New iMacs offer more value than competition – report:

A fresh analysis argues that new iMacs introduced Tuesday already compare quite favorably with their Windows-based counterparts.

The Oppenheimer analyst also used his report Tuesday to perform a side-by-side comparison of the new iMacs against all-in-one desktops from Dell and HP. He found that the mid-range $1,499 model sports faster CPU and RAM while delivering better or comparable graphics than its rivals while still coming in $100 to $250 cheaper.

The difficulty Apple has here is that it’s always simpler for people to say “I don’t care about that feature” rather than “I don’t care about the price.”

(Via AppleInsider.)

Posted: March 6th, 2009 under News.
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Apple’s new Airport Extremes, announced a few days ago, have several features that make them very useful for small business environments.

Foremost is the guest network. As well as your main Wireless LAN, you can set up a secondary wLAN which can be restricted to internet access only – preventing access to your internal network. the Airport Extreme can be configured to allow devices on this guest network to communicate with each other, if you wish.

Security options are interesting here – none, WPA or WPA/WPA2. This is because the 802.11n spec does not allow WEP security.

The new Airport Extreme also has two radios built in – one operating on the 5Ghz band and one on the 2.4Ghz. This allows useful network traffic separation – 802.11n-only on 5Gz for all new network equipment, and 802.11n/g/b on 2.4Ghz for older equipment. Each frequency can have a separate SSID – useful in some circumstances, but will break the seamless roaming Apple brought out in the Airport update earlier this week.

As before, holding down Option when selecting radio mode gives full access to the radio choices. However, the defaults of 802.11/a/n and 802.11b/g seem perfectly reasonable.

In summary, this device is useful for separating out older devices onto their own network, allowing newer computers with 5Gz-capable network adapters their own clear space without the need for two wireless access points.

However, if you still need WEP access for old devices on the 2.4Ghz side, then you will still need a second access point. If that’s the case, and you already have one on 5Ghz and one on 2.4GHz, then there’s nothing really to recommend rushing out and buying a new Airport Extreme just yet.

Their final new feature is MobileMe integration. If you have a MobileMe account, USB hard drives attached to the access point are shared via the Back to My Mac. Useful for getting access to data from wherever you are – if you can get Back to My Mac working properly. I never have!

Posted: March 6th, 2009 under Comment, Review.
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Head-to-Head: Parallels Desktop for Mac vs. VMware Fusion:

In the majority of overall averages of our tests, Parallels Desktop is the clear winner running 14-20% faster than VMware Fusion. The one exception is for those that need to run Windows XP, 32-bit on 2 virtual processors, VMware Fusion runs about 10% faster than Parallels Desktop.

My question is, do users notice 14-20% in real life use? My guess is that they don’t.

(Via MacTech.com.)

Posted: March 6th, 2009 under Comment, Review.
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Many sites are talking about Quicktime Pro being available in the current betas of Snow Leopard. They’re all speculating that this will make it through to the release of the product.

I don’t think so. It’s a beta, people! Remember, the time where product features get tested prior to release? That’s all that’s happening here. Quicktime’s pro features out for testing. There’s absolutely nothing that suggests Apple will change their current marketing model in that.

And contrary to at least one article, there is no difference in the Quicktime binary – all that’s ever been needed is a key to unlock the Pro features. All that needs to be done is for that key not to be installed in the release version

In fact, I’m pretty sure this situation is no different from previous betas – those of Leopard and Tiger. I’m sure Quicktime was included with the Pro features enabled during the beta process then too.

So what’s the fuss here? People seem to be making a mountain out of absolutely nothing.

Posted: February 11th, 2009 under News.
Comments: 1

In order to get Google Sync to get your calendar and contact information synchronised with phone, you need to get that data into Google, and keep that data synchronised from your Mac. This is how to do that if you’re using the inbuilt Address Book and iCal apps on OSX 10.5.x

Address Book

Setting up Address Book is straightforward. Go into its preferences. On the General pane, right at the bottom, is “Synchronize with Google”. Press the button and add the google account and password with which you want to synchronise. Tick the box, and that’s it.

I’ve had problems where Google changes details on one or two of my cards. No data loss – just duplication of address details. I’ve not sorted out why this occurs but since it’s just duplication all I’ve done is deleted the extra address.

iCal

iCal is more complicated. Unfortunately there’s no way to synchronise an existing calendar with Google Calendar. So you will need to add a calendar from your Google account to iCal, then move or copy data from your existing calendar to it.

To set up Google Calendars in iCal, first download Google’s Calendar set-up tool. Sign in with your Google account and password. The tool will show a list of calendars to which you have access. Select the ones you wish to add to iCal and press “Add to iCal” to add them.

This shows my Google Calendar added to iCal.

Now sync to your phone

Now you have your address book and calendar ready for synching, you’ll need to set up your phone to use Google Sync.

That should be it! Back up often – both your Mac and your phone – Google Sync is in beta.

Posted: February 10th, 2009 under Tips.
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Google announced yesterday that Google Sync is now available for the iPhone, adding it to a list including the Blackberry, Windows Mobile devices, some Sony Ericcson and some Nokia phones. The iPhone, Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices will synchronise calendars as well as contacts in the address book. Is this enough to replace Mobile Me if you have a Mac as well as an iPhone?

Mobile Me is a paid-for service (£69, $99 per annum) that enables the near real-time synchronisation of calendars, contact information and a number of @me.com email addresses. It’s built into OSX and the iPhone and (after initial teething problems) has proven to be a reliable way to keep the information on your Mac in synch with your phone. But even with its other perks – 20Gb of internet storage, email addresses – it’s expensive. Can Google Sync now be used instead?

The answer is yes, but there are compromises here. Firstly, you lose those perks. Secondly, if you’re using Activesync on your iPhone already it simply can’t be done – Google Sync requires Activesync and there can only be one Activesync configuration. Thirdly, it’s nothing like seamless. You need to set up Address Book, create new calendars, move data around and back up regularly – this is a beta after all.

However, if you wish to replace Mobile Me, or if you use one of the other Smartphones that work with Google Sync, this is an interesting opportunity. At the very least, I hope it will cause Apple to revisit the pricing of Mobile Me. I’ll pay for simplicity of configuration, but I don’t think I’ll be the only one who will think “is this worth it any more?” when my Mobile Me subscription rolls around again.

Posted: February 10th, 2009 under Comment, News.
Comments: 1

If you’re using Macs inside a organisation with a MS-based instant messaging infrastructure, you will want to upgrade to Microsoft Messenger for Mac 7.0.2 The release notes suggest this is a bugfix release, primarily concerned with improving operation with Microsoft’s recently-released corporate communications hub Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2.

This isn’t the promised release with audio-video messaging for non-corporate users – that’s still to come.

Posted: February 6th, 2009 under News.
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Google Battles ISPs With Technology:

Google has a vested interest in net neutrality. They don’t want to be forced by ISPs to pay a premium in order for the ISPs not to slow down traffic to them. Being the biggest site on the internet, they’re a sitting duck for this sort of tactic.

But Google believes that users also don’t want their internet traffic to be messed around with in order to squeeze money out of content providers. So it has created Measurement Labs, a server platform and a series of software tools to measure broadband speeds, whether or not your ISP is filtering or prioritising traffic.

By fighting politics with information, Google believes that the competitive disadvantage of being seen to filter traffic will be enough to keep the net neutral, by default.

(Via GigaOm.)

Posted: February 5th, 2009 under News.
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You would think that the ability to access your information anywhere by the simple expedient of moving it away from one physical location, out onto the internet, would be compelling. And it is for a lot of people – Cloud Computing is the tech bubble of 2008-2010. But we are already starting to see the problems with the model. Hopefully this should go some way to bursting the bubble and let cloud computing assume its proper place – a useful tool, not a universal panacea.

The major problem is that all you’re actually doing is moving your data from one physical location to a different one. A different one where you have less control – you have no say how your data is being maintained. How, or even if, it’s being backed up. What it’s being used for. How you can get it back. How it can be deleted. Your company’s data is the very essence of its existence. Surely you must do everything to preserve it?

A few days ago I wrote about people being locked out of their Google Apps accounts. Commonly used services, for example Google Notebook, cease development. And a couple of days ago, Ma.gnolia, a major social bookmarking service provider, suffered major data loss and has gone offline. The people fighting with Google Apps finally got access to their documents again. Ma.gnolia users may not be so lucky – at over 48 hours’ downtime, it could well be the site is gone for good – along with all its users’ bookmarks.

So how can a balance be struck between the convenience of data being stored in the cloud, universally accessible, and remaining in your control? A few simple rules should cover it.

Read more »

Posted: February 1st, 2009 under Comment, News.
Comments: 1

The Business of Software – Don’t ever use Google Apps for anything important:

I’ve posted before on why I don’t think you should use Google Apps for your business. Here’s another reason. Should it go wrong, you can expect no help from Google whatsoever.

Who in their right mind could sensibly recommend businesses use this? Let alone the pain and complication suffered when, for whatever reason, it stops working, there are corporate legal issues here. Putting all your data where someone else determines whether you can get to it or not is so far away from corporate responsibility it’s unreal.

(Via Joel on Software.)

Posted: January 29th, 2009 under Comment, Links.
Comments: 1