OK, it’s only mildly amusing, but one of the first thing owners of the new Macbooks and Macbook Pros will see is a Software Update.

A mere six hours after they were announced, and probably a good twelve before they’re available in the shops, Apple have released a Macbook, Macbook Pro Software Update 1.2, improving compatibility with external displays and “including other software fixes”.

Version 1.2 already though? That, given Apple’s numbering scheme, is the third update for machines that haven’t been released yet!

Technorati Tags:
Macbook, Macbook Pro, Software Update

Posted: October 14th, 2008 under News.
Comments: none

This is what Apple should have released in the first place - this bugfix release of the iPhone’s OS fixes at least two of the three problems I mentioned in my initial post of my impressions last month.

The obvious feeling with this release is that it’s much snappier. Gone are the delays in the Address Book application, and I’ve been pushing Location Services quite hard to see if I could stall the phone again, with no luck. Also fixed are some other niggles that I came up against - Apple seemingly had broken Time Zone support again, which of course I only found out about when I was 8 timezones away from home.

Apple, of course, have not released a full list of fixed bugs, so I can’t tell you exactly what it fixes. But it’s certainly worth a go to see if it improves whatever small thing was bugging you about your iPhone.

Posted: August 5th, 2008 under News.
Comments: none

You will remember that wide channels are the method by which you can boost the throughput of your Airport Extreme access point to up to 300Mbps, if your local laws allow it. It used to be set by, in Airport Utility, going into the wireless options, choosing a country that supports it and ticking the “Use wide channels” box.

This functionality may have been recently removed, however. While testing network connectivity today using our favourite wLAN graphing software, AP Grapher, we noticed that our maximum bandwidth was 130Mbps. Yet we still had wide channels selected. We’re unable to find a way of getting 300Mbps right now, using the current 7.3.2 Airport Extreme firmware.

Can anyone else confirm they’re having the same issue, or is it unique to us?

Technorati Tags:
Airport Extreme, wide channels

Posted: July 16th, 2008 under News.
Comments: none

Good-ish news, for people wanting to upgrade - Microsoft have finally brought out the upgrade to Office 2004 that allows it to convert and read the Office 2008 file formats.

The Open XML File Format converter is the starting point - this allows conversion of documents saved in Office 2008 for Mac or Office 2007 for PC file formats. It can do single or batch conversion. After that, the Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.5.0 update integrates with the format converter, allowing Office 2004 to seamlessly open documents from the newer versions of office. This allows you to run both versions in parallel, and exchange documents in the new Office file formats.

What we can’t understand is why these functions weren’t released at the same time as Office 2007. Or why VBA isn’t implemented in Office 2008 for Mac. We know that there are very many large companies for whom this is essential.

Us? We fall on the other side of the 80:20 functionality rules, and Pages is quite good enough for us. And faster. And it also reminds us of Ami Pro, still our favourite word-processor ever, even if it was on a PC.

Technorati Tags:
office 2008, office 2004

Posted: June 29th, 2008 under News.
Comments: 1

Around six weeks ago we wrote about why we thought using Google Apps Team Edition was no real substitute to having the same apps provided by in-house IT. The reasoning was, it has to be said, more gut-feeling than anything else - that it was a bad idea to have your corporate data anywhere other than on your corporate servers.

Now, it turns out that there is a very good reason indeed for keeping data in house only. The US PATRIOT act, allows data at Google - including your data - to be spied upon by the US Government with only the most limited of legal oversight. This is a clear conflict with any requirement your business for keeping its data confidential - that may be as simple as matters of competition.

Where it really strikes home though if you’re using data that can identify others. That could be for Marketing, information on clients, or even worse, processing information supplied to you by clients. Anything that you do that requires your use registered with the Information Commissioner? It’s pretty safe to say you must not use Google Apps to do it.

(Oh, and that’s whether you’ve actually registered or not!)

Be careful now. This is the article where the problem first emerged.

Posted: March 26th, 2008 under Comment, News.
Comments: none

It’s Tuesday, it’s changes happening at Apple. Three things happened today: two pretty much anticipated, and one that wasn’t foreseeen.

As expected, Macbook Pros got an upgrade: new multi-touch trackpads as recently introduced on the Macbook Air, and the 17″ Macbook Pro gained the LED backlighting introduced to the 15″ version some months ago.

What was unexpected that the processors inside both the Macbook Pro and the Macbook got a bit of a speed bump - Macbook Pros are available now with Core 2 Duos at 2.4 and 2.5GHz, the Macbooks at 2.1 and 2.4GHz.

Macbooks are in stock now on the UK Apple website, Macbook Pros are delayed by 4-5 days.

Technorati Tags:
Macbook, Macbook Pro, update

Posted: February 26th, 2008 under News.
Comments: none

New on Software Update: Keyboard Firmware Update for Macbooks and Macbook Pros. Ever had the situation where your laptop has been sitting idle, you press a key to wake it and nothing happens? We’ve had that many times, and we’ve never been sure if it was us or the computer at fault. We think it’s safe to say it was the computer all along.

Run Software Update now to get it if you need it. It doesn’t even need a reboot.

Technorati Tags:
Macbook Pro, Macbook, update, keyboard

Posted: February 20th, 2008 under News.
Comments: none

Continuing the trend set from Steve Jobs’ keynote at Macworld, the Apple Store closed for an update today - the new business product being XSan 2. Interestingly though, there’s also a product missing from the shops - Apple’s previous RAID storage arrays for XServes.

XSan 2 gives a number of new and improved features: easier setup and configuration - Leopard setup recognises Fibre Channel controllers and configures accordingly, and the rest of the configuration is now handled by wizards. The Admin tool can manage multiple nodes and now has inbuilt realtime monitoring and notification. Most importantly, a single workstation or server can now access multiple XSan volumes at the same time directly, without the slow hop via Ethernet. This is ideal for any IT architecture which works in a staged manner towards the final production environment.

Initial impressions are that this is a solid and useful step up from XSan, and is priced at $999. UK Pricing isn’t yet available at time of writing.

But where have the Apple XServe RAID drive arrays gone? There’s no sign of them on the US site, though they’re still visible for now on the UK site. On the US site all that’s visible are Promise RAID subsystems - it may be that Apple have left the storage market. That’s a shame, as their cost per Gb was one of the best available.

Technorati Tags:
XServe, XSan, Promise, VTrak, XServe RAID

Posted: February 19th, 2008 under News.
Comments: none

Not to be left out, Tiger users also receive an update today: Security Update 2008-01. The list of fixes can be found here.

Some of the fixes also apply to Leopard users, these are rolled up into 10.5.2. We think that’s bad practice: we like to be able to install security fixes quickly and easily rather than going through the process of testing and installing a full OS update. But clearly we’re not getting that, this time. Oh well.

Technorati Tags:
10.5.2, leopard, security, Tiger, 10.4.11

Posted: February 12th, 2008 under News.
Comments: none

You’ve no doubt read everywhere that Apple have released 10.5.2 for client and server. There’s a list of fixes documented for the client version, but the article for the server version isn’t very forthcoming.

As well as 10.5.2, there’s a update to Leopard’s graphics drivers. Hopefully this will relieve the freezes we’ve been having. For Web site design and deployment, there’s also the WebObjects 5.4.1 update. This fixes bugs inn deployment, database compatibility and web service serialisation.

Technorati Tags:
leopard, OSX, 10.5.2

Posted: February 12th, 2008 under News.
Comments: none