Views from the Ivory Tower -
November 2007
By Ted Bade
I always thought Macs were gold,
but... - This news
event really made me chuckle. As you know, some people love their Macs so much
that they modify the Macs exterior to reflect their personalities and artistic
feelings. This is known as “Modding” the Mac. Somebody took this to the extreme
by giving their MacBook Pro a real 24 caret gold exterior! Take a look at this
blog that shows some images of the gold-modded Mac! Wow, I would love to have
that one myself!
Personalizing a computer was
unheard of until Apple came out with this new machine called the iMac! Since
then, the flood gates have been opened. People who just want to use a computer
in their home or for fun have ever since added personal touches to their
machines. When the iMac first came out, I recall being truly stunned by a woman
who was all too willing to pay extra for a color coordinated USB hub (an almost
Bondi Blue one) and another who told me that she just loved the way the iMac
fit into the color scheme of her study!
However, this gold-plated MacBook
Pro takes the all time cake! I hope the owner has an opportunity to enjoy the
golden interface of Mac OS X as well as enjoy the machines new exterior!
Apple adopting the ZFS
filesystem? - Rumors have been flying and now partially confirmed, Apple will be implementing
the ZFS file system into Mac OS X. When I first heard this, like most Mac Users
I said, “What is it?” So I did a little research on it.
The ZFS filesystem is a system
developed by Sun Microsystems to handle a LOT of data very efficiently. The
acronym once meant zettabyte file system, but like so many acronyms, it had
become the term. (Does it annoy you when someone says VIN number? ☺).
In any case, a zettabyte is a very
large number. People comfortable with scientific numbering systems will
recognize it as 1021 or 270. For non-math people, it is
as many time larger then the terabyte as the terabyte is larger then the
kilobyte. Many many times more data!
I found a short article that
explain a little about what the ZFS file system is all about in the MacDailyNews
site.
You can also see the Wikipedia
entry for additional information on the ZFS file system.
Essentially this system looks at
the hard drives connected to a computer as a pool of storage. It then makes use
of this pool as it sees fit, organizing files and backups of these files. If
you insert a new drive into the system it will automatically incorporate it and
when you need to remove a drive it shifts data around to empty the one leaving.
The system apparently works fast even when dealing with large bundles of data
and incorporates features that keep the disk and the data healthy. Which means
no data loss.
I guess that Apple’s new feature,
Time Machine, makes use of aspects of the ZFS file system. I expect that we
will see more of it in the future. I expect that it will be a real benefit for
people working with video, as well as people who collect large numbers of songs
and photos, or just about any other type of data.
Apple grows to #3 PC sales
position - In a
recent article carried on electronista they pointed out that Apple has ranked
in the number three position for PC sales. Dell and HP are the two retailers
ahead of Apple. Take a look at this article, it is informative.
The fact that Apple is ranking well
compared to other PC manufacturers is good news for Mac fans. While the Mac
isn’t yet the most popular computer, it is definitely moving up. People are
buying and enjoying their Macs, which is good news for any dedicated Mac user!
A new Cat - Finally, in late October, Apple
released Mac OS X 10.5. (I have to poke fun at myself for saying that. If I was
using Windows it would seem like it was released years before it was expected!)
Apple released many new features in this OS, most of them are things I really
expect to enjoy and value. You can take a video tour of the major items and
read to your hearts content about it by visiting Apple’s Mac OS X web area, but
there is nothing like trying it for yourself.
During the week before its release
the MacNewsNetwork reported that several value added retailers said that the pre-orders
of Leopard have exceeded that of Tiger.
As reported by an article on the
CRN site, reasons for this increase are said to be due to the length of time
since the last release of Mac OS X, new features, and users dissatisfaction
with Windows Vista.
As with every version of MacOS ever
released, there are many features that are not explained to users. This is
either because they are relatively insignificant or significant to only a
certain sub group of users. Some features are in the OS but are not turned on,
so you need to either run a Terminal session or a helper application to make
them work. In any case, there are usually many articles written by testers that
bring some of them to light. One such article I found documents 16
interesting features of Mac OS X 10.5 that Apple didn’t bring to light.
Take a look at the article, you might find a few that will make your life
easier.
There are going to be several
articles on Leopard. We will share a few here and comment next month.
One gotcha associated with Leopard
is that BootCamp, which has been a beta version since its release, will expire
at the end of October. Which means those users that take advantage of BootCamp
to satisfy their needs to run Windows only applications will definitely need to
upgrade to Mac OS X 10.5.
Here are some of the features I
expect will benefit the way I use my Macintosh;
Stacks - One of the earliest tricks I
learned with Mac OS X was to place a folder full of items I wanted easy access
to, on the Dock. Using the right-click and hold of a two button mouse will open
a list showing the contents of this folder. The stacks feature does this for
you with a lot more flair. Items downloaded via the Internet no longer clutter
the desktop, but are placed in a stack folder are can easily be accessed by
mousing over the stack icon on the dock. Depending upon the number of items in
the stack folder you get an arc of icons (for a few items) or a grid for a
larger number of items.
Like a lot of users, I download to
the desktop for several reasons.
By always going to the same place, I don’t
have to wonder where the item went. The desktop is also very accessible. While
its real folder might be several layers down on the hard drive, it is right in
your face when you use the Finder! However, another reason I use the desktop is
as a reminder. An icon on the desktop means there is something I need to attend
to. I am hoping that the Stacks feature will still allow me to use the icon in
your face reminder system and organize my desktop better. I have some stunning
astronomy images I use for desktop backgrounds and I just hate it when a
generic icon covers something interesting!
QuickView - This is a really hot feature
that lets the user inspect the contents of a file without running the
application that created it. It is handy in the way that Dashboard is handy.
When you need a quick look at a document to see if is the one you really want
to open and work with or to quickly check some information. However I find it
humorous that in a time when memory is cheap and computers are powerful enough
so that one could run almost every application they own at the same time, Apple
comes up with a system that makes it so you don’t have to do this!
Coverflow for the Finder - This is really
eye candy, but I happen to like the Coverflow view. Just like the iTunes
feature, using this method in the finder, you flow through the icons of items
in the folder you are viewing. You can even access the file’s contents without
using the creation application for those items that QuickLook can handle. This
is a really handy feature. I often spend a lot of time trying to find a
specific image after I download from my camera. (Yes, I know it is probably
heresy that I don’t download directly into iPhoto, but I have my reasons). With
Coverflow, I can now flow through the images in the folder, and even look at
them to find the one I want to work with. This would work for PDFs, movies,
documents, and many other file types.
Time Machine - This feature, coupled with an
external hard drive to back up stuff, gives the user the ability to “go back in
time” and recover a file that was accidentally deleted. Of course this means
that one needs to have a backup drive running all the time and if you typically
download or create and delete a lot of files, storage might become an issue.
But I am sure Apple has provided a means of honing this feature so that it
works well with any user. It is one of those things that will benefit the
average user a lot. Time machine also works from within an application
providing the ability to go back to an earlier version of a document.
Spaces - I know I have spoken of this one
before. I love using this feature on the UNIX boxes that I work with.
Essentially it is a way to organize the applications you are running in
separate spaces so that they don’t get in the way of each other. For instance,
you can open your web creation tools in one space, and your browsers in
another. When you create a page, flip to the browser space and view what you
created, then back to the editor space to make changes. It is really a lot more
efficient then moving windows around. If you have mail open, it can be in
another space, so it doesn’t get in the way, but when you want to check mail,
you just jump to that space.
I find it a lot easier to do my
work when it is organized into spaces. In the current version of Mac OS X, I
hide any application I am not currently working in, and use the command-tab
feature to jump back and forth, but doing this unhides them. I really think
Spaces will make working on a Macintosh a lot easier.
Apple’s Mail program seems to have
a lot of improvements. So many in fact that I have actually decided to try it.
I have to admit that I am fond of Microsoft’s Entourage and believe that it has
done a really good job for me. But after the last couple of demos I have seen
with Mail, I am ready to convert. Well, at least, give it a try. I might even
do a review of Mail right here in
macCompanion land!
One very interesting aspect of Mail
is called data detectors. It is a feature that understands data type and makes
it really easy to select it and store it in an application that makes use of
it. For instance a Phone number or address. With a quick click Mac OS X
recognizes it as such and gives the user the option to move the data into
address book. It can also recognize an event and let you transfer the event
from the email into iCal. Pretty slick.
iChat has some newer features.
First of all you can apply several different the eye candy effects such as
distorting the image, coloring the background, changing the background to be a
specific image, and so forth. This is fun stuff but not necessarily important.
More importantly is iChat’s ability to allow the remote user to interact with
you by being able to share your iPhoto libraries, presentations and most
importantly the Finder itself. I think the sharing feature will be really cool.
Instead of sending those vacation images, you can share them with a friend over
the Internet. Also being able to work on a document or a presentation with
another remote person is a feature many will enjoy.
As a person who spend time
helping other people figure out how to get their Macs to do something, the
ability to share their Finder will be a nice feature. Of course, I see a lot of
potential for not so nice event based on these abilities. If anyone ever
wanted to write some nasty code for a Mac, being able to access the Finder
would be one way to do a lot of damage! I expect Apple has implemented a lot of
security with this and it probably requires a password based confirmation from
the user whose Finder is being shared.
Apple financial information - At the end of October Apple
posted it’s fourth quarter financial results and they were once again pretty
good. They reported a $6.22 billion and net quarterly profit of $904 million.
(When compared to the previous quarter of .84 billion and net quarterly profit
of $542 million, this is a good increase).
Apple shipped out 2,164,000 Macs,
representing 34 percent growth from the same quarter last year and exceeding
the previous quarterly record for Mac shipments by 400,000. They also sold
10,200,000 iPods during the quarter, representing 17 percent growth over the
year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone sales were 1,119,000, bringing cumulative
fiscal 2007 sales to 1,389,000. (Even with all the complaints about the price
drop)
“Apple ended the fiscal year with
$15.4 billion in cash and no debt,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. (see Apple’s
financial letter on their web site. (With that much cash, it’s no wonder anyone
with a lawyer wants to sue them!)
Their stock also went up almost $4
per share after this announcement. (although to put it in perspective, it has
been jumping up and down by $2 to $3 every day or so for the last couple of
weeks.) At the close of the day on October 22nd, it was prices at $174.36.
Pretty nice Apple. Right before the release of Leopard it jumped almost
$12/share, Wow!
Personally, I am very happy to hear
about the growth of Mac sales. While some of those numbers are people replacing
older Macs, I am certain some of that growth represents new people coming to
the Macintosh platform.
As always, keep on using your Mac!
