Baggas' Blog

Apple today yesterday quietly released the newest update to their base model MacBook laptop. With updated graphics and CPU and longer life battery, it’s also about the cheapest Apple laptop ever. And with it’s smooth lines and cute glossy white colour, it’s also the perfect gift for the Mac-savvy woman in your life who needs her very own laptop!

If you want a more detailed first-hand account of it, ask me some time next week…

Thought I’d mention a nifty piece of Mac OS software I’ve been using. Read on if you have a Mac and either an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3… if you don’t have those you might as well save time and stop reading this now!…

Right, now that we’ve got rid of those non-Mac and non-Gaming console people we can continue with Rivet. This program basically enables your connected games console to access your music, video, and photo libraries on your mac. These consoles talk nicely to Windows out of the box but unfortunately they are not designed with Mac OS in mind. Rivet takes care of this smoothly and easily. Set it to load when your Mac starts-up and it just sits in the menu bar. There are no extra steps – right away I was able to browse and play my media content from my Mac on the Xbox 360 and PS3**. It’s very handy if you have a large collection of video files (home movies, TV shows, movies, whatever) as they can be immediately accessed and played on the console. Podcasts (video and audio) are handled as well, and all your iTunes playlists show up too. This last feature is very useful at this time of the year so I can pump my gigabytes of Christmas Mp3s ‘all through the house’

So if you have a Mac and a console download the trial version of Rivet and give it a go.. there’s a good chance that, like me, you’ll soon be going back for the full version too.

** Yes, I now have both consoles. I was in the market for a Bluray player and was soon convinced (despite my initial hesitation) that a PS3 was the way to go.. As far as gaming consoles go I still like the Xbox better – the interface is nicer and easier to navigate, and there is a better and easier to find selection of downloadable demos which the kids like playing. The Xbox360 interface has been hugely improved over the last year or so and the new avatar section is really good. I believe it’s due for another big update any day now as well…

I can’t really contrast the actual games though as I haven’t played much on the Ps-3 – my feeling is that the graphics and games are comparable. I did enjoy stuffing around with this funny game called Little Big Planet on the Ps3 last night. Oh and it has this interesting feature called Playstation Home which is similar to Second Life.. something to explore when I’m bored… but mostly the PS3 has become our home theatre media hub – great for playing Blurays, DVDs, and streaming videos and music (via Rivet). One big plus is it’s a lot quieter than the Xbox which makes it better for that application.  So there’s my haphazrd initial review of the PS3

*** Hey, and if you know me and have an xbox 360 or  PS3 let me know who you are and maybe we can add each other as ‘friends’ Presently I have no PS3 friends and only some random people on Xbox that I played a game against like once a few years ago, so having some people that I actually know would be cool. (here ends the pathetic appeal for friends..lol)

For anyone who, like me, didn’t catch the Apple event last week with Steve Jobs et al, here’s an incredible, really nice, abbreviated version where they discuss their fantastic, great products…

Apple released iTunes 9 today, and it is probably the most significant update we’ve seen for the software in some time. New features include a redesigned iTunes store, enhanced ‘LP’ albums, improved library sharing over a network, and further improvements in the Genius function (which I have increasingly grown to appreciate..). But the feature I like the best is the new ability to arrange iPhone applications. You can now rearrange the App screens on your iPhone from within the iTunes software. Much easier dragging and dropping the app icons using a mouse on my iMac than using my finger to push them around on the screen. Very impressed with this update!

Note : make sure you update your iPhone to the 3.1 software to take advantage of this feature.

I’ve had Snow Leopard on my iMac for a few days now, and aside from having to update a couple of programs, I haven’t had  any major problems. And it certainly seems to me to live up to what I expected. Generally faster load times for most applications including Safari and Mail and a few minor enhancements which I am gradually discovering.

Sadly though, it seems that I am one of the lucky ones. For a sizeable minority of users, Snow Leopard has been a bit more of a scary experience…

This article from ilounge chronicles some of the woes that people have been having. It’s an uncharacteristic and unfortunate let down from Apple, particularly badly timed in view of the upcoming release of Windows 7. Windows “fans” (had to use inverted commas as it’s hard to imagine a true “fan” of Windows) are sure to gloat if Windows 7 has a smoother release, which I imagine it might.

So while personally I’m happy with Snow Leopard, I might decide to wait until the next point update before I install it on my MacBook Air as well – I’ll just stick with the warmer climate Leopard for now and hope they get all the bugs ironed out fast.

SO next week (on 9/9/9)  we finally get some remastered CDs of The Beatles’ albums, according to this story :
A Splendid Time is Guaranteed for All: The Beatles Remastered

What’s notable is that they are releasing mono remasters of some of these albums, more like they were originally heard back in the 60′s. Apparently these mixes carry lots of little differences and details to give a quite different experience to the current (1987 era) CD versions. Very tempting, but perhaps for the time being I’ll just stick to my 1987 box set (complete with roller door… hehe – take a look at the picture. I still love that box – has pride of place in my music wall) – hard to justify spending that much on a bunch of albums I already own, even if they are much better versions. Sooner or later I’ll have to get them though as I do love The Beatles.

Also on 09/09/09 we’ll see the release of The Beatles RockBand game, which looks cool. I’m not a serious gamer but this is very tempting too… maybe something I’ll look at getting later in the year when I’m not so crazily busy.

And coincidentally on 9/9/9 there’s also a big music related Apple event scheduled where they are likely to be releasing new iPod models. Usually these events are held on a Tuesday so the fact it’s on a Wednesday on the same day as these other Beatles may herald the long overdue addition of The Beatles’ catalogue to iTunes. I won’t be buying them, since I already ripped my 1987 CDs into iTunes a long time ago, but it’s an important step so the younger generation of non-CD-buying iPod listening youths can have better access to some of the most important popular music ever made… Will also be interesting to see if Steve Jobs makes his first post-transplant public appearance here..

Another test post, this one. I just downloaded the wordpress app onto my iPhone, which is cool. Now I can write or edit blog posts, check comments and much more from anywhere, even my bedroom where I am now. The photo below is of my bedside table – posting it only for the reason of testing this app… Hope it works… If you can see this I guess it means it does

Spent the first part of the evening playing with Apple GarageBand – such a fun and easy piece of software. The new version makes recording guitars so much better as it gives visual representation and control over virtual amps and stomp box effects. I also added in some nice clarinet and organ sounds. It took 2 clicks to send it to iTunes and now I have the fruits of my labour on my iPhone. Very cool. I could easily waste a lot of time on this program…

Anyway typing on an iPhone is a little slow and I have stuff to do so I’ll end this now.. hope it works

Like many, I’ve been watching the release of the iPhone 3G with interest. At present I have no definite plans to get an iPhone although I’m sure I will end up with one in the next couple of years. The main thing holding me back is that I’m less than halfway through my current phone contract and I’m fairly happy with my current HTC TyTnII phone – but if I found a way to get an iPhone cheap without having to pay huge contract fees I would jump at it. The other thing is, even in it’s second iteration I’m still not convinced the iPhone is a complete product – as a phone it lacks simple things like a decent camera, video capabilities, and MMS – I still cannot fathom why it won’t work with MMS. So for now I shall continue to bide my time, whilst still envying those cool people who have the iPhone already.

The other new release from Apple is their MobileMe service, which is an upgrade of .Mac which allows automatic over the air syncing of calendars, contacts, email and more between your Macs, PCs and iPhone. I’m quite excited about this one, having tried to achive similar things previously with Google with limited success. If I had an iPhone I would sign up for this in an instant but even without one I am quite tempted to do so anyway. Will be nice to have synchronized calendars on my Work and Home PCs and my MacBook Pro, which I can then sync to my phone with Missing Sync. I’m also planning to invest in a MacBook Air in the next couple of months to use for my Masters degree study and travel (just booked flights for my first Uni trip over to Townsville in October) – so keeping that in sync as well will be great. In fact, I think I’ve just talked myself into trying MobileMe. I’ll sign up for the free trial and let you know how it goes.

United Airlines offers in-flight iPhone and iPod Connectivity | The Apple Blog

Over the last couple of years I’ve spent many hours on planes, huddled over my iPod watching shows and movies on the little screen. In fact I watched the first three seasons on Battlestar Galactica (awesome show) in this manner. And almost invariably if you look around the cabin on any flight you will see several people with those characteristic white earphones in their ears. So the above story definitely appeals to me and I’m sure many other travellers. In a nod to the increasing ubiquity of these devices, United Airlines have installed iPod connectors in some of their planes so you can browse your iPod or iPhone and watch or listen to your own content on their screens, as well as keep your device charged. Certainly beats huddling over a tiny screen and definitely good to have more choice beyond the usual in-flight entertainment. Hope this comes to Australia soon…

In other iPod news, I noticed today that you can now purchase some TV shows via the Australian iTunes store. Only a couple of years behind the rest of the world! Hopefully movie rentals will follow. My guess is they’ve finally got their act together and done this because of the upcoming Australian iPhone launch.

• The Exigent City – this is a fascinating in-depth article from the New York Times on the history, sociology and architecture of refugee camps around the world. They also have a good article on the groth of new cities.
• Ben Witherington writes an excellent post on God’s freedom, love, and human free-will. I’ve been pondering some of these issues lately so this is very timely.
• On the US election, this article compares the online presence of Obama and McCain, and this article looks at McCain’s strategy in searching for a Vice President – Google!
• Apple News from the WWDC conference. A better, cheaper iPhone with 3G and GPS, coming to Australia soon (wonder how long I will be able to resist?). An upgraded .Mac service (no trouble resisting that) and a new Mac OSX ‘Snow Leopard’ next year. Read a summary of some of the buzz here. My only disappointment is that I was hoping to see an upgraded version of the MacBook Air with more storage and RAM – guess I’ll keep waiting for that one… until the next Stevenote..