Apple Reporter

After a series of power outages in the Northwest, my Macbook Pro was left a little messed up. By messed up, I mean that it wouldn’t turn on unless it was plugged in via Magsafe adapter. Realizing that this, combined with the broken fan that had been ailing my Macbook for the 10 months I’ve owned it, probably warranted a call to Apple support, I promptly began my phone call into 1-800-MYA-PPLE. The first thing I noticed was that instead of using the standard “Press 1 for etc., two for etc.,) I was told to say the name of my product. “Macbook Pro” elicited the “Sorry, what did you say?” response. Obviously, they aren’t using the same speech recognition as their operating systems. After about 5 minutes of navigating their automated systems, I was put on hold, with an estimated 15 minutes of wait time. After 25 minutes of horrible waiting music (think Nickelback and fake Oasis), I was connected to an Apple Customer support technician.

Being a 14-year old kid, mostly on customer service lines I am treated like an idiot. I was used to this, even though it infuriates me. For the first time I can remember, I was treated like I should be: like any other Apple customer. The two problems with my MBP were promptly addressed, and he promised a package for me to return my Macbook Pro back to them with in less than two days. The box came today, almost 48 hours since I hung up with them. This is how customer service should be, I have now decided. Kudos to Apple for their amazing customer support, and kudos for helping a broke teenager repair his Macbook Pro for absolutely free. Anyone else have any other Tech Support experience they want to share?

As every Mac user has probably realized, the Dock is probably the most used part of your Desktop during your daily computer use. Everyone has different docks, some with apps that I’ve probably never even heard of. But I thought I would post my dock, and I would hope that everyone else would do the same. If it’s really cool, maybe I can add it to the post so other people can see it too.

Apps in order: Finder, Safari, Mail, iTunes, iPhoto, Adium, iChat, Colloquy, Address Book, Coda, Pages, Photoshop, Netnewswire Lite, Marsedit, Final Cut Express HD, and then my stacks: Downloads, and my Home folder, and then of course, the Trash.

Don’t just look at this and say, oh that’s cool looking. Use this as a forum to share your favorite Mac apps with other people, maybe even something that will save someone an hour of their time everyday. The choice is yours, whether to participate or not.

The Online Apple Store for Mexico has now been added to the Apple website. For those in Mexico who want to get their iPod or Mac fix, it’s now easier than ever. Apparently they are also offering prizes for potential shoppers, specifically a Macbook everyday and an iPod Nano each hour. Any Spanish-speaking readers want to translate?

After dropping the “Android” bombshell, Forbes has info on the prototype phone built by HTC for Android. 

 Look familiar? That’s because this picture has been floating around the web for a few weeks prior to Android’s announcement. Apparently, the “Dream”, as it is known by HTC, has many cool features, some of which are outlined by Forbes:

“It is thin, about 3 inches wide and 5 inches long, and features a touch-sensitive, rectangular screen… the screen is also time-sensitive: Hold down your finger longer, and the area you’re controlling expands. The bottom end of the handset, near the navigational controls, is slightly beveled so it nestles in the palm. The screen also swivels to one side, revealing a full keyboard beneath. (The screen display changes from a vertical portrait mode to a horizontal display when someone uses the keyboard.)”

Overall it looks pretty great, but why isn’t Verizon jumping in on this? They’re the biggest cellular provider out there, and with T-Mobile and Sprint both having the gPhone and Android available, and AT&T having the iPhone, looks like us Verizon users are stuck with Motorola **ZR’s.

Andy Ihnatko wrote a great piece on Macworld about the individual features in Leopard and what they add up if they were each individually priced. A lot of the features, including Time Machine, he is very critical about and I think he does a good job in showing that some of these “killer” features aren’t so killer, but have been available in better ways for a very long time.

(Link)

Apple Inc. today announced several enhancements to its $99 per year .Mac service. They include:

• 10Gig email and file storage is standard, up from 100Meg.
• Impressive Web Galleries allowing users to post and share photos and movies directly from iPhoto or iMovie. Web Galleries also offer complete iPhone integration for easy uploading and downloading to an iPhone, and can be accessed via RSS.

• Enhanced website creation and hosting, including the use of Google AdSense and Maps widgets.

• “Ad Free” IMAP Email.

Other features include enhancements to group calendar and shared wiki-like websites, backup and sync applications.

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Yes. We hate to admit it, especially to Windows people - and I live in Seattle - there are a lot of them. But crashes do happen. Sometimes they have nothing to do with the Mac OS itself. Ever seen the guy at the airport who is rushing to a flight, gets out of his chair too quickly, and realizes he didn’t zip the part of his briefcase carrying his laptop? I have. Once. And it was like slow motion as the corner of the laptop screen hit the floor, bearing the brunt of the fall. Yea - I had to turn away. It was like watching a predatory chase on the Discovery Channel, where you know how the whole thing is going to end, and you close your eyes to avoid watching.

So enough of the scare tactics. Back up regularly. Here’s three ways you can be the person that says, “don’t worry - everything is okay” as all of the passers-by gaze at you in sympathy.

• Use a shared drive on your corporate network. Most IT managers in big companies (or the hosting company at smaller ones) can help you set up a partition to park your docs, prefs, tunes, photos and everything else on that big Mac hard drive.
• Use an online backup service like Mozy. I’ve been trying this service lately, and it’s really solid. Plus, since you’re likely connected all night, Automator actions can be configured to perform the backup in the middle of the night.
• Use your iPod. Truthfully, it’s pretty hard to fill an 80Gig iPod with tunes - even movies. To use the iPod as a backup drive, click on “Enable Disk Use” from your iPod’s configuration screen in iTunes. Now the iPod can accept any files from your hard drive. Applications such as Backup, included on every Mac, can provide a periodic reminder.

Do your duty. Back it up.

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One of the little digs that Mac lovers like to tell Windows tolerators is that there is far less maintenance and housekeeping necessary on OS X than on Windows. System utilities, like cache cleaning, drive defragmentation, etc. happen in the middle of the night within the Unix-based core of OS X, and generally keep the system running smoothly. But this depends on the user keeping their machine on through the night to allow these tasks to run. You DO keep your Mac on all night, don’t you?

But sometimes, OS X gets messy, and performance begins to slow. Temporary files, trash, deleted apps with leftover scraps, and other annoyances begin to build up. At that point, it’s time to clean house.

For the last several months, I’ve been using a great free app called IceClean from MacDentro. It is one of the best general system utilities I have found, and it significantly improves the performance of my 17″ Macbook Pro. If you don’t have it yet - get it.

There are quite a few robust utility packages on the market, at a variety of price ranges. But the most attractive thing about IceClean (aside from the price) is its simplicity. It is basically an aggregator of system utilities you could find and perform on your own within OS X, but packages them into a nice front end that makes them all accessible from one app.

I use my MacBook for a lot of different apps and tasks, from the standard Office apps to the full Creative Suite 3. After a couple of weeks of intense work, I notice a reduction in performance, even with 3Gig of RAM on the latest Intel Dual Core Duo processor. 10 minutes after running a few of the cache cleaning and other system utilities, my machine performs just as when I removed it from the box. The software works both on PowerPC and Universal.

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A fellow 451press writer over at Environmental Talk asked me last week why he should buy a Mac, and outlined some of his motivations, reservations about making the switch.  It’s sometimes difficult to go in to all the details for each user’s unique needs, so I have decided to take a once a week look at what’s behind the “Get a Mac” statement that always comes out of my mouth whenever I listen to anyone discuss anything about computers.

In the meantime, check out My First Mac, which is a community of volunteer writers giving “Switchers” advice about the one jump most will never look back on.

My buddy Keith has got some bizarre taste in music. He himself is an artist, so he’s always finding new music that I’d never heard of before, further fragmenting my already fragmented taste in music. Most of the stuff is nice to listen to, but not necessarily buy.

Today I get an email from him about a new, really slick piece of software called Simplify Media, which allows me to listen to his iTunes library, and those of 30 others, streaming through my own iTunes application. Free. Legal. And amazing. It takes the concept of iTunes sharing among the “home” network and blows it out over the entire internet. So now I’m listening to the Dove’s Lost Souls album from Keith’s iTunes library (which is really killer). And for all I know, Keith’s in China right now.

The software only works for iTunes, on both Mac and Windows (please, Simplify Media, keep it that way - this software is far to classy for Windows Media Player). When it’s installed, a screen name is created that can be shared among up to 30 other users. Once a few names are entered, open iTunes, and your friends shared libraries automatically show up. The only downside is that too listen, the other user must be connected to the internet and have iTunes open. So as I am half-way through the Dove’s album, Keith decides he has to go to a meeting or something unimportant like that - and wrecks my listening experience.

The software is supported by a small ad window that matches the currently playing song with the equivalent album for sale on Amazon.com.

Apple sent out an email to customers requesting advance notice of iPhone sales today. The email contained tips for use, as well as the reveal that the iPhone would use Entourage or Outlook for your contact management and syncing and require iTunes for activation. (more…)

Hi! My name is Leslie and I will be your source for all things Apple. I have a lot of exciting things planned for you so be sure to check back daily for all the latest news and reviews of Apple products.

Do you have a favorite Apple product? Do you have questions about Apple products? Are you a PC user who’d like to know more about switching to Apple? Whatever your needs I’m here to help, whether I can answer your question myself or point you to someone who can.

I’ll be doing product reviews as often as possible, reporting breaking industry news, interviewing people in all walks of life who create and use Apple products and hosting regular features such as a weekly Q&A feature.

If you have any questions that you’d like answered in the Q&A, a product you like to request a review on or any other Apple wants and needs, please e-mail me here to let me know or leave the comment below.

Have a Mac-tastic weekend!