Developer Connection

via daringfireball, absolutely mesmerizing:

Harmony, works great on the iPhone too. and that other thing that you can hear coming down the tracks…

From Cnet Crave:

Despite Google bragging about testing the Nexus One with some aggressive poking and dropping, as seen in recent behind-the-scenes video, we got the message that this phone is too high-strung to survive in common phone environments. “People sometimes forget that they don’t go in pockets,” said HTC.

This is real! and coming from Penguin books:

On the other hand, Microsoft is releasing concept videos of a project called courier, which who knows when it’ll see the light of day:

And for pickup (or delivery) on April 3rd!!!!

Learn more over here: Apple.com/iPad

drobo is the hot new(2 yrs old) device, that makes redundant arrays of independent disks an easy easy proposition.

They sell the Vanilla Drobo on Amazon for just $350 now, and you can buy 1.5TB Seagate 7200RPM drives on there for $109 a piece to populate your Drobo.

There are discussions and forums online discussing how and if a drobo can be used with or without an Airport Extreme, a Network, Time Machine or many other details. These date back to April 2008 when there were some restrictions, you could only use 2TB for storage and other factors. But today the situation is as follows:

Plugging your Drobo into a Mac in your office through the Firewire 800 port, and installing the Drobo utility will allow you to format the disks you’ve loaded as you please. This process can take five minutes. The next step is to connect your formatted drive to your Airport Extreme and mount it on your office Macintosh(es), enable it as a Time Machine Backup location, and Bob’s your uncle.

To learn more about backup for yourself, or your company, and to have us build a design or custom solution for you, give usa call on 415-843-1622, or email us.

Thanks!

Mail.app is definitively the greatest Mail program in the world, it’s wealth of features are rarely explored, but if you go over to Apple’s wonderful Tutorial page, or Hawkwings.net, you’ll be able to learn about all the powerful things mail can do for you. If you need to know more, or have your company trained on this, or know specifically how your company can gain productivity and time saving without having to dig through all the tips, you can call us in for a consultation. Our number is 415-843-1622, and you can email brendan@auburncom.com too.

In the meantime though, the topic of this post, is how to get Mail to show you all mail after you’ve sorted it into all your different folders. a quite useful feature, if you’re trying to see a timeline of all your messages for a certain period of time.

The best solution I’ve found is to run a search for “mail” in all folders, in all fields and save this search. It’ll then appear as a smart folder in your left sidebar and present most every mail you’ve sent, received or filed away.

to a 500GB, 7200RPM drive, with Snow Leopard and iLife 09, it’s running like a dream.

Remoted to a clients server and resolved this in five minutes flat!

This is pretty nifty. I’m presuming the ipad will work with this…

http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=10849

Just found a good write up about the iPad by Louis Trapani over here.

He drew my attention to the PADD from Star Trek, the next generation, and the all knowing handheld from The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, both of which I’d long forgotten (The tricorder I certainly remember, and is how the iPhone, and in certain less powerful ways, the palm, android and other phones seem). And made good points that I agree with. Like:

The possibilities are bountiful.

But I have some comments.

Nice post Louis, and I must ask if you’re closely related to Gina Trapani? But on topic, everything you wrote makes lots of sense, and you’re one of few who I find uses the Phone on the iPhone as little as I do, so cool, glad we meet there.
The only comment I can differ with you on is the space issue, with your portfolio in the cloud, then you have zero limit to your storage(depending on your provider), wheras 64gb is still a limit, so why get 64 over 16gb for simply media? Personally, I see, as does Tim Cook, the $499 model as an AMAZING value, with the price of 64GB of Flash memory costing maybe $50 at the store, why spend the $200 extra for that unamazing part?

For $499 you get the following features (ranked by amazingness in my eyes):
The Platform
The A4 Chip
Giant screen
Connectivity(Wifi N)
Keyboard capable
All the blood sweat and tears of the Apple engineers
Everything Else
Storage, dead last.

The only thing that can bite you on storage is if you dont have a permanent mobile connection to the net (boo, this will change rapidly, see the amount of places offering free Wifi? The honda dealership on market has it, unadvertised, welcome to the future, or drop your home comcast/dsl and grab an overdrive), OR, an app needs lots of room, so that’s the chance to take, but with Apple’s recent purchase of Lala, which will take your entire iTunes library online, the wealth of podcasts, and available resources online, and the increasing power and storage potential in the cloud, does your local storage on a mobile device still matter?

Comments welcome…

Two stolen iPhones recovered using MobileMe.

The officers dispatched another squad car to go to the displayed location, where a man sitting outside an apartment building hurriedly concealed a cellphone when the officers approached.

Last Week, at Ted an amazing demo of Bing’s new map technology was demoed, see the below video if you haven’t yet:

Now, this morning Google Maps is offering “Labs” feature if you’re signed in, and using Google maps, these features are quite basic, some, including “Smart Zoom”, which prevents you receiving the “no data available at this zoom level” message, one would have hoped would be a standard behavior of the maps, and another, “Beta” which adds the Beta label to Google Maps indicates pure silliness, and perhaps at a deeper level the reality that as awesome as google maps are, maybe in light of Apple’s own placebase technology, and Bing’s killer Augmented reality maps, Google’s maps really are only in Beta, Thoughts as always, welcome in the comments…

With a clean 10.3.9 Install, new 160gb hard drive, and 1.25GB of PC133 Ram!

The Sprint Mifi 2200 has been a nice device for me for getting internet everywhere, it’s free after rebate, and you can talk the guys at the store into getting a $50 per month contract with unlimited data, but they only advertise a $60 plan with 5gb cap on their marketing papers. Keep reading below though because there’s more to know.

Mifi:
http://bit.ly/b6WSu4

My main reason for getting the sprint mifi over the exact same device from Verizon is that Sprint have a new device called the overdrive, my sprint representative gave me the mifi as a trial till the overdrives come into stock (this week apparently). This device the Overdrive, is what I think I’ll be using for the next twelve months. It’s key advantages are support for an apparently forthcoming Sprint 4g Wireless network built using WiMax, with unlimited downloads on that network, and speeds ten times(allegedly)3g speeds.

I don’t see the iPad or iPhone having any 4g technology built in till 2011(but I could be wrong, it could be a june surprise, but with network rollout so slow, I’m sure apple will stick with 3G a while more), so the overdrive will give us about 12 months(say sprint has 4g in SF in June) or 6 months(say sprint has 4g in SF in December) of 4G speed on our existing MacBooks, iPads, iPhones etc… Pretty neat if it works out.

For the record, I keep a blazing 16mb downstream Comcast connection at my home for the niceish price of about $50 per month because DSL never was good enough here for me, and because 1mb down on the Mifi/Overdrive is a little slow for home internet. But your mileage may vary.

Overdrive:

http://bit.ly/9KQeyJ

These guys are writing good pieces on the wider, abstract ideas at work in theis marvelous device, the iPad.

Read them at their respective sites:

Frasier Spiers:

What you’re seeing in the industry’s reaction to the iPad is nothing less than future shock.

Gruber:

AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSION

Used to be that to drive a car, you, the driver, needed to operate a clutch pedal and gear shifter and manually change gears for the transmission as you accelerated and decelerated. Then came the automatic transmission. With an automatic, the transmission is entirely abstracted away. The clutch is gone. To go faster, you just press harder on the gas pedal.

Steven Frank:

I need to talk to you about computers. I’ve been on a veritable roller-coaster of “how I feel” about the iPad announcement, and trying not to write about it until I had at least an inkling of what was at the root of that.

For the record, Steven Frank is a relatively quiet and humble writer, who seems to think very deeply about what he writes, doesn’t write on a schedule(that I can tell) and is one of my favorites.

The iPad, to me is going to instantly accompany my Air and my iPhone as one of my work tools. And though most pundits (Patrick Norton, mouthy Ryan Block, Alex Lindsay who kept cutting off the excellent Merlin Mann on last weeks groundbreaking Live Twit Keynote coverage), think the iPad replaces your Macbook, for me, I believe the iPad will mostly replace the iPhone for me.

With my incoming calls all handled through Google Voice, and a million ways to make outgoing calls, Skype, iCall, Gizmo5(Googles latest acquisition), I’m trying to figure what the iPhone does that the iPad won’t do. Thoughts in the comments please…

If you’d like to get professional Mac Systems, networking, workflow, backup, automation or repair or upgrade advice, please get in touch with us. Through eMail, Voice or twitter!!!

Call us if you’d like any FileMaker, Bento, Access or other Database/Knowledge center style things.

Sympathy for the Devil
In the last couple of years, it has become trendy to bash the Adobe Flash Player. I need to say a few things on that subject.

First, let’s be very clear: I’m not on the Flash team. I don’t speak for them. (I don’t speak for anyone but myself.) This post is just my personal take on things. Caveat lector.

Good post by John Nack, he references HTML5 and H264, but mostly leans to the right on this issue, believing Flash will stick around.

John Gruber thinks that Flash will one day be like Internet Explorer, a former Giant now irrelevant.

Meanwhile, a Flash evangelist called Lee Brimelow, seems to be indicating that porn sites based in flash won’t work on the iPad, but try googling “sex” on your Mac and then on your iPhone, the number one site looks great on both. Go ahead and try it. Caution: Adults only. NSFW

So this site, depending on high viewership to make money on ads, has transformed their site into serving flash and h264 video, Youtube just started doing it too, and if you read Wikipedia, you’ll see H264 is being used in everything from Blu Ray, to iTunes and more, it’s a completely open industry standard. How long till websites decide offering video in HTML5 H264 is all they need?

If the iPad and its successor devices free these people to focus on what they do best, it will dramatically change people’s perceptions of computing from something to fear to something to engage enthusiastically with. I find it hard to believe that the loss of background processing isn’t a price worth paying to have a computer that isn’t frightening anymore.

In the meantime, Adobe and Microsoft will continue to stamp their feet and whine.

The whole article is a good read

We’re going up to 1TB for this client!

Just replaced the DC Card in a 4 year old iBook G4 1.07mhz PowerPC for a professor from Pacifica.

Hooray!

We received a Mac on New Years Eve, that had fallen on it’s face off a desk, the mac kept running, but the next day it displayed the flashing folder icon, our client brought the Mac into us for diagnostics and repair. We’re installing a new 1TB 7200RPM Hard drive as I write this.

occurring as we speak!

Hoorah!

Since the inception of computers, they have been idealized as helpers for our day to day tasks, through the last thirty years, this is not always obvious and there is a large contigent of people who having being burned by “File not Found”, crashing hard drives, or the ethereal experience of technology see technology as more of an obstacle than a helper.

Let’s take a look at how Apple envisioned the computer in this concept video from 14 years ago:

Clearly, this computer is an stand in for a personal assistant, that handles a lot of your mundane tasks, like taking messages, making appointments etc, and let s you communicate instantly, research anything and build charts, relational datasheets and more really really easily.

What’s cool about this video is that the touch sensitive nature of the concept device looks very similar to how the iPhone and iPod touch accepts input. And the bulky camera on top of the “Knowledge Navigator” looks very like the classic iSight Camera apple made for a few years (before updating it to the near invisible pinhole sized camera on top of modern Macs screens.

So, if you combine a MacBook Air, iPhone and a computer that understands vocal commands cleverly the way the digital avatar person in the video does, you see Apple has nearly reached it’s conceptual vision from 14 years ago. An admirable achievement of it’s own even if it didn’t make our lives any easier or more productive.

But, wait, do you know about all the automatic and wonderful things your Apple is able to do for you? From auto sorting contacts in order of their birthdays, anniversaries or hobbies, to recognizing faces and places in your photos, to emailing you a week before, two days before and five minutes before the big big event you don’t want to miss (and including a PDF or Numbers Spreadsheet with the pertinent information for that event)

If you’d like to learn more about the time and labor saving powers of your Macs, give us a call or send us an email and we’ll work with you on a well planned, well budgeted system to suit your business needs.

Word on the street (and in Tech Circles) is that this is the best USB headset for the buck out there:

http://bit.ly/8W48Gv

Right here: http://www.peachpit.com/podcasts/index.aspx

Here at AuburnCom, we take data very seriously, data is, your folders, documents, pictures, movies and everything that exists on your computer, and we handle hundreds of data migrations for people every year. We promote owning your Data by hosting your email on a site like ours or your own, so Google, Yahoo, or Bing doesn’t control it, and we love causes like Google’s own Data Liberation Front (http://www.dataliberation.org/) which advocate being able to get your data into and out of Google’s services easily.

Ask yourself if Facebook or Flickr easily lets you retrieve albums you’ve put up there…

Anyway, on the subject of Data, we wanted to let you know, that when we’re done with a drive, after we’ve upgraded a hard drive, and double checked the transfer went perfectly. We use a couple of steps to ensure no data will ever be recovered from the old drive that would compromise anybody. Those methods include 7 Pass Zeroing of the drive at a software level, which erases everything, not once, but seven consecutive times. It can take over 24 hours.

We want to keep your Data the way you want it, personal, safe and private.

For a great new law firm in downtown San francisco, this office uses three Pc’s and runs Hot Docs, Time Matters and QuickBooks but need a good server to serve files, and allow VPN access. They called us, we set it up and they’re happy as clams.

With Emails now happening at the speed of thought, thanks to everyone carrying a handheld email device, folks are getting more and more used to honing their productivity skills in order to deal with the hundred or so emails a day they receive, or tasks they have to do, calculations, contact upkeep and more.

The Mac can help you out SO MUCH with all this.

Give us a call and come in for training or have us out to your company, to show you simple but unseen magic powers of your Mac, including:

Create Smart Groups of contacts that contain Contacts of a certain kind, i.e, those whose birthdays are coming up in the next month, or those who work for Photography studios, so you can send a mail to all those photographer and Say “Hey, can one of you make a large format print of this right away?” instead of hunting through your address book of 1000’s and saying, “who are the photo guys in this pack of people?”

Or, would you like your Mac to run multiple on site and remote backups and notify you when they’re done, wake itself up to do those, go to sleep when it’s done? Heck,your Mac’s Automation powers have to be seen to be believed, call us to come into the studio and see a demo.

What about Inbox Zero? Would you like to learn how to get your Inbox back down to a manageable size? We worked with a photographer last week, and got her inbox from 2900 emails down to 18 in less than a day, and not only do we do this WITH you, we teach you how to get it to here and keep it here.

Give us a call at Auburncom, Bulletproof Mac Repair and Technology Consulting for the Bay area and beyond. 415-843-1MAC

Amazon has a bunch of really good deals on Apple stuff today. They are matching and beating Apple’s own discounts, plus offer Free shipping and all the other good stuff that comes with Amazon, Gift wrapping, Good return policy, etc.

iWork is $49 instead of $79
Most iMacs and MacBooks have at least $100 off
iPods have an average of 10%off or more across the line, (that gets you a 8gb video shooting iPod Nano for $135!)
And the Magic Mouse, Airport and other stuff like Nike sensor, all have nice discounts too.

Shop on Amazon for these things (or anything else) through these links and you’ll support AuburnCom and our work to keep Macs repaired, working well and efficient for the Bay Ares (and Beyond)

Thanks!

Via ITPRO

SOPHOS, one of the biggest names in computer security did these tests, so they’re worth listening too:

According to one leading security research lab, Windows 7 is vulnerable to an astonishing 8 out of 10 viruses it was exposed to during testing. But wait a minute, just how astonishing is this, really?

Sophos loaded a retail release copy of Windows 7 onto a clean PC, configured it to the system default as far as the User Account Control process was concerned, and failed to install any anti-virus software. OK, so this might be a little unfair you would think, but it does represent the actions of many a person new to the new OS. Microsoft insists it is the most secure version of Windows yet, and ‘ordinary users’ will take the company at its word.

What Sophos did next was less typical, instead of connecting the machine to the Internet and clicking every link under the sun until it was infected up the wazoo, it instead “grabbed the next 10 unique samples that arrived in the SophosLabs feed to see how well the newer, more secure version of Windows and UAC held up” says researcher Chet Wisniewski.

Unsurprisingly, Windows 7 didn’t do too well in fighting off these new threats. Indeed, it only managed to prevent 2 out of those 10 from operating correctly. Wisniewski insists that this just goes to show that his pre-launch warning that the UAC is not fit to protect a PC from malware was indeed correct. While I actually agree with him on this point I’d also argue that any machine that is not running an up to date anti-virus solution is asking for trouble no matter what version of Windows is installed.

I’d be more interested to see that same test performed on the same Windows 7 PC but running different AV solutions, including the new and free Microsoft Security Essentials to be honest. I wonder how far and how many of those 10 viruses would get then?

I wonder if Microsoft will come out fighting against Sophos this time, like it did when XP Mode security came under attack in the summer?

Thanks to M Laber for this tip sent in:

am stymied. This should be a no brainer but no matter what I do I can’t seem to get my ipod (in the iphone) to simply play normally. It ONLY repeats the same song over and over again. I tried to sync with repeat off on laptop and also looked for a switch within iphone. Am I crazy? I hope it’s a simple solution that I simply haven’t found yet. Might a factory reset be necessary?
Any help much appreciated.
Jim
Otherwise I love his little addictive machine

Once you have your playlist displayed start the first song. Tap on the album art and the Playhead will appear. The Playhead tells you how much time the song is in minutes:seconds; elasped time on left, remaining time on right.

On the left side of the Playhead is the Repeat icon (it looks like a race track). Tap it to make a selection.

Black=repeat one song
Blue=repeat all songs
Blue with black head=set to repeat current song
Black and white=not set to repeat songs

On the right side is the shuffle incon (it looks like two crossed lines with arrows to the right). Tap it to make a selection.

Black=play songs in order
Blue=shuffle
Black and white=set to play songs in order

Hi All,

I hope you’re all enjoying your Apple TV’s, since their introduction three years ago, when they simply streamed music and photos from your Macs using a small white remote, they’ve received numerous free updates that now allow them to rent, stream and buy High Definition Video, be controlled by your iPhone or iPod Touch, and through Home Sharing, let you bring music and video’s from any one of your computers to any other.

Thank you all for getting in early with the Apple TV, I hope you are continuing to enjoy it and look forward to hearing your stories of how useful it’s been (be that in catching up on Mad Men, or showing your friends your vacation photos)

Best Regards,

Brendan.

Press release from Apple Today:

Apple Introduces Apple TV 3.0 Software With Redesigned User Interface

CUPERTINO, California—October 29, 2009—Apple® today introduced new Apple TV® 3.0 software featuring a redesigned main menu that makes navigating your favorite content simpler and faster, and makes enjoying the largest selection of on-demand HD movie rentals and purchases, HD TV shows, music and podcasts from the iTunes® Store even better on your TV. You can now enjoy iTunes Extras and iTunes LP in stunning fullscreen with your Apple TV, as well as listen to Genius Mixes and Internet radio through your home theater system. The new Apple TV software is available immediately free of charge to existing Apple TV owners, and Apple TV with 160GB capacity is available for just $229.

“The new software for Apple TV features a simpler and faster interface that gives you instant access to your favorite content,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Internet Services. “HD movies and HD TV shows from iTunes have been a huge hit with Apple TV customers, and with Apple TV 3.0 they get great new features including iTunes Extras, Genius Mixes and Internet radio

More here: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/10/29appletv.html