AuburnCom
Mac Repair San Francisco
Contact: Brendan McKenna
Telephone: 415-843-1622
Address: 660 Alabama Street
2nd Floor
San Francisco
CA 94110
Thanks for Visiting!
AuburnCom is a San Francisco business, providing Mac Repair, Apple Consulting and broad IT consulting.
AuburnCom has been providing services to small and large San Franciscan indiviuals and businesses in the Bay Area since 2006.
Clients have always appreciated our honest, direct and quick service, diagnostics and consultations.
Please explore this site and contact us with your questions about repairs and upgrades to your Mac, your network, or any tech needs.
A lot of folks love Google Talk over any other instan messanger, even Adium or iChat, because of a couple of features,
one, it works in your browser with no extra software,
two, it saves all your chats, and includes their text when you search through your emails
three, it has a neat “off the record” feature that disables item two, other software like ichat is either in “always record conversations” or “never record conversations”
Well, starting today, Google talk has a slick new webapp for the iphone that gives you all your Google talk benefits right to your iPhone or iPod touch, try it out here: google.com/talk
Apple has initiated it’s 2008 Back to School campaign today on their site
The bottom line of the promotion is that students who buy a Mac between now and the start of school get a free iPod touch, that’s a $299 value.
(In prior years students only got an iPod valued at $199)
In addition, students get much better pricing on their computers, MacBook Airs are only $1699(saving $230), regular MacBooks are $999 and the savings continue up to the MacBook Pro and iMac lines.
The site is nicely designed, located at http://apple.com/backtoschool and features some of Apple’s slogan writers better lines, like :
Starting with today’s update to MAC OS X Leopard, 10.5.3, which should come down to your Mac automatically in the next week.
You’ll see an option in Address Book to sync your contacts with Google Contacts, this is really good news, as many client’s already are using a combination of Gmail’s great IMAP and Spam filtering combined with Apple Mail, the big issue was that Apple Mail, and your iPhone/iPod uses Mac’s own ‘Address Book’ (not to mention your iPhone and/or iPod’s contact list), wheras GMail relies on it’s own Contact database.
Well rejoice, you can now synce the two of them up and have one unified list of your contacts accessible inside a browsear window, Apple Mail, your iPhone, iPod Touch or any other device that syncs with your Mac, Moto RazR springs to mind.
On Lewis Blacks excellent Carnegie Hall Performance (available from Amazon on CD or downloadable MP3!), jokes that while iPods are the size of credit cards and play music, they still haven’t created a good method to harness solar power, he jests “iPods are geting so small, pretty soon, you’ll just be wearing underwear and hear music playing in your ears!”And now, reports in MacWorld now say your clothing will soon be powering your electronics: ”Professor explains Nanotech power for iPods“From the article:
“Wouldn’t it be great if you could walk down the street listening to your iPod or using your smartphone without ever worrying about the battery dying?Zhong Lin Wang, a professor and nanotechnology researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology, says that within five years, you might be able to do just that. According to Wang, instead of using a battery to power phones, MP3 players and other portable devices, you could harvest the energy generated by the movement of your shirt. Yup, you read that right – a “power shirt,” which would provide users with a flexible, foldable and wearable power source.”
At the Apple store yesterday, I was there to get my iPhone Earbuds replaced, and, also to submit my brother in laws iPod nano for diagnosis. While waiting on their bench, I spoke to the girl beside me, after telling me that her current iPod nano with video is ‘not syncing’, after going to the bar she came over and showed me the brand new replacement model they’d given her. Just like that. My turn came, and though my brother in laws iPod Nano is thirteen days out of warranty, they diagnosed it as dead, and still offered to replace it!Over and over again I’m impressed with the high level of customer service Apple provides.
I was given a card to get free tracks off itunes, with a download code.I’ve asked people to download them for me but they say it can’t betransferred to another computer or MP3 player.Can you confirm this? there’s no way for me to get those? (unless Iinstall itunes on one of my computer and listen to those tracks onlythere, which sounds ridiculouis…)thx!
Approximately 10% of the entire iTunes music store is now DRM free, which means that it will play on ANY computer or Device that you like, these songs are labeled iTunes Plus, and display a small plus sign (+) next to them, almost every song on the EMI record label, as well as many many songs from independent labels are in this format. But, the other labels, Sony, Warner, and Universal are not allowing their music to be sold in this DRM free format that allows you to choose your own player, be it iRiver, Creative, Palm, Blackberry or any of the 100′s of music players out there. I believe quite a few of the cards with free tracks on them are indeed these “Free” tracks, one reason they do this is to make happy kittens, and the other is so kitties can become aware of this DRM issue and make trouble for the silly record companies that don’t allow DRM free sales. So, go ahead and claim your free songs, if, for some reason they are restricted to play only in iTunes and won’t play in your Linux/Windows wonderland (free from silly fruit symbols) then simply burn a cd from iTunes, that will liberate your songs to the old fashioned CD format and remove that pesky DRM, you can then rip to any operating system, be it Unix, BeOS, Ubuntu, Windows 95 or Microsoft Ultimate Limited Super Exclusive Signature Vista Premium Edition
An Apple certified evangelist is awaiting your phone call to help you get the most out of your Mac. Certified by Apple in OS X support, I provide consultations on Panther, Jaguar, Tiger and the amazing New Leopard operating system. Would you like it to do more for you? automate your calendar events, simplify your music collection, handle the party music for your elaborate home audio system.
or lets talk about video, I evangelise the Apple TV, apple’s great product that brings your entire iTunes library to your living room, your bedroom, in fact any rooms in fact you’d like to listen to the large music library that you’ve spent so much time building, wouldn’t it be great to play all that music from the comfort of your living room couch? Call for a example of it’s usefulness.
Mac Hardware, software and Networking is all under our microscope, Apple has certified us as experts and we are so happy to bring this expertise to you.
AuburnCom is a registered San Francisco company with clients from Marin county, Sausalito, Yerba Buena island, the city of San Francisco and as far south as Daly City, we make house calls to the East Bay, and ship replacement and upgrade superdrives to faraway states including Texas and Massachusettes.
Call us on 415-871-9683, email brendan@auburncom.com or visit http://www.auburncom.com to find out more about us or how we can make things better and easier for you.
and boy is it great. Today’s software update for the iPhone brought with it a couple of really nice new features and the Wifi pickup seems to be twice as strong as before, I had a list of over twenty wireless networks at one point today. But the really great feature is the ability to access iTunes from the iPhone and make quick purchases, to illustrate how easy it is, search for “Car Crash” by Matt Nathanson on your iPhone or iPod touch, the single will preview really quickly, and if you tap buy, after tapping once more to confirm, your iPhone will download the song straight to your iPhone.Once you reconnect with your iTunes library later in the day, iTunes will transfer your newly acquired song to your library, it’s easy and fun and may be enough to keep iTunes market dominance growing despite Amazon’s spectacular entry to the digital music business.
Obviously, to use this, you’re going to have to have a mac with at least Tiger, and a copy of VisualHub.Let’s say you’ve got your iPhone, your mac with Tiger, and a copy of VisualHub.
First, you need to be able to script VisualHub. To do that, you’re going to have to download this special script dictionary.Next you’re going to install this script library. To do so you need to…
To learn more, call or email Brendan at AuburnCom 415-871-9683 for expert Mac advice and tutorials.
The environmentally friendly way to watch and listen to home and mobile entertainment has been the digital way for several years now.
I’ll set clients iTunes configurations to automatically import and eject and CD that gets inserted into their Mac, this ensures that the CD Drive motor spins for a maximum of five minutes to convert the audio into digital mp3′s or aac’s on the hard drive, thereby saving the rotations that would be used up if the CD played the standard way, that is, the CD spins around and around for about 60 minutes a la LP’s.
I also endorse this method of Rip now, watch later to DVD’s and video, where a DVD has been purchased, the responsible and energy efficient practice is to rip the DVD using HandBrake and adding the movie or video to iTunes, this can take anywhere from twenty minutes to eight hours for an older Macintosh, however, the benefits are vast. You’ll put your dvd safely away in it’s case post Rip and watch your movie from iTunes, your iPod (Nano, Classic or Touch), your iPhone, your Apple TV, or you can even post it to your personal web space for watching when you’re without any of these things (or if you’d like your girlfriend or family to see the movie).
Ripping DVD’s using handbrake not only, saves energy, wears your Superdrive down less, makes the video portable, protects your original DVD copy and is cool, but also, eliminates any Region Coding that DVD’s may have on them. For example, say you’re in Milan and buy a copy of the wonderful Romanze Criminale DVD, unavailable most everywhere else, this movie is one of Italian cinema’s masterpieces, when you arrive home in California, your Mac informs you that “Hey, your Superdrive will only play Region 1 (American) DVD’s”, sure you can change this to European Region or Asian Region, etc. but you can only change this five times, so after watching Romanze Criminale, you switch back to American to watch a classic Woody Allen DVD and then back to Italian region next week to watch a collector edition Fellini you just bought in Genoa. Pretty soon you can’t change your region anymore!
Enter Handbrake, the one stop shop for converting DVD’s to local video files that will play on your Mac, iPod, iPhone, MacBook, Apple TV or the web.
Try out Handbrake and you’ll be saving the planet as well as carrying Fellini, Romanzo Criminale, and, Woody Allens great movies all on your gorgeous iPod. You’ll never think about Region Coding again!
The 16gb iPod touch previously reported by us to be in third place on amazon is now in first place on the top sellers list, click here to check it out, if you buy it through a link from this site, you’ll be helping make this site prosper.
Just in time for the holiday season, Apple today unveiled a massive revision to it’s 110 million selling iPod line.
The revisions began with the iPod Shuffle, this small iPod is the size of a stamp and clips onto a lapel or shirt collar in a discreet manner suitable for bringing on trips to places that an iPod Nano might be too valuable to have, lke the beach, a jog through the woods, or when you’ve got to carry as little as possible. The iPod shuffle is now available in five new colors, including a Product (Red) edition which benefits African charities, they are still $79.
The iPod Nano received one of it’s most sensational revisions yet when the third generation became a video playing, game playing slender and sleek model. The iPod Nano starts at $149 for the 4GB model and $199 for the 8GB model, prior to hands on testing, the blogosphere was concerned it was too broad, but Engadgets Ryan Block said this after getting hands on with it at the Moscone center:
Ok, we know we’ve been calling it the fatty, but we’ll be straight up with you guys: the third gen iPod nano is friggin’ tiny. It’s maybe not the most beautifully proportioned iPod we’ve ever seen, but its tapered edges and ridiculously thin frame make up for the squatness going on here.
The iPod that we’ve known and loved has gotten a beautiful aluminum wrapper and beefed up storage, it can now hold 80GB of music videos and pictures for $249 or 160GB for $349. The iPod classic is exactly what can be expected a sleek and good looking elder iPod who seems content to hand the throne over to the successor King, his beautiful and technologically amazing son, the iPod Touch
The iPod Touch is the iPod to rule them all, Multi Touch Wide Screen Display, Web Browser, iTunes purchasing on the go, slender as can be, and absolutely gorgeous. Starting at $299, it’s got a generous 8GB of storage and goes up to 16GB of storage for $399 (at which price you can also now buy an iPhone 8GB model)
The iPod Touch and iPhone have similar feature sets with the iPhone having enough extras to make it a tantalizing temptation, Maps, Email, and, Camera are certainly three of the top reasons I’ve got my iPhone, it’s a business tool through and through, the iPhone meets a certain user set and I’ve a feeling the iPod touch is going to meet the larger user set who is simply seeking an iPod, after all, two days ago folks were paying $249 for an 8GB Nano with a small screen, they’ll surely love a full screen multi touch display, with Wifi web browsing and iTunes purchasing built in. They don’t even need a Mac or PC anymore to fill it with Music.
Both the iPhone and iPod Touch are gaining the superpower of Wireless iTunes purchasing through a new custom application that looks nice and simple.
With this revision of the iPod lineup, Apple is sure to reignite the interest of consumers and leave competing music players scrambling for competitive solutions, the iPhone price drop is a masterful piece of Machiavellian marketing, let Steve Ballmer and others scoff at the iPhone for the last six months, “Pfff, $600 for a phone!”
Then stun all by making it incredibly affordable, to compare, examine the price of unlocked Palm Treo’s and Rimm Blackberries, both sets of smart phones are in the $350 plus price range with the Palm 750 at $599. Out of the clear blue sky the iPhone is now a major competitor on price and a clear winner in terms of functionality.
One more feature worth noting is the existence of CoverFlow on all three of the new iPod models, iPod Nano, iPod Classic and iPod Touch, more than making these devices incredibly sexy to navigate, this confirms the existence of a OS X style operating system under the hood, great news for all Mac Programmers, developers and users, it verifies Apple’s commitment to the OS and their skills in advancing their software for the benefit of customers.
To ask questions about the new range of iPods, send email to brendan@auburncom.com, telephone 415-871-9683 or leave a comment on this page.
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Jul 3, 2008 
Well, starting today, Google talk has a slick new webapp for the iphone that gives you all your Google talk benefits right to your iPhone or iPod touch, try it out here: google.com/talk
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Well rejoice, you can now synce the two of them up and have one unified list of your contacts accessible inside a browsear window, Apple Mail, your iPhone, iPod Touch or any other device that syncs with your Mac, Moto RazR springs to mind.
