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So The Big Cat Is Coming

If you are a Mac user you will no doubt know that the new OS 10.5 is on the way. In fact Leopard is due for release on the 26th October; only a few days away.
So far I’ve always upgraded to the latest version but recently I’ve lost the way with Apple. Despite other bloggers detailing a few reasons why they would upgrade, if I was asked a month ago if I would the answer would be ‘not straight away’
I’m not loosing my love of Apple, I am just not in a position to keep upgrading and take advantage of the new technology. We all know that you can not stand in the way of progress but every time I purchase a new piece of Apple hardware before I’ve finished reading the manual it has been super-seeded!
My current setup is a dual G5 PowerMac as my main machine, a G4 iBook for traveling and an old G4 iMac for looking good in the living room! The new version of Leopard feels that it is all about Intel Mac’s, built in iSights, FrontRow and basically stuff that will push my resources to the limit.
Yes everything looks completely sick; Spaces and Time Machine for instance, but what in that complete package will really benefit my current usage, not much I’m afraid.

But I did say if you asked me a month ago.
Ask me now and I will be the first in the line to try and get a copy. My new Mac at work is the reason for the change and the main point for me is the iTunes style Finder sidebar.
Working in a Windows network I am for ever ‘connect to server’ and trying to find resources on the network. By the looks of it every machine in the local workgroup will appear in that sidebar, making everything so much easier. Well thats what I think Apple want me to believe.
I’m all for it, plus my new work iMac is an Intel Mac with a built in iSight and FrontRow. I guess I’m just the right candidate, either that or I just need to find the right excuse reason to upgrade.

I Made The Switch

So I’ve made the switch from Windows to Mac.
But hold on I hear you cry, you have been a Mac user for years. Well that is true but only in the ‘home user’ market. Recently I’ve made the move in the work office environment.

Oscar Products is a small business and like many small business’ in the UK we use Sage for all our accounts, purchasing and sales orders. If there was an open source or even less expensive alternative I would happily look into it as Sage is a Windows only program and not one of the best examples of sound programing.
Yet when I joined the company I found an old G3 Bondi iMac that I managed to get going again and it soon became our ‘design’ machine, carrier bag artwork was created on this and made moving files between our plate makers a whole lot easier.

But life was limited with the old girl and soon the hard drive failed, the network collapsed and 256mb ram was no longer cutting it. We needed a new option.
Move to recent events and we have a new director starting with the company that required a new computer. Suddenly I saw an opportunity to make a switch; new director get’s my PC, I get new Mac. The idea was put forward but I thought nothing of it.

A week later I have a shiny new 20inch iMac sitting on my desk. Now came the interesting job of making that switch, Apple would lead you to believe that this is just a simple process and anyone can move over to a Mac.
I just don’t think they planned the switch for me. All I needed to do was move my PIM data from Outlook to the Apple standard; Mail, iCal and Address Book.

Moving files over was quite simple, just move over to a network server and then drag/drop back home again. That done, now for my emails. Fire up Apple Mail and select Import, hold on the Import option was for Outlook Express, and this was only a Mac version. So I’ll have to try another way.
After some searching Googling I found an article that detailed a way to get my Outlook mail folders into the .mbox format that Mail understands. Install Thunderbird on the pc and import all messages during the startup.
Excellent I now have a folder full of 6 files, all the messages spanning about 700mb. So I drop these onto the Mac desktop and try importing these, the trusty dialog box appears and it looks to be taking a while so off I go for a cup of tea.
But after 4 hours the bar had not moved and lost hope, this was not working and needed a new plan of attack. This pains me to say it but I needed Mircosoft! Microsoft Entourage to be exact.
So back to the interweb to download the trial for Microsoft Office, only to remember it was on the install DVD that came with the iMac.
Anyway, install Entourage, import the .mbox folders and check everything works. Now fire up Mail and try importing again, but this time selecting Entourage data. Dialog window again but this time it was moving, in just 3 minutes it had installed a full 1200 mails and preserved folder’s.

Lucky I had a iPaq and a copy of Mark Space Missing Sync to handle both calendars and contacts. Finally something that just works. The whole process took hours and was no where near as simple as the documents on the Apple site.

iPhucking want one!

It is January which means only one thing MacExpo!
The time of year were Mr. Jobs shocks the world with just ‘one more thing’. This year there was no exception just a slight change in the proceedings. There was no last minute shocker, it was full blown shock from the outset.

First up we have AppleTV or iTV as it was nick named. This is a clever streaming media device that will sit under your hi def TV and stream movies, music, photos and other such media treats from up to 5 machines. Very clever me thinks but I’ll wait to see if it will stream Aperture libraries until I get too excited.

Second shock, the fabled iPhone. After Cisco released a wifi phone labeled iPhone I thought it was the end of the rumour mill for Apple. Yet Steve manages to pull one out of the bag, a wide screen, touch enabled iPod with phone capabilities! (Now thats a gadget to behold)

The Apple iPhone has not passed FCC approval and so will not be on sale or advertised as being so until it does but the Keynote indicated prices of around $499 for the 8gb phone and a two year contract.

Aperture Virgin

Last night I downloaded the trial version of Aperture to test out and see what it is all about.
For those of you in the dark Aperture is Apple’s ‘Pro’ photo application, think of Aperture as what Final Cut Pro is to iMovies for iPhoto.

It installed fine and everything looks great but I am totally at a loss now on how to manage my library. Before iPhoto would take care of everything for me and I was never really worried about storage. Just plug in the card reader, import the photo’s and create some albums.

Obviously being a Pro application Aperture has some very clever ideas and tricks about the storage and management of files, so much so I’m completely at a loss.
On the startup I decided to import my iPhoto library to give me something to play with. By clicking the wrong button I imported the files into the Aperture library so in essence I have two copies of every photo. But during the import everything was put into ‘rolls’ which is iPhoto’s way. This works very well in iPhoto but you don’t get to see it much, it all happens like magic. However when I looked into these rolls there is everything in there, even the modified pictures.
Then when looking into the files and the Aperture project folders everything has an iPhoto slant on things. All files are tagged as iPhoto, the folder structure of Aperture is labelled iPhoto libary and everything is stuck in some 250 odd project files created from the roll import thing.

What do I do, I want a nice clean crisp structure for everything but where do I go with the Project files, the Album files and the Folders that can be created within Aperture.
Has any one got some good tips on file management for Aperture or a few rules to the importing and storing of photo’s?