shibbyonline

Finally Getting My Money’s Worth

When I look in System Preferences it now tells me I’ve been a .Mac member since 2004.
Since I purchased my first Mac I have signed up to Apple’s own web service but until the last few weeks I have only ever used a .mac email address. Now armed with Leopard and an iPhone I can finally see the point in the service and have changed my work to use it more.

Mail

First off I’m now using .Mac mail as it should be, using the magic that is IMAP I’ve moved all my mail over to Apple. Since my first attempt at using .Mac webmail they have made some improvements and it is now usable and my perfect ‘out of office’ doorway. Plus with an iPhone I am now totally connected at any time, yep Edge is not great but just being able to sit in the garden and check your mail is worth it.

iDisc

No more box.net for me, I’m a fully fledged iDisc user now. This is only because of having a Mac at work now and the better support for iDisc in Leopard. Before then I found it flakey; dropping connections, refusing to sync and just being a pain! Now I have a local copy on both work and home machines and auto sync to keep everything where it should be.
There are still a few things I would prefer but the positive point out weigh the negative.
Ease people, it’s just about making things easier.

The iLife Extras

Now you might think I will take this further with all the iLife/.Mac goodies.
Sorry but no joy, I have no reason for sharing my iPhoto library; I’m Flickr’ed and that does everything I need for online photos.
I do not use my camcorder nearly enough to want to share movies, I’ve not even fired up iMovie since installing iLife.
iWeb is just nasty, besides why would I want to mess with that when I have my own domain and one of the most powerful web editors out there.
So I will not be investing in Apple’s wholesome family fun filled sharing adventure idea. That said though for what it is worth I will gladly continue to pay for the service; now I can see the full picture. It has taken a few years but I’m glad I kept forgetting to cancel the ‘auto renew’ option.

Leopard, A Week Later

As any Mac user worth his salts will know that the latest version of OSX was released on October 26th October.
Due to a bit of a mess up with a new hard drive I did not get round to installing Leopard until the following Friday. Since then I have had a little over a week to try out some of the claimed 300 new features and give it a bit of an airing.
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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.

Panic: CODA Alert

Yesterday the tubes were alive with the news of Coda, the new application from Panic.

Coda is an attempt at an ‘all in one’ application containing all the tools for the development of a web page.
Currently I use a combination of TextMate, CSSEdit and Transmit that seem to fill most needs, but what if I could have all that power and only need load up one application?
Well I downloaded the 15 trial of Coda and spent a few minutes using it.
Find out my thoughts.
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