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MacCog: I help humans.

... your Digital Life Coach and Apple support guru

Remote Support

guitar hero 3 for mac!

I played a song and got an encore… and am tempted to buy the slow
discounted version for $75 with a free tshirt… as if I need a new
tshirt or a way to waste time, but that shit is fun!

How to Manage Your Passwords

A Digital Life is rich with lots of great things, but keeping track of the many many passwords you’ve set up over the years is not one of the greatest. 
This article on a cool new search engine called Mahalo.com will provide some great tips and help you weigh the pros and cons related to managing this lifelong challenge…

http://www.mahalo.com/How_to_Manage_Your_Passwords


If you choose the password management software route, I would suggest most people just need to learn how to use Keychain Access (in the Utilities folder of every mac) or 1password, a great third party solution has even more features, and is part of the software package deal called MacHeist which you should check out if you’re at all into extending the usefulness of your computer with 3rd party software… this is a great deal…

justin

my iPhone wishlist

I originally composed this list for my own edification and never thought it would do anything other than allow me to check off the list as time goes on and Apple puts in my desired features…. assuming they take my sage advice.

Here’s hoping that releasing my grip on this list somehow leads to someone on Apple’s iPhone team reading it…
(I already sent a version of this to their development team but it never hurts to try again, right?)
This list is basically in order of importance and obviousness:

To-Do Application.
WTF??? Is the only thing I can say about this one. So simple, so necessary and so NOT THERE! Oh, and while you’re at it, don’t forget to make this program sync with iCal/Mail’s to-do list. Good, just thought I’d remind you.

t-mobile-like VOIP/cell combo HOTSPOT at HOME
This request, unlike a To-Do list, is non-trivial. Allowing the iPhone to make free-over-wi-fi voice calls would require a hefty programming addition and more importantly an okay from AT&T… grrr.
For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, this is the single feature that came out just a few days after the iPhone release and got completely overshadowed. But the reality is that it’s almost as cool and just about equally as game-changing. I ALMOST wished I was back on T-mobile so I could sign up for “Hotspot@Home”.
…. and then I picked up my iPhone and kept playing footsie with it and forgot all about it.

Grand Central widget or at least flash in safari
The irony of this situation is not as funny as it used to be. It’s now over 6 months after the iPhone release and I can’t visually check my Grand Central voicemail from my iPhone
Grand Central, (www.grandcentral.com) if you haven’t heard me rave about it yet, is the voicemail box I use for 90% of my calls because it had visual voicemail on the web WAY before the iPhone came out. It’s an amazing life-changing (free!) service that I recommend to just about everyone BUT they have yet to deliver an iPhone interface that works. I’ve emailed them at least 4 times asking when and how they’ll do it and not heard a peep… which is strange because usually they’re johnny on the spot with my comments. weird.
It’s not all Grand Central’s fault, though. Apple has not delivered Flash support on iPhone’s Safari and it’s really not clear why.
This gets another big WTF???

iChat (duh)… or even better, Adium
Since I’m over-using the WTF thing, I might as well keep going… WTF? No iChat? only SMS? And you even make SMS LOOK like iChat so we’ll be lulled into forgetting that we’ve only got 200 of them PER MONTH? Oh and did you say “incoming AND OUTGOING?” I smell a scam… or a rat… or whatever you can think of to describe this corporate greed.
The problem isn’t just Apple leaving an IM client off this device, it’s the added insult to the injury my pocketbook would feel if I used the SMS client like I do my IM client.

copy/paste
I don’t miss this very often, but when I do, I REALLY do. The device is a bit crippled without this very basic of tools. Get with it Apple, it needs to be a full screen shap that we swipe. THAT would be cool!

Spotlight… especially with addressbook
For people like me with less than 1000 contacts, the lack of Spotlight is a mere annoyance when we’re looking for that specific email, but for people (many of my clients) that have upwards of 4,000 contacts, the lack of a quick search is devastating to the usability of this as a phone. How do you find someone’s number easily when there are 400 names under S?

selecting and dragging text
Right there with copy/paste. Absolutely essential for a handheld computer, but granted not so much for a phone, but c’mon, let’s live up to our potential, shall we?

Bluetooth and Wi-Fi syncing
I don’t see any big technical reason Apple hasn’t done this yet. The ability to be able to sync your computer (especially Address Book and iCal) with your iPhone without having to plug it in… (and perhaps even automatically whenever they’re in range of each other) would be amaaazing and I really look forward to that day, yessireee.

Address Book and iTunes integration
My trusty Sony Ericcson 610 (I think that was the model) could connect to my Addres Book and do some pretty cool stuff: I could dial the cell phone just by clicking on a number in Address Book and choosing “Dial with Justin’s Cell Phone”… It was awesome. It would even pause iTunes when I got a call. Why, oh why doesn’t the iPhone do this???? An ominous sign for this feature came when, in Leopard, the button to connect to a cell phone in this way was removed from the program.
Apple, say it isn’t so… say you’re gonna bring back this cool AND useful trick… oh and while you’re at it, why not build support for controlling my computer’s iTunes directly from the iPhone. Sure you can do that very nicely with Remote Buddy (which I love) but c’mon that stuff should be BUILT IN!

.Mac wireless sync
A very close friend of mine who is a huge mac geek and REALLY needs an iPhone more than he knows refuses to get one because it won’t sync the Address Book over the internet with his .Mac account (which by the way he doesn’t have. Apparently he’ll buy .Mac AND an iPhone when this feature goes prime time. Are you listening Apple???)
This is a fancier (and even more useful) version of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi syncing. But just think of the possibilities here! Small businesses could rejoice in the ability to deploy iPhones all over the company and keep a central list of contacts no matter where any of them are on the globe! ah, one day people, one day….

More Storage
I haven’t been too terribly crippled by only 8 gigs but… aw who am I kidding, I can’t fit all my stuff on there! Constant compromising? Not interested! I used to have a 60 gigger folks! It held ALL of my stuff. What can I say, I’m spoiled.
Macworld will most certainly bring a 16gb iPhone. My out-on-a-limb-prediction.

notes syncing with Yojimbo
It doesn’t have to be Yojimbo and I suspect this will be cured by the developer SDK coming out in February, but oh for the love of all things holy, let us access our iPhone notes by some other means than emailing them to ourselves.

voice activated dialing (duh)
A really weird and glaring omission, too. Not something I personally use a lot so it’s not high on my list, but who knows, maybe if it was on my iPhone I would use it…. well of course i would!
Voice Notes would be great, too. For those looking for a great way to take voice notes using any phone, try Jott.com, it’s very cool.

3G network
Yeah, yeah yeah. everybody complains about this one. I think EDGE is reasonable. I mean I rarely find myself waiting for it. Yeah, browsing on espn.com over edge is ridiculous, but that kinda sucks on a desktop with DSL too. So yeah, it would be nice to have the faster 3G network, but I’m not sweating it. The Japanese on the other hand, will have nothing to do with a device that doesn’t do the 3-to-the-G and I don’t blame them. They’ve got so many cool phones that we’ve only dreamt about it’s not even funny. But the iPhone will rock their world when it comes out in 3G (and in their native GSM frequency)

laptop connections through EDGE/bluetooth
Oh yeah, another thing I could do with my trusty Sony Ericsson (albeit slowly and unreliably) was use my laptop to connect THROUGH my phone to the internet with the cell data network. THAT was really cool and I think to be the endgame for connectivity. I suppose Apple wants to wait for 3G and an okay from AT&T for this, but it’s a BIG one on my list (don’t be fooled by it’s proximity to the end of the list)

flickr integration
Sigh, back when I had 1.1.1 on my iPhone and I was downloading tons of stuff with “Installer” I found a program that would upload pictures from my iPhone to flickr. It was not very good actually but got me enticed. I would LOVE to see Apple’s relationship with Yahoo! climax in a dedicated Flickr app for uploading to and viewing of this amazing network of pictures and photographers!

skype
This goes along with, but is not the same as, my request for Wi-Fi based VOIP as provided by the carrier. But Skype is going to produce an iPhone client with the SDK coming in February…. I just hope that Apple or AT&T – or both – don’t try to squash this one for some stupid corporate agenda.
gps
The more I use the amazing Google Maps the more I want to know where I am and which direction I’m going. Having a GPS in the iPhone, while not being essential to me, would be insanely cool… I mean “insanely great”!

better wifi reception
the range for my iPhone is woefully behind that of my MacBook. Sure, the MacBook has the best reception of any laptop (apple’s or otherwise) that I’ve ever seen and it’s probably unfair to compare a phone to this, but I’m doing it anyway… give us better reception so we can sign onto more wireless nodes and buy more songs on iTunes!

Multi-media messaging
Filed in the category of absurd ironies like my Grand Central/Visual Voicemail dillema, getting a text message that says I must go to a website and use a cryptic and complicated username and password to retrieve a MMS someone sent me from their crappy flip phone… seems insane when one considers that this thing is capable of holding over 3000 of my pictures and geting new ones vial email all day…. but text messaging? no way. weird.

File-level browsing
the geek in me really wants to get in there and explore the guts of this mobile OSX. I used “Mobile Finder” when I was in iPhone app-bliss but want it to be official and supported.

I want my m-p-3-tooones
iToner does this for me, but that stuff seems to keep getting randomly deleted from the phone. An annoyance for me and for the developer caused by Apple. Stop being boneheads! We should be able to make our own ringtones and legally put them on our phones! geeeeez.

iTunes purchasing power (delivered)
Of course, the one thing on my list that they’ve already handled… is a way for them to make more money.
Don’t get me wrong, I love apple, but sometimes it’s a tough love 🙂
If you agree, disagree, or want to burn me in effigy, please comment on this post and share your thoughts….
thanks,
justin


Gmail gets IMAP… it’s all over now folks.

preface: This post is a bit old by now, but I just discovered I’d posted it to the wrong blog on accident. So here it is… still VERY relevant, just not timely!

Thank you, Google. You’ve just turned what was a really good email
account into an amazing one… perhaps the holy grail of email…
Let’s consider…

It’s free.

It’s fast.

It’s huge. Not unlimited, but more than most people need. and growing.

It’s got a great web interface that works with all types of computers.

It’s searchable. (duh, it’s Google)

It’s got good spam filtering.

It allows the use of other email addresses, like for your own domain
name.
… and if you want, you can set it up AS your domain name instead of
gmail.com!

Integrated chat, labels, starring and threading, among other goodies.

It’s got POP access. Free POP access.

and now… drum roll… Gmail has IMAP!!!

Now, for those of you who are less of a geek than me, just know that
IMAP is better. WAY better if you ever check your email from multiple
places. Two computers? no problem, IMAP keeps your mailboxes, all of
them, in sync. Need webmail when you’re travelling? Cool, your
changes, deletions, organization, sent messages will all appear
naturally on your Mail program when you get home! Once it’s set up,
you’ll never have to delete a message twice again. You’ll never have
to BCC yourself just to have access to your email somewhere else.

Lots of paid email hosts still don’t offer IMAP. It puts greater
demand on the server but duh, as email users put greater demand on
their email…. and begin to carry it around in their pocket… this
is the way things will be moving… and thanks to Google for seeing
that!

tivo to go finally works on the mac!

for the Tivo and mac lovers (they seem like natural partners, right)
out there… you FINALLY have a way to watch your TV shows on your
iPod and computer.
Tivo certainly had no idea what they were doing, since it took them
an unbelievable amount of time to come out with the mac version…
and in the end, it wasn't even Tivo that came out with it….

The good news is that it's out and it comes with another great
program. The bad news is that it isn't free like the windows
version.. it will cost you $100. There are still the hack-y versions
you can use if you want, but that technically violates the Tivo
agreement.
http://tdm.sourceforge.net/

Here's the Wired article:
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/mac/0,72420-0.html?tw=wn_culture_mac_6

justin

The new Apple Stuff

So you may have heard by now that Apple announced a bevy of new stuff yesterday.  Here is the rundown and the opinion of the Cognoscenti…


Apple remote for iPod
Very cool that they’re finally responding to users’ needs for an FM tuner and re-introducing the idea of a wired remote (the 2nd generation iPod came with them but they were taken out of the box and then discontinued). It does bother me a bit that they seem to only be compatible with the new iPod Video and iPod Nano. What the heck is that, right?

OS X 10.4.4
This is a minor and free upgrade to your favorite Operating System available today. It includes new widgets and I’m sure some bug fixes and stuff.  Significantly it is the only version so far that runs on Intel Processors. That only matters, of course, if you have one of the new machines just announced… read on

iTunes content
You can now buy SNL and some sports content on the iTunes Music/Video Store. Um, there is some other stuff but, well, go check it out yourself…

iWork ’06
Pages and Keynote have received major upgrades and are still available for $79 (New or Upgraded). Pages is a great alternative to Word as long as you don’t frequently share files with other people using Word, and Keynote is leagues better than PowerPoint if you’re doing presentations. 

iLife ’06
Maybe my favorite announcement, and the most predictable for sure… but I really like iPhoto, iMovie and all of the iLife apps. 
 iPhoto now has full screen editing, which is super cool because before you could only rotate, rate and delete while in full screen. It also supports up to 250,000 photos in one library, but really, who’s going to let their library get that big? I would highly recommend starting a new library ever year or two if you take lots of pics. It’s so much easier to back up a library if it’s less than 4.4 gigs (the size of a DVD) 
 iMovie has some cool new motion templates that let you make your movies look much more professional… though of course they’ll look like a lot of other people’s movies too, but hey.
 iDVD has a magic DVD thing which is cool, but most importantly, it now supports 3rd party burners! That was a huge doink that lots of people in the know got angry about. Now it’s better and I can use my 16x external burner instead of the 4x in my laptop. Even more importantly, someone who doesn’t have a burner built in can now use iDVD. yay, Apple.
 GarageBand has a podcast studio which makes it insanely easy to create a podcast. Now you have no excuse
 iTunes now has a removable bar below your music lists that shows stuff from the Music Store that is like what you’re playing. I, for one, will not be looking at that too much, but like the little arrows they added a few months ago, it’s pretty easy to get rid of, so I’m okay with it.

.Mac
I’m very excited about the .Mac updates. They’re really starting to integrate their online service into iLife even more. The new program, iWeb, promises to be the best way for the average joe to put up a website and is probably even easier than HomePage. I’ll let you know more when I get my hands on it, but keep your eye on this one – all of you with .Mac accounts that is.
 Anyone else wanna do a Blog like this? Well now you can do it even easier than before with .Mac. I might even switch this Blog over to .Mac when I get the new iLife.
 Photocasting. It’s like podcasting but for photos. How much would you love to share your photos with certain loved ones really easily? Email? HA! just photocast it with iPhoto. You’ll wonder what it was like before it got this easy.

intel iMac
No, it wasn’t the MacMini, it was the iMac G5. They’ve simply taken out the G5 and put in the Intel Core Duo. So now it has two processors in there and supposedly gets twice the performance. We’ll see about that. But yeah, it’s very cool… and the same price and all the same specs except for the processor.

intel PowerBook (i.e. MacBook Pro)
Nope, it wasn’t an iBook that got the intel chip first (as all the rumors indicated), and technically, it’s not even the PowerBook, because they’re doing away with that name. They’re now calling it a MacBook and it looks very similar to the PowerBook but is very different inside. It also got the Core Duo chip which is way faster than the G4. It’s thinner than the current 15in PowerBook (but not lighter, go figure), has a much better screen (not related to the processor upgrade by the way) and some other neat bells and whistles like an IR sensor remote control and a built in iSight camera for video conferencing on the go. Wow. The dissapointing things to me are the name (MacBook Pro sounds weird to me right now though I’m sure I’ll get used to it) and this laptop doesn’t have FireWire 800 for some odd reason. WHY, Apple? Thank goodness it still has FireWire 400 (unlike the new iPods). Confusing? a little, yeah. Apple likes to change up their designs a little unexpectedly sometimes and for inexplicable reasons.

What does this intel stuff mean for me and do I need one?
Well, first of all, it doesn’t mean that your user experience will change at all. If you buy one of the new intel Macs you probably won’t really notice any difference.  Not satisfied? read on for a more in depth explanation…

All your old applications will still run on the new machines and new, optimized versions of those apps are probably in heavy development as you read this.  Of course all of Apple’s apps are already optimized and will come that way on the new system. If you have some high end applications like FinalCut Pro you’ll have to use the old version and put up with the performance hit or pony up $49 for the new one. Of course, if the performance claims with these new machines are even close to being true, the new machines will still be faster for these apps even though they’re not running at top possible speed.  
In english? Don’t worry about it. In time, everything will be optimized for intel as well as PowerPC and we won’t even be talking about this.

Got more questions? Send me an email to [email protected] or post it as a comment and I’ll put the answer up here…

justin