Previously, on the "Mac Newbie":
If you're one of those that think there are no viruses or other malware for Mac OS X, then you're mistaken. The only reason why viruses haven proliferate to Mac OS X is only because viruses' creators are busy devising new nasty malware programs for Windows and because the market share of Mac users is still too small to justify the time spent creating them.
But now that Apple has been cutting a larger and larger piece of the market's pie, the attention of these "evil-doers" has turned to Mac OS X and other Apple-related software.
The latest news on this issue are related to torrent-based downloads. People downloading the latest version of iWork'09 or Photoshop CS4 through the popular file-sharing network are likely to also be downloading a trojan that gives access to your computer to a mal-intentioned user.
So, you might want to consider installing an anti-virus, specially if you're downloading this software from these "not-so-legal" networks.
After seeing the keynote I can easily understand why Apple has decided to stop with these special events to announce new products. The pressure to deliver new products at specific timetables (forced by these events schedules) builds up a hype that most of the times leads to failed expectations. Yesterday's keynote was an example of that: people were waiting for a final and blasting Apple Keynote but all they got was a predictable software update (and not all that impressive) and an obvious small hardware update.
But now the pressure is off and Apple can surprise us at any time and anywhere. So, if it takes slightly longer to see some updates from Apple now...no problem...that just means that something big is probably coming. And then, at least, we'll know that is going to be huge.
But coming back to the keynote, let's analyse it a bit in detail.
About the keynote speaker
Phill is not as relaxed or as calm as Steve usually is but the keynote was fluid and appealing, so, not bad... But maybe he should cut by half the times he says "That's really cool" :-)
iPhoto'09
iPhoto'09 looks realy cool with its new Faces and Places features and since I'm an avid user of iPhoto, I would love to see those features on my iPhoto Library right now. It sure would save a whole lot of time to tag every person and place on the 15000+ photos on my library. However, I'm still reluctant as to whether the face recognition will be that effectice on photos that are not picture-perfect as the ones showed on the demo (which is the case for most amateur photographers).
Also, Facebook and Flickr integration seems to be a great step. Even though we can also have that on the current version of iPhoto, it requires you to install specific add-ons that are not as simple to use as a button on the event view.
iMovie'09
I still use iMovie HD (iMovie'06) because iMovie'08, besides being too buggy on my Macbook Pro, it's a lot more complicated than its previous version (I was really surprised about this, Apple). And what's funnier is that Phill (kind of) admitted Apple's error on that one :-)
It still looks quite similar to iMovie'08, but I'll give iMovie'09 the benefit of the doubt and hope it to be a lot better. At least, the demo looks cool: video stabilization, audio-only selection and real-time video effects...wow!
GarageBand'09
Yeah, learning the musics from the artists is great but $4,99 per lesson? I keep getting amazed on how Apple finds ways to earn money from simple ideas that anyone could have thought of that before...
iWork'09
Yes, I want that app on my iPod Touch to remotely control presentations and, yes, the new magic effects and transitions are really cool but is that it? Pages and Numbers updates are hilarious... Come on, in order to really step up against Microsoft Office, iWork really needs to do more than that.
iWork.com is the real interesting feature: sure, it's Google Docs à-la-Mac style (which means collaboration made easy) but the direct integration with all iWork apps is exactly what's missing on alternative platforms.
Mac Box Set
This is the most interesting news at least for me, a Mac OS X Tiger user :-) I'll get all three products (Leopard, iLife'09 and iWork'09) for the reduced price of $169.
The new 17'' Macbook Pro
This was an obvious update since this was the "soldier left behind" on the last Mac event when the unibody Macbooks family was presented. The good news is that Apple recognized the need to offer (I mean, with a $50 donation :-/) an anti-glare LCD display option to users that don't like the excessive reflection glass display. Too bad this won't be an option for the other Macbooks but I understand how difficult it is to manage stocks and manufacturing processes to allow all customers to customize their laptops.
Regarding the non-removable battery, I stand by my previous statement when this was first announced on the Macbook Air: "...innovative laptops have to make some compromises. And a removable battery is overrated. On my lifetime of "gadgetery" I only had to buy a new battery for a cellphone once."
iTunes news
This was the part of the keynote that I didn't quite get it. The only real news is the pricing tiers and the increased amount of DRM-free songs. iTunes+ has existed for quite some time now and the possibility to "upgrade" to DRM-free tunes is not a novelty.
Oh, and the possibility of using the iTunes Music Store on 3G in addition to WiFi...please...that should have been done from the beginning when iPhone 3G was first released.
What's missing?
Rumor-wise something's missing, but that is the usual consequence of the hype built around these events:
I haven't had the opportunity to see it for myself but it seems that the glossy screen choice for the new MacBooks may not have been the best. The minute I saw the specs for the new MacBooks I thought about how painful it is to work outside with a laptop with glass display (yes, I used to have one and it sucks).
The general opinion of Mac users (around 44%) is that a matte display would be more suitable.
For example, here's the opinion of a photographer that does a lot of work outside: "As a pro photographer the glossy screen only option will keep me at my current MBP for a long time. I know Steve replied that at the new light levels output by the LED screen are so bright that you won't see a reflection. I do critical work on location and a hardware calibrated screen requires a light level setting of about half the maximum brightest level and at that level the glossy screen is a reflective non-start for me"
So basically, to avoid any reflections you have to set the brightness level of the display to its maximum. But then the battery will drain itself quite faster.
And the funniest part is that in some countries (like Finland and Sweden) such computers with glass displays that have a lot of reflections do not comply with Health and Safety at Work regulations: "The screen must be free of reflections that can cause mixing and inconvenience to the user."
I guess with all this talk about how the new displays may be unsuitable to most Apple users, Steve Jobs will make a shift to (or at least introduce a new option of) matte displays. Let's hope...
Source: Gearlog
As soon as I knew that a new version of Open Office was available for Mac, I decided to test it to see if they finally were able to create a valid competitor of Microsoft Office. Obviously, I don't expect an open source initiative (even with the dimension of Open Office) to reach the same level of completeness as Microsoft Office (hate Windows or not, fact is that Microsoft Office is an excellent tool). But at least, I would expect it to reach a certain level of compatibility.
First, let's have a look at the things that I liked in this new version:
use track changes to suggest changes in parts of the documents and insert comments. So, a word processor that doesn't have this feature is quite useless to me. Other users may survive without this feature, though.So, Microsoft has decided to ditch Seinfeld and the all idea of "Microsoft and the future" and went on to adopt a new approach in their marketing campaign, where they focus on the idea that there are a lot of PCs out there and that, in spite of the stereotype created by the "I'm a PC" guy from the Mac ads, they can achieve great things. See the ad for yourself:
Even though the ad itself was made on a Mac, I still think it is better than the previous approach of placing Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld on a "higher level of the society" that is trying to "connect with the simple people".
However, it is still not there... because they show all these people but they still don't say why do they use Windows and not other operating systems. Maybe they use it because they have to, maybe it's because they don't know the alternatives, or maybe they are in fact not happy with using Windows but are too afraid to switch to Linux or Mac. And most of all, they don't show how all those people react when they get a BSOD and loose their work :-)
Every now and then, while playing some video podcasts and movies on iTunes, when the mouse hovers the movie (to trigger the appearance of the controls), my Mac completely freezes and I have to do a hard-reset. I couldn't figure out what caused this...until now.
If you remember, a few months back I posted a nice tip on how to enhance FrontRow in order to watch all kinds of video files, instead of just Quicktime files. This included installing Perian, a component plugin for QuickTime that adds native support for many popular video formats.
What I failed to notice is that this component somehow conflicts with video playback on iTunes and was the cause of these crashes. But since it only happened ocasionaly with certain video files I wasn't able to find the relation between the two applications.
But today, as I was doing some maintenance on my System Preferences, I notice the Perian section and decided to have a look and suddenly everything made sense: Perian makes some changes so as to allow playback of different video formats, right? So it must deal with video codecs, right? So, it may be related to the video crashes on iTunes... I decided to remove Perian and "voilá"...everything seems to be working just fine in iTunes now. At least, the videos that frequently crashed my Mac, now work like a charm.
As I posted before, Seinfeld was being recruited by Microsoft to be a part of the new marketing campaign to try and take down the negativity brought by years of those "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads. And even though Jerry Seinfeld was once part of one of Apple's "Think Different" ads, he accepted the offer from Microsoft (after all it was $10M, who wouldn't?) and crossed to the "dark side".
The following video seems to be the first ad of the new Microsoft's marketing wave. However, this feels more like a teaser, since nothing much is divulged. Basically, Seinfeld assists Bill Gates in buying some nice shoes at affordable prices (like if any of them needs it) and in exchange gets a glimpse of the future at Microsoft...See for yourself!
I sure hope there's more to it than this, because I don't quite see how this is going to change people's perception of Windows. It is basically trying to create a hype for the upcoming Microsoft technology (Windows 7?) in a attempt to divert people's attention from the failure that was Vista.
Let's wait... for now! :-)
Everybody knows that Apple has been doing a great job with the "Get a Mac" ads (by the way, there a few new ones that you should have a look at). They're funny and entertaining, but most of all, they show how Mac can be a real (and better) alternative to PCs, especially those with Windows Vista.
But Microsoft is getting tired of this marketing domination and has decided to bring out the big guns. The new marketing campaign, which will star Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates, is said to be based on the idea of "Windows, Not Walls," stressing the need to "break down barriers that prevent people and ideas from connecting." Basically, Microsoft will try to change the public's negative opinion of Windows Vista, for which the Apple's "Get a Mac" ads have made a large contribution :-)
Well, let's wait and see...
Source: Engadget
That's right, the problems with Office 2008 Service Pack 1 are not over. I'm now starting to notice some strange behaviours on my Mac whilst operating with Office 2008 apps:
Microsoft has recently released the Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 1, which apparently fixes some of the issues that this Microsoft product presents on the Macintosh platform. However, my experience with it, hasn't been particularly interesting:
The Lenovo ThinkPad X300 laptop may never be as cute and appealing as the MacBook Air, but you have to admit that this ad does bring the MacBook Air down:
I especially like the "no-compromise" and "everything else is just hot air" statements :-)
The war for the "ultimate ultralight thin" title in the world of laptops has begun! And right now, it seems that the Lenovo is ahead of its competition.
Source: Engadget
Remember when I discussed about which browser I was going to use on Mac OS X? One of the things I pointed out on the comparison between Firefox and Safari was that scrolling web pages in Safari seemed a lot smoother than in Firefox. This is especially valid for pages that have embedded videos. Scrolling these pages on Firefox sometimes makes a video trail appear across the entire page.
Well, Vladimir Vukicevic (who is part of the Firefox developing team) has come across some questionable practices from Apple while he was trying to improve the Mac OS X version of Firefox. It seems that Safari uses undocumented APIs to get some advantages over other browsers, which (among other things) explains why Firefox is unable to smooth scroll pages just like Safari does.
Given that Microsoft has already suffer the consequences for performing this kind of unfair application development, it makes you wonder why Apple has the need to take a part in similar practices.
Source: Slashdot
Every now and then, the Quicksilver menu on the top bar turns into this:
It still works fine and I can use all its functionalities (altough some of the icons on the search window are no longer available) but I can only go back to its normal state once I "force quit" it and then restart the application.
Does anyone else has come across with this same problem? Do you know a solution?
I recently needed to make a small movie and I decided to give my first real try on iMovie and iDVD.
My idea was simple: merge a bunch of videos that I had of my friends all together, put some nice effects and background music and burn it to a nice semi-professional DVD. But accomplishing this was not so simple. And it was not because of the lack of features of the applications or because of my newbie experience on a Mac. The applications have the potential (but not the ability) to be great, but the frequent crashes and system hangs can really make it unbearable to work with them.
But let me tell you about my experience so you can draw your own conclusions.
The iMovie experience
On a first note, I used the iMovie HD from iLife'06 because iMovie'08 was crashing too many times with just some simple editing features. If you feel the same about iMovie'08, don't worry. You can download and install the previous version and keep both versions running on your Mac.
So first of all, I needed to collect all the videos and get them into iMovie so that I could make all the editing in one place. This task was really painless, whether it meant importing videos or recording them with the iSight.
Editing the movies (to get only the parts that I wanted) was really simple too, but sometimes the application would crash and exit without any warning and would put the unsaved files on the Trash. And sometimes I wasn't able to restore the videos back from the Trash, which meant that I had to import and edit them again.
When all the editing was finished, adding some background music was very simple and no problems occurred. Managing the volume between the parts where people were talking during the movies was really simple and the final result was amazing.
Adding some subtitles or text effects was also very easy and problem-free. Adding special effects was not that easy, however. At this point, I decided to add some effects to the movies to make them look a little bit more professional.
I wanted to add a "white point adjust" effect to give the movies a "warmer" look but this revealed to be an impossible task since iMovie crashed everytime I tried this.
Since I was going to use iDVD for making the DVD, I decided to use the iMovie "Chapters" tab to add some chapters' anchors to help people navigate the movies. This presented no problems.
The iDVD experience
With my movies ready, I used the "export to iDVD" feature of iMovie (Share->iDVD) to start a new iDVD project. The transfer was amazing and iDVD even created a menu view with all the chapters I created before on iMovie, so no work was needed to make these. I also added some extra menus and sections to show other movies (such as bloopers).
I then chose a nice theme (from one of those that come with iDVD) and used the "drop zones" to choose the appropriate videos that I wanted to show on the DVD title. The "drop zones" are areas on the DVD title where you can place videos or photos that will appear when you put the DVD on your DVD player. The effect is amazing and I couldn't wait to show these to my friends. However, actually creating a DVD with these effects was a different problem.
After trying countless times to create the DVD with no success (the computer would hang after an hour and a half of rendering menus) I decided to look over on the Internet if somebody else was having the same problem. That's when I found this thread with a bunch of people having similar experiences with iDVD.
It seems that, from what I've read in the thread, iDVD is really buggy when it comes to MacBook Pros (lucky me, huumm???). And Apple doesn't seem to be doing anything about it. And in the meantime, MacBook Pro users have these powerful computers that can be used with anything else, but not Mac OS X's own video and DVD editing tools.
The reported bugs include using dynamic drop zones (such as videos), background encoding and burning directly to DVD. So I decided to change my DVD to avoid these bugs:
Another day, another error: I'm starting to think that my mac doesn't like Christmas. Maybe it is the Grinch of the Macs :-)
What to do when this kind of message appears on your screen?
Well, there isn't that much you can do, because the keyboard is locked and the mouse doesn't respond. All applications are frozen and there's no way of getting out of this situation elegantly.
All you can do is exactly as the text explains: "...Hold down the Power button for several seconds..." and the computer will turn off.
In my case, this message appeared when I pressed F12 to bring Dashboard to the front to check some widget. But unfortunately, I couldn't figure out what the problem was, as now the mac seems to be behaving well, as before.
Apple is not very helpful too
Later on, I learned that this message (referred to by Apple as a Kernel Panic) appears "when the core (kernel) of an operating system receives an instruction in an unexpected format, or that it fails to handle properly". Also, "a kernel panic may also follow when the operating system is not able to recover from a different type of error".
This kind of help from Apple is not very "helpful"! But I love their bottom line conclusion:
"A kernel panic can be caused by damaged or incompatible software or, more rarely, damaged or incompatible hardware"So the problem is either related to software or hardware. Ok, it's good that we were able to rule out "little green men from another planet".
I have two new problems to add to my experience as a Mac Switcher.
CanoScan N650U and Mac OS X:
I tried using my Canon N650U scanner with my MacBook Pro but I had no success. The problem is that for Mac OS X, Canon decided to distribute only a plug-in version instead of a normal utility application:
What does this mean? It means you need to have installed on your OS another application (such as Photoshop) to use the Canon plug-in and be able to acquire images from the scanner.
Well, since I'm not a graphics expert and Gimp is suitable enough for me, I don't intend to spend a whole lot of money on a program that I don't need just so I can scan some documents!!
In one of the forums that I looked for, someone said he was successful in using the plug-in in another application other than Photoshop: Graphic Converter. However, I tried several times to install the plug-in but was unsuccessful.
It is sad to say this, but I actually need Windows for this. Luckily, Parallels Desktop works like a charm and running Windows on my MacBook Pro is simple and easy, as much as it is possible taking in account that we are running Windows :-)
So, for now, whenever I need to scan some document, I have to use Parallels Desktop to run Windows and then connect the scanner to start scanning away!
If anybody was able to solve this problem of using N650U in Mac OS X Tiger, leave a comment below.
Using NTFS-formatted hard disks:
I have this WD MyBook 250 GB portable hard disk where I used to keep my backups of music, photos and work-related documents. When I first connected it to my Mac, I found it very odd that it was read-only and, obviously, I was unable to change anything.
At the beginning I didn't care that much about it, since my priority was actually to get my music and photos into my new Mac. However, soon enough I needed to backup some new stuff and the read-only annoyance was still there.
It wasn't until I looked on Google for this problem, that I figured out that NTFS-formatted disks do not work on the Mac OS X file system thus appearing as read-only. In fact, this is how Windows-formatted drives work on Mac OS X:
All good things must end, and my (so far) problem-free switching to the Mac was no exception. It's not a Mac problem directly, but it's related to iTunes on a Mac.
I've been an iPod user for a few years and I currently have a 30GB iPod (5th generation). I almost never had any problems with my iPod and iTunes on Windows. The only problem was related to deleting video files from my iTunes library: when I removed them and iTunes prompted me whether the files should be moved to the recycle bin or not, even though I say yes, the files still remain on my disk and have to be removed manually. Besides that specific problem, I never had any other problems with iTunes or iPod on Windows.
Since I used it on Windows, my iPod was windows-formatted. Although iTunes on Mac OS X supports windows-formatted iPods (and it has worked perfectly for the past week with no sync problems), there is still a warning that says that further "updates to the iPod software can only be done if the iPod is mac-formatted". So, considering that from now on I'll be using a Mac and that constant updates are released from Apple, I decided to format the iPod on the Mac and restore it to factory settings so as to have a fresh start on Mac OS X's iTunes.
After this, synchronization problems started and have been getting worse. Every time I plug in the iPod to the Mac, I get this error on iTunes:
And even though some synchronization is actually done, some items, such as movies and photos, are not transferred to the iPod.
So, as any normal Internet user with a problem, I "googled" it and found out that Apple already has issued a report and a solution for this problem. However, it seems that Apple is actually joking with iPod users on this one. Let's see:
Although my transition to the Apple operating system has been running quite smoothly, there are however some things that I still wasn't able to get in my head (mainly because of old Windows habits):
Copy + Paste
This issue applies to a lot of different situations, not only to the copy and paste shortcuts. While in Windows (and other system too) the shortcuts are done using the CTRL key, in Mac OS X I have to use the Command key (the Apple Logo key) instead. So this is taking a little bit longer to get used to than I thought, but I'll get there.
Some keys are missing
Like most programmers, I have picked up a lot of habits using shortcuts and quick-access keys to "travel" around in a text file. Unfortunately, in a Mac Home, End, Delete, Page Up and Page Down keys are not available. Instead, these can be emulated with different combinations of keys, mostly using the Command key again.
Alt + Tab
This shortcut is one of the most useful features on windows-based operating systems. If offers you a way of changing between windows easily and with no effort. However, this shortcut has a slightly different behavior in Mac OS X. First of all, I have to use the Command key (again) instead of Alt. And then this shortcut switches between applications instead of windows. Let me give you an example: if you have two Firefox windows opened, this shortcut won't allow you to switch between them, only between Firefox and other applications that are opened.
Hard writing
I don't know if this is exclusive to the MacBook Pro or if it applies to all Apple keyboards, but this keyboard seems to be less sensible to pressure, that is, I have to apply more pressure than usual to write some of the letters in the keyboard.
Lighting Sensor
The lighting sensor is an excellent feature as it automatically changes the display's and keyboard's brightness according to light conditions. However it seems that this sensor is located near the speakers and since I have the habit of placing the left hand on top of the left side of the laptop when I'm not using it, the display gets darker every time i do it.
Nonetheless, these issues don't really annoy me because I know that these are thing that I'll get used to with time.
And what about you? What are your dislikes towards Mac OS X?
