AppleCare After A Warranty Replacement

A few months ago, the Irvine Applestore declared my MacBook Pro officially “dead” and replaced it with a shiny new one thanks to AppleCare. That machine was a few years old so, while the old warranty transfers over to this new machine, there isn’t much time left on it. Today I finally got around to calling Apple to see if there was a way to extend it for three years on the new machine. Turns out there is. Apple is refunding a pro rata portion of the old warranty to me. They say it takes about 30 days to receive the credit. In the meantime I will buy a new AppleCare warranty for this new machine and then I’ll be good for 3 years after the date they swapped me out the new machine. By the way, I saved $70 buying AppleCare from Amazon instead of Apple
I should probably also mention that I have a separate insurance policy on my computers for accidental damage or theft. You can usually get them as part of your homeowner’s insurance or buy one from a specific electronics insurance broker. So between these two policies, I’m covered for just about any problem with my Macs.
By the way, if you are looking for the AppleCare phone number it is not exactly easy to find. Add it to your Address Book. It is 1-800-275-2273.

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Apple Gives a 30 Day Extension to MobileMe Customers

This morning Apple sent out its “mea culpa” email to MobileMe subscribers concerning the less than stellar transition from .Mac to MobileMe. Standing behind the apology, Apple gave everyone a free 30 day extension of services.
We want to apologize to our loyal customers and express our appreciation for their patience by giving all current subscribers an automatic 30-day extension to their MobileMe subscription free of charge. Your extension will be reflected in your account settings within the next few weeks.
Apple also confirmed my suspicion that Calendar and Address Book syncing was less than instantaneous.
I appreciate Apple stepping up and taking responsibility and providing some value to the customers. My only complaint is the lack of information while they were sorting everything out. A few simple postings explaining the problems and estimated time for fixes would have been appreciated.

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Getting Comfy with MobileMe

The dust is finally settling around MobileMe. I am still scratching my head over the bungled launch of this product but as the servers seem to be recovering, I’m already incorporating the new features into my daily life. Specifically, the push syncing is fantastic. I generally use a MacBook Air as my daily computer. I have a MacBook Pro at home at my desk for all of the heavy lifting like video, photo editing and the likes. I also sync my iPhone to the MacBook Pro. Before MobileMe, that meant when I made an adjustment to an appointment on my Mac, it did not get on my phone until that night when I synced it at home. Now it pushes right through. I already can’t live without this feature. Here are a couple other tips I’ve discovered:

1. Do Not Become a Lemming to Email Notification

Just because you can push email, doesn’t mean you have to become a Pavlovian dog like some of our Blackberry brethren. I’ve left the “push” on for my email but I refuse to jump every time it pings, vibrates, or otherwise announced new mail. Stopping for every email would make it impossible to get anything done. Be the master of your email, don’t let email master you.

2. BusySync Still fills a Role

BusySync still lets you sync your calendars with your family and co-workers. Likewise it allows you to painlessly publish to Google if needed. I had an interesting chat with George Starcher and Katie Floyd over the weekend where we figured out a work-around for MobileMe’s inability to sync subscribed calendars. Specifically, if you subscribe to the calendar at your Google calendar and then sync it down to your iCal with BusySync, you can get it to push. If anyone knows a way to push the birthday calendar, let me know.

3. All Push is not Created Equal

I’ve noticed that while the email pushes nearly immediately, the calendar and address push is a bit slower. For me it is generally 5-15 minutes. This delay doesn’t bother me at all.

4. About that Web Interface…

I really like the look of the web access portal. It looks and feels like an application. I think the UI is heads and shoulders above Google’s offerings but feature poor. There are a lot of options available in Google calendar that are simply not there on MobileMe. Lets hope they continue to improve stability and add features as things calm down.

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Launch Day Check In

I’ve had my head under water the last few days with some deadlines at the day job so I thought I’d check in with the MacSparky faithful with a couple of observations.

iPhone 2.0 – YES

I did the manual install that was widely publicized yesterday. The App Store is everything I though it would be and then some. I’ve downloaded a ton of free applications. My favorite two free ones so far are Urbanspoon (it is so satisfying shaking your phone and having it tell you where to eat) and Lightsaber (because .. well … its a LIGHTSABER!).
I’ve also bought a few apps. I have OmniFocus running (review in the future) but am also loving the MLB application and Band. Now if we could just sort out the issue of that pesky bluetooth keyboard.

iPhone 3g Launch Woes

I, along with most of the interweb, predicted AT&T’s painful signup procedures would be a problem and it looks like that is coming true. For those of you going through it, at least rest easy knowing at some point in the next few days, your phone will be faster than my phone.

MobileMess

My biggest disappointment is the problems getting MobileMe off the ground. It has been generally non-existent and, when briefly available, extremely slow. I think MobileMe holds great promise but Apple needs to give it sufficient server backbone to make it snappy AND reliable. I’m withholding judgment on this one a few more days to see if they get it sorted out.

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MobileMe Arrives Tomorrow Night

Apple announced last night that the .Mac service will be going down at 6 PM Pacific on July 9, 2008. The service will remain down for approximately 4 hours or until they have MobileMe in place. This is great news. Thursday morning, I hope to have MobileMe working.
In anticipation of using the new service, I have deactivated the Google sync function in BusySync and will be instead doing it through the MobileMe service. My primary use for the Web calendaring is to view and edit it on my PC at work. That is just the beginning. With iPhone calendar push syncing, it will really streamline things for me. Is anybody else planning on dumping the Google calendar sync for MobileMe?

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Stepping Up the Screencasts

Recently, I’ve been getting a lot of email questions about some of my productivity hacks. It has inspired me to try and step things up with the screencasts. I’m now tooling up to release a series of productivity themed screencasts. The first two installments will be:
1. Email
All things email – IMAP vs. POP, dealing with Spam, archiving, best practices, plug-ins, and my filing system.
2. OmniFocus
My particular OmniFocus tips, tricks, and tweaks.
I’ve got a few other ideas but the above two are going to keep me busy for some time. Let me know if there is anything in particular you would like covered in the above two shows or if you have any other ideas for screencasts. I’m looking forward to putting these together.

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To 3g or Not to 3g, That is the Question

I know that all of the readers have been waiting with baited breath for the MacSparky verdict on upgrading to the new iPhone 3g. [eyebrows roll] Well friends, the wait is over. I’ve finally decided to “go public”.
I have to admit I’ve waited until the last week to post this because when the first iPhone came out I was vocal pretty early about the fact I would not immediately get one. You can imagine how surprised I was carrying that little bag on launch day. What did it for me the first time was that spiffy video Apple did on how to operate the phone. Well Apple just did another one of those videos (with the same Actor no less) and after watching it I’m even more convinced I won’t be buying a 3g iPhone on launch day.
The original iPhone was so much more than my old smart phone that I couldn’t resist upgrading immediately. The difference between the 3g and original iPhone however doesn’t strike me as all that revolutionary.
It really comes down to this: Are you willing to pay $200 plus an additional approximately $30 on your monthly bill for 3g and GPS? I can see how this is a no brainer some folks who need those features. I’m just not blown away by it. I have wi-fi at home and at work. Most of the iPhone web apps I use are already very Edge optimized and acceptable. I own a $100 Nuvi that handles my navigation.
Also, I think a lot of people will be surprised on July 11 to find out that the 3g buying experience, for lack of a better term, will suck. The AT&T folks are going to make sure the phone is activated before it leaves the store. It probably takes 30 minutes to activate. So lets say you are at a really big Apple Store with 100 employees. That means they can sell 200 phones an hour. Ugg. I think people are also going to be surprised how often their 3g coverage isn’t so 3g and more Edgey. This will, of course, depend on where you are located. I am very curious about the non-driving direction uses for GPS on a phone. Maybe not immediately, but very soon I suspect that will be a compelling feature.
Of course I’ll upgrade eventually I’m not even ruling out within a few months but most likely for me it will be in November when maybe they have a 32gig model with (hopefully) a better camera. I can say that I am certain I will be nowhere near an Apple Store on July 11. Hopefully, I’ll be home updating my existing iPhone software and going crazy in the App Store. How about you? Are you going to upgrade?

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4th of July Photography

I hope everyone had a nice Fourth of July. The nerdy side of me particularly enjoyed shooting my family with sparklers. For these shots I put the Canon on a tripod and set the ISO to 100, the Aperture to 9, and the exposure varied between 5 and 10 seconds. The above shot is of me.
We also went to Disneyland on the third but one of the legs on my knock-off Gorilla Pod broke. I’m going to see if I can return it. As a result I ended up having to prop the camera on a trash can for this shot.

Finally, with no trash can or tripod, the fireworks shots came out jiggly. Feel free to laugh.

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Iris Review

It wasn’t so long ago that there were very few options for Mac users in the graphics department. There was 800 pound gorilla, Photoshop, and Adobe Photoshop Elements for the rest of us. Adobe was behind on its product cycle and for Intel Mac users, Photoshop in any iteration was a slug.
In just one year, this space has completely turned around. Adobe finally got its act together and released CS3 and an Intel friendly Adobe Photoshop Elements version 6. Likewise, Apple beefed up the core animation, core graphics, and other elements of OS X to allow developers to create their own graphics applications. In short, there has been a boom of quality graphics software including Pixelmator, Acorn, and now Iris.
The developers of Iris bill it as a graphical and photo editing application “designed from the ground up specifically for Mac users.” In large part, Iris delivers. It features a simple interface that is much less intimidating than Photoshop. Iris uses a “one window” metaphor for the application. It has simple sliders that are in obvious locations that allows you to adjust color or zoom just like you would in a lot of current OS X applications.

One of my favorite features was the inclusion of a small pane at the bottom of the Iris window that includes thumbnails of all of your current open images. When you’re working on several images at one time, this is extremely convenient.
Within very little time, I had easy access to common tools such as dodge and burn and a decent set of drawing tools. The implementation of layers is both easy to use and powerful once you start using the built-in filters. Iris also accepts and writes a wide variety of files depending on your needs.
Another function that I thought was pretty slick was the inclusion of a “new from clipboard” command. This really made sense to me. In fact, I could see this command being used in a variety of applications.
While Iris does a very credible job of giving you easy photo editing and drawing tools, it is not going to replace Photoshop. Indeed, I don’t particularly see at replacing Photoshop Elements. The selection tools are not as robust and some of the deeper features from the Adobe offerings are simply nonexistent.
Iris fits in that space already occupied by Elements, Pixelmator and Acorn. All of these applications are aimed squarely at that user who does not want to spend the time and money required to master Adobe Photoshop but still wants some photo editing tools beyond iPhoto. If that is you, take a look at Iris. I can’t make a recommendation between Iris, Pixelmator, Acorn and Elements. I think that depends a lot on the user and I simply haven’t spent enough time with the applications to give an intelligent recommendation. Regardless, all of these applications have trial periods available. When making a decision such as this, it’s probably best that you kick the tires yourself.
 
Iris retails for $79. You can find it at Nolobe.com. You can listen to this review on Surfbits MacReviewCast episode #167.

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