Jason and the Golden AirBook

Apr 22, 2008 by Dan Taylor    3 Comments    Posted under: Technology

If the original 24k Gold Macbook wasn’t enough for you, Computer-choppers let their 24k Gold and Sapphire MacBook air loose on the market today.

This baby is bathed in 24k gold all the way around, and features the ‘classic’ mac logo with 86 multi colored sapphires. Even 86 Sapphires wasn’t enough to satisfy those krazy kidz at the ‘choppers and they’re also offering a polished gold superdrive to go along with it.

Maclust Realized

Apr 16, 2008 by Dan Taylor    No Comments    Posted under: Technology

An ongoing review of Me and my MacBook Pro.

As Brent pointed out, I’ve not yet done a post about the shiny new bundle of joy that’s come into my life.  Well, let’s just say I’ve got a new toy.  More so than a toy, I’ve actually got my hands on a professional tool that’s going to allow me to be more productive, creative, and generally a better all around person (ok…that might be pushing it a bit far).  In other words…Maclust realized!

So dear readers, this is the first post I’m writing on the new MacBook Pro, and I’m sure you’ll understand and forgive me if the ‘screw doesn’t have a few posts for a few days….I’ve still got to use this darn thing. Biggest difference right off the bat; what’s the funny command key for, and I have to mount applications to install them?

I say a few days…probably more like a few hours. But all in all, thanks to all of you who’ve already sent me congrats messages. I’m incredibly happy already, and she’s only 6 hours old!’

A few days later (edit update) …

I’m just a little short of one week with my new MacBook Pro, and I’ve already decided that it’s (almost) the love of my life. I was talking with an uninitiated the other day, and she asked me why I love it. I honestly had to stop and think for a minute, as there are so many reasons, but I wanted to put it in plain and simple words she could understand. My answer? ‘Because it just works’.

Simplicity

Since this silver bundle of joy is brand spanking new, it shipped with Leopard, so I don\’t really have a version comparison to make, but all I can say is that OSX Leopard is probably the most intuitive OS I’ve ever worked with. Sure, it’s different from winblows and yes, it’s going to take you a minute or two to get used to it. But once you do…things just start making sense all of a sudden. There’s that lightbulb moment of, yeah…that was easy, why was that so complex with winblows?

Included Goodies

I’ve not yet done it, but I’ll be reformatting my old pc soon and rebuilding winblows xp. This got me to thinking, when I install winblows, what ‘extras’ and ‘goodies’ come with it? The core OS sure, along with solitaire, a calculator, and Internet Explorer. Oh wait…there’s defrag as well. If you buy your dell/hp/toshiba/sony, they often come preloaded with a boatload of crap that most of us go ahead and delete right off the bat anyway, so these do NOT count as goodies.

Upon booting up the Mac, I was delighted to find iTunes, iPhoto, Garageband, AppleMail, iMovie, Dashboard, Frontrow, (shall I continue?) preinstalled. Ok, I’ll admit it, one of the first things I unchecked as default was Safari in favor of Firefox, but hey…can you blame me?

It’s HOT!

Actually, quite the opposite. Coming off a 1.5gHz Centrino processor where I could more or less fry an egg on the keyboard after about an hour of usage, this duocore 2.5 gHz could keep my drink chilled. The secret? Aluminum. The mac comes in a super sexy aluminum casing. The aluminum acts as a heat sink and wicks heat away from the key components inside, thereby increasing overall operating stability and speed. Conversely, take a look at your PC notebook. I’m going to take a wild guess, and assume that it’s probably made from plastic? Plastic. Un huh…a heat INSULATING material. Along this same line, I was told before my purchase that one of the most frequent gestures I was going to make was to hit the shift key just to make sure that the machine was actually on. Whereas the fan on Compaq could sound quite close to a vaccum cleaner running at full speed, the Mac is virtually silent.

Power for Days

I think it’s no secret that I like to watch my American television here in Austria. That requires and download, and then a trip over to the TV to have a watch (the other monitor isn’t actually required, I just like to watch TV in the living room). Normally, I’d have another dedicated power source in the living room to plug the computer in, as I know it’d never make it through more than 1 one hour program. My first reaction after recabling my desk was, hmmm…I’ve probably got to go get another power adapter for the mac now as well. But I figured at least we could watch one episode of American Idol (I know…don’t hate, but David Cook IS seriously a good singer) before I’d have to recharge. Well, low and behold, I cued up 2 episodes, and watched them both back to back without the battery even flinching. Upon taking it back to my desk, the battery meter indicated that I wasn’t even half way empty. Doing a quick mathematical equation, this means that I could potentially get almost 4 hours of computing time from this battery in minimal conditions? WOW! Now that’s what I call power management!

BuiltIns

It’s just a bunch of the little things built into this quite possibly perfect mixture of function and form. Everything from the built in iSight webcam and microphone (making skype calls an absolute pleasure), to the magsafe power cable (I can be a bit of a klutz sometimes, and have tripped over a cable or two in my day). The environmentally sensitive ambient lighting feature knocks me out every time I watch it in action. The iSight webcam actually monitors the ambient lighting around you, and automagically adjusts screen brightness and illuminates the keyboard. I didn’t mention that already? Yeah, the keyboard f#(ing lights up in dim conditions. The 1440 x 900 display is absolutely breath taking (and I’m already trying to figure out how I can swing one of Apple’s 23″ cinema displays), and the 512mb NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT doesn’t hurt either.

Conclusion

I’ll keep this one very short. Have I mastered this beauty yet? Not even close. Has Apple made the (almost) perfect machine and OS, whereby I can get my way around and utilize some of it’s super fun and cool features within a few days? Absolutely.

A few moths later (edit update):

Things are still rock solid here at camp mac, chez DT.  Since the addition of a Vestax VCI-100 that I use to controll Traktor (thanks Ludwig), the mac now replaces my down dust collector Technics.  The Canon Vixia HF10 in combination with Final Cut Express is about as close as I’m going to get to Hollywood, and while I’ve completed the 12 step process for my World of Warcraft addiction, gaming on a Mac is still a heckuva lot better than my winblows experiences.

I’m still a VERY happy MacBook Pro owner, and want to buy the world a Mac.

Logitech NuLOOQ increases productivity

Apr 15, 2008 by Dan Taylor    2 Comments    Posted under: Technology

While my shiny new Mac has not yet arrived, some of the stuff that I ordered to go with it has arrived today. 85% of it is Mac specific, so it’s not really doing me much good on my winblows based machine. However, one of the new pieces of hardware that arrived is truly changing my computing experience right out of the box.

At a suggestion from Bottle, I figured as long as I’m making this big of an Amazon.com order, why not just chuck the Logitech NulOOQ in there as well. And oh how I am glad that I did. Logitech bills the NulOOQ as ‘It’s not a mouse, it’s your mouses’ best friend’, and I can honestly say, it’s all that and then some.

Upon installing the software a bunch of popular programs and associated shortcuts are preinstalled (Photoshop, Illustrator, Premier Elements, Firefox, etc.). First stop Firefox. A twist of the scrolling wheel is now rolling me through tabs, while and up and down on the wheel is scrolling me smoothly through pages, and a nudge left or right is moving backwards and forwards in browsing history. Could I have done this with a mouse? Sure, but why all the extra motion when, I’ve now got controls all under my fingertips with my left hand.

Another great feature is that in addition to the presets (which you can remap any way you choose) you can also set up your own custom settings. The iTunes settings were not preset, as I can imagine everyone has their own preferences of how they’d like it to work. Well, I’ve been listening to iTunes all afternoon, and haven’t once had to alt/tab to the program itself to change the volume, play, next track, previous track and/or mute/pause. I have them assigned to touch sensitive numbers on the top of the device (see top image above). Square is play/pause, III is forward, I is backwards. Ready for the super-slickness? The entire top of the control pad functions exactly like the scroll wheel on an iPod. In other words, I can now control iTunes volume just by sliding my finger around the top of the device. Nice.

iTunes is already a preinstalled feature device (but commands left blank). The NulOOQ is also programmable to virtually any program you\’ve got on your machine. Simply go to the main menu of the controls, select ‘add program’ and then start adding keyboard shortcuts. The ‘lOOQ then recognizes which program you’re working in and maps key commands specific to that program. In other words, let’s say I’m working in Ableton Live and want to map a twist of the wheel to a filter effect. No problem. I add Ableton to my commands in the NulOOQ menu, and map the specific keyboard command or mouse gesture to a right turn of the NulOOQ wheel. How cool is that?

This settings can also be exported in case you ever switch machine (or work onsite for a client). This works out quite nicely for me, as I’m mapping custom settings today on winblows, and will hopefully by this time tomorrow be working on a mac. No need to remap, just export from winblows, and import on the mac. I also found this site, that’s offering up a bunch of preconfigured mappings (most are specific to <snicker>Vista</snicker>). Hmmm…now to figure out some mapping for WoW for some SERIOUS pwn ftw!

I’ve only used it thus far with Firefox, Word, and iTunes, I’m sure this is going to get REALLY fun when I start working with it in Photoshop (think magnifiers and brush size) and Final Cut (shutteling through video…oh nice!). Is this object necessary for your everyday computing? Probably not. Is it a wicked awesome cool productive time saving the keys glow blow ultimate geek toy? Abso f#*(ing lutly!