MacMegasite

One of Apple’s most important & interesting announcements today, which didn’t get its own press release, was the new $999 Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server. This is significant as Apple’s least expensive server configuration and the first one targeted to end users rather than IT departments.

The Mac Mini server configuration includes two 500GB hard drives and no optical media drive, although an external USB SuperDrive is available. This model includes one FireWire 800 port & 5 USB 2.0 ports,mini DVI & mini DisplayPorts, Airport Extreme 802.11n & Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 2.1, a 2.53 GHz Core 2 Duo Processor, and 4GB RAM.

Other new Mac Mini configurations starting at $599 include a 160, 320, or 500GB internal SATA hard drive and slot-loading SuperDrive with double layer support.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Aug. 27, 2009 — Eye-Fi Inc. today announced that its Eye-Fi Manager software enables all Eye-Fi cards, both new and existing, to work seamlessly with Apple’s newly released Snow Leopard operating system. All Eye-Fi cards integrate seamlessly with Mac products like iPhoto ‘09, ‘08, the iPhone and MobileMe.

“We think one of the reasons so many Eye-Fi users are also Mac users is our shared value for a great user experience and simplicity” said Jef Holove, CEO of Eye-Fi. “Snow Leopard’s ease of use and power are the reasons why it is so important to ensure that our entire family of cards let users make the most of their memories, and their Mac.”

Eye-Fi has embraced its Mac following by developing wireless memory cards that seamlessly integrate with Apple products and features. The Eye-Fi Geo ($59) is the newest addition to the Eye-Fi product family and is now available in all Apple stores and online. It includes lifetime geotagging and lets users wirelessly upload photos straight to Apple’s iPhoto or a folder on the computer. iPhoto ’09’s “Places” will plot automatically geotagged photos on a digital map for a richer experience and lets users search and sort photos by location. Users can also effortlessly share images online with MobileMe or on 20 other online photo sharing sites by enabling the WebShare service for $9.99/year.

Eye-Fi also offers an application for the iPhone, which wirelessly uploads photos from your iPhone to the Web and into iPhoto, or organized folders on a computer. Users can aggregate all of their photos – from both an iPhone and their digital camera – to manage and share photos in one place, regardless of which device captured the shot. The app is a free download exclusively for Eye-Fi users and is available on the App Store.

Eye-Fi’s complete line-up of wireless SD and SDHC memory cards range in price from $49-$149 and are available at www.eye.fi, in store at Apple Stores and Best Buy locations, and at major online retailers such as Amazon.com, Walmart.com and Costco.com.

Eye-Fi cards have won numerous Mac product awards, including “Best of Show” at Macworld 2008 and The Mac Observer’s “Editors’ Choice Award 2008” at Macworld. For more information, please visit www.eye.fi/apple, or follow Eye-Fi on Twitter @EyeFiCard.

About Eye-Fi

Founded in 2005, Eye-Fi is dedicated to building products and services that help consumers navigate, nurture and share their visual memories. Eye-Fi’s patent-pending technology works with Wi-Fi networks to automatically send photos and videos from a digital camera to online, in-home and retail destinations. Headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., the company’s investors include LMS Capital, Opus Capital, Shasta Ventures and TransLink Capital. More information is available at www.eye.fi.

Apple has announced that Snow Leopard will ship this Friday, August 28, as was widely rumored. You can still pre-order it for $29.

According to rumors, Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) may be released as early as August 24. Build 10a432, which was seeded to developers yesterday, may be the golden master.

You can pre-order it now from Amazon.

A leading producer of the direct response infomercials we all know and love – Swivel Sweeper, OxiClean and Smart Chopper – as well as the subject of Discovery Channel’s popular “Pitchmen” series, Sullivan Productions recently took the Small Tree challenge to see if Small Tree’s scalable, cost-efficient shared storage technology was the right solution for their workflow needs. After struggling with its workflow for months, Sullivan Productions is completing projects much more easily thanks to Small Tree’s Edge-corE ES4524D, a 24-port Gigabit Ethernet switch, along with its PEG6 6-port Ethernet card – both of which are a part of Small Tree’s new GraniteSTOR product line.
 
Prior to installing Small Tree’s technology, Sullivan Productions had a separate RAID for two of its three Final Cut Pro editing suites. Its third room was used to digitize onto a portable RAID, which would then have to be moved manually to one of the other suites. This slowed down the production team because it couldn’t share anything and didn’t have access to any footage.  By installing Small Tree’s GraniteSTOR products, Sullivan Productions is now running in two  rooms concurrently for 10 hours every day, and three rooms for 10 hours at least three days a week with real-time editing and no dropped frames.

“The difference in workflow since installation [of the Small Tree equipment] is night and day,” said Stephen Cain, post-production editor at Sullivan Productions. “Just the other day I was working in Suite 1 and needed b-roll footage for another project with a tight deadline. I was able to digitize the b-roll in Suite 3 so that when I was finished with the project I was working on in Suite 1 I could pull up the footage and immediately begin working on the next project. It’s incredible that we don’t have to stop, transfer materials onto a portable drive and then move it over. The seamless, real-time editing has made life so much easier for everyone on our team.” 

Improved workflow? Check. Happier production and post-production teams? Check. But wait, there’s more.

Not only did Small Tree’s shared storage make life easier for Sullivan Productions, it did so at a fraction of the cost of a typical storage solution. “It was absolutely more cost-efficient than the system we were currently running and far less expensive than SAN solutions on the market today,” Cain continued. “Cutting the cost of our storage technology allowed us to address other pressing technology needs in our facility, such as adding more computers and software to maximize our services. I can’t think of a reason why a post-production facility wouldn’t go with this solution.”

Small Tree is the Mac Networking Expert, making networking child’s play. Small Tree provides a complete portfolio of Ethernet-based networking and storage solutions for Apple Mac OS X customers.  Small Tree’s team of networking developers has extensive experience in high performance computing, and knows how to achieve the demanding application requirements of Mac customers.  Small Tree also provides contracted programming services for the Department of Defense.  For more information about the company and its products, please call 1-866-STC4MAC (1-866-782-4622), or visit www.small-tree.com.

Yesterday, Apple released iPhone SDK 3.0 beta 4 along with iPhone OS 3.0b4 updates. The release notes for the SDK states (emphasis added):

iPhone SDK requires an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X Leopard version 10.5.7 or later. Xcode 3.1.3 is also available separately for Mac-only development and is compatible with Intel and PowerPC Macs running Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 and later.

Installing the new iPhone OS requires iTunes 8.2, which is available as a pre-release from Apple’s iPhone Developer Center.

Apple has released the Mac OS X 10.5.6 update, now available via the Software Update panel. A fairly complete release note is available at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3194

The many changes in 10.5.6 include:

Address Book

• Improves reliability of Address Book syncing with iPhone and other devices and applications.

AirPort

• Improves the reliability of AirPort connections, including improvements when roaming in large wireless networks with an Intel-based Mac.

Client management

• Improves reliability of synchronizing files on a portable home directory.
• Fixes an issue in Mac OS X 10.5.4 and 10.5.5 in which managed users may not see printers that use the Generic PPD.
• Client computers that use UUID-based ByHost preferences now respect managed Screen Saver settings.

iChat

• Addresses an issue that could cause an encryption alert to appear in the chat window.
• Setting your iChat status to “invisible” via AppleScript no longer logs you out of iChat.
• Resolves an issue in which pasting text from a Microsoft Office document could insert an image rather than text.

Graphics

• Includes general improvements to gaming performance.
• Includes graphics improvements for iChat, Cover Flow, Aperture, and iTunes.
• Includes fixes for possible graphics distortion issues with certain ATI graphics cards.

Mail

• Includes overall performance and reliability fixes.
• Improves Connection Doctor accuracy.
• Fixes an issue that could cause messages identified as junk to remain in the inbox.
• Fixes an issue that could cause Mail to append a character to the file extension of an attachment.
• Addresses an issue that could prevent Mail from quitting.
• Improves reliability when printing PDF attachments.

MobileMe

• Contacts, calendars, and bookmarks on a Mac automatically sync within a minute of the change being made on the computer, another device, or the web at me.com.

Networking

• Improves Apple File Service performance, especially when using a home directory hosted on an AFP server. Important: If you are using Mac OS X 10.5.6 (client) to connect to a Mac OS X Server 10.4-based server, it is strongly recommended that you update the server to Mac OS X Server version 10.4.11.
• Improves the performance and reliability of TCP connections.
• Improves reliability and performance for AT&T 3G cards.
• Updates the ssh Terminal command for compatibility with more ssh servers.

Printing

• Improves printing for the Adobe CS3 application suite.
• Improves printing for USB-based Brother and Canon printers.

Parental Controls

• Addresses an issue in which a parentally-controlled account could be unable to access the iTunes Store.
• Includes general fixes for time limits.
• Resolves an issue that prevented adding allowed websites from Safari via drag and drop.

Time Machine

• Fixes issues that could cause Time Machine to state the backup volume could not be found.
• Improves Time Machine reliability with Time Capsule.

Safari

• Improves compatibility with web proxy servers.

General

• Includes Mac OS X security improvements. See this website for more information.
• Addresses inaccuracies with Calculator when the Mac OS X language is set to German or Swiss German.
• Improves the performance and reliability of Chess.
• Improves DVD Player performance and reliability.
• Performance improvements for iCal are included.
• Fixes an issue when running the New iCal Events Automator action as an applet.
• Adds a Trackpad System Preference pane for portable Macs.
• Improves compatibility with smart cards such as the U.S. Department of Defense Common Access Card.
• Updates time zone data and Daylight Saving Time rules for several countries.

Just a couple of weeks after getting a MacBook for his wife, David Alison discusses some of the challenges his wife has had in making the switch from Windows.

Eight months after David Alison switched from Windows to Mac he has created a list of the 26 Mac applications he finds himself using nearly every day.

What does it take to set up a Time Capsule? David Alison walks through buying a refurbished Time Capsule from Apple (which saved $50) and setting it up in today’s blog post.