MacMegasite

A lot of great hardware was released in 2009, so here are my favorites:
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I upgraded this site to WordPress 2.9.

David Alison talks about a subject that can frustrate both managers and employees: should internet access be limited while people work? If so, how many limits should be placed on it? Sure, most people wouldn’t grumble about not accessing porn and gambling sites but what about Facebook, ESPN or Amazon.com? Does this even matter when people can bring an iPhone w/ unlimited access to the web into the office?

Read the article and participate in the discussion at David Alison’s blog.

Here are some more Macworld notes, now that I’m home.

North vs. South As usual, most of the major companies were in the South hall and the small, funky booths were in the North hall. There were lots of iPod & iPhone accessories, games, and music software in the North hall. The Acura lounge in the North Hall provided a welcome place to rest, and the John Lennon Tour Bus was a fun place for playing rock band and trying out real musical instruments.

Best Product for the trip home FastMac’s True Power IV for iPhone. I’ll post a more extensive review soon, but it was awesome on the trip home. I charged it overnight and after more than 8 hours, including over 4 hours of music, 1 hour of video, and several games of Frenzic & reMovem, my iPhone was still fully charged and the IV’s battery was still full.

Cool product The Pulse Smartpen from livescribe captures everything you write or say.

Photoshop plugins Topaz Adjust, Simplify, Denoise, and Vivacity make photo touchups easy and let you create great effects like paintings, line drawings, and dramatic colorization.

It’s not about Apple. The real reason to go to Macworld isn’t for Apple; it’s for all of the cool people and cool products from the other companies. Apple’s booth is one of the least interesting, merely rehashing what we saw at the keynote.

Free Macworld Expo 2010 Passes. IDG is offering free expo passes (regularly $25) for Macworld 2010.

Lots of iPod accessories Vestalife was showing their iPod speakers & video screens. I even got a free Ladybug speaker after attending their presentation.

Party Bus Hear Planet’s Party Bus shuttled people between parties.

Lots of parties There were several parties every night, often at conflicting times. The only way to avoid missing a party was by spending a few minutes at one and running to the next one.

Google Dance This was the scene at the Google booth in the final moments of the show on Friday afternoon.

iLife 09 looks cool I use Aperture, but I’m very tempted to switch to iPhoto 09.

An old tradidion The Netter’s Dinner has taken place during Macworld since 1985. A big group treks from Moscone to Henry’s Hunan for a great dinner, interesting conversation, and free swag.

Drive Savers demonstrated graphically what can go wrong with disk drives.

The end At 4PM sharp on Friday afternoon, the lights were dimmed and the crowd was herded out of the hall.

Around midnight Pacific time last night, 30GB Zunes everywhere began restarting and locking up at their boot screens. Reports have swamped official forums and fan sites, and Microsoft has yet to officially comment on the reason for this pre-New-Year’s Zune apocalypse, saying only “We are aware that customers with the Zune 30GB are experiencing issues with their Zune device. We are actively working now to isolate the issue and develop a solution to address it. We will keep customers informed on next steps via the support page on zune.net (zune.net/support).”

I suspect it’s related to Microsoft’s DRM.
Update: It’s a leap year bug.

Michael Mistretta has created a free Christmas Wallpaper both for desktop and iPhone, which you can download from his site.

With Apple bringing back the personal in Personal Computing and general acceptance of Macs as THE safe and reliable computing platform there has been a surge of interest in the use of these computers. Local MUGs are here to help you find out how to get more out of your … Apple Mac, iPod, iPhone.

You may have recently switched to Apple or be a long term user. Whichever, there always comes a time when you need to find some local friendly help and advice. Look no further! – there is a wide spread of MUGs (Mac User Groups) meeting both face-to-face and online with members who are always pleased to share their knowledge and experience. Indeed, there is probably a MUG in a town near you.

Take a look at our Mac Users UK & Ireland website, which now includes a totally revised listing with a new map facility giving the ability to find the nearest MUG meeting by entering your own postcode. It will also help you get in touch with your local MUG by email or via their own web site.

For full information on individual Mac User Groups and to contact a local Group go to www.macusersuk/mugs/muglist.php
or call Michael Corgan on 01308 459398

David Alison switched from Windows to Macintosh just over three months ago, yet he feels he’s become a power user in a short period of time. How? By blogging about his experiences. His latest blog post covers how blogging has helped him learn a lot of information in a very short period of time.

While David Alison’s parents are happily using the Windows 98 machine he got for them 9 years ago, his wife reminds him of why getting them a shiny new iMac is probably not a good idea.

This is a universal problem that I run into on every computer that is plugged into the Internet. I call it the “Scan, Update” problem, meaning that it seems like my computer is always either updating one of its many programs or scanning for something. This seems likes its always robbing some bandwidth or some CPU cycles from my computer.

I am not saying by any stretch of the imagination that companies should stop providing updates or scanning my computer for problems. I just wish they would find a less invasive way to do it. It’s not uncommon for me to turn on my computer to record some music or edit a video and I get bogged down by Adobe updating a CS application, then my anti virus application starts updating their virus definitions as well, in the middle of this my anti spy-ware application decides that its a good time to scan my computer for any problems on my computer. Oh and amiss this chaos Microsoft needs to get in on this and update their browser which I haven’t launched in weeks. I’m sure there’s a way to turn off this chaos but the point is I shouldn’t have to.

Now I’m guessing at this point I have Apple and Linux fans snickering at me, you guys don’t get a free pass out of this. I have launched MS Word for Mac only to find it updating, then I have a couple of GB’s of files to download and install the latest iTunes+Quick time update (exaggeration of course but seriously apple my Internet does not have an unlimited supply of bandwidth.). So my Mac is installing updates while “Word” is downloading it’s updates. And here comes Adobe because we all know that whatever system you’re on, your not escaping Adobe products.

With all this downloading and installing going on its safe to say I will not be using the Internet or using any system intensive applications on my G4 for awhile. Linux does not escape this insanity but I must say it does handle it better, except for the damn upgrades Ubuntu puts out every 6 months which require me download a few large files to upgrade a stable version of a still very brown and un-attractive OS. Laugh at me or hate me but you have all been in this vicious cycle before. Now please excuse me I have to update my system.