MacMegasite

In an attempt to put an end to the wild speculation about his health, Steve Jobs posted the following letter to the Apple community:

Dear Apple Community,

For the first time in a decade, I’m getting to spend the holiday season with my family, rather than intensely preparing for a Macworld keynote.

Unfortunately, my decision to have Phil deliver the Macworld keynote set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed.

I’ve decided to share something very personal with the Apple community so that we can all relax and enjoy the show tomorrow.

As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors. A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority.

Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause—a hormone imbalance that has been “robbing” me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.

The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I’ve already begun treatment. But, just like I didn’t lose this much weight and body mass in a week or a month, my doctors expect it will take me until late this Spring to regain it. I will continue as Apple’s CEO during my recovery.

I have given more than my all to Apple for the past 11 years now. I will be the first one to step up and tell our Board of Directors if I can no longer continue to fulfill my duties as Apple’s CEO. I hope the Apple community will support me in my recovery and know that I will always put what is best for Apple first.

So now I’ve said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this.

Steve

Maximo’s iP-HS2 iMetal® Isolation Headset for iPhone is a great, inexpensive in-ear headset with a built-in microphone & control button that provide the full functionality of Apple’s standard headset.

It’s one of the more reasonably priced headsets with a list price of $69, although you can find it for as little as $36 from Buy.com and other online retailers.

The iP-HS2 includes 3 sets of ear tips (small, medium, and large) for the best fit, a 2 ft. extension cable, which I found unnecessary since the cable is slightly longer than the one from Apple’s standard earbuds, and a carrying pouch.

Unlike Apple’s earbuds, the microphone and control button are separate. The microphone is in the middle of the right earbud cable, exactly as it is with the Apple earbuds, but the control button is at the point where the two earbud cables join.

The sound quality and isolation is excellent. I was able to listen at a comfortable 50% level while blocking outside noise. I highly recommend the iP-HS2 as an alternative to Apple’s standard or in-ear earbuds for the iPhone.

Buy it from Amazon.

The new MacBook offers the perfect balance of high performance in a small, lightweight package. The performance is almost equal to a MacBook Pro, yet it’s only slightly larger and weighs only 1.4 pounds more than a MacBook Air.

I replaced my 2007 MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo with a new MacBook and it doesn’t feel like I’m sacrificing anything.

I like the new trackpad a lot more than I expected. The front portion of the trackpad gives a positive click, like the Mighty Mouse, which is nothing like the one-finger tap of the old trackpad (which is still supported).

Not all software supports the new multi-touch gestures. iPhoto only supports pinch & expand in editing mode, not when viewing a photo. Aperture doesn’t support multi-touch at all. Photoshop CS4 does support multi-touch.

The only real drawback of the new MacBook is the lack of FireWire.

Migration Assistant took about 5 hours to copy my applications, settings, and home folder over gigabit ethernet. Running migration assistant from the initial setup failed to replace my home folder, since it doesn’t have any option to specify an alternate name. If you rerun migration manager, you’ll be given an option to rename the account, which will allow it to successfully copy the home directory.

I’ve posted a full unboxing gallery here.

The D90 is Nikon’s latest midrange digital SLR, replacing the older D80. It’s the first DSLR that can record video, but it’s also outstanding for still photography with a 12MP CMOS sensor based on the D300’s sensor.

I recently upgraded to a D90 from my older D40x and I’m completely blown away by the difference. Stepping up to a D90 from an entry level DSLR like a D40x or D60 is almost as much of a jump as switching from a point & shoot to a DSLR.

You can see the difference in quality very dramatically in this side by side comparison:

The D90 is especially impressive at high ISO settings. While many cameras start showing some noise at ISO 800 and most are unusable by ISO 1600, the D90 still shows very little noise at ISO 3200. Even at ISO 4000, the pictures are still clean.

The D90’s video mode is an extension to the Live View, which lets you use the 3″ LCD screen instead of the viewfinder. To record video, simply switch to live view, focus, and press the OK button to start recording. Press OK again to stop recording. At the highest resolution of 1280×720 you can only record 5 minutes of video at a time, but the default 640×424 resolution lets you record up to 20 minutes. You can use any lens for video and you can even use effects like monochrome.

If you don’t want to record video, the 4.5 FPS continuous shooting mode lets you freeze action for a striking effect.

If you like HDR imaging, the D90’s exposure bracketing feature makes it very easy. When you combine bracketing with continuos shooting mode, you can simply press the shutter release once to take 3 shots at different exposure levels, which you can then merge to HDR in Photoshop, Photomatix, or Hydra.

Unlike entry level DLSRs like the D40, D40x, and D60, the D90 has an internal auto focus motor, so you can use auto focus with Nikon’s older AF lenses like their popular 50mm/f1.8 AF.

Don’t bother shooting RAW, at least for now, since there’s no native support for the D90’s new RAW format in Aperture or in the OS. It will probably be fixed in Apple’s next Camera RAW update. Adobe already has a beta version of their Camera RAW that supports the D90. I find the JPEG quality to be good enough that I usually don’t have to do too much adjustment.

The D90’s only minor drawback is that it’s much bigger and heavier than the D40x, but after a few days it didn’t bother me. The improved performance and new features more than make up for the weight difference.

Dallas, TX, August 19-20th, 2008—Village Tronic is proud to announce Jeremy Sutton’s first two-day Dallas Painter Workshop incorporating Village Tronic’s ViDock Gfx. Taking place at the Fran Reisner Studio, Jeremy will be using different hardware, including the ViDock Gfx to create a dynamic presentation as well as giving students time for hands-on practice with their own image and computer. Briefly the class will encompass the themes of “systems, organization and optimization, loosening up your paintings through use of the ‘muck up’ under-painting technique, selectively refining your image and adding detail and contrasts, and enlivening your imagery through use of color” (Jeremy Sutton). For presentations like this Jeremy states, “The ViDock enabled me to give a live painting demonstration from my MacBook Pro last week in a dramatic and effective way that would not have been possible without the ViDock.”

Jeremy is a great example to show who the ViDock family of graphics docking solutions was created for and its versatility across the business spectrum: the professional user that wants to use a single portable computer both on the road and the option to utilize multiple screens when needed whether that be in the office, studio, classroom or at home.

ViDock Gfx takes advantage of the fast connection offered by ExpressCard technology, the latest standard from PCMCIA for notebook expansion, to deliver an uncompromised user experience in terms of speed, responsiveness, 3D acceleration and resolution support. With the options of VGA, DVI Dual Link, or Dual DVI video output (Pro Edition), all the displays currently in the market can be supported, including the 30” ones at 2560×1600. The operating system compatibility ensures support for Windows Vista, Windows XP and Mac OS X. Aero accelerated user interface for Vista is also supported.

ViDock will be on the market bundled with the valuable software application “VTMultiDisplay” that improves the user experience when working with multiple screens. Thus, allowing the user to analysis large quantities of data. Creative professionals can take advantage of ViDock’s powerful multi-display support to experience the final work on one screen while viewing edit commands on another. ViDock also allows the user to turn a notebook into a high performance graphics platform, with full HDTV support perfect for artists, gamers, and home users alike.

For further information about Jeremy Sutton or his seminars/classes please visit his website: http://www.jeremysutton.com. For further information about Village Tronic and its products, please visit the company’s website: http://www.villagetronic.com. Email: press@villagetronic.com

While Spotlight is a great feature for quickly finding applications there is one little problem: the index can mysteriously become corrupt and need to be rebuilt. Quicksilver not only serves as a free replacement for Spotlight, it can do a lot more - as David Alison finds in his blog post on Quicksilver.

There are a number of plugins that can really enhance your experience with QuickLook. David Alison talks about his 3 favorite plugins, provides some web resources to find new plugins and gives some pointers on installation in today’s blog post.

David Alison had over 77,000 e-mail messages sitting in an Outlook PST file - over 10 years of valuable e-mail. Once he switched to Mac he needed to find a way to get those messages on to his Mac’s Mail application. His blog post for today covers how he did that.

David Alison mentioned on his blog the other day that he was looking for a replacement for Visio since he made the switch from Windows to Mac. A bunch of people recommended that David try out OmniGraffle - a native Mac application for creating flow charts, org charts, screens, etc. It looks like David found his replacement.

Though there are a number of ZIP utilities out there, and OS X natively supports the ZIP format, it requires that the ZIP file be extracted completely before it can be viewed and it has problems on older ZIP file formats. David Alison talks about how Zipeg, a free utility, makes this an easy task.

Zipeg also supports ZIP, RAR, ARJ, LHA/LZH, 7z, TAR, GZ, TGZ, BZIP2, CPIO, RPM, ISO, CHM, Z, CBR, CBZ, WAR, EAR… lots of formats.