Retrophisch

ATPM 14.05

The May issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.

Wes has a great round-up of the Mac blogosphere’s reaction to the Psystar Mac clone, as well as bits on Adobe Creative Suite, e-mail clients, Apple’s proceeds from Google referrals, profitability of potential iPhone software sales, and user interfaces. Finally, the blog about the column returns as Son of Bloggable. It’s about time, Wes!

Mark’s understandably unhappy with actions of the MBG (Britian’s RIAA), and notes the fallacy of DRM in light of the closing of MSN Music. Ed has a revised list of GTD applications in this month’s Next Action, while Lee dodges and burns up Photoshop for the Curious.

This month’s desktop pictures are courtesy of David Siebecker, and are from a six-day hike through New Hampshire’s White Mountains. All seems lost for Cortland and company as Lisa makes a last bid for victory, any way she can take it.

Yours truly pounds out a review on Apple’s latest keyboard, while Linus grills Blue Crab. Sylvester is impressed with Drive Genius 2, while ATPM’s Official Pilot™, Flight Officer Lawson, puts the Flipp Premium Leather Case for his iPod through its paces. ATPM is a labor of love, with no staffer receiving compensation, so we really can’t complain when Paul takes time to play with SpacePig.

As always, About This Particular Macintosh is available in a variety of formats for maximum reader comfort. Thanks for reading!

ATPM 14.04

The April issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.

Wes kicks things off with a look at what’s been popular in the Mac blogosphere of late, and that’s namely been about a product that isn’t a Mac, but works with your Mac: the iPhone. The announcement of the software development kit (SDK for short) for the iPhone has generated quite a lot of discussion amongst developers and pundits.

Mark talks about chips of all sorts, from his uniquely Brit point of view, as well as the latest DRM nonsense across the Pond. Charles has another Filemaking, and walks through relational databases.

This month’s desktop pictures are courtesy of several ATPM readers, and feature views from all around the globe. Thank you, all, for sharing!

Back in meatspace, Todd turns the tables on the enemy with a reprogrammed Lisa. Cortland and Angela arrive safely from the Mudrix, but Cortland has paid a heavy price…

My good friend Tom Bridge returns to the pages of ATPM with a look at The Book of Wireless. Lee rounds up the latest iPhone accessories from Newer Technology, while Ed puts PhotoAcute Studio through its paces. Paul is pleased with Take Control of Permissions in Leopard, and Ellyn closes out the Tome Edition™ of ATPM by digging through Wikipedia: The Missing Manual.

As always, you can read ATPM online, as well as in three other formats of your choosing. Thanks for reading!

Mixed Messages

What is ZDNet trying to tell us, I wonder?

Click to see a larger size

ATPM 14.03

The March issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.

Wes has analysis and the roundup from the blogosphere on Microsoft’s attempts thus far to acquire Yahoo!, as well as bits on the MacBook Air, a disastrous HP PC (is “disastrous” redundant there?), the iPhone, and Aperture. Mark notes Apple’s approach to design, compared to others. Chuck takes a break from the normal workflow of Filemaking to look at what’s new in FileMaker 9.

Time warp with us back to the 1950s and 60s with ATPM reader Jennifer Curry’s shots of automobiles in and around Havana, Cuba, from a trip she took there in 2006. Sorry, Marty, no De Loreans. Meanwhile, Lisa is history, and the Mudrix code dissolves to nothing as Cortland makes a huge sacrifice to save the woman he loves. But is that sacrifice enough to save Angie from Cortland’s enemies in meatspace?

Lee puts Microtek’s ArtixScan M1 Dual Media Scanner through its paces, while Eric sees if LicenseKeeper can keep track of all those pesky software serial numbers every computer user tends to accumulate. Ellyn shoots a little pool with her Mac, but after finding it really hard to get the chalk off its case, she elected to shoot pool on her Mac, with MacPool. Chris tries to extend the wireless range of his PowerBook with Wi-Fire, while Linus reclaims some space on his hard drive with Xslimmer. As always, we get to the nitty-gritty of Mac and technology products so you don’t have to!

Every month, About This Particular Macintosh is available in a wide variety of formats for your reading pleasure, and this month is no exception: on the web; as an offline webzine; a PDF optimized for reading on your computer screen; or a PDF optimized for printing. On behalf of the entire staff, I hope you enjoy our work.

Little green men

I love the little aliens from the Pizza Planet vending machine in Toy Story. Thanks to my friend Heather, and a long ago giveaway of some kind, I have two of the little guys guarding my favorite Mac, which is a little otherworldly in its own right…

Click on the photo to see the entire set.

ATPM 14.02

The February issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.

Yes, he’s a month late for such reminiscing, but Wes weighs in on the comings and goings of 2007 in this month’s Bloggable. He also looks at the blogosphere’s rumblings over the new MacBook Air, and other items of interest. From across the pond, Mark offers an Englander’s point of view on Steve Jobs’ Macworld Expo Keynote, while he waits for a CyTV update, due to an incompatibility with Leopard.

Angus offers the pros and cons from this year’s Macworld Expo, as he sees it. Ted offers a progress report for this month’s ATPO, pre-announcing (pre-pre-announcing?) an outlining product he’s endeavoring to build, as well as offering his thoughts on Macworld Expo (anyone else see a theme here?) and an opinion regarding software business models.

Photoshop For the Curious returns from its brief hiatus, as Lee introduces us to Photoshop’s wonderful world of Masks. And, yes, while I didn’t attend Macworld Expo in person, this will not stop yours truly from offering his impressions of Steve Jobs’s keynote address to open the 2008 Macworld Expo, which took place in San Francisco last month. (There it is, again.) This month’s desktop pictures are courtesy of ATPM reader Kim Lee, from a November 2007 trip to Manado, Indonesia. Thanks, Kim!

Linus looks at Chameleon 5.0.881M Legacy, a Photoshop plug-in for combining images, while Ellyn plays around with Flip Words 2, something of a combination of Boggle and Hangman. Chris, ATPM’s official pilot, puts the Kinetik 15.4 Backpack through its paces, and Ed puts a few balls in to play with MacPinball 2.6.

As always, this month’s issue is available in a variety of formats for your reading pleasure.

Macworld Keynote impressions

So the big news in the tech world yesterday was what Steve Jobs talked about during his keynote address at Macworld Expo in San Francisco. The annual technology conference geared toward the Mac OS, and all things Apple, Inc., is often used for the announcement of new products from my favorite fruit company. Yesterday was no exception. Here are some of my thoughts on what was announced:

Time Capsule

If I hadn’t bought an Airport Extreme Base Station last year, to replace a router that died, I’d be buying a new 1 TB—yes, that’s a T, for terabyte—Time Capsule right now. Merging an Airport Extreme Base Station with a “server-grade” hard drive, the Time Capsule allows for wireless backups from all of your Leopard-based Macs via Time Machine. Jobs called it a “back-up applicance”.

Backing up your data is very important, and too few people do it, realizing the value of doing so only when it’s too late. Time Capsule is a dead-simple way, for most people, to ensure their Macs are getting backed up. Plug in and power on the Time Capsule, open up Time Machine on your Mac and point it to the Capsule, and you’re done.

Time Capsule comes in two sizes, the 500 GB version for $299, and the aforementioned 1 TB version for $499. That’s an amazing bargain, a terabyte of storage and a full wired/wireless router for five hundred smackers. As I said, if we didn’t already have the AEBS router, my credit card would have already seen one of these charged to it.

iPhone Update

Today was the 200th day the iPhone had been available for purchase, and Apple’s sold 4 million of them, an average of 20,000 iPhones sold per day. This means that in terms of United States smartphone market share, Apple has nearly 20% of the national smartphone market.

The rumors of a 1.1.3 update to the iPhone proved to be true. The home screen can now be customized, and the Maps application—the underrated killer feature of the iPhone in my humble opinion—is now even more super-powered. The new Location feature in Maps is great. Combining data from Google and Skyhook Wireless, your iPhone can now, without GPS on board, triangulate your position within a couple of blocks. It pulled up my location at home with no problem.

You can, finally, send a SMS message to more than one person, something my lowly Motorola v557 was capable of two years ago. The WebClips functionality is pretty neat; you can create a WebClip from any web page or portion of a web page and pop it on to your home screen, so it’s easy to just go to Google, or The New York Times, or whatever web page you wish, with one touch.

I’ve had quite some fun this afternoon playing with all of this new stuff, and it’s almost like getting a new iPhone for free. All in all, it makes the iPhone an even better communication device.

iTunes Movie Rentals

In addition to buying movies through the iTunes Store, you can now rent them as well. Library movies (viz: older titles) are $2.99, and new releases are $3.99. From the time you click “Rent Movie” in the iTunes Store and it downloads, you have 30 days to watch the movie. From the time you click “Play” on the movie, you have 24 hours to watch it. You can also transfer the movie to another device, such as your iPod or iPhone, and watch it there as well, before your 24 hours or 30 days, depending on where you are when you perform the transfer, are up.

The thirty days requirement is pretty decent, but I find the 24 hours one to be a little restrictive. It should be at least 48 hours, and 72 would be better, with 96 being the ideal.

Going hand-in-hand with the new rental service is an updated Apple TV, or as Jobs put it, “Apple TV Take 2”. Whereas the original Apple TV pretty much required you to have a computer to sync it up with, the new version acts as a stand-alone box. You can rent movies from the iTunes Store in HD through the Apple TV, for only $1 more than the standard resolutions. So library titles go to $3.99 and new releases are $4.99, and no trip to the mailbox or corner Blockbuster is required.

I’m still not convinced that we have a real use for this in our house, given our movie viewing habits. For now, Netflix will continue to suffice, but I’ll be keeping my eyes on the Apple TV, and I’m sure I’ll try out the new rentals even without the new box.

MacBook Air

This had all the buzz, and was the announcement I was most looking forward to. I was ready to pounce on ordering Apple’s new subnotebook, provided it met my personal expectations.

Apple has created the world’s thinnest notebook computer. At its thickest point, the MacBook Air is 0.76 of an inch, and it weighs only three pounds. It comes with a full-size keyboard, a 13.3-inch LED backlit display, and a 1.6 or 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. Two gigabytes of RAM, an 80 GB hard drive, 802.11n wireless networking, Bluetooth, and a built-in iSight camera. A pricey option is to ditch the standard hard drive for a 64 GB solid state drive (viz: no moving parts), and when I say pricey, I do mean pricey: $999 on top of the base $1,799 cost.

You won’t find much in the way of ports on it, either: MagSafe power port, a single USB port, headphone jack, and a micro-DVI port which requires adapters to hook up to external displays. That’s it. The trackpad is larger than on previous MacBook versions, and features multitouch, so you can perform some of those pinch, zoom, and rotate gestures you may have seen with the iPhone.

The downsides to this incredible piece of tech? For me, the hard drive size is the first. I put a 160 GB drive in my four year-old 12-inch PowerBook last year, and have gotten quite used to the extra room it gave me. I’d hate to step back down by half. Only two gigabytes of RAM? And no way to upgrade it? My two year-old iMac is maxed out at 2 GB, and some times I bump against that particular ceiling. I’d really prefer a machine that can handle up to four. The battery is also not replaceable by the user. This might be okay on an iPod or iPhone, but in a full-size computing system devoted to the ultimate road warriors?

Ultimately, I decided this was not the next notebook computer for me. It’s a really awesome system, and if someone were to buy one for me, I wouldn’t hesitate to take it, but that’s not happening. I think I’ll be better served ultimately by a MacBook Pro, and with seven and a half months since the latest edition of those came out, they’re due for a refresh, even a “silent” one like we saw with the Mac Pros last week.

Summation

In the end, it was what I would call a typical Steve Jobs Macworld Expo keynote address. There were the requisite ooohs and aaaahs, Apple’s making some evolutionary gains in all facets of its business, and there was a great new product introduced that has the entire tech world talking. It wasn’t a blow-me-away sort of keynote, as was last year’s with the announcement of the iPhone, but then they can’t all be like that. Still better than anything Bill does on stage.

ATPM 14.01

The January 2008 issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available to help you ring in the new Mac year.

Mike Chamberlain looks back at the first of 2007, and how his desire for a “MacPhone” panned out, and surprisingly so, later in the year. Mark notes how smaller cars might not always be a good thing, but smaller iPods are, and wonders what lies ahead for Apple’s music player line. Mark’s also thankful that FileMaker has remained easy to use, lo these many years. ATPM reader Tricia Roach becomes an ATPM contributor, with a Segments piece on how she uses her Mac’s video capabilities to stay involved in the lives of her grandkids.

This month’s desktop pictures are courtesy of ATPM reader Jennifer Curry, from her 2006 trip to Cuba. They feature the island nation’s buildings and cityscapes. Meanwhile, Angie flashes back to 1984 as she and Cortland face off against Lisa in the Mudrix for a final showdown.

Linus takes Baseline, a utility which helps you look at file and folder sizes on your Mac, through its paces. Ed uses BusySync to get things done, allowing others to subscribe to or read his iCal calendars, thus assuring everyone’s on the same page. Chris Lawson tries out, and really likes, the Fin Laptop Handle/Stand, while Lee pairs his iSight up with Iris for some fun. Reader Mark Stoneman contributes a review of Mellel, a word processor I’m fond of, and a must-have for those who work with right-to-left languages such as Hebrew or Arabic.

This issue marks the entry in to the fourteenth year of publishing for About This Particular Macintosh, and we hope it’s a great year for our readers, and Mac users everywhere!

ATPM 13.11

The November issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.

Wes kicks off the month by covering—what else?—the blogosphere’s reaction to Mac OS X Leopard. He also has a choice bit regarding the ZFS file system, which I encourage you to read. I realize that particular topic sounds boring—I teased Wes I was printing out that part to help me get some sleep—but he’s done a stellar job of condensing a boring subject in to easy-to-understand layman’s terms. Our intrepid blog investigator also dishes out the links on the forthcoming iPhone development kit for application programmers, as well as a few other choice bits.

Mark—who seems to have the same attitude toward mobile phones as my parents—talks iPhone from the Brit perspective, while also pondering the Google goings-on in the mobile phone space. Speaking of pondering, Mark’s also beginning the laptop or desktop? dilemma. He gets extra points for using a title from one of my favorite authors. Lee’s taking a break from his great column, Photoshop for the Curious, returning in our February edition. To tide you over until then, he documents some other Photoshop-related links you may be interested in.

Sylvester offers a great how-to on extending iTunes’ abilities with content presets. ATPM reader Graham Lindsay was nice enough to share photos from his native Australia for this month’s desktop pictures. Just as all seems lost, our intrepid hero reenters the Mudrix to save the woman he loves in this month’s Cortland.

Small business owners may be interested in Ed’s review of Billable, whereas many folks may be interested in Paul’s look at Graph Paper Maker. Yours truly makes an appearance this month, as I contribute to the iPhone Case Roundup, with Lee and David. Lee likes XtremeMac’s Luna, and Ed is impressed with Nisus Writer Pro. Finally, Eric puts SuperSync through its paces.

As usual, you can read this month’s issue in a format of your choosing.

ATPM 13.10

The October issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading enjoyment.

If you haven’t gotten enough iPhone news in the past month, or if you’ve just been vacationing in the Eastern Hindu Kush with Osama, Wes has a big round-up in this month’s Bloggable. Speed is on Mark’s mind, as is, um, more speed. Of a sort. And referencing the first in a certain series of science fiction movies many would know by name, but few will recall by the included reference.

Lee delves in to one of Photoshop’s premier features, layers, while Sylvester talks about your Mac’s speed. (Was there a theme for this issue that no one told me about?) Matthew has a how-to for installing a cooling fan in our beloved Cube. (For the record, he installed it in his Cube, which is not the same as my Cube. We don’t share a Cube. I was using “our” in a communal sense, as in all Cube owners everywhere. Oh, never mind…)

Tim Allen—the photographer, not the actor (though that would be pretty cool)—shares with us some shots he’s taken around the United Kingdom, including his home town of Kent, as part of this month’s desktop pictures selection. The Usual Suspects it ain’t, but to paraphrase Bill and Ted, “Strange things are afoot at Wieser Graphics” in this month’s Cortland.

Chris Lawson tries out a pair of iPod cases, the Claro, and the PodFolio, while Linus puzzles the ins and outs of Crossword Forge. Chris Dudar dives in to digital watermarking with iWatermark, while I am underwhelmed by DLO’s TuneStik. Lee hauls around the Velocity Matrix Backpack, and yours truly reviews Apple’s latest game-changing device, the iPhone.

As usual, ATPM is available in a variety of formats, so you can read it however you choose.

So here I am, vocalizing

Jeff Ventura:

What’s interesting about Windows -> Mac switchers is that they typically feel a need to vocalize their experience in one way or another. That’s pretty remarkable, because it means that somehow Apple knows how to make evangelists out of users. I’m not sure any other company on earth does it as effectively. Apple’s installed base isn’t just an installed base: it’s a field marketing department.

[…]

Aside from very specialized computing tasks, there is literally very little reason to own a dedicated Windows machine anymore. I’d proffer that for the great majority of users, a Mac would work just fine if they do a modicum of research and go into the move with an open mind and the understanding that the Mac != Windows and there will be a learning curve. After that, it’s all good.

Apple: The not-so-premium brand after all

Wherein I shamelessly plug my favorite computing platform.

DealMac has a post where they put three systems in a head-to-head-to-head competition for specificationss and price. The systems? The Sony VAIO VGC-LS37E All-In-One Desktop PC, the HP TouchSmart IQ770 Desktop PC, and Apple’s iMac. The verdict? The iMac comes in cheaper than both of the PCs, and it trumps them both in the specs department. Not to mention the iMac is the best-looking of the three, and you get to use the best operating system in the world, instead of Windblows Windows.

So answer me again on why you’d want to use a Windows machine? Avoid the heartache, people—believe me, with a spouse insisting on bringing a new Dull in to our household, for her use, I’m well acquainted with the heartache—and just buy a Mac.

MarsEdit 2

My favorite blogging client has now been revved to version 2. I’ve been using MarsEdit ever since original developer Brent Simmons rolled out the 1.0 product, and I’ve been very happy with it. A couple of months ago, I began beta-testing new owner Daniel Jalkut’s upgrade of the client, and wow, was I ever blown away. Brent never really had the time to devote to MarsEdit, what with the popularity of NetNewsWire, and Daniel has definitely taken MarsEdit to the next level.

One thing I’ve noticed, being on the beta test lists of a few independent and small-shop Mac developers, is the level of responsiveness from those developers. You’re talking directly with the individual responsible for the product, not some project manager or mid-level flunky who really doesn’t get what’s going on with the application. Daniel is no exception, encouraging great participation from those on the beta list, and he always maintains a professional, and very friendly, attitude. It sounds like the the upgrade release is a hit so far, and no wonder, because MarsEdit 2 is a great product.

Great job, Daniel!

ATPM 13.09

The September issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.

Former staffer, and still good friend, Raena Armitage provided us with a fun cover this month. Thanks again, Raena! If Rob didn’t already have my undying friendship, well, by the power of Greyskull he has it now, managing to work our behind-the-scenes discussion of the new college football season in to this month’s issue. (I confess, this is one reason why you’re not seeing my iPhone review this month.)

Wes covers the big story of the Mac blogosphere from last month, the outing of Fake Steve Jobs, as well as iPhone-related AT&T issues, the iMac refresh, the new Apple keyboard, the latest addition to the iWork suite, and something having to do with brandy and lobster. Regarding that last, maybe our Wes has been sniffing too much newspaper ink at work or something.

Mark laments the Microsoft-blinders of myriad IT professionals, who don’t quite get that not everyone uses Windows, much less Internet Explorer. And speaking of Microsoft, Mark wonders if there might not be some new measurement of time coming forth. If you’ve ever needed a fancy tile graphic, Lee’s got the lowdown for you in this month’s Photoshop For The Curious, so you can knock it out without having to resort to talking to Crunch, the neon-blue mohawked graphic designer with the spike through his cheeks who blasts emo rock from his cubicle.

ATPM reader Jennifer Curry was kind enough to share some shots she took in 2004 from Australia’s Great Ocean Road. These are some breathtaking views of The 12 Apostles and the London Bridge rock formations. Thanks so much, Jennifer! More and more, the swing dance hall offers naught but misery for Cortland, while Todd suffers iPhone temptation. We’re also given a handy guide to online forum denizens.

Matthew explores the under-the-hood utility Cocktail, which, last time we checked, was not a Tom (Maniac) Cruise vehicle. Ed covers Curio 4.0, while Eric dives in to my feed reader of choice, NetNewsWire 3.0. ATPM’s official flight deck officer, Chris Lawson, isn’t suitably impressed with the radioSHARK 2, while Linus puts Snapz Pro X through its screen-capturing paces. Finally, Wes looks at the online, free-form information manager Stikkit, which doesn’t even require a Mac to use, just a web browser. Preferably one which is not from The-Company-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named. (Sorry. I’m currently reading through the Potter series for the first time ever. Apparently, it’s having an effect.)

As usual, this issue of ATPM is available in a variety of formats to suit your wants, desires, and needs.

Today’s head-smacker

Overheard by Jeff Harrell earlier today:

Wouldn’t it be great if the people who made the iPhone also made a computer?

Really? Really?!?

ATPM 13.08

The August issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available.

In this month’s Bloggable, Wes makes sure to avoid coverage of “the largest technology premiere since the launch of Windows 95”, which would be the debut of the iPhone. Well, he almost avoids it, but does feature a round-up from the blogosphere concerning the WorldWide Developers Conference, the continuing chase to unmask Fake Steve Jobs, and the tale of Photoshop’s birth. Mark, meanwhile, has found a great benefit in the .Mac service over what he’s been getting from his local broadband provider.

Paul delivers a well-rounded meal of web sites for your browsing digestion, including subway maps, fast food ads versus reality, and a digitally-reproduced manuscript of Portuguese sonnets. Part of getting to the next action in GTD is processing. This month, Ed takes a look at processing reference material, which can play an important role in exactly what action you’ll choose. In the latest Photoshop for the Curious, Lee offers a resolution tutorial. (That would be screen resolution. Conflict resolution…well, that’s another publication.)

This month’s desktop pictures are courtesy of staffer David Thompson, and feature scenery from a recent motorcycle trip through parts of Texas and Utah. Cortland finds himself in a spot of trouble with the fuzz, while Angie is paid an unexpected visit. Meanwhile, evil plans are afoot to acquire the Cortland OS.

Andrew enjoys some screen time thanks to El Gato’s EyeTV Hybrid, while Frank Wu offers a double-dose of MagSafe adapters—the Portable Power Station from Battery Geek, and Mikegyver’s MagSafe 120w AC/DC Car/Airline Adapter—for MacBooks and MacBooks Pro. Finally, Linus finds learning fun with Travelogue 360 Paris. I kind of wish my son was older so he and I could play this game together.

As usual, this issue of ATPM is available in a variety of formats for your reading pleasure.

ATPM 13.07

The July issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available.

Ellyn kicks things off by noting how the Internet’s managed to let us support our servicemen and women in ways that wouldn’t have been possible in wars past. In this month’s Bloggable, Wes has a round-up of posts on—what else?—the iPhone. Mike laments the pains of the tech upgrade cycle, but looks forward to what the future may bring. Mark offers his “furs thoughts” on Mac OS X Leopard, based on the information recently released at the Worldwide Developers Conference. As he looks forward, Mark also looks back, noting how old technology, while great at the time, may not be so great in the future when we need it once again.

Ted returns with an ATPO of a different sort, comparing past WWDCs, as well as Apples and oranges, with today’s. Lee delves in to some of the cool stuff one can do with Photoshop with layer effects, while offering the acquisition saga of his latest tech toy, a new MacBook Pro. Yours truly has an acquisition saga of his own, as I relate my tale of iPhone hunting.

This month’s desktop pictures are courtesy of ATPM reader Forrest Brown, and feature Crowders Mountain, North Carolina. “Uncomfortable” is the word of the day for the Cortland crew: at the office, on the dance floor, or in MySpace. No one is having a good time on this particular night, well, except for maybe Steve. Qaptain Qwerty interviews the guy waiting for One More Thing™.

Linus plays around with Crossword Express, while Frank Wu puts the i-Volution Shell, a carrying case for MacBooks, through its paces. Lee’s impressed with the PocketDock AV, and Paul takes Redline for a test drive, though I think we need to talk about those gas receipts he submitted for reimbursement.

As always, ATPM is available in a variety of formats for your reading pleasure.

ATPM 13.05

The May issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.

April showers certainly brought May flowers for Apple, notably the kind that grow from the branches of the money tree. Rob provides a rundown of Apple’s latest financials in this month’s Welcome. Wes has the blogosphere round-up on the latest digital rights hubbub, set off by the open letter by Steve Jobs to end DRM on music. When you’re already using the coolest computing system in the world, where do you go next? If you’re Mark, you start letting a robot clean your carpets.

Lee takes us through Photoshop’s bag of tricks concerning color, hues, saturation, gradients, and all sorts of other goodies you can tweak your photos with. In closing out her series on web accessibility, Miraz looks at the capabilities of Firefox and Opera. Matthew does some hacking on what is still my favorite Mac to have owned, the Cube, shoving a XFX GeForce 6200 graphics card into our beloved lucite box.

Lee shares some great photos he snagged at the 2007 AirFest, held last month at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. And it may look like this month’s Cortland is having a severe case of schizophrenia, but trust us, it hits on several plot points of importance.

Miraz thinks Digital Photography Expert Techniques is pretty good, but badly missnamed, as it is about workflow after the fact of shooting photos, rather than during, the latter of which being what I would have thought from the title. Lee has a double-dose of reviews this month—I guess May turned out to be Lee Bennett theme month—looking at a pair of iPod accessories: the Dock Extender, which I am gear-lusting for; and the PocketDock Line Out USB.

Chris raves about the Elevator, Griffin’s replacement for the iCurve, which I used to use extensively. David uses Pando, which I’ve been following closely, but have not yet had a need to use. Ed closes this month’s issue out with a look at Yep, billed as “iPhoto for PDFs”. Personally, I store a lot of my PDFs in EagleFiler, but Yep certainly does look interesting.

As always, you can read this month’s ATPM online, as an offline webzine, a screen-optimized PDF, or a print-optimized PDF. We offer a variety of flavors for your consumption. Enjoy!

Professional, interesting and well-written and edited

No, the title doesn’t refer to this blog. (Though I’m trying.) It refers to the publication I’m proud to be a part of, About This Particular Macintosh, and comes from Claire Rottenberg’s Quality Mac Websites:

ATPM is a professional, interesting and well-written and edited magazine. It has a large variety of content, ranging from short news bits to in-depth articles and product reviews, so there is something for everyone in each month’s issue. Take a look at the latest issue and I’m sure you’ll find something worthwhile in it and, like me, will become a regular reader of ATPM.

Kudos to the great volunteers we have on staff at ATPM, and thank you, Claire, for the kind words.

ATPM 13.04

The April issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available.

Chris Dudar, the staff’s resident 3D artist, provides us with some great cover art this month. Good work, Chris!

Wes kicks things off by noting the response from a lot of the tech crowd to Windows Vista: yawn. Those that have given a flip have turned on those who don’t care for it, like Chris Pirillo, and prominent switchers think it’s time for Pirillo to get a Mac. This and more in Wes’s monthly blogosphere roundup. Mike notes that while it’s not all all roses all the time with Macs, it still beats the alternative.

Mark notes that there is scientific evidence that size does matter. For display size, you plebeians! Display size! Sheesh… Ed returns with another GTD column, focusing on the hunting/gathering aspects of information collection. Lee continues Photoshop for the Curious, this month exploring levels and curves. Miraz looks at the browser side of things when it comes to web accessibility.

Chris Lawson manages to tie together Billy Madison, blogging, reviews, and business ethics, all in one tidy package. Lee provides us with this month’s desktop pictures, shot in New England in 1997. In this month’s Cortland, our hero finds himself traveling to other dimensions, while persons from other dimensions travel to ours, and the Dark Lord I.T. is trying to travel to other dimensions, or our dimension, or…Heck, there’s just a lot of dimension-traveling going on this month!

Matthew picks apart the open-source sound editor, Audacity, while Lawson pores over an accessory many a business traveler will want to take a look at, the Keynamics Aviator Laptop Stand. Linus plays around with Dodge That Anvil!, and Lee is less than impressed with the new HomeDock Deluxe from DLO. Ed peruses Joe Kissell’s Take Control of Mac OS X Backups 2.0, a tome I heartily recommend. And the man that leads off the April issue closes it out for us, as Chris Dudar reviews the app that helped make this month’s cover art, Wings3D.

As always, ATPM is available in a wide range of choices for your reading pleasure.

The new shirt arrived today

ATPM 13.03

Oh, right. The March issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available. You’d think someone on the editorial staff would be more aware…

Angus decides to reward Microsoft’s recent marketing efforts regarding the Zune and Vista by purchasing a brand-new 17-inch MacBook Pro. Yeah, when I first read his column, I had problems with the logic there, too, but someone informed me it has something to do with this thing called “sarcasm”. In this month’s Bloggable, Wes tracks the biggest news making the circuit of the Mac blogosphere, Steve Jobs’ recent condemnation of DRM for music downloads.

Mark has a quick hit on publishing formats, notably the resistance coming against Microsoft’s Office Open XML, because the words “Microsoft” and “open” go so well together, don’t they? (I like this sarcasm thing. Must note to use it more.) Lee continues his fabulous series, Photoshop for the Curious, this month walking us through color calibration. I really could use one of those monitor calibration tools. Miraz has a great column on web accessibility this month, one I can really relate to, given how I am amongst the spectacled crowd. (We also learn Miraz’s age this month, and please note this was volunteered by the author; our mothers taught us well enough to know better than to ever ask that of a lady.)

This month’s desktop pictures are courtesy of ATPM reader Le Anne Brown, and feature the land of Tasmania (coincidentally, the home of ATPM’s own Tasmanian devil, former staffer Raena Armitage). Strange things are afoot for Cortland at the swing dance-hosting lodge, which appears to be more than meets the eye. Staffer Linus Ly doffs his editorial cap for that of an artisté, introducing the ATPM readership to Qaptain Qwerty.

You may notice a striking similarity between Qaptain Qwerty and the review of Art Text. As a member of the editorial team, allow me to reassure you, this is not accidental. Ed got his hands on a piece of tech that’s found its way on to my personal gear lust list, the SnapScan S500M, by Fujitsu.

I never thought I’d have the opportunity to write, “Ellyn lays the smack down with Smack Mahjong”, but you can’t pass up those opportunities when they present themselves. Finally, Lee reviews the intriguing TuneView from Keyspan: leave your iPod connected to your entertainment system, but have its screen in the palm of your hand with the TuneView remote. Sounds sweet.

As always, you can enjoy About This Particular Macintosh online, or in a manner more appropriate for your reading preference.

A signature problem

So I have this email signature. Actually, I have about three. One is the somewhat standard signature I use for all ATPM-related correspondence. The other two are personal sigs which vary only in the email address contained in the signature. One is for the address at this domain, and the other is my Gmail address.

I have set up these signatures with keystroke shortcuts in TypeIt4Me, which I encourage you to check out. Without going in to too much detail, these three signatures are shorthanded “asig”, “gsig”, and “rsig”, and this works very well. For the most part.

I seem to have this memory muscle problem with the last abbreviation. The other two I can rattle off with nary a conscious thought going from my brain to my fingers on the keyboard, but the last has proven to be rather elusive. Instead of typing “rsig” I find myself typing “risg” instead. I even did it in the previous sentence, and had to backspace and fix it.

The obvious and lazy solution is to create a new abbreviation in TypeIt4Me that automagically puts in the proper signature when I mistype the actual abbreviation, because there’s little chance “risg” will ever be a real word in the English language, but that still doesn’t help with why I’m mistyping it in the first place. Bizarre.

That didn’t take long

This post is coming to you from MarsEdit 1.1.3, the first release of my blogging app of choice since Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software acquired it from NewsGator. This update fixes my biggest druther with MarsEdit, where images flicker when you’re previewing your post. Thanks, Daniel!

Speaking of not taking long, Lee and I were chatting via IM last night while he watched the Oscars, and, of course, there was talk regarding the iPhone teaser commercial. I wondered jokingly how long it would be before some post showed up somewhere detailing all of the stars shown in the commercial. Lee provided the answer: two hours. And here I thought I didn’t have a life. I’m sure there’s now a post somewhere detailing each of the movies or shows featured in the commercial, but I’m too lazy to google it.

Jumping on the Bandwagon

Bandwagon, going live in two days, is an iTunes backup for Mac users. They’re offering free one-year subscriptions if you blog about them, and like Eric, I can be a cheap date.

Frenzic

Tired of Tetris™? No good at first-person shooter games? Want something quicker than world-building or war strategy games? Frenzic may be the answer you’re looking for.

A joint release from The Iconfactory and ARTIS Software, Frenzic is an addictive puzzle game that you can play solo or against others online.

Jobs and company should seriously be looking at getting this game on the upcoming iPhone.

Sorry, Windows users need not apply.

Update, 1:00 PM CST: If you decide to register Frenzic, feel free to add me as a friend.

“Shameless Mac OS X imitator”

Julio Ojeda-Zapata, for the St. Paul Pioneer Press:

I praise Microsoft’s new Windows Vista operating system, and I also curse it.

[…]

But after waiting five years — as in half a decade — for this thing, I think I should get something revolutionary, a PC operating system so astonishing it makes the competition look laughably primitive. The almighty Microsoft made this, right? So Vista—being released to consumers Tuesday—has to be jaw-droppingly superior, right?

Well, it’s not. Vista hardly rocked my world during weeks of testing. It’s a fine Windows upgrade, but it’s also a shameless rip-off (and not quite the equal) of another major operating system, Apple Computer’s Mac OS X.

That begs the question: Why not just use OS X?

Those upgrading from XP likely will have to get a new computer anyway because Vista doesn’t work properly on most older PCs. […] So, instead of purchasing a Windows PC, they could—and typically should—get an Apple Macintosh computer running OS X.

[Emphasis in the original. —R]

ATPM 13.02

The February issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.

Kudos to Lee for this month’s cover art. He ran the idea by me via IM one night, I thought it was great, and Michael gave it the final thumbs-up. Our thanks to Steven Frank for playing along. In case you missed the link, you can also get the cover art as a desktop picture this month.

Well, well, well, well, well. What’s that? Steve Jobs announced the iPhone at Macworld Expo last month? You don’t say. Why, I believe that means Wes has to eat his hat. And given how another ATPM staffer is resident in the city Wes currently calls home, I’m sure we can arrange a photo shoot of the happy event, because let’s face it Wes, tasting is not the same thing as eating. I’m sure we can find a nice Rachel Ray recipe wherein we substitute the meat of choice with the hat. Perhaps former ATPM staffer and amateur chef Tom Bridge can help us out in that regard.

While we hammer out all of those details, Wes does have the blogosphere’s coverage of Apple’s next paradigm-shifting product, as well as weigh-ins on MacHeist and MacZOT. iPhone fever has certainly set in amongst the ATPM staff, as Mike Chamberlain attests to in this month’s Mac About Town. He talks about some other stuff, too. I think. Did I mention the iPhone fever settling amongst the staff? Angus takes us on a safari of the Apple landscape, including, yes, the iPhone, but oh so much more as well.

We welcome Ed Eubanks to the staff as we present Next Actions, a column devoted to to using your Mac to get things done. Lee presents the third chapter in the ongoing saga of Photoshop for the Curious, with a look at the application’s menus and a tutorial on getting better grayscale (viz: “black and white”, even though that’s really a misnomer) photos from your color pics. Chris Dudar has a beginner’s guide to the UPS, and no, he’s not asking what brown can do for you.

Reader David Kettlewell was kind enough to share some photos from Sweden’s “Little Leaf Sea” for this month’s desktop pictures selection. Cortland has junior-high flashbacks after a night of swing dancing with Angie doesn’t go like he planned. Meanwhile, the chameleonesque Agent Smith arrives in town, palming a familiar-looking comm device…

Ellyn isn’t very smitten with Arctic Quest, but David is quite taken with MoRU. Our eastern seaboard surfer, Eric, tries out NetworkLocation, while Frank Wu beats me to a review of Booq’s Python XL System. Matthew wraps up this month’s reviews with a look at Eltima’s SWF Movie Player.

I remarked to Michael that this month’s issue was our most content-packed out of the past few months, and we still had four writers unable to submit this month! (Hey, we have real jobs outside of ATPM, you know?) We’re both very pleased, and our thanks go out to the staff for their efforts.

As usual, this issue is available in a variety of flavors for your reading pleasure.

FinderPop Universal has landed

Turly’s brought out a universal version of the venerable FinderPop, now a preference pane.

I found with earlier builds of the OS X version of FinderPop that I wasn’t using it nearly as much as I did under OS 9, due in large part to my use of Quicksilver. However, I can still find a use for FinderPop in my workflow, and I encourage you to give it a go and see if it has a place in your workflow, too.

Twittering just got easier with Tweet

Scott McNulty noted Tweet in his Twitter feed as well as on TUAW. I downloaded Ted Leung’s Growl-modified version of Coda Hale’s script. Coda has good installation and usage instructions in the original Tweet script, which you can use if you don’t care about Growl support.

Tweet combines the power of AppleScript with that of Quicksilver (you are using Quicksilver, aren’t you?) to make posting to your Twitter account easier and faster than ever. Sorry, Windows users, but all of this, except the Twitter service itself, is Mac-only.

Once again, we learn why they’re called analysts

So let me get this straight:

Apple sets new company records for revenue and profit, beats the Street’s estimates, and ships 28 percent more Macs and 50 percent more iPods than they did this time a year ago, but because a bunch of analysts don’t like future estimates, the stock price takes a dive?

No wonder monkeys do just as good a job at the stock market as analysts.

Tell me again why I should upgrade

Walt Mossberg reviews Windows Vista for the Wall Street Journal:

Nearly all of the major, visible new features in Vista are already available in Apple’s operating system, called Mac OS X, which came out in 2001 and received its last major upgrade in 2005. And Apple is about to leap ahead again with a new version of OS X, called Leopard, due this spring.

There are some big downsides to this new version of Windows. To get the full benefits of Vista, especially the new look and user interface, which is called Aero, you will need a hefty new computer, or a hefty one that you purchased fairly recently. The vast majority of existing Windows PCs won’t be able to use all of Vista’s features without major hardware upgrades. They will be able to run only a stripped-down version, and even then may run very slowly.

In fact, in my tests, some elements of Vista could be maddeningly slow even on new, well-configured computers.

Something tells me that the only Vista-running PC we’ll see in our home will either be my wife’s company-provided laptop, when their IT department decides the latest version of Windows is “safe” enough with which to conduct business, or if I decide to throw Vista on my Intel-powered iMac. The latter would, at most, be for web site testing, and pure kicks.

I’m pretty much done with Windows PCs at this point. The Mac does everything I want, does it better, does it more intuitively and elegantly, and the Mac is safer. Sure, you can argue this locks me in to a single company, Apple, but then Windows users are pretty much locked in to a single company, too, aren’t they? Oh, you can buy your PC from Dell, HP, Sony, Toshiba, or build it yourself, but you still have to go to Microsoft for the operating system.

(Linux zealots are not invited to this discussion, so pipe down already. Besides, most of you are fawning over Ubuntu nowadays, which still locks you in to a single distribution/company for that particular flavor of the OS. Or you like SUSE, or Debian, or Red Hat, for whatever your reasons may be. And most people don’t feel like hunting down drivers for their Sony notebook just so it can properly display all available resolutions or connect wirelessly to the Internet, things you still have to do with Linux variants.)

For the record, in his review, Mossberg does acknowledge that as far as Windows itself goes, Vista is the best version yet. Which isn’t surprising, since each version since the original has been successively better, with the exception of Windows ME (what a disaster that beast was).

When the desktop PC I built my wife two years ago outlives its usefulness, it will get replaced with either a hand-me-down iMac, or a Mac mini. It’s one thing to do Windows tech support for a living, but when it comes to home computing, that’s something I’d rather not have to worry about.

DiskWarrior 4 now shipping

I just received my shipment notification from Alsoft that DiskWarrior 4 is on its way.

ATPM 13.01

Welcome to 2007! The January issue issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available. With this issue, ATPM enters its thirteenth year of publication! I am very proud to be a part of this staff, and would like to thank all of the staffers for a great 2006. I’m looking forward to the next twelve mon