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First review underway

Well, I can now reveal the company who’s software & possibly hardware I’ll be reviewing for the site: it’s Equinux !

They have a range of useful Mac software and they also produce a USB TV dongle & associated software. They also have iPhone apps too, so this should give a good range of stuff for me to pick some ‘Switcher Oriented’ ones from.

Wasn’t sure what to choose for the first review, then life provided a solution (as it often does) in the form of some items I needed to put on ebay.

I know it’s not completely a Switcher oreintated subject, but I wanted to get a feel for Equinux’s products and also waned to give the first review software a good work out - so what better way to do that than use it to put some items on good old ebay! (and I’m sure a lot of Switchers will have ebay accounts too!)

In case you still don’t know, the software I’ll be reviewing first is iSale, the Auction software from Equinux. As luck would have it, Equinux also have a companion iPhone App for iSale, giving you the functionality to compile auctions on the iPhone and transfer them over to the App on your Mac for finalising & posting on ebay.

So, there’s your taster - I’ll be using the Apps over the next few days to post some items on ebay, and will report back on my findings. Should be interesting, seeing as it’s a ‘Real World’ test !

Wiz.

Posted in Apps / Software, Iphone, Reviews, software. Tagged with , , , , , , , .

By Rob
June 3, 2009

No comments

Reviews it is then!

Well, looks like a unanimous result in favour of reviews then! (going by the comments, anyhow)

I’ll be contacting the company who have offered to supply review copies/items to me and I’ll post more details of what I’ll be reviewing here once that’s finalised.

Rest assured it WILL be Switcher oriented though, I’m not straying from that part if the site too much :0)

Changes are afoot though, sobif you have any suggestions for information you’d like to see here - to help you out if you’re switching, or maybe someone you know who is thinking of switching - then drop me a line: rob@switchmac.com or leave a comment on this post.

Don’t know about you lot, but I’m pretty excited!

Wiz

(p.s. posted this from my iPhone using the WordPress iPhone App, let’s you post, edit & approve comments wherever you are - and it’s free! v. useful if you have a word press blog)

Even let’s you take a picture and add it to the post from the iPhone! Or choose one from the pictures already taken…

Posted in Apps / Software, Hardware, Iphone, switching. Tagged with , , , , , .

By Rob
May 20, 2009

2 comments

Hardware & Software reviews…?

I have been talking to a company who have asked if I would like to review some of their hardware & software for the Mac - and I was quite flattered to be asked.

But seeing as Switchmac.com is for the benefit of YOU lot (not an Ego-massaging excercise for me) I thought I’d ask you for YOUR thoughts on the matter?

Would you like to see more Hardware & Software reviews as opposed to just my opinions and personal recommendations? 

Feel free to leave a comment, and tell me your views - whatever your thoughts - I don’t censor the comments on the blog (unless they are inappropriate, rude, or of a racial nature)

Look forward to hearing your thoughts…

Wiz

Posted in Apps / Software, Hardware, software. Tagged with , , , , , .

By Rob
May 16, 2009

5 comments

Before you switch - 5 things to help you determine if Switching is for you

Yes. I know. There are way more than 5 things to take in to consideration, but it wouldn’t have made you come and read it if I’d have called it ‘327 things to consider….’ would it?

Apple have a section aimed at Switchers too...

Apple have a section aimed at Switchers too...

 

So, seeing as ‘Lists’ seem to be the big thing at the moment, I thought if you can’t beat ‘em - join ‘em!

1. what do I use my computer for now?

2. do I want to tinker or use it?

3. is there a Windows Program I cannot live without?

4. is there a ‘crucial device’ I need to sync

5. will my existing devices work seamlessly?

Lets take them one at a time:

1. what do I use my computer for now?

Seems an obvious one, but it’s worth sitting down and listing out what you actually ‘do’ on your computer. I had quite a long list, seeing as I run a web design company, but your needs may be a lot simpler - or just as complex! Either way, it’s a great way of working out if it really IS worth taking the plunge.

Yep, you read that right - I’m not saying switching to Mac is for everyone. Some people could benefit by switching to something like Linux - lets take an example:

If all you use your computer for is email, surfing & writing the odd letter, then a switch to Linux would be relatively simple to achieve, as programs are freely available to do all those things, and if you have an older machine, you may see some performance increases too! (I’m not a Linux Expert, and if I’m talking rubbish here, feel free to put me right in the comments :0)

However, if you do all the above, and have an interest in taking & editing pictures or video footage and / or making music, then I wouldn’t hesitate recommending a Mac to you.

2. do I want to tinker or use it?

Might sound like an odd one, but some people love to upgrade their systems, and modify their cases etc - if this is you, again, I wouldn’t recommend a Mac straight off - there IS a large community based around modding Macs, but it tends to be older models in general, so maybe not the best place to start (and before you say, I know that a lot of people mod Mac Minis, and put them in all sorts of odd enclosures, but they ARE the exception to the rule, being so small)

Modern Intel Macs are getting easier to upgrade in terms of Hard Discs and RAM (well, RAM certainly) and the new MacBooks are a great example of this. But on the whole, I’d say this: 

If you want to spend time modifying & streamlining your hardware & software (& killing viruses & Spyware) then a PC is fine - if you want to spend time USING your computer - you need a Mac.

3. is there a Windows Program I cannot live without?

This might seem like the deal-breaker, if you rely on a Windows Program daily or very frequently, it might make you think twice about switching.

The good news is you needn’t think that! There are lots of programs (usually called Applications or Apps) available for the Mac, and I would bet there is a developer somewhere who has produced a solution to your problems. (even quite specific ones: I needed to sync an HP iPaq PDA to Mac & then transfer the info off when I got my iPhone, and I found Apps for both needs :0)

Even if you can’t find anything (say you have a REALLY niche program, that the Windows Dev’s are not going to port to the Mac anytime soon) there is still a solution. You can run a Windows operating System on your Mac - or another OS, such a s Linux too - so you needn’t lose the ability to run that program. I won;t go in to the details here, that will be for a future post, or the ‘Start Here’ section I’ll be getting under way soon.

4. is there a ‘crucial device’ I need to sync

Again, you may think this one would be a stumbling block, but as I’ve mentioned, there are lots of Dev’s out there solving your problems for you - go Google your device & Apple Mac Sync, you’ll be surprised at the amount of solutions :0) - if the answer is ‘No, nothing available’ then again, time to take a step back and consider if you will be due to upgrade your phone / PDA anytime soon, I found myself in that position just as the 3G iPhone came out, so it wasn’t much of a decision for me!

5. will my existing devices work seamlessly?

I’d be very surprised if they didn’t! Most modern devices will come with Mac drivers (if required) and the Mac OS X Leopard has support for a huge number of devices built in - here’s another example from my experience:

I have an old Brother Mono Laser Printer which has served me well for years, and when I moved to Mac, I was a little concerned, as it only has a Parallel Port - No USB ! Well, I tracked down a Parallel to USB cable and connected it up. Went to the Add a Printer section of the System Preferences, and chose the closest model in the list for Brother Mono Lasers (they didn’t have the exact one listed) and saved the settings - and it worked seamlessly. I can tell you I was pretty impressed. The same thing on Windows would have taken a few visits to Google & several Driver sites too I daresay.

Same goes for things like Cameras, Video Cameras, External Hard Drives, Scanners… the list goes on.

I will say, if you are thinking of switching to Mac, it’s always worth checking compatibility with things like Video Cameras - some of the older models will have a slightly more complex method of transferring footage across, but most will still work, USB or FireWire! (Apple have a list for compatibility  that you can use to check for iMovie ‘08 - iMovie ‘09 has it’s own section, link on the page)

So there you go, some food for thought if you are considering Switching to Mac, and if after doing all the above you’re convinced, we’d love to welcome you aboard!

Wiz

Posted in Learning, switching. Tagged with , , , , .

By Rob
April 2, 2009

2 comments

Typographic Detective Work

Have you ever been asked to reproduce something either on paper or on a web site that has included a Font you don’t have on your machine, or don’t recognise?

I did the other day, and it nearly had me beat - I was ready to tell my client that I had re-done his Logo as I couldn’t find the Font on my old Windows machine… until I heard about the online service ‘What the Font’ over at MyFonts and it’s companion iPhone App.

I used the Online service for this particular find, and found it very easy to use and it found the font for me first go - it actually suggested about 10 fonts that could have been the one I was looking for, but it found the one I wanted, so I didn’t mind!

Then I noticed that they have an iPhone App too! so I had to download it to try it out, didn’t I  :0)

 

The App is Free, and although not quite as accurate as the web based version (in my limited tests - YMMV) was still a good way to determine a font from, say, a magazine title or poster.

It does struggle with small fonts though, and ones where there are joined up characters or the characters are very close to each other, but hey, it’s a free App, so I’m not holding that against it.

I realise this is a bit of a specific kind of application, and not much use if you don’t work with Fonts on a regular basis, but SwitchMac.com IS the chronical of my day-to-day experiences with the switch to Mac, and I DO use fonts on a daily basis! :0)

Hopefully it’ll be useful to anyone needing to find out what that cool font is on a sign or shop front - presuming your a Typeface Geek like me, of course!

Random Font-y Fact: The font for the lettering on the Space Shuttle is Helvetica ! 

Have an App that’s proved indispensable to you when you switched? Why not share it with us all on SwitchMac.com - just drop me a line : rob@SwitchMac.com and I’ll post it up on the site.

Or maybe you’re just on the edge of switching, and want to ask a couple of questions? Don’t be shy - send them in, either via email or a recorded sound snippet - I can deal with both on the site - and we’ll get the SwitchMac.com readers in on the act (presuming I haven’t answered the same questions myself as I’ve made the switch, obviously!

If you’ve just switched - welcome! and if you’re still thinking about it, go for it - once you go Mac, you Never go back  :0)

Wiz

Posted in Apps / Software, Iphone, switching. Tagged with , , , , , , .

By Rob
March 7, 2009

2 comments

Pixen 3: going Ninja on an Animated Gif

Had the need to change the background colour on an animated Gif file this week - and yes, I know they aren’t flavour of the year right now, but I have a client who loves his Gif (no names - no packdrill) and with the move to a cleaner, CSS based site happening, it looked like curtains for the old Gif.

I was just on the verge of digging around in the Loft for an old Paint Shop Pro disc with JASC Animation Studio on it (they have dropped the program now, so it’s no longer available) and loading it up on to one of the Windows Virtual Machines I have on the iMac, when I realised I hadn’t even tried to see if there was a native Mac App to accomplish the same thing! Shame on me!

So a bit of a ‘Google’ later, I had turned up a program called Pixen 3 by the Open Sword Group - it’s tag line is “pushing Pixels to the Limit” and from a cursory read through the quite impressively long spec, it seemed it would do the job for me.

It’s a free download, and then ‘Donation-ware’ i.e. if you use it, slip the Dev some $$’s - so you get a chance to see if it fits the bill for you before you part with any cash - nice!

After a little trial and error, I had imported the Animated Gif file in as a series of images or Frames and could now work on each one individually. As Pixen 3 is a pixel editor, there are no ‘brushes’ as you would be used to with other image editing tools, but thankfully for my requirements, there is a ‘Fill’ tool, and that worked fine for changing the colour of the backgrounds on my Frames.

It was then a simple matter of reversing the import procedure, and exporting the Frames as an animated Gif, and I had the new Gif with the right coloured background to drop on to my clients new site.

Now I’ve barely scratched the surface of what Pixen 3 is capable of, but yet again, those Mac Devs have come through for me in my search for a Mac App to replace a Windows Program.

Have any Mac Apps you’ve used to replace a Windows Program when you Switched? we’d love to hear about it.

Wiz

Posted in Apps / Software, switching. Tagged with , , , , , , .

By Rob
February 23, 2009

No comments

OS X 10.5.6, Time Machine and insufficient permissions

Came across an annoying little problem today, so decided I’d share it with you along with a solution I found.

It seems that the OS X 10.5.6 update has an adverse effect on Time Machine when used with an external drive. I haven’t seen this problem on my MacBook Pro, which uses a wireless connection to my Time Capsule, just the iMac with it’s USB 2 external Drive for it’s Time Machine back-ups.

I had recently moved my iMac downstairs (my Home Office is in an unused Bedroom) as I needed to be available to help out with my 16 month old Daughter as my wife had been ill.

Upon moving it back up to the Office & plugging it all in again, I noticed that the last TM back-up had been just before I moved it down stairs - and it had not backed up while being in it’s temporary location. Upon pluggingg in the external USB Drive, and opening Time Machine preferences, I tried to select the external drive to contineue the back-ups, but was instead greeted with the “You do not have appropriate access privileges to save…” dialogue box as shown below (your file name will vary, so I’ve added some ‘X’s - you need to make a note of YOUR filename for the fix later)…

I tried following the instructions to change the access privileges as shown on the dialogue box, but ‘get info’ said I was able to read & write the external drive !

After some head scratching & a re-boot of the iMac (just in case!) I thought I might try to repair Disk Permissions on the external drive - this has been sucessful on the main drive of the iMac in solving a few curious issues after upgrades in the past.

Upon opening Disk Utility (found in the Utilities Folder in Applications, or via Spotlight) I notice the ‘repair permissions’ & ‘verify permissions’ options were grayed out for the external drive ! no joy there then.

After a fairly intense Google session, I turned up a couple of solutions involving the Terminal, but as I’m still happy to class myself as a Newb where the Terminal is concerned (sorry Bart, I’m trying - Honest!) I was still a bit releuctant to dive in ‘unsupported’.

Then I turned up a blog post by  James Foster, who’d had the same problem in December of 2008 - and he had since added some ‘plain English’ instructions to accomplish the task.

Here’s a link to James’ Blog Post, and I’ll reproduce the ‘longhand’ instructions here too:

1. Click on the magnifying glass in the top right (Spotlight) of the menu bar.
2. In the text entry field type “Terminal” (in all these steps, type what is in the quotes, but not the quote characters themselves) and press Return.
3. In the new window that opens, type “cd /Volumes” and press Return [note the space in the command].
4. Type “ls -al” [the "l" is a lowercase "L"], press Return, and note the name of your backup volume.
5. Type “cd ” (no Return yet), type the first few letters of your backup volume name, and press the Tab key, then press Return.
6. Type “ls -alF” and press Return and note the file with a name that matches the error message.
7. Type “sudo rm ” (no Return yet), type the first few letters of the file name that is reported in the error and press Tab to get the full name on the command line, and then press Return. (Alternatively, you can change ownership as described in my comment #3.)
8. When asked for your password, enter it and press Return.
9. Type “ls -alF” and press Return and note that the file is gone.
10. Type “exit” and press Return to close Terminal (then use the menu to Quit).
11. Retry the Time Machine configuration.

(if James would like me to remove these, and just link people straight to his blog, I would be happy to oblige - I have a comment in checking permission for this as I type)

There are a couple of less detailed versions within the comments on James’ Post, so whatever your level of expertise in the Terminal, you’re sure to find a version to enable you to rectify the problem. I was particularly drawn to the version I have quoted, as it would make it easy for even a fairly recent switcher to solve this problem should it arise for them (maybe upon upgrading to the latest version of Leopard from Tiger on a second hand machine perhaps?)

Hope this has proved helpful to you if you found yourself in the same position as myself & James, and thanks to James for the helpful post & revisions in the comments.

Wiz

Posted in Apps / Software, Hardware, Problems, Tutorials. Tagged with , , , , , , .

By Rob
February 17, 2009

No comments

Stitched up like a Kipper…

Well, last week was pretty eventful, lots of Family stuff happening, a busy time with my web site design business & on top of all of that I was bamboozled in to recording a “Live’ interview for the Nosillacast Podcast (A technology Podcast with an ever so slight Macintosh bias).

I made the mistake of saying Hi to Allison a couple of hours before she records her ‘Live Show’ on Ustream.tv - if you’ve never heard of it / been along, it’s highly recommended, I try and make it when I can, but it doesn’t start until 1AM GMT, and it’s on a Sunday!

So, I’m chatting to Allison, and I remember that I had promised to record a ’summary’ of how I started SwitchMac.com for her to include on the show. Allison said that would be great, and we were discussing the timing of it, so it would fit in ok, when she had ‘The Idea’…

‘We should do it as an Interview’ she said, ‘it would come across great!’

I agreed, thinking we could schedule it for that coming week - and Allison says ‘or we could record it now… if you’re not busy?’ well, I was a bit taken aback - here was one of the Podcasters I had been listening too since I switched 12 months ago inviting me to do a ‘Live’ interview for her show!

Well, I could have turned in to a plate of Jelly - and it did cross my mind - but I thought ‘why not’ so we got our Skype gear sorted (mostly my end - sorry Allison!) as I don’t keep it all plugged in, and ‘3-2-1′ we’re off!

You can hear the results in The NosillaCast Episode #190, and listening back, I don’t think I sounded too nervous! It was a genuine pleasure to be a part of Allisons Show (only kidding with the ‘Bamboozling, Allison!), after all, she was one of the people who inspired me to start jotting down my every day experiences while Switching which then became SwitchMac.com.

I’ve been asked to appear on the Mac20Q (Mac 20 Questions) Podcast by David Allen too, a new Podcast where David asks a broad sample of Mac users 20 Questions about their Mac & how they use it and well worth a listen! (was that OK David? ;0)

It’s so nice to be able to ‘put a bit back’ in to the Mac Community, after getting so much when I was a Newb (correct spelling - see Allisons Podcast for confirmation!) it only seemed fair to try and help some Switchers in return.

And if that includes you, you’re welcome!  :0)

Wiz

Posted in Blogging, Podcasting, switching. Tagged with , , , , , .

By Rob
February 15, 2009

3 comments

Screencasts Online

I’ve mentioned ScreenCasts Online quite a few times here on Switchmac.com, I’m an ‘Extra!” member, and it’s been worth every penny. 

I decided to take up Don’s offer of an Affiliate Link - it’s a great way to help Yourself, help Don continue to create his excellent ScreenCasts & help Switchmac.com too! everybody wins :0)

If you’ve just switched to Mac, Don’s ScreenCasts are Legendary!  There’s stacks of ScreenCasts to cover most of the Applications I use & reccommend for Switchers, and loads of more advanced ones for when you’ve started to get your head around the Mac way of doing things - and I’ll be going back through the Switchmac.com Archives and adding some links to appropriate ScreenCasts when I have a few minutes.

Flick that Switch!

Flick that Switch!

In the mean time, just click the link on the right hand side of the Blog, and you can search all the ScreenCasts on Don’s site, and if you decide to sign up, you can feel ‘warm & fuzzy’ inside knowing you’ve helped your favourite Switching Site too!

 

Go on… Flick that Switch - You know it makes sense!

 

Wiz

Posted in Apps / Software, Learning, Tutorials. Tagged with , , , , , .

By Rob
February 5, 2009

No comments

Leading us up the (garden) path…

Ever wanted to be able to copy the file Path of a file or Folder to the Clipboard in OS X?

www.galaticstrings.com

www.galaticstrings.com

Well, a blogging Friend of mine from the ‘Other Side of the World’ (Jane Griffiths) has the answer! I won’t repeat the post in it’s entirety here, but will provide a link to her blog so you can read it at your Leisure.

 Jane also asked if I’d mind SwitchMac.com being added to her ‘blogroll’ - always make me smile, does that one! - of course, I most certainly didn’t mind! 

Especially when I visited Jane’s blog to see SwitchMac.com ‘up in lights’ as it were… I’m in some Illustrious company (’we’re not worthy’ etc etc…) A big thank you to Jane, for not only solving an intriguing problem, but giving my efforts here some recognition on her blog - Thank You Jane  :0)

Wiz

Posted in Blogging, switching. Tagged with , , , .

By Rob
January 27, 2009

No comments