Matthew Reilly, Leopard and our new Mac Mini

Last Friday we were at Macquarie Centre for 2 reasons. One was to get our new Mac Mini (10% off at JB HiFi!) which will become our new media centre (more on that in a later post). The 2nd reason was to go to Borders to meet Matthew Reilly and get a signed copy of his new book Six Sacred Stones :)

Also last Friday at 6pm Apple released Mac OS X 10.5, though it is probably better known by its code name, Leopard, which Apple is also using in its marketing. I didn't get a copy on Friday (despite NextByte and JB HiFi being open after 6pm) as I qualify for a $13 upgrade with the Mac Mini purchase.

It has been interesting reading the reports on Leopard (mainly since I am seeing what people's overall experiences are). I generally try to ignore the more sensationalist stuff and instead read sites whose authors know their stuff and give praise or criticism when its due (such as John Gruberor the always excellent Mac OS X reports by John Siracusa's reports).

However, I am really disappointed in the Sydney Morning Herald's incredibly poor and badly researched report "Spotty Leopard makes Mac users catty". The report implies that Apple's latest operating system is flawed and Apple have been deluged with support requests. This is simply not the case and the fault of this error lies equally with a 3rd party hack by Unsanity and Logitech. Unsanity provide "extra" functionality to the Mac by installing stuff in into the parts of the OS that Apple say not to. Generally users who install this stuff keep the hacks up to date, but what is worse, Logitech have installed this as a part of a mouse "driver".

The lesson here is when installing a new OS (whether Mac, Windows or Linux) it is best to start from scratch. Leopard (and Tiger before it) provide an option to "Archive and Install". This copies your old system files (including all the 3rd party stuff into a separate folder) and installs a fresh copy of Leopard, it also can (set by default) copies across all your user and network settings.

Back to the SMH. I have noticed of late there has been an anti-Apple bias in the reporting there (or at the very least they just copy their news from blogs). With a small amount of research (like I did above) the article could have been balanced and less sensationalist and instead provide a bit of guidance to users. At the very least once new information became available the article could have been updated to indicate it was a problem with the Unsanity hack and that users were at risk if they had installed Logitech stuff. Newspapers have a responsibility to report critically and fairly, many people read this stuff and just believe it (I had a few discussions on this at work today trying to dispel the fallacies in this article. So Asher Dunn you are now on notice.

And, yes, I will be doing an Archive and Install on our iMac

UPDATE: Apple have sold over 2 million copies of Leopard. It took Tiger (10.4) a month to sell that many!

Leopard release date announced and price drop for iTunes DRM free tracks

Apple has announced that MacOS X 10.5 (or Leopard) will be available on October 26th and is now available for presale ($158 or $145 for Education). If you bought a new Mac this month then you can get it for $12.95. They have also added a webpage with a categorized list of new 316 new features. However, if you don't want to go through the whole list then Appleinsider has a good summary.

Also Apple (most likely in response to Amazon's MP3 store) have reduced prices of their iTunes Store DRM free tracks to $1.69. However, there is no indication currently if there is a price change for upgrading existing tracks to DRM free. Also, they have also added a number of independent labels. Good stuff :)

Get This cancelled - TripleM you buggers!!!

Just heard today that one of my favourite radio shows (which I grab via podcast) is being cancelled. Triple M have cancelled Get This (see SMH link). Despite several time slot moves they were rating well, not sure I understand the logic of this one!!

Sign this petition to try and reverse this.

Amazon launches MP3 store

This week Amazon have launched the Amazon MP3 Store. What makes this interesting is that the nearly 2 million tracks available do not contain DRM. This is another nail in the coffin for DRM after EMIs announcement in April (see my previous post on DRM removal).

This is the first store to seriously challenge Apple's iTunes Store and the tracks are cheaper than the regular iTunes tracks (let alone the DRM free iTunes Plus ones which cost 30% more). However, only 2 of the 4 major labels are available (EMI and Universal). Also "officially" the store is only available for US residents, however, they don't check the country for your credit card's billing address just your home address. Though I reckon this won't last long...

My Money Minder 1.9.7 released

I have released another bugfix version of My Money Minder (which I hope again will be last bugfix before v2!!). This release also includes a revised help system which is modelled on the current style in Apple's apps and is also searchable. For the full details and download links go to the My Money Minder pages .

Canon 40D, Holden Utes and Google Maps

Well it has been a couple of months since I started this blog and the regularity of posts has faltered somewhat! However whilst there have been things I have wanted to blog about I have had writers block. Oh and the fact that about a month ago I discovered Facebook...

I do have a few ideas for blog posts (damn writers block, well that's my excuse and I am sticking with it!). We will see :)

Anyway this week I don't have writers block and there are things I want to write about! Firstly I have been thinking for some time of updating my Canon SLR to digital. Until this week it was an easy answer as I would get the 400D which I have found for under $1000 at Photo Buff. This week Canon announced the next model up, to 40D which is tempting but probably outside my price range.

I am bummed that this week's Top Gear was the last one on SBS until summer. But to keep the inner car buff happy Holden has obliged and released details on the VE based ute (which we have waited nearly 12 months for). Tempting as it looks great!! But practically I will still keep my new Golf turbo diesel. It was only this time last year I sold my VR Commodore for it even though was very very very tempted by the new VE SV6. Hmmm, if they had a diesel version...

This week Google has announced two new items. Google Sky is an addition to the Google Earth app where you can reverse things and look at the night sky. In fact many of the southern sky images were taken at the UK Schmidt telescope in Sidings Springs near Coonabarabran in NSW. Also you can now embed your Google Maps into your own websites, which reminds me that I need to sort out our Cairns photos! Here is the map from our NZ trip.


View Larger Map

Transformers

I was excited about going to watch the new live action Transformers movie as I remember watching the tv show as a kid (and the cartoon movie) as well as having the toys (Bumblebee and Jazz are the two I remember). However, I was a bit worried as I found out the director was Michael Bay who had directed the woeful Pearl Harbour, but only a bit as he had also done the fun Armageddon, The Rock and Bad Boys.

Well overall this movie was not only fun, but was everything a blockbuster should be and was exciting too! Now I am disappointed that Bumblebee was not a VW Beetle as he was in the toys and tv show. However, this was not too bad as instead he was a very cool 5th gen Camaro.

In fact this was probably the best movie we have seen recently so just go an see it :)

Oh and not to detract from the movie, but there is some dumb Hollywood science in it. Have a look at (spoiler warning) the Bad Astronomy review.

Ben: 4 stars, Ruby 5 stars