The new 3G iPhone is going to make its debut in 70 countries this year and 22 of them by July the 11th (Canada being one of them - yippee!).

So what’s different about the new 3G iPhone? It comes in Black and White (plastic backing), it sports a 2.5x faster 3G radio over its edge based predecessor, it now has a built in GPS and it costs about half the price of the existing iPhone.

It’s all good news but I really want to point out the part that makes the most sense here… it’s being launched in 70 countries! Who really cares what the iPhone does if you can’t get one! Getting the price down will also make this little Apple gem not only a must have but a can have device. Apple is playing their cards very well here, by getting an iPhone into the hands of as many people as possible. Apple is effectively cramming Mac OS X and all it’s sexiness down the throats of of millions and millions of previous non-Mac users. Combine this with Apple’s new “me.com” dot-mac replacement and all of it’s push services and web based iApplications and it’s going to be really hard for the PC iPhone user to go back to that Windows based PC everyday. No matter what you thought about Apple, when an iPhone is staring you in the face day after day with all of its glory you are going to cave in at some time and take that first baby step into an Apple store even if it’s only the online one.

There was a lot more discussed at the (WWDC) today, Apple spent a lot of time talking about the new iPhone 2.0 software as well as the Software Development Kit (SDK) for developing Apple iPhone supported application. This only supports what Apple is doing by getting as many iPhones out their as possible and making sure the software is as good as it can be.

It kind of reminds me of what Apple did with the iPod, they turned the Walkman concept into something new that everyone wanted even though at the end of the day they both played your music. Could this be the future of the iPhone? Will the iPhone be the new iCon of the smart phone?

I use Leopard’s built in Networking features a fair bit around my home and I really like the way OS X Leopard shows a very accurate preview iCon of all the connected Macs available on your network. The best way I can explain this is by showing you the actual images you would see in the “Get Info - Preview” area.

So here is a sample of all the Leopard network iCons I have at home and a few on some of the networks I visit:

Airport Extreme - AirDisk

iBook G4

MacBook

MacBook Pro

iMac G5

Power Mac G5

And now for the PC…

PC Blue Screen

No word of a lie, I was over at a friends and when I went to connect to his network I noticed the iCon for his PC looked a little different, when I got info and previewed the image I just about fell out of my seat!! Looks like some of the folks over at Apple snuck a Windows Blue Screen Network iCon in for good measure! Good for them…

 (UPDATE -  they’re done and they are live, you can get them here)

I wanted to give you a bit of a teaser preview of some Video Tutorials I’m working on, they’re part of a series I’m calling “Quick Start Your Mac”. There will be a total of approximately 40 or so short and informative videos shot using screen capture at a very crisp 1024 x 768 resolution so they look like I am sitting right there in person demoing them on “your” Mac.

Here is a preliminary list of what the end content should look like:

Navigation

• Finder Views
• Cover Flow & Quick Look
• Apple Menu
• Menu Bar
• Dock
• Red-Yellow-Green
• Opening Files or Applications
• Expose
• Stacks
• Spotlight
• The Trash
• Inserting & Ejecting Media
• Key Commands
• Quitting Applications
• Managing Open Applications

System & Settings

• System Preferences
• Power Management
• System Info
• Installing Applications
• Deleting Applications
• Setting up a Printer
• Change Desktop Images
• Sharing your Mac
• Right Mouse Click
• Changing File Names
• Time Machine

Extras

• File Management
• Contextual Menus & Items
• Force Quiting
• Save as PDF
• Zoom
• Target Disk Mode
• Recent Items
• Word Processing Options
• Web Browser Options
• Media Player Options
• Widgets
• Help menu
• Software Updates
• Windows on a Mac

I have not worked out the cost as of yet for the series but I do plan on making them available as an affordable download.

So take a look at a few samples and let me know what you think…

(Depending on your Internet connection the movies may take several minutes to load and play)

We knew it was coming, just had to wait and now the Leopard 10.5.2 update here.

You can download the “Combined Updater“  for Intel and PPC Macs hence the larger size (353MB) or simply run your Mac Software update to download the Intel or PPC specific files. After the install a fairly large Graphics update will be waiting for you so run Software Update again to grab it.

The Leopard 10.5.2 update has lots of improvements so make sure to get this one ASAP, if you want more info on exactly what is included in the Leopard 10.5.2 Update checkout “Apple’s “About the Mac OS X 10.5.2 Update” page.

Accounting Programs

• Quicken
• Quickbooks
• Jumsoft
• myob-us

Add-ons

• AB Menu - AddresseBook Menu Addition - Linked at MacUpdate
• Google Stuff For Mac
  
• iPhoto Buddy

Audio

• Audio Hijack - Audio Stream/Recorder
• SoundSource - Switch Audio Input/Output On The Fly

Audio Books

• Audio Book Builder

Read the rest of this entry »

Turning the Dock 2D

There are people out there who don’t like the new 3D Dock in Leopard. Well if you are one of them, here is a quick and easy terminal command to make it 2D. In Applications > Utilities > Terminal, type:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES

killall Dock

This will turn the Dock 2D. If you want to put it back to normal just type:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean NO

killall Dock Read the rest of this entry »

Some Tips and Ticks Leopard style, thanks to Wraith2021 from our S2M Forum.

Spaces

Application Binding In Spaces

To set up application binding, launch ‘System Preferences’ and select the “Exposé & Spaces” pane under the “Personal” heading. Switch over to the “Spaces” pane, and press the little plus button below the “Application Assignments” box. In the pop up, choose an application and select “Add.” Under the “Space” column, select which space the application is to be assigned to. Now, whenever you attempt to launch a bound application, OS X will immediately shift to the assigned space and launch it there.

Application Binding to All Spaces

Launch ‘System Preferences’ and select the “Exposé & Spaces” pane under the “Personal” heading. Switch over to the “Spaces” pane, and press the little plus button below the “Application Assignments” box. In the pop up, choose an application and select “Add.” Under the “Space” column, select “Every Space”. Now, whenever you switch spaces the application will follow you to every space you move to.

Moving Windows Between Spaces

If you want to move a window or application between spaces you can do this a number of ways. If you want to stay focused on a single window or application just drag it to the top, bottom, left or right of the screen while keeping hold of it with your mouse, this will switch to the corresponding space without having to let go. Read the rest of this entry »

Is it a coincidence that the MacBook Air, Time Capsule and the Apple TV 2 software update all come out in about two weeks time? I have a theory about this. There are definitely some overlapping technologies going on and in order to pull it all off I believe leopard is going to need that 10.5 2 update that we have all been hearing about to pull it all off…

The MacBook Air doesn’t have an Optical drive so it requires you purchase an External USB SuperDrive or you share another computer’s optical drive on your network. Strangely enough this feature would sure come in handy with an Apple TV since it also doesn’t have an internal optical drive, maybe this handy little Apple external USB SuperDrive could also be used with an Apple TV 2? Maybe an Apple TV 2 will allow you both options?

And then there’s Time Capsule! What gives here? What is so different about a drive being internal or externally connected to an AirPort Extreme’s USB port? I know people are talking about network drop outs and how they can affect transfers in mid process potentially corrupting or erasing data, but this is Apple we’re talking about, I’m sure they have this all figured out??

Basically what I’m saying is I think Apple has a few more ticks up their sleeve and it makes a lot of sense that the Leopard OS X 10.5.2 update will also play a big role in all of this. Stay tuned…

For those who are regulars on the Switching to Mac Forum, you already know that I have been putting off Switching my main Mac to Leopard. The reason being - it’s my main work machine, combined with starting my S2M Computer Consulting business and needing as few distractions as possible, some compatibility issues with my productivity software and syncing programs and the potential for some other Leopard bugs to get in the way of me actually getting stuff done.

I have installed Leopard on several machines, two other Macs in my home (iBook G4 & MacBook) but both of these machines where not mission critical being they belong to my Wife and Mother-in-law. I also installed Leopard on a few Customer machines. In most cases I simply used the Upgrade option but all the Macs in these situations had very basic software configuration unlike my main work Mac.

I really needed to get Leopard on my MacBook Pro, there simply is no better way to get to know an OS other than using it day to day. Kind of like when you get married, All that really good stuff from when you where dating is still good but now you get to see a bit more of the darker side… Read the rest of this entry »

Here are some interesting comments found in an Article on The Tech Talk Blog about Mac vs PC or should I say Vista vs OS X system bloat and how this affects Ram usage and Boot times.