Review Roundup: Apple Edition

So after a long hiatus (I recently moved, among other things), I'm back with a few reviews.

First up is the iPod touch. I won an 8 GB touch through work, and I love it. While I wouldn't mind more storage, this thing is far and beyond an MP3 player. In fact, I would put it somewhere between an iPod and a PDA (though not below either). Aside from the cool multi-touch interface that's been written about a million times, the screen is gorgeous and it has a bevy of PDA functions. With Address Book and iCal syncing, I have full access to all my contacts and the ability to work with my schedule on the fly. The calculator has become indispensable for my work, and I'm really looking forward to it's upgrade in the 2.0 firmware. The keyboard takes a little getting used to, but it auto-corrects better than I expected (even puts the apostrophe in contractions for you), so it's actually very fast. The sound is on par for an iPod (duh), and the video experience is wonderful. I picked up a dock and composite cables for my 52 inch (non-HD) TV and it's great to watch my movies through it. That big, you would expect to see degradation of the video quality, but since I'm not HD yet, it looks fine. I also picked up the Apple iPod In-Ear Headphones as my $60 Sony buds had distortion on the bass-end. They were a solid investment at $40, and very comfortable to boot. So what's missing? I would have liked to see Bluetooth ,even if only A2DP, as there are now lower-end MP3 players out there with it (Best Buy's Insignia line, for example). Built-in speakers would be wonderful too; there are plenty of MP3 players and PDAs with speakers. I also would have liked to seen a camera; again, there are PDAs out there with it. There are valid reasons for those omissions, most notably that those are draws to the iPhone. And most people would never use those things on an iPod anyway. But it's a great device that has certainly made my life simpler, if not easier.

Next is Apple's aluminum keyboard. Now, I went with the wired version because I can't stand not having a 10-key setup to work with numerically. I thought that I would have to get used to it's low profile (the thing is barely thicker than my iPod touch), but I had no "learning curve" at all. The tactile feedback is perfect; the keys click perfectly with not too much or too little pressure. It has built in keys for Expose and Dashboard, as well as media and volume controls. It also has an Eject key. While it has brightness controls, those don't work for me and my Hacintosh (hardly surprising). It also has two USB ports on the bottom side of the keyboard; in fact, these act as the keyboard stand to give it a little angle. While plugging in my iPod touch gave me a Low Power warning box, I have my tiny Kensington USB Mini Bluetooth adapter plugged in with no problem (it's so small, in fact, that you can't even tell it's there). It is a great keyboard; better than I expected given that I just wanted a non-Windows-key keyboard.

Finally, we have the Wireless Mighty Mouse. I must say, I was skeptical at first of the scroll-ball, but I've come to love it. 360 degree scrolling is wonderful in Photoshop, Pixelmator, Illustrator, and even iTunes and Safari. My last mouse did have horizontal scroll, but this is a whole new ball game. It's funny to think that something like that could impact my workflow so much, but it has. While the Mighty Mouse may look like a 1 button mouse, it's actually got 4. You have your right click and left click, of course, but you also have your 3rd button with the scroll-ball (which takes some getting used to as the whole mouse clicks when you use it) and the 4th as a squeeze to both sides at once (again, takes a bit of getting used to). All the buttons are user-mappable. It's a fairly comfortable design (it is based on their tried-and-true mouse design), but it doesn't quite stand up to some of the more ergonomic mouses I've used in the past. On the wireless side, it uses Bluetooth, so there's not any interference with anything else, and it stays connected very well. Overall, it's a good mouse. It's one-click design, but 4 button functionality, takes a bit of getting used to, but the scroll-ball makes that curve well worth it.

Motorola MOTOROKR S9

So I stopped in my local T-Mobile store the other day to fix a small account issue (I ended up with a month of free service too!) and saw that they had dropped the prices on some of their Bluetooth headsets. I've been wanting a stereo Bluetooth headset for my Nokia 5300 for a while, but didn't want to drop almost a hundred bucks on one. They had the S9 on sale for $49.99 and I jumped all over it. I have to say, I was quite surprised; it completely surpassed what I had expected. It looks a bit uncomfortable, especially when you're handling it, but once on your head, you almost forget about it after a while (as you should with any headset, in my opinion). The "earbuds" aren't actually earbuds as they're designed to sit right over the ear canal, but with the right sized bud covers (three sizes are included), they deliver pretty good sound. Not necessarily thumping bass, but it's loud and clear, with decent low ranges. It's actually just if good, if not better, than my canal-phones sound when connected to the headset port (via the included adapter). This tells me the lack of deep low ranges is more a limitation of the phone's output than the headphones. The right side has the music controls while the left contains call controls and volume. While music plays from both sides, calls are only heard on the left side, which takes some getting used to if you're used to a single headset on the right side. I have no clue where the microphone is, but I have yet to have any complaint from callers about being able to hear me. They're rated at about 6 hours of music-time and 8 hours of talk-time, though I haven't pushed those envelopes. They're a great buy at $50 if you're lookin' for some wireless stereo headphones.

*It should be noted that Motorola has recently released the S9-HD with SRS-WOW technology, which I'm sure is the reason for the price drop. They are exactly the same design, just with enhanced sound.

.Mac and iLife Integration/Google Apps

So I bit the bullet and sprung for a .Mac account for my photography site. I had been using the .Mac trial for the past 60 days to back up settings and host a small gallery, so I knew what I was buying into. And I have to say, I'm very happy with it. iWeb is a great, simple, and fast program for building a website, and with 1-button publishing, updating my site couldn't be easier. With iPhoto, I can create any number of slick looking galleries (anyone seen the cool Carousel gallery feature?) and keep them free-standing, integrate them into my site (via iWeb), or even create users/passwords for individuals to access private galleries. I can do the same thing through Aperture for my professional photography (I manage my personal pictures through iPhoto and professional ones through Aperture). This feature will be great when I launch my photography company. I'll be able to go to an event with cards that have a generic username and password and pass that out so people can access the event's pictures. Or, I can take e-mail addresses and send out specific usernames/passwords to each person so they can see only their own pictures. It's all so simple to do, super-fast with 1-click uploading, and the results look great! Add to that, you can use your own domain name for your .Mac site, and it's suddenly very professional too. I'm sure I'm just scratching the surface of what I can do with iLife and .Mac; I can't wait to see what else is in store as I dig deeper!

Google Apps is something I've been playing around with for a while now (in fact, I purchased my domain with GoDaddy through them), and it's been indispensable. I have Gmail with my own domain name (which forwards a copy of every email to my cell phone instantly), a nice looking start page, and an online calendar (synced with iCal via Spanning Sync). Not to mention, Google Docs, if I ever need 'em. I have all this (plus this blog) under one roof because .Mac doesn't take full control of the domain, just the 'www' CNAME. It's been a long time since I've worked on DNS side of building a website, so this is all (re)new to me, and I love it. The last site I had built was hosted by the registrar, and I couldn't change anything to use stuff outside of my own site. Being able to have the best of several different worlds under one domain is wonderful!

Booyah, T-Mobile!

So I got around T-Mobile's crippling of the Nokia 5300! I can now use Salling Clicker, Opera Mini, Google Maps, and whatever other programs I want without the connectivity being blocked. I hacked the phone's serial number (not IMEI) using NSS and ran the Nokia Software Update (through VMWare Fusion) and now I'm running a "generic" 5300. Debranding the phone unlocked plenty of little gems for me; EDGE now works at full speed, T-Mobile was hiding an e-mail client (along with other programs), and there were quite a few settings locked out that I can access now. Oh, and reception is way better now too; it also unlocked extended roaming capabilities (ie. not blocking AT&T access in certain areas). The downside? Um... Well, I can't access MyFaves on the phone, but I can manage those online, so no biggie. Now, if I can just get the e-mail client to finish synchronizing, I'll be pretty damn happy! lol

For the brave, check this link for instructions. Just be sure to read and have an understanding before diving in. And understand that you will be voiding your warranty with T-Mobile.

T-Mobile and the Nokia 5300

I recently switched to T-Mobile because of their awesome FlexPay system. Basically, you prepay for service, but you sign a 2 year contract and get all the post-paid plans and options. Not to mention the sweet discount on the phone for signing a contract. This option is wonderful for my fiance and I, both of whom have exes who killed our credit. If you're on pre-paid or don't want to pay a high deposit (if your credit isn't that great) for cell phone service, give it a bit of research. It seems like a "too good to be true" option, but I assure you, it is real.

At any rate, I went with the Nokia 5300 XpressMusic slider phone. The phone itself is great; dedicated music shortcut keys on the side, a really smooth, spring assisted slide, a ton of customization options, and, most importantly, full Bluetooth 2.0 +EDR. I've already created a Leopard theme for it, and I'm loving everything about it. The sound is loud and clear through the speaker; I'm almost scared to use the ringer at full volume because it's so loud! At the highest volume, music is a bit distorted, but it's so loud that you'd rarely need to have it that high. Nokia did include a nice little headphone/speaker adapter that takes the 2.5mm headset jack and converts it to a 3.5mm audio jack. While T-Mobile hasn't launched their 3G network yet, this phone does have EDGE, and it's surprisingly fast. I had an EDGE phone (Nokia 6230) with Cingular a few years back, and I swear it wasn't this fast. I can start up the browser and load Weather.com faster than my fiance can get the page to load in a pre-existing browser window on her laptop. Yes, the pages are optimized for it, but it's pretty damn fast! I just wish I could use Opera Mini with it (see next paragraph). The camera is okay; it's 1.3 MP with no flash, and it takes pretty decent pictures in the sunlight, but get it under any kind of dark lighting and it gets really grainy, really fast. I like having it there for snapshots, but it hardly puts a dent in my real camera use. lol Battery life is lacking (I need to charge every night), but I also use it A LOT. I listen to music and browse the web constantly, so I'm probably the heaviest load this battery is designed for. lol Reception has been excellent so far; I've been in a few places way out in the country where I've dropped signal, but I expected that. The memory card can be acccessed by using a USB cable to connect the phone with the computer. Upon plugging it in, the phone gives 3 options: Nokia Mode (for use with Nokia PC Suite for Windows), Music Sync (puts the phone in MTP mode for WMP11), or Data Storage. Data Storage is compatible with Mac, so that's what I use. Under Windows, both Nokia Mode and Music Sync work flawlessly (I have VMWare Fusion to run Windows). Bluetooth access is also complete, allowing for file transfers and data syncing. That being said, I had to hack iSync to add support for the 5300, but it works very fast over the Bluetooth 2.0 +EDR now. You can also use a customizable "Active Standby" screen in place of the the blank home screen that shows you what music is playing, today's calendar entries, and a customizable Shortcut Bar. This screen is great, and was honestly a selling point for me on the phone. I keep all my photography and sales appointments, along with my school assignments, in iSync, so after syncing it with the phone, these show on the main screen.

There is one glaring issue: T-Mobile blocks, through the firmware, blocks "unauthorized" 3rd party apps from using any data connectivity. That means no Opera Mini, Google Maps, or even Salling Clicker. I've gotten used to it now, but it was really disappointing at first. I was really looking forward to trying out the location ability with the new Google Maps, and I've always loved using Opera Mini and Salling Clicker (the firmware won't let an "unauthorised" 3rd party apps access Bluetooth properly). T-Mobile also blocks some SMS short codes, so I can't Twitter through text, but I can get at it through the WAP page. One last gripe: it only supports up to 2 GB MicroSD cards (beyond that, the cards are MicroSDHC). MicroSDHC support can apparently be added by a firmware update, so I'm hoping that it'll come down the pipeline soon.

Overall, the 5300 is a great phone. Good reception, awesome music controls, loud sound, and a great physical interface (smooth slider and easy-to-find-by-touch keys). It has a few flaws, but what phone doesn't? For high end users, it might not be enough, but for music lovers, it's a great phone.

SteerMouse

SteerMouse is a great program that has really enhanced Leopard for me.  I was pondering getting a Mighty Mouse to replace my wireless mouse as it had extra customizable buttons, but this program completely changed my mind.  I use a Logitech MX700 wireless mouse and I've been a bit disappointed that I couldn't use the forward and back buttons for anything in Mac OS X.  Logitech doesn't support the MX710 keyboard/mouse combo in Mac, so I thought I was out of luck.  The other day, I remembered that I had used a program in the past to customize my mouse with my PowerBook; upon some research, I came across SteerMouse.  

I decided to give it a go, and I imediately fell in love.  Not only can I finally customize all my buttons, but it's given Spaces an entirely new functionality for me.  I use the forward and back keys to switch between my 3 Spaces (Internet, Art, School) effortlessly now, which has sped up my productivity amazingly.  Now I can switch between Word, PhotoShop, and Safari with two little clicks.  Yes, there are keyboard shortcuts (which are actually what I mapped to the mouse keys), but when I'm working with my mouse already in PhotoShop or Photo Professional, it works MUCH better.

Not only does it work, but it works so well, I don't think I'll ever drop the money on a Mighty Mouse now.  But, if I do, SteerMouse supports it as well, taking it beyond the functionality of Apple's software.  If you're a Mac user with  "Designed for Windows" mouse, give SteerMouse a go for the 30 day trial.  I was so impressed that I had no hesitations paying for it when the trial was up.

Creative Xmod

So in my search for a way to listen to my music and watch movies on my laptop through speakers, I decided to look in the realm of USB audio adapters.  While there's lots of little cheap-o things that look like thumb-drives with an audio jack, I came across something at Circuit City that really caught my eye.  

The Creative Xmod plugs in to a USB port and has three audio ports; one for speakers, one for headphones (that over-ride the speakers when plugged in), and one for input (microphone or other external source such as MP3 player, gaming system, etc).  It has a built in volume and mute control via a slick brushed metal jog dial too.  But the greatest thing (besides true plug-and-play with Macs) is the "X-Fi" enhancements that are built in and controllable.  One, the Crystalizer, "cleans the sound to studio quality" by enhancing the lows and highs and cleaning out artifacts on highly compressed sound.  I was fairly skeptical at first, but it makes a huge impact.  I really didn't know what I was missing before this; as cheesy as that sounds, it is leaps and bounds past what it sounds like without it turned on.  This makes is noticeably better than the on-board sound the laptop has (even if there was some way to enable the audio out to work with my Hacintosh install; I am comparing it to the sound out of the jacks using Windows).  The second enhancement is the CMSS-3D enhancement.  It basically simulates surround-sound with two speakers.  It does add depth to the sound, but I'm not sure I'd call it surround-sound.  Where it really shines, though, is with headphones.  It really transforms a stereo sound into something much, much deeper.  Both of these enhancements are user-customizable through a mouse-like click button on the controller itself in conjunction with the jog-dial.

Not only am I excited to have real speakers again for my music and movie library (the on-board speakers, like all laptop speakers, are tinny and too quite for this), I was highly, highly impressed with the Xmod's sound enhancements.  Add to that, a slick, on-control customization system (which allows the enhancements to be controlled when using the Xmod with something other than a computer), and Creative put out a great little USB audio adapter.  Now for the good and bad news:  Circuit City has it on clearance.  This makes it a great deal, but it also spells doom for this wonderful little device.  Creative has taken the Xmod name and turned it into a wireless sound system solution.  If you're in the market for a great USB audio adapter, don't pass up this deal.  It is far and beyond what the on-board audio sounds like on my laptop, and I'm willing to bet it will sound better than most soundcards, short of more expensive high-end cards.

VMWare Fusion

Wow.  This program is cool.  I need Windows for one very important thing (my Sansa Connect MP3 player), and thus far have tried every MTP solution out there for Mac to no avail.  I realized tonight that I could avoid chucking the player or repartitioning and dual booting by creating a virtual machine with XP.  For those less geekier than I, virtualization involves running another operating system within your native one (Mac OS X Leopard, for me).  VMWare Fusion creates a false hard drive for Window XP  (or Vista, or any Linux distro, etc) to install to.  For me, I kept it small as I only needed it for Windows Media Player to connect to my MP3 player.  And having access to Internet Explorer for school and work will be nice too.

The cool thing about Fusion?  Not only is it fast (just as fast as any native program; I'm assuming that's because I have a dual-core processor to split tasks), but it fully integrates with my Leopard desktop.  This means that Windows windows float with my Mac windows on my desktop seamlessly (except for their borders, of course).  And get this: Leopard somehow knows (I'm assuming that some part of Fusion tells it) that my MP3 player will only work with Windows, and therefore automatically passes it through when connected, as long as XP is running too.  Any of my other USB devices I have to explicitly tell to connect to XP if I need them (which I don't).  I'm pretty damn impressed.

Theoretically, I can run games through it too since it has DirectX 9 support, but I don't really feel the need to.  I'll probably give it a go at some point though; I need a FPS fix soon.  lol

The Update

So after several failed attempts at updating to 10.5.2 for Leopard, I finally got it working.  I'm fully updated with 10.5.2, the Graphics Update, and Aperture 2 now.  I've really lucked out with Ruri; it seems from reading the forums over at InsanelyMac.com that the Presario c714NR is the perfect laptop for Leopard.  The upgraded versions of this laptop (the ones that have come out since I got mine) have changed a few things hardware wise and don't work as well.  I'm still having my issue with audio where I can't use the headphone/mic jacks, but that's nothing more than a minor annoyance.  

I've installed the programs that I need to make my laptop work for my job too; they send us XP laptops to do photo-editing with, and we're supposed to only use those to do said edits.  Since we shoot in a RAW format (Canon's CR2 to be exact), we have to use Canon Photo Professional to do our "edits" (it's really just rotating the pictures, reordering them when needed, and deleting bad frames).  Leopard has built-in support for RAW format, but I couldn't rotate the pictures.  It took a while, but I tracked down a copy of Photo Professional, so I can do my edits on my own lappy without them knowing.  While that sounds like a minor (if not insignificant) accomplishment, it means I can carry my own laptop around with me to do my work without having to lug an extra laptop bag.  I also needed support for burning a DVD-RW in reburnable format, so I tracked down BurnAgain DVD.  Even Toast can't do an RW right, so if you're looking for an RW solution for Mac OS, check out BurnAgain.  Well worth the money, in my opinion.  

So, after a few weeks of using Mac OS X exclusively, what is the #1 feature for me?  Hands down, Time Machine.  It has saved me countless times and allowed me to experiment with updates, drivers, and kernels with losing nothing more than the time it takes to restore.  This is the best backup solution I've ever used, and I've used a lot in the past.  I have a 120 GB external hard drive dedicated for it and that seems to be adequate for me (my internal drive is 120 GB too with 50 GB free).  Not to mention, it's got a pretty slick interface.  lol

Do I have any regrets about nuking Vista?  Nope.  Gaming is fun, but hardly worth the hassle when it comes to Windows.  Windows is slow and takes up way too much room; I'm running a comparable setup, application wise, under Leopard that I did under Vista and I have WAY more room (like 40 extra GB) over what I did with Vista.  Will I ever go back to Windows?  Probably not seeing as how I know I can get a $400 MacBook (with some tweaking).  lol  I love my "Mac".

Hac OS X Leopard

I am loving Leopard.  I got Photoshop fixed (uninstalled, wiped all related files, reinstalled, and it worked), Office 2008 is really nice, I can do most of my schoolwork through Safari, and what I can't do in Safari, I can knock out in Firefox.  I have my N-Gage QD set to sync with iCal and Address Book through iSync, and I can control Ruri with the N-Gage using Salling Clicker.  I have iPhoto and Aperture synced with all the photos from both Ruri and Omoikane, all my music is tagged with album art in iTunes, and CoverSutra has given me a great interface with shortcut keys to control iTunes.  Cover Flow in Finder along with Quick Look has sped up my workflow incredibly.  I imported a couple thousand photos off of Omoikane and was able to trim out everything I didn't need in only 20 minutes!  And I don't know how I used a Mac without Stacks before.  Some people don't like them, but I love 'em.  Time Machine is not only cool as hell, it's already saved my butt once (when I needed to resize my partitions).  Everything just works.  And that's pretty impressive considering I'm not on a Macintosh; Hacintosh is more like it.  lol  I only have one lingering issue, and that is that sound will only play through the internal speakers.  I'm going to get an Airport Express router soon which will take care of that; our WiFi router died anyway, and with that, I can use AirTunes with my powered speakers and subwoofer to play my music (the only thing I really need bass for).  All in all, I love it.  It's fast, gorgeous, and works out much better for my photography and graphical needs than Vista.  Vista has the gaming support, but Leopard kills it in the artistic department.  And that is a big thing for as I just landed a job as a professional children's photographer, so I have a bunch of new toys to play with...