Author: jamesclay

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New MacBook Air???

There are rumours floating about regarding a new MacBook Air.

Macrumors says

…the new MacBook Air will offer an 11.6-inch display, down from the 13.3-inch display found in the current model.

and

…the new models will do away with existing options for a conventional hard-disk drive (HDD) or solid state drive (SSD) in favor something described as an “SSD Card” that lacks a traditional drive enclosure and more closely resembles a stick of RAM, yet is not easily user-replaceable.

This sounds like the really portable MacBook that I expected when the first MacBook Air came out. A true Apple netbook….

Back then I said

Key new product announced at the keynote was the MacBook Air, a small light MacBook.

I do like small computers, great fan of the 10″Sony VAIO laptops, however this is slightly bigger than I would like, and I can’t see how that would survive travelling by air or train.

Don’t get me wrong I think it’s very stylish, well designed, but doesn’t meet my needs for a small portable computer for use at conferences, on the train and in coffee shops.

I also talked about the lack on built-in 3G, something that most portable laptops at the time were coming with.

However something has changed since then.

The iPad.

The iPad is now that portable computer that I take with me to conferences, use on the train and in  coffee shops. The iPad has built in 3G and has a great battery life.

What will the MacBook Air offer that can’t be done on the iPad? Well I know stuff like printing and saving and moving files for instance….

This rumoured MacBook Air sounds like the device that Apple should have released back in 2008.

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Some more thoughts…

If you have a look at the invite for the 20th…

Have another close look…

Notice how the bottom corners are square and the top are rounded?

Significant?

Photoshop error?

Probably!

Some other thoughts coming from discussions over the tubes.

3D could be coming.

Blu-Ray, though I think not…

Facetime, very likely in my opinion.

I still think touch will be there too.

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Back to the Mac.

October 20th sees an Apple event called Back to the Mac.

Now no more details than that.

There are two key clues though in the image.

First it says Mac, this probably means that it is about the Mac and not another iOS device.

Second, peeping behind that apple is a Lion.

Now this means that it is time for Apple to announce their new OS called Lion. Will it be 10.7 or 11.0 well we don’t know. A lot depends on what the big new thing will be.

10.6 was only a slight improvement over 10.5 and to be honest I am using 10.6 on my iMac and 10.5 on a MacBook Pro and I rarely notice the difference. What new stuff could we see in 10.7, no idea.

However if this is 11.0 then could we see the iOS touch interface integrated with the OS X (or is that OS XI) as rumoured earlier this year?

Whatever happens it will be interesting to see what Apple have to say.

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Airport Extreme Reliability

At the beginning of September, I wrote:

…my Airport Extreme is becoming less reliable. I am having to reboot it at least once a week now. There is no warning before it goes dodgy.

I said at the time that when I upgraded to FTTC I would probably upgrade the Airport Extreme

I am going to wait before replacing it, as we are getting BT Infinity later this month and I am not sure if I will need a new router. If I do need a specific type of router then I will get a new 802.11n router.

However in the end I found out from BT that I could use my Airport Extreme with FTTC. So before I was upgraded I did update the firmware on my Airport Extreme to firmware 7.4.2

I don’t usually recommend updating your Airport base stations unless there is a security issue, or in my case you are having problems.

Updating the firmware seems to have resolved the issue and I have not had a problem since I updated. However the Airport Express has stopped working properly at least once, though that is much older than the Airport Extreme.

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Some things now working…

As I have upgraded to FTTC and one of the requirements is that your router supports PPPoE. As a result I have replaced my old aging Netgear ADSL modem router with my Airport Extreme Base Station. I wasn’t able to use the Airport Extreme before as it did not support PPPoA, but as FTTC requires PPPoE I can now use it. As a result, it is a new(ish) router and therefore I anticipated that I would be able to do two things, one is use EyeTV remotely across the internet and two use Back to my Mac.

So what of EyeTV?

Watch, record, and enjoy live TV on your iPhone or iPad via a 3G or Wi-Fi connection. At last, you don‘t have to leave all your great TV shows at home; the EyeTV app puts the power of award-winning EyeTV in the palm of your hand.

The EyeTV app accesses EyeTV running on your Mac at home to deliver these great features to your Apple device:

  • Watch live TV and change channels anywhere (via a Wi-Fi or 3G connection)
  • Watch your EyeTV recordings
  • Browse the comprehensive Program Guide and view details
  • Start recordings back home on your Mac immediately or schedule them for later
  • View and edit your recording schedules
  • Automatically launch EyeTV on your Mac at home as needed

    • EyeTV has an iPad and iPhone App which have worked really well on my home network, but so far I have not had any luck accessing it away from home, even though it is correctly configured.

    I do believe though this is because of the remote network I was on. I have yet to try on a public wifi network and I suspect I will have better luck then.

    As for Back to my Mac, Apple says.

    Back to My Mac puts any Mac OS X Leopard- or Snow Leopard-based Mac you use within easy reach. MobileMe finds your remote Mac computers over the Internet and displays them in the Finder on the Mac you’re using. So you can connect from anywhere with just a click. Edit and save documents, open applications, and move folders. With Back to My Mac Screen Sharing, you can control your remote Mac as though you’re sitting in front of it.

    Again on my home Mac, everything seems fine.

    Well I did try and do this, however I couldn’t get my work Mac to recognise my MobileMe account and again as with EyeTV I believe this is because of the remote network.

    So near, yet not quite there.

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    Really fast…

    Finally had my broadband upgraded to FTTC and I am impressed.

    With 40Mb down and 10Mb up this is significantly faster than the 1.3 down and 0.6 up I had before.

    It has already changed how I use the internet, whereas before I would probably not consider downloading a film from iTunes during the day, as it would soak up my bandwidth and would take hours to download; now it takes under five minutes to download! No problems with downloading large files and updates now.

    The other key advantage is streaming video, which was almost pointless before due to buffering, and like downloading, previous streaming would soak up my bandwidth, having 40Mb down means I can stream and do other stuff at the same time.

    My only concern is that all this speed I will probably exceed my bandwidth quite easily…

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    Facebook unveils ‘groups’ feature and user controls

    BBC News reports on new features on Facebook.

    Facebook has introduced a raft of features aimed at giving users more control over their personal data.

    A groups feature will allow users to specify circles of friends with whom they want to share different data.

    For the first time, users will also be able to download all the data they have uploaded onto the site.

    Read more

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    Ministry of Defence warns service personnel over Facebook Places

    Daily Telegraph reports on security issues over Facebook Places.

    Security officials have warned members of the armed forces that geo-location services, such as Facebook Places, could be used by terrorists to track potential targets.

    There are real security issues as far as the MoD are concerned, but I wonder if many learners have actually thought about the implications of “shouting” where they are all the time.