Tag: imac

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More rumours on new iMacs

Macrumors has some nice new rumours on the next incarnation of the Apple iMac.

The new iMac may include…

…an SD card reader, as found in the 13″ and 15″ MacBook Pro, and the use of quad-core processors, which conflicts with a subsequent report claiming that the new iMac will continue to use dual-core processors.

and

…a new 100% touch-enabled mouse capable of advanced mouse functions, as well as a new aluminum Apple Remote. 

I am also hoping that the Blu-Ray rumour that has also been seen is also true. However Apple do seem to have decided that video downloads from the iTunes Store and not via physical format.

I am expecting to see the new iMacs in October and I will probably more than likely be buying one, to replace my current imac which is coming up to three years old.

While we’re on the subject of new Macs, there is also a white MacBook rumour on Macrumors. I wonder if this will be the same format as the current MacBook but with better specifications. However could it be a completely new format to compete in the cheap netbook market?

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Installed Snow Leopard

I have now installed my copy of Snow Leopard. I have installed it onto an external LaCie Poulton 1TB Firewire drive for my iMac.

My current OS is Leopard 10.5 and that is also installed on a (different) LaCie Poulton 1TB Firewire drive. I am using external drives as the internal drive on the iMac was a little too small for me at 250GB – when did 250GB become too small?

So far everything seems okay and Snow Leopard appears a little snappier than 10.5.

My main concern is that EyeTV 2 is not compatible and so I will need to go out and buy EyeTV 3 which means that is not such a cheap upgrade as I would hope.

Adobe CS4 should work fine, and I already have iLife 09 and iWork 09, so no worries there.

Over the next week or so I will be installing various apps to check they work before moving over my data.

The advantage of not upgrading is that I can always fall back on my previous installation if it really doesn’t work out.

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200GB

After much deleting and arching I have freed up 200GB of hard disk space.

I do consider it strange that I now view 200GB as “small” when a few years ago I considered 250MB Iomega Zip disks as “huge”.

The iMac I use the external drive with only has an internal drive of 250GB, which is why I now use an external 1TB drive as my main startup disk.

The first laptop I was given at work had a “huge” hdd, 20MB, yes MB not GB.

I am going out to buy some more external storage, I have started to look at 2TB drives… I have considered a Drobo, but am wondering about the noise, I do like my quiet Lacie Poulton 1TB drive and will probably get some more of them.

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Clearing room…

Before installing Adobe CS4 I decided that I better clear out some free disk space so that it will not only install fine, but run fine as well. I had bought it for my new iMac, but that’s on hold at the moment.

So what’s on the hard drive?

Well though my files, photos and music take up a fair bit of space, it is EyeTV recordings which take up the most space. I have been a little lax (because I had the space) in editing and exporting recordings.

Generally I only export the recording in the native MPEG2  format, partly to avoid loss of quality, but in the main as it is very quick. After exporting I might copy the Wi-Fi access version into iTunes so I can then put it onto the iPod pretty quickly, but that’s not always done, it depends on the recording.

Of course if I don’t want the recording, it never gets exported and just gets deleted.

After exporting, I try and move files to an external hard drive, to free up space, but it shouldn’t and it does still surprise me by how much space the recordings take up…

Now I know I could export as a DivX format and reduce the file size significantly over the MPEG2, however then I will have a later problem if I want to export into a different format for a different device.

Until we have a consistent video file format then I would rather maintain the high quality large file size of the native MPEG2 recording then try and mess about with a smaller DivX recording for a different device.

I watch the recordings on a variety of devices, the iPhone and various iPods, the PSP, the PS3 and an Archos PVR device. The iPod h.264 recordings for example would not play on the PSP (always) likewise they would not play on the Archos unless I paid €20 for the “extra” to allow the Archos to play h.264 files, if I was willing to pay that I would pay the €20 to allow the Archos to play MPEG2 files natively!

So at the moment I am editing, exporting and in some cases realising that I am never going to watch that special which went out at Christmas and I am deleting!

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New iMac, well I think I am going to wait now…

I was going to order a new iMac this summer. A 24″ model with 4GB of RAM, a 1TB HDD and a good graphics card. It would be an improvement over my current 20″ iMac which I bought in 2006.

However….

Though I knew that new models were coming out in October, I decided I needed it now and wasn’t going to wait.

However….

I then read MacRumors.

AppleInsider reports that the next-generation iMac will see the inclusion of two “compelling” new features, although sources refuse to provide anything more than suggestions as to what those features might be.

One of those features is said to have long been on the wish-lists of many Mac users while the other is expected to cater to the semi-professional audio/video crowd. This is according to cryptic tips from people often familiar with the Mac maker’s future product initiatives, but who declined to elaborate because they were not authorized to discuss the matter in detail.

My guess (based on what I have read) is Blu-Ray and an SD card slot. Though reading both articles indicate it could be anything or nothing.

However…

I really would like an iMac with  Blu-Ray capability, I do watch a fair few movies on my Mac and I would like to watch them in HD.

Of course I could be completely wrong, who knows with Apple.

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iMac going slow

I now feel that my iMac is way too slow for how I am using it these days. It shouldn’t surprise me but it does, this iMac is (well should be) one fast computer, but I certainly push mine to its limits and notice slowdowns and memory issues.

I have 2GB of RAM in there, so it’s not a lack of RAM, much more running too many applications at the same time. Yes I should exit one application before running another, but I often don’t have the time and sometimes (as with EyeTV) it just isn’t possible due to scheduling issues.

I wouldn’t mind the odd delay here and there, but due to delays it is starting to impact on the performance of applications such as EyeTV and as a  result I am getting dropped frames on my EyeTV recordings.

My solution will be to get a new iMac, not to replace my current iMac, much more to have double the processing power. As a result I am going to get a bigger desk.

So which model, well it’s going to be the 24″ model.

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EyeHome can’t find my EyeTV content

If you have been reading recently you will know that I have upgraded my iMac to Leopard.

The majority of software and applications I use seem to have been working fine.

However last night I decided to use my EyeHome so that I could watch a recording of Merlin I had made earlier using EyeTV.

However the EyeHome could not find my EyeTV recording, and I knew I had some. The EyeHome could find video in my Movies folder and other content across the iMac but not the EyeTV recordings.

I did remove the relationship between the iMac and the EyeHome, restart the EyeHome application on the iMac, but no joy.

In the end I used Wi-Fi Access instead. One of the features of EyeTV following an update (version 2.5) was the ability to stream recordings wirelessly to an iPhone or an iPod touch. It’s simple to turn on, just go to the relevant section in the EyeTV preferences.

EyeTV Wireless Access Preferences

What this does is once EyeTV has finished recording a TV programme, it will automatically convert the recording into a format which will play on the iPod touch or the iPhone. This is then made available over your wireless network via a web interface.

So using an iPod touch I connected it to the TV, browsed to my EyeTV recordings using the URL given in the EyeTV preferences and played the recording.

This worked well (and the quality is better than the BBC iPlayer version).

Having enjoyed the episode of Merlin, I now wanted to work out why the EyeHome couldn’t find the EyeTV.

I did find this on the Elgato website.

If you are using EyeTV with EyeHome, then EyeHome thinks your EyeTV Archive is in the Library folder for your User account. In reality, it’s probably in the Documents folder, or somewhere else that you chose via the Recording Preferences in EyeTV. Due to this error, EyeHome can’t find your EyeTV recordings without help.

A symbolic link, that points from the true EyeTV Archive location, will solve the problem – name the link “EyeTV Archive”, and place it in the Library folder ( ~/Library/EyeTV Archive). In other words, put the link here:

Open the Hard Drive

Open the Users folder

Open the folder that’s named after your User account (it may have a House icon).

Open the Library folder

Place the link called “EyeTV Archive” in the Library folder

Most users can do this using SymbolicLinker.

In this way, you keep the EyeTV Archive wherever you like, but EyeHome will find a link to it in that Library folder.

My solution is going to be to move the default folder to the Library.

What is interesting is I am almost 100% sure that I did not change this preference and if I had I would have not put the archive in the Documents folder, but put it in the Movies folder.

This was a fresh install of EyeTV as when I upgrade an OS or change computer (or in this case change hard drive) I usually start with a vanilla fresh OS install and then add my applications as and when I need them. This avoids clogging the computer with applications I used once or rarely, and usually avoids problems following you around from the previous install to the new install. A good example of this is that my Canon printer now prints everytime.

Lets hope EyeHome works fine now.

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So is it faster?

I have been using my new LaCie Poulton drive for over a week now and so far I am impressed with it. Running Leopard on it for my iMac means I now have a lot more free space over 700GB compared to the 15GB I seem to have with the original 250GB hard drive I had on the iMac.

So is it faster?

Yes!

It certainly appears to be faster, but I suspect that Leopard is also a factor as that made a difference with my MacBook Pro.

It was certainly a bit of a pain going through all my applications and re-installing them, re-activating some and finding the serial numbers of others.

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Installing Leopard

So I have my new drive, a 1TB LaCie Poulton, and though it is not as quiet as I would like (well a 7200rpm drive is still quite noisy, but at least there are no noisy fans).

So decided to install Leopard on it and use it as a boot drive for my iMac. The iMac only came with a 250GB drive which is proving problematic, I am hoping with 1TB of space that I can at least have a little more room for “stuff”.

Rather than install Leopard direct, I decided to install from the iMac install disks and then install Leopard on top of that.

Once Tiger was installed, I went straight to Leopard. Once Leopard was installed I then ran Software Update, and of course forgot to change the energy saver settings, so as before, the iMac did a Vista on me and turned itself off whilst downloading a 560MB update – for 10.5.4

I will then need to decide which software to install that I will use.

Wondering if Office 2004 is Leopard compatible (I think it is) and wondering if CS2 is? Problem with both those is that they are both not Universal applications, so both rely on Rosetta as they are PowerPC applications, and as a result are quite memory intensive.

Will certainly be installing iWork ’08 and iLife ’08 and iMovie HD ’06 as well.

Still downloading the updates.

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It took ages….

Took (what seemed) like a really long time this morning updating not just Parallels (to build 5608) but also updated the virtual installations of Windows XP and Vista I have on my iMac.

I updated Windows XP to SP3 which once I started I thought I wonder if SP3 would work with Parallels, so I downloaded the latest update.

While I was at it I also updated my virtual installation of Windows Vista as well – as that hadn’t been done in a while.

I know I know I should update when patches come out, but more often than not when I have updated it breaks something.

So far no problems, just it seemed to take ages…