Weblog of a “Switcher”

Daring Fireball linked to a survey report that shows that 24 percent of current iPhone owners switched from the Motorola RAZR. Whelp, I'm one of them. I had a RAZR before I bought my iPhone. I loved the RAZR due to it's size. It was small, metal so that if it was dropped it wouldn't crack the case, and quite thin.

Survey Claims 24 Percent of U.S. iPhone Owners Switched From a Razr

If it’s even vaguely close to accurate, that’s a remarkable number. It might also explain Motorola’s precipitous decline.

★ Sunday, 22 June 2008

[From Daring Fireball Linked List: Survey Claims 24 Percent of U.S. iPhone Owners Switched From a Razr]

My old RAZR is now being used by my wife. However, with the new iPhone just around the corner. I'm really considering getting the new iPhone. Mostly for the higher speed data connection. I use my iPhone about 4 or so hours a day checking mail, surfing the internet, reading tweet's on twitter, etc... Plus, the $300 price tag is pretty darn good to for the 16GB phone.

If I do get the new iPhone, I'll probably be giving my wife my current iPhone and then she will be switching from the RAZR to the iPhone.

So overall, I really believe the statistic and am not the least bit surprised.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Apple, Switcher

Electronic Arts released Spore's Creature Creator yesterday so that the many folks that are waiting and waiting for Spore to be released is released. Spore is scheduled to be released September 7th.

I'm quite pleased with the performance of Spore's Creature Creator on my Mac Pro. I'm using the low end graphics card that came with the Mac Pro, the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT. The frame rates are more than adequate to use the creator. Mind you, this isn't the actual game, but it's really great looking and quite fun to play around with.

I spent about 30 minutes creating a creature for the first time. It was quite easy and pretty darn cool to mess with. According to the program, over 170,000 creatures have been created since the program was released a week ago (?) to a limited group of people and then the public release yesterday.

I really can't wait for this game to come out. It's going to be stealing months and months of my life and I'll love every second.

If you haven't downloaded it and played with it, I really suggest heading over to EA's Spore website and pick up a copy of the Trial Edition.

Download and enjoy!

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Apple, EA, Game, Mac, Os X, osx, Windows

So the WWDC keynote speech has come and gone. I have to say I was a little bored with this one. They seemed to spend way to much time talking about all the applications that are going to be on the phone. Especially the medical software.

They did announce the 3G iPhone, but it's not going to be ready until July 11th. If the folks that were selling their iPhones actually did sell them, they now have to wait a little over a month before they can get a new phone.

I wonder if this means that Apple isn't going to be selling iPhones until July 11th now. That seems like a really bad idea to lose a whole months worth of sales just because they came out with a new phone. Do they really think they are going to reach their 10 million units sold by not selling them for a month? Hmm...

One thing I am really looking forward to is MobileMe. That is going to be really great and make .Mac really worth having. It's basically Microsoft Exchange for the Mac as well as Windows. That's the coolest part about all that. MobileMac works with Outlook in Windows so that regular home users have the power of Exchange available to them on their home computers and iPhones.

So, this was definitely one of the less interesting keynotes I have heard, but some interesting things coming done the road for sure.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: 3g, Apple, appstore, dotmac, iPhone, keynote, Wwdc

Lately, I've been reading about all these people selling their existing iPhones with the understanding that Apple is going to announce new 3G iPhones on Monday.

I would get the biggest laugh if Apple instead did not announce a new iPhone on Monday. There has been tons of speculation and rumors of a new 3G iPhone.

Now, I realize that in all likelihood, Apple will announce new iPhones. Why? Because you can't buy an iPhone now to save your life. There are very few stores that have iPhones in stock. Why is this? Everyones guess is that Apple is holding it's stock so that when they announce the new iPhones on Monday, they will ship those phones as well as the original iPhones to stores.

What makes me wonder though is why hold back the stock of the current generation of iPhones? I mean if they are going to have both 3G and GSM iPhones, why hold back the stock?

The only thing I can figure is that all the "sneak peak" pictures are real and they are redesigning the device. So the 2nd Gen iPhones will look different than the 1st Gen iPhones.

Ah well, It would be a pretty funny practical joke to play on iPhone owners who are selling their phones in anticipation of a new iPhone.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Apple, Wwdc

For the last 3 weeks or so, there has been nothing but speculation about a ton of new products for Apple. New 3G iPhone, Mac Tablet, renamed .Mac, etc... So what is happening?

Yep, WWDC08 is just around the corner.

I just love all the rumors and speculation; "The new 3G iPhone blah blah this", "Shipping packages labeled Electric computers...", "Apple has changed it's hard coded '.Mac' strings to variables...", "me.com being held by company that Apple uses for it's domains...", "Apple attempting to get ipod.me, iphone.me, mac.me...".

Funny thing about all these speculations and rumors is that they are typically accurate. It just cracks me up that so many blog sites go after these including Daring Fireball, which really surprises me, I've always thought of Daring Fireball as being the beacon of solid information and fact.

This reminds me of a presidential election. You start hearing about the candidates almost a year in advance, and the ads on TV start getting more and more frequent to the point you just want to shoot the TV. Just before the election, there are more ads for the candidates than shows on TV. I get so annoyed by all the ads, I almost don't want to vote as a protest.

I'll be so glad when WWDC is over so that all the speculation can stop. Of course then it's "See, we were 100% correct with our rumors...", "We were right on the money...", etc... for at least 2 weeks after the show.

Sure will be glad when it's all over.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Apple, Blogs, conference, Speculation, Wwdc

This is a continuation of my sad, sad story of the demise of the boot drive on my Mac Pro and the process of recovery. This chapter finds the rather stupid Mac Pro owner looking to recover all the purchased media from Apple and iTunes.

Monday morning at around 8am, I sent off a letter to Apple asking them if they would allow me to download all my purchased media and games from iTunes since I lost all the data on the drive the media was on. I told them that I normally backup my data, but my backup drive had recently crapped out and that I was waiting for my new drive to arrive when the drive holding the media died. Not entirely the truth, but pretty close.

I did have a Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo 1TB RAID drive which contained 2 500GB SATA drives and a very small RAID controller. The drive worked great for about a year, but then started acting strange. Turns out that the fan used to cool the box seized up due to dust and stopped spinning. I was unaware of this fact until the drive completely shot craps. From what I can tell, one of the 500GB drives is dead and the other may still work. I'm testing that fact now and was ultimately the reason why I accidentally wiped the boot drive. I want to use it for a Boot Camp drive for Windows.

My new 1TB My Book Studio Edition II drive is a single 1TB SATA drive. No weird built-in RAID controller, no need for a fan to help cool the unit down. Just 1TB's of pure backup storage for Time Machine to do it's thing with. In fact, it's finished the full system backup now so I am back to being safe once again.

Anyway, I got an email from Apple at 5:30pm the same day telling me that they have decided to allow me to download the tracks I lost. Now, from what I have heard from Leo Laporte and TWiT, Apple allows it's customers 1 of these "get out of jail free" cards (as it were) per year. I shouldn't need more than just this one since I will be not only backing up to the external drive, but also backing up my purchases to DVD later. I'm not going to allow myself to lose my media again, period!

So, now I'm downloaded the thousands of files that make up all the music, movies, and games I purchased over the years. There is quite a lot. It's interesting to see that iTunes is smart about this and is not downloading tracks that I recovered off my iPod earlier. This saves a little time and confusion when it comes to dealing with duplicate files.

So, once again, Apple support shines bright and true. It sure is nice to know you can count on them when you need them. Pity other computer manufacturers can't seem to get their acts together.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Apple, customer support, iTunes

When Leopard first came out, one of Leopards new features, Stacks, didn't allow for the ability to display the contents of a folder on the Dock in the way that Tiger used to which was to display all the files and folders in a popup list menu. Later versions of Leopard added this feature back in.

Quay is a great replacement for Leopard's (OS X 10.5.x) Stack feature. It was first released in public beta form not long after Leopard was released and has gone through 7 revisions since. I have been using it since Version 1.0.1 and have found it to be a great extension of Leopard's Dock.

First, it does what Leopard should have done from the beginning. Allows you to display the contents of a folder on the Dock in an easy to setup fashion.

As you can see from the above screen shot, Quay lists out all the files in a given folder, nothing really all that different from Leopard. What sets Quay apart from Leopards built-in feature is configurability.

Along with all the options that Leopard supports, Quay allows you to display more information than Leopard like Folder item Counts, Invisible Items, and Package Contents.

You can sort the list in a few more ways that Leopard; Application, Label, File Size. Quay also displays icons for the items in the folder where Apple decided that icons were not necessary.

Quay allows you to adjust the size of the icons or show a preview image which uses the preview images used in CoverFlow.

The best feature of Quay is the ability to display a little more information than just the name of the file. You can display the Date Modified, Date Created, Label, or File Sized of each item in the list.

Quay also allows you to customize the icon that will appear in the Dock after it's added. You can add an icon or badge over the folder image, change the color of the folder, and even choose a different image for the folder itself. This is done from within the application that is run from the first menu item of a Quay options menu.

You can even place the folder on the left side of the Dock usually reserved for Application icons.

If this was all that Quay did, the €7 or about $10 being asked for the program would be a steal. However, Quay does a few more things.

If you hold down Command and Option when clicking on a running program in the Dock, Quay displays some statistics about that running program. The version of the program, the memory it is currently using, Average and current CPU percentage.

Lastly, Quay supports Leopard's Smart Folders. Just drag a smart folder into the Dock and Quay displays it just like any other folder. Leopard doesn't support this at all. You can place a smart folder in the Dock, but when you click on it, it just opens the folder in the Finder.

This is one of my "must have" programs for the Mac. Before Quay, I had very little in the on the right side of my Dock. Now I have 10 Quay folders helping me find documents and applications I open/run frequently.

It's a great buy for the €7 or ~$10 being asked. There isn't a trial version, but the first folder on each side of the Dock will work until registered.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: dock, Leopard, popup menu, quay, Stacks

It's been quite a while since NBC decided to pull it's content from iTunes so that it could give away the content on it's own website and Hulu.com. I'm not really sure where the logic is in that since they wanted to control the price of the content being sold on iTunes. After being pulled from iTunes, NBC makes no money at all except for the income from the ads in the content.

So, now I read that NBC has worked out a deal with Microsoft to sell it's content through Microsoft's Zune Marketplace. For how much? You may have guessed it, $1.99!

Zune and NBC sitting in a tree:
Today, Microsoft announced that its Zune Marketplace would begin selling TV programming and guess with whom Zune’s sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. Right, NBC Universal. And why? Because, much like Microsoft was more than happy to give music companies a portion of the profit from every Zune sale, the Redmond crew responded to NBC’s demands for variable pricing with a sycophantic “Please sir, may I have another?”

Am I missing something here? I'm guessing that Microsoft is going to allow NBC to set the prices of their content, but it's going to take quite a bit of an increase of the price to match what they would have made if they were still on iTunes.

Well, we all know just how intelligent NBC executives are.

Update (5/8/08): So here some new info on the Microsoft-Zune/NBC deal:

Microsoft May Build a Copyright Cop Into Every Zune | The New York Times:
First, Apple insists that all TV shows have an identical wholesale price so that it can sell all of them at $1.99. NBC wants to sell its programs for whatever price it chooses.

Second, Apple refused to cooperate with NBC on building filters into its iPod player to remove pirated movies and videos.

Microsoft, by contrast, will accept NBC’s pricing scheme and will work with it to try to develop a copyright “cop” to be installed on its devices.

So Microsoft tells NBC it will assume that all it's customers are theives/pirates and will check all content to see if content being played or moved to the Zune is pirated. I'm assuming that if it is, it will not allow the data to be transferred to the Zune or at least not played.

I wonder if it has to check every file including pictures. Can you imagine taking a picture of a television with the latest episode of Heroes on because you wanted to show off your television only to have Microsoft not allow you to display the image because the content is the property of someone else?

Now, pundits are saying that Microsoft is agreeing to this to appease NBC but wont actually do the work. However, if this is part of the contract, they will have to do this. Let's hope its not part of the Zune firmware. Otherwise, it's going to slow down the Zune player and make it work as well as Microsoft Media player works. Yuck!

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Apple, iTunes, Microsoft, Nbc, zune

It should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever gone to a Brick & Mortar Apple Store, that Apple has been ranked #1 in Technical Support by Consumer Reports according to MacObserver.com. MacObserver quotes some of Consumer Reports findings and has screen grabs of the scorecards from Consumer Reports website.

Consumer Reports: Apple #1 in Tech Support:
Based on 10,099 notebook and desktop computer owners who contacted customer support between September 2006 and January 2008, Consumer Reports found Apple to be number one in technical support. Lenovo came in second for notebook computers and Dell was second for desktops.

This really comes as no surprise to me. I have had to call Apple once to deal with a problem I was having with Kernel Panics not long after I switched from Windows to OS X. I had installed a bad version of Cisco's VPN software which was causing the Kernel Panics. Even though I was finally able to figure out what the problem was and correct it before I actually talked to the tech rep at Apple. I did pick his brain to make sure the procedure I used to determine the cause was a sound one and made sure that he felt I had indeed solved the problem. Total time on the phone with Apple (including hold time) 40 minutes.

The feeling I had after hanging up on the call was one of relief that I wasn't talking to someone in India, but someone here in the good old U S of A.

I had an absolutely horrible experience with Dell a year or so prior to switching where I was forced to pay $90 for their software technical support because Dell's BIOS was configured incorrectly from the factory. I did manage to convince Dell to refund my $90, but only after a couple of hours extra on the phone and finally in Dell's online chat system talking with someone named "Uma". (Yea right.) The first tech person at Dell I had talked to was a hardware person that was obviously based in India. After an hour trying to explain what problems I was having, he declared the problem a software issue. The entire time I was on the phone with Dell (including hold time) was 5.5 hours. Really!

All that, and all I was trying to do was re-install Windows. I often wonder what took me so long to make the switch...

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Apple, genius, rank, support, tech

Well, actually for users of all web browsers that 1Password supports, which is pretty much all the mainstream and even some of the not so mainstream browsers.

The great program 1Password has updated their software to version 2.6 and added a great new feature to it's program that allows it's browser extension to test visited web sites against an online database of known Phishing sites called PhishTank.

It's great to see 3rd party software stepping up to the plate to help make our World Wide Web experience and enjoyable and safe as possible.

I have been a very happy user of 1Password for quite some time now and use it to hold Credit Card info as well as my wife's Social Security Number (I get asked for that number quite a bit since I have been seeing quite a few doctors lately).

With 1Password, you can take all your secure information and store it on your mobile device or iPhone in such a way that only you can access it. This feature has saved my behind several times now!

The program is only $34.95 and well worth every penny.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: 1password, anti-phishing, iPhone, Safari, Security