Rocking the Snow Leopard

My copy of Snow Leopard came in the mail today. It was minimally packaged in a small envelope with the DVD and the instruction pamphlet separate, even without the small box that comes in the retail version.

Hopefully by tonight I can raise my arms in celebration.

Joy of Tech

I took the kids to the mall today to escape the almost 100 degree heat so of course I had to stop by the Apple Store. Snow Leopard was fully stocked on the software shelf as well as pre-installed on all the Macs.

I have to say, I had a hard time seeing what was different between Snow Leopard and the old Leopard as the two looked exactly the same. If I had read this Joy of Tech ahead of time I would have known the menu bar now displays the day of the week!

Snow in Southern California

No snow yet (although Kruddler may already have a copy). It turns out although I pre-ordered Snow Leopard using Apple's Up-To-Date program, they didn't ship it until yesterday (the first day of general availability) and then only using snail mail. According to the Order Status website I won't get it until Wednesday, Sept 2nd.

This is in contrast to people who pre-ordered the regular upgrade DVD in which Apple sent it FedEx next day so it arrived at their home exactly on August 28th.

I'm not terribly too concerned about how soon I get SL because I'm still getting used to 10.5 and need to document various features for work (binding to Active Directory, connecting to 802.1x corporate WLAN using PEAP, ect...) however this is a good reminder for future purchases that its probably best to wait until Apple ships a new software product before you buy new hardware.

On a related note, I loved using Leopard so much (Stacks!) that I ended up ordering the Mac Box Set for my G5. I bet someone in Apple is wondering who the heck is this guy, ordering a new MacBook Pro and a long in tooth operating system days before 10.6 is released. :-)

Not so good apps

Well, I have a couple of useless apps now.

First a game many people give rave reviews about: pocket god. B-O-R-I-N-G. That's all I have to say about that.

Very disapointing app: blogpress. I read reviews, saw the snapshots and it seemed like the perfect iPhone app if you like blogging, especially if you wanted to add photos, which I can't on a straight iPhone blog in the browser. Doesn't even accept my user id. I can't get started as it won't let me in! Waste of money and I was looking so forward to using it.

Posted from my iPhone.

Logitech Speakers

The next few weeks I'm going to try to catch up on some old blogs I've been meaning to write, hope you don't mind...

Back in 2004 I upgraded my cheap Dell computer speakers with the Logitech Z-5500 Digital Speaker System. It being a true 5.1 system this was intended to be my ultimate surround sound system for gaming on the PC. It served its purpose but I was always miffed I couldn't use the pure digital connections for lack of an optical port on my Sound Blaster Audigy 2 SE (I found out later I could have purchased an external Digital I/O Module that would have allowed me to use the digital output).

After a while I decided to connect it to my Power Mac G5 which featured a native optical out port using a TOSLINK cable. Oh what a difference that made! Now listening to music was crystal clear and playing movies had thunderous bass. The weird thing was that I lost the ability to control the volume using the OS X volume applet but according to Apple this is normal.

This was the first time buying anything from Logitech but now I'm sold, they make awesome equipment. The only negative was the extremely large subwoofer it came with. I have it tucked away under my desk but it still takes up a lot of floor space. If I had to buy again I would probably stick with a smaller 2.1 system as I really don't use the surround speakers as I don't have a good place to position them.

More MacBreak Fun

Stealing a page from Rob's blog, here's proof that Leo Laporte is not a true gamer...

MacBreak Weekly 154: Graceful Degradation
1:35:44

Leo Laporte: "They also have GlaDOS from, uhh... from the, uhh..."

Andy Ihnatko: "Ha ha ha!"

Leo Laporte: "Oh yeah Andy knows what I'm talking about! From that... what is that... what is the name of that game? I can't remember... what is it?"

Andy Ihnatko: "Portal."

Leo Laporte: "Portal!"

Microsoft Kills trueSpace

This report is over three months old (I've been off the grid!) but Microsoft has killed off all support and development of trueSpace after acquiring the company just 15 months earlier. You can read a May 2009 letter from the founder of trueSpace, Roman Ormandy, here.

Microsoft really doesn't seem to have any sort of plan of what they want their company to be. Who are the tech visionaries there, Ballmer?

Got it!

I'm writing this on my brand new 13" MacBook Pro! It came in today as promised but unfortunately "only" with Leopard. I was kind of hoping Apple would have slipped in Snow Leopard but I guess I have to wait until next week like everybody else. What was interesting was that it came shipped with 10.5.7 although 10.5.8 has been out for a few weeks already.

So one of the benefits of the new computer is that I finally have a webcam and can now participate in a video chat with the rest of you. How about we test this out this weekend? Let me know what day and time and I'll host.

Snow Leopard

According to FedEx, my new MacBook Pro is scheduled to arrive tomorrow. If the rumors are true and Snow Leopard is released on August 28th, that means I would have exactly 7 days to get acquainted with my "new" operating system before having to learn another. Good thing that it's supposed to be mostly under-the-hood changes!

With the almost giveaway price of $29, I assume everybody is upgrading? The only bummer is for Tiger users since they must purchase the Mac Box Set if they want the latest operating system, essentially forcing them to purchase iLife and iWork even though they may already own it. But as the MacBreak Weekly crew said, who is still using Tiger? :-)

Ibusuki Firefly

One of the biggest differences I've noticed between Japan and Southern California are the various types of "wildlife" roaming outside. I've seen lizards crawling on the outside windows, crabs scuttling along the sidewalk, beetles of all shapes, sizes and colors, dragonflies, butterflies and as of last night, a firefly.

As I was locking my school's door, I noticed a green streak of light floating past me. I first thought there was a fire and some glowing embers were being caught in the wind. The firefly landed in front of me so I immediately picked it up and took it upstairs to show Rika. I was really amazed how bright and florescent green they are in real life- nature's version of an LED light. I took pictures of it and released it afterwards, but now I wish I would've kept it as a pet. I wonder if it's possible to have a tank full of these and have my own mini version of the Pirates of the Caribbean bayou scene.

I took a video of it in action which you can see on my Flickr site here.

MacBreak Weekly 153: The Case Against Apple

Just a little friendly ribbing at Mark's expense. I kid!

MacBreak Weekly 153: The Case Against Apple
1:02:30

Andy Ihnatko: "Do you really know anybody who is still running 10.4? Apple is very, very successful in getting people to upgrade at some point."

Alex Lindsay: "Well, when you see somebody running 10.4, you are like, 'What is wrong with you?' "

Andy Ihnatko: "Yeah."

Leo Laporte: "Yeah, yeah. What is 10.4? Is that Panther?"

Alex Lindsay: "Oh, I don't know."

Andy Ihnatko: "Panther."

Alex Lindsay: "Oh, I think it was something..."

Leo Laporte: "Tiger?"

Texas Hold'em

Rob promised to write a blog about my favorite iPod game, Texas Hold'em, but after waiting forever I figure it's time for me to step in considering I mentioned it in yesterday's post.

It turns out that it does feature multiplayer gaming but using the standard Wi-Fi that's available on any generation iPhone/iPod touch, rather than BlueTooth which was a feature only introduced with the second gen models.

What's cool is this game comes with multiplayer support for up to 8 people so it looks like I don't have to upgrade to iPhone Software 3.0 just yet. Who's up for a poker party during our next gathering?

The game itself is superb showing off Cover Flow as well as other iPhone/touch features. What instantly grabbed me was the high quality live action video clips of the dealer and your opponents. It reminded me a bit of Tad and company from The 7th Guest.

In case Rob is keeping score, so far I've played it 185 times, winning 10% of the time in 1st place, 5% in second and 2% in third and I've gotten as far as the Roppongi level. I usually play aggressive since its all fake money anyway.

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Edit: Turns out BlueTooth wasn't on 1st gen iPhones either, so I revised the blog to reflect this.
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Peer to Peer Gaming

Back in June, I blogged that I was still on the fence about upgrading my iPod touch to the new iPhone 3.0 Software Update.

Rob made a comment that I should upgrade so that we could play Texas Hold'em together using Peer to Peer Gaming. According to Apple this feature is only available on the 2nd generation touch, since it requires Bluetooth technology that doesn't exist on my 1st generation model (also stated on the iPod touch Software Update webpage).

What's strange is that some people claim it works when using Wifi. So what's the deal, does anybody know?

For the record, I still haven't upgraded to 3.0 yet and it looks like I'm not the only one.

Why Tiger?

I figured since Apple released it's latest Mac OS X 10.5.8 update to Leopard today, I'll take the time to explain why I'm still using Tiger.

Since its beta days I've been a staunch supporter of Mac OS X, purchasing every new iteration usually the same day it became available. I usually bought the software using my educational discount up until Leopard was released in October 2007. For some reason Apple didn't give as big of a student discount on this version so I held on upgrading until I was able to secure more funds for the purchase. Well a few days became a few weeks, which then turned into a few months and then eventually years later I was still was using Tiger.

It wasn't that I didn't want Leopard (I wanted to use Time Machine and Spaces) but Tiger seemed to be good enough. All my apps ran fine on it and I liked the fact I could still use Classic with it on my G5. There were also minor issues like my Canon scanner not working with Leopard but that could have been resolved by using VueScan (or by buying a new scanner).

I was about to pull the trigger when Apple released the Mac Box Set. With the Amazon discount it was almost like getting iLife and iWork for free but again my iLife '08 software suite was doing the job.

Another thing causing me to procrastinate was the fact Snow Leopard was just around the corner. Why buy now when I can skip a generation and go straight to 10.6? Well Apple ruined those plans when it was confirmed that Snow Leopard would be an Intel only product. Yes I knew from last year that the developer editions had this limitation but I was hoping PowerPC support would be in the final shipping version (wishful thinking on my part).

Now here we are in August 2009 and I'm still not sure what I'm going to do. Upgrade my G5 which is getting long in tooth to an operating system that may not even be on the shelf next month or stay firm and go down with the ship? During the interim I'll have to continue to endure the ribbing from my Mac friends who still wonder in amazement that I'm still using Tiger. Perhaps I'll cough up the cash after I put Leopard through its paces whenever I finally get a MacBook Pro. Time will tell.