Muskoka Mac User Group » 2005 » June
Some of you will remember Meg’s comments on podcasting from a couple of meetings back. The big news from Apple today was the release of iTunes 4.9 – which understands podcasts!
Some early thoughts and notes – this is definately an Apple interface with an iTunes feel.
So far, I like it. iPodder wasn’t quite ‘me’ and the scheduler required you to be logged in – maybe this will fit my mindset better.
It looks like Apple is trying to drive you towards the iTunes store to find your podcasts – but there is a manual subscribe button for podcasts not originating there.
Unfortunately it won’t import .ompl files so you can transfer your subscriptions forward. I ended up exporting from iPodder to .ompl and then using a text editor to add each one manually to iTunes.
Don’t add too many in a row or it starts ignoring you – I easily got well ahead of it and had to go back and redo a couple entries.
I also had a couple of entries I had to tweak a bit for iTunes to ‘grok’ them
http://feeds.feedburner.com/infoworld/dickerson/podcasts
works fine in iPodder but it has to have a trailing slash in iTunes.
http://www.itconversations.com/rss/category-rss.php?k=dougkaye& amp;e=1
has to be edited to read http://www.itconversations.com/rss/category-rss.php?k=dougkaye&e=1 (ditched the amp;)
And anybody that can explain the bottom two buttons (Podcast directory and Report a Concern) please explain ‘em to me !
Proof that Mac addicts have a sense of humour (or a problem….)
A hula girl dashboard widget – 
.
download here.
This isn’t quite on topic – but it falls under the ‘once removed’ rule 
I’ve been listening to a number of podcasts from www.itconversations.com. While many of these fall into the ‘geek’ catagory there are some real gems in there too.
The one I just listened to I thought would be of general interest is on the subject of children’s use of the internet. It’s a sane practical discussion by Larry Magid – a syndicated columnist and reporter for CBS and the New York Times. I quite enjoyed it. To listen to his speech on the topic – start here and either click on the ‘Play Now’ button or go the download area and download it in your choice of formats. Please note it’s a big download.
Here’s an interesting article from O’Reilly on customizing Mail. It even lists a couple of ways to make the new Mail look like the old mail.
Well, I have a copy of Tiger right here on my desk – So all of you hesitant to take the plunge can wait and get my 2 cents first if you like
I hope to have a good install in a couple of days you can explore at the next meeting or whenever.
Of course with me there’s always a catch. I’ll let everybody know how it works out.
Jamie has been sick and therefore not on top of all the happenings in the Apple world. So, when, on Tuesday night I mentioned Apple’s planned move to Intel chips, he was shocked. His immediate reaction was something just like Brian’s. Then he spent the better part of a day simmering about it and reading other people’s opinions (which certainly are plentiful on the web) and finally wrote a summary of his own thoughts which he has posted on our website. To access Jamie’s wisdom go to www.macs-at-work.com and click on the mini mac icon with the word INTEL on it. For those of you who are beginners at this internet thing, you will notice that your cursor arrow turns into a hand when it moves over the image of the mac mini and lots of other images. This means that it is a link that will take you to another page if you click on it.
Happy reading!
For those of you that haven’t heard – Apple announced today that they will be moving to Intel based chips by the summer of 2006. Here’s some samples of the various announcements I’ve seen:
There’s a million posts on the subject floating around already, but I gotta put my two cents in anyway
I think they need to get their head examined….
Now, I acknowledge they are having trouble making a laptop G5 processor, but that’s not enough reason to put your whole business at risk… and that’s what this does.
A little tidbit everybody seems to be ignoring here is that the just announced last month new Microsoft Xbox 360 runs on IBM G5 chips. IBM’s own mid-range servers are running G5 chips.
Apple was gonna be number three on the totem pole all the sudden, and a laptop chip is hardly a priority for IBM who sold off thier laptop line along with thier PCs to a Chinese company earlier this year. IBM won’t miss Apple’s business much at all.
Intel on the other hand is having it’s butt kicked by AMD lately. That line Jobs put out about ‘the best roadmap going forward’ is baloney. AMD right now has the acknowledged superior 64 bit chip – ironically enough because it has a lot of the same features a G5 has. I think Intel is after some positive press and Apple is hoping they can cut some good deals while the pressure is on Intel.
Where this whole thing really falls apart though is that a large portion of the reliablilty and reputation Mac’s enjoy is built firmly on the fact that Apple has had tight control of both hardware and software. Drivers and related issues aren’t much of a problem when all the hardware is tested ‘in-house.’ Now sure Apple claims that this will still be the case – i.e. you have to buy the hardware from them. Fact of the matter is Apple won’t be able to price thier hardware in the same ballpark as the Dell’s of the world, so now you are trying to convince people to buy more expensive hardware that’s the same stuff they can buy elsewhere just so you can run Mac OS on it? Yeah right. Sure I believe Mac OS is superior in many ways, but it was a lot easier sell when the hardware was different too.
Besides, I’ll put money on the fact Tiger x86 is hacked to run on generic (non-Apple provided) hardware within weeks of it’s release.
Oh, and now you have to tell all those people that you convinced to swap to OSX not so very long ago that they are going to have to make another tumultuous change…
*maybe* five years down the road this makes Apple better off, but I sure hope those iPods keep selling….
Hi Everyone:
Last meeting of the year before the summer break happens on Tuesday, June 7th at 7:30 p.m at the Digital Life Centre at macs@work.
We have some end of the year business and if you have something you would like to show, bring it. See you then. Come with questions, ahas and excitement. We’ll all do our best to help one another.
Cheers, Meg