A Leopard Weekend

Damm, is it really almost a month since I last posted here! If truth be known, I'm probably micro blogging more than ever on Twitter rather than traditional blogging, it just seems more immediate and easier. You can checkout my micro blogging and follow me at Twitter and can get a great OSX client from Snitter Anyway, A quick update post Leopard release. The big cat arrived on time (actually before time) on Friday and I've spent the best part of the weekend installing Leopard on various machines including the MacBook, PowerMac G5, the Mac Mini and the MacBook Pro. I've used all three different installation schemes and had various results but on the whole, it's been a fairly painless experience! I'll cover the installation processes during this weeks show and give you my initial thoughts but some immediate things spring to mind...

• SuperDuper is worth its weight in gold - do not even attempt an install without a good bootable backup (preferably two)
• If you have any external cards in your Mac, check with the manufacturer that they are certifed for Leopard. My eSATA card in my PowerPC G5 appears not to be so I've had to revert to Tiger on that machine.
• If you have Application Enhancer installed either remove it or upgrade to the latest version. Only use a clean install or Archive and Install otherwise you'll have problems. I'll cover this in this weeks show.

Because of the issues with the PowerMac G5 which has been my main machine for a long time. and the fact I need to use Leopard on a regular basis, I decided to promote my MacBook Pro to be my new main machine running Leoprad. So some initial teething problems aside, my initial impressions are extremely favourable! I won't write screeds about it but my favourites at the moment are:

• Spaces - Excellent, excellent, excellent - Virtual desktops done right by Apple.
• Mail - Integration of to dos and notes is great but does need the iPhone intergration introduced.
• UI - Unlike the general trend to bash the Dock and the new UI, I like it!

Lot's more to cover but I'll bring that out over the next few shows. If you want to read the definitive review on Leopard, I'd highly recommend the Ars Technica review.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Leopard

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Appearance on the Mac Roundtable

Those nice chaps over at the mac roundtable (OK, so that nice chap Tim Verporten... not saying that the other chaps aren't nice.... Doh!) invited me onto this weeks episode of the mac roundtable with Tim, my good buddy Allison Sheridan from the NosillaCast Podcast and Steve Stanger from The Mac Attack. A good time was had by all as we pondered the imponderable and had a good old fashioned "chingwag" all about Leopard and the Mac in general. If so inclined, you can check out the episode here or subscribe to the podcast (recommended).

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Leopard Launch?

Still no official leopard launch date and the clock is ticking? Everyone seems to think 26th Oct @ 6pm but still no official word from Apple. Ah well, today is a Tuesday (16th Oct) so I imagine we'll hear today. Update (14:08) - Told you so :-) Leopard Launch

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No Laptop....

Just back from an extremely pleasant (albeit tiring) few days in Prague (Chezch Republic). I have to keep online at least once a day to check on membership additions and issues and in the past, I've taken my MacBook Pro for just such reasons. However, this time I thought I'd risk taking just the iPhone to see how I fared. No edge connection (as the iPhone is unlocked and running on a temporary SIM) but the good news was that the Hotel had free wifi in the bar - result! So how did I manage - surprisingly well! The mail client built into the iPhone is great and I was able to read all my mail, sort into urgent and not so urgent, respond to the urgent ones and file those for later action into a subfolder. Check out this weeks show for how I have my email configured. But along with email I was able to tweet and read my RSS feeds just as easily as at Home. Where it really surprised me was in the usefulness of Internet browsing to check on various bits and pieces - locations, place names, sporting stuff, basically everything at your fingertips! No to mention, passing round the iPhone to view clips and articles on thins we chatted about during the evening! It really is a remarkable, game changing platform. Oh and as an aside, Prague is an absolutely beautiful city and highly recommended. I was also surprised to see a large number of Macs in and around the town including a number of Macbooks and iMacs.

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SMS Dashboard Widget

Alco over at SMS Mac contacted me a while ago to do a voice over for a short introductory video to his new Send SMS Dashboard widget. This allows you to send SMS messages directly from your Mac Dashboard. So if you want to hear me in a slightly different tone to the usual weekly show, you can check out the video (and SMS Dashboard widget) here.

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