Studio Revamp

Been incredibly busy over the past few days getting the studio sorted out. The catalyst was the acquisition of a new triple monitor stand from Monitors in Motion - the Triple Boa.

What started off as a seemingly difficult task went very smoothly and the new rig looks brilliant and provides maximum flexibility.

Why I decided to completely re-cable the studio is another matter.

You can see the progress in rapid quicktime (!) in the video below.

If you need an iPad or iPhone 4 version - use this link - iPad/iPhone 4 version

SSD Woes

Just to bring you up to speed (no pun intended!), I'm now on my third SSD drive on the MacPro.

If you look back on previous posts, you'll see i was so impressed with the SSD in my MacBook Pro, I ordered one for my main production machine. It's a 256GB SSD from Crucial memory.

I first one failed on me about 2 months ago. Very little warning but ended up I couldn't boot. Couldn't see the drive at all. Extracted the drive and couldn't see it in an external drive enclosure.

Crucial were very good and their automated returns process meant the drive was swapped out with no fuss.

The replacement drive failed about two weeks ago.

Again, a replacement was issued with no fuss and I've just installed it into the MacPro.

Touch wood, the original SSD in the MacBook Pro has behaved faultlessly. I just need to keep an eye on it more closely and ensure my backup is up to date. Luckily, I have a second drive in the MBP so I'll be running daily SuperDuper backups - most of my important data is on external drives or in the cloud anyway.

Anyway, back to the MacPro...

The drive is installed and working. I'll do some performance testing between it and the drive that's been in the MacBook Pro for a while and report back.

The Two Techies Podcast

Aaron and Jamie are two young and highly committed podcasters with a great tech related podcast called "The Two Techies"

They were kind enough to invite me onto episode 29 for a quick interview.

You can hear the results here:

http://theimacone.com/2010/08/07/the-two-techies-29-an-interview-with-don-mcallister/

Thanks for the invite guys and good luck with the podcast.

PS You really do need to shorten that intro ;-)

Mac vs PC - Microsoft's Take

You might have thought that the Mac vs PC marketing campaign was over - well it is from Apple's side. Looks like Microsoft want to have a go!

This section of the Windows 7 website shows Microsoft's spin on the debate.

Unfortunately, although there are some genuine points hidden in the message, the main emphasis is to spread FUD - Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

The average Mac user can see through all this pretty easily but to the unsuspecting PC user, the majority of the points will just re-inforce opinions of the Mac that may have been valid several years ago, but bare no relation to the Mac of today.

In some cases, there are just plain untruths.

What I find really galling though, is the simulated Twitter feed in the sidebar. If you reload the page, you'll see the same Tweets being repeated over and over again. All positive about Windows 7. I'm sure that these are genuine tweets (they wouldn't stoop that low surely?) but the presentation is deceptive in that it appears that this is the "buzz" in real time.

Patently not the case.

Microsoft have obviously filtered and sifted through Twitter and are just presenting tweets that give a positive spin on Windows 7.

Despicable really!

Apple Battery Charger

Arrived.

Plugged in.

Works.

Not much else to say really!

Very small and compact. I like the fact that it uses the same small LED on the top to show the charging status, exactly like the MagSafe connector.

Amber is charging - Green is charged.

A nice Apple touch!