An open letter to all Apple blogs...

Dear fellow Apple bloggers,

Only seven days to go and I'm really enjoying the coverage leading up to the Apple special event, scheduled for 27th January. I think it's pretty much a given now, that Apple will release a "tablet" type device. On the days leading up to the event, I have a couple of requests...

Let's try and keep the rumours and speculation to reasonable levels, so that the inevitable reality shock isn't too great on Wednesday. It's going to be a great product but you have to bare in mind that it will be a version 1 release. Compare the iPhone version 1 to the current 3GS, not just in terms of the hardware performance but also the level of functionality provided by the current release of software. It may take the Apple tablet a few releases to shine. We all know whatever is released on Wednesday will disappoint those with over ambitious expectations, so let's try to set expectations realistically.

The only other request is an important one but one I fear will be impossible to implement. Let's say that you do get a real, actual picture of the device, or concrete evidence of what it's capable of...

...do us all a favour and bury it.

Yes. Just don't publish it!

Pretend it doesn't exist.

Most if not all of the previous events have been spoiled by the early leaking of information about unannounced products. Let's leave this one for Steve, so we can be truly surprised on the day and not be sullied by some blurry photo released a couple of days before.

An impossible request I know.

Perhaps I should just close down Twitter and Safari until Wednesday.

"MacTabletNetbookThingy" Musings

Props to Ken Ray of Mac OS Ken for coining the term "MacTabletNetbookThingy" - love it!

There's no point me spending ages creating a carefully crafted blog post about what might (or might not) be included in the fabled device. The only thing we can say is that it exists and will be awesome.

Sorry, that was the fanboy in me getting over excited!

Better men than I have written screeds on what to expect, but one particular blog post has nudged me into some speculation on two specific areas of the device and how it may work. The blog post has just been published by one of the MacRoundtable posse and that's David Sparks over at MacSparky. You can also find links to some other great articles in Davids post.

The two things that struck a chord with me in David's post were:

Microsoft Onenote - I've only used this briefly many moons ago, but it was the secret sauce when using a Tablet PC. One wonders if Apple will take the approach of creating a brand new new single application that has been built from the ground up to take advantage of the new features of the "MacTabletNetbookThingy". Perhaps a new application in iLife or possibly iWork.

The other option is that they make the existing iLIfe and iWork suites fully "MacTabletNetbookThingy" compatible. 

My gut feel is that they will have taken the more difficult yet ultimately more "Apple like" approach and re-written all the applications provided with the "MacTabletNetbookThingy" to be fully compatible.

Second Monitor & Processor - OK, this one's personal! David suggests

"You could also run social networking apps, like Twitter, on the tablet while working on your Mac or even watch a screencast about software on the tablet while operating the software on the Mac."

I get a lot of feedback from people saying they like to follow my ScreenCastsOnline tutorials on screen whilst going through the motions on their Mac. The problem is that unless you have a pretty big display or an existing second monitor, it's pretty distracting to swap between the tutorial and the Mac desktop or App.

Running a ScreenCastsOnline tutorial on the "MacTabletNetbookThingy" would be perfect. To be honest, even though I already do an iPhone/iPod touch version of the show, the screen is just too small to view a screencast. OK it you're travelling and just want a quick peek, but it's very hard to follow and see clearly what's happening on screen.

However, a ScreenCastsOnline tutorial on a 10" screen in HD - wow!

I already produce ScreenCastsOnline shows in both 1280x720 and 960x540 and both should play perfectly on the "MacTabletNetbookThingy". The entire archive of over 230+ shows (OK 99% of them) are already in these resolutions. 

The MacTabletNetbookThingy could be the best thing to happen to ScreenCastsOnline in a while!

The Apple Slingshot Effect...

What is the "Apple slingshot effect" I hear you ask?

Well this is how Apple give their stock price a double boost in a matter of days - a double whammy, in effect.

This is how it works...

First, you have to have a stellar quarter in sales. This usually is not a problem for Apple as each quarter just seems to be getting better and better. If speculation is anything to go by, the past quarter including Christmas has been another record quarter for Apple. So, once you have the stellar figures, you schedule a quarterly earnings call. In reality, the earnings call has to go ahead regardless of the results - as a publicly traded company, Apple are obliged to do this.

The trick is in the timing.

So the next quarterly earnings call has been scheduled for January 25th 2010. With a presumed record quarter, the stock price should go up!

Whammy number one.

It's also speculated (and still not confirmed) that Apple are preparing a major product announcement for January 27th, just two days after the earnings call. If Apple deliver the goods, the already inflated stock price resulting from the earnings call, will be slingshotted on the basis of future products.

Whammy number two.

A double whammy!

Of course, this assumes that they have had a good quarter but also that they announce something earth shattering on the 27th.

The Mac community is collectively holding it's breath in anticipation that the fabled new Apple tablet will be announced at the special event.

I think it will be just that for one main reason...

Apple have still not made a correction to peoples expectation.

They know that rumours are running at fever pitch and to not deliver the device would be detrimental. They could easily have extinguished (or at least dampened) the rumours by placing a few strategic calls to certain luminaries. But no, they are letting the rumours have free reign!

Along with the Wall Street Journal making "informed" comments and the highly suspicious taking down of the Fingerworks site just a few days ago, all the signs lead me to believe that that Tablet will be announced at a special event on the 27th.

Mind you, they have yet to even confirm the special event!

Things are going to get very silly over the next few weeks...

Disaster averted...

Happily ploughing through my email inbox this morning, trying to get on top of things, when suddenly, the Mac Pro "kernel panicked". To the uninitiated, or to those who still think Macs don't crash, this is the equivalent of the Windows "Blue Screen of Death" on a Mac, albeit handled much more elegantly by a slowly rising curtain of darkness with a multilingual message displayed centre screen.

Anyhow, it means the whole Mac has crashed and you need to power down and power back up.

Since getting a Mac 5 or 6 years ago, this has happened six or seven times on various machines and usually a reboot fixes things.

Except this time...

The Mac Pro would not boot.

Not "pining for the fjords" or simply "stunned", it was a true "Norwegian Blue".

No chimes, just a laboured sound of a fan spinning up and down again in a cycle.

Oh dear!

Baring in mind this was my main production machine, an icy chill ran down my spine when I realised the severity of the problem. 

Luckily, this only lasted for a second or two as I had a contingency plan.

Back when the Nehalem Mac Pros came out (you know, the ludicrously expensive ones), my local Apple store contacted me to see if I'd be interested in one of the pre-Nehalem Mac Pros at a knock down price. To cut a long story short, I said yes! The main idea was that I could use two Mac Pros as a distributed encoding system but to be honest, due to the flakyness of Compressor, this never really worked out. The second reason was to have a backup machine, you know, just in case I ever had a problem with my main production machine.

Like today!

So within 5 minutes of the problem, I had both Mac Pros disconnected and next to one another.

A single flick of the lock both side panels were off.

Pulled 4 drives out of each machine and swapped them over - no tools required

Removed the Expansion Card holder in each machine (4 screws)

Moved my CompressHD card and MX02 card from the production machine to the Spare and replaced the gard holder.

Panels back on and reconnect.

Within 15 minutes I had the spare Mac pRo back up and running with the identical configuration as before and I'm back in business.

The "spare" Mac Pro was being used by my wife so in order to keep her working, I took the boot drive from the spare Mac Pro and inserted it into the Voyager Quad Interface and connected it to my old 17" MacBook Pro via Firewire. Chose the external drive as the boot drive and she's working away exactly the same as before.

All that is left is for me to battle through the snow to take this Mac Pro back to the Apple store for repair. Wish that Apple did a home repair service - I'd pay for that.

So my folly of buying a second Mac Pro has now been completely justified and it's a huge relief to know I can carry on regardless. 

As an aside, the ease at which you can transport drives between machines and how OSX can boot machines with external drives without the slightest hiccup is one of the most impressive features of using Macs, especially when comparing the nightmare of trying to boot a mixture of Windows machines. It just makes it so easy to support and should be one of the reasons why businesses and corporates should take Macs more seriously. 

Update on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 at 10:12PM by Don McAllister

The Mac Pro is now safely back from the repair shop. It seems they needed to replace the logic board. 

Now I Can't Guarantee This For Everyone...

OK, so this is a cop out for my daily blog post but I thought it was note worthy.

I'm not ashamed to say I get a fair number of thank you emails and great feedback for ScreenCastsOnline, but this one gave me a rosy glow and I thought I'd share it with you!

Greetings Don,

I just wanted to say a few things about the show before I give you a show suggestion. I have been following the show for some time now and because of the wonderful lessons you have put together, I was able to apply and hired at my the Apple store as a product specialist. Thank you so much for putting together such amazing and professional content every week. It has made all the difference in my life as a novice mac user to a product specialist now training for creative genius.

The author is a regular viewer who I've exchanged emails with a couple of times and I cleared it with him before publishing. 

As I say, I can't guarantee to get everyone a job in the Apple store and I'm sure the ScreenCastsOnline contribution was only part of the whole equation, but it's nice to know that the show can make a real difference!