Another bit of free software for your Mac. If you run a Nokia mobile phone you’ll know the pain it is to get media across from your Mac to the handset. Syncing contacts and calendars is no problem with iSync, but now we have Media Transfer for Mac which integrates itself into iTunes and iPhoto to allow you to send music and podcasts to your phone and photos from your phone to your computer. It’s in beta at the moment but well worth a look even so.
Apple
Mozy for Mac
I mentioned an online backup service called Mozy almost a year ago well they now have a Mac client which is well worth taking a look. You get 3gb storage for free and can upgrade to unlimited storage for $5 per month. The point of .Mac is suddenly becoming even less clear than it was already.
Parallels v3
The release of Parallels 3.0 rather passed me by last week, but if you are a Parallels user I’d definitely recommend you download the new version and try it out, there are some really cool new features. The killer feature for me is the integration from Windows back to the Mac, for example your Windows drive gets mounted as a drive which accessible from OS X. You are even able to launch files in the Windows client in a Mac application. I haven’t yet used VMWare for the Mac but if Parallels keeps on adding these new features then I just won’t need to bother.
VPN Client for Mac
With my current client I’ve been granted access to their internal network via VPN with the caveat that I have to use a specific VPN supplier, namely Checkpoint. Luckily they do have a VPN client for OS X called “VPN-1 SecureClient R56”. It works pretty well actually but I have had a problem when not using it that the airport task runs at 100% processor until I kill both SecureClient and airport. Not ideal. The Apple help on the subject is worse than useless:
Make sure your third-party VPN client software is up-to-date. Contact your network administrator or the manufacturer of your VPN client software.
What I have found after some playing around is if either the VPN or airport are in use then the problem doesn’t occur, if neither are being used is the time when the processor ramps up. So if you remember to turn off the airport connection before you shutdown, then when you restart you don’t get the processor hogging issue. I used to just leave it on all the time so this is an annoyance but it saves having to go through the whole killing tasks process after startup each morning.
Sailing Clicker
It’s obviously a week for new software. On the recommendation of Leo Laporte on the Macbreak Weekly show I downloaded Sailing Clicker for my phone to give it a try.
Basically it acts as a remote control for your Mac but it does so much cool stuff it’s well worth checking out. If you get a phone call, for example, it mutes your computer, flashes the incoming number (or name if it is entered into your phone’s address book!) onto the screen and when the calls finishes resumes as before. Then when you walk away from the computer it will pause iTunes, mark your iChat status as away and lock your screen saver. If you do presenting then your phone can control Powerpoint or Keynote and if you use iTunes it acts as a full remote with access to playlists, album art etc. And all of this in an idiot proof control panel. Very nice.
Sametime for Mac First Impressions
So I’ve been using the new Sametime client on my laptop for the last couple of days now and, nice as it is to have native Apple software, I’m afraid it’s not quite polished enough to call a gold release. It feels to me like a late beta or a release candidate version. There are still annoying little bugs / features which have pushed me back to continuing with Adium for the moment.
This is just a list of the bits and pieces I’ve found so far…
These are all minor issues but taken together it makes the product look slapdash and thrown out without sufficient testing. I would much much prefer to wait for a further round of bug fixing and testing to get the product right than have to deal with unfinished software.
The only thing I can say is that I hope this isn’t an indication of what we can expect for the Notes 8 release which is also based on the Eclipse platform.
MBP Back again
I got the call from the Apple store this afternoon that they had fixed my Macbook Pro again. They were gracious enough to admit that the problem with the fans due to a mistake when installing the new logic board. As I suspected, one of the temperature sensors had not been pushed home properly and so the fans were running in their default safe mode, so it was definitely worth getting fixed.
Just a few hours of work to do now to restore all of my data and programs (again).
Lets never speak of this again.
MBP Gone Again
It became obvious during the day that the fan problem on my repaired Macbook Pro is more serious than I had hoped. In the office I use a laptop stand which happens to have a fan built into the bottom which is powered by a USB socket, with this running and the fans continued to churn at full pelt the case of the laptop was actually cold to the touch even when I was running really heavy duty software. So I headed back out to the Apple Store (again) this evening and they’ve taken it back to try and fix it (again). Which all means that I’m back to the borrowed Vaio 🙁
In the past I have recommended without hesitation, and to be fair the guys in the store are very helpful. But this is a real pita which may well make me think twice in the future about my hardware platform of choice. Windows is still a steaming pile of crap, but at least the hardware is cheap and generic, if a laptop breaks it’s a lot easier to fix.
MBP Back
I got the call from the Apple store last night that my Macbook Pro had been fixed so I dashed down to pick it up and then spent about 3 hours restoring it to include all of my apps, data and configuration. They seem to have fixed the problems as I can listen to my purchased music and use the ethernet port with no problems. One thing I have noticed is that the fans now kick in at a lot cooler temperature than before. I’m undecided whether this is a good thing. On the one hand it’s a lot easier to use on my lap now but the extra noise is annoying. Maybe it’s just because this weekend is so warm, I’ll see over the next few weeks.
Boy am I glad though that I can get back to my proper machine with everything set up just the way I like it. It’s amazing how much muscle memory is involved in using your computer, the simple act of moving a few keys or removing trackpad features on the Vaio really slowed down my work during the week as I was having to think about using the computer rather than the problem at hand.
Now out to the balcony to enjoy the sunshine for the afternoon.