Egg Freckles

July 2011

• Should You Buy…

  Should you buy AppleCare? Every Apple product comes with 90 days of complimentary telephone technical support and a limited one year warranty. AppleCare for Mac extends your service and support coverage to three full years from the date you purchased your computer. It gives you global repair coverage, and direct access to Apple experts for questions on a wide range of topics. But at up to $349 per computer, AppleCare for Mac can be a considerable investment. That is why you should know what AppleCare for Mac covers, and what it does not. AppleCare for Mac covers: All included hardware and accessories. One compatible Apple-branded display if purchased at the same time as your computer. An Apple-branded mouse, Magic Trackpad, Apple Battery Charger and keyboard if included with the Covered Equipment (or purchased with a Mac mini or Mac Pro). An AirPort Express or AirPort Extreme Base Station, AirPort Time Capsule, Apple memory modules (RAM) and Apple USB SuperDrive if used with the…

  Permanent link to “Should You Buy AppleCare?”

• Why I Bought…

  I have had a Mac.com email address ever since I had a Mac that could send email. iTools, the predecessor of .Mac and MobileMe, has been part of my online identity since the summer of 2001. I remember when the only way to access my iTools’ IMAP email was through Outlook Express. When sending files to iDisk’s 5MBs of storage required AppleShare. When one of the perks of owning a Mac was the ability to send tasteful electronic greeting cards with Apple’s branding all over them. Before 2002 Apple’s online offerings were less about features and more about exclusivity. iTools was free, but only if you owned a Mac. iTools was replaced with .Mac in the summer of 2002. Suddenly my mac.com email address cost something, my online storage size got a little larger, and my iCard electronic greeting cards? Well they stayed the same. I started paying for .Mac because I saw the value in developing the online identity I started under iTools. Additional services like Apple’s miserable Backup…

  Permanent link to “Why I Bought MobileMe”

June 2011

• What Lion Left…

  Apple may be adding 250+ new features to Mac OS X Lion, but just like Snow Leopard before it some features are scheduled to be taken away. Early Intel Macs Lion’s aggressive system requirements excludes early Intel Macs without a 64-bit compatible processor. This includes the first few versions of Intel powered iMacs, MacBook Pros, Mac minis, and MacBooks equipped with “Yonah” processors. (All versions of the Mac Pro contain 64-bit Xenon processors capable of running Lion.) Even the first 64-bit Core 2 compatible Macs that make the cut will require additional memory to run Lion. The base system requirement is 2GBs, and that is enough to max out those early 64-bit machines. It has been more than five years since the first Intel powered Macs were introduced and it comes at no surprise that they will not be supported by Lion. Snow Leopard made the logical cut of dropping support for PowerPC powered Macs, and Lion is making a similar break from the 32-bit machines of the past. PowerPC…

  Permanent link to “What Lion Left Behind”

• Burn a Lion Boot…

  With the absense of easily obtainable installation media Mac OS X Lion looks like it might make for a difficult clean install. Not so, Apple was hiding the official installation media disc image under our noses the entire time. Purchase and download Lion from the Mac App Store on any Lion compatible Mac running Snow Leopard. Right click on “Mac OS X Lion” installer and choose the option to “Show Package Contents.” Inside the Contents folder that appears you will find a SharedSupport folder and inside the SharedSupport folder you will find the “InstallESD.dmg.” This is the Lion boot disc image we have all been waiting for. Copy “InstallESD.dmg” to another folder like the Desktop. Launch Disk Utility and click the burn button. Select the copied “InstallESD.dmg” as the image to burn, insert a standard sized 4.7 GB DVD, and wait for your new Lion Boot Disc to come out toasty hot. It is important that you burn your Lion boot disc or backup the Lion installer prior to installing Lion…

  Permanent link to “Burn a Lion Boot Disk”

• The Best Mac OS

  With the unveiling of Lion just days away it is easy to look back at past releases of Mac OS and see how we arrived at Apple’s latest system software. Over the last 27 years Apple has introduced more than 17 major releases of its premier desktop operating system. Some releases such as System 7, and Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger brought revolutionary changes to the Mac while making the transition between hardware architectures. Evolutionary releases like System 6, and Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard consolidated features while improving stability. The entire history of Mac OS says more about Apple than any other product, and it is the best of Mac OS that says the most about Apple’s future. When considering the best version of Mac OS you must compare releases that offered the greatest number of new features against versions that clocked the longest up time. You must reference the classic system software of yesterday’s Macintosh against the latest breaking developments in Mac OS X. Your answer might be…

  Permanent link to “The Best Mac OS”

April 2011

• Stacey CMS

  Stacey is a framework for building simple websites. The project is based around two core ideals: Separating textual content & assets from your HTML Keeping ugly PHP-style logic out of your templates Stacey accomplishes this without a database, or installation files. Simply drag the application onto a web server with PHP installed and Stacey starts runing. “Content is managed by creating folders and editing text files.” Templates are generated by authoring HTML with a special set of tags. You have complete control over every piece of markup that is generated. All of the dynamic parts like breadcrumbs, navigation lists, and embedding images are handled for you automatically. I start a new note in Stacey by copying the folder for the last note I have written. Each folder contains all of the note’s assets. Text can be written in plaintext, markdown, or HTML. Images can be .jpg, .jpeg, .gif, or .png. Stacey also supports videos, sounds and PDFs. Each note’s…

  Permanent link to “Stacey CMS”

February 2011

• Choosing a Newton

  Apple released four distinct Newton form factors containing eight different models between August 1993 and February 1998. Each form factor was an evolutionary step forward for the platform, and introduced design considerations and features that were different from past and subsequent models. Choosing a Newton requires understanding each models benefits and weaknesses and applying that knowledge towards selecting the Newton that best meets your needs. Original MessagePad & 100 The OMP was unveiled and released on August 3, 1993 at MacWorld Boston. It’s release was somewhat premature and it is referred to by some of the Newton faithful as the ‘grand public beta test’. Despite having similar technical specifications as later Newtons the OMP is limited to the kind of personal information management we attribute to yesterday’s PDAs or today’s most rudimentary mobile phones. Names, Dates, To Dos, Notes, and the ability to send simple faxes and emails are the OMP’s killer features, but…

  Permanent link to “Choosing a Newton”

• Why I Carry a Newton

  A Newton MessagePad, the grandfather of all PDAs, is a funny thing to carry around with you when most people are sliding super slim, constantly connected, application-rich smartphones into their pockets. Compared to the iPhone a Newton MessagePad looks like a green brick, and I have been accused more than once of stealing the rubberized signature pad from a UPS delivery man. Despite what my Newton lacks in portability, connectivity, and applications it makes up for with a unique set of features no other mobile computer can match. Battery Life MessagePads have a battery life that can be measured in weeks and not days. While most modern smartphones struggle to make it through a twenty four hour period, my Newton keeps on ticking due to an energy conscious design that continues to impress more than ten years later. Best of all, when my Newton runs out of juice a simple AA battery swap will get it back on task while a modern smartphone must wait three to four hours before going back to…

  Permanent link to “Why I Carry a Newton”