A great free tool from Radio Silence called Private eye allows you to see in real time everything they is talking on the network. You can filter by incoming, outgoing or by application. You can grab this fine piece of software (Mac only) from the site

I had a spare USB Drive made by iOmega and is a 500GIG Dive and if I remember correctly it is a IDE type drive inside not SATA.  The goal was to have this drive plugged into the imac and use it as a time machine backup drive. I started time machine running but after a few minutes the drive went from the desktop and time machine complained it had no drive to back up to. The only way to get the drive back was to power it off and on. This left me puzzled, so I turned to the PC next to my iMac to do some serious testing.

Will the drive fail on Windows?

It crossed my mind that the drive was getting hot after constant use and failed, to make sure this was the case I plugged it into a computer running Windows 7 and the goal her was to torture test the drive and see if it either kept working or indeed failed.

I formatted the Drive and made sure it was a full not a quick format – this took a long while (as you would expect) and at no point during this test did the drive stop working. I then moved onto copying as close to 500GIG and once again this took a long while but passed with flying colours. It was obvious from these test so far then that the drive was as much working as humanly possible right.

Testing once again on OSX Lion

Now that we know it is working, let us move it back to the iMac, started copying some files and after 10 minutes (it’s a random time) the light goes out, the drive is no longer there and I did try all the USB Ports on the back of the computer.

I shall do more testing with other drives (I have a 320GIG handy) to see if this a LION issue.

Of all the companies that are out there, the one that I thought could get it right with a major operating system rollout would be apple. They stated that if you bought a computer from apple from the 25th June onwards, you are entitled to OSX Lion when it came out free of charge. The problem is, the servers that handle verifying if your are entitled to acode or not is having trouble matching serial numbers against inventory. When I headed to the page I entered my infomation in there only for it to tell me:

Sorry, we can’t find the serial number you provided. Please recheck your serial number and enter it again.

Apple Support – second to none

I Always assumed that apple support were great, I called them up and then went through the issue, tried it and explained to me that in fact the servers were overloaded and I was to try again either later on that day or in fact the next day. As this was the first time I had called and could beileve maybe that was the case, I ended the call but not before the guy was trying to sell me Apple care of course.

I searched around the web and spotted something, every time they have a major upgrade such as Leopard, Snow Leopard and iLife, people struggle to get verified on the apple site.  I left this until the next morning, surely this would be fixed by then right?

The day after the day before

I tried at 8am UK time, still the same, I called Apple support and got the same old story, servers are too busy. I took his name this time, he was called Kiren. He told me to try later, it should work by then – I hung up. I tried many times whilst at work and finally when I got home, I had one last go before calling Apple. No Surprise then that the page did not work and I called once again apple support, this took 10 minutes to get a person so they must be getting a lot of issues same as mine.

We went through the normal blurb and he tried to get his supervisor to maybe get an answer but he failed at that and asked if I wanted to wait for this guy or just leave it until one day it might work? The other suggestion he gave me was why do I not just go out and buy it if I wanted it that badly, after all it was only £22 or something.

I have a better idea on how to get Lion and no need for serial numbers – you failed Apple.

I thought I would write a new post with my thoughts on the new iMac that I bought, this may help some people who are not sure if spending that much money on a computer is worth it or not. I need to add of course that I have owned the 24 inch iMac and know enough about this sort of thing already. Given the time since using Apple computer in a proper sense (I have a Hackintosh running 10.5.8), it would be nice to see what has changed, how much I had forgot and how working on such a large display would either Aid me in my work or hinder me due to the size. Let us begin then on this journey back to the mac.

The Arrival of the Hardware

The box arrived at 7:30am on a Tuesday and if you recall I ordered it on a Sunday – so that’s not bad going at all and it saved waiting in all day for this to arrive. I was expecting after watching various un-boxing video’s for the plain outer box to have another one inside but with refurbished it seems there is not inner box, no marking whatsoever with iMac on the side and so forth. I checked it over, it looked un-marked and got it set up in place. The good thing about the imac is that there is one plug with no other wires at all (apart form the network cable of course). The Mouse and keyboard is now Bluetooth, my old one was the wired version with keypad and the mouse was the one with the little ball.

Boot it for the first time

On the first Boot, the white screen seemed to stay on for ages and then finally the welcome video played, it soon picked up many updates, rebooted and found yet more updates. I have seen people complain about Windows 7 doing this but it seems Apple are the same, maybe not as many reboots of course.

Getting used to the Hardware

The keyboard is really small and most of the functions keys already do something so this never left many for stuff like spaces (which I placed on F6). Typing on the keyboard was not as good as say my Logitech keyboard and for normal day to day stuff this is fine but if I were to write a blog post or a long email I think I shall carry on using the Windows machine. The mouse as I had heard is not the best thing in the world, the shape does not lend itself to be held properly (too thin) and it does not always respond to the clicks and swipes. Quite often I had gone back two pages as I had used two fingers and it took this as a swipe. I have heard the batteries run out quickly so this I shall see. I cannot see myself buying with the Apple charger or the induction charging device from apple – I would rather just change the keyboard and mouse.

The super large display

As everybody has pointed out, the display is big and let us not forget that apple have spaces which means you can have 4 (or more) virtual screens with applications on each, this increases productivity a lot. If you find the text is a bit small to read, remember that OSX allows you to zoom in with the mouse on any part of the screen. There is the option to use the display as an input (not sure how that works) and even get devices to attach your PS3 for example. I need to say though that the screen is very bright and as it is reflective, acts almost like a mirror and can be distracting.

The Speed of the machine

To make sure I had an Core i7 in there, I did about this mac and was happy to see instead of supply 4 GIG ram (2 x 2) they had in fact gave me 2 x 4Gigs to give me a total of 8 GIG ram. I have already price the Ram and I can get a 4GIG stick for £28, for now I am happy to leave it running with 8GIG ram.

One of the things I did was try a virtual machines running Windows 7 and this is while I had all sorts of programs open and it all ran without even stressing the machine. One thing I did notice though was the noise grew a lot louder due to the Fans running on full. To compare, in the Dell Desktop (also Core i7) this is not the case as it has a full case to spread the air around while the iMac is a lot thinner of course.

The Speed of powering up the machine

I alwasy thought my Dell Windows 7 machine was slow at starting up and I do not count the time it takes to get to the desktop but rather the time it is before I can actually use the machine. I knew what was slowing my machine down though and this is the fact I have lot of backdrops on my NAS drive and the desktop switcher it working out what picture to choose next. The iMac stays at the white screen doing nothing (in my eyes) for as long as my windows machine is loading to the desktop, once I get the spinning wheel, it takes mere seconds to get to the desktop and of course is now is ready to work (unlike Windows). The iMac is faster but not by that much which surprised me, maybe if I had SSD it would boot very fast indeed.

Conclusion

Given the speed, the ease of use that comes with OSX and the fact there is no wires trailing all over the place combined with the large display makes this machine more than worth the money. I would suggest that the Core i5 and even last years models (2010 – the one I bought) are more than enough to do day to day stuff as well as play games. I will probably be replacing the mouse and keyboard at some stage but for now I shall try and get along with what was supplied.

I have been pondering on buying one of these super large Apple iMac machines for a little while now, before I was waiting until they refreshed the range and once they did refresh the range, I was unsure as to which one to buy. I went out yesterday to look around the shops, to see what they had on offer (the prices do not change for apple products) and have a general play around. I spotted some reduced price models but they were not only last year models but shop used (ex-display) and the saving to be honest were not that great. In my mind I was unsure to buy the Core i5 2.7 Model, the faster (only slightly) Core i5 3.1 model but had a better graphics card or wait until a decent refurb hit the store.

The New models

The main features of the new models were simply Thunderbolt, the New HD iSight Camera and a faster graphics Card (ATI 6770M or ATI 6970M). Now while thunderbolt sounds a great idea, I do not see myself buying anything that will plug into this thing – I already have various NAS Drives so I wont be buying an external Thunderbolt drive. As for the Webcam, this is a nice update but I have various Webcam’s anyhow and I much prefer the flexibility of a seperate movable webcam. This leave the graphics card – it is always better to have the best there is when dealing with an all-in-one type machine as you cannot upgrade this.

How much is too much?

I looked at the New models and £1399 & £1649 seemed to be a lot of money to chuck down, this was holding me back to be honest as I had some money set aside but not enough to clear the whole amount. I did not want to get financing as I felt that this added even more money to the cost of the machine in the long run.

Refurbished

I already know about this section of the apple store and often have a look there but there is not that many 27 inch models for sale. Today I went there and there was a selection of 4 models to choose from:

• Core i3 3.2Ghz, ATI 5670 512MB ram (2010 Model) – £1,049
• Core i5 2.66GHz, ATI 4850 512MB Ram (2009 Model) – £1,099
• Core i5 2.8Ghz, ATI 5750 1Gig Ram (2010 Model) – £1,189
• Core i7 2.93GHZ, ATI 5750 1Gig Ram (2010 Model) – £1,289

If we ignore the i3 Model and the 2009 Model, this leave a choice of two machines to go for – the Core i5 or the Core i7 – this is were the benchmarks come into play.

We can see the 2010 i7 Model sits second in that list while the 2010 i5 model sits about 10th – so the last year core i7 is still quite a performer. We can also see by the pricing that for an extra £100 – we get a jump in CPU basically. I jumped straight onto the buy it now page and went ahead and completed the transaction – it should arrive by Tuesday (5th July).

What about all the other machines you own?

I have a few machines scattered about that I got by way of upgrades along the way and just put them to use as you get next to nothing for a second hand windows box these days. My plan is simple enough, I can sell my Laptop for say £200-250 (I checked e-bay for the value), I plan to sell this at work as it is easier to get rid of and get the money quickly. As for the desktop machines, I maybe will also try and sell them as well at work but I am not sure how viable selling a desktop is – I may only get a small amount of money and it may be better to carry on using the machines for odd tasks as I am doing now. The problem is I do not have the space for 2 major machines along with the rest to fit on one desk. 

Apple got out the Door the new range of iMac’s – this rather like the older range with the same 27″ Screen, all-in-one design, still no Blu-Ray drive and so forth. The Difference is inside, the CPU is faster (Sandy Bridge model), it now has 2 thunderbolt ports (which I cannot see myself using any-time soon) and the 6 Series ATI Graphics card. The Downside to any “All-in-One” type system is that you cannot really upgrade the thing and if it breaks, your whole system goes down. My thoughts on the iMac in general is that it is a very nice system that is free from clutter but of course as it is all built into the same case, leaving the system switched on overnight is a pain compared to a PC which has an on/off switch for the monitor. The question here then is not if the imac is fit for purpose but rather “Do I really need to buy more hardware”?

What am I using at the moment?

I bought my Dell XPS 435MT System some time back, it features an Intel Core i7 running at 2.67GHz. I combined this with an ATI 4670 Graphics card, this was cheap, silent (passive heatsink) and does not require a large Power Supply Unit to operate. I bought some DDR3 Ram as well to take the machine to 9 GIG’s ram and this all runs on Windows 7 Ultimate edition. The key thing here about this system is that it it silent, the days of fitting 9 fans and having some thing hum away n the corner is long gone. The other fact was it was cheap, refurbished kit saved a lot of money and as good as buying new in my eyes.

Decisions, Decisions

Looking at the Apple website – we have a choice between spending £1,089 on a refurbished Last year 27″ iMac with the Core i5 running at 2.8GHz and the ATI 5750 graphics card. The other option is to get the extra cash out and buy the brand new 2011 27″ iMac which has the 2.7Ghz Core i5 (Sandy Bride model – 25% Faster), ATI 6770M with 512MB, HD iSight camera and finally thunderbolt connectors. This comes in at £1399, so £300 extra?

Normally Money wins out every single time and it depends on what the iMac will be used for that will determine which route to take right? I already have various HD webcams and thunderbolt is nice to have but what devices are there? If the price of the Refurbished was Core i7 Model, then it would be a no-brainer. I shall think about it longer, maybe raise more of the money required.

It has been known for many years that everything that comes out of Apple comes with an added premium, much like buying a BMW for example or a Sony – you are paying for the name. While you get the added build quality compared to the much cheaper ‘run of the mill’ brands, are we entering a time were people have to tighten there belts and could apple suffer during this time?

Jobs

I read a recent news story of a local firm who make and package Bacon and they employ 600 people. One of there major customers (ASDA – a large supermaket chain) choose to go somewhere else to get its bacon and this was such a drastic turn of events for this factor that it had to shed 180 People. This means this christmas 180 People will be sitting there without a job and slap bang at christmas time as well. Will these people think about spending £1000′s on an apple computer or £500 on an iPad? I think not.

Turning the screw

VAT (Value added Tax) is set to rise in the UK in January 2011 – from 17.5% to 20%. Everything that is bought has this TAX applied, this in turn means good go up, the price of food will go up and the money in your pay packet will feel the squeeze. This does not end here though, the price of Gas supplied to your home is due to go up in December, a handy time as it will be cold of course and people need to keep warm right? The price of Fuel for your car – this is set to rise by 8% by the end of the year – this has a knock on effect in that as well as costing you more to top up your car, the price of food and goods go up as they need to transport it via roads.

What has this got to do with apple?

You fancy a new mobile phone, you check the deals and you see you can get an Android phone for free as well as a lower contract with more minutes per month – compare this to an iPhone, not only are you locked into a 2 year contract but you get less talk time, less sms messages and less internet usage and you have to buy the phone. Does the Android do the same as the iPhone? Of course it does to the average consumer.

The iPad looks might fine but a starting price of £450 seems a lot when you start to compare it to the £179 Android Tablet computers. Remember the person on the street has no great technical background and the price will pull them toward the Android device – especially if the salesman can talk it up enough.

On the computer front, we have an Mac Mini which is junk compared to the equivalent priced windows machine. You can buy an Core i7 box for the price of that Mini – the only saving Grace is OS X but hey, just what does it do different? The IMac’s are good all-in-one computers but once again – given the above, people will start to think twice before chucking this kind of money down. We shall not even go towards the Mac Pro – this is to some people the price of a Car.

Sony you said?

I remember a time that a Sony TV was a no-brainer – yes it cost a lot more but you got a good end product for your money. When I went shopping for a new 42″ TV – it was hard to even consider the Sony even though they had marked the price down to the level of the LG I was buying, Sony had been outclassed and out-priced.

I have taken apart a Sony Laptop (I was fixing it and yes they do break) and I had to take my hat off and say how well it was put together. Was it worth the £1000 the person had paid for it? My view was once you take away the name of Sony, it had the same quality keyboard as any other Laptop, it had the same screen, the same CPU and so forth and at the end of the day, did the same job as that £369 Dell Laptop.

Have you say…..

I like all operating systems, I like Windows, I like OS X and I love Linux – I just do not feel though that Apple offer anything that you cannot do on the others. Feel free to put your thoughts though – I would love to hear them.

Before we begin, the story is not about me buying an Apple for Christmas, this is a tale of the ‘normal’ people view of apple, what there children are asking for and the shock factor when you tell them how much they cost, what they do and probably why there children want one. By the way – the picture above – Designed and hand-built by Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the Apple I was Apple’s first product, and went on sale in July 1976 at the distinctly unsettling price of $666.66. Only 200 units were produced, and unlike many other computers of the day, the Apple I came as a fully assembled circuit board containing around 30 chips.

My Son wants an Apple Computer for Christmas

My first encounter was a person at work wanted some advice, her son requested for Christmas he would like an Apple Computer, in fact he was specific – he wanted an Apple Mac Pro Desktop. The mother of course had seen all the desktop computers in the local stores and assumed it would cost about £500. I showed her the Website and explained that the mac Pro starts at £1999, this does not include a monitor or anything crazy like that. She was in shock – how could a computer cost so much money? She asked me “What does it do” and the best way I could describe this without been bias was it is built from the same parts as a normal PC (aka Dell) inside but the build quality is better and it runs a very different operating system called Mac OS X.

Now before people start hating on me – I had to keep this simple, to a person who has no great understanding outside the box on her desk made by Dell and Windows XP. We also discussed the iMac but each time the main shocker was the price.

I have heard about this Apple TV – What does it do?

The next question coming my way is the Apple TV – they heard it was only $99 and given the current Exchange rate of 0.6212 ($ to £) this means it will cost a mere £64 right? Well wrong, it cost £99. Wait one minute there, all they have done is changed the Symbols, do Apple not understand the world uses different currency and has a thing called Exchange rate?

What does this little device do though – well I do not own one but from my understand it connects via Wireless and sync’d up with iTunes and streams your iTunes content. The person seemed puzzled, did it not record your programs for you, show you TV and play movies and on and on? It seems people are confused over that this device does and I think it is the price that is making them look – after all it is made by apple right?

Bottom line on Apple products

You need to ask yourself, what can an Apple computer do for you, is there a program you must run and only out for Apple? Do you like the all-in-one of the iMac (I do) and do you prefer the look and feel of MAC OS X? I have proven (while I owned one) that in fact you can do anything on Linux, On OS X and finally Windows. Each one has something missing and I personally am not happy to be chucking money at an Apple, not when my current computer has enough power to cope easy and I could have bought 4 of my computers for one quad core Mac Pro – that’s the difference and of course Windows 7 is a very well behaved operating system with stable drivers.

Today I went to Meadow Hall Centre which is shopping centre based in Sheffield and I spotted they had one of these so called “Apple Stores” – so I ventured in. The Store reminded me of a mobile phone store with products laid out on tables, chained to the desk and people playing with them with the odd person walking around asking if you wanted any help. This would be a good time for me to have a play with all the apple products and see them in the flesh. Would I pull my wallet out and by something or would I walk away laughing to myself that people pay so much for these things?

The iPad

First on my list (and closest to the door – so they know what sells) was the iPad. It was a lot smaller than I expected and of course as a lot of poeple have rubbed there hands across these things, they were very dirty indeed. They had various demo apps installed to let you see what it could do and I shall be honest here, had I thought “I could use this” I may have bought one at some stage but no people, it was nothing more than a gimmick to me – a rather large iPod if you like. Had it been say £300 – I may have been tempted but starting at £429 is not my idea of a impulse buy item.

iMac 27″

I had someone expected the screen to look bigger than it was, after all it was 27″ right? Maybe as the OS has large icons and lack of items on the desktop (bar the dock) – I never got the sense of “wow – this is big”. If I remember rightly – the Core i7 model was a staggering £1794 and once again, it was not something I pressed and messed about with and said “WoW – this is quick”. I agree though that the short time spent shopping was not a length of time to test and assess the speed of the said apple but whatever – the price people is just too much for what you get – seriously.

Various Apple goods

The router, the mouse, the keyboard, the cases and other things – one point here, they cost money, a lot more than the same products from other people. There was fair few people in the store but not a single person at the till buying anything that I could see. My Guess is people seen the flashy store and wanted to play with the iPad, I even seen various Mac computers with nobody on them. I left and headed off to look for some proper hardware at normal prices and sensible priced software

It’s officially official: Valve will bring its Steam online distribution service and titles from its massive library of hit games to the Mac this April, the company confirmed Monday.

The successful content-delivery service will bring Valve titles like Left 4 Dead and the upcoming Portal 2, as well as games from other publishers, to Apple computers for the first time.

The move was telegraphed last week in a series of teaser posters that mashed characters from Valve games into retro Apple ads. Dan Connors, CEO of Telltale Games, called Apple and Steam a natural fit.

“If there’s anything like iTunes on the PC right now for games, it’s Steam,” Connors said. “So you’ve got two great leaders in digital distribution coming together.”

Steam is the pre-eminent digital distribution platform for PCs. With more than 1,000 games and 25 million user accounts, Steam is by one estimate responsible for more than 70 percent of digital game purchases. Bringing the service to Macs means wider selection, quicker updates and more episodic content for Apple’s traditionally game-deprived computers.

Valve wants to position its games not as static products but as part of an ongoing, constantly updated, ubiquitous service, company co-founder Gabe Newell told Wired.com in advance of Monday’s announcement.

“The traditional model has always been that you have these really extended development times … where you do nothing for customers for several years and then you try to drive everybody into the theaters or into the stores on a given date,” Newell said. “It makes it hard to steer your decisions based on customer feedback, and customers don’t particularly like that. They would like to have the experience of being part of an entertainment community where they’re getting something on a daily or more frequent basis.

“The Mac represents a great opportunity to deliver these things.”

Bringing Steam to Mac will give gamers several cross-platform benefits, Newell said.

• If players already own the PC versions of Valve games, they’ll get Mac versions at no extra charge through a feature called Steam Play.
• By using the Steam Cloud feature that the company introduced in 2008, players can save in-progress games online, then call up those saved games no matter which version they’re playing. If you’re playing Half-Life 2 on your home PC but then head out on the road with your MacBook, you can continue your game-in-progress.

“We looked at a variety of methods to get our games onto the Mac and in the end decided to go with native versions rather than emulation,” said John Cook, director of Steam development, in Monday’s press release.

“We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac and the Xbox 360,” Cook said. “Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates. Furthermore, Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies and so forth. We fully support a heterogeneous mix of servers and clients. The first Mac Steam client will be the new generation currently in beta testing on Windows.”

Portal 2 will be Valve’s first simultaneous release for Mac and Windows, the company said.

“Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step,” said Josh Weier, said Portal 2 project lead in the press release. “We’re always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac.”

Bringing Valve’s gaming engine Source, and the company’s Steamworks development and publishing suite, to the Mac will make it easier for developers to bring games to OS X.

“Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs,” said Jason Holtman, Valve’s director of business development, in the press release. “We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play.”

Easy updates

Steam lets the company take full advantage of the freedom that the PC and Mac platforms give it to constantly update and tweak its games. For instance, the developer has updated its 2007 game Team Fortress 2 more than 100 times, Newell said.

This wouldn’t be possible on a closed system like Microsoft’s Xbox Live, he said: “Microsoft’s QA fees … would be several hundred thousand dollars to do the updates that we did to Team Fortress 2. And that ignores the fact that the cycle on these closed platforms would have taken years to get all these updates through.”

Most recently, Valve leveraged its ability to push updates through Steam and engage its fan base by dropping hints into its 2007 cult hit Portal about the game’s upcoming sequel, letting the fans be an active part of the game’s announcement.

“We want to bring content creators and consumers closer together to minimize the latency between what somebody on the team does versus a fan’s ability to participate in that experience, not put more barriers between them,” Newell said.

Valve isn’t the only PC developer with a strong, engaged fan base looking to Mac. Telltale Games, creator of the episodic Sam and Max games, announced last month that it would be moving to Mac, even inviting fans to vote on which of its games should be ported over first.

While Telltale has not confirmed any of its games will be on the Mac version of Steam, Connors called getting his companies titles on Valve’s digital-distribution platform “a no-brainer.”

“We have games that run on the Mac and we have games that run on Steam, so our goal is to be there,” Connors said. “We think they’re going to do a great job with getting the Steam client over there and we want to continue to be a part of it.”

Asked to name other developers that we’d see on Steam, Valve’s Newell demurred. But Steam’s popularity means that as Valve goes, so go other gamemakers. Steam on Mac means many more games on Mac.

“(Mac) has all of the right pieces, and we know other developers see that as well,” Newell said.