With the latest iPhone commercial hitting the airwaves touting the incredible Mail app, Stock Reader and otherwise catering to a business user, a lot of focus on the web in the last 24 hours has been the iPhone’s ability (or inability in some people’s eyes) to handle Microsoft Exchange Server.

We use Exchange 2007 where I work (and I administer Exchange so I can’t blame anyone but myself) and getting it to work on the iPhone or Mail.app on  the Mac has been a bit of a hassle.  I get the “The message from XXXXX concerning YYYYY has not been downloaded from the server. You need to take this account online in order to download it.” message that also frequently occurs on Mail.app on the Macintosh.

The problem is that mail doesn’t get pulled from IMAP sometimes and won’t come through until other mail “pushes” it through.  Sometimes repeated restarts help.  I blame Exchange’s IMAP implementation for this as I have two other IMAP accounts working flawlessly on it and the iPhone support pages are alight with similar complaints.  However, because my Exchange email is the most important, (yes, I am a wage slave – the trust fund from the far off relative hasn’t kicked in just yet) I need results.  Also, iCal and Addressbook don’t synch with Exchange (yet) and I often find myself in need of these features.

read on for more screenshots and info….

So I turn to the Outlook Webmail client.  And you know what?  It really isn’t that bad!  As a matter of fact, props to Microsoft for their Web 2.0 SDK work.  Maybe the Microsoft Live initiative will be a competitor afterall.  The combination of Exchange’s almost complete messaging (lite for non IE browsers) web client and Apple’s Safari Browser might be the best way to experience Exchange on a mobile device.  Even over EDGE or GSM, my mail page pops up very quickly and is very responsive.  The spell check is done on the back end as is the addressbook lookups and the calendar invites.  So, when I return to my desktop, all my changes are propagated properly (take that Exchange POP3 users!)  

The obvious issue is when I am out of Wifi or EDGE/GSM range and have no cached email to go back to.   I am then stuck using iPhone Mail.app to write emails to be sent later.  And even for all of Microsoft’s work, the Outlook Web client still isn’t as beautiful as Apple’s mail – and probably won’t ever be.

At some point in the future, Microsoft and Apple will probably figure out this IMAP issue and might even get Addressbook and iCal talking to Exchange properly.  I can wait, however, as my email setup has arrived.

This week brought news that John Lennon’s entire discography will now be on iTunes, DRM free at $1.29/track.  This is very likely the latest clue in the next big announcement from Apple.

John Lennon Solo Catalog Debuts on iTunes Store
Apple today announced the debut of the John Lennon solo catalog on the iTunes Store. Sixteen of Lennon

Facebook is solidifying its place as the number one social media company to look out for by releasing innovative new features at breakneck speeds. Today’s release of the Facebook iPhone interface is another stroke of genius.

Facebook is joining a number of companies courting the mostly affluent, early adopter crowd that own iPhones.  Dropping their website down to the 480×320 resolution never looked so easy.

 http://iphone.facebook.com

By using the same motions for the transitions between pages that the native iPhone user interface employs and integrating familiar features like the ability to call your contacts directly from the webpages, this Facebook web app will make iPhone users forget they are on a webpage.  

Exactly what Steve Jobs wanted when he announced the Web 2.0 iPhone SDK.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q-MPZ_44VY]

“All these years, you’ve gone through the day without email like this in your pocket…
or stock updates like this in your pocket, or Internet like this in your pocket…

And you survived…

The question is…

how?”

CoasterDude2002 sent this in…looks great – I am sure it will hit Apple’s website in 3..2..
Edit: Apple has posted the new ads online:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads/ad9/
http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads/ad8/

August 7th brought many excellent product updates for the Mac platform but some product lines were sorely overlooked. Mac Pros, for instance, received very mild memory discounts and a surprising $999 RAID card.  This RAID Card isn’t the traditional type that has the SATA ports built in.  This one turns the Mac Pro’s motherboard SATA ports into something that can be used in a hardware RAID array.

For people in the know on RAID cards, the advantages are plenty. Mirroring (RAID 1) protects you from a hard drive failure. Striping (RAID 0) speeds up the data access speeds of your drives by writing to two drives simultaneously. RAID 5 does a little of both if you have three or more drives. From there, you can go on and on with different configurations and levels to your heart’s content.

Another popular Disk Array configuration is JBOD – which stands for “Just a bunch of Disks”  As the name suggests, it is a span of the disks available but it isn’t striped so that losing a disk doesn’t mess up any data not housed on that disk.  The speed is usually just that of the hard drives.

RAID cards used to be SCSI only, but have filtered down to the IDE and have been on the SATA bus for a little over two years.

Over this time, SATA RAID cards have come way down in price and have added many features that were previously only available to high end SCSI RAID cards. If you want to know everything about SATA RAID cards, check out this article from a few years back – it is essentially a SATA RAID card bible.

OK, now that we know about SATA RAID cards, we have to ask ourselves, how can Apple ask for $1000 for a mid-range, bare-bones SATA RAID card that doesn’t even add external ports?

**disclaimer, I have not bought one of these to try it out first hand, nor will I based on the (sparse) specs provided by Apple.  I have used the Xserve model on a few occasions and found it solid, if uninspiring.

So first of all – for you glass half empty people out there – let’s talk about what this card lacks:

1. External ports for external drives
2. PC Drivers for Boot Camp or removal and using in PCs (see citation 6 in specs – and Virtualization is questionable)
3. More than 4 Ports that are currently on the motherboard
4. The specs say nothing about SATA-II
5. Anywhere close to a reasonable price
6. It is huge – with a large array of heatsyncs – which means lots of juice needed – so it ain’t green
7. Speed…It is only about 50% faster ON PAPER than just using software RAID on an older Mac Pro 

So there have to be good points about this $1000 SATA RAID card?

1. It is build to order and has Apple Software and Warranty Support
2. It has a 72 hour battery (usually a $100 upgrade) and 256 meg cache (standard faire).

Yeah, that’s about it. This isn’t even as feature rich as the RAID controller on the XServe that is smaller and lets you do SAS in case you still like SCSI. The speed – mediocre for a RAID card – is barely faster than Software RAID. There are no external ports so you can’t hook up any external SATA drives without buying another card (or wiring the onboard port cables out through the back) – which is a huge loss for professionals. 

So, for those of you who want solutions, not problems let’s look at some alternatives…

On the low end, you can find a number of RAID cards for $150 – $300 which aren’t going to be as feature rich and you’ll need to check the driver compatibility on Macintosh.

In the midrange,you have a $485 product with MacOSX drivers from HighPoint called the RocketRAID 2340.  This guy packs 16 internal AND External SATA-II ports (downward compatible to SATA 1).  

On the high-end (but still less than the barebones Apple offering), ATTO makes the R348 Adapter for $910.  This card offers SATA, SATA II and SAS (Serial Attatched SCSI) interfaces and speed that will more than likely blow away the Apple product in real world tests.

Still though, Apple will probably do well with this product add-on.  For Sysadmins, it simplifies the ordering/building/warranty process and is probably best adapted and tested by Apple to work with the Mac Pro.  If you are using the Mac Pro as a server – and reliability trumps speed and features, you have more reason to stick with Apple covered products.  Unfortunately, you cannot currently get the Apple Mac Pro RAID card as a stand alone product if you fit into this subset.

Edit: Removed the Adaptec SATA Card because of the lack of driver support for the Mac Platform.  Thanks commentors!

EDIT:At the request of Apple legal, this story has been removed.

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iPhoto 7, part of the new iLife 08 suite, has some great new features, including the much-touted “events” categorization instead of “rolls,” a better levels slider and a new “reduce noise” slider that clears up fuzz (and in the extreme can make your friends look like digital cartoons – nice).

The upgrade is not without its faults, however, and even the most simple of operations

So there is a bit of a quiet revolution going on in the computer world lately. Solid State drives (drives is a legacy term that needs to go – it is not a drive at all) have been coming way down in price over the past few years to the point where they may actually make sense for some normal power users.  Now I am not saying that you should take out your current hard drive and replace it with something marginally faster and about 10 times the price in terms of Gb/$.  That isn’t fun. 

80 Gb 2.5 inch  HD = $60

64GB 2.5 inch solid state >$600

Yes, MacBook hard drives are easy to replace, but,  last time I checked, it wasn’t that much fun to take the hard drive out of a MacBook Pro.  Plus that is kinda pricey.

So what I decided to do is get a Lexar Solid State Express Card from Amazon.   They happened to be having a sale on the largest current available size – 16Gb and I got it for $199.

They also have an 8GB version for about $100 for the lower budget minded.  Word on the street is that there is soon to be a 32GB version which should clock in at a relatively reasonable $400ish.

The first thing I did after inserting the Expresscard  was open Disk Utility and reformat it to HFS+ format (it came in Fat32).  I then did a disk image of Leopard boot disk which is about 8GB.  It only took a few minutes until it was done and popped up on my desktop just like any other drive would do.   I then went to the Startup disk system preference and chose the Express card partition.  Finally, I restarted.  So started the fun things you can do with an Expresscard:

1. A Boot Drive -The restart seemed to take as much time as the hard drive overall but with noticeably faster “after login” speed.  The machine was very quick even though very few programs were installed on the machine.  I  was able to watch Quicktimes without any problem.  The machine seemed very quick.  I don’t have any benchmarks but I suspect that the battery used less power when the OS was running from a Flash Drive.
2. A Backup Drive – The 16Gb Expresscard is an awesome backup device.  It worked great as a Tiger backup using Rsync and even better using Time Machine under Leopard.  It isn’t going to be able to save all of your music and photos if you have a big collection, but it is nice to know that my important docks are being backed up often and without my intervention.
3. A Parallels Image – The Solid state drive comes formatted with a 16Gb Fat32 partition on it, but if you are handy you can probably fit a Linux and a Windows partition on the little memory card.  I simply moved a Parallels Disk image to the card.  I can now take this image between my two MacBook Pros without even having to reboot.
4. Your Home Directory – The Expresscard file format may be the perfect storm between speed, size, cost and flexibility.  As the size of these drives goes from 16 to 32 to 64 up to 128GB in the next few ears, it is possible that this is what you will take with you to work and school as your mobile home directory.  The size is big enough that it could even be your mobile boot disk as stated in step 1.

Whatever the case these little guys are sure to be valuable, and could possibly be the next big thing...Here’s a link to Amazon’s store where I picked up my card which was very well priced.

EDIT: I know some of you are mad that we linked directly to the torrent site.  The reason we did this is to show people what we are talking about (that it does exist).  People who are going to steal are going to know how to find a torrent.  Those who don’t steal aren’t going to be swayed by our link.  Move along.

Well, that didn’t take very long.  It looks like those Internet “Evil Doers” have  posted Apple’s new lifestyle set of apps on the Internet for all to see.  It is really just unfortunate for Apple, who does not include any sort of serial number or tracking on their consumer applications, to miss out on revenue. I guess at a very reasonable $79.99 price point, they expect most customers to do the right thing and pay to play.   If pirating eats too much into Apple’s bottom line, they will be forced to implement some sort of complicated  hassleware to keep their innovations from being picked up from illegitimate sources.  That would be bad.

On the flip side, I guess it is good to have this sort of thing for people who have defective or lost installer DVDs.

If you are too lazy/scared/morally-not-bankrupt to steal iWork, just head over to Apple’s iWork ’08 trial download page.

People, don’t steal – buy it cheap!

This is a rebuttal to a PC Magazine article that was so bad it was good (dugg)...

So, times are obviously good for the Macintosh. How does one know this?  Because even the people who should be trumpeting the virtues of Vista and Linux are clumsily falling all over themselves to praise the Mac.  Honestly, I haven’t read PC Magazine much.  I’ve spotted it in a few magazine racks and dentist offices with subscription cards falling out everywhere, but nothing ever interested me enough to pick one up or visit the website.

However, when trolling Digg for Macintosh news items, what should appear but a PC Magazine article written about the Macintosh entitled Apple’s Mac Set to Soar penned by Lance Ulanoff. After reading a few lines, it became clear that Ulanoff has never come within thirty feet of a Mac.  He starts off by mentioning the blather that Dvorak spewed a few weeks ago about liking the Mac or something.  Usually, when I see “Dvorak” in print, I immediately hit the back button or close the window – which has unfortunately left a void of information about this optimized keyboard layout thing..hmm digress time..  Anyway, this article was so bad it was getting good – in a “Amerika, we stand as One” or “Why must I cry” sort of way.

Why was this article so (bad it’s) good? Because it was becoming ever more apparent that this guy has very little computer, let alone Mac, experience. How does one know this?  Have a gander at this little gem:

The introduction of Intel chips has not made the Mac OS more susceptible to virus attacks, though I wonder what the experience is like running Windows with Boot Camp on a Mac. Has anyone gotten infected?

Where to start?  
1. Viruses are not CPU based?!  At least not yet anyway.  I don’t think there is one virus that has ever been written in low level machine code.  Kudos to whoever does – if it is ever done.

2. Asking if someone has gotten infected in Boot Camp shows that this author really has no idea what Boot Camp is.  For the uninformed (and unwilling to do 10 minutes of research), running Windows in Boot Camp is exactly like running Windows on a PC – except the hardware is prettier – meaning that you have the exact same susceptibility as a PC.  Even running Parallels or VMWare leaves you as susceptible.

Will there come a time when I recommend only Macs? No. But the day when Apple owns a much, much bigger slice of the computer-market pie is now within view. Let’s mark our calendars, shall we? I say that by Q1 2012, Apple will own 12 percent of the market. Anyone want to guess where it’ll be by 2025?

1. If you are asking this guy for a PC recommendation, you are in REALLY bad shape.  Stick with the typewriter.

2. Apple has been gaining market share for the last few years.  But 5 years from now?  Twelve percent of what market?  In five years, I would be surprised if anyone was still using desktop machines.   I am not saying we will all be using space cars, just that most people will probably be using their mobile phones/communicators for computing.  Will Apple have 12 percent of that market?  It is naive to try to equate things now and five years from now when the technology landscape will be infinitely different. Frankly I have no idea but I certainly will not be hedging my bets with PC Magazine.

A word to the wise, PC Magazine, stick to your guns (Windows/Linux) or hire someone who has some Macintosh experience. You aren’t doing yourself any favors by showing your

“triple core”

hand.

Apple’s dramatically smaller bluetooth wireless keyboard that debuted alongside the redesigned iMac is not just thinner but it also loses the number pad arrow keys and that little area with “Help”, Home” etc.  Size-wise it is very similar to just lifting the MacBook keyboard off of its body and carting it around.

This isn’t a device for the desk.  This is a remote control.   Obviously a good fit for the iMac that is an entertainment device.  Perhaps also for some other devices?  A Bluetooth phone?  The iPhone doesn’t yet accept Bluetooth Keyboards but it obviously could with a software update.   Or perhaps a better keyboard for the UMPC’s and Sony UX line?

But the biggest market might be in entertainment.  We can see this as being the MUST-HAVE media center remote whether it is PC or Mac based.  With it’s small size, media keys and incredible style, who can resist the next big remote?

Not us!

We are not sure if systems admins will be able to ditch their desktop/laptops yet (the controls on this look a bit – shall we say- light) but this is certainly a step in the right direction.

We got this email from Media Temple this morning an couldn’t be more pleased to know that one more of our everyday-type tasks can be completed from the comfort of our iPhone.  

Bravo Media Temple!  The Revolution has begun!

Log in here if reading from an iPhone.

(To toot one’s own horn) So my latest Computerworld story is gracing the top(ish) slot of, not one, but two IDG Publications today.  

Click on the logos to head to the stories. ———–> 

Screen captures after the jump for posterity (and for mom).

So we’ve heard many rumors about the new iMacs and what appears to be the loss of the 17 inch variety.  We’ve also heard that the old 17 inch might be staying on as an eMac. 

Add to that the reports of the death of the Mac Mini.  This obviously leaves a huge hole on the low end side for Macs.  It would be hard to believe that Apple would just cut off the under $1000 crowd (but not impossible).

More likely, there is some low end device waiting in the the wings.  We’ve been kicking the idea around here a bunch and have come up with some interesting senarios:

1. A taller mini (Steve Jobs likes cubes – we know this) with some real 3.5 inch hard drive(s) that act as a media center or low end computer (WebTV lives!)  
2. Older version iMacs that are drastically cut in price…iMac lite?  Emac reborn?
3. Mini’s on steroids!  Core2 Duo with 200GB+ HDs and 2GB of RAM, Gig Ethernet, HD Optical
4. A new form factor computer all together.  Maybe something that fits on the back of a monitor and includes a camera?
5. Smaller, cheaper towers. aybe you can turn them sideway and fit them into an entertainment rack.  Mac Amateur, Mac Semi-Pro?
6. Status Quo.  BORING!

Only a few hours left – I guess we’ll find out soon enough. Most likely – as Apple events usually turn out

Details are light on this one but we’ve got it through a very reliable source that Apple will indeed be releasing the long awaited spreadsheet application as part of iWork ’08 tomorrow. It is supposed to be a “whole new way to work with spreadsheets.”  Also noted were the tie-ins between iWork and the .Mac service that Apple provides for $99/year. In the past rumors have circulated about a Google Hosted agreement with .Mac and it isn’t certain if Google Docs and spreadsheets will also be tied in.

Update: Macrumors is reporting on .Mac being down for tomorrow’s event

Due to scheduled maintenance, .Mac members might be intermittently unable to access some .Mac services from 10 AM to 12 PM PDT on 08/07/2007. We apologize for any inconvenience.

‘Charts’ and ‘Numbers’ have been thrown around as names for the new application but our source was unable to confirm or deny the name of the product.
Personally we like Sheetz…

What a difference 10 years make!

Edit: This story picked up by Computerworld…DIGG

Apple will once again be wowing the technology world on August 7th, most likely releasing the long awaited redesigned iMacs and a slew of other technology innovations. Analysts and the press now stalk Apple

Some more clarification of future feature updates for the iPhone are emerging.  A somewhat unlikely but reputable source, Barry Solomon at DeafMac, has summarized his recent meeting at Apple/AT&T regarding changes to the iPhone.  

To summarize his summery:

1. iChat – It is coming.  Was held back by AOL licensing issues (haven’t heard that before but it makes sense).  The application exists and is ready to go
2. Video Conferencing – No – obviously camera is in the wrong spot and EDGE probably couldn’t handle it.
3. Landscape Keyboard on all applications- coming in updates
4. Email wakes phone – coming
5. Highlighting/Copy/Paste – coming Apple: “We dropped the ball on this one – we just missed it”

To read the full post head here: http://www.deafmac.org/blog/?p=115 

August 7th, Cupertino. Apple is set to announce new iMacs for sure, perhaps some new iPods (though more than likely these are another month out), maybe a mini replacement, and doubtfully an ultra-light laptop.  On the software side, it is  very likely the new versions of iLife and iWork ’08 will be hitting the streets.   It just aligns well with the new iMac announcement and of course we’ve had some hints from Think Secret and MacRumors.

What will these new software titles include?  Likely a lot of upgrades, stability enhancements, etc. We know there is a spreadsheet application in iWork, you can see parts of it when you open an excel file on and iPhone or in Leopard in Quicklook.  But what else?

A Blooging.app

Why?  Because it makes perfect sense.   Blogging is blowing up from both a consumer and business standpoint and wants to hit mainstream very badly.   Presently, only mildly techie people can blog effectively and most people are unaware of how to blog at all.  Tools like Ecto, Journaler and MarsEdit don’t cut it.  They do connect to proper blogging platforms (iWeb closed platform app need not apply) like Blogger, Worpress, MT, Drupal and the like, however, it isn’t simple and isn’t reliable. This is a wide open area where Apple can take the lead on Microsoft, Sun and even Google in the Office productivity arena.   Could Apple be doing for the blogging culture what it has done for the computer, word processing, , music, digital camera, video editing (on and on) cultures before it–allowing the other 80% in on the fun?  We can only hope.