mac diddy

Seriously, dump it. It’s stupid. Go “Office Space” on that thing. You have been in this abusive relationship for far too long and it’s time to move on.

I hate inkjet printers because they suck and they’re money pits. And yet for some reason, almost everyone seems to have one. Let’s break this down:

Inkjet pros:

• When it works, you can quickly print out a color photo of passable – not pro – quality.

I was really surprised to see that Apple chose to hide the Library folder that lives in your Users folder by default in OS 10.7 Lion. After all, accessing this folder is way more useful (and advisable) than accessing the System and Library folders at the root of your hard drive, which Apple chose not to hide. Go figure. Anyway, here are two ways to get into that folder:

1. In finder choose the Go menu, select Go To Folder, and enter ~/Library
2. Open Terminal and enter the following command: chflags nohidden /users/username/library (where username is replaced by your username of course!)

The first solution will get you right into that Library folder, which is especially useful if you’re on someone else’s machine. The latter solution will permanently reveal the Library folder.

Editor’s Note: The Mac Diddy (Adam) is proud to join the Alliance Partners. Click below for more info.

The Creative Alliance Announces Alliance Partners

LAFAYETTE, CO – The Creative Alliance (TCA) announced today the development of an Alliance Partner network. The Alliance Partners are a select group of specialists working with TCA on a part-time or contract basis. By combining the talent of TCA’s award-winning, in-house team with dedicated outside specialists, the agency’s clients benefit from the bandwidth of a large agency, but the personal touch and lower overhead of a more intimate boutique firm.

Alliance Partners were chosen by TCA based on established working relationships and successful past projects. By formalizing this consortium of talent, TCA benefits from a team of professionals who are committed to the same high level of quality and innovation for which the agency is known. The Alliance Partners benefit from a team atmosphere that fosters professional development and provides expanded new business opportunities.

The Mac OS version of the App Store launched today. This should be familiar to iOS users who have made the App Store a huge success on their iPhones and iPod Touches. This is also the first of many major changes coming to the Mac OS that will be modeled after Apple’s iOS. Expect a lot more in Mac OS 10.7 “Lion”. It will interest many Mac users that Apple will now be selling iLife and iWork apps individually at $15 and $20 each respectively.

Note that as of now, the new app store is only available to 10.6 “Snow Leopard” users. To get it, simply use Software Update (under the Apple menu) to install the update to 10.6.6.

Remember a couple of weeks ago when Apple said they were “surprised” to find that the formula they used to calculate reception bars was faulty and “in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength”? While I remain skeptical that this was truly a surprise to Apple, it appears that they’ve adjusted their formula with the new iOS 4.0.1 update.

I haven’t lost any bars yet, but apparently I live on top of a cell tower. What I did notice is that Apple’s signal bars have become taller. So while you may soon get hit with the reality that your three bars are really one bar, you can at least take comfort in the fact that it’s represented by a taller bar.

In semi-related news, Apple will be holding a press conference tomorrow, most likely about the iPhone 4′s antenna woes. Could this be related to a report from TheStreet that the problem is related to an internal insulator and an internal “bumper” fix may be coming? It’s an enticing thought for those of us who love our iPhone 4s, but fear the consequences of touching them inappropriately.

Bouncing a message is a tricksy little feature in Mail that not a lot of people seem to know about. Usually when a message is “bounced”, it means that it was sent to a bad email address. For example, if you were to send a message to lothar@macdiddy.com, you’d receive a message in return that looks like this:

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at p3plsmtpa01-08.prod.phx3. secureserver.net. I’m afraid I wasn’t able to deliver your message to the following addresses. This is a permanent error; I’ve given up. Sorry it didn’t work out.

:
216.69.186.201 does not like recipient. Remote host said: 550 #5.1.0 Address rejected lothar@macdiddy.com
Giving up on 216.69.186.201.

However, Mail also lets us bounce a message when we want it to appear that the address was entered incorrectly, which can be useful in trying to throw off a spammer, a stalker, or a Nigerian prince. Simply highlight the message you want to bounce in the message list and right-click it to choose Bounce on the little pop-up menu. Or if you prefer, you can select the message and then go to the Message menu and choose Boulder. Keyboard shortcut: Command-Shift-B.

Unfortunately, spammers usually don’t give their real return addresses, so bouncing doesn’t always work with them, but keep this trick in your arsenal and it will surely come in handy on occasion.

Almost two years ago when I got my first iPhone (a 16GB iPhone 3G), my iPhone became my iPod. All of a sudden I had my favorite tunes with me everywhere I went and there was much rejoicing. The only problem: my 40GB music library wasn’t going to fit on my 16GB iPod. Even less would fit as I eventually would put 2.5GB of apps on there, along with photos, video, etc.

So I prioritized. Rather than synching my library wholesale, I made playlists of my favorite stuff and synched only those to the iPhone. This worked out pretty well for a while, but it wasn’t too long before I had well under a gigabyte of free space and needed to start juggling tunes and apps.

Well iTunes version 9.1 has finally delivered a very simple way to improve the situation: a little checkbox in your iPhone Options box that says “Convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps AAC”. iPod Shuffle users have long had access to this option, but it wasn’t until iTunes 9.1 was released on March 31st that all iPod/iPhone users could do the same.

It so happens that a large portion of my music was originally ripped at a higher bitrate, along with all of the iTunes Plus purchases, which are 256 kbps by default. Higher bit rate = somewhat better sound = significantly bigger files. Well when you check this magical little box, iTunes will automatically re-rip your higher bit rate tunes at 128 kbps, freeing up (in my case) gobs of space, while leaving your iTunes library itself untouched.

But won’t my music sound worse if I do this? Technically, yes. Barely. The strength of the iPhone/iPod is in interface, simplicity, and portability; it’s not an audiophile’s device. Chances are the device’s DA converter, headphones preamplifier, and the headphones you use are already enough of a limiting factor for sound quality that you won’t miss the higher bit rate on most of your tunes. Most pop/rock music is already so compressed in the studio that compressing the bit rate further won’t matter much.

The bottom line is that if you use really good headphones and listen to lots of classical music, you might skip this step, but for most people the space gained far exceeds any diminishing in sound quality. I got 2.5GB freed up. Your mileage may vary.

Big news for Mac users who like to game and gamers who like to Mac: Valve Software‘s game platform Steam has gone live for Mac users. But perhaps the biggest news is that until May 24th, Portal is a free download for Steam users. Originally released as part of Valve’s excellent Orange Box, Portal made waves in the game industry for its innovative first-person puzzle gaming. Gamers will eat it up and people who game less frequently should check it out too.

Other games available at launch include Civilization IV, the time-bending innovative platformer Braid, World of Goo (a favorite of this author), and a bunch of others. Valve has also promised a new “set of games” every Wednesday for the next several weeks. All of a sudden Mac gamers have reason to feel significantly less neglected!

As AT&T approaches the home stretch of their third year of iPhone exclusivity, the inevitable question arises: will the next iPhone be available on other networks? I’d wager it will. Sort of.

There are a lot of reasons to believe that AT&T’s exclusive deal with Apple is coming to an end, but really they boil down to one: it would seem that this exclusivity no longer sufficiently benefits both parties to keep it going. While I have no numbers to back this up, it is easy to imagine that AT&T must be seeing diminishing returns on subscribers who are switching solely for this very expensive iPhone exclusive. And given recent research on the relatively massive data consumption by iPhone users compared to users of other smartphones, it is doubtful that AT&T’s already stressed network could handle significantly more iPhone subscribers, particularly as slower old iPhones are weeded out and faster (more data hungry) ones take their place.

But perhaps the more compelling argument for the end of Apple phone exclusivity is Apple’s own interest in going multi-network. When Apple first released the iPhone, there was nothing comparable and so the game was changed with the iPhone, continuing with the 3G and 3Gs. And not only did the landscape change completely, but in time so have Apple’s competitors. Where there was previously no product to offer serious competition to the iPhone, we’ve recently seen a number of solid offerings from Google, Palm, and even Windows, particularly in the last year.

Apple doesn’t want you picking up a Google phone on Verizon or any network. They don’t want you to realize that even Microsoft is bringing cool new innovations to the smart phone market. But you will realize this if you’re one of the over 90 million subscribers on Verizon’s network who wants a sexy smartphone but can’t get the iPhone due to an exclusivity deal with AT&T. Apple doesn’t want this. They want consumers consuming in their App Store, not someone else’s. They want developers to favor their App Store and they want to continue to dominate the market they re-shaped and re-created. The fact of the matter is that if Verizon subscribers can’t get iPhones, then they’ll simply get other phones. And while many of them might have preferred iPhones, most of them will be relatively happy with something from Google.

My guess is that we’ll see a sexy new iPhone announced for AT&T only in June and then, once the buying frenzy has subsided somewhat, an Apple phone will be at least announced for Verizon by the end of the year.

“An Apple phone?” you ask. “Don’t you mean the iPhone?” Maybe, but not necessarily. Perhaps the iPhone as we know it will come to other networks, or perhaps the offering will be a cousin, like an iPod Shuffle or and iPod Nano are cousins to the iPod Touch and the iPod Classic.

Part 3: Make the battery last.

Battery technology has come a long way, but there’s still a long way to go. When your Macbook is new, its battery life is great and all is well in the universe. But the honeymoon doesn’t last. Used batteries hold their charge for less and less time and they can be expensive to replace, especially for Mac users.

A battery is only good for so many cycles, one cycle representing a battery going from completely charged to completely depleted and then completely charged again. If you run your battery down to 50 percent and recharge it, that’s a half cycle. If you have a white or black Macbook, the battery is only good for a couple of hundred cycles and they add up quickly. A new aluminum Macbook Pro has a new/improved battery which will supposedly be good for several times the life of the older battery types, which is a good thing because they’ll be more difficult and more expensive to replace. Let’s start with an all-too common myth.

Myth: you should always run down a battery all the way before recharging it.

I’m often surprised by how many people work under this assumption. This belief is a throwback to a truth from the days of nickel-cadmium batteries, but no longer relevant in the world of Lithium Ion batteries like those found in Macbooks. In fact, Lithium Ion batteries “like” to be charged and will last longer if you don’t let them fall below 50% too regularly.

However, there are reasons to let your battery deplete all the way once in a while: if you let your computer run until it completely runs out of juice and goes into “deep sleep”, then you are effectively resetting or recalibrating the battery life meter. Or if you’re a laptop user who most of the time happens to use the laptop plugged-in at a desktop, Apple suggests that you run the Macbook on battery once per month in order to cycle the battery.

Did you know that you can check how many times your battery has been cycled? Open up the System Profiler (Macintosh HD->Applications->Utilities) and click on Power in the column on the left. You should find the Cycle Count along with other details.