Category: Apple

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How to clean mighty mouse

I know that the post title is grammatically caveman in nature, but that’s exactly what I typed into Google. “how to clean might mouse”. This is what I came up with.

Duane's Wireless Mighty Mouse
Photo credit: duanestorey on Flickr

Of course, I have the wired version of the Mighty Mouse on the iMac, but I’m sure you could apply this idea to the wireless version. When it comes down to it, sometimes the scroll ball, or mighty nipple as Rebecca calls it, gets gunky.

The same procedure can be used to clean the scroll ball on your Mighty Mouse if it has become discolored or dirty. Use a clean lint-free cloth lightly moistened with water. Wipe the ball and the surrounding area, making sure to rotate the ball itself to ensure complete coverage. If the scrolling feels rough or if the scroll ball isn’t scrolling up, down, or side-to-side, hold the mouse upside-down and roll the ball vigorously while cleaning it to help dislodge any particles that may have collected on the internal hardware. [apple]

They even have a little quicktime movie that you can watch to help you out with the process. However, I pulled a bit of a Red Green maneuver and went for my trusty bottle of isopropyl alcohol. Combine that with a good pair of boxers, clean yet lint free as well as soft enough for this job, all is well again.

In all seriousness, I was impressed that Apple had this on their site, including the explanatory video. That’s not only a clever way to provide support to your customer base as much as good marketing. They care. They really, really care. *sniff*

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Leopard is cool, I get it

I’ve had a few folks ask about Mac OS 10.5 Leopard. Have I seen it first hand? No. Have I upgraded to it? No. Do I want to? Yes.

I’ve been reading a lot about it[arstechnica], and it seems like something I could really use, like, and get used to. There are so many features that I would love to get my hands on, and there are some pretty neat podcasting tools that have peaked my attention.

Still, I haven’t gotten my hands on it yet. In due time, it’ll come. Rebecca’s MacBook can handle it, and the iMac will cruise right along with it. However, I’m thinking that my 17-inch Powerbook G4[wiki], this being my major hesitation before leaping into Leopard, might not like or be able to fully handle the new OS.

Right now, I’m running 1GB of RAM on my Powerbook, and the maximum I can put into it is 2GB. There lies the dilemma. Do you make the upgrades or do you consider an overall upgrade, getting a flavor of MacBook with a faster processor?

It’s a no-brainer as to what you should do, but the reality of what you, and the bank account, can do is another.

I’m incredibly jealous of the track pad on Rebecca’s laptop and the ability to use it to scroll. I swear that ups the ability to do things faster, and it might be time for me to downgrade to a smaller laptop for the sake of portability.

That brings me back to Leopard. The Spaces feature means that you don’t need a huge screen real estate, the reason I got this first generation 17-inch, to be efficient. I think I could be happy with a 13-inch screen, and the ability to have Firewire 800 is a consideration that I could live without, but prefer. Still, with the iMac at home, I can survive on Firewire 400 when being portable with my external hard drive, but even that lives at home most of the time.

After that, I have a little issue with being on the bleeding edge. I’ll let those brave souls out there be the first to be first. If there are any issues, let them figure that out and have the fixes come down as a result. I haven’t heard of anything huge yet, but never say never.

Until then, I’ll keep contemplating upgrades for my Powerbook and looking for cheap RAM for a laptop that was discontinued about as soon as it was released.

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Comparing loonies to the thin, aluminum Apple keyboard

My mom did something interesting the other day. They purchased one of the new Apple keyboards, the new, ultra thin aluminum ones that now come standard with most of their desktop machines. Taking some loonies from their last trip to Vancouver, she showed just how thin it actually is.

Two loonies thick

As you can see, the thickness of the keyboard is just two loonies.

One loonie thick

The keys themselves stick up from the keyboard at just one thickness of a single loonie.

That’s an outstanding size comparison. I haven’t had a chance to use one of these, but the last standard that Apple sent out with their products, in terms of keyboards, is something I’m not too found of. I love the feel of the keys on Apple laptops, so this might be an investment worth snagging. I fear I’d fight Rebecca over it though.

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WiFi enabled iPods are here, bonus for podcasters

New iPods

There are still things that could be better with the new iPod Touch, but overall, I can’t complain too much. This is one step closer to what could be really good for the realm of podcasting. Putting wireless internet into an iPod makes getting podcasts that much easier. Grab a coffee in a place with free WiFi and download the latest episode of RadioZoom while you’re there. That way you can listen to some new tunes when your in office listening gets stale.

Not sure about my opinion on the rest of the new gizmos, but it would be nice to replace Rebecca’s ailing iPod Mini. Perhaps with the iPod Touch, she could take mobile blogging to whole new levels. It’s almost like not needing a laptop, but it remains to be seen. Have to say that I’m digging those new nanos as well.

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I touched an iPhone

Prior to seeing the Simpsons and after a mind-blowing afternoon on the job (i.e. playing radio at a car dealership in Port Moody), we linked up with John Biehler for some pre-movie, post-BarCampVancouver festivities.

iPhone! John's session is up next
Photo credit: Miss604 on Flickr

John is one of the first folks in Canada to snag an iPhone, even though it is not officially available in this country yet. That’s not to say that you can’t use yours here if you are from the states, but no one is offering service here that allows you to activate it, yet alone use it on their network. The only reason I know that U.S. plans have working functions here is because I happened to be in the same room as the lead singer of the band Yellowcard a number of days ago, and he confirmed this to me when I noticed him fiddling with his own iPhone.

Asking him what he thought of it and using it, his repeated response was, “I just love it. Can’t say more than that.”

So having the chance to sit down with John Biehler the other evening, he put the power of grayskull in my hand. I know that sounds corny, if you get the reference at all, but this was a really unique experience that made you realize that you have a very powerful device in your hand.

John and John and the iPhone
Photo credit: Miss604 on Flickr

John has hacked the iPhone enough to get nearly all the features to work, minus the phone, at least while he is in Canada. Memory can’t recall if he activated the phone in the U.S., where he bought it, but the session that he led at BarCampVancouver earlier in the day was all about hacking into the iPhone for those of us north of the border.

Post BarCamp/Pre-Simpsons Movie beverage
Photo credit: retrocactus on Flickr

After about thirty minutes of seeing what I could do with it, minus the availability of wireless internet at the location we were at (which I can report that said location had a plentiful availability of Hoegaarden in glasses the size of my head), I was uber-impressed. Not only is it cool and/or slick, but it works. All the features make sense, applications work like I expect them to, and you quickly forget that you tapping a flat surface, opposed to the numerous buttons that exist on my Nokia 6682[wiki]. In other words, I adapted to it mind numbingly fast.

Do I have to rush out and get one right this second? No, I think I’ll be alright. I also wouldn’t be opposed to it, more so when it works in all its glory in Canada. John knows of ways to hack you way into doing this for those willing to put the work into it. I’m ok for now, but there was something incredibly cool about checking out pieces of The Matrix[imdb] on his iPhone while sitting in a pub. The resolution was astounding.

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The Crazy Canucks on the iPhone

John Biehler left a comment on my last post about the iPhone, and the picture he took is too good not to post.

Crazy Canucks Podcast on the iPhone
Photo credit: retrocactus on Flickr

In his comment, he said, “Streaming podcasts in Safari on the iPhone works amazingly well.”

This is certainly some great news. I would still like to see some very simple and easy applications on the iPhone that are specifically geared towards podcasting. You see and hear about the YouTube button on the device, so why not develop something like that for subscribing and listening to your podcasts?

Of course, I don’t own one and have never seen one. Perhaps the function exists, and I just don’t know it yet.

Edit: I found this link courtesy of Scoble. Very funny things you can do with your iPhone contacts.

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Podcasting and the iPhone effect

It may seem that I was completely bashing the iPhone in my last post, but I wasn’t. Breaking things is cool, but the iPhone is still a pretty remarkable gadget in my book. Still, I would prefer to wait until a 2nd generation comes out, not to mention to wait out the potential problems that could arise. They don’t say “bleeding edge” without reason.

The iPhone does make me wonder about the effect this product can have on podcasting. It’s true that there are cellphones out there than can download podcasts and play them directly, but the interface is lacking in one way or another. The only reason I say that is because if it were so easy, and it didn’t take a geek to master the method, then we’d have a lot more people listening to podcasts as is.

Flickr photo by: retrocactus
Photo credit: retrocactus on Flickr

The cost of data plans aside, WiFi enabled cellphones is what purely sparks my interest in the iPhone. It’s a feature, besides Bluetooth, that I will look very hard at when it comes to purchasing my next cellphone, granted that the bank account can handle it.

Talking to Tod Maffin about podcasts at Northern Voice, he was surprised to find out that I listened to the hourly news updates from NPR and CNN. It struck him odd that anyone would subscribe to such things, mainly due to their timeliness, but I love them while running in the morning to get a basic low down of what’s going on in the world.

Imagine taking that concept and applying that to a situation where you are standing in line at your favorite coffee shop that has free WiFi. While waiting for people ahead of you to order their drinks with ridiculously long names, you’re snagging the latest news podcast. Better yet, you’re a hockey fan and notice that The Crazy Canucks published an episode last night and want to snag that for your commute home(had to get a plug in there). Download as you wait, get your coffee order, burn your tongue while taking the first sip, but are happy that you have something to listen to get your mind off the pain.

This is what excites me about the iPhone. Being such a prominent product in the cellphone market, I would like to see it revolutionize the whole spectrum in the realm of getting more phones with WiFi built in, not to mention bringing the price down. User interface will be another issue, but keep it simple and easy for developers to make simple and easy applications for people to easily subscribe and listen to podcasts.

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This is how I feel about the iPhone hype

I love the concept and wouldn’t mind owning one. However, I got really sick of the hype leading up to the iPhone release, am sick of hearing from those who got one, and am tired of hearing about all the things you can or will soon be able to get for your iPhone. Just not one of those rush-out-gotta-have-it types, even though I love cool, little gadgets from Apple.

I found this highly entertaining.

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Apple WWDC keynote was kind of… meh

I’m often a fan of the keynotes that Steve Jobs gives at either MacWorld Expo or the WWDC, and the one today has left me with a lot of mixed feelings. Either way, no matter what happens at these events, you expect something to wow you. Big or little, I usually feel like something cool just happened.

Today, I just didn’t get that feeling.

Ok, I am not forgetting that this is the “World Wide Developers Conference”, so these guys are concerned about hardware as much as they are the lines of code that they can manipulate and build cool software with, so I wasn’t expecting much in the way of product updates and launches.

Jobs, instead, gives us a demo of the really cool features that Apple is excited about and think will be uber sweet for us, the consumers, to get our hands on… again. I mean, there were a few, new neat things announced, but we saw this same keynote in January. Left me feeling a little let down, but there were some interesting things announced today that made me chime into the “cool” vibe that Steve was touting.

The next version of Mac OS X is $129 across the board, for all flavors. Boot Camp will be built-in, so you’ll be able to run XP and Vista out of the box. A new Finder, but that gives me reason to pause in that I’ll have to relearn a few things, no biggie. Anything that helps file management and work flow is a great concept to me.

They also announced a Windows version of Safari, and I am debating with myself as to how I feel about it. As cool as Safari looks, there are elements about it that I can’t handle when it comes to making it my default browser. Maybe version 3 will change my mind, but I’m still resisting the urge to download the beta for now. Bottom line, Safari beach-balls on me too often for me to go back to it, but my mind remains constantly open.

On top of that, Apple launched a redesign to their website. It has a heavy Web 2.0 look and feel to it now, complete with fun AJAX things here and there. Looks nice.

Other than that, not too much else sticks out to me. iPhone still sounds cool, I hope it works well when it’s released, and making software for it sounds pretty easy if you are skilled at making web applications in general. I think I’d be more excited about the outcome if this new OS was coming out next month and not October, but the waiting is half the fun. Kinda.

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Find the best FM freq for your iPod transmitter

MyBestFM Courtesy of PC World, I thought this was pretty cool. My Best FM is a website from Belkin that allows you to plug a location in and get the best, dead spot on your radio to tune your FM transmitter to. Handy if you have one of these things for your iPod or various portable MP3 players.

If you’re like me, then you own a FM transmitter that connects to your computer via USB and broadcasts nicely to a two hundred foot radius. Sadly, their database doesn’t cover Canada, and I’ve just been guessing that the freqs that my transmitter sits on is fairly empty. If not, oh well. I hope those poor suckers like what we crank out from here.