Tag: Mac

The September issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.
Shhhhhhh. Be vewy, vewy quiet. Mark is hunting dwagons. He then ponders who’s really using less paper, us or them. (Them being corporations, not dwagons. Er, dragons.)
Yours truly had the pleasure of interviewing a friend: Heather Sitarzewski. Heather’s a very creative gal; the things she comes up with never fails to surprise me.
ATPM staffer Wes Meltzer has had to travel quite a bit of late for his other employer (the one that actually pays him). With finances being tight enough that a MacBook Air wasn’t in the cards, and needing something lighter than a 13-inch MacBook, Wes decided to try living with an EeePC netbook running Ubuntu Linux on the road.
Rob regales us with his tale of iPad purchasing, noting that our favorite fruit company’s tablet is an earnings and revenue monster.
If you like flowers, you’ll love this month’s desktop pictures selection. ATPM reader Sterling Garwood shares some photos he took in North Carolina.
Calling out the hazmat team, too much caffeine, avoiding FBI warnings on DVDs, old-fashioned copy editing, menopause, multi-level marketing, outsourcing the boss, and recycling: all in the line of duty in Out at Five.
Ed boldly goes where most of us fear to tread: into the realm of accounting. With his look at Acclivity’s AccountEdge and FirstEdge, things appear to be heading into the black. Finally, Eric puts his baby in then hands of Griffin’s Loop, a tabletop stand for the iPad.
As always, this issue of About This Particular Macintosh is available in a wide variety of formats for your enjoyment:

• Online
• Offline Webzine
• Print-optimized PDF
• Screen-optimized PDF

Thanks for reading, ATPM!

The August issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.
Rob gets us going with a recap of Apple’s latest earnings, as well as their new product introductions. Two lines in Rob’s analysis really stood out to me:

At $65 billion in annual revenue, Apple’s revenue take is greater than the GDP (gross domestic product) of most nations.
And:
It’s interesting to note: In the June quarter close to 50% of Apple’s revenue was generated by products that did not exist in the marketplace just over three years ago.
It’s no wonder how favorite fruit company continues to be the envy of the tech industry.
While vacationing in Normandy, Mark discovers “wee-fee”, a new French cuisine. Despite some, er, “digestive” problems with the “wee-fee”, it was much preferable to the palate than his having to deal with refurbishing a Windows-running Dell.
Ed not only returns to update the Next Actions GTD app list, but shares his workflow and tools for processing e-mail. This is a great resource for those of us floundering through e-mail inboxes full of stuff we know we should get to, but never seem to.
Linus shares his experience going from 10 GB iPod to iPod touch to iPad, and learns some times the greener grass is hiding a few weeds. Sylvester shares his travails on maintaining the household network, noting that this sometimes unpleasant task has gotten easier over the years.
The August edition of our desktop pictures is courtesy of ATPM reader Giuseppe Balacco, his daughter Maria Luisa, and his wife Cecilia. They feature the gorgeous Tremiti Islands. I’ve already downloaded the entire set.
In this month’s edition of Out at Five, we are treated to unqualified sales recruits who’ll stab you in the back at the first opportunity, lightsaber confusion, why you should never finish every project you have at work, and finally those notes taped to the outside of the fridge should always be heeded.
Yours truly reviews the OWC Express USB 2.5-inch hard drive enclosure, a welcome addition to my tech stable. Finally, Matthew puts Ambrosia’s WireTap Anywhere through the wringer of digital recording.
Our all-volunteer publication is always looking for talented writers, photographers, and graphic artists to contribute regularly. If you’re interested, please contact the editors.
As always, this month’s edition of About This Particular Macintosh is available in a variety of flavors:

• Online
• Offline Webzine
• Print-optimized PDF
• Screen-optimized PDF (which I’m thinking is great in GoodReader on an iPad)

Thanks for reading ATPM!

The February issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.
Mark laments how the technology of his employer isn’t quite there when it comes to telecommuting when the weather’s bad. Then he laments how his home entertainment technology isn’t quite where he’d like it to be, either. Mark also ponders if anyone still cares about the browser wars.
Ed updates the Next Actions master list. If you can’t find something on there to help you get things done, then I suppose you’re content with pen and paper. (And there’s nothing wrong with that.) ATPM reader Stanley Jayne was kind enough to share with us his first experience with the Mac, which began with, well, the first Mac.
Yours truly is responsible for this month’s desktop pictures, which come from our trip to New England in May of 2006. At Weiser Graphics, Chad deals with a finicky printer and the changes in technology, while there appears to be an irrepressible march toward “green products” no one’s heard of. Or may need.
Finally, Sky King Chris has a pair of iPhone-related reviews, checking if the Element iPhone Stand and i.Tech’s SolarCharger 906 can measure up.
As always, About This Particular Macintosh is available in a variety of formats for your enjoyment:
+ Offline Webzine
+ Print-optimized PDF
+ Screen-optimized PDF
Thanks for reading ATPM!

The January issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure. The staff of ATPM is pleased to note with this issue we are entering our 16th year of publication!
Mark kicks off the new year having some fun with a GPS iPhone app, comparing it to its hardware-based brethren and how they work in the United Kingdom. He then notes some consternation with the ability of a XP-based Dell to not multi-task while his equivalently-equipped Mac strolls along chewing bubble gum.
Sylvester is kind enough to take us through building our own additions to the Services Menu. What’s that? You’ve never heard of the Services Menu? Crikey. Sylvester’s certainly got his work cut out for him then…
ATPM friend Delwin Finch loves macro photography, and was kind enough to share some shots of water drops under low light conditions in this month’s desktop pictures section. At Wieser Graphics, they’re feeling the economic crunch. Todd runs headlong into the digital vs analog wall, but proves adept at translating marketing speak for his boss.His greatest achievement, however, may be…well. You’ll see. If you haven’t made a New Year’s resolution yet, but would like to, Linus is ready with some suggestions.
Ed takes a look at a device I’m beginning to pine after: the Harmony 510 Universal Remote. Why, pray tell, might a publication dedicated to things Mac review such an item? Because Ed’s using it with an Apple TV, that’s why. And a Sony DVD player. And a Dish Network DVR/receiver. And an Onkyo 5.1 AV unit. And…well, you get the picture. Or maybe just Ed does…
Matthew drops his nets in the Craigslist ocean using Marketplace. It has a few limitations, sure, and some might find its price (there is a fully-featured trial period) off-putting. However, I recently used Marketplace to help my sister locate a used MacBook, and it was pure pleasure compared to searching Craigslist via its web site.
Linus claims he used Ortelius to make a map for his son, who wanted to use his green and tan plastic army soldiers in a game of world domination. But we really know who was playing with the green and tan plastic army soldiers, don’t we? Don’t we, Linus?
Chris gives Uniea’s U-Motion, a workout sleeve for the iPhone, a, well, workout. Then he goes after the U-Motion’s more formal sibling, the U-Suit Folio Premium.
As always, About This Particular Macintosh is available in a variety of formats for your enjoyment:
+ Offline Webzine
+ Print-optimized PDF
+ Screen-optimized PDF
Thanks for reading ATPM!

After a couple-month hiatus from my usual blog posting announcing publication, I’m pleased to note the September issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.
After more than twenty years of self-employment, Mark finds himself in the company of, well, a company, and is exasperated by the many instances of “anti-time” he is encountering. Oh, and he misses his Mac. (Who wouldn’t?) Angus performs some fortune-telling as he gazes out over the technology sector.
Back in July, Lee took a 10-day excursion to merry ol’ England. (Technically it was the United Kingdom, as Wales and Scotland were visited too, but “merry ol’ United Kingdom” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.) While on his journey, he chose to forego taking along his trusted MacBook Pro, winging it solely with his jailbroken (ahem) iPhone.
In addition to providing us with his Mac-less trip experience, Lee also shares with readers this month’s desktop pictures. My favorites include Becky Falls, Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey 1. Matt showers another array of his new cartoon, Out at Five upon us; I really like “Difficult Printer” and “Get to the point”.
Chris finds a simple and inexpensive iPhone stand, while Linus wonders if Cram is the learning tool it’s cracked up to be. Chris also puts the In Your Face “flexible holder” for one’s iPhone through its paces.
It’s always handy to be able to power up one’s iPhone after a busy day of texting, mapping, web surfing, e-mailing, oh, and using that voice thingy that comes with it. No, not the Skype app. That thing that says Phone. Thus, Lee is pleased he can do so thanks to Griffin’s PowerBlock Reserve. Finally, Ellyn takes control of Safari 4 thanks to, um, Take Control of Safari 4, one of the latest titles from TidBITS Publishing’s Take Control e-book series.
As always, About This Particular Macintosh is available in a variety of formats for your reading enjoyment:
+ Online
+ Offline Webzine
+ Print-optimized PDF
+ Screen-optimized PDF

The May issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.
Reading about Mark’s travails in obtaining faster broadband across the Pond, I’m thankful our step up to fiber optic a couple of years ago was relatively painless. I’m also thankful we’ve never had the sort of printer troubles Mark’s run in to, thought he does aptly highlight how inkjet printers are pretty much a commodity now. In some cases, it’s to the point of, “We need more ink? The new ink costs how much?!? How much was that new printer at Costco?”
Ed updates the master GTD app list for May, while Sylvester walks us through Front Row. Linus’ attempt at making it through the Bible of GTD, David Allen’s Getting Things Done, offered at least inspiration for this month’s Qaptain Qwerty.
I’m especially proud of this month’s desktop pictures selection. Not only were they were shot by Jessica, the teenage daughter of my good friend Rob Leitao, but they were done so not with even a low-end digital SLR, but with a run-of-the-mill Canon PowerShot point-and-shoot. We hope you enjoy Jessica’s stunning photos from Yosemite National Park.
Lee works out the combo of Slappa’s PTAC laptop sleeve and shoulder bag, while Chris crisscrosses the country with his iPhone in a Core Case. Rob puts iWeb ’09 through the wringer as he creates from scratch a new web site. Chris puts two non-case iPhone accessories through their paces: the Pogo Sketch stylus, and the “tuned conical deflection chamber” of the SoundClip. Finally, Ed pours some audio through the interesting Transcriva: dump in the audio, out comes text transcripts. I may have to look into that one myself.
As always, ATPM is available in a variety of formats for your enjoyment:
+ Offline Webzine
+ Print-optimized PDF
+ Screen-optimized PDF

The April issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.
Mark discovers an unexpected benefit of the iPod nano apparently having a mind of its own, while at the same time dealing with the beta of Safari 4 and problems with paperless billing. As usual, Ed updates the GTD App Master List, while exploring the automation of file management.
Rob brings us photos of the Vasquez Rocks, part of the San Andreas Fault just north of Los Angeles, in this month’s desktop pictures. (Be sure to tune in next month when Rob’s teenage daughter’s photos of Yosemite are featured, and we can all see how much better a photographer she is than dear ol’ Dad. Love ya, Rob!) Linus shows us how Mac users really can be affected by Windows viruses.
Ed expands the capabilities of Photoshop Elements with the extremely capable Elements+, which unlocks big-brother Photoshop features otherwise hidden in the application’s source code. In the quest to protect sensitive data, Linus conducts a little Espionage, while Lee looks at the iPhone app for Facebook, a place where far too many people aren’t sensitive enough with their data.
Frank conducts the Mother of Current Big Three GTD Mac Apps Round-Up™, having a hard time choosing between OmniFocus, TaskPaper, and Things. (I use TaskPaper myself, though I admit I don’t really use it every day, in the way I should be using it. I guess I have trust issues. Which is funny because many times, my brain itself can’t be trusted, so… Oh. Right. This month’s issue. Sorry.)
Chris is a little disappointed with the iFlyz Personal Media Solution Stand, whereas Lee finds KavaServices rather useful. Finally, when he’s not flying the friendly skies, Chris is trying out the Showcase with his iPhone 3G.
As usual, ATPM is available in a variety of formats to suit your reading needs:
+ Offline Webzine
+ Print-optimized PDF
+ Screen-optimized PDF

The March issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.
Mike ponders a Jobs-less Apple future, especially in light of a certain comment made by a certain Apple fan-baiting hack. After a long hiatus, Mark re-enters the world of book design with a job hunt, and comes away pining for a twenty year-old Mac rather than suffer the slings and arrows of the Windows machines he encounters. Also in the employment hunt, Mark discovers the paperless office and instant communication are still a long way off, especially, and not surprisingly, in the bureaucratic wasteland of government offices.
Sylvester has a wonderful introductory piece on Time Machine. Be sure to read the comments; after submitting the article for publication, Sylvester encountered an error with Time Machine backups, and his solution may prove valuable to some of you in the future.
David Siebecker was kind enough to share some amazing photos from his 2006 safari to Tanzania for this month’s desktop pictures. (Consequently, Tanzania is the home of Emmanuel, the boy our family sponsors through Compassion.) I especially like the shots of the rhino, elephant, and the two sunsets. In this month’s Qaptain Qwerty, Linus shows us how backups have grown up.
Speaking of Linus, he puts ChronoSync, an app I’ve long had on the Eventual To-Try list, through its paces, and finds it worthy. One booth we made sure to stop by at while at Macworld Expo was the Eye-Fi one, and Lee has given the namesake Explore wireless SD card a workout. Finally, Chris determines whether or not the PED3 iPhone Stand is a worthwhile replacement for Apple’s iPhone dock.
As usual, ATPM is available in a variety of formats for your convenience. Thanks for reading About This Particular Macintosh!

The February issue is now available for your reading pleasure.
If you’ve gotten over Wes’ analogy to high-altitude, fiber-producing, spitting camelids in last month’s Bloggable, you’ll be pleased to know he’s now moved on to the blogosphere discussion of appropriate iTunes App Store pricing. Oh, and Steve Jobs’ health. Because the mainstream media will just not. Let. It. Go.
Mark wanders down memory lane so far as Internet connections are concerned, and laments that some employment forms across the Pond are in non-editable PDF form. Why is this a problem? When one such form is 28 pages long, that’s a lot of handwriting. There’s also the testy problem of folks paying for a broadband connection half the speed of which they’re paying for.
For anyone looking to get things done, Ed has updated the master list of applications which might help you to do so. Yours truly, with much help from Lee and Eric, offers a report from our adventure in San Francisco, and Macworld Expo 2009. Speaking of memory lane, Linus takes a stroll about Removable Storage Avenue, with a column title that made me smile nostalgically.
Speaking of San Francisco, one of the things the three ATPM musketeers did while we were there was take lots of photos, and the Bay Area offers lots of opportunities for great shots. Lee shares some of his favorites with us for this month’s desktop pictures. Linus contributed a cartoon complimentary to his column, wherein an old maxim is shown to not be true.
Some of you may think laptop stands are just not cricket, but Frank Wu is impressed with the Cricket Laptop Stand. (What? Too many Britishisms in this month’s ATPM post?) Ed puts MacSpeech Dictate 2.1 through its paces, and the voice recognition tool emerges unscathed and highly recommended.
As usual, ATPM is available in myriad formats for your enjoyment.

About This Particular Macintosh enters its fifteenth year of publishing with the release of our January issue.
Angus found himself doing some iPhone evangelism during the holiday season, even if it was completely unintentional on his part. Wes returns, after many months, with a look at the latest in the Mac blogosphere, notably the latest news regarding lawsuits between Apple and Mac-clone maker Psystar.
Mike is very happy with his iPhone 3G, but is disappointed that it meant his having to leave Sprint. He wonders if we’ll ever have mobile phones and mobile serviced unbundled from one another. As Mike notes, the cable companies don’t tell us what TV to use, and thank Jobs and Woz we aren’t required to use Windows to access content on the Internet. (Well, most content, anyway.) As his next action for 2009, Ed lays out where he’s taking his column, and looks for feedback from the ATPM readership.
Ken Aspeslagh was kind enough to share some photos from around the world for this month’s desktop pictures. Locations include St. John, France, and New England. Linus entertains with this month’s cartoon, related to a review in this same issue.
Speaking of reviews, Ed gets on the, er, Freeway. No, not of love, but of web site design. If you’ve got a ton of URLs you’d like to store for later reference, Paul thinks you can do worse than ShoveBox. For those looking for a hands-free kit to use with their iPhone, Ed thinks highly of the Vizor SUN. (Yeah, I had a line there about shining brightly, or using your car’s sun visor, but I couldn’t make it work, and it’s already past midnight, so this is getting posted on the 2d instead of the 1st. Maybe next year.) Finally, Linus wraps up our first issue of 2009 with a look at WordSoup, and if you’re still trying to figure out the cartoon, hopefully it makes sense now.
As always, this month’s issue is available in multiple formats for your reading enjoyment. Thanks for reading ATPM!