Changing the tone of this blog

Even though this blog started out about getting the Mac Book Air, I have decided to change the tone of the blog towards all things Apple. This will include purchases of Apple products as well as experiences with Apple products and services.

iPhone 3G

So here we are July 11, 2008. Boy was there a line at the AT&T store. I drove by the store last night and didn't see anyone in line. However, this morning there looked like there were some people who camped out. Somehow I don't think that is a good ROI for my time. I did manage to get there at approximately 7:15am. I was just about the 100th customer. As the line grew even after me, the AT&T manager was starting to tell people there was not enough supply. Turns out that I was the cut off. I was afraid I would not get one. About 2 1/2 hours later (from 8am), they ran out of the 16 GB black and white. So people were getting out of line who were in front of me and in back of me. I was no longer the cut off!

The experience was a bit unnerving. It was really a 3:30 hour wait. The first 2 1/2 just to find out if I would make the cut. Several people behind me would not leave the line even after the manager said you would not make it. People were still coming at 10am. By the time purchasing came, the systems were already at a melt down. AT&T could not even activate the phone. They told me by 3pm or 4pm today. This means I cannot unbrick my phone. I guess there are worse things to do on a day like this. So at least I can say I was one of the firsts in California to get one on 7/11. I can't wait to test out the speeds. I had already downloaded the 2.0 upgrade for my old iPhone yesterday. I will be giving that one to my mom!

Well, as with my Mac Book Air, I have decided to make it a tradition to take pictures when I get a new Apple product. So check out the photos below.

The box - They managed to make it smaller than the 1st iPhone

Inside the Box

Front facing


Back side with the black


Everything inside - The power source is even smaller!

Using iPhoto to create and buy Photo Album

Okay, so this post is more about iPhoto than it is about the MBA. All I can say is that I did it with a MBA. I really never knew what iPhoto could do until recently. I thought it was just a way to organize photos and preview them. However, I saw a spiel on creating your own photo album and I thought, who has hard copy photo albums anymore? Everyone shares on the web. Well, call me old fashioned, but there is just something nice about sharing a hard copy photo album when you have company or you want to give a gift. I think grandparents would really dig something like this. So I tried it. The hard part was sifting through hundreds and hundreds of pictures stored on an external drive and importing them into iPhoto. If I had a complaint about the MBA now, it would be the lack of storage capacity. Using iPhoto to create the album was simple enough once I had all the photos I was going to use. Depending on the type of album you pick you can only have a max of 20 pages. However, you have various layouts that give you up to 16 photos to a page. At the end ordering was rather simple to. iPhoto checks for some types of errors. For example, I had not filled out all the pages that had text to them, so iPhoto warned me that it would be blank. Again, if I had any criticism of the product it was that it told me there were so low res photos in the mix, but did not tell me which one. I didn't have the energy to go look at the directory to see. It was my first album anyway. If it turns out nice, who knows, maybe I'll make another one for our upcoming vacation! Anxiously waiting to see what it looks like.

Remote Desktop Connection Beta 3

In a previous post I talked about using RDC beta version for Mac to connect into work PCs. In a April release, Microsoft put out a new Beta rev. This Beta will not expire and will allow users to continue to use the Beta version to RDC into Windows based machines.

Extending the desktop (take 2)

In my last blog entry about the resolution degradation after connecting to an external monitor, I find that I was in error to some degree. While working at home yesterday, I plugged in an external monitor and the video resolution was great on both screens. So I decided to try and experiment with the display settings when connected to work. This morning, I plugged in the external monitor and sure enough the video resolution on the MBA went down. So I opened up the Display options and found that the resolution had gone from the highest to the 2nd highest resulting in the video degradation. Once I set the settings back to the highest for the MBA, both screens looked GREAT!
What I can't explain is why I had two different experiences. The external monitor at work is a 17" 4:3 aspect ratio and the home external monitor is a 22" 16:9. So it is possible that this had something to do with it. Also, it wasn't immediately intuitive to change display resolution to solve the problem given that 1 screen looked great. This may just be chalked up to figuring some things on your own unless you are willing to pay $99 for education at the Apple store.

Extending the desktop

Okay...so as I write, I realize that my experiences described on this blog has been a mix between the MBA and Leopard. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish which one I am writing about until I post and think about what I just wrote. However, this time I am going to make the callout that this is mostly an entry about Leopard. I will make one or two comments about the MBA.

I used the micro-dvi to connect to an external monitor. I have tried it at home before, but today was the first time at work. Normally, at home, the MBA would transition and show on both monitors. Today was different. After plugging in the monitor, I saw the normal screen come up on the MBA and just my desktop background on the external monitor. I shortly realized after checking the systems display that it configured the setup to be extended monitor. WOW.

I had to do a little bit of configuration to get the extended monitor the way I wanted, but once that once done, I put the RDC application on the extended monitor so I could remote in to my work machine, while saving the MBA monitor space for Safari. Also, I had to configure Spaces to allow the extended monitor to be up the same time as Safari because Safari is configured for Space 4. I am assuming that if I transition to another application on a different space, the application on the extended monitor will hide.

So here is my comment on the MBA. I believe, at least what my eyes see, there is a bit of video degradation when plugging in an external monitor. The words are just not as crisp. Not sure if there is a solution given the video card has to handle both monitors. Is it something I can live with? Yes. After all, this is not my primary machine and I don't think I plan to have it connected to a monitor all the time. That defeats the whole mobility part of it.

MBA for business use

I finally broke down and used the MBA for a business trip. I had to go to Tucson, AZ and I did not want to lug the IBM T60 with me, especially since I was bringing everything I needed in one back pack carry-on. However, before I left, I needed to do some configuration. So I downloaded Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) beta 2.0 from Mactopia. This allowed me to RDC into either of the machines I had logged in at work. Second, since I might be connecting while not at an office site, I downloaded the VPN software for Mac from Apani (formerly Contivity). It is the Mac version of the Nortel Network client. I also had to get a ethernet dongle from the Apple store since I knew the AZ office would not have wireles.

Everything checked out at the home office as well as offsite when checking the VPN software. So off I went last Wednesday evening. Arriving in Tucson at 9:15pm, I checked into the hotel and luckily had free wireless. I was able to RDC into my laptop at work and check some email and make some calendar appointments.

The next day, I LAN'd into the network and everything was a breeze. When I checked email, I could use Outlook Web. If I needed a file or had to use the laptop at work, I just RDC'd into the laptop. Furthermore, I didn't have to carry a paper notebook as the MBA worked just fine as a notetaker. The only thing I dare not do is leave it out of my site. There is no way to lock this thing down.

Using the Air during the trip was a breeze. It was so light to carry and being connected was so nice. However, I really still want to use this just for fun!