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You may recall I got bought a very nice Apple ‘Think Different’ neon sign a while back. It’s been left in the cupboard gathering dust, as I really didn’t know where to put it! Well, I finally dusted it down the other day, and gave it a new place in my Mac setup. I think you’ll agree, it looks great! One day I will own a shop with that sign in it!

I really enjoy my little workspace now, especially when it’s all lit up at night. Next stop, to get cracking with that coding book. I will understand it one day. Would be great to make a nice iPad app, as that market will be less saturated to begin with.

As most of you probably know I ordered a new iMac late last year, but when I finally received it in early January it was suffering from the dreaded yellow screen tint. After a simple phone call to Apple Customer Care they agreed to send me an advanced replacement. This replacement was due to arrive on the 28th of January. I got a phone call from Apple on the morning of the 28th telling me there was delay in shipment, and my new machine wouldn’t be here till February the 19th! Anyway, to my surprise I received an email on the 29th stating my iMac had shipped and that I’d receive it today.

Thankfully the new machine (on the left) doesn’t suffer from the yellow tint, the hard drive in it also seems a lot quieter. I thought I’d have a bit of fun and see what it’d be like if I were running these two in a dual screen kind of setup, have to say I was starting to get used to it until I finally gave in and started the Migration Assistant! It’s currently got just under two hours to go and I’ll have to start clearing the old one and packing it up. Never nice to wave goodbye to any Mac equipment, even if it is faulty.

After weeks of rumours it seems Apple have finally come out and officially announced it will be staging an event on Wednesday Jan 27th at 10am PST. It will take place at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, in San Francisco. For us UK peeps this will be at 6pm, so make sure you get home from work sharpish! The event has been labeled ‘Come see our latest creation’. This is the biggest indicator yet that Apple will be showing it’s iSlate Tablet device, the first new product since the iPhone debuted at Macworld 2007. So what can we expect? Well so far the strongest rumours suggest…

• 10-inch Touch Sensitive Display
• Runs custom ‘Tablet OS’ a mixture of iPhone OS and Mac OS X
• Tablet Apps on AppStore – Custom made for bigger screen
• Subscription based Digital Content such as the New York Times delivered to Tablet
• SIM Card Slot for 3G Mobile Broadband Connectivity

Steve Jobs himself is supposedly ‘very happy’ with the device, this after he actually dismissed Tablet PCs in 2008 claiming they were ‘only good for browsing the web on the can’ Does this mean Apple have something special on the cards? Are all them patents purporting ways of giving touchscreen keyboards more tactile feedback going to come to fruition? I certainly hope so.

Well it finally arrived. After waiting the best part of 3 weeks, my iMac showed it’s face on the 6th of January, a full day ahead of schedule. After eagerly unpacking it I prayed the glass was intact, it was. I then prayed it would boot, it did. So far, so good (I thought)

I’ve been following a few forums online with plenty of people complaining about various ailments their iMacs are suffering from. This put me on tender hooks, I didn’t know what to expect when I turned it on. The first thing I noticed was the lack of any dead pixels, which is always a good thing. After a few minutes of use though, I did notice something, the dreaded yellow screen tint problem was clearly visible. The bottom section of the screen, more towards the right hand side, is a very warm colour, whereas the rest of the screen is clarity personified. I was slightly upset.

I ran through a few more tests to see if there were any other problems, the hard drive wasn’t noisy, the screen didn’t flicker or blackout and I had no beach-balling problems whatsoever, the thing really does fly to be fair! This made me wonder whether I could forget the yellow tint problem and just get on with it, after all, it is a beast of a machine and I was loving using it.

So, after two days of trying, I finally cracked! For the money I paid I think the machine should be perfect, hell it should be better than perfect! So I called Apple, they were very helpful and have agreed to send me an advanced replacement, meaning I can keep the current machine until the new one arrives. It’s a bit of a lottery at the moment though, will I get a machine that is 100% perfect? It could get even worse…?

I ordered this machine on the 16th of December knowing there was a 2 week lead time on them. For the first few days I was constantly checking the tracking hoping a miracle would happen and I’d have it before Christmas. I was wrong. I got the ‘Shipped’ email off Apple late on Christmas Eve (24th Dec) which was a week earlier than they had initially quoted. I was pleased and was hoping I’d have it in my hands before the new year kicked off. I kept checking the status online, but had still not been given a tracking number. I went through the usual antics of using Apple’s delivery reference number on a host of courier websites (TNT, UPS etc) but to no avail.

After a phone call to Apple they told me to expect my tracking number on the 4th of January. So yesterday came and went without any sign of an email, I phoned again. This time the representative told me my Mac was on schedule for a 7th of Jan delivery. I asked him regarding the tracking number and he said I won’t get one until the carrier in the UK pick it up! So basically I hear nothing until the day of delivery! I think this is shocking by Apple. I’ve been reading various online forum posts regarding shipment of their i7 iMacs. Many people in the USA have had their orders before me even though they didn’t order until late December! Not only that, they had full tracking info all the way from Shanghai to their front door.

Let me just say, I’m hoping and praying I don’t get a machine with any of the following symptoms

• Yellow tainted screen
• Dead pixels
• Grumbling Hard Drive
• Flickering & Blackout issues
• iSight with dead pixels
• Cracked Glass

Since I’m bored and wide awake at the moment, I thought I’d make full use of my iPhone. I rarely use the WordPress App, but after realising today how great the iPhone is as a Netbook replacment, I thought I’d start using it to it’s full potential. Not only have I been listening to my favourite Music, I’ve been playing some great Games. Titles like Chop Sushi, Rogue Planet, Bejeweled, Rock Band, Monkey Island, the list goes on. It’s no wonder manufacturers are chomping at the bit to get their ‘AppStores’ up and running. I recently downloaded the new (and free) Photoshop App, a very cool program that enables cropping, rotation, along with a whole host of visual filters and user adjustable colour balance. Pictures can be shared effortlessy to your favourite online Social Networking sites, whether it be Twitter, FaceBook or Flickr, the iPhone has the power and finesse to keep you up to date at any time. Anyway, enough of my rambling and enjoy the view I’ve had nearly all day (picture edited with Photoshop before you ask!)

Since Apple released the 10.6.2 update on November the 9th I have noticed the glass trackpad on my Unibody MacBook has become very unresponsive. I didn’t really notice it at first, but then started to wonder why links in Safari weren’t responding to  my clicks. Not only that, selecting blocks of text or using the scroll bars has become increasingly frustrating. I tried cleaning the trackpad with an alcohol solution, tried repairing permissions, and even reset the System Management Controller (SMC). The only thing I could think of that’d changed recently was me updating to 10.6.2.

After a bit of searching I couldn’t find much through Google. I then  decided on posting a thread on the Apple Support forums. After a few days, more reports started trickling in with others experiencing the same problem.

So get on it, Apple!

Earlier today Apple released a software update for the AppleTV. It’s mentioned in the release notes that it’s been given a “simpler and faster interface”. I’m not sure it’s that much quicker to be honest, the menu lag still pops up on occasions and the remote can be as unresponsive as ever. The front end menu has completely changed, something I’ve been hoping would happen for some time. I got a bit fed up of the bland old menu, this newer look brings more colour to the screen, and uses a menu system not too dissimilar to the PlayStation 3’s. Sorry for the quality of the picture, I took it straight off my TV with the iPhone.

After seeing the ‘Internet’ menu I was hoping we’d see BBC’s iPlayer magically appear, but it wasn’t to be this time. Instead the newest addition, next to YouTube, is Internet Radio. This is a welcome bonus for me as I regularly tune in to the Electronica stations. I tried a couple of stations and everything seemed to work flawlessly, you get a Growl style notification at the bottom left of the screen letting you know what you’re listening while you browse through other stations.

Another new feature added is Genius Mixes. This was introduced in iTunes 9.0 and expands on Apple’s Genius mode. When selected you are presented with a choice of Mixes split by Genre. Once chosen, iTunes (or the AppleTV in this case) will keep playing songs it thinks fit together, until it runs out of ideas music. Notice the notification in the bottom left, showing I’m still listening to a Radio Station.

One of the few new features I was hoping for the most was the ability to view your iTunes LP’s in full screen on your HDTV. Apple granted my wish and have supposedly included this in the update. Only trouble is, the two iTunes LP’s that I own do not show up on the AppleTV no matter what I do. I’ve tried manual sync, creating a dedicated playlist, even tried sharing it off my MacBook, nothing makes the LP’s show up.

UPDATE
After a quick tweet to my friend Sam over at Fruit Bytes, she found a document released by Apple with information about this new feature. It seems we must wait for an email telling us when AppleTV compatible versions of our existing iTunes LP’s are available!

Since Apple released the newest iMacs just under a week ago I’ve been trying to decide which would be the best option. After a bit of indecision I thought, I need the daddy, the top of the line, the i7! This new CPU from Intel is a Quad Core demon. It uses four dedicated Cores, but with the use of HyperThreading can have up to eight virtual Cores. When the software doesn’t call on all four Cores, the processor can turn on Turbo mode. This turns it into a two Core beast, running as high as 3.46GHz. Talk about the best of both worlds.

So with my heart set on the i7 system, I realise there are two stumbling blocks. Firstly, they don’t ship till ‘November’ and secondly, I don’t have enough money yet. Anyway, after sticking the thing in the basket online I was checking on upgrades. With the four DIMM slots you can have up to 16GB of RAM in there, although this will cost you close to £1000 from Crucial UK! So I’m looking online for more info and benchmarks of this i7 CPU and notice it supports triple channel memory. Most of the new mobos shipping only have 3 RAM slots and people are running 6GB in their machines. The new iMac has 4 slots. So what will happen, will Apple enable triple channel? Will it be better to run 6GB in your iMac even though 8GB is the more cost effective method? It’ll be interesting to see once they ship!

UPDATED*

After a bit more digging I’ve found that the iMac i7 is using the i7-8xx platform and will not support triple channel memory. This is kind of good news really, as I’ll now be able to throw 4 x 2GB modules at it for a fairly cost effective 8GB of memory. Here’s a chart showing the various platforms, I’ve highlighted the iMacs.

What’s interesting now is, the table clearly shows the platform is capable of DDR3-1333 RAM. Apple is shipping theirs with DDR3-1067. Will we be able to stick quicker RAM in the i7 iMac? Another question that now remains unanswered!

Rumours have been rife of late that Apple were seeking to replace their current Mighty Mouse with an all new, fully touch sensitive bit of kit. One of the major complaints regarding the Mighty Mouse was inconsistent scrolling, caused by a build up of gunk in the scroll ball workings. This usually rendered the downward scrolling of the mouse useless, unless you had the nerve to open it up and clean it yourself. Plug time I made a guide for this very problem here.

Apple have also been battling with the naming of the Mighty Mouse, with medical company Man & Machine claiming rights for the name. Man & Machine have released five revisions of their Mighty Mouse. Since losing this case, Apple has rebranded their version, simply, Apple Mouse. Today though, we were introduced to it’s successor, the Magic Mouse.

What’s new in the new Magic Mouse? Two words, Multi touch. Magic Mouse expands on what the Mighty Mouse introduced. No buttons to differentiate Left and Right clicking, just sensors. You might have noticed that dreaded scroll wheel has also gone. Now you simply use the mouse much like a trackpad. Scrolling is taken care of with a single finger swipe in the centre of the mouse. The quicker you swipe your finger, the quicker it scrolls (where have you seen that before?) Apple have also added a few other nifty gestures, like the two finger swipe to browse through your Photos or iTunes library in Coverflow.

The Magic Mouse doesn’t come cheap though. Although it’s bundled with every new iMac, you’ll have to fork out £55 if you want one for your current setup. The one thing I must say is the design looks a lot more comfortable than the Mighty Mouse. The shape and curvature of the body looks like it’ll fit snuggly in your hand and work well for prolonged use. I am also very glad they kept some tactile feedback and didn’t just give us a touch screen slapped onto a mouse.

Head over to the Apple site to see a video of it in action.