The next appleJAC meeting will be Tuesday, May 6th, 2025 at 7 PM at Kennedy Hall, Immaculate Conception Church in Jefferson City. The months topic will be Accessibility by Leslie Bowman. Kennedy hall's entrance is from the rear parking lot of the church. You do not need to be a member to attend our meetings.
As I have blogged before, I really love my TomTom GPS. TomTom has made getting one of these even easier this holiday.
It's the GiveGive Event. You give a TomTom and we'll give you $100 off any model online or at any retailer. So give the best portable everyday navigation solution: TomTom. Now through Jan. 6, buy any TomTom GPS device and get $100 off. Get more info at the TomTom official site.
Or check out TomTom's YouTube Channel.
Thanksgiving Day in America is a time to offer thanks, of family gatherings and holiday meals. A time of turkeys, stuffing, and pumpkin pie. A time for Indian corn, holiday parades and giant balloons.
Please spend time with your family if you can and keep in mind all of the things you are thankful for.
Apple has some new commercial spots and this has to be one of the best I think they have had in this series. It is called Better Results (guest-starring Gisele Bündchen)
Check out all Three:
1. Counselor
2. Better Results
3. Self Pity
Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen's involvement had been rumored since May, when her official website reported that she had been photograph for an ad campaign concerning the Mac.
And you can see them all, right here.
Adobe has been a premier Macintosh developer for years. Ever since Pagemaker in 1985, Adobe and Apple have been joined at the hip for the mutual benefit of both companies. So what is the deal with Adobe and the Intel transition?
Adobe has an official statement on Intel based Macs.
Adobe said it would not deliver native Intel versions of currently shipping professional products and that customers would have to wait until future major releases--which could be more than one year away--for native Intel Mac support. While noting an upcoming release of a native Intel Mac beta of Lightroom, its newly introduced professional applications for photographers, Adobe refused to provide additional release dates on the native Intel versions of its applications, except to say it was moving its development to Apple's Xcode development platform to help ease the Intel transition and was focused on the next major releases of its professional, which due to planned development cycles would delay the release of any native Intel Mac support.
The company, however, reiterated its support for the new Intel-based Mac platform, noting that at last year's Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference, Adobe CEO Bruce Citizen expressed "strong support" for Apple's transition plans: “We think this is a really smart move on Apple’s part and we plan to create future versions of our Creative Suite for Macintosh that support PowerPC and Intel processors."
Ok, but what about all the other applications and why no patches to make them work in Rosetta. I am a Contribute user (a product Adobe got from Macromedia) and it does not work in Rosetta. This is ridiculous. The least Adobe should do for paying customers is to fix the problems to allow us to get by until they release the real deals.
Other developers have done this, it is time for Adobe to get in gear and make it right.
If you have had the opportunity to use an intel based mac you can see that Apple has done wonders with the transition. Not only are the new machines fast but they are Macs through and through. As with any transition, there are applications that either take forever to be converted to the new technology or may never make the cut. One of these, called Drop Drawers I talked about the other day.
So what, in my opinion what are we missing on the application front? Keep in mind, these are applications I use so some make no difference to you but here is my list:
Believe it or not, that's about all I need. Looking in my applications folder, most all the others I use, even on a weekly basis, are Universal.
Are there applications you use that are not yet Universal? Let me know by commenting to this post and lets see the list.
Seeing the Mac Pro announcements this week, I must admit that the first thought I had was about the price. Gone are the professional tower configurations for less than $2000 and replacing them is a single configuration that prices at $2499. Kind of a high entry level don't you think. But upon reflection, you have to realize that these machines are intended to be just what apple calls them, Professional Machines.
Apple said that this machine was very price competitive with Dell so I decided to go and configure a Dell and see. I started with a Dell 490 workstation. This was the lowest end Dell that would accept both the dual processors and the Woodcrest chip. I added the second 2.66 GHZ processor, DVD-RW drive, Firewire, and came up with a nice Dell workstation configured very much like the Standard Mac Pro at a cost of $3540. Now to be fair, Dell provides an entry level 3 year warranty on a workstation machine like this so to make the two machines the same, I need to add the $249 Applecare to the Standard Mac Pro price of $2499 for a Mac Price total of $2748.
It looks like Apple is telling the truth. In this configuration, the Dell workstation is 29% more expensive.
The one item I believe Apple needs to address is that of a machine somewhere between the Mac Pro and the iMac. Many people want larger displays and tower machines rather than an all in one form factor. Apple needs a single processor dual-core machine in the $1500 price range for all these people. It is really a Mac Semi-Pro that people who need more expansion than an iMac could go for without needing to go all the way to the Pro hardware. Perhaps Apple will see that. With the use of Intel component system board designs, it becomes easier for Apple to provide many form factors that it could previously not make. Only time will tell.
After a recent trip to Boston, this Independence Day strikes very close to home for me. While back east, I visited a number of the sites where this countries revolution began and I must say, I am impressed by the risks these founders took to make where we live today America.
As I write this short entry for today, I think how these people took a leap of faith to start our country. We may not always believe in the direction, policies, or the roads that our leaders are taking us down, but we need to keep the faith that our founders today, as it was in 1776, are doing the best things they can for our country. We may not always agree, but we all need to try to understand.
Take a minute today, in between the barbeque, pool parties, and fireworks to smell the gunpowder in the air and be thankful for the gunpowder used by our founders to allow us to enjoy the freedoms we have today.