The Apple thread

Fuseball · Post by **Fuseball** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 7:53 am 0

I actually quite like typing on the macbook keyboard. I'm interested to see how it works when it's not attached the rest of a laptop.

PaulCunningham · Post by **PaulCunningham** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 8:57 am 0

Much prefer the MacBook keyboard to the Pro. Now if only they'd put the bloody buttons in the right place

Glossy screens suck!

Kemper_Boyd · Post by **Kemper_Boyd** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 9:09 am 0

Not owning a MacBook I'm skeptical about the keyboard, but I've heard
plenty of positive opinions about the MacBook's keyboard.

I understand the arguments for gloss screens (greater transmission and
less diffusion) and against (reflection), but I don't like them and the iMac
looks like it has the worst gloss screen yet.

xav · Post by **xav** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 9:31 am 0

If anyone was thinking about buying an iMac and isn't too worried about having the latest and greatest, I notice that the price of the old models has just plummeted in the refurb store. Two days ago they were 14% off the original retail price, now they're down to 27% off.

When a new Apple product is announced one of two things usually happens in the refurb store:

1) You can't get the previous model at all, as they planned ahead well enough to have got shot of the old stock

2) They didn't plan ahead so well, so are stuck with a glut of them and drop the price a bit more

My gf's business needed to get a refurb iMac, so fearing (1) they ordered it last week. If they'd known that (2) was going to apply in this case they could have waited and saved nearly Â£100 more!

Rod_S · Post by **Rod_S** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 2:24 pm 0

Excellent service from Micro Anvika - ordered the Cinema Display at about 11am, it arrived just now

Also ordered iLife 08 and one of the new keyboards, but they're waiting for stock to arrive.

Now, to set up the beast...

Kemper_Boyd · Post by **Kemper_Boyd** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 2:26 pm 0

Nice. It's probably a good decision to buy the cinema display before
Apple start slapping glass on the front of them as well.

amanset · Post by **amanset** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 3:02 pm 0

Well I just went and did it.

24" with 750GB drive.

I'll pick memory up locally once it arrives.

GeeZa · Post by **GeeZa** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 3:17 pm 0

gravy wrote:
Yak wrote:Doesn't anyone actually care about keyboards any more? Do people really prefer shiny chiclet keyboards to proper keys? I love my model M and I think it's a great shame that it is becoming increasingly hard to find any kind of a decent keyboard at all these days, and now people are waxing lyrical over something that's more like a Speccy keyboard than even the worst PC Wrold cheapo effort?

I don't get it. Is thin and shiny now better than actually comfortable and good?
You're in the world of personal preference here rather than "good" or "bad". I've been surprised to find that the mac book keyboard has proven to be my favourite of all the ones I have here.

To be fair I've never been keen on the full size apple keyboards but I am surprised I like it a lot more than the macbook pro keyboard.

Anyway, horses for courses innit

It's totally horses for courses. Keyboards are a very personal thing. I've always disliked the old IBM Ms and feel that I'm somehow losing geek points, but I hate them. Didn't really like the old Powerbook G4 keyboard although it was hardly unbearable, the MacBook keyboard, despite looking a bit odd, is excellent (imo).

matt · Post by **matt** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 4:47 pm 0

I've loved Pages since it came out, having used it for every letter I have written since, my CV/resume and all my invoices.

Just installed it and it's a joy to use. The '08 version seems to iron out a few quirks that were in the previous versions - very much improved.

In fact I think it could be the real successor to Adobe's Framemaker, which Apple have continued to use to produce their "for-print" - but also for download as pdf - user guides and manuals right upto and including the iPhone.

Very nice. Next, Numbers.

matt

ps: contemplating a new iMac myself, to replace my rock-steady but aging single 1.8 G5. I'll likely buy at Christmas, when this Mac is 4years old.

Atty · Post by **Atty** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 7:39 pm 0

Well, it's taken them a while to make the mac mini a competitively priced computer again, but Â£400 for a 1.8Ghz core2duo machine with 1GB of ram and an 80GB hard disk (plus the remote for using it as a media box) is pretty darn nice, especially when you consider that, like all mac minis, it's an extremely solid piece of kit.

Like Kemper says, it's stupid to still be trying to sell non-writable DVD drives, but considering how rarely I burn DVDs these days (and the fact that I already have an external burner), it's not much of an issue for me.

Lack of graphics upgrade is also a shitter, but hardly surprising. Apple barely even talk about the mac mini anymore and with the recent Apple Insider report, I think a lot of people are surprised that we got another revision atall.

Gilby · Post by **Gilby** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 8:01 pm 0

Can anyone with a mac mini answer me a question?

Can you power it up have it running with nothing attached, then VNC into it?
I have an idea that I'd like to try out. If you can use them like this, I might grab a cheapo off the bay and give it a go.

G.

Dave · Post by **Dave** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 8:11 pm 0

Gilby wrote:Can anyone with a mac mini answer me a question?

Can you power it up have it running with nothing attached, then VNC into it?
I have an idea that I'd like to try out. If you can use them like this, I might grab a cheapo off the bay and give it a go.

G.

Yeah, I see no reason why you couldn't.

You'll need to configure it first, of course, locally with a keyboard and monitor to get it up and running. Make sure you have it auto-logon with a user account (an admin account ideally), as I'm not sure it'll let you connect via VNC unless someone is logged in already.

You can use a 3rd party client like "OSX VNC" to run as a VNC server, or use Apple's built-in VNC server. Enabled it under: System Preferences -> Sharing -> Services -> Apple Remote Desktop

Configure user accounts for it there (Access Privileges... button).

vncviewer under Linux doesn't like to connect to the Mac VNC server, but the "Remote Desktop" program in Gnome works fine. FYI.

VNC'ing into a Mac also isn't as fast as using VNC into a Windows box. Probably because it has more graphics on the screen typically (I don't know of a way to change the theme either - XP runs much faster over VNC when you disable the XP-style themes and default to the Windows 2000 theme - I don't think that OS X has that ability).

Also, the Dock can sometimes be a pain to refresh when VNC'ing in. Under Gnome, it tends to not show the icons there, but rather just the text when I hover over an icon. I'm not sure with using a Windows VNC client, however.

Kemper_Boyd · Post by **Kemper_Boyd** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 8:38 pm 0

Atty wrote:Lack of graphics upgrade is also a shitter, but hardly surprising. Apple barely even talk about the mac mini anymore and with the recent Apple Insider report, I think a lot of people are surprised that we got another revision atall.

From the questions and answer session yesterday they all but killed off
any possibility of an xMac or even a future Mac Mini revision.

I'm not sure how exact this is. I might even watch the presentation to
check.

"iMac is an all in one desktop, we pioneered this design. This is an all in one world. Phones, iPods, laptops."

Those don't sound like the words of someone planning on pizza box or
mini tower Macs.

Rod_S · Post by **Rod_S** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 9:38 pm 0

Kemper_Boyd wrote:Nice. It's probably a good decision to buy the cinema display before
Apple start slapping glass on the front of them as well.

Yeah, an ACD refresh is probably imminent, but I wanted a matte display and not any of this glossy nonsense. They'll most likely be upgraded next week with higher res LED panels, HDMI inputs, matte screens, and a price cut then, but hey

The 30" display is ridiculous and immense, it's taking a while to adjust to this after coming from a 22" CRT. Photoshop and Cinema 4D are incredible to use on this thing. Different world really.

My iDisk has been upgraded, anyone else? Split mine equally between storage and Mail.

WiteWulf · Post by **WiteWulf** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 9:44 pm 0

Gilby wrote:Can you power it up have it running with nothing attached, then VNC into it?
I have an idea that I'd like to try out. If you can use them like this, I might grab a cheapo off the bay and give it a go.

Yeah, I VNC into headless Macs all the time at work but, like Dave says, Aqua really doesn't move quick over VNC. Try turning the bit-depth down to 12- or 8-bit in your viewer application to get things a bit quicker.

Also, ask yourself "Do I really need a GUI for what I'm doing?". Don't forget that OS X has a full blown Unix under the hood and can be SSH'd into for most tasks.