K&B SPECIALS | 11/05/10 – 11/08/10

_Dear Friends,_

The season of lawn signs and endless political commercials is over and we can move right into the holiday season. Santa Claus comes to the Mall of New Hampshire this week and stays until Christmas. Thanksgiving is right around the corner and this year Chanukah is December 1-8!

While not everyone is thrilled with the results of the election, I am energized by the process. For all of its flaws, our electoral system provides periodic ways for the people to make changes in their government in a peaceful manner. Here in Vermont, the two candidates for Governor held some 25 debates all over the state, called many residents and the result was a very close race and pledges of cooperation and support once the winner was determined. I feel it is important that our legislators and leaders remain close to the people and our election cycles provide this accountability.

I have loaded up the latest version of Microsoft Office 2011 and have initiated an experiment that I will be reporting back to Kibbles & Bytes readers about in next week’s issue. I have decided to use Outlook instead of Mac OS X mail for a week and will let you know my impressions. The installation process and setting up of my email accounts was mostly smooth; however, not all of my IMAP folders were imported. After searching around in the very rich menu structure, I did find a window that allowed me to “subscribe” to my folders. This seems like an unnecessarily laborious process since I have folders and sub-folders and I had to individually select and subscribe to each of them.

I made the switch to the new 13-inch MacBook Air this week from my 15″ MacBook Pro. I prefer the smaller size since I travel so much and now with the more powerful MacBook Air, I will get the performance that I need. At the office I connect the MacBook Air to my Apple LED display, my backup drive and my Kinesis keyboard and it makes a great desktop system. The battery life on this latest version of the MacBook Air is much better than the previous version and it is lightning fast (iPad fast) to wake from sleep. I really appreciate the extra USB port that Apple added and with 4GB of RAM and 256GB flash drive, I have enough storage and RAM for a production machine.

I still love my iPad and use it for many purposes. I prefer the iPad for looking at and taking notes at meetings because it lies flat on the table. I get annoyed sometimes when I am in a meeting and everyone is staring at their laptop screens and seemingly not paying attention. They may not be paying attention when they are looking at their iPad either, but at least it is not as blatant!

While listening to music on your iPod nano, iPod touch or iPhone, do you ever experience a problem where the songs seem to randomly jump ahead in the middle of a song? That’s probably because the “Shake to Shuffle” is turned on. Shake to Shuffle is active by default in iPhones and iPod nano; I believe it’s also on by default on iPod touch.

Shake to Shuffle allows you to shake a compatible iPhone or iPod and immediately change the currently playing song to a different random song. This is often useful. However, if the iPod or iPhone is jostled (for example, while running, or even driving on a very bumpy road) the device will shuffle to the next song.

For iPod nano, Shake can be disabled in two ways. First, you can set the hold switch on the top of the iPod nano to on. Second, you can turn off the Shake feature by choosing Settings > Playback on iPod nano (4th and 5th generation). For iPod nano (6th generation), from the Home screen, tap Settings > Music and then tap the On/Off switch next to “Shake to Shuffle”.

For iPhone and iPod touch with iOS 4, navigate to Settings > iPod, then turn Shake to Shuffle on or off.

On November 18, we’re teaming up with Apple to present a *free* seminar on adding a Mac to your business, as well as how to get the most out of using a Mac for work. It runs from 1:00 to 5:00 in Manchester, NH with an intermission.

Read more and register for free by “clicking here.”:http://www.smalldog.com/register/at_kb

We hope to see you there!

This weekend, Apple released an important update for current users of iPhoto ’11 and prospective buyers alike. Version 9.0.1 resolves a critical flaw in the initial build of the software that in rare cases could result in data loss. Within hours of the iLife ’11 suite becoming publicly available, Apple’s discussion boards were ablaze with reports of data loss when upgrading to iPhoto ’11.

In actuality, as is often the case, the affected number of users was much smaller than it may have seemed. Akin to the “antennagate” issue which surfaced this summer, this bug, while a significant problem, only affected a small population, yet spread like wildfire. Due to the severity and the irreplaceability of the data in question, the bug resulted in users condemning the entire suite, giving it a rocky start.

Thankfully, Apple has wasted no time intervening with a patch. Citing reported data loss issues in “extremely rare cases,” the 9.0.1 update is accompanied by the following set of directions:

bq. *Before you update*
The library upgrade process is generally safe and reliable, but it’s always a good idea to have a backup of your library in case of unforeseen issues. Keep in mind that fully upgrading a very large library can take a long time, even up to an hour or more.

 Before updating to iPhoto ’11, it is recommended that all customers download and install the iPhoto 9.0.1 “*software update (click to download).*”:http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1322

If you’ve already upgraded to iLife ’11, and have not noticed any abnormalities or missing photos, you should be safe. However, if you are planning on purchasing iLife ’11 or have already but not installed it, absolutely download the patch. As long as the 9.0.1 update is applied prior to running iPhoto 9 for the first time, you should not experience any issues. As always, we recommend keeping a regular backup to protect against unforeseen issues such as this.

To view our current line of available external hard drives click “*here*”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/x/x/x/Storage_and_Backup|External_Hard_Drives

You can obtain the 9.0.1 update by either clicking the link above, or by running Software Update from the Apple menu in the top left of your screen.

*UPDATE:* 11/05/10 – Apple yesterday released another significant update to iPhoto. Version 9.1 brings back the ability to create calendars under iPhoto’s project menu. Surprisingly absent from the original build of the software, Apple evidently listened to customer feedback prompting them to re-introduce the feature. The update also contains several additional bug fixes, and adds a number of holiday project themes.

I will be heading up to Burlington on Saturday for the 16th Annual Vermont African Dance and Drum Festival where my daughter Autumn, along with her husband Ismael Bangoura and my three grand kids, all perform with the “Jeh Kulu Dance and Drum company.”:http://www.jehkulu.org/festival.html

I also got all the parts to rebuild Grace’s crashed motorcycle and with rain and cold in the forecast, it looks like I’ll be able to put in some time in the shop. I hope you have a wonderful weekend and thank you so much for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

Your Kibbles & Bytes team,
_Don, Kali, Ed & Ben_

The 12-inch PowerBook G4 is one of my all time favorite Apple notebook designs. The combination of performance and extreme portability this model offered upon its release in 2003 was unmatched by any other machine of the time. When Apple made the transition to Intel in early 2006, I, like many PPC users, eagerly awaited the announcement of a 12-inch Intel based notebook. Sadly, the day never came. In the years to follow, the rumor mills occasionally hinted of the return of a sub 13-inch professional Apple portable.

However, the closest Apple ever came was with the introduction of the 13-inch MacBook Pro in 2009. Once Steve Jobs himself confirmed that Apple had no interest in the netbook market, my wishes for a minuscule Mac seemed permanently dashed. Last month, however, my faith was restored when Apple announced the next generation of MacBook Air. Featuring an all new 11.6-inch model to accompany the existing 13.3-inch design, the new line of Air looked fantastic. When we received our first shipment at Small Dog, I decided to get my hands on one to review.

After about a week on and off with the 11.6-inch Air, I’m pleased to report the machine has taken everything I loved about the 12-inch PowerBook and brought it into 2010. The first thing to grab my attention was the machine’s size. While I got a decent point of reference during the keynote, it was not until I held one myself that I realized just how small the machine was. Weighing in at 2.3 pounds, the 11-inch Air is only slightly heavier than an iPad. At a glance, its form factor and footprint are roughly the same too. Though more elongated in order to accommodate a full sized keyboard, this machine is the most portable notebook Apple has ever produced. In fact, I’d argue that it is even more portable than an iPad, as its durable unibody offers a larger degree of protection than the iPad’s fragile and exposed display.

Speaking of displays, the Air’s is gorgeous. LED backlit and featuring an impressive 1366 x 768 resolution, it is truly a sight to behold. Though individual pixels are still discernible, one has to squint hard to see them. To put things in perspective, the 11.6-inch Air features a tighter native resolution than the 13-inch white MacBook by almost 100 pixels horizontally. The display not only looks great, but increases functionality by accommodating more windows simultaneously. Supplementing the superb screen, the Air includes a wide range of other features.

In terms of ports, some may argue that the Air is a bit lacking. However, for its target audience, the range of included ports seems just right. Featuring 1 USB 2.0 port, a MagSafe port, and a headphone output on its port side (sorry for the nautical pun) it also boasts a secondary USB port and a Mini DisplayPort. This not only enables compatibility with Apple’s existing line of display adapters, but also allows multiple peripherals to be used at once–a feature the original Air lacked.

While the Air’s weight and size may be biggest draw, some have raised concerns over performance. Due to size constraints, battery life issues, and heat, Apple was restricted to the Intel Core 2 Duo series of processors in both models of Air. With clock speeds of only 1.4GHz and 1.6GHz in the 11-inch model, benchmarks seem rather low compared to other Apple products (the iPhone 4 allegedly uses a 1GHz Apple A4 processor.) However, those quick to critique the new Air fail to acknowledge its secret weapon: means of storage.

While it would be careless to dismiss the importance of processor and graphics performance in a computer, many people fail to realize that at times the slowest component of a modern machine is its hard drive. Have you ever wondered why your Mac takes a few seconds to fall asleep? It’s because whatever information and applications you are currently accessing need to be written from memory to your hard drive. Vice versa, when you wake your machine, it quickly loads stored information from the hard drive into system RAM. Though drive speed has vastly improved over the years, there’s no denying this process is the Achilles’ heel in many modern machines.

The Air avoids this problem entirely with its fantastic implementation of solid state flash storage. Like the iPad, the Air’s storage is entirely flash-based. While perceivable benefits of this inclusion are greater reliability, no moving parts, and improved battery life, it impacts the machines’ speed significantly as well. The aforementioned transition from drive to RAM takes place almost instantaneously on the Air. As there is no hard drive to spin up, the Air wakes almost instantly. This incredible read/write speed transcends start up time as well as application launch time. Coupled with the powerful NVIDIA GeForce 320M card, the inclusion of flash storage eclipses any weaknesses the processors may present when handling routine tasks.

Though I was admittedly skeptical of the Air’s performance, I was pleasantly surprised after speed testing the base 11.6-inch model. Offering only 2GB of RAM and a 1.4GHz processor, I didn’t set my expectations very high. I figured at best, the machine would be able to handle a couple of programs and maybe run a YouTube video in the background. To my surprise, these initial estimates didn’t even touch upon the machine’s full capabilities. I was able to playback 1080p video while simultaneously running the iTunes visualizer, several 3D tests in Grapher, and typing this review. Did I mention I also had nearly every member of the iLife ’11 suite open as well? The Air quickly surpassed my expectations easily handling these relatively stressful tasks without stuttering in performance or breaking a sweat.

In addition to the inclusion of flash based storage by default, the second largest innovation in the new MacBook Air is its battery. The Air’s battery (or should I say batteries… it has four) provide up to 5 hours of use in a device that’s thinner than an axe blade. While some of Apple’s portables boast up to 10 hours of battery life, you must consider the size of these batteries and how they influence the size and weight of their corresponding machines. Considering that a typical Apple battery can account for up to 50% of a machine’s weight, it is all the more impressive that Apple was able to incorporate such a great battery into the Air’s slim profile.

Starting at only $999.99, the 11.6-inch Air is among Apple’s most affordable notebook offerings. Though higher priced configurations of both the 11-inch and 13-inch models benefit from more RAM and higher amounts of internal storage, the base model is a fantastic solution for any light to moderate user.

Though in some ways the Air is not as versatile as its 12-inch forebear, it doesn’t pretend to be. The 12-inch was designed as a professional machine, whereas the 11-inch Air targets a “pro-sumer” market. The line is relatively upfront about its limitations and though some of its omissions will turn off demanding users, the Air is a fantastic machine for the right person. A great fit for students, writers, and otherwise general users, the Air truly innovates Apple’s portable line. Fusing next generation hardware with an incredibly thin design, the Air has more hits than misses. A great primary or secondary Mac, I would highly recommend the 11.6-inch MacBook Air.

To view our unboxing/first impressions video click “*here.*”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxIjBEjl2-g

To learn more about the 11.6-in MacBook Air click “*here.*”:http://www.smalldog.com/search/?find=macbook+air+11in

What are your thoughts on the new Air? Feel free to send me an email or comment “*here.*”:http://blog.smalldog.com/article/11-inch-macbook-air-review/