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Free Business on a Mac Seminar In New Hampshire
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
We hope to see you there!
_Dear Friends,_
I am writing this on Thursday the 11th, Veterans Day, and I want to give a shout out to all Veterans to thank you for your sacrifice and service. We will always remember.
With the change to Standard time it has been a lot easier to wake up in the morning since it is light out, but it is a sure sign that winter is upon us (notwithstanding the snow at my house) as we move towards the shortest day of the year. Many times during the summer, Art sets his iChat status as “the days are getting shorter and I hope it snows soon”. I don’t think I can fire him for that, but I’m going to counter with a “days are getting longer” message in a few weeks.
Grace went to get some straw to cover our strawberry patch in the garden and put it to sleep. Of course, the next morning I look out my window in the bedroom and there is a very plump deer pawing at the ground and munching on our dormant plants. I let Hammerhead outside to bark at the deer but he didn’t even see/smell her, so the deer finished her breakfast and strolled into the woods. I think that I’ll have to build a fence around the garden this spring since the deer pretty much ate our garden and we seem to be on the feeding trail now.
I really tried, I really did. I did not make it the entire week with the new Outlook mail client in MS Office ’11. I think that for those who are very familiar with Outlook on other platforms, perhaps this is a great boon to have Outlook for the Mac, but I found it to be a drag on my productivity. Outlook would crash a couple times a day and while it was very quick to re-load, that was an annoyance. Perhaps the clincher was the way that Outlook handles photos. I try to write a daily report to the entire Small Dog team. I usually start out with a picture from my iPhoto library and then talk about our business. Maybe it is just me, but I could not find a way to re-size a photo in Outlook. With Apple Mail, I can just drag a photo to an email message and then choose the size from the drop down box. With Outlook, the only way that I can have a correctly-sized photo is to export it from iPhoto at the appropriate size. While I am talking about iPhoto a bit–why is it that Apple does not support mail groups in the email shortcut in iPhoto?!
There were definitely some features of Outlook that I liked, including tagging messages with categories based upon my Address Book and the big collapsible headers in the inbox that separates messages by days. However, it was also missing some commands from Apple Mail that I definitely would miss. Two of those are “redirect” and “resend”–commands that I use many times each day. I have an enormous amount of email coming into my inbox, usually amounting to hundreds of emails even after I have eliminated the junk and spam. Many times these are messages that I want someone else to handle for customers or vendors (or I would be just doing email all day) so the redirect command is my favorite. I can redirect to a sales person who, when responding to the message, can just hit “reply” and be assured that the message goes to the right person. Resend is not used as much, but I use it if I have forgotten to include someone on a thread or if I have mistakenly sent the message to the home address instead of the business address.
There is an update to MS Office ’11 that might address the crashing that I experienced in Outlook and as I say, I think that if you are an Outlook experienced emailer you may find that Outlook fits your needs, but for this Apple fanboy, Apple Mail is still my email client.
Apple announced this week that they have stopped making the Xserve. I completely understand that it is difficult to maintain a product line that does not seem to have sufficient sales, but on the other hand, the Xserve was a rack-mounted powerhouse that gave us entry into many corporate clients. I just have to walk over to our own server room to see a few racks of Xserves powering our operations. Ben has more on this below–we’ll miss ya, Xserve!
Xserve To Be Discontinued; Users Respond.
In a controversial move, Apple announced it will be discontinuing the Xserve early next year. First released in 2002, the Xserve marked the company’s first venture into the rackmount server market. Going on over a year and a half without seeing an update, some predicted the server’s early demise. To many, however, the announcement came as a surprise, and to some even a shock. Though Apple has announced they will not be developing a future version of Xserve, the current version will remain on sale until January 31, 2011, or while supplies last.
As alternatives to the Xserve, Apple has posed the Mac mini Server as well as the newly announced Mac Pro Server as suitable replacements. Though some have billed the Xserve as Apple’s only “real” server, the aforementioned products will hopefully close in on the gap left by the server once it disappears from Apple’s lineup. To assist users in this change, Apple has released an official “*Xserve Transition Guide*”:http://images.apple.com/xserve/pdf/L422277A_Xserve_Guide.pdf detailing the performance and available configurations of Mac Pro Server and Mac mini Server. Recent reports suggest that Steve Jobs himself acknowledged the discontinuation to a customer citing poor sales as the primary motive.
While this move might seem agonizing to those who have relied on various Xserve models over the years, given Apple’s current trend and emphasis on consumer oriented mobile devices, it does seem somewhat predictable. Some have raised concerns that this indicates Apple is pulling out the enterprise market all together, but in actuality, it is entirely too early to say.
The announcement has certainly caused a rift within the Xserve community, and stands to affect businesses of all sizes–including Small Dog. In fact, the article thumbnail offers a peak at one of the Xserve racks in our server room (what Don referenced earlier!). In the days following the announcement, enterprise users have been more than forthcoming with pleas for Apple to reconsider their decision. Dave Schroeder, an Apple Distinguished Educator at UW-Madison, published an “*open letter*”:http://appleopenletter.org/ to Steve Jobs explaining the Xserve’s significance in the enterprise and educational fields. In addition, a “*Save the Xserve*”:http://www.savethexserve.com/ website has emerged and is steadily garnering supporters.
Small Dog’s own Morgan A. cites the following features which will be completely lost in the absence of the Xserve in his article, “Xserve, Your Day Has Come.”:http://www.makkintosshu.com/journal/xserve-your-day-has-come
*A powerful 1U option:*
“Yes, you can fit 2+ Mac mini servers in 1U, but that’s not always the correct solution, nor will it yield the same raw processing throughput. Only being able to fit two Mac Pros in a whopping 12U of rack space is an astounding waste of space unless you actually need the internal storage and PCI Express expansion.”*Hot swappable internal storage:*
“I won’t miss the price tag of Apple’s drive modules, that’s for sure, but they did an excellent job of ensuring they were actually enterprise-grade. It’s slightly painful to think that both their server options will require a power down and to be pulled out of the rack just to swap a drive.”*Redundant power supplies:*
“I’m all for the lower power consumption of the Mac minis and Mac Pros, but the fact that Apple will have no server hardware that can be gracefully transitioned between power sources is very disappointing for those needing high availability.”*Lights-Out Management:*
“I personally don’t use LOM, and I frequently hear complaints about Apple’s LOM implementation, but the number of times I could’ve used it and not had to send someone to the server room (or drive in myself) is way up there. So, not even having it as an option is an additional downer. Maybe someday the Mac Pro will get LOM.”Will you or someone you know be directly affected once Apple discontinues the Xserve early next year? Feel free to send me an email or comment “*here.*”:http://blog.smalldog.com/article/apple-xserve-to-be-discontinued/
The annual Northfield Sock Sale at Cabot Hosiery is this weekend and next. I’m hoping for enough of a break in the weather so that I can continue my tradition of the last motorcycle ride of the year being over the hill to the annual sock sale. It is a true Vermont event and if you are in the area, you should definitely check it out! It is a “stick season” event that some call the 8th wonder of Vermont.
“As a family-owned business that has been in this community for three decades, we always enjoy opening the mill doors and letting people in,” said Ric Cabot, third-generation owner of Cabot Hosiery Mills. “People walk right by the machines where the socks are knit and get to sort through over 120,000 pairs of socks and stock up for the holidays and impending winter months.”
Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes! Have an awesome weekend!
Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,
_Don, Ed, Kali & Ben_Sometimes It Is All About Size
Recently my 13″ MacBook began giving me some trouble, refusing to wake up, flickering screen issues, and all the other signs that it was about to meet its maker (and I don’t mean Steve Jobs).
I’ve been harassed for the last 2 years for using the machine itself, because, as Don’s assistant, I think there is an idea that I should be using the latest and greatest. But it got the job done and darn it, I loved that little machine. It has never let me down, and much to Hapy’s horror, I was able to personalize it with a shnazzy sticker sample that Art had given me. It was my baby.
But it was time to move on.
I had a couple of options. I could wait a week or two and take over Don’s old 15″ MacBook Pro unibody or a previous generation MacBook 17″ Pro (not a unibody model). I gave it about 2 seconds of thought. Despite the weight of the machine and Don’s warnings that I would find the size cumbersome when traveling, I decided to go with the 17″. About a week in, I am still in love.
At work I have a plastic bezel 21″ Apple Display and external keyboard and mouse that I connect to, so when I used the 13″ at home or on the road, it was incredibly frustrating. My screen felt cluttered and having multiple windows open was overwhelming. I also hated typing on the 13″ keyboard. (I only passed typing in junior high by the skin of my teeth and am a 2-finger, rapid-fire typist.) I’ve found that the keyboard on the 17″ is a dream and I rarely make mistakes now.
I do have some travel scheduled in the next few months and we’ll see how the size and weight impact my love for the “new” machine. I don’t have an iPhone (yes, I heard your collective gasps from here) and am already thinking I won’t like negotiating the 17″ while on a plane or in an airport. This may be the push I need to invest in the phone as an “on foot” resource, or even an iPad.
What kind of Mac user are you? Do you __need__ the newest and shiniest? Or are you happy with a solidly performing machine that may be a couple years old?
Apple Releases Mac OS X 10.6.5
This Wednesday, Apple released the fifth revision of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Offering a series of updates and refinements over 10.6.4–which was released in June–this incremental update focuses primarily on security and stability. A detailed list of all improvements can be found “*here.*”:http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4250 Some of the standout fixes included in the update address performance issues in graphically intensive applications and games, as well as oddities and performance glitches in the UI. The update is available via Software Update in the Apple Menu, or by direct link (see below). Though initial reports have been positive, we always recommend that you perform a Time Machine backup prior to installing a significant OS revision.
In the days following the release, users have confirmed that the AirPrint functionality originally slated for v10.6.5 has been modified to omit support for shared printers. Though direct printing with compatible printers remains intact, users will have to wait for iOS 4.2 to be made available before they can take advantage of the new feature. Perhaps the ability to AirPrint to shared printers will be reinstated in a future release of Mac OS X or other Apple Software.
“*Mac OS X v10.6.5 Client (for users running v10.6.4)*”:http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1325
“*Mac OS X v10.6.5 Client Combo (v10.6 – v10.6.4)*”:http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1324“*Mac OS X v10.6.5 Server (for users running v10.6.4)*”:http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1327
“*Mac OS X v10.6.5 Server Combo (v10.6 – v10.6.4)*”:http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1326