All Forces

The fact that my wife and I both have iPhones is a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because well… we both have iPhones. But it’s also a curse. It has become another gadget to upgrade, to pimp up and gulp- to depreciate quickly . We were both going to get the 2nd generation iPhones but after weighting in the fact that the original ones are upgradable via software, it became hard to justify the cost of a whole new phone. Sorry, 2 new phones. So we opted for the software update, which gave us in a lot of ways a new phone. The upgrade was free, but the mostly inexpensive apps add up. This got me thinking about Fairplay, Apple’s DRM technology used throughout the iTunes store for music and now applications as well. Fairplay allows you to register up to 5 computers and unlimited iPods/iPhones synced to those computers. So… it should be easy for my wife and I to share iPhone apps with each other as long as both our iTunes are authorized to use them. All we need to do is authorize both accounts in both computers and re-download the apps. This could work in Windows, but why would I right?

Here’s a step by step tutorial on how to do it.

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Multiple Languages is a feature in Leopard most people don’t know about. Having access to this is great but it can be rather tedious  to switch your spellchecker back and forth between multiple languages. Leopard introduced a Multilingual feature that makes the spellchecker check against multiple languages instead of just one.

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And the countdown begins. Apple announced today it will be shipping Leopard, it’s next version of Mac OSX on October 26th. That is only 10 days away! I’m particularly looking forward to the new Mail, Spaces, Quick Look and the new Finder. Oh and of course, one of my most used and beloved apps, TextEdit, which will have OpenDocument and Word 2007 Formats support. I know Apple is touting Time Machine as the killer feature, but we’ll see how many people end up using it.

Referral Link: Pre-Order from amazon.com

I so had to have one. Although I did end up getting the wired one instead of the smaller wireless one because I am tired of recharging/replacing batteries on my old bluetooth keyboard. Having that said, my heart is still set with the smaller one. I can only hope my kids have another liquid spill on their keyboard forcing me to pass on this one to them and get a new wireless one for me. Oh, Apple, why do you do this to me? You make such pretty things.

Link: Flickr Photo Set

After many months of painfully slow internet service from Time Warner Cable, I’ve upgraded to a 20 Mbps connection from RCN. According to my first test, I got 15.6 Mbps. Not the advertised rate, but still 20 times faster than what I was actually getting from Time Warner. Even my upload speed is 2.5 times faster than the download I was getting before. At these speeds, I am seriously considering canceling my tv services as well. And since usually only the best shows end up on DVD, I think between Netflix and everything else available online, all of our tv needs can be met. So good bye loading bar, and hello multiple downloads.

The iPhone comes with probably the best email application on a mobile device. The problem is that if I read and delete an email on the iPhone, when I get to my laptop I need to do it all over again because my email uses the POP email protocol. And this is cramping my style. With the POP protocol, email is downloaded from the server and stored on my computer. The most recent emails stay on the server usually for a week or two and that’s why multiple devices re-download the same emails. A more productive system is to use the IMAP email protocol. With IMAP, all email stays on the server. If you delete an email on the iPhone, it is deleted when I get to my computer. I only have to do things once and that’s the beauty of it.

In this tutorial I’m going to show how to switch an account from POP to IMAP. And to be honest, you don’t need an iPhone to benefit from this setup. IMAP will allow you to check your email from work or some one else’s computer and have access to all of you email folders and sent emails. This is not for web services like Google or Hotmail, although as long as it supports IMAP it doesn’t really matter.

This example uses Apple’s Mail in Tiger. But, I believe IMAP was supported in Panther as well.
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Here’s the proof of my new acquisition. I waited in line for an hour at a local AT&T store only to realize their sense of speed is not the same as Apple’s. So I broke off the line and headed out to the Apple Store in SOHO were it took only 10 minutes to go in the store and walk out with an iPhone. I even went back a couple of hours later and got one for my wife, it was her birthday on Sunday after all. I was very impressed with Apple’s efficiency and preparedness. They had an employee in almost every turn just like the parking lot at Disney. Plus they had an army of employees with portable wireless checkout devices and were checking out people in less than 2 mins. Much better than the 20 people an hour I experienced at the AT&T store. I wasn’t able to transfer my L.A. number and I didn’t have the patience to call and work that out. So we are now official newyoricans with NY IDs and phone numbers.

And the iPhone… well, it’s all the hype and more. Truly revolutionary. I’ve already set up twitter with iPhone and I am hooked.

photo by: ConjugalVisitor?
more on Flickr

And the madness begins.

I am looking for 1 or two iSight magnetic mounts. This mount is the one that’s needed for the cinema display. It comes with the second generation iSights or the iSight accessory kit. If you have one, please le tme know. Apple is no longer making the iSight and it’s very hard to find just the part I need. I have a Mac Pro at work that has no mic and I have an original iSight that’s not being used. I would love to video chat with my son from work. Help me Obi-wan Kanobe, you’re my only hope!