Contact

×
Name:
Email:
Message:
Send message

Share

×
Twitter
Facebook
Tumblr
Posterous
Blogger
Wordpress
Linkedin
Delicious
Digg
Myspace
Windows Live
Google Buzz
Orkut
Stumbleupon
Reddit

Matt Hillyer

Technology evangelist, father, husband, PACS System Engineer for a large Healthcare Company, Podcaster, Amateur Astronomer, photographer, and all around gadget freak and computer geek.

Profile

Matthew Hillyer

Field Engineer at GE Healthcare
Information Technology and Services | Iowa City, Iowa Area, US

Experience

  • Nov 2005 - Present

    Field Engineer / GE Healthcare

    Responsible for 10 customer sites in the state of Iowa. Provides onsite and remote technical support for the PACS product.
    Skills include IT troubleshooting, remote support, SQL, Unix/Linux, Microsoft OS Products.
  • Sept 2004 - Oct 2005

    Customer Service Representitive / EDO

    Provided remote, level 2 support for the Navy & Marine Corps IT Infrastructure (NMCI Project). Skills include IT troubleshooting, remote support, Remedy Ticket tracking system.
  • Jan 1996 - Jan 2004

    Electronic Technician First Class / United States Navy

    6 years of submarine communications experience with radio equipment ranging from ELF - EHF. 2 years communications center management

Education

  • 2008 - 2010

    University of Phoenix

    Masters in Business Administration
  • 2003 - 2006

    University of Phoenix

    Bachelors of Science in Information Technology

Additional information

Websites:
My Website
LinkedIn

Posts

  • July 08, 01:41 PM

    Workflow Simplification

    Over the last few years my desk setup has evolved, looking through old pics and videos I have noticed a trend into the complex. Having more machines, more monitors – all with the goal of making myself more productive and capable at my daily IT tasks.

    While this may have given me tools to do my job, I don’t think it necessarily made me any more productive. The multiple monitors bombarded me with information all the time, making my attention to a particular issue/subject scattered at best. There was always something trying to vie for my attention.

    Not only were there multiple monitors, there were multiple systems, setups, etc… I have to use a PC for work – well in theory I have to. I’ve gone through several iterations of just how to work at home using the various computers I have.

    In the end, I’ve decided that a VM of Windows XP running in parallels is the perfect fit for me, using this and the combination of spaces seems like it’s the best workflow for me. The whole trial of various methods, could be, and will be another blog post, or even a podcast episode.

    So where am I going with all this? Well it seems I’ve almost gone full circle. From having almost 2 desks worth of computers, monitors, printers and scanners, I’ve whittled it way down.

    My current setup consists of my MBP in a book arc – yes, not actually using it for a second monitor, just a CPU really. I’m using my 24″ LED cinema display, Apple keyboard and magic mouse. Only one external hard drive, my Drobo via FW800 and I dumped my MOTU for a mixer and went back to using my Blue Icicle for an XLR to USB converter.

    I’ve been running this “simplified” setup for about a week now and I love it. It truly lets me focus on one project at a time. And I’m starting to fully realize the potential of spaces and what it can do to your workflow.

    I’ll let you know as time progresses if this setup really does meet all my needs, I’m constantly tweaking and playing to find just what works for me.

    Jan 2010 setup

    July 2010 setup

  • December 28, 08:28 PM

    New & wonderful Gadgets & Toys!

    Christmas has passed, all the presents are bought and given. It’s now time to start planning and gear up for MacWorld 2010.

    I’ve been thinking about how there will be thousands of laptops there, and how they all will look the same. So my first idea was to come up with something to differentiate my MacBook Pro from everyone else’s. I actually had an issue at an airport a while back where me and another traveler had MacBook Pros go thru the xray machine at the same time and when they came out there was a moment of confusion.

    I did some research and found a dozen or so vendors offering various vinyl decals. I considered GelaSkins but in the end I found LapTatt.

    I chose the baby Mario on Yoshi and he is trying to eat the Apple logo.

    So now my MacBook Pro has a shiny new sticker on its lid.

    The next thing I had to consider was addressing the heat concerns from using the MacBook Pro in my lap. While not searing hot, it can become uncomfortable at times. From reviews I heard last year from the MacWorld show I decided to give the ThermaPak HeatShift Laptop Cooler pad.

    This pad has crystals in it, that when heated will turn into a conductive gel, insulating your legs as well as wicking away the heat.

    Okay, while at MacWorld I’ll be attending many different training seminars, how can I keep my MacBook Pro powered for that whole time? Currently I am getting about 2 hours of charge on my internal battery that is a little over a year old. I have the first 15″ unibody model so there is an option to purchase a second battery, but I’m only going to get 5 hours out of both batteries, MacWorld seminars run 8-9 hours a day.

    I did more research and came up with an external power solution called the HyperMac This device is an external battery, and they say the 100 watt hour should give me 13.3 hours of “normal” runtime on 1 charge. I will be testing this later this week but if that’s true, my entire MacWorld trip will be powered and I won’t have to think of rationing!

    Lastly, as you may have heard me before – I have one computer and prefer to keep all my data with me. Recently I bought the OptiBay This is a device that allow you to mount a hard drive in the laptop’s optical bay, allowing for the use of a second Hard Disk.

    Currently I am running a 7200 RPM 500GB HDD in the primary HDD bay and a 7200 RPM 300GB HDD in the optibay mount. The 300GB HDD is almost full with just my iTunes Library (yes, I know… I have a problem!)

    So I decided to upgrade the optibay drive with a 5400 RPM 750 GB HDD from Other World Computing

    After listening to various other podcasters talk about the speed increase from Solid State Drives I finally broke down and during the same order for the 750GB HDD I ordered a 250GB Solid State Drive.

    So the plan is to place the OS on the solid state drive and map my user directory to the 750GB hard drive.

    One last thing I am thinking of doing this weekend after all these toys gets here is to do some power and speed benchmarking. I’m interested to see how much power the second HDD takes up (so far I’ve been using the optibay with 2 spinning disks for about 2 weeks and I haven’t noticed any impact to my battery life.)

    I would like to see how my internal battery fares with 1 SSD drive and 1 optical, 2 spinning disks and 1 SSD and 1 spinning disk. I’m also interested in the actual battery life of the HyperMac power unit. All of this will be benchmarked over the next few days and I will be doing a blog post or podcast on it.

  • November 02, 10:43 PM

    Apple’s Magic Mouse Review

    When Apple updated their store on October 20th, they quietly released updates to their iMac and Macbook lines and released new mice and remotes. After watching the new iMac video with Johnny Ives demonstrating the new mouse I couldn’t resist clicking on the purchase button from the Apple online store.

    The mouse arrived Friday October 30th and I’ve been using it ever since. So lets give you a little history first before we talk about Apple’s new mouse.

    The previous mouse I had was the Apple Bluetooth mighty mouse. The mouse was white, shiny and reminded me of an elongated puck. The mouse had four touch sensitive buttons – these were left, right, center and the sides (think squeeze here) – they could be programmed for anything in the OSX System preferences pane but for me they were left and right click, center was Dashboard and squeeze was to invoke Expose. The mouse also had a ball in the top forward center that was used for scrolling. This ball was the crowning point and at the same time the downfall for this mouse. The ball allowed for 360 degree scrolling – up/down and left/right for those long spreadsheets that you may have to deal with. Or my favorite scrubbing the timeline in Final Cut.

    The problem with the ball though is the same problem every other mouse that ever had a ball in it ever had. Eventually dirt and debris would collect on the motion detector rollers and cause the little scroll ball to cease functioning. A little aggressive cleaning upside down on a lint free cloth sometimes helped, but over time the ball would just become less and less responsive.

    The downfall here is that there is no way to get the ball out to clean the detectors, so once it’s jammed full there is no way to get it clean unless you break the mouse apart to get at the ball and rollers to clean it. Now this isn’t too hard to do – in fact I did this to my first Mighty Mouse (Now called “Apple Mouse.”) After I put it back together though it just never worked well again – so I ended up purchasing another.

    So there’s the problem – now for the solution. The new Apple “Magic Mouse” – yes, Apple changed the name due to a recent court awarding the “Mighty Mouse” trademark to another company that Apple did not have a previous agreement with so Apple had to rename it’s mouse.

    The Magic Mouse is the same length as the mighty mouse was, but about half the height. And honestly reminds me of the Dove soap bars in size and shape.

    The bottom is the brushed aluminum that Apple has recently grown fond with. There is a switch to turn the power on and off, and speaking of power the mouse uses two AA batteries that are included with the purchase. The tracking engine has been improved over the previous model and from what I have seen, it is much more precise at tracking movements than the previous Mighty Mouse was.

    There are no buttons on the mouse – it’s surface is a smooth plastic surface. You can left and right click like a traditional mouse. to scroll just use your finger to “brush” on top of the mouse in the direction you want to scroll. It even uses the inertial technique that the iPhone has where if you flick your finger quickly it will quickly scroll down the page. The scrolling is smooth, and much better than anything the Mighty Mouse had to offer.

    You can also use two fingers to swipe to go forward or backward through web pages, or photos in iPhoto or Aperture. I have some issues with this because there is no real easy way for me to hold the mouse still and flick it. I have big hands and long fingers, and if I follow what’s shown in the video on the preference pane, using my palm to hold it, my fingers extend several inches past the top of the mouse.

    While I find this gesture nice to have, I think it rather fails on actual usability.

    Also – when right clicking, you must do it with only one finger resting on the top of the unit. If you say use one finger to left click and another to right click while leaving the opposite finger resting on the top of the mouse, the click will not register.

    Installation:

    When you turn on the mouse, it appears in the bluetooth preference pane, you choose it and that’s it – the mouse works. To enable the scrolling gestures, however, you need to run system update and download the mouse drivers from apple. The drivers just automagically show up in the system updates after the mouse is detected in the bluetooth pane. The mouse driver install requires a reboot, so be prepared.

    As for losing the two extra buttons – I’m not heartbroken about the dashboard button – I rarely use the dashboard. But I am saddened over the loss of a button to invoke Expose – now there is a feature I use frequently. To get around this I have created the bottom left corner as a hot corner to invoke Expose and it works quite well.

    Overall the mouse is what you’d expect from Apple – yes this statement is worded this way on purpose. I have found that within Mac users there are two camps – ones that LOVE the apple mouses and the others that HATE it. Well if you HATE it – you’ll probably hate this one too and would be happier with your MX revolution or whatever alternative you’ve found. But for those who actually liked to use the Mighty Mouse you’ll find the Magic mouse really is a step up in the mouse. It feels better in the hand, scrolling and tracking are much more accurate – while the loss of the two extra buttons is a pain, there are rumors that maybe Apple will have something up their sleeve in the 10.6.2 update.

    Apple Store link: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB829LL/A

    Pictures of my Magic Mouse unboxing: http://www.flickr.com/photos/baldingnerd/sets/72157622572830365/

  • October 29, 09:27 PM

    Apple Store Pilgrimage

    so no post yesterday – I spent most of the day driving back from St. Louis. On my way out I ended up stopping at the mall and making a visit to the local Apple Store. As I was talking about this to my wife I realized I’ve sort of made a habit of visiting Apple stores each time I travel. So I decided to make it sort of a goal to try and visit stores as I go, perhaps I’ll even create a web page to track my travels.. who knows.

  • October 27, 10:48 AM

    Create a Wireless network with your Mac

    currently I’m in a hotel room that doesn’t offer wireless (I know, huh?) but they offer 1 wired connection. They have great 3G coverage here so my iPhone and Blackberry work great. However I’d like to watch some shows I recorded on my media center using eyeTV. The only way to use the iPhone app is to be a wireless network. So here’s a quick way to create a wireless network with your Mac.

    Now to share the internet connection

    click on system preferences, then click on the sharing preference pane. Choose ethernet from the "Share your connection from:" dropdown menu. Now check "Airport" in the "To computers using:" panel.

    Click on Airport options

    Click on the airport options button. Create a name, leave channel as automatic. Check the require password box, and enter a good password. Choose 128 bit wep. Click OK when done. Note the password for 128 bit must me 13 characters long.

    Internet Sharing

    now check the box that says internet sharing in the service panel. After you check the box you will get the above warning. Click start. Congratulations – you are now a wireless router!

  • October 25, 07:41 PM

    Creating Media Center PC from 1st Gen 17 ” MacBookPro – Day 1

    I walk you through step by step as I turn my old 17" MacBookPro into a media center

    Backup old data

    Just in case we realize 3 weeks from now we missed a file off there I backed up the user home folders onto a 1TB external USB Drive. This step is something you should kick off and go to bed, as some of the file transfers can take a few hours.

    Load Snow Leaprd

    I stuck the disk in, and rebooted expecting it would launch into the snow leopard disk so I could do a clean install. 3 reboots later and I realized you had to hold the option key down and force it to boot off the disk.

    The second "gotchya" here is that before you use the wizard to install Snow Lepard you have to open Disk Utility from the menu bar and reformat the drive to do a clean install.

    After the drive is formatted, go ahead and follow the wizard – after it starts installing this is another good time to walk away, grab lunch or something for a few hours.

    Intall updates

    first thing after install 10.6 is I went to software updates and downloaded all the patches released. Once again this is a click and walk away for a while operation.

    Set up remote dekstop

    I set up remote desktop access next, so I can remotely access the machine. To enable remote access go to system preferences -> sharing -> and click the screen sharing checkbox. Also I changed the name here to "media center"

    Install Elgato EyeTV

    I then plugged in Elgato EyeTV hybrid in the USB port and loaded the software. Launched and configured it, then loaded the latest patches. Since my cable TV is carried by Fiber to the door service I need a special decoder box. Since I really don’t feel like paying for another box I’m just going to use a $30 digital antenna. I get about 3-4 channels, which is fine for what I want to do with this system.

    Elgato H.264

    Next I installed the Elgato H.264 stick and loaded the app, after that I updated it to the latest as well. This device allows me to encode video faster by using an external encoding chip.

    Hulu Desktop App

    I went over to hulu.com and downloaded the desktop app for mac. This allows you to access all the content from hulu.com

    Configuring iTunes

    i set up home sharing, using my main itunes store account. I then went into preferences -> advanced and unchecked the box that says "copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library". I did this because I have some ripped dvd movies on a portable USB drive and I just want to add them to the iTunes library but don’t want to copy them onto the laptop’s local HDD. I then drug the folder containing all the ripped vd movies onto itunes and imported them – this only added the pointers to the files in the library and didn’t actually move them off the external hard drive.

    Power Settings Tweak

    I found that the laptop went to sleep on me after I left it alone for a while to do something else. So I woke it up and changed the power settings to never sleep when plugged in. This way I will be able to always get to the media center computer remotely if needed.

    Screen Resolution

    since I will be eventually hooking this up to an HDTV I changed the resolution to 1152×720.

    Required connectors, cables and adapters.

    I was actually amazed when I found I had all the required cables and adapters. In reality there were no required adapters. My TV is rather an older one and has a DVI-IN connector on it. Luckily I found a DVI cable that fit both the TV and the DVI port on the MBP! For sound I’ll be using optical out to my stereo.

  • October 24, 10:46 PM

    Media Center Mac

    I’ve been toying with the idea of using my old 17″MBP as a media center. Plugging in my eye tv and turbo h.264 into it and letting it record and stream tv shows (via the iPhone application) as well as host all my ripped DVD’s in iTunes. Also by using the home sharing feature. This way the wife and I could backup our itunes libraries to the same place. I might even set up iPhoto to share as well so we have a central place to backup the iPhoto libraries as well.

    I’m planning on getting the mac mini server after the first of the year, and I’m wondering how much of this I’d end up moving over to the server.

    As you can see I’m still in the musing and planning process… any thoughts or suggestions?

  • October 23, 10:13 AM

    A new look

    About a year ago I had someone make artwork for me to replace the black and green logo I had started with. The art was wonderful but I never got around to using it. Yesterday, some events helped move me along to switching. As some of you know I’m going to Macworld 2010 – along with the trip I wanted to have some business cards with the podcast info on it to hand out, as well as a few shirts with the logo to wear. Hey, I’m proud of the podcast! Well cafe press wouldn’t accept my green and black logo since it had the apple logo in it, a very valid excuse – so I thought it was time to change into the new logos.

    Links to the cafe press store to buy shirts and a coffee mug is:
    http://www.cafepress.com/TheStealthMac

    I have no markup, and make no money off of the sales, it’s just a way to show your support of the podcast.

    Here are the new logos – what do you think?


  • October 22, 12:57 PM

    Snow Leopard Tips & Tricks

    Apple made many user interface changes with the release of OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard, here is one of my favorite changes.

    Minimize windows to application icon

    under system preferences, choose Dock. Check the box that says "Minimize windows into application icon"

    Using expose to find minimized windows – click and hold on icon.

    Now that the windows minimize to the application icon how do you know what windows are open. There are two ways. The first is to choose the application icon in the dock and click and hold on the icon.

    Using expose to find minimized windows – invoking expose

    By pressing F9 on the keyboard, using an assigned hotcorner or mouse button you can invoke the OSX Expose feature, the windows on the bottom half of the screen are the minimized windows.

  • October 22, 12:24 PM

    A Post A Day – Experiment


    Ah Yes, just like many other bloggers and podcasters I have been toying with the “post a day” idea. For those unfamiliar with this, basically it’s forcing myself to post once a day. I’m going to try to limit my posts to tech related, no funny stories about what my toddler son does, or what I did at work. In my typical fashion I may reference a rumor but won’t dwell much on it.

    I’ll also be tweaking up the blog a bit, cleaning up the template, etc. If you have any ideas or suggestions for blog posts, or show ideas, please feel free to drop me a line – matthew.hillyer”at”mac.com.

    This isn’t easy for me, I’ve never been one to write much. In fact I find it rather difficult to write at all – papers for grad school are painful to me. This is rather strange since I love to talk, and you’d think it would be easy to just type, but not for me. Anyway, I am off to research for my first daily technical post.

Tech Blog

Posts

Tumblr Blog

Latest checkin

  • @Famous Dave's (1110 East Kimberly Road)
    2 months ago in Davenport, Iowa

Badges

Checkin history

Friends

Foursquare

Posts

  • June 17, 12:47 PM

    Episode_0048 - Terminal Series PT3 (HD)

    Another in the terminal series by guest producer Peter Upfold.

  • June 09, 11:11 PM

    Episode 0047 - iPad Discussion (part 2 of 2)

    We conclude the iPad workflow and application discussion with guests Lola and Tom.

  • June 07, 05:49 PM

    Episode 0046 - WWDC Recap

    Episode 046 - George Starcher joins me to discuss our thoughts on the WWDC Keynote.

     

    Apple iOS 4

    Apple iPhone 4

    iAds

  • June 02, 09:11 AM

    Episode 0045 - iPad Discussion (part 1 of 2)

    This week we sit down with Lola and Tom and discuss how we use our iPads.

  • May 19, 11:10 PM

    Episode 044 - iChat Part 2 - adding services and tweaks

    Episode 044 - iChat Part 2 - adding services and tweaks

     

    Chax - http://www.ksuther.com/chax/

     

    (From the Web site)

     

    Chax is a collection of minor modifications and additions that make using Apple's iChat more enjoyable.

     

    Features

    • Unified contact list shows all contacts from all accounts in one window

    • Growl notifications for new messages and users changing status

    • Automatically resize the contact list to fit the number of visible users

    • Powerful, searchable log viewer that can also browse images and URLs from past conversations

    • Activity log that displays your contacts' status changes

    • Auto-accept file transfers, AV chats, and screen sharing requests

    • Always on top option for contact list, message windows and AV chats

    • Set font of names, status messages, and group separators

    • Option to immediately display new messages, skipping the notification window

    • Show status changes directly in the message window

    • Additional unread message notifications in the Dock

    • Automatically hide chat windows and contact lists when iChat is inactive

    • Toggle text status visibility of users

    • Properly use ICQ accounts without sending text formatting in messages

     

    Facebook in iChat

     

    Create a new Jabber account in iChat

     

    Account name: facebook_name@chat.facebook.com

    Server: chat.facebook.com

    Port 5222

     

    Adding MSN and Yahoo! into iChat

     

    Macmaster blog - http://macmastersoftware.wordpress.com/2008/01/14/ichat-tip-msn-in-ichat/

     

    1. Create Yahoo / MSN account if you don't already have one using the native chat clients for the respective services

     

    2. download PSI Jabber chat client  - http://psi-im.org/

     

    3. create jabber account (I don't recommend using your existing chat g-chat account). The server I used was jabber.planetteamspeak.com or you can choose from the drop-down list or this Web site of jabber servers - http://www.jabberes.org/servers/

     

    4. service - discovery, I used jabber.planetteamspeak.com for MSN transport and lethyro.net for the Yahoo transport

     

    5. add/authorize the transport then all contacts that appear in the jabber contact list

     

    6. Add to iChat

     

    7. Create a new Jabber account in iChat using the jabber account info created in PSI

     

    Any Questions, comments or suggestions - feedback@thestealthmac.com

     

    follow us on twitter - thestealthmac


  • March 21, 08:45 PM

    Episode 043 - iChat Overview

    Episode 043 - An introdcution to iChat

    It’s March 21st, 2010, I’m Matt Hillyer and you are listening to The Stealth Mac Podcast.

    <intro music>

     

    Hello and welcome to Episode 43 of The Stealth Mac Podcast. In this episode I give you an intorduction to iChat. That’s right - we’ve been on a little hiatus but now we are back, so sit back and relax and enjoy episode 43, All about OSX's iChat application.

    iChat is the chat client that is included with every OSX install. From the Apple Web site - “iChat is a rich instant messaging application that works with your AIM or MobileMe account and makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using text and video”

    iChat works “out of the box” with jabber, Google Talk, AIM and MobileMe. It’s easy to set up an account just launch the application for the first time and follow the wizard, or if you want to add an account launch iChat then click on the iCat menu -> click on preferences -> then click on the accounts tab, and press the plus button in the lower left, then answer the questions in the setup wizard.

    iChat pretty much works like any other chat client, you have a contact list (sometimes called a buddy list) - the list will show who is online, idle, away or not online. If the contact is online you can double click their name to send a message. If the contact is capable of audio or video chat you can start one of those chats with them as well.

    iChat supports the usual chat client functions - file transfer, emoticons, text chat, audio chat and video chat. If the client is also using iChat then you can also perform functions as share your desktop, show a document or share a picture slideshow.

    I’m going to assume you get the basics of a chat client and how they function. In the next segment we’ll dive into all of iChat’s settings. I recommend if you can to sit in front of your computer and go through these menus with me to fully get the capabilites of iChat.

    All right, while you have probably used iChat at one time or another I bet you haven’t really looked into all the settings and know what you can do. I’ve actually found you can customize iChat quite a bit by poking around in the menus. We’ll start with the first menu and work our way to the right.

    What is iChat

     

    The Menus


    iChat Menu

    Most of the functions are self explanatory here - About iChat gives you the version number. Provide iChat Feedback opens your web browser to a webpage form that allows you to leave feedback to Apple. The preferences menu opens the preference pane. Change my Picture and profile allow you to do just that - you profile is just a blurb of text you can write about yourself for others to see if they look at your user profile. The My Status allows you to set your online status - online, offline away and a customized status. You can also have it display the iTunes track you are listening to here. Accounts lets you choose which of your accounts are active. The services menu is the standard OSX services and will vary depending on what apps you have loaded. Then there is Hide iChat, Hide Others, Show All and Quit iChat.


    File Menu

    Under the File menu you can start a new chat with someone, if you click this you are presented with a dialog box that allows you to type the username of the person you want to chat with. From what account and the type of chat (text, audio or video) this is useful if you don't have their username in your buddy list but still want to start a chat with them. The Send SMS menu item will allow you to send an SMS to US mobile phones only. The go to chat room will allow you to join or create a chat room, while not IRC this can pretty much perform the same functions. This function only works with an AIM or MobileMe account. You can also set your account to auto join a room any time the account is online. The open dialog box presents you with a finder dialog but all the files are grayed out. Not sure what Open allows you to do at this time. Recent Items will show you all the recent chats you've had. The next two menu selections allow you to share a file or photo with another iChat account using the iChat Theater function. The Quick look choice will only be available if you have an active chat and will allow you to invoke quick look to view documents sent by your chat partner. Close window and close chat do just that. The Save a copy as - lets you save a chat transcript. The Page setup is the typical printer page setup dialog and the print command allows you to print a chat transcript.


    The Edit Menu

    The edit menu is your typical OSX edit menu, there is Undo, redo, cut, copy, paste, paste and match style, delete, complete - which will bring up a dialog box to assist you in completing a work - try it, type "th" in the chat window then choose edit -> complete. It will give you a listing of words starting with Th. Select all, copy style and paste style are pretty self explanatory. So are the Find, Spelling and Grammar, Substitutions and speech choices. The insert Smiley menu will present you with a drop down menu displaying all the emoticons (or smilies) that iChat supports. Add link allows you to paste a link in chat, the mark transcript places a timestamp and a line in the chat window (and I'm assuming the transcript as well). The clear transcript does just that and the special characters brings up the OSX special characters palate.


    The View Menu

    Under the view menu you change the text size - using the Make Text Bigger, Make Text Smaller or Make Text Normal Size. There is an option to show buddy pictures in the buddy list as well as show their audio and video status. You can also choose to display offline buddies in your buddy list. You can also choose to show groups - these are groups you can arrange your buddies in like coworkers, friends, family, etc.. You can also use a group to put all of your offline contacts in. You can choose to display the full names, short names or handles of your buddies in the buddy list. You can also choose how to sort your buddy list - by availability, first name, last name or manually. The Messages menu allows you to choose to show or hide smilies in chat. It also allows you to show your chat text as balloons, boxes, compact or just plain text. You can also choose to show chat participant names, pictures or names and pictures. The set chat background allows you to set the background color or fill it with a picture. I believe this only affects your chat client and will not show on your chat partners window. The option to clear background does just that. The last choice is the use alerts in this chat, these are the alerts that are defined in the preference pane.


    Buddies Menu

    Show info menu opens a dialog box that displays the selected chat users profile, alerts and address card information. Under the profile tab it will show you the capabilities of that user - i.e., text, voice and/or video. The Alerts tab allows you to set up custom alerts for that user - for example if you wanted a special sound to be played every time a specific person cam on you could set that here. Show profile does exactly the same thing as show info. Show in buddy list will open th buddy list and highlight the buddy you are currently chatting with (or have selected.) Show in address book will open your address book and display that selected buddy. Search in spotlight will search the currently selected buddy in your spotlight. Add buddy and remove buddy will add or remove them from your buddy list. Invite to chat will just open a chat window with the selected person from your buddy list. Send Instant Message does the same thing, Send email will open an email addressed to that selected user, and send SMS will open a new chat window to send an sms to that person - for this to work they have to have a mobile number populated in your address book. Send file will open a dialog box to choose a file to send to the selected chat participant. Invite to video/audio chat will do just that. Share my screen or ask to share

    my screen will enable screen sharing with that chat participant. This only works with other iChat users. Lastly you can block the person, ignore them or request authorization to see their online status.

    Mute - well does just that, it mutes your sound. Pause video will pause your live video feed to your chat participant. Full screen will make your video chat full screen, take snapshot paces a picture of the video chat on your desktop. Record chat will record the video chat to a QuickTime movie file. Hide local video will hide your video preview window. The video preview will show you the live video from your iSight camera without broadcasting it. Show video effects will display the effects HUD for you to choose various effects and backgrounds to apply to the iChat video. Reset background will clear any background effects applied. Connection doctor opens a window that shows the statistics of the current video chat, the capabilities with your current chat parner as well as network status and an error log. The last three options in the video menu allow you to enable or diable microphone, camera and screen sharing.

    Video Menu


    Format Menu

    The format menu is the standard OSX format menu and allows you to show the font selection pane, to bold, italic and underline text. You can change the writing direction of your input text and lastly you can open the OSX color pane.

    Minimize will minimize the selected window, zoom will expand the window the same way the green button works. Bring all to front will bring all of the iChat windows to the front. Previous and next chat will cycle through your chat windows. Then there is a list for each account you have active, clicking on

    Windo Menu


    the account will open up a buddy list for that account. File Transfers will show a list of files that were sent or received from buddies and show the status of any files currently in transfer. Address book will open the address book application and the chat menu will bring forward the selected chat window.

    The help menu allows you to search for a specific iChat command or allows you to open the iChat Help dialog box.

    We'll now go through iChat's Preference Panes

    Help Menu

    Preference Pane


    General Tab

    Under the general tab you can set your default IM application. You can show your iChat status in the menubar and you have the option to set your status to Availible at login and when you quit iChat to set your status as Offline. You also have the option to use shapes instead of colored dots to indicate buddy online status in the buddy list. If your buddy has an animated buddy icon (usually this is found with AIM users) you can enable or disable the animated buddy pictures here. There is an option to confirm before you send files to a contact. There is an option to set your status the same for all active accounts, and to set your stats as away after the computer is inactive - not sure how long "inactive" is but I believe it is 15 minutes. There is a dropdown to chose what ichat sets your status as when using fast user switching - to set you away, offline, etc.. The next setting is what you want iChat to do when you return from "away" - keep you as away, set to availible or ask what to do. Lastly there is a setting on where to dump received files.


    Accounts Tab

    This tab will allow you to add and delete chat accounts. This will also let you change the Account Information, security and server settings for each chat account.


    Messages Tab

    The messages tab allows you to set the font "bubble" color, font colot and font type and size. You can also reformat any incoming messages text by setting bubble color, sender's font color and font type and size. You can activate a keyboard shortcut to bring iChat to the front. You can enable chat transcripts and choose where to save them. If you enable transcripts you can display last chat in the chat window anytime you start a new chat. You can enable tabbed chat windows by selecting "collect chats in a single window" - you can also watch for my name in incoming messages where you name will be

    hi-lighted in the text of any chat. and lastly you can auto reply with an away message.

    Alerts Tab

    In this preference pane you can set specific alers for an event - here you choose the event from the drop down menu - such as "when I log in" you then can choose to play a specific sound, bounce the iChat icon in the dock, run an applescript or speak the announcement using the OSX speech engine.


    Audio/Video Preference Pane

    This preference pane allows you to choose the camera, microphone and sound input to use for audio/video chat. You can also set up a bluetooth headset to use with iChat. You can limit the bandwidth usage of iChat if you need to throttle it for some reason. Lastly you can choose to open iChat when your designated camera is turned on and for it to repeat the ring notification sound when a

    buddy is inviting you to an audio or video chat.

    Wrap Up

    Well I hope this introduction to iChat helped you out and that you found some settings and features you didn't know existed. In episode 44 I'll show you how to get iChat to work with Facebook chat, MSN and Yahoo chat as well. And I'll show you a plug in application called Chax that fills in most of iChat's missing features.

    If you have any comments, questions or suggestions - don't hesitate to email me at Feedback@thestealthmac.com, that's Feedback@thestealthmac.com.

    Thanks for listening to The Stealth Mac Podcast, I'm Matt Hillyer <outtro music>



  • February 01, 12:18 AM

    Episode 042 - MUG, iPad, Display Adapters, SSDs, Drobo as Time Machine Drive

    it's January 31, 201o, I'm Matt Hillyer and you are listening to the Stealth Mac podcast.

     

    <Intro Music>

     

    Welcome to Episode 41 of The Stealth Mac Podcast, in this weeks show we talk about Mac User Groups, The announcement of the Apple iPad, using display adapters with your mac, Solid State Drives, and using a Drobo as a Time Machine drive. We have a full show this week so I suggest you grab a cup of coffee and get comfortable as we get into the content

     

    <bumper>

     

    So I've been rather busy this month - work has been super busy ramping up for a major patch deployment to our customer base and I've been rather involved in the planning stages for that project. School is also getting near the end and each week's assignment is getting more difficult in scope and requiring more of my time. I cannot wait until March 15th when school is finally over! 

     

    I've started quite a few new projects for 2010 and I'd like to share one of those with you now - I have more on the back burner and will share those on a later show but I thought this topic would be good to cover because it seems there are others out there thinking about the same thing.

     

    Mac User Groups - that's right they are still alive and well - at least in certain areas. Not around here, however. There is a Cedar Rapids, Iowa Mac Users Group - and they are a bunch of great guys, but the group seemed small and their activities (or lack thereof) at the meetings left me wanting more. I decided I wanted to start my own group. So after some research I found that really to start a Mac Users Group there are no requirements. Just get a few people together and a meeting place and there you go, instant mac users group.

     

    Now to become Apple recognized there is a few more requirements - from the Apple Website http://Apple.comusergroups and Mug Center http://www.mugcenter.com website you need at least 25-30 members, need 3 officers, a web presence and bylaws written. While that seems complicated it really isn't - all you need to do is start meeting and the rest will follow. Create a website and guaranteed you will get more members over time. The MUG Center website even has templates for bylaws so all you have to do is download them and edit them as needed. 

     

    There's no real reason to be recognized by Apple other than it gives you visibility on their website and you'll be assigned an Apple liaison to work with you to get resources from the mother ship.

     

    I've already had my first meeting of the Coralville/Iowa City/North Liberty Mac Users group and we have another meeting planned for the 18th of February. If you are interested in the user group, drop on by at http://www.cmugiowa.com

     

    <bumper>

     

    Unless you were living under a rock you probably have heard on January 27th Apple announced a new product. The Apple iPad. - it's a 9.7" touchscreen device - think iPod touch, only bigger. The device will come in 3 storage sizes and retail at $499 US for the base model and going up from there. It's another $130 US for the 3g feature. The iPad will be available in late March for the WIFI version and April for the 3g version. If you want to know more - check out the apple website http://www.apple.com/ipad.

     

    I did a TSM roundtable just moments after the keynote but I had technical difficulties and can't release the recording. However, if you would like to hear more of my views on this product check out The International Mac Podcast - over at http://impodcast.tv.

     

    Overall this is the device I have been wanting for about year now - I've been using my iPhone 3GS for a "netback" and just wish it had a bigger screen for things like web surfing and ebook reading. I think this product will fit perfectly into that slot.

     

    Let me know what you think of the device - email me at feedback@thestealthmac.com

     

    <bumper>

     

    <icasual game review>

     

    <bumper> 

     

    Now for a little rant, I hope you all don't mind. Let me give you a back story. So here I am doing keynotes for my upcoming Mac User Group meeting. I make sure everything is perfect and that the meeting place has supplied me with a projector. I bring a ton of cords and adapters and I think I'm ready for anything… guess what? I wasn't. At the very moment the meeting begins I realize that the Apple brand mini display to DVI adapter will not work with the projector cord. Why? it seems the cable the projector came with has 4 extra pins around the blade portion of the connector. If you have access to a dvi cable look at an end for a moment and you'll see what I mean. There is an array of pins on one side and a blade on the other, for some cables this blade has two pins on one side and two on the other. The Apple brand adapter is missing holes for these 4 pins. Oh man I was crushed! I worked so hard on these keynotes and I had to give them on my laptop screen - I felt like such a noob! Well after the meeting I went to newegg.com and found another adapter from bytecc - it's the same as the Apple connector but it has the four holes for those extra pins. It was $14.99 US and you can find the adapter at newegg (the link will be in the show notes) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812270264

     

    Next meeting I'll be ready!

     

    <bumper>

     

    After listening to David Sparks of Macsparky.com and Macpowerusers Podcast fame talk about the mind numbingly fast speeds of Solid State drives I started to consider buying one. The nail in the coffin is a recent screencast performed by Don McAllister from Screencastsonline where he talked about using an SSD in his Mac Book Pro.

     

    I finally broke down and after the holidays I purchased a 256gb Crucial Solid State drive from Other world computing. 

     

    Now a solid state drive is basically a hard drive, but made out of flash memory - like the memory used in your iPod touch or iPhone to save your data. There are no moving parts so it's incredibly fast on data throughput speeds.

     

    If you have listened to any of my previous shows you'll know I got a dud drive and had several issues with it. I had to swap it with a new one. I even then continued to have all sorts of issues - and up until a few days ago I was still having a bug pop up here and there. Well I think as of Friday I got everything under control. My current setup as of tonight, January 31, 2010 is the 256GB SSD in the HDD bay of my mac book pro and the DVD-ROM in the optical bay. 

     

    I've been successfully running this way all weekend with no issues. Now just how much of a performance boost do you get for such a significant investment? let me give you some numbers - now keep in mind this is all manually timed using the iPhone stopwatch so there is some error to the numbers, I'd estimate +/- 3 seconds.

     

    The times for the Apple Setup - that is 350GB 5400 RPM Drive

     

    Time to Load OSX 10.6 from DVD - 25 m 49.5 s

    Bootup from cold - 47.2 s

    Login - 2.6 s

    Shutdown - 3.3 s

     

    Here are the times using the 256 GB SSD

     

    Time to Load OSX 10.6 from DVD - 22 m 04.4 s

    Bootup from cold - 37 s

    Login - 2.2 s

    Shutdown - 3.0 s

     

    Battery life using both devices was about the same - I didn't do any special testing here, just used the device on a full charge doing normal activities until the machine put itself to sleep. Using both devices I got a little over 2.5 hours.

     

    While these numbers don't show a huge improvement - I can tell you that the overall system is more responsive and that the apps launch almost instantly - rarely does any icon "bounce" on the dock more than once.

     

    Overall I am pleased with the SSD - I hope that this stays stable so I can continue to use it as my primary drive. The one problem here is that the storage space is rather small - my iTunes library is nearing 300GB and that obviously will not fit on the SSD - so there are some storage considerations you will have to take when looking at a solid state drive.

     

    <bumper>

     

    I mentioned a few shows back that I finally got a Drobo-S from http://www.datarobotics.com and I love it.  Overall there have been no issues with the device and it just works. Now I got it for a primary backup of my data and thought I'd also use it for a time machine backup. Well after playing with it for a few weeks I've given up on that and I'll tell you why.

     

    First of all let us consider how Apple's Time Machine app works. Time Machine will take a drive and fill it with backups until that drive is full, it will then delete the oldest backups one by one as it creates a new one.

     

    In normal circumstances this may be fine since you have an external drive just for that purpose, but what if you want to use that drive for other things as well? The Drobo falls into this category.

     

    The first alternative is to partition the drive - lets say you have a 1TB drive, you could partition 500GB for the Time Machine Backup and the 500GB for data, that way the Time Machine backups will not eat into your data storage partition. This is an option for the Drobo, but not one I considered and once you put data on the Drobo (or any other drive for that matter) this option really isn't viable.

     

    The next alternative for the Drobo is to use a script called Time Tamer - this is an Apple Automator script that will create a sparse image bundle 1.5 times the size of your hard drive - this will keep your time machine backups contained to the sparse bundle. This works great for backing up - but I found a few issues with this solution.

     

    1. when you use the time machine app - the star field comes up and the only time you can choose from is "now" - this is actually a known bug, what you have to do is first mount the sparse image and then option click on the time machine icon in the menu bar and then choose "browse other time machine disks." this will then bring up your backups - a workable solution yet wonky. I did use the record feature of Automator and made a script that would do this at the click of a mouse but after a while I just didn't like this work around

     

    2. the second reason I found this solution to be a bad idea is when my computer crashed on the 27th - I put in the Snow Leopard disk and tried to mount the time machine volume - only I found there to be an issue, see to mount the drobo you have to have the drobo dashboard loaded. You can't load this software when booting from the drive, so for me to restore I would had to of loaded a fresh copy of OSX on the drive, then loaded drobo dashboard and then mounted the time machine backup as described in the above section, then I'd have to restore the HD. Too much convoluted work if you ask me!

     

    Overall the Drobo is a great storage solution but I think using it as a time machine backup drive is a bad idea, so what I've done now is use a 1TB USB drive partitioned into two parts, both 500GB each. One is my Time Machine backup and the other partition is my super duper backup. My next step will be to write a script to copy these partitions over to the Drobo late at night.

     

    <bumper>

     

    Well that will wrap it up for show number 42 - I hope you enjoyed this show. If you have any questions, comments, or submissions, feel free to send them to me at Feedback@thestealthmac.com and Thanks for listening!

     

    <outtro>


  • January 20, 06:01 PM

    Episode 041 - SSD, Drobo and Hypermac

    It's January 20th 2010, I'm Matt Hillyer and you are listening to The Stealth Mac Podcast Episode 41 - Matt and the great Hard Disk Adventure Welcome to the first audio show of 2010! I'm excited it's a new year and with the new year gives me the inspiration to continue to improve this show - if there's anything that you would like for me to talk about or if you have a submission feel free to email me at feedback@thestealthmac.com. Also if you have a moment could you please hop on over to iTunes and give us a rating. The more ratings we have, the more likely the podcast will show up as a suggestion to new listeners, so please take a moment and give us a rating - I would appreciate that greatly! http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=290517037 Well I've been pretty quiet since Christmas and there are a few reasons for that. First I've been pretty busy with family, school and work. The second reason is that I've been having a few issues with hard drives on my mac book pro. Now these issues are nothing to do with the Ma c itself, it's fine and honestly if I were to stop messing with it and trying to modify things it would work perfectly fine. Let me explain a little - I've been toying with the idea of getting a Solid State drive - the problem is that they are too small for all my data - my user folder is right around 300GB by itself!! The solution that I came up with was inspired by Don McAllister from http://www.screencastsonline.com - he recently did a show where he used a product called an Optibay in combination with an SSD to get the best of both worlds, the speed of an SSD for apps and OS and the storage of data with a spinning hard disk. I've reviewed optibay in previous episode but really it's a mounting bracket that fits in the optical drive bay of your macbook pro and allows you to mount a second hard disk so that your mac can carry and use 2 hard drives. the optibay goes for around $99 US and even comes with a USB external case for your optical drive to go in once it's pulled out of the macbook pro. The Optbay is made by MCE and the link will be in the shownotes - http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/ So I ordered a 256GB Crucial Solid State Drive and a 750GB 5400 RPM Western Digital Hard Drive from Otherworld computing. (http://www.macsales.com/) - this would give me a total of 1TB of storage on my mac. My plan was OS and apps on the SSD and the user folder would be mapped to the 750GB Hard disk. My first intent was to place the 750 drive in the optibay and the SSD in the actual hard drive bay of the Macbook pro but i soon found out the 750 drive a little thicker than standard 2.5" drives. I've placed a pic in the show notes so you can see the difference. I had to settle with the SSD in the optibay and the 750 in the hard drive bay - and that worked just fine. In case you were wondering - yes, the unibody mac's will take the slightly thicker 2.5" drives just fine. Now the next bit was where things turned south - I tried to load OSX on the ssd and it continued to fail - I pulled it out and placed it in an external USB enclosure and was able to load it that way - but it took forever. And after it was loaded it still was acting buggy. After several tests I determined that the SSD was faulty and contacted OWC for a replacement. Now I have to give Other World Computing some props here - they provided me an RMA with no resistance - I figured they'd make me do a bunch of testing or give me the run around. Nope - within a few minutes of filling out the form on the website I had my RMA paperwork and had the drive boxed up and ready to ship back to OWC. Within 24 hours of them receiving the return I had a new SSD in my hot little hands. Now I ran into some other issues with my second SSD - it was also acting a little odd - but I think I've got that settled and as of today I am running OS on my SSD and my user folder on my 750gb. I'll update you in a few weeks as to how this solution is working out since I haven't had much luck with the SSD drives so far. I'll also be talking about the speed comparisons of the various drives in a later show. Another toy that I've recently gotten was a Drobo S. For those of you who don't know what a Drobo is - it's an external hard drive system made by http://www.datarobotics.com This is a case with 5 bays and they use a proprietary RAID system that allows you to increase drive size as you progress to ever increase the total storage size of the device. I really recommend you check out the website for a better description. I opted to get the Drobo S with 1.5 TB drives - of course, within 24 hours one of the drives failed and I had to work with Western Digital to replace the drive - I've had a few hard drives issues the last few weeks. I attribute that to the dry air causing static electricity everywhere in my house and the extreme cold all these devices have been shipping in. The Drobo is running fine now with 5 working drives and I have a total storage capacity of about 4TB. There is some capacity loss due to the raid technology being used to protect against hard disk failure. I was using FW800 to connect to the drobo but a coworker gave me an express 34 eSATA card and I've been playing with that for the last few days. Overall I am very impressed with my drobo unit and the eSATA connection makes it a very fast device. I've posted some pics of the Drobo and my desk setup in the show notes: The last new toy I'd like to tell you about is the hypermac external battery. This is an external battery for my MacBook Pro and can be found at hypershop.com. I chose the 100watt hour battery and it measures 7.48" x 4.92" by 0.83" and weighs 1.6 pounds. From the website it should provide up to 13.3 hours of battery life. I chose this device because I wanted my Macbook pro to last an entire session at macworld. In my testing I came across a few bumps - first the macbook pro battery must be fully charged - if you don't have a full charge then the computer will continually try to charge the battery off the hypermac and this causes a very short run time on the hypermac. also - the macbook pro has to be using the lower powered gpu, and you really can't push the computer too much. Any time the fans kick on or the computer starts to draw a lot of power - more than the hypermac can provide the internal battery will kick in and then the hypermac will forever try to charge the batter causing issues. With minimal cpu usage in my tests I was able to squeeze about 7 hours out of the hypermac and an additional 2 from my internal battery giving me a total of 9 hours of runtime wirelessly. The battery uses the magsafe adapter to power your computer so the one problem here is that it's easy to pop off - I wish there was some way to secure this so it wasn't so easily unplugged. I think overall the power issues I had with the Hypermac were more of my own fault then the devices. When I ordered the battery I was originally going to get the 60 watt hour, but a warning popped up that it wasn't recommended to be used with the MacBook Pro line. So I went with the next step up - the 100. In hindsight I should had gone with a bigger, beefier battery. The nice thing is that the battery doesn't give off any heat while in use and is rather small - so it fits in my backpack slot perfectly and there is a place for me to run my charging cord out to the mac. Well that will do it for show 41 - I hope you enjoyed my reviews and if you have any questions or comments feel free to contact me at Feedback@thestealthmac.com Please join us next week as we review the upcoming Apple Event on Jan 27th and discuss all the new announcements. See you then - I'm Matt Hillyer and thanks for listening to The Stealth Mac Podcast.
  • January 10, 09:43 PM

    Episode 040 - Intro To The Terminal 002

    Associate Producer Peter Upfold is back with another episode of the Introduction to the Terminal series. You can find Peter over at http://peter.upfold.org.uk/
  • December 27, 09:30 PM

    Episode 039 - The Apple 2009 Year in Review (part 3 of 3)

    Episode 0039 - The Apple 2009 Year in Review (part 3 of 3) The Apple 2009 Year in Review - Stu Helm from The International Mac Podcast joins us this week to discuss all the Apple news from 2009. This episode is from September to December 2009. September 2009 it's only Rock & Roll event - Steve Jobs first public appearance - updated iPod touch (NO CAMERA!!) - new iPod nano with video recording, FM tuner - iTunes 9 released - LP brings back the Album Experience - Extras - more DVD like feel to movies - Genius Mixes - iTunes DJ revamped - vote for songs with Remote.app - iPhone 3.1 released 10.6.1 released 40GB AppleTV pulled, 160GB version price reduced Apple Updated Main Stage, Logic Pro and Logic Express AT&T rolls out MMS October 2009 Placebase Mapping Service acquired by Apple iPhone 3.1.2 released New iMac, Mac Mini Server, Magic Mouse and BlueTooth Keyboard Unibody Plastic Macbook released New Apple Remote, Airport Extreme and Time Capsule Apple TV 3.0 update iTunes 9.0.2 released November 2009 iPhone comes to Orange UK Apple TV 3.01 update released 10.6.2 released December 2009 Apple adds 3.33Ghz Quad Core to Mac Pro and Xserve line Apple purchases Lala streaming music service iPhone comes to Tesco Mobile in the UK Psystar : Game Over!
  • December 26, 12:39 PM

    Episode 038 - The Apple 2009 Year in Review (part 2 of 3)

    Episode 0038 - The Apple 2009 Year in Review (part 2 of 3) The Apple 2009 Year in Review - Stu Helm from The International Mac Podcast joins us this week to discuss all the Apple news from 2009. This episode is from June to August 2009. June 2009 iTunes 8.2 released North Carolina Data Center becomes official WWDC 09 - iPhone 3GS announced - shows off Snow Leopard, will Ship in September - updates entire notebook line, lowers prices Safari 4 public Beta Announced - 11 million downloads in 3 days iPhone 3.0 OS released for iPhone & iPod Touches Jobs undergoes Liver transplant Jobs returns to Apple following Medical Leave July 2009 iTunes 8.2.1 released Final Cut Studio 3 is released MobileMe iDisk app for iPhone is released Time Capsule now comes in 1TB and 2TB capacities Shake is quietly discontinued iPhone 3.0.1 released August 2009 FCC questions Apple, Google & AT&T about Google Voice app rejection Google's Eric Schmidt steps down from Apple Board of Directors iTunes Store comes to Mexico Apple releases Safari 4.0.3 China Unicom and Apple strike a deal to offer iPhones in China Snow Leopard 10.6 released - ends PowerPC Support -64 Bit support -Quicktime X
  • December 24, 05:58 PM

    Episode 0037 - The Apple 2009 Year in Review (part 1 of 3)

    Episode 0037 - The Apple 2009 Year in Review (part 1 of 3) The Apple 2009 Year in Review - Stu Helm from The International Mac Podcast joins us this week to discuss all the Apple news from 2009. This episode is from January to May. Jan 2009 Steve Jobs takes a leave of absence due to health. Macworld 2009 - Last Macworld with Apple -Phil Schiller Keynote -variable pricing iTunes Store, iTunes Plus -17" Unibody MacBookPro (non removable battery) -return of the Matte Screen option -iLife 09 -in app training videos -iMovie gets a really nice upgrade -iWork 09 -iWork.com Feb 2009 HD TV enters UK iTunes Store MobileMe iDisk sharing services appear 2.3.1 update for AppleTV March 2009 Updated iMac and MacMini Nahalem Mac Pro Dual Band Airport Extreme and Dual Band Time Capsules iPod Shuffle with VoiceOver iTunes 8.1 iPhone 3.0 Event -Apple demonstrated iPhone 3.0 OS -tethering and find my iphone features announced HD Movies available for rent & purchase Apple Bluetooth Headset discontinued MacWorld Expo announces move to February for Expo dates April 2009 Movies come to iTunes Germany Apple Announces 1 billion applications downloaded from apps store May 2009 No News for May
  • December 15, 11:44 PM

    Episode 0036 - Airlock, Second Bar, OptiBay

    Episode 0036 - Airlock, Second Bar, OptiBay Two application reviews and 1 product review. This week I talk about an application that uses your iPhone to lock and unlock your Mac, an application for mulit monitor users that places a menu bar on the second monitor and last I talk about a hardware mount for a second hard drive in a MacBook Pro’s optical bay. New website look and feel http://www.thestealthmac.com Twitter Account http://www.twitter.com/TheStealthMac Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Stealth-Mac-Podcast/192497401262?ref=ss YouTube Channel http://www.youtube.com/user/TheStealthMac Secondbar http://blog.boastr.net/?page_id=79 Airlock http://themha.com/airlock/?s=a Optibay http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/index.html OWC Macbook Hard Drives http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/2.5-Notebook/
  • December 05, 08:25 PM

    Episode 0035 (HD) - Introduction to the Terminal

    Associate producer Peter Upfold is back with another screencast. This week Peter introduces you to the terminal. The terminal is a seldom used but powerful tool in OSX. Peter Upfold - Peter.upfold.org.uk The terminal is one of those tools that is there, but rarely does anyone use it. The terminal application lets you dig into the Unix core of the OS and unleash the potential that awaits the power user. Join Peter this week as he introduces you to the Terminal Application and gives you a few commands to stretch your legs, er fingers with.
  • December 05, 08:16 PM

    Episode 0035 (iPod) - Introduction to the Terminal

    Associate producer Peter Upfold is back with another screencast. This week Peter introduces you to the terminal. The terminal is a seldom used but powerful tool in OSX. Peter Upfold - Peter.upfold.org.uk The terminal is one of those tools that is there, but rarely does anyone use it. The terminal application lets you dig into the Unix core of the OS and unleash the potential that awaits the power user. Join Peter this week as he introduces you to the Terminal Application and gives you a few commands to stretch your legs, er fingers with.
  • November 29, 11:16 AM

    Episode 0034 - Part 2 of The Stealth Mac Roundtable Apple Buying Guide

    Episode 34 - Part 2 of The Stealth Mac Roundtable Apple Buying Guide Note: This episode is over 2 hours in it's entirety so I've split it into 2 episodes. This is part 2, Episode 34. Part 1 is Episode 33. Host: Matthew Hillyer - matthillyer.com Guests: Peter Upfold - Peter.upfold.org.uk Hugo Poon - xxloverxx.tumbler.com Stu Helm - impodcast.tv When buying a mac you can be overwhelmed with information. Fear Not! The Stealth Mac podcast team offers advice on buying a mac, iPod and accessories. Software Recommendations from The TSM crew. iLife suite - iPhoto iMovie iDVD Garageband iweb http://www.apple.com/ilife/ iTunes http://www.apple.com/itunes/overview/ Final Cut Express http://www.apple.com/finalcutexpress/ Final Cut Studio http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/ Virtualization Bootcamp http://www.apple.com/macosx/compatibility/ Parallels http://www.parallels.com/ VM Ware http://www.vmware.com/ VirtualBox http://www.virtualbox.org/ Office Suites Microsoft Office http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/Office2008/default.mspx iWork http://www.apple.com/iwork/ Training resources iWork Tutorials http://www.apple.com/iwork/tutorials/ Screen Casts Online http://www.screencastsonline.com/ for November use the code NOV2009 to get 35% off an SCO membership, amazing deal. Mac Mania http://www.insightcruises.com/top_b/mm07_top.html Lynda http://www.lynda.com/ Kelby Training http://www.kelbytraining.com/ iChat Screen-sharing http://www.apple.com/macosx/what-is-macosx/ichat.html iPod Touch http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipod/family/ipod_touch iPod Nano http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipod/family/ipod_nano?mco=MTM3NDk0MTA iPod Accessories http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipod/ipod_accessories?mco=MTM3NDY2NTM App Store - apps from the TV commercials (opens iTunes) http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewRoom?fcId=295314709&id=25204&mt=8 iTurntable USB Turntable with Software http://www.djkit.com/product.php?id=3754&cat=85 Eye-Fi http://www.eye.fi/ Mag Safe Adapter (for MacBook Pro) http://store.apple.com/us/product/MA938LL/A Laptop Cases http://store.apple.com/us/search?find=laptop+cases&mco=MTA4NTI4NzY AppleCare http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/applecare Picks: Peter: SuperDuper (or upgrading a free user to paid) — The 'Smart' incremental backups are well worth paying the money for to make it less painful to keep a regular backup. Not particularly exciting, but nothing worse than losing important data. Stu: WD MyBook Studio Drive. http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=756 Hugo: SmugMug (http://smugmug.com) - better than any other photo sharing site in my opinion; unlimited storage regardless of what membership you have, great support, a very customizable homepage, and you get a discount with my affiliate code (0TJsosSHXJYtw) Matt: http://www.thestealthmac.com/ Stu: IMP - http://impodcast.tv / http://blog.stuhelm.com and http://twitter.com/stuhelm Peter: http://peter.upfold.org.uk/ should have all the information you need about me :P Comments should be addressed to either of the addresses at http://peter.upfold.org.uk/contact Hugo: My blog (literally a bit of everything) - http://xxloverxx.tumblr.com My photos (esp. check out my portfolios) - http://xxloverxx.smugmug.com Twitter - http://twitter.com/xxloverxx (well well, who would've guessed it…) email us at: feedback@thestealthmac.com or find me on twitter: bldngnerd
  • November 18, 10:30 PM

    Episode 0033 - Part 1 of The Stealth Mac Roundtable Apple Buying Guide

    Episode 33 - Part 1 of The Stealth Mac Roundtable Apple Buying Guide Note: This episode is over 2 hours in it's entirety so I've split it into 2 episodes. This is part 1, Episode 33, Part 2 will be Episode 34. Host: Matthew Hillyer - matthillyer.com Guests: Peter Upfold - Peter.upfold.org.uk Hugo Poon - xxloverxx.tumbler.com Stu Helm - impodcast.tv When buying a mac you can be overwhelmed with information. Fear Not! The Stealth Mac podcast team offers advice on buying a mac, iPod and accessories. Apple Holiday Gift Guide - http://store.apple.com/us/browse/campaigns/holiday/giftguide?mco=MTM3NDY2NTY Laptop - MacBook, MacBook Pro, Macbook Air Desktop - iMac, Mac Mini, MacPro http://www.apple.com/mac/ Apple Mac Mini - http://www.apple.com/macmini/ Apple Mac Book - http://www.apple.com/macbook/ The big take away here is to figure out what you want to do with your mac, then get an idea of what products Apple has to offer. I'd suggest going into an Apple store and trying a few different machines out. I'd even let the Apple store employees help you in making your decision. Backups: Buy an external HDD at least twice the size of the HDD in the Apple Product. Time Capsule: http://www.apple.com/timecapsule/ Router: Airport Extreme: http://www.apple.com/airportextreme/ Time Machine - http://www.apple.com/macosx/what-is-macosx/time-machine.html Peter's security post - http://peter.upfold.org.uk/blog/2009/11/08/on-teaching-computer-security-to-non-geeks/ Off SIte Backups: Mozy - https://mozy.com/ Carbonite - http://www.carbonite.com/ Backblaze - http://www.backblaze.com/ Bottom line - you need a back up plan. The best way to do this is when you purchase your new Mac is to buy an external drive. Set up Time Machine when you first set up your Mac and it will be there when you need it.
  • November 10, 05:20 PM

    Episode 0032 - Magic Mouse, Sharing an Internet Connection and Minimize to Application Icon

    Episode 0032 - Magic Mouse, Sharing an Internet Connection and Minimize to Application Icon A new look and feel: New sound equipment - Heil PR-20 New Icons Website is revamped - http://www.thestealthmac.com Swag store - http://www.cafepress.com/TheStealthMac iTunes link: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=290517037 Magic Mouse: When Apple updated their store on October 20th, they quietly released updates to their iMac and Macbook lines and released new mice and remotes. After watching the new iMac video with Johnny Ives demonstrating the new mouse I couldn’t resist clicking on the purchase button from the Apple online store. The mouse arrived Friday October 30th and I’ve been using it ever since. So lets give you a little history first before we talk about Apple’s new mouse. The previous mouse I had was the Apple Bluetooth mighty mouse. The mouse was white, shiny and reminded me of an elongated puck. The mouse had four touch sensitive buttons – these were left, right, center and the sides (think squeeze here) – they could be programmed for anything in the OSX System preferences pane but for me they were left and right click, center was Dashboard and squeeze was to invoke Expose. The mouse also had a ball in the top forward center that was used for scrolling. This ball was the crowning point and at the same time the downfall for this mouse. The ball allowed for 360 degree scrolling – up/down and left/right for those long spreadsheets that you may have to deal with. Or my favorite scrubbing the timeline in Final Cut. The problem with the ball though is the same problem every other mouse that ever had a ball in it ever had. Eventually dirt and debris would collect on the motion detector rollers and cause the little scroll ball to cease functioning. A little aggressive cleaning upside down on a lint free cloth sometimes helped, but over time the ball would just become less and less responsive. The downfall here is that there is no way to get the ball out to clean the detectors, so once it’s jammed full there is no way to get it clean unless you break the mouse apart to get at the ball and rollers to clean it. Now this isn’t too hard to do – in fact I did this to my first Mighty Mouse (Now called “Apple Mouse.”) After I put it back together though it just never worked well again – so I ended up purchasing another. So there’s the problem – now for the solution. The new Apple “Magic Mouse” – yes, Apple changed the name due to a recent court awarding the “Mighty Mouse” trademark to another company that Apple did not have a previous agreement with so Apple had to rename it’s mouse. The Magic Mouse is the same length as the mighty mouse was, but about half the height. And honestly reminds me of the Dove soap bars in size and shape. The bottom is the brushed aluminum that Apple has recently grown fond with. There is a switch to turn the power on and off, and speaking of power the mouse uses two AA batteries that are included with the purchase. The tracking engine has been improved over the previous model and from what I have seen, it is much more precise at tracking movements than the previous Mighty Mouse was. There are no buttons on the mouse – it’s surface is a smooth plastic surface. You can left and right click like a traditional mouse. to scroll just use your finger to “brush” on top of the mouse in the direction you want to scroll. It even uses the inertial technique that the iPhone has where if you flick your finger quickly it will quickly scroll down the page. The scrolling is smooth, and much better than anything the Mighty Mouse had to offer. You can also use two fingers to swipe to go forward or backward through web pages, or photos in iPhoto or Aperture. I have some issues with this because there is no real easy way for me to hold the mouse still and flick it. I have big hands and long fingers, and if I follow what’s shown in the video on the preference pane, using my palm to hold it, my fingers extend several inches past the top of the mouse. While I find this gesture nice to have, I think it rather fails on actual usability. Also – when right clicking, you must do it with only one finger resting on the top of the unit. If you say use one finger to left click and another to right click while leaving the opposite finger resting on the top of the mouse, the click will not register. Installation: When you turn on the mouse, it appears in the bluetooth preference pane, you choose it and that’s it – the mouse works. To enable the scrolling gestures, however, you need to run system update and download the mouse drivers from apple. The drivers just automagically show up in the system updates after the mouse is detected in the bluetooth pane. The mouse driver install requires a reboot, so be prepared. As for losing the two extra buttons – I’m not heartbroken about the dashboard button – I rarely use the dashboard. But I am saddened over the loss of a button to invoke Expose – now there is a feature I use frequently. To get around this I have created the bottom left corner as a hot corner to invoke Expose and it works quite well. Overall the mouse is what you’d expect from Apple – yes this statement is worded this way on purpose. I have found that within Mac users there are two camps – ones that LOVE the apple mouses and the others that HATE it. Well if you HATE it – you’ll probably hate this one too and would be happier with your MX revolution or whatever alternative you’ve found. But for those who actually liked to use the Mighty Mouse you’ll find the Magic mouse really is a step up in the mouse. It feels better in the hand, scrolling and tracking are much more accurate – while the loss of the two extra buttons is a pain, there are rumors that maybe Apple will have something up their sleeve in the 10.6.2 update. Apple Store link: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB829LL/A Pictures of my Magic Mouse unboxing: http://www.flickr.com/photos/baldingnerd/sets/72157622572830365/ Sharing an Internet Connection: click on system preferences, then click on the sharing preference pane. Choose ethernet from the "Share your connection from:" dropdown menu. Now check "Airport" in the "To computers using:" panel. Click on the airport options button. Create a name, leave channel as automatic. Check the require password box, and enter a good password. Choose 128 bit wep. Click OK when done. Note the password for 128 bit must me 13 characters long. now check the box that says internet sharing in the service panel. After you check the box you will get the above warning. Click start. Congratulations – you are now a wireless router! Minimize Window to the Application Icon Apple made many user interface changes with the release of OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard, here is one of my favorite changes. under system preferences, choose Dock. Check the box that says "Minimize windows into application icon" Now that the windows minimize to the application icon how do you know what windows are open. There are two ways. The first is to choose the application icon in the dock and click and hold on the icon. By pressing F9 on the keyboard, using an assigned hot-corner or mouse button you can invoke the OSX Expose feature, the windows on the bottom half of the screen are the minimized windows.
  • October 04, 12:42 PM

    Episode 0031 - Setting up Cisco VPN client (HD)

    In this show I talk about setting up a Cisco VPN on Mac OSX Snow Leopard. I show you were to get the required information should you have a client software loaded on your work provided Windows machine. The Campus Geeks - Cisco VPN Group Password Decryption http://www.thecampusgeeks.com/tools/cisco-VPN-decrypt/cisco-decrypt.php
  • October 04, 12:41 PM

    Episode 0031 - Setting up Cisco VPN client (iPod)

    In this show I talk about setting up a Cisco VPN on Mac OSX Snow Leopard. I show you were to get the required information should you have a client software loaded on your work provided Windows machine. The Campus Geeks - Cisco VPN Group Password Decryption http://www.thecampusgeeks.com/tools/cisco-VPN-decrypt/cisco-decrypt.php
  • September 06, 09:48 PM

    Episode 0030 − 1 Week with Snow Leopard (Roundtable)

    Peter's notes • Did three installs — on main MBP, white MacBook and on parents’ iMac • Main install was an Erase & Install, clean install, whatever you want to call it • Using SL as an excuse to do a brand new clean install, had previously just kept migrating • Absolutely incredible speed increase versus the clogged up Leopard • Wow • Did an upgrade on the white MacBook, worked very well, if a little slower than expected. • Again, speed increase and generally found it stable • Finally, upgraded parents’ iMac to Snow Leopard, simple in-place upgrade and seems to work well and be stable • Incompatibility with Parallels 3, but I haven’t needed it. Hugo's notes Quotes from Twitter about the early winter http://twitter.com/xxloverxx/status/3758253970 "It would be _very_ nice if  dropped all 32 bit support in 10.7 and required all apps to run on 64 bit…might make things a bit smoother" http://twitter.com/nevali/status/3758274686 “@xxloverxx I’d be amazed if they didn’t, tbh. not a huge number of macs which are 32-bit only.” http://twitter.com/MarkSheppard/status/3758385244 “@xxloverxx I think that is the whole point of 10.6.  It's a transitional release.  This is the bumpy part of the ride.  :-)” My first Snowy install was on my Macbook, for testing before I put it on my main machine (Unibody MBP).  That went well, so I did one last backup of the MBP using SuperDuper and another manual one, and installed on the MBP.  Of course, everything went wrong with that install.  The installer said  "10 minutes remaining", then suddenly jumped to th finish line.  I decided not to worry; I proceded to reboot.  Startup froze after loading Apple CPU Power Managment (checked in Verbose mode).  Booting in Safe mode didn't do anything either, so my only option was to reinstall. On the 2nd reinstall, everything went well, hadn't lost any data or preferences! Finder is slightly faster, not a huge improvement IMO, but every little bit counts iTunes hasn't had any change, so it's still that POC (piece of carbon) that it always was Quicktime X is sexy! Makes watching movies a joy now - Quicktime 7's bar always took up too much space for my liking, especially on my 2nd, 17"-but-very-low-res (1024x768), but now, it all works fine :) Aperture has gotten a bit slower since Snowy, not sure why Audio Hijack Pro doesn't work on Quicktime X (that or I need an update) Will is @beiju @marksheppard - Mark Sheppard Mo - @nevali http://xxloverxx.smugmug.com (photos - I recently hid all my existing albums and am working on creating portfolios, so keep checking back) http://xxxloverxxx.tumblr.com (Tumblr blog) http://twitter.com/xxloverxx (Twitter, obviously. >16,000 updates since last March when I joined!) Matt's Notes: Pre-ordered from Amazon, but shipping was too late, so cancelled order and ordered from Apple - Got late afternoon on Friday. Upon upgrading MBP had issues with partition map - had to nuke and pave to get it to work on the MBP. Believe this is from adding the 500gb hard drive using superduper! Had time machine backup, and selected file backup. Before nuke and pave - drug over home folder to external 1TB USB Drive Enable 64 bit mode - tried this didn't see significant difference (hold 6 & 4 key on boot) SL upgrade on white first gen macbook tokk about an hour - 70 minutes On MBP not really sure, walked away for a few hours - came back and it was all ready Jodi's Notes: Snow Leopard Installation went great on my Mac Mini 2.26 GHz, Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM. 45 Minutes standard install. HP printer driver for Officejet 5610 AIO no longer works. Had to purchase VueScan to access Epson Perfection 1260 Scanner. AppleWorks and Quicken 2007 will only work under Rosetta. I refuse to load Rosetta on Snow Leopard. Intuit needs to get off their butt and get some new code! They've had 2+ years. Snow Leopard fast! Load times faster. Graphics on my Mini and ViewSonic monitor are greatly enhanced. Colors brighter and crisper. Blacks blacker. Whites brighter. Any time I turn on my HP 5610 Snow Leopard automatically goes out and checks for the driver. HP has promised driver support. Come on HP! Gamma Ranges change from 1.6 -> 2.2, might want to change back if you do photo editing.
  • July 22, 05:39 PM

    Episode 0029 - Traveling with your Mac

    Traveling with MacBook Pro Cases: Incase 15" Neoprene Sleeve for MacBook Pro http://www.goincase.com/products/detail/15-neoprene-sleeve-cl57099 I put the MacBook Pro in the sleeve then into your standard Jansport backpack/bookbag. Looks like TSA allows you to leave laptop in sleeve for security screening http://www.tsa.gov/press/happenings/simplifying_laptop_bag_procedures.shtm Power: The power brick is a self switching 100 - 240V 50-60 Hz power supply, thus it doesn't require a voltage regulator to go from US power systems to European power systems. The only thing you need is an adapter to change the plug end to fit the different style plugs. I chose the Apple World Travel Adapter Kit - this comes with a set of 6 adapters http://store.apple.com/us/product/M8794G/B I charged my iPhone 3GS via usb from the MacBook Pro Two things I would look into for next time: Apple USB Power Adapter (UK) http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MB051B/A Magsafe Airline Adapter http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB441Z/A Second Battery (for units with removable batteries) http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB772LL/A Headphones: Apple In-Ear Headphones http://www.apple.com/ipod/inearheadphones/ Might want to consider noise canceling headphones http://www.bose.com/controller?url=/shop_online/headphones/noise_cancelling_headphones/index.jsp Security: PGP Whole Disk Encryption this basically makes the disk a brick if it's removed from laptop or anyone tries to access it from a 3rd party device. Only thing you can do with it is reformat it and lose the data on it. Warning this also affects the use of the boot-up utility found on the included disks that come with your mac - no availability to repair permissions, etc... http://na.store.pgp.com/whole_disk_encryption_mac.html disable automatic login under security preference pane for extra security then go to System Accounts, click the "Login Options" button Display Login window as: "Name and Password" Also Go back to the Security Preference Pane and check "Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screensaver" this way if you leave mac on while you are out, it locks and keeps unauthorized uses from accessing your data. You might want to consider turning on your firewall as well if you are using the hotel computer network wifi/ethernet hardwire go to security preference pane, click on the firewall tab and choose "allow only essential services" if you have issues with certain apps functioning you might have to choose "Set access for specific services and applications" and then add the application using the plus button in the bottom left of the window. I suggest you test the firewall setting out before your trip to fine tune it. consider a laptop lock cable to secure laptop to desk/furniture if you are going to leave it in hotel room http://store.apple.com/us/product/TR414LL/A?mco=NTkwMDU1NQ Accessories: Be sure to remember things like USB cable for camera, small portable mouse, USB cable for iPod or iPhone. Might want to create a list a few days in advance and keep adding to it, checking it.. that way you don't forget anything. Also come up with a plan to charge batteries for your camera.. either USB, buy another battery, adapter fro charger (be sure charger can autoswitch it's voltage or you'll have to buy a voltage converter as well.) Pictures of London Vacation http://www.matthillyer.com
  • July 12, 03:29 PM

    Episode 0028 - Creating a Windows XP VM in Parallels (HD)

    In this episode I walk you through creating a Windows XP virtual machine in Parallels Desktop for Mac. http://www.parallels.com/
  • July 12, 03:28 PM

    Episode 0028 - Creating a Windows XP VM in Parallels (iPod)

    In this episode I walk you through creating a Windows XP virtual machine in Parallels Desktop for Mac. http://www.parallels.com/
  • June 30, 11:14 PM

    Episode 0027 - Sharing files With PC's, iPhone 3GS first impressions

    Working with windows - sharing data SHARING FILES: Drop Box https://www.getdropbox.com/ iDisk http://www.me.com Lifehacker - how to mount a Windows shared folder on your Mac http://lifehacker.com/software/mac-os-x/how-to-mount-a-windows-shared-folder-on-your-mac-247148.php SHARING DOCUMENTS: iWork File -> save -> check save copy as -> dropdown "Word Document" -or- file -> export -> word (can save as pdf, rtf or plain text as well) Print to PDF Any OSX cocoa app that you can print from should allow you to print to pdf. file -> print -> pdf dropdown -> save as pdf, give filename and location to save it in the dialog box Bootcamp: http://www.apple.com/macosx/what-is-macosx/compatibility.html 24” LED Cinema Display http://www.apple.com/displays/ Emulation: Parallels and VM ware http://www.parallels.com/ http://www.vmware.com/ http://www.virtualbox.org/ Episode 004 - Intro to Virtual Machines (Screencast) http://www.thestealthmac.com/files/67bef46224c36c76a10ca7c4cadfe843-3.html VNC for mac (screen sharing) http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20071102122311545 First Impressions of the iPhone 3GS Speck Candy Shell Case http://www.speckproducts.com/products/candyshell/iphone-3g-iphone-3gs/162 TomTom for iPhone http://iphone.tomtom.com/ iDisk for iPhone http://www.apple.com/mobileme/features/idisk.html Pick of the week U-verse for iPhone http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=312886438&mt=8 (link opens iTunes App Store) iChat A/V http://www.apple.com/macosx/what-is-macosx/ichat.html
  • June 16, 10:42 PM

    Episode 0026 - iPhone 3.0, 3GS and 11 Millions downloads of Safari

    Episode 0026 The Stealth Mac Show Notes 15 Apps Rendered Obsolete By The New iPhone 3GS (http://www.ismashphone.com/2009/06/15-apps-rendered-obsolete-by-the-new-iphone-.html) T-Mobile Netherlands spills the beans on iPhone 3G S specs (http://www.macworld.com/article/141088/2009/06/tmobile_netherlands_spills_the_beans_on_iphone_3g_s_specs.html) iPhone Sales per Quarter (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/IPhone_sales_per_quarter.svg) Total Cost of Ownership: iPhone 3G S versus Palm Pre versus Android G1 (http://www.billshrink.com/blog/iphone-versus-palm-pre-versus-android/) AT&T already sold out of launch day iPhone 3G S pre-orders (http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/06/13/att_already_sold_out_of_launch_day_iphone_3g_s_pre_orders.html) Safari 4 Downloads Top 11 Million in Three Days (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/06/12safari.html) (Side Note: Firefox 3.3.11 dl’d 150 Million times in 24 hours… http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2244094/firefox-reaches-150-million) How to use to 40 features of iPhone 3.0 http://www.ismashphone.com/2009/06/how_to_use_best_40_features_of_iphone_3.html AT&T signals an abrupt end to iPhone prepaid phone plans http://www.tuaw.com/2009/06/15/atandt-to-discontinue-prepaid-iphone-plans/ Apple Patent Could Ease 911 Cellphone Calls http://hothardware.com/News/Patent%2Dcould%2Dease%2Demergency%2Dcellphone%2Dcalls/ Appfresh http://metaquark.de/appfresh/ Skitch http://www.skitch.com/
  • June 10, 12:03 AM

    Episode 0025 - All things WWDC

    In Episode 0025 we welcome Antonio Rippe to the podcast as a co-host and we discuss all things WWDC: Snow Leopard http://i.gizmodo.com/5283157/everything-you-need-to-know-about-snow-leopard New Macs The new unibody models include a 2.26GHz model for $1199 and a 2.53GHz model for $1499, down from $1299 and $1599. MacBook Air is available in two models starting with the new entry price of $1,499 for a 1.86 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo system with a 120GB hard drive and NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics, and a 2.13 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo system with a 128GB solid state drive and NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics for $1,799. iPhone 3G S Hardware prices are $199 for 16GB and $299 for 32GB as announced, with the 8GB iPhone 3G costing $99. New information is that the 16GB 3G should remain on sale for $149, though once current stock is depleted, no more will be available. (http://www.macnn.com/articles/09/06/08/att.on.iphone.3gs/) Complete Features (http://i.gizmodo.com/5283099/iphone-3gs-complete-feature-guide) http://www.apple.com/iphone/ better camera 3mp - video, autofocusing, macro lens voice control to dial, play music digital compass WWDC Post ATT Screwing over customers (http://i.gizmodo.com/5283334/att-is-screwing-over-us-iphone-users) Boy Genius Report – Tethering to cost $70/month (http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2009/06/08/the-reason-why-att-wont-support-mms-with-the-iphone-until-late-summer/) Real Cost of iPhone 3GS: About $118 More Than You Think (http://i.gizmodo.com/5283568/real-cost-of-iphone-3gs-about-100-more-than-you-think) Tom Tom video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YskygegTjAU) Death by “Fine Text” (http://www.apple.com/iphone/compare-iphones/) Compatibility reports (http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/06/09/round-up-every-iphone-3g-s-compatible-accessory/) - Funny Safari 4 - http://www.apple.com/safari/ Little different look than beta releases tabs moved from top of window back to under the address bar zippy 100 on ACID3 test - http://acid3.acidtests.org/ Speck Candy Shell Case: http://www.speckproducts.com/products/candyshell/iphone-3g/16
  • May 27, 10:34 PM

    Episode0024 - Mac 101: so you just got a mac, now what?

    So you just got a Mac, now what? Well don't just rip open that box and stare at it blankly. Let me guide you through setting it up, applying patches and I explain what the most common applications in the dock are and what you can use them for. This is another podcast in The Stealth Mac's MAC101 series.
  • May 18, 06:26 PM

    Episode0023 - Flash Cookies (HD)

    This week guest editor Peter Upfold is back with a review on what flash cookies are and how to manage them. This is something that goes on under our noses with little interaction and Peter pulls the covers back to reveal what is going on and how we can have a little control in the process.

  • May 18, 06:25 PM

    Episode0023 - Flash Cookies (iPod)

    This week guest editor Peter Upfold is back with a review on what flash cookies are and how to manage them. This is something that goes on under our noses with little interaction and Peter pulls the covers back to reveal what is going on and how we can have a little control in the process.

  • May 01, 11:55 PM

    Episode 0022 - Broadcasting on Ustream.com & PGP whole disk encryption

    In this episode I was playing around and trying out live broadcasting via ustream, so the first half of the show I talk about what I am doing and the applications I use to broadcast. First I created an account at http://www.ustream.com and set up all the data for my "show." I then downloaded an application called Camtwist - found at http://www.allocinit.com/index.php?title=CamTwist. This free application allows you to have multiple video inputs and have effects applied to them real time - then it allows this video to be put out as a single video feed and shows up as a video source in OSX, just like iSight or a firewire video camera. Next I snagged an application called Wiretap anywhere from Ambrosia Studios found here: http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/wta/ this application does somewhat the same thing as camtwist but with audio. This application allows you to have multiple audio inputs, combine them together and create a single audio "output" that can be selected in various OSX applications as an audio source. This is not required to broadcast on ustream, but if you want the viewers to hear application sounds and you talking you will need an application like this. I used this application specifically for the audio output of garageband and my Blue Snowball microphone so that viewers can hear me talk and listen to the garageband output. After I've set up my video and audio source I went back to ustream and logged in, then clicked the "Broadcast Now" button, and clicked OK on the security prompt to allow the website to use my camera and audio source. That's it - I'm now broadcasting live. One thing I did discover - there is a delay, from 5-30 seconds is what I observed. I also talk about PGP whole disk encryption for the mac and why I purchased it. This application provides whole disk encryption security. When booting you first have to type in a pass-phrase in order to allow the OS to boot. If someone were to steal the laptop - the data is safe because the entire disk is encrypted. you can read more about PGP whole disk encryption for the mac here: http://na.store.pgp.com/whole_disk_encryption_mac.html I hope you enjoyed this weeks show - if you are interested in more live recording sessions or have any questions or comments, please contact me at thestealthmac@gmail.com
  • April 23, 11:03 PM

    Episode 0021 (audio) - Backblaze online backups and an introduction to twitter

    In this audio only podcast I talk about online backups and using the new service Backblaze (www.backblaze.com). I also talk about twitter and review a few of the twitter clients that I use on both my mac and my iPhone.
  • March 26, 11:54 AM

    Episode 0020 - Proxy Icon (HD Version)

    Guest Producer Peter Upfold is back this week and shows us how to use the proxy icon for file manipulation. The proxy icon is that little icon of the document in the menu bar. Peter shows us how to take charge of the proxy icon to help streamline your workflow. If you have any questions or suggestions, please email us at thestealthmac@gmail.com
  • March 26, 11:53 AM

    Episode 0020 - Proxy Icon (iPod Version)

    Guest Producer Peter Upfold is back this week and shows us how to use the proxy icon for file manipulation. The proxy icon is that little icon of the document in the menu bar. Peter shows us how to take charge of the proxy icon to help streamline your workflow. If you have any questions or suggestions, please email us at thestealthmac@gmail.com
  • March 14, 10:31 PM

    Episode 0019 - Mac 101: The desktop (HD version)

    The Mac 101 series gets a kick off this week as I give you a tour of the Desktop, Dock and Menu bar. I also talk a little more on the continuing changes happening on the website.
  • March 14, 10:28 PM

    Episode 0019 - Mac 101: The desktop (iPod version)

    The Mac 101 series gets a kick off this week as I give you a tour of the Desktop, Dock and Menu bar. I also talk a little more on the continuing changes happening on the website.
  • February 28, 12:36 PM

    Episode 0018 - Backup.app, 24 inch cinema display (HD Version)

    In episode 18 I talk about the changes I’ve made to The Stealth Mac Podcast website. I walk you through using Apple’s Backup 3 Application to back up files. I also give you a product review on Apple’s 24” LED Cinema Display.
  • February 28, 12:34 PM

    Episode 0018 - Backup.app, 24 inch cinema display (iPod Version)

    In episode 18 I talk about the changes I’ve made to The Stealth Mac Podcast website. I walk you through using Apple’s Backup 3 Application to back up files. I also give you a product review on Apple’s 24” LED Cinema Display.
  • February 18, 05:20 PM

    Episode 0017 - Back to Basics

    In this episode I talk about going back to basics, reloading my MacBook Pro and only using OSX, iLife & iWork for 30 days. I blog about my daily experience here: http://web.me.com/matthew.hillyer/30_days_with_OSX/Welcome.html
  • February 12, 02:30 PM

    Episode 0016 - Loading OSX Leopard (HD edition)

    We talk about loading Mac OSX Leopard this week - I talk you through step by step instructions on how to load the latest operating system from Apple - OSX Leopard. I also show a trick on how to copy the OSX Leopard DVD ISO onto a bootable drive for a faster, less error prone install process.
  • February 12, 02:24 PM

    Episode 0016 - Loading OSX Leopard (iPod edition)

    We talk about loading Mac OSX Leopard this week - I talk you through step by step instructions on how to load the latest operating system from Apple - OSX Leopard. I also show a trick on how to copy the OSX Leopard DVD ISO onto a bootable drive for a faster, less error prone install process.
  • February 02, 04:18 PM

    Episode 0015 - iWork 09 pdf views from document (HD Version)

    We try a new format for the show this week - using BoinxTV as the video capture and editing suite. This week Peter Upfold is back with an update to his iWork file tricks from episode 11. iWork 09 changed things up a bit, but Peter is here to show you how it all works.
  • February 02, 04:17 PM

    Episode 0015 - iWork 09 pdf views from document (iPod)

    We try a new format for the show this week - using BoinxTV as the video capture and editing suite. This week Peter Upfold is back with an update to his iWork file tricks from episode 11. iWork 09 changed things up a bit, but Peter is here to show you how it all works.
  • January 24, 08:09 AM

    Episode 0014 - Spotlight OSX Leopard (HD version)

    This week I show you how to use OSX's spotlight feature. I'll detail how to use it as an application launcher and how to supercharge your searches.
  • January 24, 08:06 AM

    Episode 0014 - Spotlight OSX Leopard (iPod version)

    This week I show you how to use OSX's spotlight feature. I'll detail how to use it as an application launcher and how to supercharge your searches.
  • January 13, 06:29 PM

    Episode 0013 - Migration tool, Macworld, iTunes DRM, iWork 09, and Mac 101

    In this episode I talk about using the Migration tool built into OS X to migrate user data from one mac to another. I also discuss the Keynote at Macworld SF 2009 - and the announcements Apple made. Lastly I talk about the launch of my Mac 101 series. http://www.thestealthmac.com
  • December 31, 09:41 AM

    Episode 012 - pdf previews from pages bundle (HD Version)

    Have you ever sent a pages document to someone, only to find they don’t have the iWork applications suite? Have you ever sent one to a windows user on accident? Never fear! In episode 12 Peter Upfold from the UK gives me a little vacation and explains how you can pull a pdf preview of a pages document out of the pages document bundle.
  • December 31, 09:38 AM

    Episode 012 - pdf previews from pages bundle (iPod Version)

    Have you ever sent a pages document to someone, only to find they don’t have the iWork applications suite? Have you ever sent one to a windows user on accident? Never fear! In episode 12 Peter Upfold from the UK gives me a little vacation and explains how you can pull a pdf preview of a pages document out of the pages document bundle.
  • December 10, 11:53 PM

    Episode 011 - download and convert flv files for DVD & CD's 640x320 iPod format

    iPod Format In episode 11 I show you how to export flash video from a web site using your browser’s activity window. I then show you how to convert the .flv file to something more compatible with iPods and AppleTV’s. I demonstrate how to create an audio CD from the movie’s audio track (great for music videos) and how to create a DVD that auto plays it’s content when you insert it into the player. Music in this episode: bluejuice & Paul Jannicola
  • December 10, 11:48 PM

    Episode 011 - download and convert flv files for DVD & CD's 1280x720 format

    In episode 11 I show you how to export flash video from a web site using your browser’s activity window. I then show you how to convert the .flv file to something more compatible with iPods and AppleTV’s. I demonstrate how to create an audio CD from the movie’s audio track (great for music videos) and how to create a DVD that auto plays it’s content when you insert it into the player. Music in this episode: bluejuice & Paul Jannicola
  • December 03, 10:51 AM

    Episode 010 - Firewire Target Disk Mode

    A quick video this week - After I got my new Macbook Pro I needed to transfer some files off of my old 17" MBP. After some thinking I realized target disk mode would be the quickest. I've never done target disk mode, so I thought I'd record it, so everyone else who has never done it could see what the experience is like. While a pretty simple process, it was exactly what I needed to get those files moved over.
  • November 18, 04:44 PM

    Episode 009 - Font Tips & Tricks

    Quick episode this week, I show you 2 tricks, the first how to get a preview of your font in the font preference pane. Lastly I show you how to print a font reference guide from your font book application.
  • October 30, 01:53 PM

    Episode 008 - Mobile Me

    In this weeks Screencast I talk about Mobile Me - I show you how to set it up on your mac, I go through the system prefs panel. I then look at the web services. Lastly I show you how to set up Mobile Me on a PC and how to enable syncing of all your appointments, contacts and email.
    Mobile Me control panel for Windows - http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/mobilemecontrolpanel12forwindows.html
    Email Setup Instructions for Windows email clients - http://www.apple.com/mobileme/setup/pc/
  • October 19, 10:59 PM

    Episode 007 - Essential Mac Apps

    In Episode 007 I talk about Essential Mac apps, those applications that you just can't live without. I also go over what apps I have running in my menu bar. Please rate me in iTunes. IF you have any questions, comments or show ideas please email me at TheStealthMac@gmail.com. Essential Mac Apps 1Password - http://www.agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password Adium - http://www.adiumx.com AppZapper - http://www.appzapper.com/ Hand Brake - http://www.handbrake.fr/ Mpeg Streamclip - http://www.squared5.com/ VLC - http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ The Unarchiver - http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver.html Flip4Mac - http://www.flip4mac.com/ Menu Bar Apps Evernote - http://www.Evernote.com Skitch - http://www.skitch.com Dropbox - http://www.getdropbox.com CoverSutra - http://www.coversutra.com Text Expander - http://www.smileonmymac.com/TextExpander HoudaSpot - http://www.houdah.com/houdahSpot BusyMac - http://www.busymac.com Caffeine - http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/ iStat Menus - http://www.islayer.com/
  • October 05, 11:19 PM

    Episode 006 - Backup Strategies

    I talk about backup strategies in this episode, I also go over 3 backup applications and discuss 2 remote backup solutions. Super Duper: http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html Apple Backup 3.1.2: http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/backup312.html Mozy: http://mozy.com/ Amazon S3: http://aws.amazon.com/s3/ Jungle Disk: http://www.jungledisk.com/
  • September 27, 11:30 PM

    Episode 005 - AppleTV, DVD Ripping/Encoding & aTV Flash

    In episode 5 I discuss media centers, AppleTV, DVD ripping & encoding applications and an AppleTV software “hack” that enables many features including Apple File Protocol (AFP) and USB disk support.
  • September 23, 12:09 AM

    Episode 004 - Intro to Virtual Machines

    In episode 4 I talk about Virtual machines - what they are, how they work and how to install one. I also discuss a really cool feature called coherence mode. Virtual Machines allow you to run windows applications on you Mac and allow you to function in an IT realm where Windows is king. If you are interested in trying out a virtual machine application, please check out the following sites: Parallels - www.parallels.com VM Ware - www.vmware.com Music in this episode by: Tripudio, George Wood, & Return to Mono
  • September 15, 09:24 AM

    Episode 003 - synchronizing Outlook Calendar with iCal

    Well - here it is, episode 3. In this episode I show you how I sync my work outlook calendar with my iCal using "cloud" technology. Since I cannot hit mobile me directly from my office PC I had to get a little creative. I hope you enjoy this screencast and if you have any questions or comments, please let me know at thestealthmac@gmail.com or check out our forums at http://thestealthmac.com/forum.
  • September 10, 04:03 PM

    Episode 002

    In episode 2 I discuss the "Let's Rock" Apple Event - all the new products & services that were announced. I also talk a little about the iTunes 8.0 features - Genius playlist creator and Grid View.
  • September 06, 12:04 AM

    Episode 001

    In this episode I introduce myself and what the podcast is all about. I also tell you how to set the default applications launched for a particular file in OSX Leopard. RCDefault preference pane can be found on my forum - http://thestealthmac.com My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-8abf03b90f28b2b6f778d86a895c3d6a}
The Stealth Mac Podcast

Posts

App Obsessed Podcast

Updates

  • Nothing like 8 engineers debating what Fiscal Week it is
    Posted 36 hours ago
  • mini snickers nom nom nom nom
    Posted 36 hours ago
  • HALP! I's lost my motivation and I can't get up!
    Posted 38 hours ago
  • Ping - Apple's proof they can still cram more shit into iTunes....
    Posted 39 hours ago
  • 12 hour later... I STILL WANT MY COLOR BACK IN iTUNES!!
    Posted 39 hours ago
  • okay coffee... do your thing!
    Posted 39 hours ago
  • commute was hell this morning - overturned toddler on the livingroom expressway backing up traffic for miles. #iloveworkingfromhome
    Posted 39 hours ago
  • I have horrible heartburn tonight >,<
    Posted 2 days ago
  • ETA for Mom is 3.5 hours. Sure could use a nap!
    Posted 2 days ago
  • WHY DID I WAIT SO LONG TO GET NETFLIX?? ahem... That is all.
    Posted 35 hours ago
  • Pro Tip #2 - when creating online quizzes, show the user what questions they got incorrect and the correct answer so they may learn
    Posted 2 days ago

Photos

My Facebook