Google GmailLast Wednesday, Google announced the long awaited availability of IMAP for Gmail. Gmail has had POP access for quite some time, but POP just doesn’t cut it when you want to access your email from more than one device.

Now, I know some of you are thinking I should just access Gmail over the web, and you would have a pretty good point, but what happens when I’m 35,000 feet in the air or some other place where there is no Wi-Fi or cellular system? I want to use Apple’s Mail application with Gmail. I want to use Outlook with Gmail. I want to use my BlackBerry’s message application with Gmail. Basically, I want IMAP for my Gmail account. It’s been five days since the announcement, and I’m still waiting. Come on Google, hook me up.

The Mac OS X Leopard launch this weekend got me thinking about how I could get more out of my good ol’ Power Mac G4. I didn’t buy Leopard because I’m waiting to hear how it runs on G4 processors. Based on my experience with iLife ’08, Apple is clearly not optimizing applications for the G4 and its Velocity Engine anymore. Take iMovie ’08 for example. iMovie ’06 runs like a champ on my computer. I find it very difficult to believe that iMovie ’08 could not have been optimized to run on a G4. It does not make any sense to me. The performance of iPhoto ’08 is also a bit suspect on my Mac especially compared to the last version. Anyway, that’s a whole other topic.

The Leopard launch convinced me that it was time to give my Mac a fresh start. My hard drive was approaching capacity, and the performance of the machine was definitely starting to slow down a bit. To give a little background, the machine still had Classic (Mac OS 9) on it. It also had every file I had created in the last eight years. I’ll be the first to admit that a fresh OS install was way overdue.

With my internal 120 GB hard drive and 250 GB FireWire hard drive both almost full, I had a bit of a dilemma. It was time for another external drive so off to Costco I went. With a new 500 GB FireWire hard drive in hand, I was now ready to implement my master plan. The first step was to do a full backup onto my new hard drive. Once that was finished, I broke out my Mac OS X Tiger disk and did a nice fresh installation for the first time since who knows when. I have decided that my internal hard drive will be used almost strictly for applications. With over 140 GB of photos, music, and videos, I don’t want to keep my media files on the internal drive. I plan to use the 250 GB FireWire drive for my iLife media files. The drive will be a little over half full when I move all of my files over so I will have room to grow. That will leave the 500 GB FireWire drive to backup every file on my other two drives. That will give me plenty of room not only for a full backup but also incremental backups for the foreseeable future.

With my new setup in place, I feel like my Mac (barring anything catastrophic) should last for quite some time. I can see using this machine for at least another couple years. Now, don’t get me wrong; I would love a new iMac, but my Power Mac seems to be a lot more responsive so I am happy to keep on using it.

Kyah Thinking Different

Being the good Apple soldier, I was one of those guys standing in a line in a mall hallway waiting for the Apple Store to reopen for the Leopard World Premiere. As I mentioned earlier, I even took my daughter (see very old, but cool picture above) to join in the festivities. It wasn’t until we got in line that she realized we weren’t going to an apple store; we were going to the Apple Store. It didn’t take her long to get into the excitement surrounding the event. The people in line were so fun and happy that it was hard not to get sucked into the moment. The Apple Store employees made it a lot of fun too by doing a count down and taking pictures and videos when people were finally allowed in the store.

Once the store opened, the line moved very fast. This was nothing like the time my brother, Greg, and I stood in line for hours just to see what the Chicago Michigan Avenue store looked like. We got into the store in plenty of time to get a t-shirt (yes, I have yet another Apple t-shirt now). The atmosphere in the store was electric. Judging by some of the questions I heard while walking around, I could tell many of the people were new to the Mac. Perhaps they were drawn in by the large line of people. With that many people, surely something incredible must be going on, right?

I do have to say that Leopard ran very well on the demonstration machines in the store. Of course, these are the latest and greatest Macs. It better run well on these machines. Quick Look was very cool, and Spaces turned out to be a lot cooler than I thought it would be. The new version of Mail looked very good. It makes me wish I could use a Mac as my regular every day work computer. Overall, the OS seemed to be very responsive and polished. I expected nothing less of Apple, though.

On top of everything going on with Leopard last night, something else grabbed my attention in the store. Obviously, most people outside of the Reality Distortion Field are drawn to the iPods and iPhone. I watched many people first gravitate to the tables with those devices. They clearly were not Mac users. In fact, one woman called the Apple Store the iPhone Store. Something cool happened with these people when they were done playing with all of the latest iPods; they started playing with the Macs! I think a lot of homes will have shiny new Macs this holiday season. Let’s hope this is a trend that makes its way into the business world too. With so many corporate applications now using web-based technologies, there is no reason a major corporation could not use Macs as their desktop solution. No reason at all. Sure, they may need to use Windows on the server side if they use ASP.NET, but if they use PHP, they could even have Macs on the server side. It’s all starting to come together.

On a personal note, something else really cool happened at the Apple Store last night. I watched first hand as my daughter officially got sucked into the Reality Distortion Field. First she played at the kids table with all of the cool applications for kids her age. Then she found the iPod nano. We were at the iPod table the rest of the night. She instantly figured out how to use it without any instruction from me. That says a lot about the iPod interface. She had a little more difficulty with the iPhone interface. You hear that, Apple?

We had a lot of fun at the Leopard World Premiere last night. Kyah is now an Apple evangelist, I talked a lady into buying an iPod touch for her kid, and we had some really good father-daughter time. I didn’t buy Leopard last night because I’m not convinced my old Power Mac G4 will be able to handle all of the cool features that are important to me. I would love to have it, though, so we’ll see what happens when 10.5.1 comes out.

Mac OS X Leopard

That’s right, folks. Today is the day Apple releases Leopard into the wild! I don’t know about you, but I’m hoping to make my way over to my local Apple Store to geek out a bit and experience Leopard first hand. I may even take my eight year old daughter to get her sucked into the Reality Distortion Field at a nice early age. If you’re interested in participating in the Leopard launch, visit Apple’s web site to find the Apple Retail Store closest to you.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog is doing a great series of posts called 24 Hours of Leopard. The TUAW bloggers are examining the features in Leopard that interest them most. If you want to know about the latest and greatest version of Mac OS X, head on over to TUAW.

I finally had a chance to watch the Mac OS X Leopard Guided Tour over the weekend, and it looks awesome! There were many features presented in the tour that will most likely change the way people use their Macs. Here are some of the new features that I’m excited about.

Stacks

Stacks is a new Dock feature that allows users to quickly and easily view folder contents directly from the Dock. I see this as a great way to group files that need to be accessed often. As presented in the tour, it also makes a lot of sense to have a Stack for downloads so you can easily get to the most recently downloaded files without cluttering your desktop. Although it may take a little while for people to change their habits to take full advantage of Stacks, it will be a feature that people will really appreciate.

Quick Look

Quick Look is a new view within the Finder that allows users to preview certain types of files directly in the Finder. When you have several files in a folder that have similar names, Quick Look will make it very easy to find the right file. My only concern about this feature is that it may perform slowly on my poor old Power Mac G4. If the performance is good, I look forward to using this new feature to find my files.

Time Machine

Time Machine is the new backup feature built right in to the operating system. This one feature alone gives me enough reason to upgrade to Leopard. Having a solid backup routine is so important, and most people don’t do it because it is so confusing or time consuming to do correctly. Time Machine takes all of the guess work out of backup by performing hourly backups in the background. I think people will appreciate this new feature more than anything else included in Leopard especially when they go through a drive failure. As they say, it’s not if a drive will fail, it is when.

Mail

I really like the new version of Mail. For new users, the smart setup utility will make it incredibly easy to add new mail accounts. For services like Gmail, Yahoo, and .Mac, all you need to know is your email address and password to set up the account in Mail. This is a huge step forward for the less technically inclined out there. The new Notes and To Do features will make it easier to keep track of those types of things without having to send emails to yourself. I do this constantly so I know I will use this feature. The new Stationary templates also look really nice for the times when you want to add a little something extra to emails.

One thing that concerns me is that these cool new features will not make it into the .Mac web interface. As far as I am concerned, all features that are available in the desktop client should also be available in the web interface. If there is not a huge .Mac update on Friday, I will be very disappointed.

iChat

The new version of iChat looks fantastic! Sharing iPhoto Events and Keynote Presentations directly in iChat will make it possible to have very interactive online video meetings. It also looks like any file type supported by Quick Look can also be shared in iChat.

The new Backdrops will be really fun to use. Instead of showing the world my mess of an office, I can show cool patterns or even images. I will use this feature a lot!

Finally, Screen Sharing will make it insanely easy to collaborate with others online. I see this as a great way to work with others on projects as well as provide technical support to my family. I hope my Mac has enough horsepower to make all of these features work.

Leopard looks to be a very significant update to Mac OS X that will keep Apple at the forefront of operating system design. Thanks to Apple’s release schedule, it’s like getting a brand new Mac every year or so. This time, though, we may actually have to get a new Mac to take advantage of all of these cool new features. Damn you Apple for making me want to spend more money! 🙂

About a year ago, my family and I moved away from the San Diego area to settle back in the Midwest. The currently raging wildfires have hit close to home as we have many friends and co-workers that have been affected by the massive evacuations. Our thoughts are with everyone out there suffering through this tragic situation.

The San Diego Union-Tribune is using Blogger to distribute up-to-the-minute information about the wildfires. If you are in the San Diego area or are concerned about people there, check out the Wildfires 2007 blog for the most current information.

WXRTI can’t even explain to you how much I miss WXRT. XRT is the best rock radio station in Chicago, and now that I’ve lived in several other cities, I can say that it is one of the best (if not the best) radio station in the country. Every year (or almost every year), XRT releases a recording of songs from their archives of concerts it has sponsored in Chicago. ONXRT Volume 10 hit Chicago area Starbucks stores earlier this month, and my brother, Greg, was kind enough to pick up a copy for me. Not only is it a great collection of songs by artists like The Pretenders, Chris Cornell, and The John Butler Trio, it also helps select Chicago-area charitable organizations. From XRT’s website:

Proceeds of ONXRT: Live From the Archives, Volume 10- will benefit the Little City Foundation and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society Greater Illinois Chapter. The Little City Foundation ensures that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are provided with the best options and opportunities to live safely, work productively, explore creatively, learn continuously and play pleasurably throughout their lifetime.

The MS Society Greater Illinois Chapter works to end the devastating effects of multiple Sclerosis, fund research, provide more services to people living with MS, offer professional education, and further advocacy efforts.

If you live in Chicago (or if you know someone who does), run out and get yourself a copy before they’re gone. These CDs quickly become collectors items. You’ll get some really good music and help two great organizations.

It has been brought to my attention by my Internet Explorer-using friends that my blog theme looked terrible in IE. What’s funny is that it looked great in Firefox and Safari. Internet Explorer has always been the problem child of the web design community because it does not adhere to standards as well as it should.

Although it really bothers me to do this, I have switched my blog back to the default WordPress theme until I can either find a theme that looks good in all browsers or until I figure out how to fix my old theme.

Thanks to everyone that pointed out IE’s complete disregard for Internet standards.

Update: Okay, I have to admit that it was my bad HTML code that caused my blog to look all funky the other day. It wasn’t IE’s fault. IE still sucks, though. 🙂

Last.fmI admit that I’m a little late to this party, but I love Last.fm! It’s an incredibly simple concept. You go to their website, type in the name of an artist you like, and music by that artist and similar artists starts playing in the music player that is embedded in the site. If you want to take it a step further, you can create an account and download the Last.fm software for Mac, Windows, or Linux and listen to music on your computer without using a web browser. The nice thing about the software is that it can keep track of the music you listen to in iTunes and on your iPod. Last.fm calls the process of tracking your listening habits “scrobbling.” Basically, information about all of the tracks you listen to using iTunes, an iPod, and Last.fm is collected and stored in order to develop a personal listening history. Once you have used Last.fm long enough, your personal Last.fm radio station based on your tastes should be all you need to fill your day with music that you like.

One of the things I like best about Last.fm is that I have been able to discover new music that I never would have heard on the anemic radio stations here in Saint Louis. There are links to Amazon.com to buy the currently playing tracks, or you can do a quick search in the iTunes Store. Since moving from larger radio markets like Chicago and San Diego, I have not found a good source to hear good music, and Last.fm is perfect for those purposes.

If you enjoy music and have access to a computer throughout your day, check out Last.fm and enjoy.

Apple iPhone

Okay, I have to admit that I do not own an iPhone so my opinion may be a little off here, but why is there such a fuss over being able to develop for the iPhone? As a techno super freak, I keep up with a lot of technology sites and blogs through my favorite feed reader, Google Reader. It seems like there has been at least one post a day about something to do with hacking the iPhone so you can run native third party applications. At this point, I have to admit that these posts have me a bit bored and annoyed.

If Apple had intended the iPhone to be an open development environment, they would have kept it open and made it possible and incredibly easy to develop applications using Xcode. Third party applications are good for business so Apple must have had a very important reason for not allowing native development.

Instead of wasting all of this time and effort on hacking the iPhone, all of these obviously talented and dedicated developers should be focusing their efforts on developing the best web applications possible to work with the iPhone. There are some great examples of iPhone-optimized sites out there like Facebook, Digg, OneTrip, and Meebo. I know that a connection to the web is required to run these applications, but with Wi-Fi and the cellular network, how often are iPhone users really without an active connection? The web now provides a very powerful development environment, and it really is time to focus on creating the best iPhone web applications the world has ever seen. Focus guys, focus.