Category: Apple

Here are a few random thoughts on the applications that are part of the MacHeist bundle (still on sale for another two days!):

• Delicious Library: I’ve actually started using this to catalog my stuff. I’ve got about 100 CDs in there, plus around 25 books, 25 DVDs, and a handful of video games. (I have *much more* to enter, if I want to catalog my entire collection(s).) It works reasonably well. I’ve found that, with CDs, if you want to get specific about which version of a given CD you have (original, import, reissue, etc), you need to go back and forth a bit to find the right one. And the right cover art isn’t always pulled down from Amazon. Still, it’s right a lot of the time, and it’s not real hard to correct stuff that’s wrong. I find that I can enter maybe one CD per minute. Books (so far) have been a bit more straightforward. I’ve just been typing in the ISBN numbers, and I usually get a correct match, with cover art.
• DevonThink Personal: I’d like to say that I’m finding this to be really useful, but I’m not. I’m still using an old version of iOrganize for keeping track of stuff. I don’t see too much of an advantage to DevonThink. Maybe I need to play around with it some more.
• RapidWeaver looks interesting, but I don’t have much use for it right now. I’ll probably play around with it at some point to work on some web site ideas, but I don’t really need it now.
• I’m hoping to use NewsFire to replace Juice, which I’ve been using for awhile now. Juice works fine, but it’s a bit slow, probably because it’s a cross-platform app that’s not really optimized for the Mac. I’m hoping NewsFire will be better, though I haven’t had a chance to try it yet.
• I’m not sure what I’m going to do with TextMate. I’ve been using TextWrangler recently, and I’m pretty happy with it.
• I haven’t really played with any of the other apps in the bundle. A couple of them might be useful.

Overall, I have no problem with the $49 price on the bundle. I’m definitely getting my money’s worth out of Delicious Library, and I’ll hopefully get some use out of NewsFire, DevonThink, Disco, or one of the other apps. There’s been a lot of talk in the blogs this week about whether or not the MacHeist bundle was a good thing for Mac developers or not. Personally, I wasn’t planning on spending any money on Mac shareware any time soon, so right there that’s $49 into the Mac shareware “economy” that wouldn’t have been there otherwise. I imagine a lot of other buyers fit into the same category. In terms of this thing driving upgrade sales, or sales of other products from the participating developers, I can certainly see that happening. I’ll likely buy the upgrade to the next version of Delicious when it comes out. And I may upgrade to the next verison of DevonThink when it comes out, and/or switch to DevonThink Pro.

Boy, I’m tempted to pick up a new MacBook now that they’ve got the Core 2 Duo thing going on. I’ve only had my iBook for about a year, though, so I think I need to hold onto it for awhile, huh? I usually try to get three years out of a laptop, if I can.

Well, I found out today that the Nano’s battery life is definitely more than 10 hours. I started listening to it on my way into work at 7:30am. When I got into my car at 5:30pm to go home, I discovered that I’d forgotten to pause it when I got to work, and it had been playing all day. It still had enough battery life in it to work on my trip home. Cool.

I don’t suppose I have any reasonable excuse for continuing to look at Nano cases. I really should have just bought one by now. Nevertheless, here are three more:

A nice little pouch, from sfbags.com.

The Tuffwrap Accent, from XtremeMac.

Nano Valet from Difusi.

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These DLO Cases for the Nano are nice too. I looked at a few other things reviewed at iLounge, but I didn’t see much else I liked.

The Nano itself worked fine in the car on the way to work and back today. The old iPod used to hiccup in the middle of podcasts occasionally, but the Nano doesn’t. I’m sure this has something to do with the limited size of cache memory on the old iPod vs. the relative speed of pulling stuff from the hard drive. The Nano doesn’t have a hard drive, so that’s not a problem.

The battery in my old 1st gen 5GB iPod has been giving me trouble lately. Today, it got to the point where it seems to hold a charge for only about 10 minutes. I decided to give up on it, and trade it in for a 4GB Nano. I brought it in to the Apple Store in Bridgewater. They give you a 10% discount off a new iPod when you turn in an old one for recycling, so I got $25 off the $250 Nano. Not a bad deal. The salesperson thought I could have gotten more if I’d sold it on eBay, but I don’t think a 5GB 1st gen iPod with a dead battery would bring in more than $20, really, and I’d have to go through the trouble of listing it, shipping it, and all that fun stuff.

The Nano looks nice, and will hopefully be usable for listening to podcasts in the car, which is all I was really doing with the old iPod. My car charger for the old iPod won’t work with the Nano, but theoretically, I shouldn’t need one. The Nano’s supposed to have up to 14 hours of battery life. I’m thinking of getting either a Chums or Acme Made case for it.

Here’s a nice list of open source Mac software.

MacFixIt – Sudden loss of AirPort connectivity for iBook G4 mid-2005 series: I hope this doesn’t happen to my iBook!