Upgrade Options for Photoshop CS2 and Indesign CS2

Today I contact Adobe Support about my upgrade options for Photoshop CS2 and Indesign CS2. Their website doesn't include CS2 as part of their upgrade cost.

In my chat conversation with Ria, she says " I am sorry, there is no upgrade path since the version you own is an older version. In that case you will have to purchase the full version of the software."

Ria then suggest that I get a different option, "Using CS6 Design and Web Premium, you can combines industry-leading tools that allow you to create and deliver innovative ideas for print, web, tablets, and smartphones. You can design some Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) and banner. You can also work as freelancers or are employed full-time by agencies, publishers, corporations, and government departments."

So I go from a potential $199 upgrade to purchasing $1,899. Wow! I don't think that will happen any time soon.

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No iMac at WWDC

I was very disappointed that no new iMacs were announced at the WWDC conference yesterday.  In fact, so many users expressed their concerns on Twitter,  Facebook and to Apple CEO Tim Cook, that Apple's Public Relations issue a statement via Forbes.

From Forbes online:

An Apple spokesman just told me that new models and new designs of the Mac Pro, as well as the iMac desktop, are in the works and will likely be released in 2013. That confirms what New York Times columnist David Pogue said yesterday, citing an unnamed Apple executive, about Apple?s commitment to its desktop computers.

In the end, I decided that it was not worth waiting for another 6 months for the new iMacs. I am now busy playing with my new iMac. I am very happy with the new computer.

Personally I don't think its worth waiting. If you need a computer, you should go out and get one. There's always a reason not to purchase a computer, sometimes you need to focus on the present.

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Apple's Magic Mouse

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Not sure why, but Apple's Magic Mouse doesn't enable the Two-button click by default. This means that you can't do right click to see a drop down menu of options.

To enable, Click in System Preferences. Left-handed users can reassign left and right click, as well.

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New iMac

Yesterday, my wife surprised me with a new iMac. Wow! What a fantastic gift! I am very excited to have a new computer! My existing computers are about 8-10 years old, so getting a new computer is a very welcome surprise!

As tempting as I was to rip open the box, I decided not to open the box right away. I know of a website that tracks when the best time to purchase an iMac and recommends if it's a good time to purchase.

Sure enough when I checked, I discovered that Apple is overdue on refreshing the iMac product line and new iMacs could be announced as soon as next Monday. So, I decided to wait on opening the box and see what happens on Monday at the WWDC.

Its so hard to wait. Knowing that a new iMac is sitting in the living room, waiting for me to open it and explore all the new features. Intel Processor, Mac OX Lion, Facetime, Thurderbold, AMD graphics, and a nice quiet machine that starts up really fast.

Meanwhile I can start planning...

New Computer, Dual Monitor

When I set up my new iMac, I want to connect my 20" Apple Cinema Display as a second monitor. Fortunitate for me that the Cinema Display uses a DVI port so all I need is a Mini-DVI to DVI Adapter which costs about ~$20 at the Apple store or about $15 in other retail stores online.

Hard Drive Docking Station

The new computer comes with 1TB hard drive, which is pretty much bigger than anything else that I have right now. I'll have to get a hard drive docking station to moved some of my old data to the new computer.

New Software

I'll have to checkout the advantages/disadvantages of various Window emulators such as Parallels, VMWare or Bootcamp. I have some old Virtual PC instances that I may want to merge over to the new computer. However, since I haven't run Windows at home for many years, it may not be worth the effort.

Software Upgrade

I'll have to update several of my applications to use the latest Intel technology. Here's the list of applications that I'll probably upgrade:

• BBedit - $39 upgrade (Better than getting Textmate.)
• Transmit $19 or Interarchy $29.95 upgrade - Haven't quite decide which one wins. Leading towards Transmit.
• Audio Hijack Pro - Looks like no update is needed.
• Fission - Looks like no update is needed.
• Snapz Pro X - $40 upgrade
  
• Toast - Toast 9 to 11 upgrade cost $79.99. Not sure it's worth the cost.
• DiscLabel - $15 upgrade at some point.
• Textexpander - $15 upgrade at some point.
• Indesign - CS2 to CS6 at some point.
• Photoshop - CS2 to CS6 at some point.

That's all I can think of for now. Very excited about getting a new iMac!

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Record Comcast DVR Video to Powerbook

Recently I had to pull off a video that I recorded on my Comcast DVD, I found the following link to be very helpful:

http://jpicune.wordpress.com/2006/10/13/record-shows-from-your-comcast-hd-dvr-onto-your-mac/

The page mentions downloading the 'FireWire SDK 22' from Apple. Apple only has the 'FireWire SDK 26' version available. You need to search the Apple Support database to get the file.

I had no problems getting the Video onto my Powerbook computer. Once it got on the computer I had to convert it to mp4 format, as the default video format isn't supported by many applications. There's all sorts of Commercial Applications (ie Quicktime Plugins) that can do the conversion. I found that 'Handbreak' did the converstion fine, and its free!

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Using X11 and Linux

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Here are some basic instructions on getting X11 on Macintosh to work with a Linux server. These particular instructions should work with Mac Tiger, Leopard or greater - which have X11 already installed and configured.

These instructions assume that you are connecting to a remote server via SSH, using Telnet or other protocols require different instructions.

Using SSH, you simply pass the -X command when connecting to a remote server:

1. Open up Terminal

2. Type the following command:
ssh -Xl root linuxserver

3. Enter a password

4. Connected!

To test, you can just type in:

xeyes &

You should see a new window open and a couple of eyes watching you! This means that you have the power to use any x11 application on the remote server. (You add the ampersand to have the window open as a separate process.

Congratulations and have fun with x11!

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Enable agent forwarding on OSX

Here's how to enable enable agent forwarding on Macintosh OS 10.5 (Leopard)

In this example, I am on the machine name "computer-5" with the username sjobs and want to get to apple.acclaim.com using a host server called aspen.acclaim.com without having to type in a username/password. This is done using agent forwarding, a cool feature of SSH, so

I emailed the administrator my id_dsa.pub file and they put it in the home directory on aspen.acclaim.com. I then ran the following steps. Items in blue is what I actually typed in when I opened up the Terminal application:

computer-5:~ sjobs$ ssh-add .ssh/id_dsa
Identity added: .ssh/id_dsa (.ssh/id_dsa)
computer-5:~ sjobs$ ssh -A aspen.acclaim.com
Last login: Fri Oct 23 18:56:24 1998 from root.netscape.com
[sjobs@comp ~]$ ssh -A apple.acclaim.com
[sjobs@apple.acclaim.com ~]$

The above is a short step of what needs to be done. Hopefully this helps you into the right direction.

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iPhone Homescreen

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A few months ago I got an iPhone, a few days after they were available to Verizon users. I have been waiting a long time for the phone and it everything that I could hope for in a phone. I haven't had any problems with drop calls or using the data portion of the phone.

I have had better phones work with my hearing aids, but this phone does an alright job. There are plenty of external hands free options, so I am not really concern about the hearing aid compatibility functionality.

Attached to this posting is the default screen that I have on my iPhone. (Click on the image to see a larger view of the home screen.)

I have it set up so that the most popular Social Media Apps are on the bottom of the home screen; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.  Evernote App is on the home screen with the intent to use it, but I don't use it that much on the iPhone as I do on my Desktop or Laptop.

The most popular game I play on the iPhone is Words with Friends, thus it's the only app to make it on the home page.

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Benchmarks

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I am thinking of getting a new iMac 3.2GHz Intel Core i3. The question is what am I going to see in performance from my current Dual 1.42 Ghz PowerPC G4 Macintosh 3.2GHz (Mirrored Drive Doors)

According to benchmarks the Power Mac G4 scored 1230 while the iMac scored 5924. An improvement of 4694! This appears to be a good reason to get another computer. My Powerbook G3, which I still use, scored a low 215 on the Benchmark test. Yikes!

The downside of the iMac is that I wouldn't be able to expand the computer any more. This isn't really a problem since the only thing that I would add would be additional disk space, and I think I would be better off using an external drive than an internal drive.

I am still on the sidelines of if I really need a new computer right now. But the benchmark testing clearly shows the power advantage that I'll see when I get the new computer.

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Cleaning Powerbook

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I need to make some space available on my Powerbook G4 for upcoming vacation. There's very little space available for pictures and video that I'll be on taking on our trip. I am not sure what's using up all the disk space on my laptop, my initial guess is a lot of small files and not a few large files.

Here's the plan on freeing up disk space on the laptop:

iPhoto Library
Clean out all the old photos that I don't need, back them up to a DVD and remove the orginals from computer

iTunes Library
Remove all old pod casts. There's no need to keep archive of old podcasts. I can always goto iTunes and get the old recordings at any time.

Large Files
Search the computer for large files greater than 2MB. Backup any files that haven't been used for a while and delete them from the computer.

Mailbox
All my mail is archive on my desktop computer. I can go through my mail and delete anything I don't need. This means cleaning out the SPAM directory, there's zero reason to keep any spam mail. Pretty much the only valuable mail I have is the sent mail.

Applications
Backup all unused Application and removed them from the laptop. This includes games that I don't plan on using. I have plenty of cool games on my iPod touch and won't be taking the laptop out on the airplane to play games. Is there any reason to even have IE on my computer any more?

Using the above guidelines, I should be able to have enough space for my photos and video that I'll be taking on my vacation.

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