I’m really enjoying the move to Leopard. The new cat really screams on my MacBook Pro. I’ve been awaiting an Intel compatable version of Microsoft Office for a while now but since Apple released iWork ‘08, I’ve completely moved to Pages and Numbers for all office tasks. It looks like the only need for Office 08 is for Entourage. For those who don’t know, Entourage is a sister product to Microsoft Outlook for Windows. Outlook and Entourage have everything! You can mange tasks, calendars, sync your Windows Mobile device and manage your contacts. All of the features are extremely powerful and most important to me, both applications sync with my office’s Microsoft Exchange Server.

Yep, Entourage is what I need but when I switched to an Intel powered Macintosh, I gave up Entourage 2004 and moved to Apple Mail. I let go of a ton of great features but really appreciated the speed Apple’s own client provided. When Leopard was released, I was really hoping Apple stepped it up and I wouldn’t need to purchase Entourage 2008 when it came out in January. Well, Apple’s mail application doesn’t do anything that Entourage or Outlook can do.

I can’t manag contacts and calendars in one application and am forced to still navigate to Address Book and iCal for my “personal information management” or PIM for short. Another thing that’s not in Mail is native Exchange synchronization which would really make me happy. Apple’s entire mail interface is just too big! I’m not blind and would like some smaller folders. What really made me realize that this is not the mail application for me is when Apple included built in HTML stationaries. These stationaries are cute bubbly and perfect for grandma but for me, they make me angry.

I can turn off stationary view and even remove the stationary icon from my toolbar but I still know it’s there and it only makes me anticipate the next release of Entourage for Mac and that’s all I have to say about that.

Last week, Adam Jackson caught my desperation tweet about iBAM and PodCamp AZ and like a superhero, swept in to save the day. I just wanted to take a quick break and publicly thank Adam for jumping in and helping out when I needed it most. You have no idea how much I appreciate what you are doing. Also… My thanks to all iBAM’ers and authors for your continued efforts in making iBAM a fun place to hang out. We’re just getting started here and there’s so much more ahead. Viva la iBAM!

Oh! While I’m on the subject, PodCamp AZ is this Saturday so if you are anywhere near us, sign up and come on by, there’s going to be a ton of fun stuff going on all day. If you aren’t nearby, you can tune in to the PodCamp AZ Live! stream via Ustream.tv on the day of or track the tweets by following PodCampAZ on Twitter or doing the “track podcampaz” thing. It’s gonna be a blast, I can’t wait (till it’s over… did I type that outloud? haha, I am really stoked, just really tired too).

Rock on!

Brent

I work as a Microsoft guy by day where my tasks involve setting up and maintaining Windows Servers and the occasional Cisco device. I see the Windows Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) at least once a week. It’s a very common occurrence and is the default screen for many system errors both hardware and software. 

Apple has improved Windows file sharing in their new operating system but not without cracking a joke at the BSOD. If you’re viewing Apple computers on a network, you’ll see a gorgeous aluminum Apple LCD screen. However, just below the Apple share is a big beige CRT monitor (you know the old monitors that were long and contained tons of harmful chemicals). To top if all off, Apple decided to throw a BSOD on the Windows monitor.

The result, an old school beige CRT monitor with an obvious blue screen of death each time you want to connect to a Windows network share. Everything thought this would be removed in the final build of Leopard but it continues to live on as a nice little joke for all Mac users. Via Via

Apple’s latest cat has been released into the wild and I’ve been cruising the usual blogs and it looks like a large number of people moving to Leopard have had issues. These issues range from power management problems, applications crashing and kernel panics. One common factor among every Leopard problem was these were the users that decided to “upgrade” their Mac from 10.x to 10.5.

As tempting as it may be to perform an upgrade, I’ve always recommended against it. Upgrading your operating system is very dangerous. The more you have installed, the more complications that might arise. An application that runs as a service or startup item suddenly throws your Mac into a string of errors when you upgrade to 10.5.The alternative is a clean install. This is exactly how it sounds. I personally reccomend buying an external hard drive when you pickup your copy of Leopard, backup your data to that drive and after performing a clean install, migrate your data back over and then use that external drive for your Time Machine backups.

It’s a win-win situation and now Leopard will run with better speed and better compatibility with a clean install. If the upgrade goes right, you’ll lose 2 hours of your evening with a heightened risk of causing harm to your system and its data / stability. A clean install avoids those issues but causes you 5 hours of work to get everything back like it was. A difficult choice but I trust you’ll choose the right path. 

Update: For those referencing Gruber’s advice, John just posted this on DF. I know this only references Unsanity’s APE software but my post was intended for novice users that may not know to uninstall system modification software prior to an upgrade. Like I stated in the first paragraph, those that are having issues are the ones that chose to perform an upgrade and not perform a clean install. I’m not saying that an upgrade is a bad idea but you’re more likely to have issues choosing the upgrade path over a clean install. On another note, don’t take one person’s reccomendations as gospel. John’s advice is very well respected by me and others in the industry but always get a second opinion even if John Gruber says an upgrade is the best direction

I just received another email from a frustrated new Mac user. Lara is having a hard time with iWeb and since I’m not much f an iWeb user, I thought I’d throw it out on the table for you guys to take a stab at. Here’s her email.

Lara wrote:
Hi,

I just built myself a website on iweb and I do have a .mac account, I’ve been
trying to get the site published and It’s just not working.  I followed the
instructions I got from .mac about the changes I needed to make at my domain
host (yahoo).  I think they left some info out in the directions to publish.
Have you any advise or run into anyone with this issue?

Thanks in advance!

- Brent