fred avolio's musings

This may be of no interest to anyone, or maybe only to one friend who just purchased his first Mac and his first iPod touch, but I figure if I write it for one, I might as well get mileage out of it.

Unless otherwise stated, all apps were free of charge from the App Store (iTunes Store). Some I bought via iTunes on my Mac, and some I bought from my iPod and the App Store app.

On the bottom of each screen are the things I use most often, Mail, Calendar, Contacts, and Music.

Screen 1

• Safari, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Calculator, Settings all obvious. I do often check FB and Twitter in the morning and evening.
  
• Weather. The Weather Channel powered by Yahoo! I check the weather every morning. I also have the weather for places friends and family are.
  
• Notes. I use a lot! References, etc. I copied Memos in text form from Palm Desktop and put them into the Notes in Mail.app on my Mac. Need 3.0 update of iPod software for this. Worth the $9.99.
  
• Google Maps. I entered my home access points MAC addresses into Skyhook, so it knows my location at home. Most outside networks show up (APL, coffee shops, etc.)
  
• BibleReader, and eReader—I use daily.
  
• mSecure. I bought this. It is an encrypted lockbox for passwords, and other info I want to keep safe but cannot just remember. There is a free desk application so that I can create in either place, and I can backup.
  
• FighterVerses. Google “fighter verses john piper”. I got this from a tweat of his.
  
• Skype and LinkedIn. I can text chat or audio chat via Skype and a microphone (which I bought). I never had (have on my Mac though). But I have the mic with me if I want/need to! 🙂 I check LinkedIn but rarely use it. (I am moving both off of my first page.)
  
• Evernote. I need to blog on this but Google search it. I am now using it on my iPod, home Mac, and work Mac, and syncing them via the Internet.

Screen 2

• Clock. I rarely use the alarm and timer, though I have used both. I use it to keep time zone info for cities with friends in (Odessa, Bangalore, Vienna, Chiba, etc.)
  
• iTunes, App Store, obviously for purchases when not at my home Mac.
  
• Photos. Rarely use. Sometimes for capturing screen-shots (like these) and them emailing to myself to incorporate into something else (like this).
  
• IM+ Lite. IM client for AIM, etc. Rarely use.
  
• TouchTerm and VNC for remotely connecting to other machines, Rarely use.
  
• TWC and Weatherbug. When I want to see a weather map, hourly and 1- day forecast, and weather cameras I use these.
  
• ShareContact. Rare. But, in Contacts, if you want to share someone’s contact info with someone else it will send it via email as a vcf attachment. I know a bunch of folks who would not know what to do with it. This sends text in the message body.
  
• Stanza is like eReader. I think I was testing it. Don’t need it.
  
• iTalk is a voice recorder. You need a mic.
  
• Mars Hill. I wanted to see what their app did. I don’t use it.
  

Screen 3

• PNC is an app to get to my back account, etc.
  
• FedEx is obvious. I don’t use it.
  
• Voice Memos, obvious. Came with the mic..
  
• SkyVoyager, etc., were free on July 20 to celebrate the anniversary of the first moon landing.
  
• AllRecipes. Cute, interesting, maybe useful.
  
• B&N; is a B&N-branded; eReader. I don’t mean it is an eBook reader; I mean it is eReader with a B&N; wrapper. I’ve deleted it, but one might want it for the free dictionary and books.
  

Screen 4

• This is True. A daily dose of www.thisistrue.com. See
  
• Ambiance Lite. Cute. Different cover-noises. Rain on rood, rain on car roof, highway, train, etc.
  
• Amazon.com, NY Times, USA Today, Stocks (which I don’t use, but is not removeable), all obvious.
  
• TV.com, YouTube, linked to those video sites.
  
• Videos are videos that I downloaded via iTunes on my Mac which converts to size for iPod touch. I’ve got videos saved from YouTube, movies I bought and illegally converted, etc.
  
• Drinks Free. All sorts of drink recipes.
  
• DocsToGo. Paid for it for Palm and I may have had to pay something for the version for the iPod/iPhone. Word, Excel, PowerPoint. There is a Mac-side application and this syncs with that.
  
• Pingle is a central app for updating status or making microblogs on LinkedIn, Twitter, FaceBook, etc.
  

Screen 5

• Games. Free ones. Mostly got for kids. I have to be incredibly bored to play any of them
  

This is an excellent article, especially for those who are new to Mac.

10 free tools for getting work done on your Mac.

The last thing he mentions is ClamXav free antivirus for Mac. And I still say—sanity-checked by my Mac Genius, Kevin—you don’t need AV on your Mac unless you are compelled to by your management.

I’ve talked to two people in the past week about switching from PC to Mac. I am not a Mac zealot. I just made the move from using Microsoft PCs to using Apple Macs in August 2005, when my PC turned on me, and I’ve never looked back.

I started my pc2mac label in this blog way back then, Since I talk about a lot of other Mac-related things now, I decided to list pointers to initial blog entries from when I made the move.

• Dude, your getting a Mac
  This describes “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
  
• After Windows, What?
  These are the deliberations I went through when I decided to dump Windows.
  
• PowerBook Day 1 and Following
  These were my initial reactions after getting my first Mac.
  
• Mac Browsers and Instant Messengering.
  I explore these aspects of my new system.
  
• Moving to Mac Email.
  
• Mac Calendaring and Address Book

I hope you find this helpful.

My friend David Strom recently posted a video review of this enterprise e-mail management product from Sendmail, Inc. His review is at Webinformant.tv.

Sendmail has come a long way since I wrote this review of Sendmail Pro, over 9 years ago!

I have an 80GB disk waiting to be installed to upgrade my aging, bit still small, light, and useful PowerBook G4. Last week, I wrote to a friend, “Would have been a good day to swap disks out. :-)”

The PB was working fine. As I mentioned in System Back-ups, I have an external FireWire drive onto which TimeMachine backs up. Last
backup 10:30 that “fateful” morning. At 11 or so I decided I should run SuperDuper!, which I use to have a bootable copy of my PB. (I don’t do that automatically; the last time I did that was 2 weeks earlier, but Time Machine does the day-to-day—really hour-to-hour—file copy stuff.) Before I did that, I decided to check it out with Disk Utility.

I ran DU and got the error “Keys out of order… The Volume Macintosh HD could not be repaired. Error: File verify or repair failed. You are so hosed.” (I made up that last bit.) .

I booted off of the FireWire Leopard partition, used Disk Utility on it and it still could not fix it. Now, I was a bit annoyed. There should be nothing in software that should hurt the disk structure so much that software cannot fix it. And I mean software from the vendor.

I was told that Disk Warrior would fix errors on the disk including this “Keys out of order.” A friend, who seems to have everything, had an unopened copy of Disk Warrior, which I tried. No joy. It could not fix it.

Hmmm. I was starting to think of that 80 GB disk sitting in its wrapper. But, that would entail spending time and tools to open my PowerBook. No, that would wait for another day.

I tried to Restore (in Disk Utility) from my Leopard partition I was running off of (FireWire drive, remember), to my Mac HD. It said their wasn’t enough space! Okay, I erased my Mac HD! There! Said the same thing.

Plan C, now. Restore from Time Machine. Following Apple’s Instructions, I booted from the install DVD, picked Restore from Time Machine, and… it worked. It worked beautifully.

Whew.