iMac

Play, Want, Bin: March ‘08

I plan to post a Play, Want, Bin at the end of every month to show what I’m currently playing, wanting, and binning. Seen a few other people including Rockers Delight which I’m borrowing/stealing the idea from.

Play

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 - Yes, the game I have been looking forward to most of all is finally here. Got my copy of RS Vegas 2 on Wednesday (nobody had it Tuesday) after driving to 5 different places (for the second day). I ended up getting it at Gamestop (which I never go to, just don’t care for them much). I gotta say its awesome. Gone through the first two levels on Story (gotta find somebody to do co-op through it though), play some Team Leader (which is pretty cool), and of course the great Terrorist Hunt which is always fun. I love the ACES system and the new weapons and maps. Overall this game will be taking up plenty of my time in the coming months.

Rock Band - We’ve been spending more time on Rock Band recently with family and having friends over for some ‘jam sessions’. Its always lots of fun. Had some drum and guitar battles last time when some friends brought their drums over. Need to purchase some new songs though.

Want

End War - This was on the ‘Want’ last month but as RS Vegas 2 came with a sneak peek bonus disk for End Wars it is back. The disk showed the trailers and finally some gameplay footage of the Fragdolls playing. Granted it didn’t show much as it spent most of the time showing the dolls instead of gameplay but from what I saw and they talked about the game will be an awesome RTS for the 360. This is my most wanted game of the year now that I have Vegas 2.

Army of Two - I love Co-Op games and this one looks awesome and everybody I know who has it just love it. I didn’t get it yet because I was waiting to see if my brother in law would get it as we do pretty good on Co-Op. However, as right now everybody is doing other games I have passed on this… For now anyways. Would still like to pick it up.

Bin

Mighty Mouse - I’ve been on a Mac for only a short time and the Mighty Mouse was okay at first but as I work from home and the amount of time I spend on it the Mighty Mouse just wasn’t doing it. I am now back to using my Logitech mouse which just feels much better after hours of use and my hand relaxes more with it. Sorry Mighty Mouse.

Halo 3 - I’ve been on Halo 3 since just after its launch and its time to bin it. RS Vegas 2 has taken its place. I will end up getting on it a little as my brother in law won’t get Vegas and plans to stick with Halo and we do a lot of gaming together. I might get on it if the first Map Pack goes free soon to check them out since the new Map Pack was announced already.

There you have it. My current Play, Want, Bin list. Feel free to post your comments or your own list.

Hello Safari

For those who follow me on twitter you will know that I have been having some problems with FireFox on OSX. As I used FF on Windows I naturally loaded it up first on my iMac and didn’t really give Safari a chance. I have several extensions that I have used for awhile to make life easier when designing. I wasn’t ready to give up these extensions and still not. However, after using FireFox with no problems for a few weeks it started to crash often. This alone was a pain but then the keyboard would just stop responding inside FF. Did I switch yet? No, of course not. After the almost hourly crashes and daily keyboard not responding it started locking up my iMac to the point that I would have to perform a hard restart. So, as I was in the middle of client work and was having internet problems with my AT&T DSL and (mt) was having Grid-Service problems as well it was just a really off day. I finally had to force quit FireFox and just launched Safari instead.

At first Safari was a little different and I didn’t like it. In fact as I was changing some settings I was still eyeing the FF icon in the dock and kept thinking I would give it one more try, although I didn’t. After changing a few preferences I jumped back into client work as I really needed to get this design sent off. I was missing my extensions a little but overall Safari started to grow on me. I have found it to also be faster then FF which has been great. Best of all though is that it hasn’t crashed or locked up once. This alone makes it that much greater then FF. The only thing that really bothers me is that there is currently no way to middle click (button 3) to close tabs in Safari. I did find a ‘dirty hack’ that does this but I will just learn to do without it. I haven’t given the latest FF Beta a try (I’ve been meaning to, but haven’t gotten around to it) but will to see if this might solve my problems. If it doesn’t, I don’t think it will bother me much as Safari has been good for me.

24″ Apple iMac

On Monday I became an official Mac User as my 24″ 2.4Ghz iMac arrived. Granted there were a few problems with FedEx (details below) I was still excited to get it. Honestly, I didn’t think I could get that excited over a computer but I couldn’t wait. I had spent hours looking at iMac/Apple flickr pools and reading lots of great resources on switching. Lets go over the order again. For my first Mac I debated between a MacBook and using my current 22″ Dell LCD or the 24″ iMac. I personally prefer desktops for the amount of time that I spent on it and really love the look of the iMac. I also love big monitors. On my PC I used dual monitors with the 22″ Dell and my old 19″ CRT (that the Dell replaced as main) and grown to love the screen space between the two. The CRT was used to hold my ‘extra’ programs and social app such as Snitter (a twiter app), GoogleTalk, iTunes, uTorrent, etc. Basically used it for ‘play’ and the Dell for ‘work’. The setup worked perfect. Moving on to my new Apple Era. I ended up with a 24″ iMac, 2.4Ghz Processor, and a 4GB Ram Kit from Crucial to max it out.

My first thought after looking at the iMac box was how huge is this thing. Its amazing in all its 24″ glory. After opening the box you are presented with another box with manuals, cleaning cloth, apple remote, wireless Mighty Mouse, and wired keyboard. First was the keyboard which is just amazing and so small. I always have a hard time finding a keyboard that I love and was worried about the Apple Keyboard with it being so slim and the keys so small. However, it came so natural to type on it and the keys are so soft. Next came the wireless Mighty Mouse which is just awesome. After admiring the keyboard for a little bit I got to taking the iMac itself from the box. I was blown away by the size. Sometimes moving up in monitor size you can’t always tell a huge difference but moving from a 22″ to the 24″ was a huge difference and in fact sitting here I still can’t get over it. I love screen space and this is just crazy. Even after only 3 days I find it hard to look at my 22″ and not feel that it is just too small now. It makes me wonder what it is like to sit in front of Chris Pirillo’s setup of 2 30″ screens. The iMac is just so slick, shiny, thin and looks amazing in person. It’s important to note that I had never seen the iMac in person so I really didn’t know what to expect besides pictures. I wanted to get it setup on my desk as soon as I could but ran into a problem. The gap for monitors on my desk wasn’t tall enough for the iMac, it was just over an inch smaller. Which meant that I would have to take apart my desk before I could set it up. Well I wasn’t going to wait for that so I set it up on the dining room table so I could go through the setup and then install the 4GB Ram kit.

After powering on the iMac it started the setup which went smooth and was pretty quick. One of the main selling points for Apple is that the Macs just work out of the box. I always thought okay that’s cool but until you take it out of the box, power it up, and start playing with it you have no clue. I know how many hours upon hours I wasted installing Windows XP when getting a new PC. Spending hours before I could even log on for the first time. Everything you hear about OSX, its features, eye candy, and apps are true. It really is a beautiful operating system that works great on a beautiful machine like the iMac. I am still blown away by some of the features that before when reading about them I always that well that’s a cool feature but never thought about them being useful and saving time. However, you feel more productive and it feels like you do a lot more in a short amount of time on OSX because of some of these great features like stacks for example. Everything seems to be aimed at being more productive and keeping things simple so you can GTD.

I had done lots of research before making the purchase on which apps were the best for what I do and did what I needed them to do so I didn’t spend much time testing apps. I had bought the MacHeist 2 bundle in January so I already had several apps including CSSEdit which I planned to purchase anyways. I also bought Transmit for FTP. I’m debating which editor I want to use but currently using Smultron which is going great so far. I love the whole drag & drop to install aspect of the OS. I am also using my 22″ Dell as a second monitor and its going great. I’ve of course played around with the built-in iSight and some of the Mac Apps in iLife which have been great and I know will get some use in the near future.

Overall I am really happy with the purchase and look forward to life as a Mac User from here on out. I do have pictures in my flickr account but not as many as I had planned as I kept getting distracted. I’m sure that I will have future posts about Apple, the iMac and OSX. I will be posting about what apps that I find useful as a new Mac User sometime in the next week.

Apple iMac Owner?

I’ve talked about it a lot the past few months and have wanted to for the past 2 years and the time has come. This morning I finally purchased my first Mac. I went with the 24″ iMac as I prefer desktop over laptops and technically we have a laptop in the house plus I’m thinking about a MacBook Air next year. The iMac has everything that I want and need. I’m used to dual monitors and working on my 22″ Dell so now I will use the 24″ iMac and the 22″ Dell for a complete workspace. There will be a minor size difference of course but this Dell is only 11 months old so I’m not ready to replace it with an Apple monitor yet. The price of the iMac is a little much for most however honestly I have spent the same price or more on PC upgrades and parts in the past. In fact last year I spent $800 on a few internal upgrades (fan controller, light controller, etc). I have done lots of research on the iMac and visited lots of great sites with plenty of resources. I also bought the MacHeist bundle last month to give me several apps to play with and some I planned to buy anyways like CSSEdit.

Here are the iMac specs for what I bought;

• 2.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor
• 1GB of Memory (bought a 4GB kit to max it out)
• 500GB Hard Drive
• Super Drive
• Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse
• Apple Wired Keyboard

I would have preferred the wireless keyboard for a slick look on the desk however the Apple Wireless Keyboard doesn’t have the numpad and the arrow keys are moved. I use the numpad all the time and can’t do with out (of course I’m not used to laptop keyboards either). So, the keyboard will be wired but not a huge deal. I also went with 1GB of Apple Memory because I bought the 4GB (2×2GB) Kit from Crucial for $145. So, I will be maxed on ram which will be nice. Also with the order I purchased the mini-dvi to dvi adapter to use my 22″ Dell as dual monitors and a new Canon PIXMA MP520 Photo All-In-One Printer. We have a printer but its an old HP that has served its use and time for a new one and since Apple provides a $100 rebate for printers if bought with a new Mac, it was nice.

Everything was bought this morning and should arrive by Monday. I’ve actually already gotten the tracking number for the Crucial Memory as its being shipped today and should arrive by Friday. The Printer and adapter will also be here by Friday however the iMac shouldn’t arrive until Monday as its labeled as ‘custom’ due to the upgrade HDD and wireless mouse it won’t be shipped today. Did 2-3 day shipping though so we will see when it shows up. The total from the Apple Store came to $2,174.79 and $145.03 from the Crucial Store. My goal was around the $2,000 mark and I only went over by $320, so did pretty good. I still have some apps to buy but I’m happy with the purchase and look forward to it getting here. I will of course post after it comes in with pictures of the unboxing (as if there isn’t enough Mac unboxing pics on flickr).

Sick Kids

Well it seems that I didn’t get sick and have been feeling great but both my kids are sick. Chase stayed home from school today after being sick over the weekend and today my daughter started a fever and feeling sick. Its never fun to have a house full of sick kids.

On another note; the MacWorld Keynote is tomorrow and of course I’m looking forward to it. Mostly excited about anything announced for the iPod line and the iMac (rumor of an HD iSight?). I know most of the news should be about the MacBook and iPod/iPhone but I’m waiting to see what is announced regarding the iMac so I can hurry up and purchase mine already.

8 Cores?

With MacWorld just around the corner Apple has been releasing minor information regarding their products. Of course its nothing earth shattering and no major overhauls yet but everybody is waiting for MacWorld for that. One of the announcements which is also now available for purchase is 8-Cores in the Mac Pro. I’ve looked at getting a Mac Pro as my first Mac but the cost just wasn’t great for me which is why I will be getting the 24″ iMac. I priced a new Mac Pro without the monitor of course and for one that I would like (not maxed out or anything) it comes to $4,500. Compared to the $2,100 my iMac will be costing thats double. Then of course a Mac Pro I would like came to $18,000. I’m pretty sure I will never be in a position to purchase an $18,000 Mac and I’m not sure why anybody would want to but just in case Apple has left that option open. I’m looking forward to what else Apple has in store for us at MacWorld.