New Apple Lust Objects

Anyone order an iPad today?

Yes, got the cheapest one. This is pretty much going to be a couch computer for playing games, reading eBooks, and controlling my TV/Home media.

Fools rush in. Never buy a 1st gen apple product, guys.

It'll be cheaper at Christmas, I'm thinking.

But hey, if you want to drop a few bills to be a beta tester, no one can stop you.

The first generation iPhone was awesome. I don't regret buying it in the least. Sure the second generation iPad will be better, but I'll just get it too.

http://images.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/01/scrooge_mcduck_raining_gold_lg.jpg

Fortunately, this isn't the Air, or some such engineering challenge that's going to have lots of physical problems. It's a big giant iPod touch, flash memory, no moving parts... it's not going to blow up or anything.

I would expect major battery life issues, though, at least at first.

Not incidentally, I do very much love my iPod Touch. Podcasts and video games on the morning train, and best of all, you can't call me on it. Any device that allows people to bother me without my consent is never going to be as good as one that does not.

Also, the hassle of dealing with AT&T is conspicuously missing. No craptastic 3g coverage, no absurdly large monthly bills. In my perfect world, telephones are no longer a modern necessity. I resent the shit out of having to pay a monthly bill for a device that I don't want to use.

then don't

You can't not have a phone.

Sure you can, just set up a skype-like thing that has voicemail if you're so adamant that you don't want people to call you. Then when you're in wifi range, you return any calls you really feel like returning.

Interesting...

google voice not skype-like thing

Ok I am dying for the Nexus One to get Verizon on board, and for my AT&T contract to expire. I believe both things will fortuitously happen simultaneously, in about three or four months.

Google Voice doesn't have a native iphone app unless you're jailbroken, right? I've used it, but you end up having to have it call your number to bridge to numbers you're calling.

I've done this to create a dial-a-joke line I don't have to pay for:

1. create free gizmo5 account
2. tie the gizmo5 number to a free ipkall number

Now you can get free inbound calls, so long as you have a voip app such as fring running.
You can then tie this inbound # to a google voice account to get outbound calls.

I was going to create a gizmo5 account a while ago but signups are suspended post Google-buyout.

what i'm saying is that if, in a perfect world, kenan doesn't want a phone, people calling his google voice number would leave a voicemail that arrives in his inbox that he can reply to any way he wishes

Yes, I will be seriously considering that.

Oh yeah, that would work well.

anyone know if google voice works with pagers?

philip really creates his own dial a joke lines?

OK, so I might be in the market for a new Mac. Currently we have a Powermac G5 tower that we inherited, which is kinda cool, but has some major disadvantages: it takes up a lot of space, it's really loud (fans on a lot of the time), and it's not actually that fast at x264 encoding (which is about the only intensive thing we ever do with it). The machine is supposed to be used as a media server, essentially, with all our big external hard drives connected to it.

It looks like it should fetch about $500 on eBay, which is about what I could get a new lowest-spec Mac mini for. Is there any reason not to do this? Is there something I'm missing about the mini - does it badly underperform in some way? Of course I'm half tempted by an iMac, but an extra $600+ seems like a lot for a screen.

ftr I fucking love my iMac

i have a mini that is a couple of years old and it works great, although the optical drive died on it a while back. it's fast enough at most things.

my OS is fucked. thankfully I had split the hard drive and installed Windows, so at least I've got a computer. should probably take it to the 'Genius Bar', but hate the thought of doing anything involving a 'Genius Bar'.

yeah god forbid they fix your computer

the bastards.

toby, if you're on a budget then mac mini is a good way to go, especially since you will presumably have display, etc. left over from the powermac sale. depends on taste, but an imac is not much more or less intrusive/computer-y in your living room than a mini + old display + keyboard. but if all you want is a mediaserver and this thing is going to live under the stairs or something then, yeah, the imac makes no sense.

Cool. Yeah, slightly undecided about whether to run it with a screen or not - iMac might be nice for watching movies, but is it sensible to effectively spend $600 on a screen for that? I half expect projectors to come down to that price soon enough.

they are really good screens, fwiw (like they will give you a suntan), but if you're looking for a media center to point your furniture at then maybe get a mini and one of those fancy dell cinema screens. of course getting a mini gives you the option if you change your mind. (so does getting an imac, but it may turn out to be a wasted screen)

Do any of you use TextExpander? I'm trying it out now and O_O it's amazing.

http://www.smileonmymac.com/TextExpander/

There's a free less-powerful version in 10.6 fwiw.

Where?

System prefs, keyboard (iirc).

Thanks stet!

http://www.foxtrot.com/comics/2010-03-21-75f89edd.gif

time machine has saved my ass a couple of times in the last year but jesus wept it has the worst user interface i have ever seen.

have gotten time machine to work only about 50% of the time, wondering if it means corrupt archive = start from scratch

in what way does it not work?

error code -36 "The Finder can't complete the operation because some data in "BLUE_VELVET" can't be read or written."

uh oh spagettio. are you doing anything weird like putting the tm on an encrypted disk image (which is what i do but is probably not a good idea)?

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=time+machine+%22error+code+36 has some leads. let me know if you get stuck with any of the command line advice.

no, it's just a wiped and reformatted seagate external. I tried googling it last time too but couldn't find any definitive advice. don't really have any data worth saving from the last month so am tempted to either re set-up time machine or make the switch to superduper.

google suggests the problem might be with the source drive rather than the time machine, so starting a new tm may not help.

(use both time machine and super duper if you have space/drives btw. they don't save your ass in the same situations.)

I only get the problem from using time machine - I can access all my files fine on my computer (so far, at least - knock wood)

good call about getting another drive. wonder if superduper will clone my bootcamp partition

I can access all my files fine on my computer (so far, at least - knock wood)

this is the concern. weird file system problems can be subtler than a mother fucker. time machine is likely the only thing your computer does that involves touching every file on the system, so it could easily be the first way you find out about a problem that is nothing to do with tm per se. (note: i do not know if this is your problem, and maybe your tm archive is just hosed.)

internal drives + firewire caddies are ridiculously cheap and worth infinity $ when things go wrong. if your mac is, say, 200gb i would get 2x500gb drives. partition both drives into 200 + 300gb partitions. super duper clone to the first partition on each drive. time machine to the other partitions. keep the drives in separate locations, and either keep them both up to date or physically swap them once per month or week depending on paranoia.

also rsync to data center on the moon for 2012