Stan's List

October, 2006 Gartner made the suggestion that:

Apple should leverage its close relationship with Intel and team up with Intel’s closest ally, Dell.

Today, Barrons reports Gartner predicts the Mac to double its share of the US and European markets by 2011.

Apple’s gains in computer market share reflect as much on the failures of the rest of the industry as on Apple’s success.

According to Wired, Apple has confirmed that the movie rentals will not play on fifth generation iPods sold before September, 2007. This has upset a number of users and Apple has not indicated that a firmware update coming. One problem mentioned is the “analog hole” in fifth generation iPods that could enable saving the rental to a DVR or camcorder. If true, the hole would be in the iPod’s hardware and thus not patchable, unless there is off switch.

iWeb 2.0.3

This update addresses compatibility with Mac OS X. Same as the iWork updates.

Download via Software Update, or by standalone installer

Keynote 4.0.2
This update primarily addresses performance issues while playing or exporting presentations.

Pages 3.0.2
This update addresses compatibility with Mac OS X.

Numbers 1.0.2
This update addresses compatibility with Mac OS X.

Market Share shows Firefox to hold 15% percent of the internet market space.

Wired reports that percentages are even greater in Europe

Especially if you have moved Office applications from their installed folder. This MacInTouch reader nearly had a disaster:

Installed Home/Student fine on one machine (other than the permissions problem MS has already noted). On another machine, when it came time to ask about removing older versions of Office, it asked about removing one labeled something like “Applications (Trial)”. I told it to go ahead. The result is it put my whole Applications folder in the Trash. Thank goodness it was just putting it in the Trash, I yanked it back out to recover the folder.

Why did this happen? My best guess is I at one time pulled the “Remove Office” app from the Office folder into the apps folder. I looked and it isn’t there so I don’t know if that’s the cause, just a guess. However, I know I did this on the other machine that installed fine.

I looked on the MSFT site and I don’t see how to file a bug report so hope they read this. I didn’t find a reference to this problem in anything else I’ve read so far.

MacInTouch has a thorough review of Office 2008. Even though there are the expected issues, Office is given a very positive grade.

Office 2008’s new Elements Gallery and integrated Toolbox make the suite’s sometimes-bewildering array of features easy to find and easy to use. Microsoft marketing often talks about making “Mac-like” applications; Office 2008 is the most Mac-like version of Office since Word 5.1 … Office’s capabilities are vast, but until now much of it has been hidden among a maze of menus and byzantine dialog boxes. Office 2008 brings it out and shows it off.

ars technica has screen shots, which show some of the “bewildering array of features”.

This lengthy Apple Support article addresses the following two issues:

Issue 1: The Send button may be dimmed (”grayed out”) in Mail messages, preventing you from sending any message.

Issue 2: When trying to send email message in Mail, an alert similar to this may appear:

Cannot send message using the server Example SMTP The server ’smtp.example.com’ cannot be contacted on port 25. Select a different outgoing mail server from the list below or click Try Later to leave the message in your Outbox until it can be delivered.

Intezyne, a biotech company, is not large, with 11 personnel. They had the typical problems with the darkside (not Darkside, the screensaver for Macs in the classic days). Small companies do not have the IS/IT staff that larger companies can afford and, in today’s world, the lack of security required will quickly down a less supported network.

What should be interesting to anyone contemplating this move, is the professionalism and cross compatibility that exists with iWork, especially the presentation software Keynote. Their customers and investors were impressed, and I have to think so were their personnel. Nothing sells the Mac better than seeing it in action. Read how they did it. More …

I have used Keynote a number of times for presentations. When in a panel, Keynote easily imported the other panelist’s PowerPoint presentations. I recommend a wireless presenter, which allows you to be any where in the room, rather than a infrared device (also wireless), which is line of site, limiting your movement and requiring you to point the remote directly at the receiving end of the USB receiving station.

Computerworld reports that Microsoft has confirmed Office for Mac 2008 incorrectly assigns ownership of some files.