So, I’ve given Mac OS Ken Day 6 more than the one month I said I would before deciding whether to continue with my subscription.

My conclusion: Day 6 is not worth $10 per month and I’ve canceled my subscription.

Yes, if you like Ken Ray and want to support his endeavor and, more importantly, can afford to give him $120 a year, then that’s fine. However, Day 6 appears to be the same format show as one of his previous podcasts, Technocracy Radio. That show used to be free.

On the first six shows, while there were interesting interviews with tech people, I didn’t feel each show was worth $2.50. For instance, one show was Ken interviewing his friend (and Mac developer) August Trometer. While August did a great job of predicting what Apple would release at Macworld, I didn’t feel it should cost me $2.50, especially as there were so many other podcasters doing predictions for free on their shows.

Ken can try and argue that you are actually paying for six shows each week, but as everyone else gets Monday to Friday shows free, the only extra material you get for your money is one 30-40 minute show each week.

Also, a complaint: while I’ve just canceled my subscription and have already paid my $10 for the second month’s content, my subscription has been canceled immediately, so I cannot get episodes 7 and 8, which I have paid for!

So, has anyone else subscribed (or canceled their subscription) to Day 6?

written by Mike Bradbrook \\ tags: Mac OS Ken, Podcasts

Coming from the Windows world, I was used to spending many hours defragging my hard drive, running a scan on my disk and of course, running virus and spyware checks.

When I came to the Mac I was happy to leave most of that behind. I don’t associate with Windows machines, so don’t bother with antivirus software. The Mac OS runs its own defrag and you can always purchase and use an app such as iDefrag if you are a heavy user of a hard drive.

However, there are many people that seem to be proponents of doing monthly routines that may not be strictly necessary.

An interesting article from Aaron Adams put it nicely…

“Every *** munch who thinks he’s some kind of hot Mac jockey has some bull**** voodoo ritual he performs before, during, and after system updates, and the especially obsessive-compulsive ones run through a daily regimen of repairing permissions, deleting caches, updating prebindings, and ten other pointless things that make no difference from a day-to-day usage standpoint. If I were a developer, I’d write a daemon that continuously updated permissions, updated prebindings, and deleted caches every 5 minutes, sell it for $10, and retire next week. If paranoid idiots need to compulsively do these things, I might as well be rich because of it.

“Get over your irrational system tweaking obsession. Just STOP! It’s not necessary. You don’t need to fix permissions constantly, only when you know for a fact that there is a permissions problem. You don’t need to update prebindings at every login. They’re updated when the OS needs to update them without your help. Stop deleting caches unless you know you have a specific problem with cached information [ed: caching is a good thing: it is there to speed things up for the user].

Why do I have to point this out? It should be obvious to any thinking human being. The placebo effect of doing these stupid things is obviously very powerful, but 99.99999% of the time they accomplish nothing!”

One thing that I have done in the past is install Anacron. The Anacron website says:

“This version of Anacron will run on MacOS 10.5 (Leopard) but it is not needed, as the Leopard launchd will run skipped jobs when the machine is next awake”.

However, this does not appear to be correct. I used Onyx v1.9 last week to check my three Macs and none had run the monthly routines since the start of December and my iMac hadn’t run a weekly maintenance script since November! So, I will be using OnyX to run these scripts manually.

Also, I’ have found that by using Disk Warrior on my Macs, the bugs I had encountered with Leopard seem to have gone away. However, is this just the placebo effect Aaron talks about?

So, do you agree with Aaron? Should people stop with all this “maintenance voodoo” and only run the troubleshooting procedures when their Mac appears to be having problems? Or, are you in the camp that feels that running a maintenance routine prevents issues cropping up on your Mac in the first place?

Discuss in the Mactropolis Forums >

written by Mike Bradbrook \\ tags: Mac Maintenance, Mac Troubleshooting

Warner Bros. has now said it will issue Blu-Ray only. Pundits are saying this has now decided the HD DVD and Blu-Ray war, with the latter winning.

I hope it is all over, as Apple and Disney are in the Blu-Ray camp but the one thing holding me back from taking the plunge and getting a Blu-Ray player (probably a Sony PS3 as I would like a new games console too) is that I’m a Star Trek nut and Paramount are currently HD DVD exclusive. I hope Paramount can get out of that deal and if they do, they’ll be no stopping me from going Blu!

[Source]

written by Mike Bradbrook \\ tags: Blu-Ray, HD DVD

There are some people who swear by AppleCare and say that you should always buy it for a Mac, especially if the Mac has an LCD screen (because the price of LCD replacement is so high). That would mean getting it for the iMac, MacBook or MacBook Pro.

I’ve also heard people with AppleCare say that they get superior level of service than standard Apple owners. Of course, this is anecdotal.

In the past, I have bought AppleCare through the Higher Education scheme in the UK, which meant a fixed fee of £50 ($99USD). To me, that was a no-brainer… — £50 ($99) for a three year warranty is great value.

Now that I don’t have access to that discount scheme, the price is not so attractive:

• £139 ($276) for iMac
• £199 ($395) for MacBook
• £279 ($554) for MacBook Pro

If you are not worried about the technical support you get in the price of the AppleCare Protection Plan, there are alternatives to the repair coverage.

For example, home insurance policies can cover contents. The advantage of home contents insurance is they will usually cover accidental damage while AppleCare officially does not. The disadvantages to this method include a claim on home insurance will usually have an amount of money you must pay first (the excess) that you will have to pay before the insurance company pays out. Also, you could lose your no-claims discount which would mean the cost of the following year’s home insurance would go up. Taking these two disadvantages into account, home contents insurance may not be that cost-effective an option.

Another alternative is third-party insurance for computer equipment. The advantages include no excess, no security requirements and worldwide cover for theft and accidental damage. A simple Google search will bring up offerings of three years’ cover on a laptop for fire, flood, theft and accidental damage from £99 ($196) to £249 ($494), depending on the cost of the laptop.

Do you have experience with AppleCare or third party insurance?

[Source of third party pricing]

written by Mike Bradbrook \\ tags: AppleCare Protection Plan

I walk my dog three times a day and that gives me the opportunity to listen to lots of technology and Apple/Mac-related podcasts.

I’ve given up on most of the Leo Laporte ones - they seem to talk about nothing for over an hour and the people on them don’t portray that much knowledge. I get more accurate information from the web than I pick up on Leo’s podcasts (sorry, netcasts). The exception may be MacBreak Tech but the presenters of that are so pretentious I can’t stand listening to them.

However, that’s not to say I don’t like some podcasts. The MacCast is a favorite of mine. I also like the Macworld podcasts. However, the one I like the most is Mac OS Ken - it is the first podcast I listen to when it is available.

Ken Ray (the presenter and producer of the podcast) is trying to monetize the show by offering a members-only weekend edition for $10 per month. Now, that may be a bit pricey for some but there will still be five free shows per week.

So, do you have a particular Mac related podcast that you love (or hate?) and what do you think about paying for a podcast?

I’ve subscribed to Ken’s weekend edition and will let you know what I think of the show after the first month (when it will be time for me to decide whether to continue subscribing or cancel).

written by Mike Bradbrook \\ tags: Podcast

My sensible head told me to wait. Tiger was working great for me and did everything I needed. The problem is I love new Apple stuff and after a few days I couldn’t bear reading forum posts and listening to podcasts gushing over how yummy Leopard was. At least by waiting a few days I didn’t get caught by the Blue Screen of Death bug caused by upgrading from Tiger when you had Application Enhancer installed: I was able to run an Archive and Install and things worked fine. Sort of…

My main work machine (a MacBook Pro) has been unstable ever since installing Leopard. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to Force Quit apps such as Mail and the number of times I’ve sent Bug Reports to Apple. On two occasions the OS has hung up and I’ve had to hold down the power button to reboot. Not good news for an operating system that boasts it just works and doesn’t crash (from Apple’s GetaMac site: “If you spend more of your precious time figuring out why your PC crashes than you spend taking out the garbage every week, you need a Mac.” - yeah, funny.

Continue reading »

written by Mike Bradbrook \\ tags: OS X Leopard