Updated with new notes on possible locations for the bug (and consequent implications), plus warning about potential for problems in Finder automation scripts.

A rolling stone gathers no moss.

When wanting to buy a new shiny iPad goes wrong.

I just spoke to Apple sales about the month to month service on the 3G iPad about a question I had.

This is some strong hooch!

As I have mentioned before on Mac Net Journal, I live in a Mac world and work in a Windows-centric workplace. This has its plusses and minuses. The plus comes on days like today, when I was able to make a presentation to officials about my communications planning for 2009 that I manage within a very visual map view in Tinderbox . Here's a snapshot of part of the document:

As always, whenever I expose Tinderbox and its capabilities to Windows users, they are eager for a Windows version or similar application. Once a Windows version is alive, I have a few customers ready for Tinderbox.

Although I haven't found a good similar application for planning and thinking on my work PC, an HP tablet running Windows XP, over the last couple of days I have started playing around with an experimental program from a group of Microsoft programmers that seeks to make the most of pen-based computing - InkSeine . I had the program installed on Tuesday and used it to take notes all day. This is the kind of program that would be right at home on a Mac tablet, if such a thing existed.

Here is a screen shot from the InkSeine Web site:

InkSeine is an experimental program for visually organizing thoughts and resources in a drawing pad format. It isn't the same concept or as flexible as Tinderbox, but as a tool for free-form thinking, it has some similarities on the surface. It offers a different set of tools than OneNote, which I also use for taking notes with the pen when my Windows machine is in my hands. But so far it isn't as easy to imagine how to integrate InkSeine information with Tinderbox back on the Mac. I'll dig into that more in future MNJ posts...

Wowser! This thing stopped me dead in my tracks!

Tim Robertson, owner of MyMac.com and now with OWC, interviewed the host of the T4 Show for OWC Radio #25. Here is the video after the jump

Get iPad cases, screen protectors, keyboards, chargers and more at a discount from Amazon. Save $69-$112 off Apple's *new* 15" and 17" MacBook Pro models at Amazon, too! You also save a bunch on MobileMe renewals at Amazon and get Aperture 3 updates at a discount. The iPod Touch is discounted, too, along with the Mac Mini, iMacs and MacBooks. (Save money on the MacBook Pro, Mac Pro and MacBook Air, too.) Check the great selection of DRM-free MP3 music at very competitive prices (including free downloads!). Digital cameras and HDTV's get outstanding discounts, plus helpful reviews as well. *And*, while you're saving yourself money, you're also providing critical MacInTouch support just by clicking through any of our links to purchase!

[May 4] Our comprehensive iPad FAQ gets another update, adding notes about official and grey market availability; 5GHz WiFi networking; EDGE support; VOIP; Micro SIM; ATT domestic and international rates; iTunes activation; Flash; MobileMe; photo import and downsampling; DCIM and USB hard drive support; re-downloading purchased apps; USB keyboards; 110/220 volt power; mail folders; webcams and USB keyboard compatibility.

VoIP, camera/photo support, e-books, baseball, delivery, app upgrades, hands-on experiences and more

Palm, BeOS, Flash, iTunes

Retrospect benefits

startup volumes

reliability

logfile overrun follow-up

graphics hardware vs. battery

FireWire problems

display problems after 10.6.3 update

"...addresses an audio anomaly that some customers may hear coming from inside their Mac Pro computer when using FireWire audio devices."

Updates the Epson printer and scanner software for Snow Leopard.

D-Zed Software's stop-motion animation program gains support for the company's new hardware devices (DDMX-S2 Digital I/O Controller and IOTA 3D Stereoscopic Slider/IOTA Controller), an Auxiliary Monitor feature that can send the main view to a second monitor, and more.

Extensis' digital asset management software adds support for new raw camera formats, full DNG workflow support that preserves color adjustments and allows XMP metadata embedding, and other improvements.

Nova Media's mobile connection manager gets the ability to create a Mobile Hub to share a mobile connection with Wi-Fi devices (including the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch).

JetBrains' IDE for Ruby and Ruby on Rails adds compatibility with recent Ruby/Rails development libraries and tools, RVM gemsets support, improvements for HAML markup, improved Cucumber support, and fixes for some reported issues.

Cocoamug Software's Safari extension for downloading Flash video adds support for saving audio MP3s, WMAs, and other formats from last.fm, mp3.com, vivamusic.org, and other sites.

The desktop data display prefpane has been rewritten from scratch and includes interface improvements, script editor improvements, and more.

Adobe announced it is shipping Creative Suite 5, with downloadable trial versions now available.

Flying Meat's layer-based bitmap image editor adds 40 new brushes, guides and snap-to document edges for bitmap layers, an option to turn off font smoothing, an improved Brush Designer layout, and more.

This beta release of the open source virtualization package adds experimental support for Mac OS X guests, CPU hot-plugging for Linux and some Windows guests, new Hypervisor features, support for multi-monitor guest setups, and more.

BinaryNights' file manager and transfer program gets a major rewrite that brings 64-bit operation, improved transfer speeds, new view options (column, icon, Cover Flow), Stacks (virtual folders that can be used to organize items), Workspaces (for switching between tab arrangements), and other improvements.

Aperture gets stability and bug fixes in a variety of areas.

Toon Boom's vector-based animation program gains 3D stereoscopic functions, improved HD image compositing through disk caching, faster rendering through multi-threading, optimized OpenGL support with better video card performance, and more.

LogicalVue Software released SQLite Studio, an IDE for developers using SQLite, an open-source, single-user database engine.

Nova Media introduced FrameLoader, an application designed to synchronize digital photo frames with iPhoto albums, iTunes playlists and custom media files on a Mac.

Adobe released a Flash Player preview, codenamed Gala, which "introduces support for H.264 video hardware decoding on Mac OS X 10.6.3" for Macs with NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M video.

"a number of important bug fixes"

Panic's FTP, SFTP, and FTP TLS/SSL file transfer program gets a major rewrite that offers a completely redesigned interface, speed increases up to 25x, Transmit Disk for mounting locations in the Finder, bandwidth limiting, and much more.

Bare Bones Software's text and HTML editor gains an in-window Live Search bar that highlights matches in the text as you type (with previous/next navigation), the ability to attach scripts to over a dozen application and document events, support for direct browsing of zip files, and more.

Unsanity updated its combination Framework and system daemon with Snow Leopard support, 64-bit support, and other improvements.

Coding Robots' journal program adds 64-bit mode support on Snow Leopard, Quick Drawing for creating sketches in entries, fullscreen mode, printing (of single entries, ranges, or a whole journal), and much more.

CodeWeavers' software for running Windows programs without Windows improves Office 2003 service pack installation and fixes a number of bugs, including a problem with certain bottles that never stopped initializing.

Koingo Software's utility for accessing hidden settings and commands gets a major update that includes a redesigned system profiler with more information, the ability to save and restore settings, a redesigned and improved Network pane, new settings options for a number of programs, and more.

Today's announcements from Apple at its last Macworld Expo were a little underwhelming for anyone looking for groundbreaking news. For the second year in a row, the highlights feel like incremental changes - major battery enhancements in the environmentally friendly new 17-inch MacBook Pro and a beta version of iWork that can be used and accessed on the Web.

Were there any game-changers? It's too early to tell. Here is a run-down of what's updated and new:

iTunes Plus as part of the new iTunes 8 , with tons of digital rights management-free music. The upgrade to iTunes 8 is free, but moving to iTunes Plus and DRM-free music could cost you.

iLife '09 adds many new features in its components - iPhoto , iMovie , GarageBand and iWeb . Is it worth $79? If you will use one of two of the components, sure. Unfortunately, I don't use any of these tools...

iWork '09 has a number of major enhancements as well in its components - Pages , Numbers and Keynote .

iWork.com beta , which appears to only be available for folks who buy iWork '09.

17-inch MacBook Pro is the biggest announcement for major-league mobile Mac users, although it is still too big for me and for most of the people that I work with every day. In fact, one colleague is intrigued with the idea of buying a Mac for home use, but he even sees my 15-inch MacBook Pro as too large. The new 17-inch machine has lots of horsepower to go, and now up to eight hours of battery life, but many will be thrown off by the fact that the battery is not replaceable by individual users. Instead, you have to take it to an authorized repair shop for replacement.

So this is an evolutionary rather than revolutionary round of announcements from Apple. No Apple netbook, no iTouch tablet - both of which would have excited me. But now that Apple is freed from the chains of announcing the Next Big Thing at each Macworld Expo, there is no saying that we won't hear about a major announcement from Apple in March or any other time later this year. We can keep our fingers crossed...

Get a free app if you are quick enough, and maybe a chance to win an iPad.

Wowser! This thing stopped me dead in my tracks!

Tim Robertson, owner of MyMac.com and now with OWC, interviewed the host of the T4 Show for OWC Radio #25. Here is the video after the jump

Apple is notorious for the amount of control it has over their various platforms. How did it come to this and what will be next?

Guess who found Roger's new iPad?

Oh yeah, I can play Time Cop.

SRM1801 is designed specifically for the SRM450v2

Our detailed Time Capsule review includes a "Best Practices" section and lots of other tips, plus performance benchmarks, feature analysis and more.

Our MacBook Air review digs into details of its design, features, performance, compatibility and suitability for various customers. Includes benchmark test results.

Robert Mohns examines features, performance, compatibility and more in his detailed review.

We review the newest Nano, which brings the surprising additions of a video camera and microphone, an FM Radio (complete with "Live Pause"), and a pedometer, among other nifty features in the tiny device, priced the same as before. We include video samples for comparison (Nano 5G, iPhone 3GS and Flip MinoHD).

essential info, including data-loss bugs

Updated with new notes on possible locations for the bug (and consequent implications), plus warning about potential for problems in Finder automation scripts.

We dig into the technology and benefits of RAID storage systems, along with a number of issues involved, as we review SoftRAID, the leading application for configuring these systems on the Mac.

We delve into the details of VMware's new virtualization system for the Mac with some hands-on testing.

We've added some benchmark results charts (with more to come later) in a thorough review of Apple's latest laptop from Robert Mohns, covering technical advances, the overall experience, and an audio quality issue.

reviews, basics, availability and pricing, networks and carriers, features, sync with iTunes, Internet, apps, widgets, tech specs, jailbreaking and unlocking, misc.

We have updated our in-depth Apple TV review from Robert Mohns, who covers set-up, features, performance, compatibility, omissions, hacking, competition and the overall experience and value, with links to more resources.

We have added a few more notes on Ethernet and Airport Disk performance to our comprehensive examination of Apple's new wireless base station (complete with benchmark test results.

In this detailed review of the new iPhone 3GS, Robert Mohns covers everything from hardware chips to pricing, performance to photographic capability, features, issues and everything in between. The review includes visual tests and samples, a long list of related links, and much more.

We review two UPSes (uninterruptible power supplies) from Italy's iDowell, designed to complement Macintosh aesthetics while featuring sine-wave power output at reasonable prices. Runtime benchmarks and links to more information are included.

April has been a tough month for my running, after I suffered from a hamstring pull at the end of March that has forced me to forego running the Tacoma Marathon this coming weekend. While I am back to doing some running now, for the last week or so I have been doing some vicarious living through reading the words of another runner - the book "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running", by Haruki Murakami.

This is a short and approachable translation of the Japanese novelist's memoir about running, and it hits home for this runner who has been suffering from withdrawal symptoms in this month when I have only managed to run about 50 miles...

If you run and you want to get inside the head of a fellow long distance runner, this should be a good read.

The other day I wrote about exploring a new-to-me program called InkSeine under Windows on my HP tablet computer that I use for work. I did a little research over the weekend, and it's hard to find any evidence that InkSeine is still in active development or that it has any future whatsoever. That's a shame, since it feels like one of those transformational software tools that can be used for its orginal purpose for gathering research, but also for presenting information in a new way that goes beyond the stale PowerPoint paradigm.

What do I mean by "transformational software?" Maybe I am the only one who experiences computers and software this way, but every now and then I come across a hardware or software tool that causes me to rethink the way I work. Many years ago when I first encountered Tinderbox and took the time to try it out as a blogging tool, it became a transformational software tool for me. Tinderbox exposes itself in layers, and for me that started with outline views then graduated a couple of years ago to mindmapping and visual planning applications that I use every day in my work. And there is still more to learn and explore.

InkSeine feels like it could be a similar kind of tool. Given an appropriate application of the software and access to a decent, pen-based computer running Windows, it appears to be transformational software. I am playing with it right now to make a casual, visual presentation of info about Web 2.0 tools and social media to a group of executives. Why would I use PowerPoint to tell a flat story when I could run InkSeine on my tablet to flip between rich pages with graphics, Web clippings and links that I can visit with a swipe of my pen?

Sure, I could do this with the more mature Microsoft tool, OneNote, which I use on the tablet to take meeting notes. But OneNote isn't nearly as interactive. It doesn't offer the abilities to interact with the content on a note page in the same way with a pen.

What other transformational software is there out there waiting to be explored? Well, from this piece about how one writer does his craft , DevonThink sounds like it has potential. I haven't tried it because I have thought that it overlaps too much with what I do within Tinderbox, but the article and accompanying comments make me wonder if I should check it out...

As I have mentioned before on Mac Net Journal, I live in a Mac world and work in a Windows-centric workplace. This has its plusses and minuses. The plus comes on days like today, when I was able to make a presentation to officials about my communications planning for 2009 that I manage within a very visual map view in Tinderbox . Here's a snapshot of part of the document:

As always, whenever I expose Tinderbox and its capabilities to Windows users, they are eager for a Windows version or similar application. Once a Windows version is alive, I have a few customers ready for Tinderbox.

Although I haven't found a good similar application for planning and thinking on my work PC, an HP tablet running Windows XP, over the last couple of days I have started playing around with an experimental program from a group of Microsoft programmers that seeks to make the most of pen-based computing - InkSeine . I had the program installed on Tuesday and used it to take notes all day. This is the kind of program that would be right at home on a Mac tablet, if such a thing existed.

Here is a screen shot from the InkSeine Web site:

InkSeine is an experimental program for visually organizing thoughts and resources in a drawing pad format. It isn't the same concept or as flexible as Tinderbox, but as a tool for free-form thinking, it has some similarities on the surface. It offers a different set of tools than OneNote, which I also use for taking notes with the pen when my Windows machine is in my hands. But so far it isn't as easy to imagine how to integrate InkSeine information with Tinderbox back on the Mac. I'll dig into that more in future MNJ posts...

Natalie is attending a lunch session with David Allen of GTD fame today, and I look forward to hearing how the session goes and what she learns from it. I thought about going to Seattle for a long lunch to join her, but Tuesday's are busy days for me at my current job. Maybe another time...

Ironically enough, I started taking another crack at using OmniFocus as my GTD tool of choice on my MacBook Pro and iPhone yesterday.

Combining OmniFocus with my ongoing communications planning I am doing in map view in Tinderbox , I'm trying to wrap an organizational framework around 2009. I did the same thing with Tinderbox in 2008 and it helped transform my work early in the year as well as the way that I use this tool for information management. I need to do more writing about this.

The drag-and-drop OCR program adds de-screening to reduce coarse print raster, more accurate recognition, improved stability and performance, and other changes.

Palm, BeOS, Flash, iTunes

Retrospect benefits

startup volumes

reliability

logfile overrun follow-up

graphics hardware vs. battery

FireWire problems

display problems after 10.6.3 update

"...addresses an audio anomaly that some customers may hear coming from inside their Mac Pro computer when using FireWire audio devices."

Updates the Epson printer and scanner software for Snow Leopard.

D-Zed Software's stop-motion animation program gains support for the company's new hardware devices (DDMX-S2 Digital I/O Controller and IOTA 3D Stereoscopic Slider/IOTA Controller), an Auxiliary Monitor feature that can send the main view to a second monitor, and more.

Adobe announced it is shipping Creative Suite 5, with downloadable trial versions now available.

Flying Meat's layer-based bitmap image editor adds 40 new brushes, guides and snap-to document edges for bitmap layers, an option to turn off font smoothing, an improved Brush Designer layout, and more.

This beta release of the open source virtualization package adds experimental support for Mac OS X guests, CPU hot-plugging for Linux and some Windows guests, new Hypervisor features, support for multi-monitor guest setups, and more.

BinaryNights' file manager and transfer program gets a major rewrite that brings 64-bit operation, improved transfer speeds, new view options (column, icon, Cover Flow), Stacks (virtual folders that can be used to organize items), Workspaces (for switching between tab arrangements), and other improvements.

Aperture gets stability and bug fixes in a variety of areas.

Toon Boom's vector-based animation program gains 3D stereoscopic functions, improved HD image compositing through disk caching, faster rendering through multi-threading, optimized OpenGL support with better video card performance, and more.

LogicalVue Software released SQLite Studio, an IDE for developers using SQLite, an open-source, single-user database engine.

Nova Media introduced FrameLoader, an application designed to synchronize digital photo frames with iPhoto albums, iTunes playlists and custom media files on a Mac.

Adobe released a Flash Player preview, codenamed Gala, which "introduces support for H.264 video hardware decoding on Mac OS X 10.6.3" for Macs with NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M video.

"a number of important bug fixes"

Panic's FTP, SFTP, and FTP TLS/SSL file transfer program gets a major rewrite that offers a completely redesigned interface, speed increases up to 25x, Transmit Disk for mounting locations in the Finder, bandwidth limiting, and much more.

Bare Bones Software's text and HTML editor gains an in-window Live Search bar that highlights matches in the text as you type (with previous/next navigation), the ability to attach scripts to over a dozen application and document events, support for direct browsing of zip files, and more.

Unsanity updated its combination Framework and system daemon with Snow Leopard support, 64-bit support, and other improvements.

Coding Robots' journal program adds 64-bit mode support on Snow Leopard, Quick Drawing for creating sketches in entries, fullscreen mode, printing (of single entries, ranges, or a whole journal), and much more.

Our in-depth iPad review (all 9550 words of it) covers covers hardware, software, performance, problems and the "ecosystem" on which this unique tablet is based, with links to more information. [Updated]

Overview: The World of iPad Apps.

Dec. 19: Covering more than 1400 items, our searchable, sortable list gets 38 additions and updates today, including Pro Tools, Perian, MacPractice, TapDex, miXscope, Back-In-Time, CSSEdit, Vienna, Raw Photo Processor, MultiLedger, SousChef, and Volocity.

We've added an addendum to cover some tips and questions brought up by readers in response to our in-depth review, which examines the $999 Mini Server product product from Apple, which combines a dual-hard-drive Mac Mini with a full version of Snow Leopard Server (unlimited client license). We look at everything from web services to performance, along with security, installation, admin utilities and more.

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard in-depth review: 11,000 words on migration and installation; the new Finder and QuickTime X; additional features and refinements; security and technology; and our conclusions; plus links for additional information.