Digital Design Solutions » Mac

#WWDC Keynote Recap

Jarrod Skeggs — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:42:43 +0000

Highlights from today’s WWDC Keynote address:

New MacBook Pro 15″ – improved display, improved battery life, processor speed increases, SD Card reader now included, entry level price dropped to $1,699.
Enhancements to MacBook Pro 17″ – entry level product now has 2.8 GHz processor and 500GB Hard drive, entry level price dropped to $2,499.
MacBook 13″ Aluminum is now MacBook Pro 13″ – tops out at 8GB RAM and 500GB Hard drive just like 15″ big brother, entry level price drops to $1,199.
MacBook Air – entry level price drops to $1,499, processor clock speeds bumped up to 1.6 GHz, 1.8 GHz, and 2.13 GHz.
Safari 4 is out of beta. (It is super fast BTW).
Snow Leopard to ship in September – $29 upgrade for existing Leopard users, $49 family pack available too.
iPhone 3G S – launches on June 19, 2009 in North America and parts of Europe, the S stands for Speed, will ship with iPhone OS 3.0 (which is available on June 17, 2009), includes Video Recording/Edtiting, Voice Control, 3 megapixel camera with auto-focus. Available in 16GB or 32 GB option at $199 and $299 respectively. iPhone 3G 8GB option continues to be available and price is reduced to $99.
iPhone OS 3.0 – available on June 17, 2009, free to iPhone owners, $9.99 for iPod touch owners, over 100 new features including cut, copy, paste, and spotlight search.

Daylite touch/Daylite 3.9 workshop

Jarrod Skeggs — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:00:27 +0000

We’re at it again. We’ve scheduled our next Daylite touch/Daylite 3.9 workshop. This workshop will take place at the Apple Store, North Point at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 14 ,2009. Come and see Daylite touch in action. You will be excited and amazed. Daylite touch takes productivity to the next level with your iPhone.

With the Daylite touch application you can manage your business on the go without the bulk of carrying a notebook computer. Some of the features of Daylite touch include:

Multi-user Calendar management
Contact management
Opportunity management
Project management
Task management and delegation

We hope you’ll come out and join us as we demonstrate how Daylite 3.9 and Daylite touch compliment one another.

74 percent of companies plan to expand Mac use

Kevin Gilbert — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:47:02 +0000

Enterprise Desktop Alliance has announced the results of a recent survey, indicating that 74-percent of 314 companies expect to increase the number of Macs within the organizations. Fewer than two percent of the respondents said they would be reducing the number of Apple computers. The survey also reported that productivity gains and employee preference are the main reasons enterprises are adopting Macs. Lower cost of ownership is also playing an important role in Mac growth. Of the IT administrators who responded, almost 60 percent manage 100 or more Macs in a wide range of enterprise-class companies.

A majority of the respondents placed a high priority on maintaining equality between the management of Mac and PC systems. The administrators did have concerns about certain subjects relating to Mac integration, however, such as Active Directory, client management, file sharing, security and data recovery, among others.

via MacNN | 74 percent of companies plan to expand Mac use.

That last paragraph is why we’re posting this here. If you’re an organization adding more Macs to your PC environment and have questions about how to integrate Macs into an Active Directory environment, or questions about Mac client management, Mac file sharing, Mac security or Mac data recovery, please contact us. We have experience in these areas and would love to help you and your organization make a smooth transition to more Macs in the workplace.

Lawyers USA: Should you switch to a Mac?

Kevin Gilbert — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:42:42 +0000

Here’s a feature story over at LawyersUSA on the advantages of switching to the Mac platform. Not real in depth, but good to see.

Lawyers USA.

DDS Presents: OS X Leopard Server for SMB workshop

Jarrod Skeggs — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:01:44 +0000

We’re happy to announce that we are beginning in-store workshops for Atlanta area Apple Stores soon. Our first workshop will be on February 12, 2009 at 7:00 p.m. at the Apple Store, North Point. The topic for this workshop will be OS X Leopard Server for Small to Medium business.

Apple has really created an excellent server platform that helps small and medium businesses leverage the benefits of a true server/client environment without breaking the bank. If you’d like to learn more about Leopard Server you should come on out and check out this workshop.

Here is a link to our event page on Facebook.

You can go here to register to attend this event. We look forward to seeing you there.

A great iPhone/iPod touch tip

Jarrod Skeggs — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:13:19 +0000

I knew that I could buy songs from the iTunes store and then allow them to be shared by up to 5 other folks. I've often wondered about apps from the App Store but have never checked it out. Apparently, it works the same way. Check out the full story with complete instructions on how to do this over at The Mac Observer.

Jobs taking leave of absence

Jarrod Skeggs — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:57:52 +0000

In case you haven't heard, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced today that he will take a leave of absence through June of 2009 due to health related issues. Click here for the official Press Release from Apple.

So what does this mean for the Apple? No one can say for sure, but I think this is an absolutely golden opportunity for Apple to show that they can continue stellar performance without Steve involved in day to day leadership. I believe we will see evidence that Steve has been working diligently for years to build a team that can function and in fact thrive without him in the picture.

From a personal standpoint, Steve and his family will be in our thoughts and prayers. We look forward to seeing Steve return to Apple in July.

Safari vulnerability alert

Jarrod Skeggs — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:26:37 +0000

Just came across this and thought I'd post real quick for all our clients, friends, and family. See more details here. Bottom line, go into Safari, navigate to preferences, and click on the RSS settings. Once there, change the Default RSS reader to something other than Safari. (Mail, for example, will work just fine). This will protect you from the vulnerability.

What’s coming in Daylite?

Jarrod Skeggs — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:22:24 +0000

This time last week we were officially introduced to Daylite 3.9 and Daylite touch, the companion application that enables iPhone/iPod touch users to access their Daylite database in true mobile fashion. During last week’s meeting we learned about some major changes that are taking place, including some “under the hood” adjustments that will be made. As of now, we are free to discuss some of the great things that are ahead. Here is a brief summary…

Goodbye OpenBase, Hello Postgres – Through Daylite version 3.8, the back end database engine that the application runs on is OpenBase. In its prime, OpenBase was an excellent back end. At this point however, it is rapidly approaching antique status and is honestly very problematic from a support and reliability standpoint. Postgres on the other hand is also open source and standards based. It is used by many businesses from the Enterprise level down. There are two big benefits to the Postgres migration. First and foremost, is drastically improved stability and synchronization. Second is much better performance for the Daylite application overall.
Daylite touch – Of course the big news is the Daylite touch application which offers the ability to be truly mobile and access your database over any wifi, 3G, or EDGE connection. Offline databases will still be supported but will likely become a thing of the past as the adoption of the iPhone and iPod touch becomes more prevalent.
With the release of Daylite 3.9 the structure will change a good bit. As depicted below, there will now be Daylite Server, Touch Server, and the Postgres database. Standard Daylite licenses will stay at the same great price and the Touch Server license will likely weigh in at just under $100 for a license.

If you have any specific questions you’d like to ask, feel free to email us and we’ll be glad to schedule some time to discuss them with you.

We’re back home in the ATL

Jarrod Skeggs — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 21:41:26 +0000

We're back from Macworld. It was a great week and by far the most productive we've ever had at Macworld. Check back in with us here beginning on Monday to find out some more detailed information about all of the things that we wrote about last week. There is a ton of great information that we'll be sharing.

Also, thanks to all of you who kept up with us this week. We enjoyed the discussions and comments.

MWSF 2009 – Day 3

Jarrod Skeggs — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:48:13 +0000

Today, we actually went out and had a little fun. Although we only had about two hours between our meetings, we took a ride on the historic San Francisco Cable Cars. We walked down Lombard Street, (that's the one that is dubbed the curviest street in the world), and got a great view of Alcatraz. Some pictures are posted below.

I'm going to post a short video in the next post that shows how they turn the cable car around. It's pretty cool.

MWSF 2009 – Day 2

Jarrod Skeggs — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 10:13:22 +0000

Day two on the show floor was a bit more focused for us.

We are prepared to sign on as potentially the first Partner for a product called Elements SBM which is developed by Ntractive. Elements SBM is a small to medium business CRM application. The application runs in a custom browser that accompanies the product. Further, the database is a fully hosted solution and the client database runs in Ntractive's data center. They are also working on an iPhone interface for the application.

We attended a press conference at 3:00 p.m. yesterday that officially announced the Partner program. We believe that this product fills a void that we have needed to fill for a while in our business model ibecause we have worked with clients in the past that wanted a hosted solution that lives in the cloud. While there are many like this, none are as full featured and intuitive as the Elements SBM product.

We hope to sign on with them within the next month or sooner if they have all the details fully ironed out. Kudos to Dale, Amy, and all the Ntractive staff that have been working so hard to get this to market.

Macworld Expo pics

Jarrod Skeggs — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 11:32:32 +0000

Here are some of the pics we've snapped so far. My favorite is the huge crowd at the Microsoft booth.

Thoughts on the Schillernote

Jarrod Skeggs — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 10:46:40 +0000

Some would say that the Keynote, or as I like to call it, Schillernote, was a bit underwhelming yesterday. At first, I really thought the same thing. But, once Kevin and I made it to the South Hall and actually got to get by Apple's booth I began to change my tune. We both got some hands on time with iLife '09 and iWork '09. We discovered a few things that Phil didn't reveal during the keynote.

One of the first cool things we discovered was support for video layering in iMovie '09. Apple's video editing app has always been an amazing value but I'd say this enhancement alone is worth the $79 price tag.

Another nice enhancement to the iLife '09 suite came in iWeb. Phil didn't mention iWeb at all during the Keynote, but the new version allows for creating multiple sites that can be published to either MobileMe or any domain that you have registered and hosted. As well, it includes widget capability. A couple of the coolest widgets being RSS feeds and YouTube channels. Another cool feature in iWeb is the inclusion of some Facebook integration so that when you update your site built with iWeb a story is posted to your wall.

As we get more hands on time I'll post about some the other cool enhancements we discover.

Every Mac user should make these New Years Resolutions

Jarrod Skeggs — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:19:44 +0000

Here's a link to a great post that I read on the Macworld site today. Every Mac user should take this to heart. You'll live an even happier life as a result.

Happy New Year from DDS!!