After some very severe performance issues on an 8-Core Mac Pro with 18GB of RAM, I did some research and found out that Spotlight was hogging a substantial portion of my system resources for its indexing purposes. Here’s how to disable it.

Greetings Mr. Jobs,

I was excited to see the announcements you made today, but was left hanging when there was no announcement of an updated Final Cut Studio. I hope you and others at Apple will remember that your foundation was built on the backs of professional new media producers and scientists who have loved your professional computers and software for years. When will you release an updated version of the Final Cut Studio that will take FULL ADVANTAGE of the wonderful desktop computers and the large amount of RAM they can hold?!?! We need a 64-bit version of Final Cut Studio. Please!

Respectfully,
Evan Agee

To my surprise I received this response!

Stay tuned and buckle up.

Sent from my iPhone

So there’s hope!

I’m actually not terribly excited about the new features they’ve added. The Netflix streaming and AirPlay are both great new features, as well as the ability to rent TV shows. However, the main reason I’m throwing down the cash for this piece of hardware is the features that are sure to come in the future.

I found this incredibly convincing and exciting video on YouTube which actually is a great example of the types of things we could do with the iSlate, even if this video isn’t real.

Driving back from the grocery store today there was a segment on NPR about the magazine industry and how much it has changed as more and more people are choosing to purchase and consume their media digitally. I instantly thought of the all-but-confirmed Apple iSlate/Tablet and some specific ways it could truly improve our daily lives, or at least make them more fun. Here are 5specific examples:

Digital Magazines/Books

It’s been the topic of conversation on many of the tech shows, including MacBreak Weekly (which I LOVE), that the new tablet could be a wonderful platform for distributing books and magazines. The screen, being very high resolution and likely about 10″ in size, would be perfect for consuming rich and colorful magazines, not to mention reading the hottest new novel. With the right software and a nice page turning effect I get excited thinking about what the tablet could mean for magazine consumption.

And think about the new abilities that would be given to previously print-focused publishers to enhance the content of their magazines; now instead of just having a photo of Steve Jobs unveiling the iSlate you could actually include a video of the event right in with the story. Essentially it would begin to blur the line between traditional print media and web content. Of course this would force the magazines to come up with incentives to keep subscribers jumping ship, but I’m sure many trust and enjoy the content of their favorite magazine(s) enough to continue paying a subscription fee for the digital distribution. After all, it’s all about content.

Gaming

The iPhone has proven that people are willing to play games on a small portable device even if it means sacrificing the killer graphics that they’re used to with the Xbox 360, PS3 and the PC. The App Store on iTunes has hit over 3 BILLION downloads since opening just over a year ago and a large percentage of those downloads are games. Imagine a racing game where the tablet in fact becomes the steering wheel and you’re holding it 2 feet in front of your face; sounds fun doesn’t it? A touch-based interface with a large screen could pave the way for many game interfaces that we haven’t seen before, and that’s exciting.

TV and Movies on the Go

There’s been some talk about Apple pitching the id of a TV subscription service. Personally I love the idea of being able to ditch my cable company, which is easily 10 years behind the technology curve, but we’ll save that for another time. There have also been a number of applications in the App store that prove that you can stream video to the iPhone and get pretty amazing results. Are you catching my drift here? What if the tablet offers the ability to access streaming television shows from your favorite studios at any time? The process might look something like this:

1. Subscribe to a television studio on iTunes (or the tablet itself)
2. Have instant access to all of the shows, episodes, specials, etc that are released by that studio
3. Pick what you want to watch and stream it to the tablet

Also in a previous post, Apple Acquires Lala.com but why?, I talked about how Apple’s purchase of Lala.com could be a huge hint that they’re planning to start offering storage and streaming of our iTunes libraries. Is it possible that we’ll be able to watch any of the movies, video podcasts or TV shows from our iTunes library on the tablet over 3G or Wi-Fi?

Convenient Internet and email from anywhere

While I’m still pretty excited about the fact that I can truly browse the web on my iPhone, it’s inevitable that the experience will suffer because of the smallish screen size. It’s possible that I’m alone in this one, but the fact that I have frankfurter fingers and club hands doesn’t make my iPhone web browsing experience too easy. Spurious link clicks abound and the fact that there’s so much zooming and panning required to truly read something online is not optimal. This could all be fixed with a 10″ screen. I personally see web browsing/email capabilities as one of the tablets biggest selling points. There’s something about the simplicity of a screen and no input peripherals that is so attractive, and the iSlate could be the epitome of that market. The iPhone is great, but imagine the ability to have an onscreen keyboard where the keys are about 4 times larger, now that sounds awesome!

Augmented Reality

This is a new area that has just barely been explored to this point. Augmented reality is the ability to have an electronic object that can analyze (using a camera usually) the space you’re in and give you relevant information about objects or potentially people within that space. Imagine you’re at the grocery store and you’re looking at this new brand of gluten free wheat bread. It’s a little more pricey than some of the other options, but you’d love to give it a try. To get more information you hold your tablet camera up to the bread and instantly on the screen reviews and testimonials about that item pop onto the screen giving you instant feedback before you’ve even spent a penny. Or, a more popular example is walking through a museum with no information placards, you simply point your tablet at the exhibit and a wealth of information is given on screen. There are some truly exciting possibilities for this technology.

So how might the iSlate improve your daily life?

iTunes, meet Mobile Me
First it helps to look at what Lala.com has been offering to users, the ability to sync their music libraries onto Lala and then stream that music to any web browser from any computer, just by logging in. Right away this suggests to me that Apple is looking for a new feature to boost the feature set of it’s highly criticized Mobile Me service. Mobile Me, among other features, is a service that gives registered users the ability to work with their iLife files through a web-based interface. Sharing your iPhoto images, uploading your video creations from iMovie, etc. Apple has said publicly that it is planning new features for Mobile Me and this seems like a perfect fit considering iTunes is technically part of the iLife suite.

But that’s not all…

A subscription-based music/video service?
In addition to online music library distribution, Lala.com also offers the ability to “purchase” songs for unlimited playback for $0.10 per track. Of course you can’t download it for that price, it’s $0.79 to purchase an MP3 of the same song. Apple of course offers a very similar service with their iTunes Store… minus the subscription based service. Many speculators take this as a sign that Apple is planning to offer a subscription service for iTunes, which also seems possible despite Apple’s statements to the contrary in the past. But there are some technical issues this could address as well, such as their movie rental service.

As it stands, when you rent a movie from iTunes you have to physically download that video to your hard drive in order to watch it completely. Yes, it will stream once the download has started, but the entire video file must be downloaded in order to finish the movie only to be deleted once your rental period has expired. What if they could stream that rented video from the cloud to your device without ever having to transfer the 1GB+ video file to your machine? Even the experience of purchasing movies from Apple TV could be improved if you had the option to store the movie on the cloud instead of downloading it that already full hard drive on your computer.

In the news recently there have been reports of Apple pitching a subscription-based service to some of the television networks. This platform also seems like a great solution for an online television subscription service…

A few dropped hints
There have also been a few product features here lately that hint that Apple is moving in the direction of a media center or server to client relationship with some of its products. Apple TV most notably has the ability to stream content from your iTunes library to your television without having to physically transfer large video files from your host computer to the Apple TV. And because of the prices of Solid State Drive technology Apple is unable to increase hard drive capacities on its flash-based devices, such as the iPhone and most of the iPod line, users are unable to transfer their large music and video libraries onto these devices.

So what would a service like Lala.com do to remedy this problem? They provide the storage and stream the content to your device over your internet connection (or mobile network). So now instead of selecting a subset of your music library to import onto your iPhone you simply sync your iTunes library data with this new service and instantly have access to all of your music instantly. And it wouldn’t stop at iPhones and iPods either, you can bet this service would be hugely popular for media center products like the Apple TV who’s hard drive is much too small for the average digital media collection. Many folks who’ve gone DVD-less are filling 1TB+ drives so quickly that most storage solutions aren’t large enough, even their home PC.  It’s a perfect example of cloud computing and truly a great idea if they’re looking to add value to Mobile Me.

I called up AppleCare and after they walked me through many of the steps I had just tried again for good measure they made me an appointment at my local Apple Store so they could have a look and, if need be, send it in for repairs. I show up at the store a couple of days later, give them my laptop so they can have a look and eventually the guy tells me that he’s going to order a new hard drive and logic board for me and send it in for repairs and that I should have it back within a week. Much to my surprise I find out that I wont have to drive an hour back to Indianapolis to pick it up either because they now ship repaired products directly back to the customer!

Six days later the FedEx guy shows up and I have a very carefully packaged 17″ MacBook Pro that has been cleaned very thoroughly and more importantly works like a brand new computer. The best part about all of this is the fact that were it not for AppleCare these repairs would have costed me nearly $1300 for parts alone!!! With AppleCare it was completely covered.

Extending the network reach

We’ve got a large wireless network setup at the house currently but the signal wasn’t quite strong enough to reach to the back end of the garage, so I took one of the Airport Expresses I had lying around and plugged it in out by the receiver and a 2nd Airport Express towards the front of the garage to bridge the gap between my router and the one hooked up near the receiver. I set the “bridge” AE to extend my existing wireless network and the receiver’s AE to join my existing network and enabled AirTunes. I had a nice strong signal so I used an 1/8″ stereo to stereo RCA cable it hooked it from the receiver’s AE to the AUX input on the back of the receiver and was able to setup iTunes to play my music from my MacPro through my receiver in the garage, which was cool enough but I wanted a way to be able to change songs from the garage without going inside to interact with iTunes, and then it hit me.

The iTunes Remote Control

If you’re fortunate enough to have an iPhone you have access to one of the most amazing apps created for the device. It’s called Remote and it’s probably the best example of a sleeper app I’ve ever seen. I had downloaded it (it’s free) from the App Store but never really had a use for it until now. With Remote you’re able to connect to your iTunes library (as well as your Apple TV) and control the playback of songs. What’s amazing is that is also gives you a wonderful artwork view, ability to control AirTunes speakers, search your iTunes library, edit playlists and more. So instantly I had this amazingly powerful remote that allowed me to access and playback music sitting inside on my computer and hear it outside in the garage through my receiver and the sound quality was excellent.

The other bonus is that I now have wi-fi access out in the garage should the need ever come up

My wife recently purchased an Apple TV for me as a birthday present. I was very excited as I’ve wanted one since they released the 2.0 update which no longer required that you have a computer connected to it in order to watch/buy/rent movies from iTunes.

Since then I’ve converted my entire DVD collection to my computer for instant access on the Apple TV, purchased more than a few movies and TV shows from the iTunes Store and have spent far more time than I expected browsing YouTube videos. But there’s something missing…

I’ve been a Netflix user for several years now. A year or so ago they announced the ability to watch many of their library videos directly on their website instantly, which was huge. The cost of the membership seemed instantly more worthwhile. The only downside is it’s windows only (due to DRM issues) and while I don’t mind setting up a Windows partition on my Mac Pro I’d prefer to not have to reboot my computer to take advantage of this great feature. So this got me thinking, will we ever see the ability to watch Netflix movies directly from the Apple TV?

The Roku set-top box (and soon the XBox 360, if you have an XBox LIVE Gold membership) offers this ability right now, but that’s the ONLY ability it has. No online store for buying movies, no access to movies on your computer, nothing. I would love to have the ability to browse and play the titles Netflix has available for online streaming directly from my Apple TV. This would not only bring incredible value to my Netflix membership but (I think) would also dramatically increase the appeal of the Apple TV.

Netflix has announced that their online streaming service will be available to Mac users before the end of the year; could this mean the ability to watch Netflix movies on the Apple TV isn’t far behind? Oh please let it be so!

I left Thursday morning and drove to the AT&T store in Muncie Indiana. It was the closest place I could find that actually carried the iPhone. The company I work for offered to purchase the phone for me so I was off to pick it up and get it setup right away.

The features of the iPhone have been discussed ad nauseum and frankly I’m tired of hearing all of the feature overviews. What I will say is that The iPhone is an incredible device. It’s the first gadget I’ve ever used that actually exceeds the hype and marketing surrounding it. What’s so amazing about it? Everything works exactly as you might expect. The interface is so clean and simple and inviting and even for a person like myself with large hands it’s easy to navigate around without hitting the wrong buttons.

Here are a few of the things I’ve loved about the iPhone that I didn’t expect:

1. It brings new value and enjoyment to apps already on my computer
   I’ve always used iCal and Address Book for managing events and contacts, but neither was an app that I used every day. The fact is that I wanted a way to access that information even if I wasn’t on the computer. Until I didn’t have a way to do so. Now if I create an even in iCal and set an alarm it’s transferred to my iPhone and I get a friendly little sound when the alarm is triggered. My contacts are all synced to the iPhone and are instantly accessible with the tap of a finger. I’m especially excited about the ability to have a nice photo of all of my contacts that is displayed any time I receive or make a call to that person. Very cool indeed.

2. Truly usable portable video player
   I was pretty skeptical about whether or not I would actually want to watch a movie on a screen that’s 3.5 inches wide. However after spending some time watching YouTube videos, podcasts and even portions of feature-length movies I have to say that I enjoy it very much.

3. Data syncing from iPhone to computer
   I never got into the whole PDA thing (maybe because my life was never complicated enough to warrant having one). However, now that I’ve got the iPhone and can quickly and easily add an event to the calendar, a contact to my Address Book or even purchase songs from the iTunes store I’m wondering how I ever lived without that ability. I thought of a song I wanted to purchase from iTunes and since I wasn’t near the computer I decided to purchase it on the iPhone. Once I returned to the computer and docked the iPhone I was happy to see that the purchased song was transferred to my music library instantly.

4. The keyboard is actually nice
   I’ve got big hands. I was somewhat worried that the small, touchy keyboard in the iPhone would be a little too small for me to comfortably type on. Much to my surprise it’s actually wonderful. I don’t do the whole double-thumb express just yet but I get by pretty quickly using a single finger. I’ve been updating Twitter, replying to emails and surfing the web (including filling out forms, wow) with ease.

Here are a few features I’d love to see on the iPhone in the future:

1. Voice activated commands
   My free LG phone from Verizon allowed me to call a contact in my address book by simply saying their name. As far as I can tell the iPhone doesn’t have this ability, however I think it’s reasonable to expect that feature in the near future.

2. One touch speed dialing
   I would love to be able to display the keypad, hit the number 1 and have it automatically call my wife. Again, a feature that my LG phone had that seems absent from the iPhone. The favorite contacts list is nice but it’s a little difficult to use if you’re not looking at the phone.

3. A more robust iTunes mobile store
   Don’t get me wrong, the fact that I can purchase songs with my phone is awesome. Since I had never owned a smart phone before now this isn’t something I ever expected to have on a portable device. However it’s obviously a very watered down version of iTunes. From what I’ve seen you can’t access/subscribe to podcasts, preview/download music videos or movies or tv shows and I believe audiobooks are missing as well. I know that most of these are high bandwidth items but it would be nice if they were at least available if someone wanted to purchase them. How cool would it be if you could order a movie on your iPhone and when you returned home you find that it has been downloaded to your computer/Apple TV?

So, in short the iPhone is wonderful. I’m so thankful that my employer was gracious enough to allow me to get one and I can’t wait to start developing for it!!! Have an iPhone? I’d love to hear your thoughts on what you like and what improvements you’d like to see.

In addition if you’re looking for a great way to keep up with the announcements at the keynote at 12:00pm EST today you have many options:

• A live video feed of the keynote will be provided by Cunning.tv
• The audio podcast Help iGot a Mac will be broadcasting live during the keynote via Talkshoe
• The traditional live text-based updates via MacRumors.com
• Live text-based updates via Engadget

There are many others but those should be enough to get you started.

Feel free to post a comment on this entry OR shoot me an email at evan-at-evanagee.com and we’ll get things rolling. I’d love to have some input from everyone so feel free to include any thoughts you might have about how an Apple User Group might be useful to you.

For the last few months I’ve been using Quicksilver, “a unified, extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music and other data.â€? I originally downloaded it after I heard how it could simplify some redundant tasks like opening apps, composing emails etc. I’ve never really considered an app launcher very useful but Quicksilver has changed all of that.

You really need to try Quicksilver to see how great it is, but here’s an example of how awesome it is. Let’s say you want to open Firefox. As I have configured Quicksilver I simply press Control+Space to open the Quicksilver search, start typing Firefox and Quicksilver will automatically select Firefox as you type. If you want to start Firefox simply press Enter and it’s launched.

I highly recommend trying it out, you won’t be able to live without it after a short time.