Nigel Harris's Mac Diary

Mac life has been pretty quiet this year, so I finally said goodbye to my ailing PC. Big mistake!

The PC has been acting as my central server, in the sense that the Internet connection and printer were attached to it. Internet is no problem - in fact it's far more reliable now that the PC has gone. Previously I was forever re-booting the router to restore the wireless connection.

 One of the few weaknesses of the MacBook seems to be the clever power supply cable. It looks very neat with its tiny magnetic connector that you sort of stick on the side of the MacBook, and the wires all coil up and clip together to make it a very neat package to carry around. However, the thin cable that connects the computer to the brick has a tendency to fail. I have friends who have got through several of these during their MacBook's life.

Macs seem to be like buses. You don't see one for ages, then two turn up in less than 6 months!

Our home PC has been driving us nuts for some time and last weekend my wife and I had enough. A quick trip over to our local PC World and after browsing the new PCs my wife spotted an iMac. That was it. The simplicity of it, combined with the stunning display had sold it to her. 

 I always thought disk and disc were inter-changeable spellings for the same thing, but apparently I was wrong, and so is my old copy of the OED.

Apple explains in a support article that a disc refers to optical removable media, such as an audio CD, CD-ROM and DVD. They may or may not be re-writeable.

The computer mouse apparently celebrated its 40th anniversary earlier this year. The Canadian navy made the first trackball device, based on a huge maple bowling ball! Xerox brought out the first serious desktop computer mouse in 1981 and Apple quickly followed suit. Since then we have seen all manner of mice and trackball devices.

I had already decided to switch to an iPhone 3GS when my current contract expires next month. Not only does it pack an impressive set of features that will enable me to handle email and diary tasks on the road, it will also save me from having to carry an iPod and satnav. But now there's a snag!

It's the killer app for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and for some reason Apple has been pipped to the post!

The new version of Mac OS X operating system is now available. It is named "Snow Leopard" since it's actually only version 10.6, so it's a neat twist on the previous version 10.5 which was just called "Leopard" (previous versions were Tiger and Panther - spot the theme?). The question is, do we need it?

Just when I thought I had the office apps issue sorted, Microsoft goes and announces two new versions of its Mac Office suite that include more enterprise-focused features and capabilities. The new Business Edition of Mac Office 2008 launches on September 15 and will include Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage plus new features that will improve the suite’s ability to work with SharePoint, Exchange and Microsoft-hosted Online services.

The excellent IT news site The Register brings a timely warning that Microsoft's latest Service pack 2 update for Office 2008 for Mac is giving some users serious problems. In some cases they can no longer open Office files created on a PC, which is a serious problem. They have suggested some pretty rubbish 'fixes' on the Microsoft website - like using an earlier version of Office to create files, like that's going to happen! A proper fix will be released some time in August.