I am awaiting my new Mac – MacPro, 3.33GHz, 6 core Westmere processor, with 32GB RAM, 8.2TB internal storage (4 x 2TB HDD + 240GB SSD), two 27″ Apple LED Cinema displays, and 10TB of external eSATA storage. I’ve been spending a lot of time over at Macintosh Performance Guide, reading all about hardware, performance and such. This configuration is the result. I’ll post some some results once I get it configured and burnt-in. Until now I have discovered that the internal HDD of my 2008 iMac is quite slow. Even the external FW800 drive is faster. External HDD gives me 67MB/sec transfers whereas internal HDD is only god for 51MB/sec or so. I will not mention USB and Time Capsule transfers. They disappoint even more. Let’s just say they are slower than 30MB/sec. To put it all into perspective, it took just under 8 hours to clone my iMac boot drive (630GB of data).

So, once the new Mac arrives, I’ll have to put in all the goodies (HDDs, RAM, SSD), do some stress testing on the RAM and CPU, test various RAID configurations for the internal drives to get the highest transfer rate. Once this works, I’ll move my data and I should be ready to go.

I have enjoyed the iMac very much, but I have outgrown it with all the photos I am taking and such. More to follow…

I’ve upgraded the memory in my 8.1 iMac to the maximum allowed 6Gb (even though officially 4Gb is the limit 6Gb works. See here for details).

Everything works perfectly OK. And I experience no paging at all when working in Lightroom. Bliss. Bear in mind that newer iMacs will take up to 16Gb of RAM without any problems.

–
Without wax,
yOOrek

Thinking of increasing my working space with the Apple LED cinema display. This way I will have 2x 24″ to play with my photos.
–
Without wax,
yOOrek

To cut the long story short – clean all the air vents on your iMac to avoid overheating. There are three of them at the bottom of the casing. After close to two years of uninterrupted use my iMac started to to run a little hot. Especially so when doing some intensive photo processing in Lightroom. At first I blamed it on a hot weather we have here in Switzerland. Then I thought it might be caused by new features in Lightroom 3 (lens profiles). But the situation was getting progressively worse. To the point that I could no longer export any photos. CPU was reaching 80 degrees centigrade, HDD bay was getting towards 70. I was getting more and more warnings from the temperature monitor. Then it dawned on me that I have not done any cleaning since I bought it. All it took was a simple swipe with my hand to realize how much dust has accumulated on the vents. After the thorough cleaning with the vacuum cleaner all is back to normal. Exported close to four hundred shots in one go and the CPU has not gone over sixty five degrees. One more vent is to be found just over the mains plug. Do not forget about that one. I think it must be for the CPU but I am not sure.
–
Without wax,
yOOrek

My daughter started complaining that her iPod touch does  not respond to the volume controls and to the power button. After making sure that she is not doing something totally stupid, and that the device is still covered by the warranty, I took it to the local Apple Store.

As the genius bar was quite busy, I had to wait for about one hour and a half for my appointment but as the Apple store is located in a big shopping centre, I had no reason to complain. Went for a cup of coffee, and while drinking it had a chance to use Twitterrific on my iPhone. When my time came up I went to the Genius Bar, and after describing the symptoms, the genius decided that I will get the replacement. That means a new iPod. How nice of Apple.

Now my daughter has a brand new iPod touch, still under warranty. After bringing it home I upgraded the OS to 3.0. Costs 11CHF, here in Switzerland.
_
Without wax,
yOOrek

While playing with my new iPhone 3G S, I have discovered something I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere else.

By going to your Settings » General » Usage screen you can see a new option for battery percentage.

iPhone usage settings screen

This is what you’ll get when you set it to ON -

iPhone screen showing remaining battery percentage

Unfortunately users of older iPhones do not get to see this option.

Enjoy,
—
Without wax,
yOOrek

Up until today, there was only one iPhone in my household. This has changed. Now there are three iPhones, two of which are 3G S. And one of them is mine. I guess having two daughters helps with disposing of the old iPhone.

Moving all my contacts was easy. All I had to do was back-up my old iPhone using iTunes, then insert the SIM card into the new one. iTunes asked me if I want to restore from the backup or initialize the phone. I opted for the restore, and few minutes later I had all my contacts, messages and applications on my brand spanking new phone.

As far as my old iPhone was concerned, I erased all the contents from the Reset menu. It took about an hour to do so. Do not really know why but the process finished without a problem, and I was able to set it up as if it was a brand new one.
—
Without wax,
yOOrek

This does not bode very well, this news about Steve Jobs taking leave from Apple until June 2009. I wonder if Apple would be the same should SJ go. Let’s hope for the best as far as his health is concerned.
—
Without wax
yOOrek

Despite of what I have read on the Internet regarding iPods and Mac iTunes – namely that Windows formatted iPods can be used with Mac iTunes, my personal experience differs. Perhaps they can be used, but they definitely cannot be updated.

Anyway, I transferred the purchased music from my iPod to iTunes before restoring it and thus getting a Mac formatted iPod.

After the restore, the final sync and I can move onto syncing my iPhone.
—
Without wax,
yOOrek 

WOW, why do people even bother with Windows. OS X is so much better. Anyway after two busy days and three late night (4am late that is) my iMac is almost ready for prime time. Here is the quick list of what I have done so far -

• Initial configuration (the one you have to go through when you start your iMac for the first time)
• Run the software update until all updates are downloaded and installed
• Hook up the Time Capsule to the network. (In the end I turned the wireless off as I do not have any n devices and iMac is hooked up over ethernet directly to TC)
• Configure TC using Airport Utility
• Install and configure MS-Office 2008
• Run the first Time Machine backup (all backed up in less than two hours)
• Download and install Lightroom 2.1
• Copy around 60Gb of photos from Windows machine to iMac
• Copy Lightroom catalog and point LR to the new location of photos
• Be amazed how good my photos look on that beautiful 24″ screen
• Be even more amazed how much quicker Lightroom is
• Configure mail, iCal, and Address Book
• Download and install FireFox
• Download and install Xcode (without this one cannot edit plist files)
• Download, buy and run O2M program to convert my Outlook 2003 pst file to mbox format recognised by Mac mail. (the extraction process still runs, which is not surprising considering the size of my PST file and the fact that stupid Outlook grants access to external program only for 10 minutes)
• Find a free FTP client software. In the end I settled on CyberDuck from cyberduck.ch.
• Find a free text editor that will integrate with CyberDuck. In the end I settled on TextWrangler.
• Configure the dock with stacks for photography related apps, development apps, office apps

What is still outstanding -

• Backup my iTunes library to DVD and restore it on the iMac
• Finish configuration of Lightroom by re-installing the export plugins, web gallery templates and develop presets
• Bring over all miscellaneous documents from Windows to iMac
• Have some serious fun with the new machine

That’s it for now.
—
Without wax,
yOOrek