Update: Apple to live stream it’s own media event tomorrow (9/1/10). Tune into www.apple.com at 10 AM PDT. It looks like non-Apple devices won’t be able to watch. See the press release from Apple here.

Apple is holding a media event on 9/1/10 at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, CA

There are several well placed rumors that Apple with be announcing several new items.

Most widely speculated is the Apple TV. A next generation Apple TV based on the same OS as the iPhone, in order to provide support for Apps on your TV. Rumored to be priced at just $99.

This turned out to be true, however it does not run iOS. It appears to pretty much the same as the old Apple TV which has a Front Row type of interface. Apple TV is now available for pre-order from Apple and will ship in about a month. It’s 1/4th the size of the old Apple TV and is based on a streaming data model, as it has no internal hard drive. You can rent movies and TV shows on it from iTunes, or you can stream music, video, and photos from your home computer.

Another pretty hot rumor concerns a redesign of the iPod nano that appears to have some backing from both some photographic and released protective case design evidence. It would appear that the new Nano will be smaller, square shaped designed device with a 3cm x 3cm touch screen.

This also turned out to be true. The new nano has a touch screen that is large enough to show four app style icons at one. It will be shipping from Apple in about a week.

Back to the rumor mill again after leaked photos showing a camera have popped up over the last year or so is the iPod touch. It’s new design looks to include both a back side camera and a front facing camera, microphone, updated footprint, possible 3G and even a Retina display as in the iPhone 4.

Again, also 100% true. The new iPod touch support Face Time and does have now include the Retina LCD, which is the same LCD that is in the iPhone 4. The iPod touch will also be shipping in about a week.

There also has been quite a bit of buzz concerning Apple’s desire to rent TV shows for 99 cents. I’m assuming that this will also include some tweaks to iTunes and the Apple iTunes store.

This also turned out to be true. TV shows can be rented from ABC and FOX for 99 cents and iTunes 10 was released as well to support this. Apple also announced Ping a new music based social networking site inside of iTunes where you can follow popular artists like Lady GaGa, U2, Taylor Swift, and Katy Perry.

You can watch the full event video from Apple’s own website here.

Apple today released Safari 5.0.1 to enable Safari Extensions for all users and introduced the Safari Extensions Gallery so they can quickly find and download extensions. Safari is available for both Mac and Windows.

Safari Extensions are created by third-party developers and add powerful new features to the browser, from toolbars that display live web feeds to sophisticated programs that filter web page content.

The Safari Extensions Gallery is accessible from the Safari menu or at http://extensions.apple.com. Users can download and install extensions with a single click, and there’s no need to restart the browser.

Use Software Update to download version 5.0.1.

For more information about Safari, go to http://www.apple.com/safari.

To view the Safari Extension Gallery, go to http://extensions.apple.com.

MacMedics is proud to be a sponsor of the Washington DC area InDesign User Group’s Adobe CS 5 release event for the third time!

The DC-Area InDesign User Group is once again holding an all-day, special event heralding the introduction of the latest version of Adobe’s leading creative software, CS 5. The featured presenters are:

CHRIS CONVERSE, author of the new book “Bringing Your Web Design to Life”

NOHA EDELL of Adobe Systems

MICHAEL MURPHY, creator and host of “The InDesigner” podcasts

The all-day event will be held TUESDAY, MAY 25 At the U.S. Navy Memorial Auditorium, 701 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC.

This year’s venue is smaller then the Shakespeare Theatre where it was held for the CS 4 roll out event, so reserve your seat early! You can register right here!

Before you install this or any other software update, be sure to read our Software Update/Upgrade Warning Page which can be found here.

Here’s the text from the Apple Software Update window:

The 10.6.2 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Snow Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac, including fixes for:

An issue that might cause your system to logout unexpectedly

An issue that caused data to be deleted when using a guest account.

For detailed information on this update, please visit this website: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3874.

For information on the security content of this update, please visit: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222.

After failing to meet their own self imposed deadline of late summer, AT&T has finally released MMS text messaging capability to the iPhone.

Here’s the free text message AT&T send to me this afternoon (9/26/09) at 3:03 PM

“Picture and video messaging (MMS) is now available for iPhone. Txt, pic or video msgs you send/receive are included in your msging plan and subject to the limits of your plan. To enable MMS, connect iPhone to your computer and click “Check for Update” in iTunes, then restart your iPhone.”

Here’s the screen shot from my iPhone 3G S:

Here’s the screen shot from iTunes:

Update 1/27/10: This topic was mentioned on the Apple forums. See the link here.

Apple released Snow Leopard to the public on August 28. This new version of OS X leaves behind support for the Power PC and it will only run on Intel based Macintosh computers. It’s faster, smaller in size, and much cheaper then previous Apple operating systems. At $29 it’s a good value and well worth the investment. It’s $29 for the single user, $49 for a 5 user family pack, and Tiger users can upgrade via the Mac Box Set which includes iLife ’09 and iWork ’09 as well as Snow Leopard.

Update 9/12/08: MacMedics has both Snow Leopard and Snow Leopard Family Packs in stock in both Lanham and Millersville locations.

Our initial reaction to Snow Leopard has been good, and most of the MacMedics are running it now and have been using it and testing it for some time. While we are excited for it, we have not yet begun to install it for clients just yet.

Before you take the leap to Snow Leopard (or any other update to Apple’s OS) be sure to read our software upgrade warnings page first. It can be found here, but to get the word our we’ve copied the text of the page to this Blog post.

As noted below, MacMedics also strongly recommends you have a tested and fully functional back up in place BEFORE you install any Apple system software update. Something could go wrong, and you could have a major problem on your hands. Whenever Apple releases a major update to OS X we usually see 4 or 5 clients’ hard drives die that first day. If your hard drive is dying or already unhealthy, the extra hard drive activity needed to install a major update is often all it takes to kill a hard drive. Please see our web page on the subject of hard drive failures.

For more detailed information on installing Apple system updates, please see details below.

Upgrading to Snow Leopard and/or installing any Apple OS X software update

Running a software update from Apple (or elsewhere) as soon as it pops up is not always the best plan. In our travels we very frequently see clients who have run a software update without planning ahead for it, and as a result end up with annoying issues, sudden incompatibilities, and even data loss. One thing to consider is how healthy your hard drive is overall before running an update. Never try to solve an issue such as system lock ups or crashing by installing the latest update, as symptoms like those can be exasperated by applying a software update.

Here’s our safety checklist for running software updates or installing a system upgrade.

6. Consider the possibility that major applications and/or features might be affected by an Apple software update or system upgrade.

Don’t run a software update on a production machine while on a deadline. You want to be certain that the update will not cause more problems than it was designed to fix. If your machine is working, let it continue working as is, and plan to install the update after you know it’s not going to cause any issues for you. We install the updates on our test machines here at MacMedics as soon as they are released to Apple Developers, and again when they are released to the public.

Can your hard drive handle Snow Leopard?

Installing a new OS is like taking your hard drive to the gym. It can be quite a workout for an older hard drive, and whenever a new OS comes out, we always see a few dead hard drives as a result. No matter what you do, make sure you have a back up of your data before you begin! Also, don’t forget (or skip over) the important task of TESTING your back up. Time Machine is what many clients are running, and while it works most of the time, it can suffer from issues. It’s very hard to test that a Time Machine back up is totally working, and we often find ones that don’t work. Just keep that in mind when you plan your upgrade.

Prices have dropped significantly on hard drives over the last year or so. MacMedics now recommends retiring hard drives after three years in desktops, and two years in laptops. Be sure to check out new web page to find out why you should retire your older hard drive and to learn about our 5 rules of data protection and preservation. Why take a chance with your data when faster, larger, and generally more reliable drives are available. Moving to Snow Leopard is a great opportunity to get a new drive, while at the same time insuring your data is safe.

Both MacMedics Baltimore (Millersville) and MacMedics Washington (Lanham) have ample supplies of Apple’s Snow Leopard (Mac OS 10.6) in stock. Stop by to pick one up.

The MacMedics office in Millersville will be open tomorrow, Saturday 8/29 from 10 to 1.

Apple released Leopard 10.5.8 today. MacMedics always recommends that you don’t install Apple software updates right away. See all of the details on our software update warnings webpage for the reasons for that advice.

10.5.8 DOES include some security updates, so it is an update that we’d like to see get installed as soon as it’s clear that it’s not going to cause any major problems. And, it should probably be noted that 10.5.8 includes Safari 4.0.2. If for some reason anybody has been avoiding Safari 4, they would not want to apply this update.

Follow MacMedics on Twitter for our up to the second advice on this update.

Here’s what Apple posted in Software Update regarding 10.5.8:

The 10.5.8 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac, as well as specific fixes for:

For detailed information on this update, please visit this website: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3606.
For information on the security content of this update, please visit: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222.

Blog post by Brent Amersbach, MacMedics Baltimore:

We installed 10.5.7 on a MacMedics MacBook that we use as a media center tonight, and it made a wreck of things. We did see some on-line chatter about the topic, but that seemed to have something to do with attaching a Mac to any display via DVI to HDMI cables. Regular DVI, fine. VGA, fine. DVI to HDMI, PROBLEM! 10.5.7 now apparently treats “HDMI” differently than regular monitors, and by differently we mean completely different. It wants to use oddball resolutions that add in overscan rather than the regular native resolution of the panel. To make it worse, the native resolution tends to disappear as a choice in System Preferences.

You can turn overscan off, but then your display shrinks to a rectangle in the middle of the screen with a border around it, even if the resolution you’re using is greater than native. The only fix is to use this handy piece of third party software called SwitchResX that comes in a full blown shareware version, and a free control panel version. The free version seems to do the trick. It’s mildly complicated, so be prepared to re-configure it a few time to get it the way you want:

1. Launch the app
2. Tab over to Custom.
3. Hit the + button to bring up a dialog
4. Fill in what your display’s native resolution should be
5. Enable the Use Simplified Settings checkbox and choose one of the options from the newly enabled drop down menu to its immediate right
6. Click Apply and then reboot. See if the resolution now appears in Display Preferences
7. Repeat steps 5-6 until one of those drop down choices makes the custom resolution appear as an option.

If none of the three “simplified” choices work, you may be able to get it working by tweaking the settings manually, but this is for very advanced users only.

In short, if anyone has a Mac attached to a TV or even a regular monitor by HDMI, you may want to avoid 10.5.7 for the time being. See this Apple discussions thread for more details:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2004318&tstart=0

Apple released the much anticipated 10.5.7 update to Mac OS X today.

PLEASE be sure to have a fully tested backup before installing the update. Also, unplug that backup drive and any other USB or FireWire devices before your run the 10.5.7 update. It is also a good idea to “restart” your computer BEFORE running the update, and install the 10.5.7 update before running any applications.

In general, MacMedics does not recommend that you install this update on a production machine. We also suggest that you not install the update the very same day it comes out, in case the update is recalled for any reason.

See our update warnings page for all of the things to watch out for.

http://www.macmedics.com/updates.htm

Also, see our full 10.5.7 post from a few days ago: http://www.macmedics.com/blog/?p=615