There seems to be a lot of chatter online these days regarding Apple’s intentions for the future of the Mac in light of the meteoric rise of i-devices such as the iPad and the upcoming iPhone 4. Others are discussing the role the iPad might play as a notebook replacement device. I think that both of these topics miss the point that the Mac and the iPad (along with smaller siblings, iPhone and iPod Touch) both fill needs and niches. There are a number of things that I can do on my iPad that I used to do with my Macbook Pro. The ease of access, portability, instant on and off are among some of the conveniences that the iPad fulfills. I recently listened to Dave Hamilton (Mac Observer and Mac Geek Gab Podcast) discuss the use of an iPad at an all day conference and I would agree that it is an awesome device to use when you are moving from keynote to workshop, etc. at a conference. Another writer for The Mac Observer, Ted Landau writes:

These are not one-or-the-other alternatives. There’s room for both.

An analogy that fits well here is the microwave oven. When microwaves first arrived, manufacturers attempted to market them as a complete alternative to the traditional oven. Cookbooks showed how you could cook virtually anything in a microwave — from steaks to cakes. The sell didn’t work. People quickly discovered that microwaves could not do it all — at least not well. Traditional ovens never disappeared. Yet, microwaves became a huge success — because it did many things better than a traditional oven. Today, nearly every home has both a traditional and a microwave oven.

Read the rest of Ted’s article at

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/the_mac_lives/?utm_campaign=shorturl

A month or two back, I changed how Facebook imports my tweets. I tweet quite often, so I didn’t want it to automatically use every tweet as a status update. To solve this, I began using Selective Twitter Status. This allows me to manually choose which tweets are posted to Facebook by appending the hashtag “#fb” to the tweets I’d like posted.

This inadvertently caused the tweets that were automatically generated by my blog posts to cease being sent to Facebook. Doh I usually generate a fair amount of traffic from my Facebook friends seeing a blog post in my status updates, so this morning I decided I wanted to fix this somehow. Here is the really simple solution I came up with, using Twitter Tools 1.6:

via LenFlack.com » WordPress and Selective Twitter Status for Facebook.

Now what about Twitter? I find Twitter to be a kind of taunt: “Okay, truth-lover, see what you can do with 140 characters! You say your mission is to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things! Well, this is one of those ‘all things.’ Can you magnify Christ with this thimble-full of letters?”

To which I respond:

The sovereign Lord of the earth and sky

Puts camels through a needle’s eye.

And if his wisdom see it mete,

He will put worlds inside a tweet.

So I am not inclined to tweet that at 10AM the cat pulled the curtains down. But it might remind me that the Lion of Judah will roll up the heavens like a garment, and blow out the sun like a candle, because he just turned the light on. That tweet might distract someone from pornography and make them look up.

I’ve been tweeting anonymously for a month mainly to test its spiritual and family effects on me. In spite of all the dangers, it seems like a risk worth taking. “All things were created through Christ and for Christ” (Colossians 1:16). The world does not know it, but that is why Twitter exists and that’s why I Tweet.

Read more here: Why and How I Am Tweeting :: Desiring God Christian Resource Library.

Josh Harris has done us a good service. He explains why many of us think it’s a bad idea to “tweet” while participating in corporate worship. That is, we think you should use Twitter before and after corporate worship to say what you take in and take out. But when you are in corporate worship, Worship! There is a difference between communion with God and commenting on communion with God.

Don’t tweet while having sex. Don’t tweet while praying with the dying. Don’t tweet when your wife is telling you about the kids. There’s a season for everything. Multitasking only makes sense when none of the tasks requires heart-engaged, loving attention.

There is an assumption that Josh and I share, which is not understood or embraced by all. Preaching and hearing preaching are worship. Preaching is expository exultation. The preacher is explaining the Bible and applying the Bible and EXULTING over the truth in the Bible. The listener is understanding, and applying, and joining in the exultation. Hearing preaching is heart-felt engagement in the exposition and exultation of the Word of God.

via More on Not Using Twitter During Worship Services :: Desiring God.

More than half of the computers at offices in the United States run all the time, including overnight, wasting potentially billions of dollars in energy costs. But many of us have been told to leave those computers on so the machines can update at night. So should we keep our computers on or off?

via Good Question: When Should I Turn Off My Computer? – wcco.com.

As the title suggests, v0.24.1 includes the first elements of Facebook integration into TweetDeck. This integration consists of two elements.

Firstly you can click on the Facebook icon at the top and, once you have signed into Facebook and given TweetDeck authorisation, this will add a new column full of each of your friends most recent status update which updates automatically once a minute. From here you can email the update out to anyone, tweet it out over twitter, view the users online status and if they are online right now click on their name (or the green online status indicator) to open Facebook chat right within TweetDeck.

The author also notes regarding this release…

This release is not being pushed out to everyone right now since it is still being tested. Do feel free to install it directly from http://tweetdeck.com/beta/TweetDeck_0_24_1.air but be aware this is very beta software and is at your own risk. If you are not comfortable with this then please wait for the next major release where this functionality will be rolled up and better tested.

via TweetDeck v0.24.1 Pre-Release: Facebook Integration – TweetDeck’s posterous.

As I looked through the specs for the new Mac Pro, iMac, and Mac mini lineup, one thing struck me: FireWire 400 appears to be essentially dead—at least as far as Apple is concerned. With the release of these new Macs, Apple sells just one machine with a FireWire 400 port—the low-end white MacBook. Otherwise, it’s either FireWire 800 or (in the case of the unibody MacBook and MacBook Air) no FireWire at all.

via FireWire 400 reaches the end of the line | Networking | Editors’ Notes | Macworld.

Later in the day, when I returned, I turned my phone back on. It displayed the white apple logo for an unusually long time and then it showed the image of the USB cable with a note that the iPhone need to be restored. What? At least I have my iPhone backed up so other than the mild inconvenience, no worries. I tried to plug my iPhone into my Mac and start up iTunes to do a restore. After waiting a few minutes, I received an error message in iTunes stating: “iTunes cannot activate your iPhone because the SIM card is not inserted or a SIM PIN is required.” OK, this is a little more serious than I thought. Now what do I do. Part of what I do for a living involves troubleshooting technical issues. I am a good troubleshooter, I even enjoy troubleshooting problems. This however was new territory for me. First step, ‘google’ the error message and see if anyone else has run into this problem and find out what steps they took to resolve it. I found an entry on Apple’s support site that said I should use a paperclip and eject the SIM card and make sure there was no dust, etc. I tried that step twice with no resolution. I tried a reset of the iPhone by holding both the sleep and home buttons for more than 10 seconds until the phone reset and the Apple logo appeared. Keeping my fingers crossed and waiting rather impatiently by now, I watched as the same unfriendly screen came up showing the USB sync cable with a message saying I needed to restore. By now I was thinking my iPhone had gone bad. I didn’t consider that there was a problem with the SIM. It is just a piece of cardboard with a chip on it – no moving parts. I hopped online on my MacBook Pro and searched for the nearest Apple Store to Sebring. There was one in Brandon just outside of Tampa, one in Naples, several in Miami, but the closest one was in Orlando at the Florida Mall. I scheduled a reservation with an Apple Genius at 12:15 p.m. and for the first time since last August, I was iPhoneless. I kept trying the rest of the day to see if it would recover from this malady but each time I ended up with the same USB cable and message screen.

Saturday morning, after a run and haircut, I headed off to Orlando with Dad and Emilee to keep me company. We arrived at the Florida Mall with 5 minutes to spare. After a long walk, I found the Apple Store and moseyed up to the Genius Bar to wait my turn. The young Genius that assisted me was very good and helpful. He talked through the whole process of possible problems and fixes. He said that most of the time, it was in fact the SIM card that was the problem. The first thing he would do, was perform a factory reset and see if it recovered. He also used some compressed air to blow off both the SIM card and the compartment in the iPhone which held it. I learned something new at this point. The type of “factory reset” that he did involved the same steps I had taken with an additional step. He held both the sleep and home buttons until the phone turned off. Then he pressed the home button and held it until he plugged the iPhone into the Macbook he was using. This forced the iPhone to “completely” reset and restore. It took a while but eventually, my iPhone came back to life. I tried a few test calls and all seem to be in working order. When I got back home, I restored my iPhone with my latest backup. That process took about an hour or so. When finished, I had all of my applications, data, and iPod media back on the iPhone. The only lasting issue was that all of my application icons were now alphabetically arranged on 9 pages of iPhone screens. Rearranging them back to where I originally had them took a while longer, but at least I was back up and running.

I was surprised at how much this device had become an integrated part of my life. My email, calendar, todo list, Bible, as well as a bunch of other tools and references were tied up with this device. It makes me wonder what I might do if I was traveling to a place where I did not readily have an Apple Store available.

I read the iPhone: The Missing Manual: Covers the iPhone 3G by David Pogue and it served as a “user guide” to most things iPhone. I recently bought Andy Ihnatko’s 2nd Edition of iPhone Fully Loaded expecting it to be a tool to fill in some missing holes but mostly a repeat of the information in Pogue’s book. WRONG! Andy has a first class way of delivering information from every nook and cranny. I have listened to Andy on podcasts such as MacBreak Weekly and I regularly read his blog so I knew what to expect by way of humor. What I did not expect was his fantastic way of delivering bits of information and tips that feel like a friend inside of the business ‘whispering and waving for you to come over here so he can show you something few others know about.’ I kept a notebook nearby while reading Andy’s book so I could jot down every tidbit of information he shared. If you can afford to buy two books about the iPhone, then get iPhone Fully Loaded (2nd ed.) and iPhone: The Missing Manual by David Pogue. If you can only afford to get one, get this one (sorry, David!)

My Amazon review