I finally got around to setting up my new iMac on Wednesday. A new computer had been on the cards for a while as mine was 5-6 years old and I do use it everyday in a professional capacity as a freelance website designer.
I’ve always been a Mac user, starting way back with a family-owned Mac LC then my own LC 475 with a whopping 40Mb hard drive! I then upgraded to a Performa 6400 whilst at university and then an eMac. Followed by a short-lived Powerbook and then my Dual-Processor 2 Ghz G5 PowerMac which has been a reliable workhorse for a while.
I did think about getting another Tower based Mac, the Mac Pro but they aren’t cheap so ended up buying an iMac, and the bottom of the range one at that with a 21.5 inch built in screen, Core 2 Duo processor at 3.06Ghz and 8GB of RAM. I know it is still pretty expensive and I have thought of changing over to a Windows based PC to save some money on the purchase of the computer in the past. This time though that wasn’t an option and at just a little over £800 it wasn’t much more expensive than a comparable PC.
It arrived last week but I didn’t set it up straight away as I was in the middle of a website design project. I finished that and launched the site on Tuesday so set up the iMac on Wednesday. First of all I made several complete cloned back-ups of my PowerMac, and tested the back-ups by booting from them.
Then came the unboxing which with Apple packaging is always a pleasant affair. I may be a bit of a Apple fan, but there’s no denying that they do make good looking kit. It was then time to crawl under my desk and do battle with the spaghetti mess of cables. I unplugged everything from the PowerMac except one back up drive and plugged it into the iMac. The came the moment of truth, time to switch it on.
Apple Goodness
Bong, that familiar start up chime, and up popped Snow Leopard on my new computer. So far so good, it automatically found the funky new bluetooth ‘magic Mouse’ and keyboard and paired with them on its own and then started asking me some set up questions. This is where I hit my first problem. I tried typing in my name, but the middle row of letter on the keyboard didn’t work. I tried a few things but it was definitely broken so I called the AppleCare number and arranged for a replacement to be delivered to me.
Luckily I had a USB keyboard so plugged that in and continued with the set-up. There was actually very little that needed to be done and within 5 minutes I was up and running with my new computer and new operating system.
The upgrade involved changing from the G5 chipset to the Intel chips and a jump from Tiger to Snow Leopard (10.4 – 10.6) so I didn’t use the Migration Assistant built into the OS to transfer all of my ‘stuff’ from the old computer but did it manually. This did take a bit of time, but it was easy enough to do. With one of the back up drives from my old computer attached to the iMac I simply copied stuff across. This included all of my documents, music, videos etc. The applications were a little more complicated as I wanted to install them afresh, but also copy across all of my settings etc. It wasn’t too bad though, I installed the app, copied across its folder from the Application Support directory and from the preferences directory and for the most part that was all that was needed.
All was up and running and Time Machine had kicked in and stared backing my new computer up too.
The only thing that took a bit of time was setting up my web-server. OS X comes with Apache and PHP built in, but I had to remind myself how to enable PHP and how to change the Apache Configuration files so that it would process Server Side Includes etc. on my local machine. A bit of Googling and some config file changes and all was working just the way I wanted it.
Speed
I’m quite pleased with it so far. It is faster than my old machine. Benchmarks tests suggest that it is about twice the speed and although it is noticeably faster it isn’t a huge jump. That’s to be expected though as I went from a top of the range pro-user PowerMac to a bottom of the range consumer iMac. It is fine for what I need to do and the fact that I’m up to date with an Intel chip and the latest operating system means that I can at least run modern software.
I had to upgrade to a newer version of Photoshop (which added a little extra cost), but it is good to be up to date.
It did grind to a bit of a halt at one point yesterday. Investigation showed two processes were hogging the CPU and some research pointed to Spotlight indexing. I checked and at the time Spotlight was indexing an external volume attached to the iMac. I switched off spotlight indexing on internal volumes and it seemed to cure the problem.
The whole migration was a little stressful. I’d been putting it off for over a year simply because I didn’t like the prospect of moving everything from one computer to the other and getting everything set up just the way I wanted it. I don’t know why such things get me stressed. I know what I’m doing and always have back-ups and back-up plans, but I still don’t look forward to it so I’m now glad that it is done.
I’m sure there will be a few little things that I need to adjust and a few new features of the OS that I need to get used to. I’m also still waiting for the replacement bluetooth keyboard so that I can free my desk of another wire but I’m now up and running and there’s no looking back!
I know, I know, now isn’t the time to buy and don’t worry I shall wait until WWDC in June just in case anything new is announced, but my Dual processor G5 Powermac is feeling a little long in the tooth now so I shall be upgrading soon.
The G5 actually does everything I want it to, but moving across to the Intel based chips and a newer operating system is overdue so that I don’t get left behind.
Question is, should I get a superfast shiny new PowerMac, a middle of the line iMac or would a super small and less expensive Mac Mini do the trick?
The PowerMac would of course be more than enough horsepower for me and has the advantage of being easily upgradable so I could stuff lots of RAM in it and just let it get on with whatever I throw at it. Having something that is a little more powerful than I really need also adds some longevity to the product meaning I won’t need to upgrade for a while again. I already have two monitors as well so I’ll be able to continue using those (although I may need adaptors for them). It is of course very expensive. Having a Quad-core processor and 6GB of Ram does sound tempting though, if only money were no object!
The iMac looks nice and is a little cheaper. I’d go for the 24″ model with 4GB of RAM, which should be enough. I’d like more but the upgrade to 8GB is just too expensive. The dual core chip would of course be quite an upgrade over my 2Ghz G5′s, especially if I went for the 3.06Mhz model. The downsides are that I’d be paying for a monitor that I don’t really need. But then, it is a nice 24″ Apple monitor!
Then there’s the Mac Mini.. A lot cheaper, but would it be sufficient? How would the 2.26Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo chip compare to my 2 x 2Ghz G5 chips? It might be a lot cheaper but would it be a worthwhile upgrade? Also 4GB of RAM is the most you can add. Probably plenty for now, but its always good to have the option to upgrade. Also, does it have a sufficient video card to power my dual monitor set-up.
Decisions decisions! I could of course just save my money and stick with what I have. I think I’ll at least wait until after WWDC and until Snow Leopard is out. At lest that way I’ll get the latest version of the OS with whatever I decide to buy.
I’ve recently decided to try to get a little fitter again, so as well as buying some gadgets I wanted some software to track my progress (or lack of progress as it may turn out to be). I’ve been looking at various applications for the Mac and evaluating them so thought I’d share my thoughts on some of them here. Hopefully it will give others in my position an idea of which applications will be best for them.
My main objective was to use the software to record any training sessions so that I could look back over time and see improvements. keeping such a journal also helps with motivation. My first port of call was a journal and scheduler on the Nike website. It was very nice, had a nice Flash based interface and did many of the things I wanted it to do, but really I wanted to be able to store the data locally so the next apps I looked at were iSmartTrain and WeightMania.
iSmartTrain
iSmartTrain allows you to manually enter data about your training sessions, or download them from a compatible (Polar) Heart Rate Monitor. It has a nice Mac style interface, (although it isn’t a full cocoa-based app) and I really like the main calendar view which allows you to see all of your sessions colour coded according to the type of activity (running, swimming, cycling etc.). The calendar view then has a nice weekly summary showing your weekly stats for training duration, distance, number of sessions, calories burned and a few other bits if info.
Also in its favour is the way it presents the graphs, allowing you to see most of this data in a nice clear format so that you can see the number of sessions, distance, time etc for each activity over a set period of weeks or months. All very clear and easy to use and at first I thought this would be the package for me.
iSmartTrain also allows you schedule events for the future, further helping to keep you motivated.
However, after the purchase of my Forerunner 305 (GPS and Heart Rate Monitor) iSmartTrain became less attractive as it isn’t compatible with Garmin devices and doesn’t have any mapping facility to show you the routes you have been on. For those without such a device though it could be ideal.
WeightMania is a huge app with so many options it is difficult to know where to start. More than just a training log, it is a complete lifestyle log allowing you to record not only your activities but also every single calorie, gram of fat, carbohydrate and anything else you eat as well as probably every bodily function you could possibly think of! It really does have it all, including a huge database of food types with their typical nutritional values. It also has tools such as body fat calculators, BMI calculators, BRM calculators and many more, and even goes as far as having recipe managers and grocery lists. For those of you who want to record and manage your entire lifestyle this tool does it all.
The Mac version has a nice modern interface and despite its numerous functions is relatively easy to use. You can of course just ignore the bits you aren’t interested in if you wish.
For me it was just overkill though and once again without compatiility for GPS mapping and connectivity to the Forerunner it wasn’t quite right for me. I also felt that I would spend so much time trying to record everything that there would be little time left to actually get out there and do some training.
To help keep me motivated I bought myself a new gadget, a Forerunner 305 GPS and heart rate monitor, armed with this my requirements from my software app changed a little. I now needed compatibility with the Forerunner 305 and something that would take advantage of some of its features. Garmin Training Centre software is a free download, so that made it attractive to start with, but once I started playing with it I found it a little limiting.
The maps produced are basic to say the least and the overall appearance and usability isn’t great. It is also lacking in features and just not quite up to scratch. I have to admit to not having explored its potential fully, but part of that is simply because it didn’t inspire me.
Ascent
Ascent is described as ‘GPS trainomg for the Macintosh’ and is fully compatible with the Garmin GPS devices. Simply plug in the device, and sync it with Ascent and your latest training sessions are added to the journal. Not only that but it overlays your route onto a Google Earth map and produces traces of your heart rate, speed, pace etc. All very interesting and it all works well.
The app itself is very Mac-like, but it does have a few little interface peculiarities that you need to get used to. For example, clicking on a toolbar icon with an downwards pointing triangle which normally indicates that the button contains a drop down list, performs an action. To get the drop down list you need to click and hold. Other than this it seems to do exactly what I want it to and does it very well. The maps are great as are the data screens and your training sessions can be viewed in a list or in a calendar view.
Also in its favour is the fact that it is still being actively developed and the developer is approachable and answers questions quickly via his forum. This is the app that I have decided to use and have now coughed up the registration fee for. However, there are still some improvements I would like to see.
The calendar view s OK, but I think it could display more info, entries could be colour-coded by activity and it would also benefit from a weekly summary similar to that of iSmartTrain. Also, the Summary graphs are very limited. and not very well presented. You can’t determine the period of data that is displayed, you can only select a weekly or a monthly view and you can’t distinguish between activites either. Instead all activites are grouped together and the total distance, time etc is displayed whereas I would like to see the total distance ran separately to the total distance cycled. Hopefully such things will be added / improved as the app continues to develop.
I also looked at this app along the way. It looks really nice and although designed as a route planning app that allows you to plan routes on a map and then upload them to your GPS device it also allows you to import and analyse your routes /workouts. It has a diary feature for recording these workouts and an exercise planner.
The app looks really nice and is under constant development, but I never quite got the hang of it. I think part of this was because I was approaching it from the point of view of recording my training rather than using it to organise and plan my training. It is certainly worth a look, but I didn’t persevere enough with it. I may take another look at this one soon though.
On paper this looked like the ideal app, all the mapping and data analysis of Ascent, coupled with the calendar and graphs views of iSmartTrain. Compatible with my Forerunner 305 and other Garmin devices and donationware too. The screenshots made it looks as though it was just what I was looking for.
Unforuntaley it just didn’t work properly. First of all you need some other software (LoadMyTracks) in order to import data from your GPS device into it and secondly I couldn’t manually enter data into it. Well, I could but I couldn’t change the date fields on it so I could only enter training sessions on the day I did them! It certainly has some potential, but was too buggy and crashed a couple of times so I soon gave up on it. I’m sure it will improve in future versions, but at the moment it wasn’t quite up to scratch which was disappointing as it looked so promising.
Summary
To round up, none of the applications were quite perfect for my needs, some came close and with a few tweaks any of them could be right, but I’m currently using Ascent and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the developers continue to improve it by adding to the graphing capabilities and improve the calendar view a little. I’m sure they will come up with other enhancements that I haven’t thought of too. lets hope that keeping a record of my activities keeps me motivated and helps me improve my overall fitness.
