With Macintosh’s popularity with music and video production the Cakewalk release of new driver’s for the Snow Leopard operating system brings the functionality and features of Cakewalk’s mobile studio production equipment.

Boston, MA (September 11, 2009) — Cakewalk, the world’s leading developer of powerful and easy to use products for music creation and recording, announces immediate availability of new Snow Leopard Mac Operating System (version 10.6) device drivers for the V-Studio 100 portable music production system.

Also now available are Snow Leopard hardware drivers for the UA-1G audio interface and UM-1G, UM-2G and UM-3G MIDI Interfaces. More Snow Leopard hardware drivers will be announced soon.

The introduction of the SONAR V-Studio 100 and other hardware drivers for Snow Leopard furthers Cakewalk’s commitment to making its products compatible with the Macintosh.

I’ve not heard much amazing new reasons to upgrade to the new Macintosh operating system, but I’m sure keeping your Cakewalk drivers updated are always good. Visit their website to download these new drivers and keep your Cakewalk software running at it’s top performance.

• SONAR V-Studio 100
• UA-1G Audio Interface
• UM-1G MIDI Interface
• UM-2G MIDI Interface
• UM-3G MIDI Interface

Post from: EveryJoe

Snow Leopard Drivers Available for Cakewalk’s V-Studio 100

Snow Leopard

There are applications that are essential to both my work and personal life. I use my mac a lot and can’t imagine life without it. That being said, my Mac is only as useful as the applications I have installed. So these applications are must haves for me. If I can’t make it run on Snow Leopard or find an alternative to it then Snow Leopard isn’t that much use to me.

Let’s start of things with 1Password

1Password is currently on version 2 with the latest version partially compatible with Snow Leopard. The app works as well as the extensions for the other browsers except Safari. Safari in Snow Leopard runs in 64-bit mode thus the extension for it won’t work out of the box. You need to do some tweaking to get Safari to run in 32-bit mode in order for it to run 1Password.

Version three of 1Password will run in Snow Leopard out of the box with Safari support as well. However it’s still in beta mode with the final release set to launch at the end of the year. Agile Web Solutions, makers of 1Password currently has a promo for early bird upgraders. The license will only set you back $19.95 as opposed to $29.95 when it gets released. Buying now will get you access to the 3.0 beta.

Cost of upgrade – $19.95 (promo)

Next on my list is Adium. Both Adium 1.3.6 and 1.4 beta 9 work on Snow Leopard and Adium is free.

Cost of upgrade – nada

Adobe CS3

This suite of applications is the major workhorse of most Grahic/Web/Multimedia professionals in both Windows and Mac platforms. According to reports CS3 has minor bugs in Snow Leopard, Particularly Photoshop and Dreamweaver. I’m really more particular with Photoshop and Illustrator since those are the apps that I used. Adobe says the flaws are not critical and you can still use the Adobe CS3 apps.

Adobe CS4 is good to go for Snow Leopard.

So, Adobe CS3 for the most part should be ok for Snow Leopard but if you’re really a stickler for these things you’d probaly want to upgrade to CS4. In my case if I was to upgrade I would probably go and buy the Adobe Design Premium at a cost of $599.

Cost of upgrade – $599

Coda is one of the apps I use for designing web sites. The version I have is 1.6.4 and according to reports it is compatible with Snow Leopard. There’s an available upgrade to 1.6.5 that fixes some bugs.

Cost of upgrade – nada

CSSEdit is one of the apps that I really can’t live without. Since I code websites as my main job, this app literally paid for itself. The latest version supports Snow Leopard

Cost of upgrade – nada

FireFox is my main browser. Sure Safari is faster but Firefox just has a lot of extensions I use for work and so this is really my browser of choice. It works on Snow Leopard with some minor bugs reported. FireFox is free.

Cost of upgrade – nada

MAMP PRO is my server environment of choice. Thank god it’s also supported on Snow Leopard.

Cost of upgrade – nada

Microsoft Office 2008 is still my default office suite, however iWork is getting more and more work time with me. It works though with Snow Leopard although there are some reports that it is sluggish.

Cost of upgrade – nada

Parallels is an essential app because it allows me to run Windows on a Mac. It’s important because let’s face it majority of computer users all over the world still use the Windows operating system and as such, I need to test web sites on this platform. I currently have version 3.0 installed and it sucks that it’s not supported in Snow Leopard. I need to upgrade to 4.0. The upgrade will set me back $39.99 after a $10 dollar discount due to their ongoing promo. This is a must have. If I upgrade to Snow Leopard, I need to forkout the moolah because well… I just need it for work.

Cost of upgrade – $39.99

TextMate’s latest build for Snow Leopard works fine. This is my text editor of choice. All my web projects are coded with TextMate. So it’s also a must have.

Cost of upgrade – nada

Skype is one of the apps I use for communicating with clients. Along with Adium this gets me through most of my communication needs save for email. Skype’s latest build works with Snow Leopard.

Cost of upgrade – nada

Transmission is my bit-torrent client. The latest version is supported by Snow Leopard.

Cost of upgrade – nada

Transmit works in Snow Leopard with some warnings. It seems that automator actions do not work. I don’t use automator actions so as long as the file transfer works I’m ok.

Cost of upgrade – nada

Versions is one of the latest apps I’ve added to my toolbox. So I would really be bummed if I had to pay for an upgrade or if it didn’t work. Good thing it looks like it’s good to go for Snow Leopard.

Cost of upgrade – nada

VLC is freeware and it works. So this is not a problem.

Cost of upgrade – nada

While most of my apps will work on Snow Leopard, there are still 3 apps that might cause a potential problem. Of the three, two of them can be run with Snow Leopard albiet with some problems. Minor and workable. The one app I have that won’t work is Parallels which is really a bummer because apart from the upgrade cost I paid for Snow Leopard I will need to fork out $40 bucks for the upgrade. Bringing my total upgrade cost to $78. This is the minimum. If I want to upgrade to CS4 this will add to it significantly. But since CS3 is still workable I might hold out on this.

$78 is still not a high cost to pay for an upgrade of the OS however given the trying times it’s still added expense that I could otherwise save on. Being the Mac addict that I am… all reason flies out the window. So I guess it’s time to backup my files and find time to upgrade.

How much will upgrading to Snow Leopard going to cost you?

Post from: EveryJoe

My Cost of Upgrading To Snow Leopard

Disk Utility Menu

Now, I tried moving my Time Machine back up before from a 200GB hard drive to my 500GB and I thought it was just as simple as dragging the files and resuming it from the new drive. Boy, was I wrong. Lesson learned.

Luckily transferring your Time Machine backup to another drive isn’t such a pain. The easiest way I’ve found out how to do this is to make an exact clone of your backup drive onto the new one. It will be the same except it has more space. There are third party apps to help you do this but Disk Utility works fine too.

Here’s how I did it.

1. Open up Disk Utility
2. Select the Restore option
3. On the left side of the window you’ll see icons for the various drives you have mounted. It’s usually your internal drive, the old external drive and the new one.
4. Drag the old external drive to the source input in the window, drag the new drive to the destination window. Make sure you check the erase destination option. I had problems when that was unchecked. It didn’t want to push through.
5. Hit the Restore button and go find something else to do. This will take some time. Mine took several hours including the verification process.

There you go. You should have your old Time Machine backups on your new drive. You can resume your backups on the new one.

Post from: EveryJoe

Moving Your Time Machine Backups

CUPERTINO, California—August 24, 2009—Apple® today announced that Mac OS® X v10.6 Snow Leopard™ will go on sale Friday, August 28 at Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers, and that Apple’s online store is now accepting pre-orders. Snow Leopard builds on a decade of OS X innovation and success with hundreds of refinements, new core technologies and out of the box support for Microsoft Exchange. Snow Leopard will be available as an upgrade for Mac OS X Leopard® users for $29.

With pre-orders being accepted it’s just a matter of days before the world has its hands on the latest iteration of Apple’s much acclaimed operating system.

Snow Leopard

Instead of bringing a boatload of new features, Apple chose to instead rewrite most of the operating system to improve user experience and performance. On the surface to the untrained user there will be little noticeable differences from Leopard to Snow Leopard but under the hood performance is vastly improved. This improves performance of applications significantly.

Snow Leopard also comes with support for Microsoft’s Exchange Server 2007, a first for a consumer oriented desktop operating system.

There are a lot of things to like about Snow Leopard, from faster performance, a totally new Quicktime application all the way to Expose being integrated to the dock. However, the thing I like most is the price. With a $29 price tag for current Leopard users, upgrading is dirt cheap. You won’t even have to think about it. Apple said they want all Mac users to upgrade to the new operating system hence the low price. Power PC users though won’t be able to experience Snow Leopard as it is only available to Intel Mac computers.

With all the good things that comes with Snow Leopard the only thing I probably don’t like about it is the box cover design. Oh well, nothing is perfect.

Read the complete press release here.

Post from: EveryJoe

Snow Leopard Roars On The 28th

WWDC 2009 - Image courtesy of Apple

New MacBook Pro Lineup

I don’t think anyone saw this coming. At least not for this event. Apple just revamped it’s MacBook Pro line. Releasing an all new 15 inch MacBook Pro which now sports a similar battery to the 17 inch. Promising battery life of up to 7 hours. Another notable thing is the swapping out of the express slot with a SD card reader.

Another thing is that the MacBook Aluminum is now rebranded as the 13 inch MacBook Pro. It shares similar specs to it’s 15″ brother. The 13 inch model also now comes with a FW800 port.

What’s also outrageous (in a good way) is that the MacBook Pros prices have been reduced significantly. The 13″ starts at $1199 while the 15″ starts at $1699.

The white polycarbonate MacBook now remains as the only MacBook model available.

MacBook Air updated

Apple also updated MacBook Air models. The new entry level MacBook Air sports a 1.86 Ghz Core 2 Duo processor with a 120GB Hard drive while the higher end model has a 2.13 Ghz Core 2 Duo processor and a 128GB Solid State Drive. The 1.86 Ghz’s price starts at $1,499 while the 2.13 Ghz is priced at $1,799. Making both of them easily the most bang-for-buck MacBook Airs yet.

Snow Leopard

A preview of Snow Leopard was demoed during the keynote. What can I say except that I’m really excited to upgrade to Snow Leopard. Apple is also making it available to exisitng Leopard users for a low low $29 for a single user license and $49 for a Family Pack. Beat that Windows!

There are a lot of great features that come with Snow Leopard, such as a rewritten Finder, Expose controls via the dock and the new Quicktime X.

However with all of these refinements I think the most important of which is Exchange support. Sure, not all will agree but I think it’s the most important feature because it now allows Macs to really compete and penetrate the corporate market. Companies rely on Microsoft Exchange for their corporate communication needs and now the Mac can play with them. That means IT companies can now adopt Macs for some if not all of their users. That will significantly help improve market share for Apple.

iPhone 3G S and iPhone 3.0 OS

The iPhone and the iPhone 3.0 OS were the most anticipated announcements of the keynote. Apple previewed the new OS which I must say is getting better all the time. I can’t believe people are actually clapping and shouting with the announcement of the copy and past feature and MMS. It’s something that people have been really clamoring for. However true to Apple form, they won’t do something unless they can do it right. I think their version of copy and paste is good and will work really well with the iPhone interface.

The 3.0 software boasts of a 100 new features. I mentioned copy and paste, other notable features are spotlight search, new Safari, landscape version of the keyboard, better parental controls, the ability to record and send audio, voice control app, etc.

What I really liked was the “Find My iPhone” feature. This is available to iPhone users who are Mobile Me subscribers as well. In the event that you lose your iPhone, you can login to Mobile Me and send your iPhone a message. It will also tell you where your iPhone is. If in fact it has been stolen and not just misplaced, you can send it a command to erase all of your data. Some people are saying that there might be a privacy issue and that people can use it to track you without your knowledge, but this technology has already been embedded in most phones sold in the US which have built-in GPS chips to help authorities track people in case of emergencies. So this is not something that’s exclusive to the iPhone.

Some very cool demos were shown during the keynote albeit there were some malfunctions or mishaps that occured. I love medical app from AirStrip CC which allows doctors to monitor patients with a remote sensor. It feeds the iPhone the relevant data of the patient and can alert doctors when certain parameters are reached. I’ve always been a proponent of better technologies for health and medical services. This looks to really be a promising one.

All in all the WWDC keynore was great. Steve didn’t make an appearance though but it’s ok. It shows that Apple can exist and put on a good show even if he’s not there. It would have been better though but the other guys at Apple still did a good job.

Post from: EveryJoe

WWDC 2009 Roundup

Apple took the wraps off some high-profile new products at the WorldWide Developer’s Conference in San Jose. Chief among them was the next upgrade in the iPhone, the iPhone 3Gs. The 3Gs is being touted as up to twice as fast as the iPhone 3G,with longer battery life, a 3 megapixel camera with autofocus, video recording, and hands-free voice control. A ton of new capabilities are built into it. The 16 gigabyte iPhone 3Gs retails for $199, with a 32 GB model for $299.

Also today, the iPhone 3G, the last generation 8 GB model, is available for an incredible $99.

Apple also unveiled updates to the MacBook, a brand new version of the company’s free web browser Safari, and the upcoming latest version of OS X, Snow Leopard, which will be available to Leopard users for just $29.

Images: Copyright 2009 ©Apple Inc.

Post from: EveryJoe

Apple unveils iPhone 3Gs, new MacBooks

Apple is poised to release it’s latest version of OS X, dubbed Snow Leopard. While it won’t have any new whiz-bang features, it will still be a major upgrade as it focus greatly on performance improvements.

Snow Leopard is a 64-bit operating system which in theory will support up to 16TB or RAM. The OS will also take advantage of two new technologies, Grand Central and Open CL who will make significant improvements in speed and performance.

This is not to say that the technologies will make apps that much faster out of the box. Significant speed improvements will be seen as developers optimize their codes for Snow Leopard.

While there will be no new features to be included in Snow Leopard, the significant performance improvement may be a compelling reason to upgrade. Especially for pro users who can’t get enough speed and performance.

Read the complete article here.

Post from: EveryJoe

Speed: The Reason You’ll Upgrade to Snow Leopard