appleMK Blog

Need a Video?

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:50:21 +0000

We have wanted to get our teeth into the video industry for a long long time. Now that time has come!! We have teamed up with Video Production Manager Andy Larwill and have worked on ways we could offer something unique to you all.

Andy is very talented and passionate about film. His skills set him apart from the rest. We spoke to him about if it would be possible to create product/corporate videos that were of a very high standard, but at a fraction of the price. I am sure there will be those of you out there who have wanted to update your website into the 21st century with web videos, selling your services and making your sites feel a lot more interactive. The only problem you face is that they cost a fortune and you cant justify the budget in these hard times. Well thats where we come in!

A lot of Multimedia companies feel the need to hire a whole crew for the day and extremely expensive equipment in order to film these sorts of videos. This is why the costs are so high. But due to technology advancing so much over the last 5 years, its now very possible to create high quality video without using the really expensive equipment, you just have to know how.

We can do all different types of video by taking a brief from yourselves, creating a storyboard, getting the footage we need and then editing it together to present as a finished product. We can do this in all sorts of media types from the web to dvd.

We understand, everyone still wants corporate videos, but they cant afford to pay such high prices for them.

WE MAKE IT SO YOU DONT HAVE TO!!!!

iCloud is now up and running

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 15:19:22 +0000

Upgrade your mac to 10.7.2 and you will be invited to join the iCloud. Those of us who used mobile me will be familiar with the wireless Sync of our various devices. That however was a bit flaky and cost money. The iCloud is free to all and seems so far to be pretty robust. Sign up for your free me.com email and get all your devices talking via the iCloud. All this happens without you noticing a thing but one thing you will notice (as long as you switch it on, as its off by default) is Photostream. You will see an album in iPhoto (or Aperture) that will hold the last 30 days (or 1000 ) photos taken on any of your linked devices. Take a photo on your iPhone and within minutes it will be on your Mac at home. No wires, no effort, you don’t even have to be in the same country.

Lion is released this week.

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 18:30:32 +0100

Lion is out and you can download it from the app store for £20.99. However although this seems like an easy upgrade we have found a couple of snags. Firstly the download is 3.49 GB so if you have a low download limit you are going to gobble a lot of it in one go. Followed by another load of updates to all your apple applications once its done.
Secondly you need to make sure your Snow Leopard is running smoothly first. Some of our early adopting clients have experienced a few glitches and I am sure that what is needed is a good basis for the upgrade. You must of course have at least 10.6.6 installed to be able to upgrade.

If therefore you need Snow Leopard installed or tidied up before you unleash the big cat give us a call and we can sort out your system to ensure you get the best that Lion can give. We will give you an introduction to Lions new features and leave you all up and running with your new furry friend.

Finally bear in mind that many of Lions new features rely on Gestures so to use it to its best on a desktop mac you will need at least a magic mouse and preferably a magic trackpad. (it still works with a standard mouse but you miss out on all the swipey stuff)

Its grrrrrrreat....(oops that a tiger)

WWDC announcements from Apple

Tue, 7 Jun 2011 16:47:21 +0100

Steve Jobs opened the WWDC Keynote and outlined the new features in OSX Lion, iOS 5 The new mobile OS Upgrade for iPhone iPad and iPod Touch and the whole new world of Cloud computing from Apple.

Lion looks great and you can check out all of its 250 new features at......

http://www.apple.com/macosx/whats-new/features.html

It is coming in July at the grand sum of £20.99 as a download from the appstore.

Now for the unashamed sales pitch...

In order to install Lion you first must have snow leopard. You can then download Lion and it will install itself. However we recommend that first you ensure that the mac is running as well as can be and has ample space available on its hard drive.
Generally we have always said that the best way to upgrade a system is to reinstall it. Takes time but a clean install always gives a faster smoother mac than an upgrade. It seems this time Apple are not giving us that option as the Lion download looks like its only an upgrade and not a full installer.
Logically then if we must just upgrade then lets have everything right first. In many cases it will be well worth a clean install of snow leopard prior to the Lion upgrade.

Don’t get me wrong if you have Snow Leopard you can click on the store and Bob’s (or maybe Steve’s) your uncle. I am talking about getting the optimum result for speed and reliability. Trust me, I’m a mac engineer, it will be worth it.

iOS 5 for the mobile devices has a host of new features. Come the autumn (or Fall as they say in San Francisco)
our iPhones, iPods and iPads will get a new lease of life. You will find all the new features listed here

http://www.apple.com/ios/ios5/features.html

Working with the iCloud our mobile devices lose their tether to our macs and syncing becomes seamless for mail, address book, calendar, photos and music. There is a new iMessage service and upgraded camera software.

On the downside it looks like the iPhone 3Gs and below are out in the cold stuck in iOS 4 so its off to carphone warehouse or the like for an upgrade. Careful though when this comes out the iPhone 5 can’t be very far away so don’t jump the gun.

The iCloud....Steve reminisced back to his announcement of iLife all those years ago as being the Hub of our digital life. Now, he says, things have moved on. No longer is it ok to put your laptop or desktop mac as the centre. You want everything to sync together. What is more you don’t want to think about it you just want it to work. Well thats what iCloud is about. Pushing your mail, addressbook , calendar, documents, photos and music between all your devices.

You can take a picture on your iPhone in New York and hey presto its there for your wife to look at via apple TV on her television in London and your son to see on his iPad in Oxford all in a matter of minutes. When you get home its already in your iPhoto. Thats cool!

There is a whole lot more to all this and I will be playing with it all as soon as it is up and running so I can tell you all what can be done.

Cheers for now...

Andy

We look after all sorts

Tue, 17 May 2011 18:05:33 +0100

It doesn’t matter what your business is. We find Macs to take care of in every profession. Our customers range from Architects through Magazine Licensing to Zoologists. Every walk of life can find their day enhanced by using Macs and we have gained a great range of experience helping people integrate their systems into their particular business. Give us a call and we will make a free visit to you to discuss how your computing experience can be improved and your business run more efficiently as a result.

We are very good at stopping stuff

Sat, 12 Feb 2011 11:47:25 +0000

We are proud to announce our new email security services. If you have your own mailserver, be it a mac or a pc exchange server,
we can put our cloud based security services between the world and your desktop.

We will remove all the spam and virus infected emails and present you with a simple email list of the undelivered mails allowing you to have any of them delivered at a single click.
The spam never reaches your server saving you bandwidth and maintenance.

We will act as a Failover server should your internet connection or mailserver go down, queueing your mail until your local service is restored then delivering the queue to your server. During the offline time you can still access your mail directly from our servers via webmail. This prevents your customers getting undeliverable mail bouncebacks that can reflect badly on your company.

We will hold a backup of you mail for 60 days allowing you to have any lost mails redelivered.

Finally there is an option for content control scanning the mail content or inappropriate words or phrases and alerting an administrator.

All these services are cloud based and require no new hardware at your end. There are no upfront charges and just a £5 per domain + £2.50 per mailbox monthly fee.

In these days when email is vital to your business can you afford not to cover yourself against its loss.

For further info call Andy on 01908 696968 or 07763223777

By the way the netminder in the picture is actually Matt.

iPhoto 11 upgrade problem

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 10:31:43 +0100

There have been several reports of problems when updating iPhoto to the new ver 11. Some users have reported having upgraded the software they have had a problem with the new version upgrading the library. This has resulted in partial or complete loss of all the photos. THIS IS A VERY BAD THING!!!

I have updated half a dozen libraries without issue so don’t be put off the upgrade as the new iPhoto is a great improvement. However make absolutely sure that you have a backup of your iPhoto library before you install the iLife 11 update.

Also take note that Time Machine does not back iPhoto up properly if it is running so to be sure I would force Time Machine to back up manually when you know your iPhoto is off. Either that or manually drag a copy of your iPhoto library to another disk or folder.

It all comes back to the point that BACKUPS MATTER. anything on your computer can vanish so make sure it is always somewhere else too.

If you want a chat on the best way to backup give us a call on 07763223777 or 01908 696968.

Facetime comes to the Mac

Sun, 24 Oct 2010 18:54:49 +0100

Facetime iPhone4’s video chat comes to your mac. Its not a replacement for iChat (yet) but it really works well giving you the chance to phone anyone with an iPhone4 right from your mac. Your mac must be on the internet and the phone on a wireless network but the connection is free and works really smoothly. It works with address book so you already have a contact list. You simply download the software to your mac set it up with your apple id

Full details at http://www.apple.com/uk/mac/facetime/

Lion is on the prowl

Sun, 24 Oct 2010 18:45:16 +0100

Will it be the king of the OS? Well the sneak peek we got this week looks good. Al the best bits of the mobile iOS4 coming to a mac near you. You are going to have to buy a trackpad as gestures will be a big part of controlling your mac. Apple have decreed that touchscreens belong flat on your desk and not vertical (your arm drops off if you try to use a vertical touchscreen for long according to Steve) So its out of the window with scifi touchscreens and in with desktop trackpads in place of mice.

For full details stalk over to http://www.apple.com/uk/macosx/lion/

Lion should be with us next summer.

New Air

Sun, 24 Oct 2010 18:33:51 +0100

The new macbook air debuts this week. Slimmer, more powerful and cheaper. Apple call it the future of laptops. I am not too sure. I love its looks and it is now the right price but the solid state storage is just too small for real power computing. Don’t get me wrong I do like the mac but I doubt if it will really replace the standard laptop for most users until solid state storage comes down in price and we can get 500 gb in there without selling the house. I have 320Gb in my macbook pro and its always a struggle to keep room to work so how would I cope with 128Gb or even the max 256Gb

Get full details of the 11” and 13” models at http://www.apple.com/uk/macbookair/

For those of you with need of less data space it has to be looked at but ask yourself “will an iPad do?”