Tiger problems

UPDATE May2, 2005 11:13 am EST If you follow the comment trail, you can see that the issue finally resolved. It clearly had something to do with user/prefs. Onward and upwards.

I’m beginning to rethink my glowing review of Tiger.
I’m encountering a growing list of frustrations with the upgrade.

The worst involves Tiger and my Airport networks at home and work - on a G5, a PowerBook and a G5 iMac. On bootup, the Internet connection is lost and needs to be re-established from the Airport utility setup. This happens everytime I turn on the machines. Sometimes, the connection just drops after working fine for awhile and the whole process must be repeated.
Also, my printer randomly stalls in the middle of print jobs. Since it’s tied in with Airport, I’m suspecting the same glitch that drops the Internet is causing it.
I’m also noting slowdowns in how Mail works and, in general, opening Web pages.
iSync no longer works between my Palm-based Treo 650. (UPDATE… I reloaded iSync and that seems to have restored the Palm operation.).
Final Cut Pro seems fine except in exporting a project to a medium broadband sized QuickTime movie. A process that took 2 minutes or so pre-Tiger now takes 8 minutes.
Anyone else noting these kinds of issues with Tiger? I see the start of some similar connection complaints scattered elsewhere in some forums but no fixes as of yet.

Bill Gates on Tiger and Longhorn

Bill Gates came to town Friday and I had a one-on-one interview with him. We talked about a lot of things, especially Microsoft’s initiatives with the automotive industry. After all, I do work in Detroit.
But his visit was on the day that Apple released its new Tiger operating system. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to note the positive reviews about Tiger appearing pretty much everywhere and ask him about Microsoft’s latest upgrade - code-named Longhorn - which won’t be out until late 2006.
Gates seemed nonplussed.

“I think its great that people are seeing that operating systems can be better,” he said. “We like the world to be excited about operating systems.”

But he clearly saw a challenge for Longhorn.

“Our main challenge with Windows is getting people to see this new version were doing as being so much better than the previous version that they’re willing to upgrade,” he conceded. “And so as they’re reading about neat things in Tiger we’re hoping they?ll realize a high percentage of those things and some other things are in Longhorn and hopefully upgrade as Longhorn comes along.”

Tiger previewed on Podcast

Okay, as promised…Our latest podcast is up.
Click here to listen.
We have a special preview podcast of Apple’s new Tiger operating system, which goes on sale Friday. We hear from Frank Casanova, senior director of Mac OS X audio and video, via Tiger’s upgraded iChat AV. It’s an unbelievably cool app that will make podcasting even more fun.
Bill Carver gives us a Network Minute preview of VoIP phone systems.
And our resident Gizmo Dude Kim Culhan has some fun with a “Turn off Your PC Week” campaign.
As always, your comments and MP3 files are welcome.

Tiger preview

Look for a preview podcast of Tiger with Frank Casanova, senior director of Mac OS X audio and video, via Tiger’s upgraded iChat AV. Unbelievably cool ap… coming as soon as I can edit into a MP3 file.

Radio station goes all podcast

A real radio station in California has decided to do all of its programming via podcast. I just uploaded one of my shows. We’ll see if they take it. KYOU - Open Source Radio

More competition for iTunes Music Store

It’s still no iTunes Music Store, but RealNetworks has a terrific idea with its new Rhapsody To Go feature that, for $15 a month, offers the ability for users to transfer an unlimited number of songs to portable music players. TRealNetworks offers free tunes to boost sales

Apple overreacts over Jobs book

Touchy touchy. Apple is acting more than a little petulent over an unauthorized book about Steve Jobs. And this after its attempts to quash a blogger from reporting on new products. Apple Retaliates Over Jobs Biography.

SunRocket VoIP review

I’ve replaced my landline telephone with a SunRocket. By doing so, I’ve slashed my monthly telephone bill from around $60 a month to less than $17 a month — for unlimited calling throughout the United States and Canada. Here’s my review from today’s Free Press: MIKE WENDLAND: With SunRocket’s service, you can hang up landline

Turn off your PC Week

Most of us have heard about TV-Turnoff Week, an annual event that is held the last week of April (it starts Monday this year).
But now there?s PC-Turnoff Week, with the first one scheduled for August 1-7, a time when parents and their children are encouraged to turn off the family computer and enjoy other activities, such as reading, exercise, and family time.
?Just like too much TV, parents should be concerned over excessive computer use by our children, and must act to curb it,? says Joe Acunzo, the founder of what he hopes will also be an annual event.
Among other things, he claims too much computer time has many of the same negative consequences that too much TV viewing has - making for overweight kids, causing them to have lower grades and to be socially isolated.

New Information sites

My NBC-TV piece this week looks at information sites, including a powerful people finding resource. High Tech Talk

This week’s podcast: marriage via iMovie, Comcast’s DNS woes, podcast’s power grows

Our latest podcast is up and available.
Whew… it’s 37 minutes long and spans the globe, talking about a wide range of technology issues and features with lots of people.
Click here to hear the podcast.
Shownotes are in the extended entry.
And send me your comments, reviews, suggestions as an MP3 audio file. No longer then a minute, please. E-mail them to me at mwpodcast AT gmail DOT com.
Read more

Michigan laptop program to end?

Michigan’s grand vision of equipping every sixth-grade student in the state with a laptop computer may be no more. Once hailed as one of the nation’s most progressive and ambitious technology learning projects, even a scaled-down version of the program ? which educators describe as a huge success ? will be eliminated if Gov. Jennifer Granholm gets her way. MIKE WENDLAND: School laptop project at risk

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