See some things I tell you are true, as listener Al discovered when he took my advice and upgraded the RAM in his iBook.

I know you have mentioned several times on your show that adding more
than the default 256MB to the Mac (in my case an iBook G4 800) will
make a big difference, but despite all my years as a computer guy
(though recent switcher) I am astounded at how much of a difference it
does in fact make! I added 512 MB (had to toss out 128MB to do it) so
I have a total of 640MB now. It is amazing how snappy applications are
now. Quicksilver, for example, would almost always take a couple
seconds to come up when I hit its hotkey. Now it’s instantaneous,
always. Multitasking is a joy now. Literally the best $150 CDN
(including tax) I’ve ever spent on a computer upgrade (and I’ve done my
fair share over the years… ;)

I would like to recommend to all Canadians (and maybe Americans too)
that they check out http://www.canadaram.com/macram.html. 512MB of
iBook RAM for $131 CDN seems to me like a great deal. My order took
less than 3 days between the time I clicked submit and the time I
clicked the RAM into place. ;)

Artist and MacCast listener Dorothy Yamamoto is looking foward to the upcoming “Tiger” release as much as all of us MacGeeks. She sent this great image along with these comments:

Like most MacCast listeners, am anxiously awaiting Apple’s Tiger OS release. And like my painting here, “The Big Cat,” the tiger is waiting for Steve Jobs to give the go-ahead. I’ve been studying Jeremy Sutton’s terrific “Painter Creativity” book and instructional DVDs and applied his “single brush” assignment in which you must use only one brush and its variants to complete a painting. I used the soft oil pastel in a monochromatic study. Am fortunate to work on a G5 with lots of RAM and a Wacom Intuous 3 tablet which give the Corel Painter IX digital art experience as close to natural media as possible.

To see more of Dorothy’s work visit her web site

Ok. I have set up a MacCast Forum at http://forum.maccast.com. I have not customized the look and feel yet, but it is a start. To post and reply you will need to create an account. If you just want to read then no account is needed. You also need a vaild email address to register. Right now it is self activation via email, but if I start having issue with spammers I may need to go to admin approved accounts. Let’s see how it goes. Please try to keep your posts clean. The MacCast is a family show. Enjoy.

Adam

Just received confirmation from listener Terry that the PlayPod update will fix any feed issues with the MacCast. Please read the response, especially the warning about backing up your subscription URLs since you will need to resubscribe to all your feeds. UPDATE: Please read comments below from the developer on backing up your feed list and reporting bugs.

By downloading the latest version of Playpod I now get your Maccast feed up to the most recent podcast. So, all playpod users will have to upgrade to the latest version of the software.

One word of caution. When you install the latest verison it wipes out all of your old feeds. So, users may want to record all of their feeds so they can resubscribe in the latest version of playpod.

I get a lot of questions about issues with wireless routers and we have covered it some on the show. Listener Chris sent me this comment and I think it is a good reminder that the firmware should be one of the first things to check when you start to have any issues with a piece of aging hardware.

It has worked fine w/ my 2 PC for the entire month. When I got my new iBook a month ago it would work fine for 10 minutes then the router would lock up. I would need to reset it by unplugging it. This happened pretty much every time I used it. I went to the Linksys web site, grabbed the latest firmware, flashed the router. That fixed the problem. I was out 4 revisions back from the latest firmware. Just a reminder for people to check the router firmware if they’re having similar problems.

Hey geeks. For those of you using PlayPod I just received this email from the developer

I am the developer of PlayPod. I heard you mention to your listeners that some people using PlayPod weren’t getting your updates. Just wanted to let you know that PlayPod 1.0b6 fixed a nasty bug that prevented some feeds from automatically downloading podcasts.

Kind Regards,
Ian

Ian G. Gillespie, Ph.D.
IGG Software, LLC
www.iggsoftware.com

I recommend going over to www.iggsoftware.com and getting this update.

Listener Mike sent in this great explaination on why AppleCare is not available in Florida

Just want to shed a little light on the AppleCare in Florida issue. I am a Product Specialist for AppleCare tech support.

From what I understand, Florida state law (Chapter 634 of the Florida Statutes) requires companies to be licensed to sell extended repair or replacement services. Apple currently does not meet the requirements defined by this law. The law is in place to protect the large elderly population from “warranty scams.” Unfortunately, I do not know what the requirements are to become licensed.

AppleCare CAN be sold to businesses, agencies, non-profit organizations and educational institutions as long as they have a valid Tax ID, proving they are a business.

If a consumer enrolls AppleCare on a machine and they live in Florida, Apple is required by law to refund their money. This has been the case for several years, and only the Florida legislature can change these requirements.

Here is some great info from listener Art:

Really like listening to the MacCast podcast. I just heard your latest podcast (March 28, 2005) and you talked about browser performance and optimizing it. There are a few programs that you can download to optimize web browsing performance.

1.) SafariSpeed (http://www.scifience.net/safarispeed.html)
This program optimizes Safari by disabling the page loading delay, which is built into Safari. It only seems to work in Safari and not in other browsers.

2.) Panter Cache Cleaner (http://www.northernsoftworks.com/panthercachecleaner.html)
This program optimizes not only Safari, but also other browsers by optimizing or cleaning the file cache.

As for why it would seem that web browsing on PC seems to be faster than doing so on the Mac, there is a website that might answer the question (http://www.xvsxp.com). This is a website that compares OSX and Windows XP as objectively as they can. In the web browsing section, they mention that some websites are specifically coded for IE for PC by web developers. And I personally think that when a company tests its website before launch, they usually only test with a PC and not a Mac.

Hopes this answers the questions that were asked on the podcast. Continue the great work.

I received this question from listener Ted:

Have you ever tried using the Autofill method of transferring content to your iPod Shuffle? I have found that these files are ignored. If you drop the file directly onto the iPod Shuffle icon (in iTunes) or drop a playlist containing these (.mp4b) onto the icon, everything works as expected. However if you were to specify the same playlist (containing 1 or more bookmarkable aac files) in the “Autofill” dropdown, these files are skipped when you “autofill.” At least for me.

Have any of you experienced this? Does anyone know why this might be happening?

Listener Mark sent in this response to a question on how to recharge an iPod from the USB port on the PC, but not have the iPod mount or sync with iTunes.

You had a listener a few podcast ago asked about charging his iPOD at work using PC power only. Today I purchased a Targus Ultra Mini USB 2.0 4-Port Hub. The connecting USB cable from the hub to the the computer has two plugs. The black plug is for power and data flow, or you can use the red plug connector for power only. I think this would work for the situation your listener described.