Good morning from the agriblogging highway. My Mojo (mobile journalism kit) is getting lighter. This is my new Macbook Air. Came in yesterday afternoon and I am hoping I’ve got it all set up. I’ll find out this week in Canada while attending the 2011 International Federation of Agricultural Journalists Congress.

First impressions of the Macbook Air are very positive. I have a 13″, i7 processor w/256GB SSD. It’s fast and thin and light and so far so good. With this new laptop I did not do a Time Machine restore from my other Macbook Pro backup. I started clean and had to install all programs and transfer only the files I want. I’m going to use an external drive even more to keep this hard drive as clean as possible.

Time to board so I’ll see you from Canada!

Just in time for an end of week road trip I got in the monster of agriblogging and farm podcasting machines. It’s a 17″ big Mac made for today’s “all platform journalist.” I am pumped up.

In just another lesson about how cool Macs are, I just plugged in my Time Machine backup, started it up and within a few minutes it had migrated all my stuff from my other Mac. I’m talking everything, programs included. It just doesn’t get any easier than that. I’m posting from it now. Remembers all my passwords, etc.

For a small fee I’ll let you touch it next time I see you.

Since I’m getting pretty comfortable with my Mac now I might from time to time let you know about some things that make using it even more fun. One of those is a cool little app I found from Joesoft called Jax. If you want to load video onto your iPod and you want it to be easy then this little program is what you need. It even lets you load YouTube videos which is what got my attention. The best thing about it is that it integrated right into iTunes.

Joesoft says their software is “Software for the Average Joe.” After downloading and trying it I would agree.

It’s been a while since I’ve given you a Mac update. This one got triggered because I’m writing an article on using a Mac for farm use for Country Guide.

It’s made me think through why I have a Mac and why I like it vs. my PC. I really think I can sum things up in these words, “The Mac is faster, simpler and easier to use.” It boots up faster. I was on my way to the airport last time and realized I didn’t know which airline I was flying on (symptom of frequent flyer disease). I reached over to my Mac which was off and within less than 60 seconds I had my answer. On my PC this would have taken about 3 minutes. I don’t know about you but every minute counts in my day.

Another thing I’ve got to say about the Mac has to do with antivirus software. I’m having lots of problems on my PC’s with Norton Internet Security 2007. It has cost me hours and I’ve even had to pay a tech to help get things resolved. On my Mac I’m not currently running any antivirus software. Here’s a big reason to have a Mac!

If you’ve been in an airport recently, look around. There’s more and more computers showing an Apple logo on them. I think I know why.

Our presenter here at the appleJAC Mac Users Group meeting is going through the different types of digital cameras there are available. He hasn’t mentioned the iSight built in to most Macs today.

So while he’s talking my buddy Steve Mays here and I are doing digital photography and I’m posting to AgWired.

I know this doesn’t have anything to do with agricultural marketing but we’re having fun. I hope that I’m also showing you how quick and easy it is to post onto your website (if you’ve got a blog) and from anywhere.

Steve has told me that I can do everything on my PC that I can do on my Mac but, and this is key, it will be a lot more fun doing it. I agree.

Here’s a new/next step in my Mac conversion experience. I’m attending my first appleJAC Mac Users Group meeting.

“Hello, my name is Chuck Zimmerman and I’m a Macaholic.”

Actually we’re getting a presentation on digital photography right now. There’s about 25 of us in attendance. I’m hoping for some time to meet with and ask some questions of these folks who have been Mac users for a long time.

On my way out of the house Cindy told my daughter, “Dad’s going to his Apple support group.” Wrong. It’s an Apple “User” group. There’s a difference.

I know you can’t tell here on the website but everything I’ve posted onto AgWired in the last couple weeks has come off my Mac. However, today I fired up and used my PC for a couple of things. Gotta keep in touch with my other side you know.

Hello from South Florida. This has been my first trip with the Macbook Pro and I thought it would provide a good context for an update on my conversion experience. First of all, I thought that in a week or so with the new box I was pretty well prepared for this but it has been a challenge. When you’re on location doing “live” posting of images, video and audio you’ve got to be able to edit, upload and post fast. Almost as fast as say an Indy car at full throttle.

My biggest challenge has been audio editing. The built-in Garage Band software isn’t quite as intuitive as I thought and then there’s the file conversion factor. I start with an MP3 file and need to end with an MP3 file. To use Garage Band I have to convert the file to edit it, then convert it back to post it. I don’t like that. I’ve also found the conversion process a hassle since there are so many settings in each program to deal with. I was using iTunes to do the converting and found out that I have two different iTunes libraries on my hard drive. I have no idea why. So I downloaded the free audio editing software, Audacity. Then I found out it needs an extra MP3 plugin with I had trouble finding and installing. It took me 30 minutes to figure out how to download/install/use the software and this was done in a working newsroom with high performance race cars screaming by outside. I’ve also found some compatibility issues between the MP3 files created in Audacity and some other programs. So, I’m still working on this issue.

For image editing I’m using Photoshop Elements and that works great as I mentioned before. For video, I only shot one little video clip but editing it with iMovie HD was a snap. Very cool tool. It uploaded to YouTube and works just fine. The only thing was I was missing some kind of little plugin for Quicktime that took me about 45 minutes to find and download. My little Casio Exilim shoots .avi files and all I could get to start with was a white screen with audio until I found this little plugin through an online user forum. Works great now though.

So there you have it. I made it through my first road test with the Mac and survived. Now my last issue besides the audio editing thing is being able to use my Sprint broadband account with the Mac. I think I know the answer to it but I haven’t got it taken care of yet.

It’s been an interesting day. Activities included getting ready for the NAMA convention and our ZimmComm/Truffle booth as well as numerous client calls and new project discussions. The first quarter here at ZimmComm has been record setting and a benchmark for the future.

Even with all the calls and activities though I had a chance to get in a little Mac lesson. My good friend, Steve, said he just couldn’t handle the Apple Mighty Mouse so he said I could have it if I liked it. Well I do. This is a mouse without a tail and there’s nothing protruding from the Mac either since it’s connected via Bluetooth. It took almost 1 minute to plug in the batteries and connect. Then maybe another 2 minutes to set the buttons the way I want and there’s one less cord to deal with. This little dude isn’t shaped quite like a “regular” mouse. The little scroll button on top lets you navigate 360 degrees, not just up/down or right/left. There’s only one button on the front but it knows the difference between a left and a right click. And finally, if you give it a gentle squeeze on the sides it kicks in a function called Expose which allows you to see all your open windows at once. When you have as many windows open as I usually do this is very handy. I don’t think a PC can do that can it?

So, I’ll have some more posts coming soon but in the meantime I thought I’d give you a Mac update.

Here’s a little “move to Mac” update. After a week or so of using my new Macbook Pro I’m starting to feel comfortable with it. I can’t say that I’ve mastered it quite like my PC but then what’s a week compared to my whole computer life so far?

With only a few exceptions I’ve found the Mac to run faster and all of the setups and installations have been easier and more intuitive. I did download Adobe Photoshop Elements for Mac though since the one thing that iPhoto doesn’t do is optimize a photo for the web as small as I’d like. When you load as many photos to a server as I do that becomes an issue. I’m also thinking about putting Windows on the Mac so I can use Adobe Audition to edit audio with. Garage Band is fine but it doesn’t convert audio types and maybe I just haven’t mastered it yet so I’m thinking about this option.

I’m using Microsoft Office for Mac so when it comes to documents I’ve got PowerPoint, Excel and Word and for email I’m using Entourage which runs very much like Outlook.

One of the interesting things that I like is how easy it is to connect to a wireless internet connection. I’ve done this in two locations now and the Mac Airport card just finds the right local signal and boom, I’m on. Very simple and easy.

I pulled all my Outlook email data over with the use of a very simple little program called O2M. If you decide to make this move you have to have that.

I haven’t had the computer lock up on me which is something that I had happen periodically with my PC. So, I guess you could say I’m a happy camper so far.

Is there anyone who doesn’t know what company this logo stands for? When I got home this afternoon from a blog training session in Kansas City I found that my Mac had arrived. You’ll notice that the apple is not lit up. That’s because I haven’t had time to turn it on yet and yes, I’m typing this on a PC.

As I go through my Mac conversion experience I thought I’d document it and periodically post some pictures and thoughts about it for you. I’m hoping this will be good for both of us. I’ve always thought of Apple computers as some sort of mysterious gadgets that geeky people used. If you’ve thought the same thing then maybe I can take some of the mystery out of it. We’ll find out together is this box is everything they claim it to be.

I’ve also created a photo album for the experience too. It’s just got a few unpacking photos in it right now but I’ll be adding to it periodically. I guess my first comment on the experience is when I visited the Apple store. I had an appointment with an advisor who spent a lot of time with me and not only answered all my questions but showed me how he’s personally using his Mac. When I started to unpack I was struck by how simple the unit is packaged. There’s not a ton of stuff here. You’ve got the box, the ac adapter, a remote control and a get started booklet. Simple. Not a lot of junk that seems to come with a PC. Score one for Apple in my opinion.

Well you know what I’ll be doing this weekend. I’m going to set it up myself and tranfer all my PC data to it. I’ll let you know how it goes.