I have had Lion installed for a few days now so here is my opinion.

If you are considering installing on an existing Mac? WAIT until the first update has been released.

If you have a MacBook with the earlier style of trackpad and separate mouse button then you will not get the best mousing experience so maybe wait until you upgrade your computer. Lion needs a multitouch trackpad or Magic Mouse to work really well.

There are two issues that I have. These are reported elsewhere on various forums so it’s not just me and I have submitted bug reports to Apple.

1) The sound controls do not work on the internal speakers. There is a work around in place. Plug in an iPhone headset into the headphone jack, wait a few seconds and unplug. Speakers then work correctly.

2) The WiFi does not always come back on after sleeping the computer. The work around for this is not to sleep but to shut down the computer.

Hopefully Cupertino will get these addressed ASAP.

Otherwise it’s a nice OS and so far I am quite happy.

The killer feature is the auto save. It’s worth the asking price for this function alone. Launchpad and Mission Control are very clever, The Finder is improved so it’s all good.

My preferred method of ‘upgrade’ is to clone my hard drive then nuke and pave. In English: Format the drive and do a clean install then add my apps and documents back in. Often faster with less problems. If it all goes wrong then you can just reverse the process and clone the drive from the clone.

Regular reader will recall that I have been considering an upgrade to an SSD.

I finally took the plunge and bought a Crucial M4 SSD. The price has really dropped on SSD but they are still 3 times the price of a spindle drive.

Just to make it more interesting I decided to install Lion at the same time that I went solid state. There is method in this madness, if it all went down the pan the whole thing is reversible by refitting the old drive.

On the day that Lion was released I downloaded the app. I made a bootable flash drive from the app, then (deep breath and throw the warranty out) opened up my MacBook Pro and swapped out the drive.

Booting from the flash drive was easy, a very fast format of the SSD and I was installing Lion. It took about 20 minutes.

Once installed I used Migration Assistant and Time Machine Backup to pull over my personal files. I downloaded all my apps off the web so that I had the latest 10.7 compatible versions.

I am good to go. All quite painless.

The MacBook Pro boots ridiculously fast with the SSD.

From cold to fully operational is 20 seconds. If I let Lion reopen all my apps it slows to 25 seconds.

Awesome! Go do it people, SSDs rock!

I have a new shiny Samsung Galaxy Pro on the “3″ network.

This is a vast improvement over the Blackberry Curve.

Both QWERTY keyboard and a touch screen.
Battery lasts for days.
3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, USB. All the connectivity one could wish for.

And one killer feature: I can tether it to my MacBook Pro and share it’s internet connection. This was the winning feature that had me signing up for a £20 per month contract. A permanent dongle in my pocket for internet on the move on my Mac.

The only downside so far is I can’t find a case for it anywhere. I want a flip case with a magnetic catch but no one seems to make one. I think it may be too new!

A couple of weeks ago I thought that it was time to move into the 21st century of mobile communications and get a smart phone. I “upgraded” to a Blackberry Curve.

The RIM website claims 19 days of standby and 4.5 hours of talk time on the Curve.

I ordered it from O2 and a few days later it arrived.

I charged the new phone, set it up and put it on my desk. A few hours later the battery was at 5% and the phone was getting all upset. I thought it was just a new battery and it needed a long charge, so I plugged it and left it on all night.

Next day after six hours it was down to 5% again. I must be doing something wrong here I thought so read all the instructions, turned off all the apps, turned of Bluetooth, 3G, the backlight, push email. So now my Blackberry was as crippled as a standard phone.

Fully charged it lasted 8 hours.

I called O2 and complained. O2 promised a replacement phone by the next day. The following day it duly arrived.

To save my typing just re-read the first few paragraphs.

Replacement phone sucked like the original.

A quick search on the web reveals that ALL smart phones suck and the battery life is terrible.

So where to the manufacturers get these standby and talk times from. Are they just making it up?

I have invoked the 14 money back guarantee that O2 offer and the phone is all boxed up to go back. Which leaves me with just one problem.

What phone do I get?

Looks like I have neglected my blog.
Never mind.

Big news story: Apple Mac have had a skirmish with some malware.

The doom and gloom people (Translation: The people who sell anti-virus software) have been predicting that the Mac platform will drown under a tsunami of malware any day now, and this is just start.

Well they have been saying that for ten years and I am still waiting.
Truth is that a Mac malware is so rare that it makes headline news.
A Windows attack is so common no one notices.

There has been one attack per year since OS X was launched, so that about 12 items.
Windows runs at 12 Million and counting.

Draw your own conclusions.

Meanwhile Apple have patched the problem so it’s business as usual.

The WordPress people have just released a critical security update to the software.

So I installed the update. It really hacks me off that several of the sites I maintain will not do automatic updates. The manual process is tedious on a slow connection.

But we are all up to date. All NINE sites!

NINE – WTF! How did I get to be webmaster of nine sites.

Not specifically a recipe virus, but a client got her Windows Seven Dell notebook infected with one of those scare-ware programs that claims the machine is infected with all kinds of nasties and then demands money to remove them.

The interesting feature is that she got infected while searching for a recipe for couscous. Pretty innocuous search. So it just goes to show you can get caught looking for the most innocent stuff.

What I find annoying is that she has McAfee installed, all up to date and protecting her from malware. NOT.

This particular infection wrote three entries into the registry, subverted downloads to 127.0.0.1, changed the home page on IE and made IE the default browser. It also stopped McAfee from running and blocked my attempts to install Spy Bot.

I thought Windows Seven was good at stopping this type on nonsense? It asks permission to do almost anything on the PC, boxes pop up if you try to install new software – “are you sure you want to do this?” But somehow all this protection was completely bypassed.

I am very disappointed Microsoft, and livid at McAfee.

You know the answer to the problem by now I am sure.

I have always been led to believe that the Apple Mac OSX operating system was immune from attack by virus. That’s one of the reasons why I own one, no malware. Works for me.

Except if you have Microsoft software installed on the Mac. The Office Suite is susceptible to Windows virus.

That’s right, A Mac can catch Windows virus via the Word program. I just had to de-infect a Mac that had a nasty dose of the W97M.Thus.A macro virus that infected all the Word documents on the machine.

I ran ClamXav and it located all the infected files; then I was able to move them to a USB flash drive. The machine is now clean but I have a USB drive full of infected files. The solution to getting these fixed is to open each one on a Mac that does not have Word installed, copy the contents into a text editor, save the file then put it back on the original machine and copy the contents back into Word. Tedious but it should be OK.

So if you have the Microsoft Office Suite installed on a Mac be careful, you may be distributing a Windows virus. This infection was spotted because GMail block my clients emails when he attached Word documents.

The Apple TV is a so so kind of device. I bought one cheap from the refurb Apple store at a discount. As with most Apple devices it’s locked down and a bit crippled.

However with a bit of hacking it opens up and becomes quite a useful set top device.

The guys at appletvhacks.net have the details plus a Google search brings up lots more useful stuff.

My main motivation for hacking was to be able to dispense with iTunes for adding content; and sure enough the hacked device allows the use of an external drive connected by USB, so it’s easy to add content: put it on the external drive and hook it up then reboot the Apple TV. I can also FTP into the device as well over my network.

NitoTV, Boxee and XBMC are all installed. I was tempted to add Adobe Flash as well but so far have resisted as it may make the Apple TV run hot and probably crash.

I just need to get a keyboard and mouse working and I am totally fixed!

So there’s some footie happening in South Africa at the moment. I am so out of touch with sport that I only realised when all the England flags appeared on the cars.

I don’t get Football, I have no interest in any of this. Which reminds me of a conversation I had with a work colleague in 2002. England were doing quite well in the competition. My colleague was a big football fan. A Crystal Palace supporter whom we all called ‘Palace’ as a nickname.

Palace: “Dave, if England was in the final of the World Cup, would you watch?”
Dave: “No!”
Palace: “What! But it’s ENGAND, in the FINAL of the World Cup!”
Dave: “22 blokes kicking a ball about, I’d be bored stupid within 10 seconds. However it would be a brilliant time to go to the supermarket for shopping.”
Palace: “WTF! You’re weird.”

So there you have it, I’ll be in ASDA if you need me durning the England games.