Apple Xmas -- new toys going into the new year? (1 Viewer)

Purple 16GB iPod Nano

My previous nano was experiencing some problems and the battery life was about 50% of new. This new one was a surprise. And it holds my entire library, with room to spare! (my previous 4GB model needed playlists to manage my library) Looking forward to using it on the second half of my vacation travels. And looking forward to figuring out how to get movies onto it.

My sisters wonder why I got a nano instead of a Touch, like them. I can't figure out why anyone could pass up the nano. Great capacity, great price, and so easy to use everywhere (car, gym, lawnmowing).

You? Any Apple items, large or small, from Santa this year?

This turned out to be a Mac accessories holiday at our house. My son gave me a copy of the (much needed by newbie me) iMac Portable Genius paperback reference guide. I got my wife a Pinder Case and an iLap lap-desk for her Macbook. And, we gave our son a FlipCamera-HD and a FreeAgent Go (Firewire) external hard drive for his Macbook.

I'm still loving my Mac Pro from last week, my gift to myself =)

I got a lapdesk last year from Levenger, and I love it. Great accessory! Give us some feedback on the Flip HD. I hear great things about it in reviews, but I'm curious to hear from "normal folk" -- or at least your impressions of how your son likes it.

And now I'm working on getting a movie into my iPod. I may have business travel in '09 and I love the prospect of watching movies without my laptop.

Actually, I lost an Apple product in my home....my Airport Extreme Router.

I had Verizon Fios installed. In order for it to work in my home
Verizon had to install their own router. The result? Much slower
WiFi in my home. The Verizon router just doesn’t do the job as well
as the Apple.

I am going to spend the next few days researching and trying to
figure out how to piggyback my Apple router on the Verizon.

Congrats on your new toy(s)!

Ron, how's that work? Doesn't FIOS provide an ethernet input, like cable modem does, that you can connect to your own wireless router? I don't know much about networking, but I'm surprised that you have to use Verizon's wireless router.

My wife shocked me with a new Macbook for Christmas. The only Apple product I own is a video Ipod so the thought of jumping into a Mac for personal computing was a little frightening.
I must say that after a couple days of learning the ins and outs, I am in love with this machine. I guess it is true what they say - once you switch to a Mac, you never go back.

BTW, what are the must have widgets? I've downloaded a few that I feel like either I need or that are cool.

An iPhone. Delivered on the 24th

I must be in a hot spot - 5 bars everywhere in the concrete office/shop and around my local area.

The finger prints are amazing

The Verizon router does more than provide wireless Internet (WiFi)
throughout the home.

It also provides data content to all the televisions that includes
channel number and text information about the channel itself. Without
that router, none of the information would be displayed on the
televisions as I go from channel to channel.

So, what I have to figure out is how to piggyback the Apple router
via one of the ethernet ports on the Verizon router. First, it is my
understanding you can't have two routers competing to provide WiFi
throughout the home. So, the WiFi part of the Verizon router needs
to be disabled, while keeping the data transmission working so the
televisions can receive channel information.

It can be done. People on the DBS forums have successfully done it,
but reading how they did it is like reading something in Chinese. When
it comes to networking there is a bit of a learning curve I need to get
through.

Southpaw, welcome to the club!

There are a couple of threads, including a sticky I think, with lots of recommended software and widgets. Definitely do a search and look through the threads in this section.

As for widgets; there's a tip-of-the-day widget that's great for beginners; a keyboard shortcut cheat sheet; I love the Weather Channel radar map widget, the shipping tracker widget for watching for packages, and an iTunes cover art widget to find artwork iTunes doesn't find.

Ron, good luck with your FIOS! That's much more sophisticated than I knew. That explains comments from inlaws that got Uverse, and had to have a router installed in the basement where the house connection was made. But I watch with envy, as my town has no prospects for Fios or Uverse in sight :frowning:

Thanks Dave.
One issue that I've had each morning I've booted up and brought up Safari is that my tabs aren't saving. I just automatically go to the apple startup page. When I click on history and select open all windows from last time, it doesn't do anything.
What setting am I missing that is not saving my tabbed browsing?

So what mode does the verizon wireless use? Is it a "g" network? If so you should be able to ethernet from the verizon router to the APX and set it up as an "n" network and you'll be back to your old speeds again. I run both a APExpress in "g" and an APExtreme in "n" simultaneously with no problems.

-EJ

Pick up one of these
Power Support Anti-Glare Film Set for iPhone 3G - Apple Store (U.S.)
You'll never see a finger print again and you're screen will be protected.

-EJ

FullBodyFilm on the way. An ORA wallet was here months ago

Hi Ron,

There most certainly CAN be multiple wireless networks in the home. I have two on purpose -- a 802.11g network for iPhones and older, g only Macs and a 802.11n network (set to 5Ghz, "n" only) for my MacBookPro and future n Macs. Since g is at 2.4Ghz there is no chance of them ever stepping on each other.

So just plug in your airport Extreme to one of the ethernet ports on the Verizon router, set it to 5Ghz and enjoy. Use the Verizon's wireless for your g iPhone, and the Airport for your n Macs.

On topic: got my wife an iPhone (16GB). Waiting until after Macworld to give myself a present.

I'm both praying there is nothing good at Macworld and hoping for a major update that includes BluRay and a significantly updated iPhone. The former is much more wallet friendly but I'm ready to jump on the iP finally and really need BD storage output for my Pro.

If I had to bet I'd say that MW is gonna be a total bust tho. The good news is I'm often very wrong about Apple =p

That's the nice thing about being a pessimist tho, for any given prediction you are either right or pleasantly surprised.

If Apple is going all Jobs on IDG and wants to screw them, MW will be a bust. If on the other hand the Phil Schiller thing is a cover-up for an ailing Jobs, then look for them to pull out all the stops and announce lots of insanely great stuff.

Ron were you able to get you network stuff figured out?

Nope. Still working on it. Thanks for asking.