The first and foremost advantage with pairing it with an iPhone or iPad is Airplay. Basically you can take any piece of media on those devices and with the tap of a button, send it on over to your T.V. This works with the latest pictures/video you’ve taken on your device, music, videos, youtube, etc. This feature alone is certainly a great reason to get an Apple T.V.

There’s also a decent selection of streaming/downloadable content. Mainly iTunes Movie rentals/T.V. Shows and Netflix streaming. The iTunes movie rentals are on the more pricey side with new releases running around $5 for an HD movie and $4 for an SD movie. Sometimes they do have a deal with a 99 cent rental which is always good. It is certainly cheaper to rent a movie from the Redbox, but a lot less effortless and time consuming by just renting from the Apple T.V. For Netflix the Apple T.V. has what most consider the slickest interface on any device. It looks nice and runs very fast. The only devices I have to compared with, are the Xbox 360 (which also requires a gold live account for netflix), and our set top Blu Ray player which is slow and clunky.

The main way in which I’m using the Apple T.V. though is iTunes Home Sharing. This allows you to take any movie in iTunes and stream it to the Apple T.V. Typically the way you’d do this is purchase your movie in iTunes on your computer and then it would be there for streaming. I haven’t moved to purchasing movies to strictly digital like I have with music just yet as I like my Blu Rays and bonus features. However, I do love the fact that movies purchased this way display all their info (actors, rating, descriptions, etc) right on the movie list and are instantly playable with no disc waiting time. To get this same experience with my own collection I decided to start digitizing our movie library. It is quite the process when you own several hundred movies, but once I’ve caught up on it, it won’t be a big deal. Anyway the huge advantages are no disc load up times (Blu Rays always take a few minutes just to get to the menus), and where we have two Apple T.V.s I can start a movie on one and instantly resume on the other. Also, all these movies show up on my iPad/iPhone when I’m home on my network. No syncing required, they just stream.

Ripping/encoding your entire movie library is quite the task, but luckily I’ve found some great Automator Scripts that ease the process. I used the workflow for most of our DVDs which worked great. Recently, I started the Blu-Rays and I had a problem with the scripts not detecting my external blu-ray drive. I did some testing for a new version to help fix the problem and the developer figured it out. Overall, they work great. All I pretty much have to do is feed the discs and tell it what the movie is. Most everything else is automated and uses free tools to boot. It also automatically tags all the movie info, chapters, etc for you.

These are the main uses that I use an Apple T.V. for every day and why I’d certainly recommend one for someone who wants streaming content or an easy way to get their media from their idevice up to the T.V. The only main weaknesses that I’d say about the Apple T.V. is it does lack the ability to play other video codecs such as divx, xvid, etc so if you have content in those formats you have to convert to h.264. Also, it lacks 1080p support, so the highest your content can go is 720p. The format issue can be fixed if you jailbreak the Apple T.V., but for me I like the consistency of having everything the same. As for 720p, it looks fine on our set, but I imagine an upgrade will come eventually offering 1080p. When that happens, the question will be, “do I re-encode all HD movies to 1080p?” Right now, I think it would only be a few select titles like the Star Wars set.

First off, the service is pretty much only for those who have a lot of ripped music or have downloaded from other sources besides iTunes. If you already buy the majority of your music from iTunes then the service really isn’t for you.

So what is the service and what does it do? The basic idea behind iTunes match is that it puts all of your music library in the cloud. Then you can access it from any iDevice or computer with iTunes. You pay $24.99 for the service, it scans your entire iTunes Library, matches the songs with the ones available in iTunes, and uploads the rest of those that it can’t match.

After that process is finished, you can now enable iTunes Match on say your iPhone and it will make all of your library available to download right from the phone. This is handy if you go for one of the lower capacity iPhones like the 16gb model. You can download the albums you want locally, when your finished delete them, but then still have access to them anytime you want to listen to them again. You’ll get a little cloud icon next to the album/song indicating that it isn’t on your device locally, but you can start playing just as if it was there.

The same thing can be done on a computer. So for example, my iTunes library is on my computer at home. In the past I would have had to bring all my files into work if I wanted them on my work computer. Now I just turn on iTunes match on my work computer and my entire library is there ready to listen to.

The benefit of this service compared to say Google or Amazon’s is that you don’t have to upload your entire library. The matched songs just link to the actual iTunes versions, so you only actually have to upload the ones it can’t match. I have roughly 2000 songs in my library. Some of them include now out of print Soundtrack or for whatever reasons aren’t in iTunes. So of that 2000 I still have 600 songs that it had to upload. Even 600 still takes some time to upload, but it sure beats having to do all 2000.

One last benefit of the service is that the matched versions of the Songs are 256kbps versions. You get those files even if you originally ripped at 128bps or other rates. This would have saved me a ton of time last year when I decided to re-rip all my music from 128kbps to 256kbps versions. I would have paid the price for this service alone for saving me all that time.

I’m still familiarizing myself with some of the service, but overall I’d say if you have a low capacity iPhone/iPod and a lot of music from other sources than iTunes, then the service is definitely worth it.

I knew the chance of having to do a clean server install was there, but I opted to try the upgrade first. The upgraded did keep my settings pretty much all intact, but I did have to do some tweaking to get everything working again. One semi major change, is that mysql is not included anymore with the server package. If you do an upgrade over Snow Leopard server, it does keep the old mysql functioning, but it means no future update directly from Apple for it. After backing up my databases, I removed that version and installed the current version directly from mysql.com. It installed fine, but I kept getting a socket error after the install when trying to load it. I simply renamed my my.cnf file and then it worked. Something in my settings from the old one must have been causing a problem. Also, rather than using the bundled version of PHP, I upgraded my version using the package from http://php-osx.liip.ch which includes most of the commonly used extensions.

Other than those issues with the web stuff, the upgrade was fairly smooth. I have read some people having issues with upgrading open directory and mail. I don’t really use those other than mail for forwarding system message to my email address. Those settings upgraded fine and I didn’t have to touch it.

Overall, Lion Server is fine for my needs and for the $50 price compared to $1000 for Leopard Server and $500 for Snow Leopard Server, you can’t really complain. It does require a little more tinkering for more advanced setups than previous versions, but with my Linux experience it doesn’t bother me so much. Out of the box though I would say it is aimed more at the home/small business user now rather than enterprise and I’m not sure that I want to upgrade my work servers just yet.

“Service plug-ins from third-party developers let you add new chat services to iChat. And plug-ins run in a separate process to help ensure that they won’t damage your system.”

A few days ago I decided to try a google search and see if anyone had made an MSN plugin, and sure enough one now exists. It is still in beta, but works great with text chats. It is however in beta, so I certainly suggest using it with caution. Unfortunately, some of the great iChat features like screen sharing, video chats, etc do not work right now with it if ever, but I finally have that all in one messenger that I’ve wanted.

Here’s their website to grab the plugin. After installing, it does require you to log out and back in on your mac, so be sure and close anything your working on first.

Today marks the release day of OS X Lion for the Mac and I’ve had the opportunity to try it out over the last few weeks. Gizmodo published a very early negative review, calling it “If it weren’t for the fast, rock-solid Unix, graphics and networking cores, Lion would be Apple’s very own Vista.” Which I personally think their review, wasn’t well thought out and they didn’t do their research on a few things. Having been a mac user for almost a decade now (has it really been that long), I thought I’d share a few of my thoughts about the main features and a few of the not so obvious ones.

Mission Control

This is Apple’s new combination of what used to be Spaces/Expose that was introduced in Mac OS X Leopard. Some power users have been complaining about the change and Gizmodo called it a “cluster$@*$”. I personally don’t see it that way, but I only used spaces briefly when Leopard first came out. While I liked the idea behind spaces, I kind of found it cumbersome managing multiple desktops and remembering what I had where. In the bit of time I’ve used Mission Control, I feel that it is an implementation that might work better for your typical user. Only time will tell, but I also imagine someone will find a way to bring back the old way for those that miss it. The idea behind mission control, is that you start it with a simple mouse,trackpad, or keyboard gesture, and you are presented with all your open apps and desktops. You just click on whatever you’d like to switch to and it takes you there. I’ve found it to be a good experience for my workflow, especially when switching back and forth between multiple documents, full screen apps, and desktops. I can see myself using this a lot more than I ever did with Spaces/Expose. I don’t think the previous method ever caught on with your average user and that was why Apple decided to try this implementation. It will make some users mad for sure, but I think this is a good move to get the idea of multiple desktops, windows, etc to catch on with the general consumer and it works great on a notebook with limited screen real estate.

Mission Control

Launch Pad

Launchpad is a new launcher for your Apps installed on your computer. It resembles that of iOS on the iDevices by presenting them in a grid format on the screen and you can organize them in folders the same way of dragging one icon on top of the other. I think is is great for someone who has liked the experience on the iPhone and are trying a Mac for the first time. I also think I will like this feature, once I make myself accustomed to going to Launchpad rather than the applications folder and I don’t mind trying this switch. However, you aren’t forced to use it. Many people, like myself put an applications stack on the dock as an application launcher or even just use spotlight. Both of those methods still work just fine, so it is completely user optional to use the new launcher. I do feel Gizmodo got one thing wrong with their review on this. At least, with notebooks, which is the area Apple is selling the most. They said:

“Launchpad is supposedly the way to access all your apps, but who wants to click once on the dock’s Launchpad icon, launch that interface, and then select your app when you can just open the app from the Finder itself? It’s an extra click (or two or three). It’s added complexity; it’s superfluous.”

The part that they got wrong was that on a touchpad, you do not need to click. All you need to do is make a pinching motion with your fingers on the touchpad and launchpad opens right up, no matter where you are, no click on the dock required. The finder method they mention certainly is faster, but in my mind, more confusing to the average end user. However, that method still works for those that want to still launch an app that way. Launchpad is not forced in any way other than the icon on the dock being present.

Launchpad View

Open Folder in Launchpad

Full Screen Apps/Mail.app

One of the new features of Lion is Full Screen Apps. Now Windows users are probably thinking, “I’ve been able to click maximize and have an app full screen since the beginning”. While that is true, this is a little bit different. In apps the support full screen mode they have a two way arrow in the upper right hand corner. You click on the arrows, the screen moves to full screen, and opens up in its own space. The menu bar disappears, but can still be accessed by moving the cursor in top portion of the screen, but the idea is that you won’t need it. If an app uses full screen properly, all your tools will be available there and it resembles much more like an iPad app. The Apple mail client is a good example. It looks very much like the iPad app. You start a new message and the message pops up front and center. You can focus on just that without the other distractions from the dock or open windows, but you can still jump back with Mission Control if you say want grab a link from a web page to paste into your message. I think once more developers use this in their apps, some great app desktop experiences can be made. Only time will tell if that happens, but at least all of the Apple apps will most likely support it at some point.

Another nice addition is threaded mail. This is more of a catchup feature as gmail and some of the other web based systems have had this for a long time, but it’s great to finally have it in my client of choice.

The last feature that I’m really liking of mail is being able to specify multiple search criteria. Now you can type in multiple keywords when your looking for that one message that you can’t seem to find.

The upgrades to mail alone are worth it to me for the upgrade price, but everything can be turned up and switched back to the old look. It is again something that you don’t have to use.

My only gripe with full screen apps is when you sue them with dual monitors, the app goes full screen to the default monitor and leaves the secondary display as the grey checkerboard pattern with no way to use it. Hopefully that is something Apple addresses in a future update.

Sending an Email in Full Screen Mail.app

Full Screen Mail showing a threaded message

Searching in Mail.app

Airdrop

This to me is one of the coolest features in Lion for sharing files between computers on the same network. Basically you and the person you want to share with click on the airdrop icon in the finder. You’ll see an icon for your computer in the bottom and an icon for their computer at the top. Simply drag a file onto their icon, accept that you want to send it, and then they accept on their end to receive the file. No more needing ip address, setting up shares, etc between computers. It just works like it should. This really is file sharing for everyone.

Airdrop User Icons

Gestures

Lion has some new trackpad gestures that help navigate the desktop and take advantage of some of these new features. This is great on their notebooks, but on the desktop the best way to take full advantage of this is with the Magic Trackpad. However, you can use the Magic Mouse for some of these gestures as well. Once you pick up on these it really makes the Lion experience shine, but I think this will be one of the highest learning curves for the average consumer.

New Lion Gestures

The Small Things

Apple lists over 250+ new features in Lion, but these have been some of the major ones.

Here are just a few of the small ones:

Lookup

Double-tap with three fingers to select a word or phrase in any OS X application and look it up. OS X gathers information from the built-in dictionary and thesaurus, and goes to the web to bring back related Wikipedia entries. Results are displayed inline under the selected word.

Using Lookup on a webpage

Full Screen Terminal

Take your Terminal window full screen and give yourself more room to enter and view command lines.

Full Screen Terminal

Improved Auto Correction

Auto-correction in Lion displays suggested spellings below the word. Press Return to accept the change or click the X to keep the current spelling.

Auto Correction

Online Account Preference Pane

The new Mail, Contacts, and Calendars pane in System Preferences gives you a central location to set up and manage all your accounts, including Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo!, and AOL.

Account Preferences

Those are just a few that I happen to like.

Conclusion

Now, the final questions would be: “Should I buy it?” Obviously, for me, I like a lot of the new features in Lion. The important thing to remember though is most of these things can be turned off or you don’t have the use them. I can only find two exceptions. One, is Launchpad. If you’re a heavy spaces/expose user then you’ll probably hate the upgrade and hopefully a developer somewhere will fill that gap for those users. The second, is the dropping of support for Power PC Apps. Most newer Mac users won’t have this problem, but if you are still clinging to that app that worked on your G4 processor, it won’t work in Lion and it might finally be time to find an intel alternative.

For the majority, I’d say yes. I haven’t found any major show stopping bugs in my testing, but it is always good to wait for the first .1 update which usually takes care of anything major and by that time hopefully any incompatible apps will have been updated. However, anyone with the itch to be on the cutting edge, I’ve found it to be a stable and good experience. I don’t think this will be Apple’s Vista. I’m using it on my home and work computers and am loving it. Really, for $30, which includes a license to install it on any of your computers, I don’t see a compelling reason not to upgrade as it is practically being given away and you’ll be up to date for any future software that might only work on Lion.

We went to Ikea this weekend and I decided to try one out and I’m very happy with the results. It doesn’t cut on the noise which would have been nice, but as far as making a server look good in a home it does the job.

Here’s it is setup in my office/collection room.

Almost exactly a month ago, Apple launched the Mac App store. I initially wasn’t sure if I’d use it a whole lot where I already have my core programs that I use on the mac, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the experience. This certainly wasn’t a unique idea from Apple as a few Linux distributions have already had similar stores in their desktop versions, but this is the first time the idea has been used on a bit more mainstream OS. And with how simple and easy everything is, I wouldn’t be surprised if MIcrosoft eventually does something very similar on Windows.

It’s a win win for developers and end users. For developers they get the app in the store and then anyone can finding their app fairly easily. No need to google search through tons of pages trying to find the app that does that one thing. Developers get the exposure they want in the app store and users get the one place shop to find them.

The process of buying an app is just like that on the iPhone, iPad, etc. Find the app you want to buy/download, click the buy button, input your iTunes account information, and the app icon goes down to the dock with a download progress bar. The app is automatically installed with no need to find your downloaded file, drag an icon to the applications folder, run an installer, or the various other methods that a user had to do in the past.

The other nice thing is no more serial numbers, product activation, or other various methods to combat piracy that have been implemented by app developers in the past. The paid apps do use a drm scheme to prevent piracy, but it is flexible enough that I think users won’t mind. Any app you buy on the app store can be used on up to 5 computers. Most of the time you are only limited to one by most license agreements, so I think this is great. I can buy apps on my home computer and then still use them on my work computer. Or say I’m at a friends house and need a certain app that I’ve bought previously to get something done. I could login with my store info, download the app, get the work done, and then delete it.

Auto updates are another great feature. So far I haven’t had an app downloaded in the app store nag me about updating to a new version like many normal apps do and it’s always when I’m trying to get something done. Instead, now you just launch the app store and click the updates tab. It’ll list everything that has an update and simple update all click will keep your apps current.

So now what apps have I downloaded/bought

Free Apps

Stuffit Expander

This utility has been a requirement for a very long time. It is used to extract compressed files such as .zip, .rar, gzip, etc. In the past just to get this free expander version you had to go to their site, type in your email, and wait a few minutes for a download link. I was really happy when I saw it was in the app store and wouldn’t have to do this whole process anymore when setting up a mac for the first time.

Text Wrangler

Text Wranger is a free text editor created by the same people who make BBEdit. It doesn’t have all the main features of BBEdit, but gets the job done when you need to edit html, php, and similar such files. I use this utility every day and was also glad to see it in the app store.

Paid Apps

Ringer

This app was free for a limited time. I’m not sure if it still is or not, but this is a really easy iPhone ringtone maker utility. You open the app and it automatically pulls from your iTunes library. You pick the song you want, highlight the area you want for a ringtone, click create, then it switches over to iTunes, creates the ringtone, and automatically adds it to your ringtones library ready for the next time you sync your iPhone. It is well worth it even at a couple dollars with how easy it is to use. Previously I was using Quicktime Pro and it required quite a few more steps.

Angry Birds

Not much needs to be said about Angry Birds. This game has taken the mobile world by storm with its simply gameplay, but fun mechanics. The Mac version works just the same, but you glide your finger on the trackpad to launch the birds at those pesky pigs.

Pixelmator

I had heard of Pixelmator before the app store, but because of the rave reviews it was getting I decided to give it a try. For a limited time it is on sale for $30 in the app store. It does a lot of the same things that most users use Photoshop for, but at a much more affordable price. I went to their site and tried out there 30 day demo and within a day of use decided I would abandon Photoshop and use this instead. Some things take a little getting used to, but they have some great tutorials on their site and it is fairly easy to pick up. The program feels like a mac program with a polished interface, is one of the first photo editors to use your graphics card, and is fully 64-bit. Where photoshop takes a good 5-10 seconds to open up, Pixelmator is pretty much instantaneous and ready for work. This is now my goto choice in a graphics program.

So that’s what I’ve downloaded so far, but I do still have a few on my list. Apple has reduced the price of their software dramatically in the App store. One example is Aperture, the RAW image editor created by Apple. The boxed version of Aperture runs $200, but now you can get it in the App Store for $89, so less than half the retail price. I’ve wanted to toy around with Aperture, but the price has always put me off. At $80 I just might go for it at some point. I hope other developers follow suit now that they don’t have to pay for packaging, CDs, etc. The other nice thing is now the various suites that Apple had such as iLife and iWork are setup that you can just purchase the individual pieces. So say you only like iLife for iPhoto and iMove, now you can only buy those two apps at $15 a piece and save some cash without having to buy the others.

I personally think this was a great move and it helps the little developers out there get noticed. Some people have said this is the demise of the Mac thinking that at some point Apple will shut off loading Apps the old way, so you’re stuck with just the App Store. I personally don’t think the Mac will go that and certainly hope it never does. For the average consumer, they’ll be able to get what they need in the App store, but on a full fledged computer you’ll still need the ability to load tweaks and various other things that won’t fit into the App store

The first thing I did was make sure I had a backup of my data. I not only had a complete backup of my previous server files, but also the latest backups of the mysql databases for wordpress, etc.

I did a basic install of Leopard server, but excluding extras like printer drivers and language fonts as I didn’t need those. I did make sure to install X11 as it is a requirement for macports which I’ll talk about later. The install went without a hitch, so then it was time to do the updates. There are at least 2 GB of updates after clean install of 10.5.0 Server that bring it up to 10.5.8.

With all the updates in place it was time to select the services that I want to run on the server. OS X server comes with several loaded out of the box and it is just a matter of enabling them(checking a box) in the Server Admin utility. I started of by enabling web(apache), mysql (wordpress database), mail (for administrative messages), and afp (for file sharing and Time Machine backups). This makes them show up in the left hand pane in server admin and you can now configure them before starting the actual service.

MYSQL

The first thing I did with mysql was setup the root password. This can be done in server admin under the mysql settings. Once the password was in place I dropped to a command line. I first recreated a blank database with the command

mysqladmin -u USERNAME -p create DATABASE

Once the database was created I then imported my backup file with this command

mysql -u USERNAME -p DATABASE < FILENAME.mysql

One thing I noticed with the default mysql settings was it was a bit slow connecting to the database when loading wordpress. I modified the my.cnf file which on Leopard Server is located in /private/etc/my.cnf with the following settings

key_buffer = 384M
max_allowed_packet = 16M
table_cache = 1024
sort_buffer_size = 2M
read_buffer_size = 2M
read_rnd_buffer_size = 8M
myisam_sort_buffer_size = 64M
thread_cache_size = 8
query_cache_type = 1
query_cache_limit = 1M
query_cache_size = 20M


Once these settings were changed to take advantage of the extra RAM in the server the connections were much faster.

Web

Because I wanted to use Apple's Server Admin utility, I wanted to stick with their build of Apache, but you can always download and install your own. I did find Apple's php module pretty limiting though as it was missing a few extensions that wordpress, gallery2, etc needed. Rather than download and configure my own I found a preconfigured module that had everything I needed. To install just leave the default php module unchecked in the web server settings and install the package from the site. Two other apache modules I made sure were enabled, was mod_rewrite (for better wordpress urls), and mod_deflate which enables compression for smaller files to be sent from the webserver.

With those settings in place it was time to setup the various sites I host. You just click on the sites tab in server admin and then the + to add a site. I specified which network adapter the site should use, pointed it to my wordpress directory, disabled file listings for security reasons, and allowed overrides so it would use my .htaccess files that I have setup. I repeated the same steps for each site. With those settings in place I tested my site and it came right up. I had to fix a few paths in the wordpress settings since they had changed locations from my old linux server to a new one, but other than that everything appeared to have worked.

Mail

With google apps now handling my email needs the only thing I needed was to setup the smtp service to deliver server system messages and WordPress messages. I used a similar setup as before by using gmail as a relay. I found another guide that helped with the process. Mirrored below.

You might want to use Google apps mail or Gmail for your outbound SMTP server on on your Apple Macintosh running Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.2. Postfix can be configured easily for this and then scripts and applications can send mail outside your Apple computer. There is no need to configure the server portion of SMTP (smtpd), just configure the smtp client. You do not need to create any certificates either. You can use the anonymous ciphers but you will need to validate the Google Thawte certificate presented in the TLS handshake. This post will show how to do it.

First create /etc/postfix/relay_password with the server name, email account name and password as shown below. This cofiguration works with Gmail accounts as well as with Google hosted personal domain email accounts. It also works with both Google smtp servers shown below. You will most likely need to preface all these commands with "sudo" to gain the needed privileges.

smtp.googlemail.com youremail@gmail.com:yourpassword
smtp.gmail.com youremail@googlehosteddomain.com:yourpassword
Then use postmap to create a .db file.
postmap /etc/postfix/relay_password
Make sure the map is ok with
postmap -q smtp.gmail.com /etc/postfix/relay_password
You will need to retrieve the Thawte Premium Server CA from https://www.verisign.com/support/roots.html.

unzip -j roots.zip
cd /etc/postfix/certs
openssl x509 -inform der -in ThawtePremiumServerCA.cer -out
ThawtePremiumServerCA.pem
c_rehash /etc/postfix/certs
Now you are ready to configure postfix. Add these lines to the bottom of /etc/postfix/main.cf

relayhost = smtp.googlemail.com:587
# auth
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/relay_password
smtp_sasl_security_options = noanonymous
# tls
smtp_tls_security_level = may
smtp_tls_CApath = /etc/postfix/certs
smtp_tls_session_cache_database = btree:/etc/postfix/smtp_scache
smtp_tls_session_cache_timeout = 3600s
smtp_tls_loglevel = 1
tls_random_source = dev:/dev/urandom
Test now by using /usr/bin/mail to send an email. You can check /var/log/mail.log to see if it worked without errors. Leopard enables postfix by default. Launchd watches a directory and will startup when the test email is sent.

You may need to let postfix re-read the config files. Use launchctl to stop the process. It will automatically restart and read the config edits.
sudo launchctl stop org.postfix.master

Time Machine

One of the few main reasons I wanted to switch to the Leopard server/xserve, was to allow Time Machine backups over the wireless network rather than having to plug in an external drive to each mac in the house. This was quite easy to setup. I plugged the external drive into the Xserve, enabled AFP service, and setup a share point to the root of the external drive. In the server admin tool go to the share point settings and click Enable as Time Machine backup destination. I created a user on the xserve specifically for Time Machine backups and made sure it had read/write permissions to the drive.

To allow the drive to be seen on the local computer just connect to the drive with afp://ipaddress and mount the time machine share. Now you can go into the Time Machine settings on the computer, click choose backup disc, and the network drive will show up.

This is the end of part 1. This post has taken me longer to complete than I originally thought, so I'm going to put the rest into a 2nd part.

The Xserve I bought was a fairly older model being a G5 system rather than an intel, but for $300 I couldn’t really complain. I was very happy with Ubuntu and just in case, I made sure that I could load it on the Xserve if I wanted to go back. The main extras that I get with OS X Server edition is being able to fairly easily set up a Time Machine server to backup our laptops over the air and the ability to have iTunes setup to stream media to the Apple T.V.

The other plus is the Xserve is much quieter than the previous server. Which is certainly an issue living in a small area. I would compare the noise to the Xserve to that of your regular desktop PC. I still have a few more things to setup and will do my best to try and document them here.

The next day another app was approved called GV Mobile+ which was previously in the app store before it was pulled last year. I’m waiting to download this app until it is made available for free for a limited time this Saturday. It looks very similar to GV Connect, so it will probably be just personal preference as to which interface a user likes better.

Once I’ve tried both I’ll post which one I’ll actually be using for Google Voice. Both apps right now run $2.99 a piece which is pretty cheap when you consider what you’re getting. It will be interesting to see if Google themselves resubmit their app that was never approved before. If that happens than I imagine it will probably be free, so it is up to you if you want to wait and see if that happens.

Here’s a few screenshots of the app from the GV Connect page.