Something Mac-related for my DH's christmas - Hub2Dee help?!

[Pruni]

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was about to type iPod Nano..then read your last line - lucky man.
Wil be keeping an eye on this thread as I could have typed this exact post and could do with a few ideas for my Mac loving Dh too
(Sorry no ideas to suggest of my own)

What top laydees you all are, wanting to spoil your mac-loving dhes, LOL...

hmmm...

• Wireless bluetooth keyboard and mouse can make the working area look more flash.

• There is a new (sadly wired) multi-button mouse they might be intrigued by. Do they have iSight cameras (little thingies for top of screen to do video chats with) ? They might like that if they have anyone to chat to (chats only with mac clients).

• there is a new pro photography application called Aperture which if they have a digital SLR they would wet themselves over.

• erm - an upgrade to OS X Tiger (10.4. blah) if he only has OS X 10.3.blah (Panther)

• A dock with built-in speakers so he can listen to his ipod elsewhere (non Apple product)... along the same lines: armband / radio transmitter / microphone / car adapter for the Nano etc.

• How about a Mac Mini for another room (you will possibly be able to hijack it, LOL).

• camera / video camera compatible with the Mac so he can take photos / video ?

• photo printer ?

• Powermate knob (go google) - actually anything from the Powermate's manufacturer, Griffin Technology - they have loads of cool bitsies.

I don't know what else to suggest... erm surge plugs ? LOL, not very sexy... PDAs ?

ooh - there is one bitsy: Airport Express which they'd like a lot. It gives you a wireless connection to your hifi (ie. twiddle around with itunes on your desktop, hear your music played on your living room hifi, without wires), and also gives you wireless printing (plug printer into bitsie; avoid needing to plug printer into laptop / desktop)...

HTH

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Yeah, it means people like you can only talk to tossers like me, LOL...

I literally video chat to my bro, my folks and my cousin only

Rather small universe, LOL.

Aperture is fairly hard core complex photo management... would really be most suitable if he / you have (or buy, LOL) a digital SLR and shoot in RAW format, often with multiple exposures per shot IYSWIM (as opposed to little point and shoot, a few photos a week).

Oh, and quite agree iPhoto and iChat are lovely to use.

iPhoto though, once your library gets big, or the file size increases etc. etc. can tend to slow down somewhat. Still love the ease with which you can upload albums, e-mail pics in appropriate sizes to family etc. etc.

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HIJACK ALERT - H2D - is there a way to speed up iPhoto - by not displaying the whole library every time you open it up - just the last year or month or something and archive the rest? I want them to be readily accessible but just not there all the time.

Pruni - another iPod nano - black if he's got the white one or vice versa. It's a Mac, it's a thing of beauty. oh and some iTunes credits.

conferencing, video interviewing prospective Swedish aupairs etc. LOL

(isn't the quality of the video / sound amazing ??? )

OS X 10.4.blah (Tiger) gives you multiple audio chats at the same time too, which is handy.

Aha ! So if he has a digital SLR (man after my own heart, Mr. Pruni), then he would probably think Aperture is really very handy. iPhoto is somewhat limiting for 'keen amateur' photographers because it doesn't handle RAW images with quite as much ease as jpegs, and doing comparitive image views (to try and get the 'keeper' out of a stack of say 4 or 5 shots is a slow, painful process. Aperture handles all of this, with workflow and image manipulation designed to be easy for pros (or wannabes, LOL).... educationl price is half that of retail, if you can get edu pricing, and it is due for release end of November, so will still be shiny / new / cool etc. LOL

Camille is doing very well and sleeps loads and is v. sweet. Due jabs today but she has a few sniffles / sneezes and is a bit blocked up... don't know if I would call it a cold... her head grwoth isn't quite what it should be though, so some referrals coming methinks. Obviously hope all is OK...

bear, there are a few applications that makes you switch between iphoto libraries. macupdate will have them listed.

Bear - iPhoto, even with a big library should open pretty fast. A few things to try:

1. Loadsa RAM. I have 512, may move to 1GB or more).

2. I was browsing iPhoto support (as you do) because iPhoto was incorrectly rotating some of my images, and I found out there is an issue with certain cameras from certain manufacturers inserting 'maker notes' into EXIF information for the photos (exposure, time of shot etc.) and whilst most maker notes are really small, some are massive and cause iPhoto to chug / die. Not much you can do - some geeks are trying to strip these maker notes but I am not sure how much luck they are having.

3. This is a good un, but I'd urge you to back your photo library up first...Hold down OPTION and COMMAND (ie. the Apple key) when launching iPhoto. A magic menu will pop up offering to reindex your library. I went and did the full rebuild jobby and it helped. Please back up incase all goes pear shaped. I'd also empty your trash as iphoto keeps these images and bloats your library (they will disappear permanently though, so check your trash for any overlooked gems !).

4. In IPhoto / Preferences // General, I've got only show 12 months albums and show 1 last roll album, don't know if that might help keep things zippy.

5. Apps / Utilities / Disk Utility / Repair Permissions on your hard drive, do this regularly to try and keep things 'clean'.

6. As LilacBump suggests, there are several 'iPhoto library manager' apps which let you divide up your images into several libraries, and load up different ones at different times. These are all third party little shareware / freeware bitisies.

HTH

(That's your iphoto trash, not your 'sysem' trash BTW).

Oh, and iTunes credits is a cool idea.