Elgato EyeTV 250 with QAM

Watching TV and using a computer are fairly distinct activities. TV programs do not crash. The characters on “Lost” don’t start walking slowly and stuttering when too many people are watching the show at the same time. Unlike Microsoft Office, Dwight Schrute from “The Office” won’t unexpectedly quit at the worst possible time (which is more then can be said for his writers!)

Still, TV does have a lot in common with your Mac…both require you to watch what goes on on a screen, and these days, both contain digital content that you, as a consumer ought to be able to watch and use at whatever time you see fit. In our brave new world of TiVo, video on demand, and YouTube, television is no longer “broadcast” to your home on the schedule of some fat cat TV executive; consumers today have more control then ever of how and when they watch their favorite shows.
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Apress and the freindsofed division is a fairly new player to the Mac book industry, having focused in the past on heavier topics for programmers and hard core web designers. They are a welcome addition to the Mac Family.

Justin Williams wrote a very first-person account of his adventures with OS X Leopard. This should not be considered a beginners book, especially given the family this book is in. The book is designed for Tiger or other OS X users wanting to know what is new in Leopard. The book is a great effort, but at points I got annoyed that he was stating the obvious things a OS X user knows. Williams writing however was spot-on: easy to understand with plenty of screen shots and detailed examples. He also includes the basics of iLife ‘08, which is a bonus, though makes the title a bit misleading and leaves the reader with the assumption Leopard includes iLife ‘08. Unless you upgraded to iLife ‘08 and Leopard, 30% of the book isn’t applicable to you. Even with the iLife ‘08 the book is refreshingly short and can’t be used a child’s booster seat like so many technical books can be.

Though I’m an experienced Leopard user, I even learned a few tricks from this book, based on Williams personal experience with the operating system. This would be a good book to give a experienced Mac user that wants to know “what’s new” in Leopard. It was quick, straightforward and to the point: a good book for people who don’t like to read manuals.

Pros: Excellent tips, easy to understand for a experienced OS X user new to Leopard
Cons: Covers iLife ‘08 which adds unnecessarily to the book, covers thins many in the target audience would consider obvious

Three out of Five DogCows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave™ or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

Serene Saver 2 HD

While at Macworld, I usually pick one product I simply can’t wait to try until I get home. When I saw Serene Saver, I knew it would be the product I’d try that very night. The booth’s location was in the “low rent district” as I like to call it. These are small kiosks usually staffed by the writer of the software. There aren’t sales people or flashy presentations because there isn’t any room. The quality of the product needs to stand on it’s own and Serene Saver doesn’t disappoint. Of course, when I saw “Serene Saver”, I immediately remembered the Seinfeld episode of a similar name. Ironically, that episode was inspired by “The Net” which was filmed at a Macworld Expo I was at.

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You know that one episode of Family Guy where Peter makes some seemingly random reference to something that connects him to Generation X’ers and then the sketch goes on for too long. You don’t quite get the reference, it’s bearing to the story, or why Fox didn’t let sleeping dogs lie. Oh yeah, that’s pretty much every episode.

However, this reference to pop culture does actually have some bearing on my review of “The iPhone Book”. This was a series of disjointed short “tips” about the iPhone that included way too many pop culture references that made you scratch your head and want to put on Futurama instead. The book was cowritten by Scott Kelby and Terry White and their styles mixed like oil and doorknobs. In the intro the authors warn the book is “quirky.”, and if you want “quirky” buy this book. If you want a great book on how to use your iPhone, put this book back on the shelf.
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Now that the show is over officially, I’ll give my overall review of the show. Brian will give his review here

My overall impression. Apple was accurate with it’s theme of the show: Something in the Air

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The meeting opened up with introductions, recent Apple news, followed by users questions about Apple products.

The meeting concluded with our monthly door prize, which included a t-shirt from MacBak, as well as iPhone: The Missing Manual courtesy of O’Reily Media.

Check us out on the web and subscribe to the podcast at http://www.laugks.org/news/.

Here are my photos so far. Why is it version 5.?. Well, it’s my fifth Macworld and it’s day one.

Brian’s been blogging quite a bit about Macworld: Check out his thoughts as well.

I’m writing this from the Media Center at the show, starting day 2. In general, I was unimpressed with the show so far. The fact I was able to see most everything in about six hours is evidence there wasn’t anything to write home about, figuratively and literally. I’ll reserve final judgement until I finish the show. My initial thoughts is “evolutionary” not “revolutionary”. I have a term for stuff like this: “with sprinkles”. It refers to that episode of the Simpsons in which Homer gets enticed to eat donuts because it now has sprinkles. Most of the items I saw added a few bells and whistles and called it a new product. Many vendors said “Now we are compatible with Leopard” or “Now for iPhone”. Yawn. We kind of except that, it’s been out for a while.

More later!

The “Missing Manual”, in case you didn’t already know, is the gold standard of technical publications. Heck, it’s the platinum standard at this point. Any book that has the “Missing Manual” in the title is sure to be a must have. I’ve never been disappointed and “iPhone: The Missing Manual” carries the torch for the series yet again. Some books are only edited by David Pogue, but this one was written exclusively by hi, most likely because the iPhone was a hard find for anyone.

While Pogue expertly covered all the features of the iPhone, he also helped readers work around some of the limitations such as the lack of a word processor or a instant messaging program. I learned quite a few tips even for my mere mortal Treo 650. He helps you save money on text messaging, much to the chagrin of AT&T’s accountants. I had very high hopes for the book, and Pogue exceeded every one.

Ideally, the iPhone should be straightforward and obvious for most people, but occasionally you aren’t quite sure about a feature or how to combine features together to do what you want. For example, how does one avoid SPAM on the iPhone…yuck. This is more than the typical Missing Manual in my opinion. This includes those handy tips and tricks most companies write a separate book on. The list of websites that will simulate desktop apps is worth the price of admission alone.

As always, the Mac and PC platforms are covered equally and with respect. He explains how to sync contacts on a PC and a Mac. Most important, Pogue covers all the troubleshooting steps you need to know when your iPhone stops doing what it wants. Because the iPhone is so new, there aren’t many guides to fixing problems and I’ve had to google way too much in order to fix problems. Now I’ve got all I need in one guide.

No features of the iPhone is left undiscussed! Even experts with the iPhone (can you say you are an expert when it’s been out less than a year?), will find something in this Missing Manual. I think that anyone who has a smart phone will get ideas from this guide. If you can’t have an iPhone, get the next best thing.

Of course, if the manual were hard to understand or disorganized it wouldn’t do anyone much assistance. Fortunately, Pogue’s easy to understand writing style explains things in such a way novices can understand without talking down to them or boring expert users. The index and table of contents are very easy to use to hone in the particular features you are interested in. Extensive use of full color photos helps make sure you can follow along with the book.

Pros: Amazing guide to the iPhone. I suspect Steve Jobs secretly keeps a copy on his desk.
Cons: Besides the fact it doesn’t come with an iPhone, absolutely no cons.

Five out of Five Dogcows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave™ or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

I have a traditional love/hate relationship with Dummies books. When I am truly a dummy in the subject, I like their broad overviews. “Switching to the Mac for Dummies” is a new title for the Dummies series and is the first Dummies book by author XXXXX Renhold. Generally Dummies books are designed to give you the information you need in a lighthearted way so that the reader doesn’t feel intimidated or overwhelmed.

I’m not sure what mark Reinhold was shooting for but he clearly missed it. The book is overwhelming yet inadequate and in some places just wrong! As an example, Reinhold said you can’t run Appleworks on newer Macs. That is simply untrue. But why would someone switching to the Mac ever care about older version of Appleworks? Based on the contents of the book, it was more akin to “New Macs for Dummies”. Reinhold covered PC to Mac issues as well as Mac to Mac issues. While that’s nice, why would a PC user need that info? It creates an information overflow that makes the book harder to read and confusing for new Mac users.

While I realized Reinhold did not intend the book to be funny, I had to laugh at some of the topics he covered. Few users switching to the Mac need to know that back in the 1980s some PCs used MicroChannel Architectures (MCA) and Macs used NuBus. This minutae reminds me of the sketch on Airplane when the air traffic controller is asked how we got into this crisis, and he starts talking about dinosaurs creating oil and people buying expensive cars. Funny on a big screen, but not for a dummies book. That’s just an example of the massive overkill of useless information. Is the author prepping people for an appearance on a trivia show?

Too much information isn’t that bad so long as critical information is included and Reinhold simply failed to deliver on critical information. In particular I am comparing his book to the Missing Manual series of the same title and the Dummies version seems like a really poor rough draft of the Missing Manual. When people switch computers from either Mac to PC or PC to Mac they are most concerned about their data (including pictures and music), their emails and address book, and their favorites. Reinhold comes up with rather elaborate Rube Goldbergesque style ways of moving the information, but way beyond the skills (or budgets) of the average switcher. He also fails to cover how to convert email from PC to Mac, which is a top question for switchers.

Those topics Reinhold covers well are horribly disorganized and hard to follow with few, if any, illustrations or screen shots. You simply have to take his word for what he’s saying and use your imagination. I asked typical “How do I?” question on the Mac and none were covered. A new PC user might be calling Microsoft after reading this book asking for reconciliation.

Sorry for such a harsh review. I’m sure Reinhold knows his stuff and was simply trying to be helpful. Switching is a relatively new topic. Apple had to make a Newton before it could make the iPhone and I’m sure version 2.0 of this book will be much better. Skip this one though.

Pros: Interesting for trivia buffs, might increase Windows sales and Apple returns.
Cons: Disorganized, inconsistent coverage. Hard to read and follow.

Two DogCows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave™ or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

The meeting opened up with introductions, recent Apple news, followed by a presentation on the Mac Product line.

The meeting concluded with questions from group members and our monthly door prize including iLife ‘08.

Check us out on the web and subscribe to the podcast at http://www.laugks.org/news/.

If industry expert predictions hold true, laptops will outpace desktop sales again this holiday season. Unfortunately people pay thousands of dollars for a laptop , yet protect it with something that is stylish, but offers little more protection than a ziplock bag. If you give or get a laptop this holiday season, please protect it. Screen cracking can be eliminated in our lifetime, but only if we work together!

You really can’t blame some people for not protecting their laptop properly. Most bags are ugly. Butt-ugly. Black behemoths that scream “I have a laptop and you should steal me”. College students opt for the stylish laptop sleeves, because, well they want dates and don’t want to look stupid. Function over form comes later in life. Older people buy Volvos, younger people buy Minis or Hummers. Don’t buy your college student a laptop bag unless you are sure they will use it. Those ubiquitous black bags simply won’t fill the bill.
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Color Decoder 1.0 by Stray Cat Technology

“Colors” are not just the theme of a mediocre 1980s gang movie starring Sean Penn and Robert Duvall. We mammals perceive the world in color, including our computer screens. However, a significant portion of the population experience color vision deficiency (popularly and somewhat inaccurately known as “color blindness”) where certain shades of color are unable to be properly perceived. Given that this is a fairly common phenomenon, and given how important color is in the Apple user interface, it seems rather surprising that Apple has neglected to handle color vision deficiency in their otherwise thorough Universal Access preferences. Luckily, Stray Cat Technologies has stepped up to fill this gap with their initial software release of Color Decoder.

Color Decoder is a simple application that does one thing - it tells you what color the screen is displaying underneath the mouse pointer. Color Decoder does this one of three ways; via a pop-up bubble the displays the color name, by speaking the color name out loud using Apple’s voice technology, or by flashing all pixels on the screen that share that specific color. Any of these three methods of color notification can be used by themselves or combined, so for example you could have the computer speak the color’s name and display it’s name in a bubble, but skip the flashing, or vice-versa. These preferences are controlled from a small palette on the screen which is the application’s entire user interface. Color Decoder’s recognition system can be turned off or on entirely via a hot key in case you only need it on occasions. The only other user interface option is the ability to turn on a magnifying glass to see exactly where the mouse pointer is pointing, which can be very useful when trying to find a single colored pixel in a huge image.

In actual use, Color Decoder works exactly as advertised. After launching, the palette opens where you can select your settings (you can hide this window once you have things set up as you wish). I tried out all three of the methods for communicating color in turn. The color name display only is a very minimalist method of showing the color, and is very useful when you have images on the screen where color is important, especially things like charts, graphs and other documents which use color to communicate data. The “flash colors” feature works well on images that are more complex with many colors mixed together such as gradients, weather radar displays and similar items. For most daily use, naming colors, supplemented by flashing colors works well. Magnification is usually not needed, although it is nice when you are looking at very complex images where there may only be a few pixels you need to track down or see (in these cases, the flashing feature is excellent as well).

I wasn’t as excited with the speak color name feature, where Color Decoder uses Apple’s speech synthesis to actually say the color names out loud. I can see this be very useful to someone with severe vision deficiency, but in actual use, having this feature on resulted in a continuous stuttering stream of half-spoken color names as I moved the mouse around the screen. I think this feature would be much more useful if there was a longer delay between mouse movements and the color being spoken, or even better if you could assign a separate hot key to speak color names on demand without having to leave the feature on all the time.

This minor quibble aside, I found Color Decoder to be a very functional and useful piece of software. Those with color vision deficiency will absolutely want to check this program out, but I would also recommend that anyone who works with color on a regular basis give Color Decoder a test drive. It fills an important hole in Apple’s OS and makes using a Mac easier for a large segment of the population, in a clean and elegant way.

Plusses: A great way for those with color vision deficiency to recognize and differentiate colors on the Mac; useful for designers and other users to find all examples of a particular color on a busy screen

Minuses: The spoken color feature could use some polishing

Summary: Color Decoder fills a gaping hole in Apple’s otherwise fairly complete Universal Access accessibility preferences and is definitely worth a download for those with color vision deficiency or who work with colors.

Color Decoder by Stray Cat Technology.
Price: $21.95; fully-functional demo version works for 1 week
Requires MacOS 10.5 or higher

Palm’s treatment of the Mac reminds me of that girl in high school who suddenly showed interest in me the time choosing lab partners came around…and then dumped me at the end of science class. Palm’s market share grew because of loyal Mac users. We were dedicated to the Palm and shunned it’s pale imitation: Windows CE and then Windows Mobile. However, Palm later joined the dark side, began making Windows Mobile devices and left us in the dust. Development of Palm software for the Mac stalled out and Palm left it to Apple to pick up the slack. Just like I was left stood up the week after science class was over. Whatever.

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The meeting opened up with introductions, recent Apple news, followed by an introduction to Mac OS 10.5 Leopard by Brian Best of Best Macs.

The meeting concluded with questions from group members and our monthly door prize, which included a couple Leopard t-shirts from Best Macs and “Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard” by Robin Williams courtesy of PeachPit.

Check us out on the web and subscribe to the podcast at http://www.laugks.org/news/.

Robin Williams seems to have a uncanny clairvoyance that not only helps her figure out that William Shakespeare’s works were possibly written by Mary Sidney, but also helped her get a Leopard guide in
the Apple stores the same day Leopard came out. Ok, she had some help from Apple by getting an advance copy. Maybe she used the Time Machine feature to go back to the days of Romeo and Juliet. It’s a pretty powerful feature of Leopard.

Obviously Apple trusted her enough to provide her with a pre-release copy of Leopard as well as make her the featured Leopard book in the store. In the Mac publishing world, she’s about as well known and well respected as ol’ Bill Shakespeare himself–and written almost as many works. Unlike Bill, reading her books are easy and straightforward arming non-technical users with the skills and understanding to attack Leopard head on.
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Granted, Dockstar’s paltry price of $9.95 is well worth it and then some. Don’t you hate it when software developers charge too much for the product! This product is definitely right-priced.

So what does Dockstar do? It changes to the Mail icon scheme to allow for specialty “badges”to let you know which email accounts have new messages. So instead of the red seal indicating how many new messages Mail has retrieved, you can have a purple star for one account, and pink heart for another. Instantly you can see which account has a new message. I think if they added green clovers, then they’d have to name the product Lucky Charms –and that pot of gold will be suppled by the Nigerian prince who died and needs to transfer money to your account. Oh, then they’d get sued for copyright violation, so Dockstar might be a good name after all.

Short review for a simple product that does one thing and does it very well

Pros: Use the Mail app icon to instantly determine which accounts have new messages
Cons: No Blue Moons or Purple Horseshoes.

Five out of Five dogcows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave™ or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

The meeting opened up with introductions, recent Apple news, followed by a discussion of accessories to plug in and enhance your Mac.

The meeting concluded with questions from group members and our monthly door prize, which included Macware’s MacBurn, and Sleevz for your iPod by Radtech.

Check us out on the web and subscribe to the podcast at http://www.laugks.org/news/.

It certainly has a pretty face, but like it’s celebrity brethren, does the new iMac have some brains behind her good looks?

Apple recently introduced their newest revision of the venerable iMac line of MacOS computers. The iMac is Apple’s mainstream home desktop computer, designed to cover a wide variety of consumer needs. It truly is the computer for the masses, but how does it stack up? I recently purchased a new 24 inch aluminum iMac and after using it for nearly a month, I believe Apple has definitely scored another winner.

The iMac comes in two screen sizes, 20 inches and 24 inches, the latter being as large as Apple’s 23 inch cinema display (remember how big those looked a couple years ago — now that resolution is available on a relatively inexpensive consumer Mac!). All the iMacs have the same processor, Intel’s zippy Core 2 Duo, with the only differentiator being your choice of 2.4 or 2.8 gigahertz speeds. Mine came with the 2.8 chip. Unfortunately, in an effort to shave an extra $50 off the price, Apple still shortchanges the iMacs with RAM, only shipping them with 1 GB standard. Luckily it is cheap, and easy to add additional RAM. You will want to put at least 2 GB if not more (up to a maximum of 4 GB) if you plan to do any more then basic web surfing.

The first thing anyone notices about the iMac is the screen. Controversially, Apple added a glass panel over the LCD itself, resulting in bright eye-popping color, but also introducing a possibly-annoying glare. I haven’t noticed any glare myself, but still, perception of glare is a very personal thing, depending on your own eyesight and the lighting in your office or room. I would recommend finding a friend (or traveling to the Apple store) and spending a half hour using the iMac before making your decision. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t provide an option for a matte screen, although I expect eventually there will be third-party “enhancements” (the glass panel comes off easily, although I wouldn’t try it at home!) Ironically, my own iMac arrived with a distracting speck of dust caught between the glass and the screen, necessitating a trip to the Apple Store in Kansas City.

So how is the iMac in day to day use? Very fast and very nice. It seems zippier then my “old” 2 ghz Mac Pro, and benchmarking tests bear this out, showing the iMac to be about 20% faster. Web surfing, using email, listening to music in Tunes, and editing photos in iPhoto are extremely fast, and the perception of speed is palpable. I also was very pleased with how fast Parallels ran on the iMac. Watching movies and TV shows on the huge screen, especially sitting back with the included Apple Remote is a pleasure as well. I use an Elgato EyeTV to record live television and combined with the iMac, this gives you a legitimate home entertainment center.

One unique feature of the new iMacs is that they come with a very different Apple keyboard (also available separately) which looks (and types like) the keyboard on the Macbooks. I have found the keyboard to be very pleasant to use, but like with the screen, I recommend trying out yourself first. Of course, if you don’t like it, you can plug in any USB keyboard.

Other nice touches in the iMac include a firewire 800 port (new to this generation of iMac, and very useful for adding fast external storage), extra fully-powered USB ports on the keyboard, and built-in Wi-Fi and bluetooth, and of course the video camera, useful for iChat as well as fun with Photobooth.

What is the iMac missing? For a consumer machine, very little. The only obvious oversight by Apple is the continuing omission of a built-in card reader for the most common digital camera memory cards. Attaching an ugly external reader ruins Apple’s clean lines, and given the design attention paid elsewhere, seems like an oversight. I also would like at least one USB port tucked away on the side of th iMac rather then the back, to make it easier to quickly attach a removable device. The workaround for this is, of course, a hub, once again, cluttering up the view! I should also note that, other then memory, the iMac has no user-upgradeable parts (most previous iMacs were this way too); if you ever think you might want to upgrade processors or hard drives, go with a Mac Pro.

In summary, despite some minor quibbles, the aluminum iMac is a winner. A powerful, fast consumer Mac that has long legs and will make a great Leopard machine for several years to come. Anyone in the market for a new Mac who doesn’t require the portability of a laptop should consider the iMac.

Aluminum iMac
$1200 - $2300 depending on configuration and screen size

Plusses:
- Extremely fast and powerful mainstream desktop Mac
- Gorgeous screen and all-around good looking machine
- lots of built-in extras

Minuses:
- Standard RAM is barely adequate
- No built-in memory card reader

Best for: General consumer and home/family use, students, office use, public-facing areas, consumer-grade digital photography or video editing
Consider a laptop instead if you require portability
Consider a Mac Pro instead if you do commercial-grade video/graphic design work or engineering

The meeting opened up with introductions, recent Apple news followed by a discussion on how to convert Analog audio and video into digital files for archival or playback purposes.

The meeting concluded with questions from group members and our monthly door prize, which included Stunt Software’s Overflow, MacBackup by Macxware and MarinerPack from Mariner Software.

Special thanks to the crew from BadHairCut Productions for their expertise throughout the meeting and Wolfes Camera, Camcorders and Computers for lending us the USB turntable to demo.

Check us out on the web and subscribe to the podcast at http://www.laugks.org/news/.

Review: Apple Training Series: Mac OS X Server Essentials

Peachpit’s “Apple Training Series” is generally an outstanding product line. However, there are two distinct branches to the line: knowledge and certification. This book isn’t designed as much to teach you about OS X Server (Tiger edition) as it is to prepare you for a certification exam. Nothing wrong with that, it just not terribly practical for real world operations. While I haven’t taken the certifcation exam, I suspect this book prepares you well for the exam since it’s the “offical” curriculum of the Apple Training and Cetification program.

Similiar to other test prep books, there are goals and reviews. In particular, the book breaks down the learning into chapters with time estimates, which is helpful in preparing your learning process. The included CD has sample files to go along with the detailed and expanded exercises. The book takes you through the basics of setting up a server start to finish along with giving an overview of the rich feature set found in OS X Server.

Unfortunately, simliar to other test prep books, the book doesn’t arm you with the skills necessary to properly maintain and configure a Tiger server in the real world. There is no troubleshooting guide nor much practical advice on do’s and don’ts of server setup. After reading this book, I’m relatively confident I could pass the exam, but I do not feel confident I could configure or maintain a Tiger server. Nonetheless, this book is a good first step in learning OS X server. You need no prior knowledge to start using this book and to at least get a test server set up.

Overall this is a good book for beginners and/or persons trying to get certified on OS X server. The book level from Peachpit says “Intermediate/Advanced”. I disagree; this is strictly for new users. If you will be maintaining a OS X server, look elsewhere for a support guide. Anyone who’s setup a OS X server will be annoyed by this book.

Pros: Clear examples and easy to follow guide for beginners
Cons: No troubleshooting nor practical guidance after initial setup

Two out of five dogcows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave™ or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

One of the latest gee whiz inventions in the past few years are the flurry of USB to IDE/SATA adapters. While technicians like me find them indispensable, other “mere mortals” can find some real handy uses for these gems. Storage leader Newertech has constructed one of the best USB bridges out there: the Newertech Universal Drive Adapter. While Newertech’s name is familiar to Mac enthusiasts and historians (including going bankrupt and leaving some rather upset customers), it’s only connection with that past company is the name and hopefully tradition of quality. So far the newer Newertech is carrying the torch well. Newertech and Otherworld Computing are sister companies, so OWC is the main place to buy the “new” newertech stuff.
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In the Matrix, the character Neo represented a slick confidence that somehow made him master of everything in the quasi-reality construct the movie series is named after. Of course, it’s also named after the substance the case is made of: neoprene. Yes, I’m obsessed with keeping my Macbook is tip top shape. It’s the first new laptop I’ve ever bought. I’ve tried hard shells and fabric sleeves. Each have their advantages. Hard shells work well to protect the computer, but aren’t always that pretty. They also can get scratched up over time. Mine after about 9 months began to look like one of those Nanos everyone sued Apple about. I then used a fabric sleeve. I liked them, and I continue use them on occasion. The problem with a fabric sleeve is you forget to put them back in. The NeoCase, just like the character, seems to be the missing element that combines them both. The fashion sense and durability of a fabric sleeve, combined with the protection of hard shell. It is the one that will bring balance to the force. Oops, wrong movie!
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So you didn’t get an iPhone? Sorry. Maybe it was the cost. Maybe it was your cell phone contract. Maybe it’s AT&T’s coverage where you live. Or maybe you just don’t like buying a 1