Author Archives: Harlemite

About Harlemite

I am a Harlemite, born and raised in the Harlem, New York (in the U.S., of course) now happily living in Stockholm, Sweden with my family. I'm an active Eastern Orthodox Christian who loves the holy apostolic faith, and traditions handed down by the Church fathers, as well as a very happy husband and father. I'm a Telecom and Sys Admin by trade. I bought a MacBook Pro in January 2007 and haven't looked back to owning a personal Windows computer since.

Kindle for Mac Problem with OS X Lion Solved

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I had a bit of a headache with my Kindle for Mac app. After installing Lion, I couldn’t see any of the books in my archive. For those of you not familiar with Kindles or the Kindle app, when one purchases a book it is initially saved into the archive. Once one double-clicks on it while in the archive, it’s then transferred to the “Home” folder. As you can understand, this was a big deal for. Especially for someone who uses their Kindle as much as I do (I have the Kindle for Mac app on all of my Mac apps as well as my iPhone), with as many books in their archive on my MacBook Air and iPhone.

I had read that simply uninstalling and reinstalling the Kindle for Mac app from Amazon’s site would do take care of the problem. That didn’t work. And, for those of you wondering, I even uninstalled using AppCleaner (an excellent little free deletion app, btw), emptied the Trash, and restarted my machine. No go.

Interestingly enough, the solution wound up being to delete the Kindle for Mac app, and reinstall it, but it had to be the one from the Mac App Store (which is free, just in case you’re wondering).

Why is this? I honestly have no idea! Nevertheless, it solved the problem. Everything was good to go after that.

The Lion Arrives In Harlem’s World

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I’m sure none of you will be surprised to know I’ve already downloaded and installed the latest version of Mac OS X which is 10.7 Lion. My first impressions are good. I love Mission Control and Launchpad. I wasn’t so crazy about the default selection for scrolling that Apple calls it “natural”. I was really glad to be able to change it back to what I’m used to (“unnatural”? lol) in the “Scroll and Zoom” section of the Trackpad configurations in System Preferences.

So far I’ve installed Lion on my MacBook Air (64GB) and MacBook Pro (500GB); both via the App Store. I’m going to play with it a bit more and buy a couple of books from Amazon before installing it on the family iMac that my wife uses for work, or her MacBook Air. That’s simply common sense there. ;)

The MacBook Air install was literally flawless. Once I purchased it in the App Store, and clicked on install I just let it be. There was nothing left for me to do. It continued on until the restart, that wonderful Mac start-up chime, and then the OS X Lion login window.

The MacBook Pro had only one hitch, which was an options window that popped up unexpectedly (for me anyway. I’m still not quite sure why it popped up).

I didn’t panic. I chose “Reinstall Mac OS X” based on the explanation underneath it (“Set up and install a new copy of Lion”). I thought it a bit confusing at first, but decided, logically, it couldn’t be any of the others. I wasn’t restoring from a Time Machine Backup, and I’m not really sure if that would actually work since there are obvious differences in the versions.

I actually went out for a coffee once I started the installs, but I’m guesstimating the entire process would’ve taken me about 1 hour for the MacBook Air and 1 and 1/2 for the MacBook Pro. Only one restart was required for the MacBook Air, but the MacBook Pro got hung up for some reason when I first signed on (I suspect it was my LaunchBar App, and allowed the report to be sent to Apple). I hard-rebooted (held the power switch down for 5 seconds. NOTE: I do not recommend this route for folks who are less than advanced users), to get things going again, and that worked out just fine. Once I restarted, things were good to go. In fact, I’m typing this post on my MacBook Pro now.

There’s lots for me to try out, and I haven’t even told you about the new version of Apple Mail yet (which I a lot so far). I’ll plan on keeping you posted. :)

Laterz..

Macbuzzer Big Bundle Deal

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Macbuzzer is offering a very a good price, $19.95 (126SEK), for $484 (3,104SEK) worth of software) for a bundle of Mac Software. The price will go up by $1 (6.4SEK) everyday for 10 days, which is how long the deal lasts.

While I’m not buying it (I bought apps that can take care of those needs many bundles ago, lol) I certainly do believe this is worth a look.

That said, do be careful if you plan on upgrading to OS X 10.7 Lion. After all, there may be apps in this bundle offering to do what Lion should do for free, so be and check.

Laterz. ;)

Spotify Closer to A Deal In the U.S.

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It looks like Spotify is closer to a deal in the U.S. Whether or not you folks in the land of red, white, and blue know it, this is a very good thing.

Spotify is a very cool music streaming service. Presently, one gets to choose from 13 million tracks, but I’m hoping that number will increase once the U.S. deal is signed. Everyone knows there’s a lot more music to be had in U.S. markets.

A few quick things really I like about Spotify:

  • Easy to use interface. This matters a great deal to folks who don’t want to spend too much time figuring out how things work.
  • The ability to share music on Facebook. Those of you who are my Facebook friends have surely seen the occasional song I share from my Spotify account.
  • If a Facebook friend who has a Spotify account is interested in that song, they can simply click on the link and have a listen. If they really like the song they can simply click the “Get” button to buy it.
There’s an awful lot of selling potential here, and I’m guessing record labels are finally starting to understand, regarding digital music, the genie is not going back in the bottle. It’s time to adjust and make it easier for people to buy their product. Even if they have to lower the price.
I think this is something we should keep our eyes on.
Oh, btw! I have invites. So be ready to ask if this happens. ;)