by Luis Pedroza | Info@fndtn.com | Twitter.com/thefndtn

Apple has released two fixes in the form of firmware updates, solving issues related to SuperDrives and AirPort wireless cards. Before you go looking for your fix, make sure you have already upgraded to Mac OS X 10.5.7 or later. It is required for said firmware patches’ installation.

Separate EFI firmware updates are available for the MacBook and MacBook Pro lineups, allowing users to eliminate loud noises made by the optical disk drive when waking their machine from sleep. While the noise does not affect hardware performance, mounting complaints prompted Apple to release a fix.

The AirPort Client update is available for all Mac machines running Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.2. This update comes after several MacBook, MacBook Pro and Mac mini users complained of AirPort issues ranging from an inability to share the Internet connection to the occasional loss of connection all together. Some have also complained about not being able to turn their AirPort connection on/off.

As always, the above updates are available at via Software Update. If you have any problems with installation or the problem continues to persist, do not hesitate to call The Foundation at (612) 465-0700.

by Luis Pedroza | Info@fndtn.com | Twitter.com/thefndtn

In wake of the revamped iMac lineup, it hasn’t made much sense to purchase a Mac Pro. Recent benchmarks had both the Core i5 and Core i7 27″ iMacs outperforming their 8-Core Xeon big brothers in almost every department. Don’t forget the iMac comes with one of the best looking screens available in the market, conveniently built right into the machine. When comparing machines, the iMac made more sense for most professional consumers.

Apple realized they needed to give professional users a reason to stay with their behemoth lineup. The Mac Pro has been Apple’s way of pairing top of the line hardware with a cutting edge operating system since the original G5’s inception. Also, the Mac Pro’s exterior design is an example of perfection. While there is a 2.93GHz 8-Core configuration available, the additional $2600 is not within many budgets. This morning, the Mac Pro and Xserve received a much needed storage and ram capacity boost. Effectively, professionals have a reason to turn the Mac Pro again.

Without so much as a whisper, Apple updated the configuration options available on their online store. The Mac Pro now has a 3.33GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon upgrade option, available at a $1,200 price tag. While the Xserve did not receive a similar processor upgrade, both lineups benefit from Apple bringing 2 TB hard drives and 4 GM RAM modules to the table. With four drive bays, The Mac Pro now has the potential for 8 TB. New RAM modules doubles the total memory capacity of the quad-core Xserve to 24 GB and the 8-core Xserve to 48 GB.

The Foundation gives you best solution for your creative needs! We are a Value Added Reseller (VAR) for multiple manufacturers. Call us today at (612) 465-0700 .

by Erik Tollefsrud | Erik@fndtn.com | Twitter.com/thefndtn

MobileMe is great, but one feature stands out as a must-have for iPhone users: Find my iPhone. For $99/year you have a convenient and safe way to protect your iPhone from getting lost or having your sensitive data compromised in the event of a stolen iPhone. No need to install software on your iPhone or the Mac/PC. Instead, you can access the “Find my iPhone” tools from any web browser on any computer.

It is my belief that if Apple drew more attention to the Find my iPhone feature they could sell more MobileMe subscriptions. Instead they market the main features as an email account and an online calendar. Sorry, but Gmail and Google Calendar work great as a free service. The day Google’s services are subscription-only or become less reliable than MobileMe will be the day I start telling people MobileMe is your email/online calendar solution.

What about MobileMe’s other features? I group MobileMe’s contacts feature in with calendar and email account; you get an address book free with your gmail account. As for Gallery (a place to upload your photos to share with other people) and iDisk, I find it hard to justify those features for $99/year because FaceBook or Flickr are where you’re probably already uploading and sharing your photos, and uploading files to your iDisk is probably not the first idea you think of when you need someplace to backup important data to. Granted, uploading your important files to the iDisk is a really great way to make sure you don’t “lose” your files later. This feature did come in handy when I was in college. Instead of saving my paper to a flash drive and hope that the files didn’t corrupt themselves in the event of accidentally ejecting the flash drive improperly or just flat out lose it, it was nice to know that any computer I went to to print out my paper was basically already there, waiting for me. But emailing a copy of your documents to your 7GB (or more) Gmail account has the same effect.

Again, I want to stress that the only thing you cannot get from any other service or product is Find my iPhone. Don’t think you’re going to use it? I think you aren’t thinking of ALL the possibilities. It may not happen a lot, but you don’t need to wait for the day someone actually steals your phone to use the Find my iPhone service. How about the day you are running late for work and you can’t find your phone? Just login to MobileMe and make your phone play an alert sound for a full 2 minutes. I wish my keys would do the same thing when I loose them.

What about when someone takes off with your phone? You’ve got a map of where the phone and probably the culprit are at. A simple call to the police and they’ll be surprised to know that you’ve already got the address of the thief. If you’re like me, you don’t require a code to unlock your phone. With Find my iPhone you can set a code and remotely lock your iPhone right from a computer that’s connected to the internet which basically locks the thief out of your phone. And, once toted as an enterprise-only feature, you’ve now got a self destruct button for your data which whips everything which can easily be restored after you get your phone back.

MobileMe is a full suite of online services that includes an email account, synced address book, online calendar that integrates with iCal, online storage space, and any easy way to publish your photos to the Photo Gallery, but the feature you’re not going to find anywhere else is Find my iPhone. To anyone with an iPhone, this is a must have service that’s well worth the yearly subscription fee.

Check out the video walkthrough below:

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by James Klann | James@fndtn.com

With laptop sales contributing a sizable percentage of Apple’s growth, we thought it might not be a bad idea to pass along some tips on how to increase the time one can run off their battery. We’ll start with the easiest and work our way down to the more complex:

1. Manually reduce the brightness of your screen via the function keys.
2. Ensure that you’re not running any bus powered devices such as USB keyboards, mice, external Firewire drives etc. If your battery is running other devices, that’s less energy that can go towards running your machine.
3. If possible, cut down on using applications that access the hard drive consistently. Quicktime and Photoshop are both perfect examples. Since they’re constantly accessing the drive, they drain the battery quicker. Word processing apps, such as Word, also constantly read/write to the drive, so if you’re working on a paper or presentation you might want to do the initial draft in Text Edit and then paste the data into a Word file.
4. The Energy Saver Preference Pane has a preconfigured setting for running off of Battery. If you select the Better Battery Life optimization option the following items are adjusted automatically: both machine and hard drive go to sleep after 5 minutes of inactivity while the display goes to sleep after 1 minute. In addition to putting devices to sleep, the brightness of the display and processor performance is reduced. If there are certain settings that you’d like to adjust, it’s totally customizable and can be tailored to your individual needs.
5. Via the Network preferences, disable the ports that you don’t need at that time. While they may not be in use, they still require power to run, So if you don’t need them, turn them off. Most laptops have Airport, Bluetooth, Ethernet, Firewire and Modem, all of which are active by default. Most times you only need one, maybe two, of the ports enabled. In network preferences, if you click on the “Show” tab and go down to “Network Port Configuration,” you can select which ports you’d like to have running. Turn off whichever ports you don’t need and apply the changes. If you’d like to save the settings for easy access in the future, you can create a new location that’s preconfigured for next time around. A nice side benefit of creating locations for your port settings is that you have quick access to them from your Apple menu in the Finder so changing them in the future is a piece of cake.
6. One last thing to consider is turning off any network protocols (Appletalk and TCP/IP) that you don’t need. This can be accomplished in the Network Preference Pane as well. TCP/IP can be turned off in the TCP/IP tab  by selecting “off” under the Configure IPv4 pulldown tab. Appletalk can be disabled by turning it off under the Appletalk tab. Again, you can save these changes under a specific location, making it easier to turn the services off in the future.

by Patrick McAvey | Patrick@fndtn.com

This fall Apple introduced a new version of the Mac mini – Mac mini Server – intended for smaller offices that have the need for a server but on a tight budget. An alternative to the Xserve, the Mac mini Server also comes with Mac OS X Server unlimited, allowing an unlimited number of users to connect. While the software is identical, it is the hardware that differs greatly.

The Mac mini Server is a Mac mini with the optical drive removed to allow for the addition of a second internal hard drive, these drives can be made into a software RAID to offer redundancy. Additional storage can be attached via the FireWire or USB interfaces. Gigabit Ethernet is built in for a fast connection to your network.  With a 2.53 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, this server should be plenty fast for a small work group and ideal for a company with modest storage needs. At $999 the Mac mini Server is the same price as Mac OS X Server 10.6.2 Unlimited – one way of looking at the combo is that you are getting the Mac mini hardware for free!

However there are three main ways in which the Mac mini Server may not be for your company.  The first area is storage, the drives that the mini uses are laptop hard drives and so are limited in capacity as well as speed, a work group with the need for more than 400 GB of usable space would need to add external storage, this difference would be especially felt when reading or writing many files that are larger than 20 MB each. Secondly the mini lacks the redundant parts that the Xserve would have, redundant power supplies, a RAID card, and dual ethernet ports makes the Xserve more able to deal with a part failure for always on operation. Lastly the mini does not have the Quad or Eight core Xeon processors that the Xserve comes with, nor can the mini be upgraded to the 48 GB maximum the Xserve can hold, it is limited to 8 GB. These two limitations are only likely to affect companies running applications, databases or web servers that require a lot of processing power on the server end.

The Mac mini Server may make a great first server for a company that has previously not had a server, or a company replacing an older server. If your company uses mostly smaller files, Word files and Excel files, or only has two or three graphic designers working on larger Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign files then Apple’s newest server might be a perfect fit.

Image Courtesy of Apple