If you’re debating over spending a few extra dollars on the Apple Care warranty for your iPhone, Mac or any other Apple product, let me help you decide: Yes, you definitely need the extended warranty.

Apple Care Saved My iMac Display

In March of 2007, I got my current iMac – the computer I use every single day. It was a refurbished machine and it’s been awesome. Never had a problem until 2 days ago.

My display broke.

It didn’t really break, but it was on its last breath. I turned the computer on like any other day and saw the problem right away: a green line from top to bottom in the center of the screen.

Thankfully, it’s still under the Apple Care warranty. I gave my iMac to the guys at the Southdale Apple Store. They installed a brand new display in less than 24 hours.

I don’t know what the cost is on a replacement display for an iMac, but I’m guessing it’s a least a few hundred – plus installation fees.

Apple Care is Worth Every Penny

My guess is, I’ve saved at least $300 in repairs – thanks to the very affordable Apple Care warranty. I’ll definitely buy the Apple Care on every iPhone, Mac and other device I own. It’s already paid for itself.

Worried about losing all of your precious and critical files on your Mac? I drove myself crazy thinking about all of the possible ways my iMac hard drive could break down and delete all of my photos, contacts, portfolio files, etc. Now that would ruin your day – Probably your year.

“It’s time to get smart and start backing up my stuff” I thought. The safe, secure and stress free feeling of knowing ALL my data is safe is worth the price of a new hard drive… So I got a new hard drive, set up Time Machine and thought people like you should protect your Mac too.

This is How To Setup Time Machine (and reduce stress!)

What’s Required For Time Machine To Work?

If you want to run Time Machine, you’ll need two things:

1. The latest version of OSX – Leopard.
2. An external hard drive.

Got both? Sweet! Continue reading…

If you don’t have Leopard or haven’t found an external hard drive yet, I’ll show you where to find Leopard and the hard drive I use – at the end of this Time Machine Tutorial. (Skip to the bottom if you’ve gotta have it now)

Plug In Your Hard Drive

Plug the hard drive into your Mac. I recommend using the Fire Wire cable – NOT the USB cable.

Give Your Hard Drive A Name (Optional)

Sorry, but VERBATIM isn’t very sexy. So I’m changing the name of my Hard Drive to Felix AppleSlut.

To change the name:
1. Click on the drive
2. Click File in the top left corner of your screen
3. Click Get Info
4. Type a new name in the Name & Extension field
5. Close the window

Open Time Machine

The Time Machine icon should be in your Dock. Click it!

Set Up Time Machine Storage Location

Time Machine needs to know which drive you’re using for the backup and then you gotta set some options too. Click Set Up Time Machine

Choose Your Backup Disk

Now you need to select the hard drive you’ll use as the back up for Time Machine. Click on Choose Backup Disk…

Select Your Hard Drive

If you have more than one hard drive connected to your Mac, you’ll see them all here.

1. Click on the drive that you’ll use with Time Machine.
2. Click Use for Backup to continue

Time Machine Settings

Time Machine has found your hard drive and is ready to start the magic!

1. The Time Machine On / Off slider is now set to ON.
2. The counter has started for your Next Backup. When the counter reaches zero, Time Machine will begin copying files from your Mac to your new, external hard drive.

NOTE: You can move the slider to OFF and shut down Time Machine before the backup starts. Also, if you let the counter reach zero, the backup will begin – make sure you don’t need to use your Mac for a while…

Backup Started

The Next Backup counter reached zero and the Time Machine Backup started automatically.

1. The Backup progress bar is shown in a small pop up window
2. The Backup progress is also shown in the main Time Machine preferences window

NOTE: This process will take some time. As you can see in the image above, I had 61.85 GB of data to transfer to my external hard drive. It took a couple of hours to finish. If you’ve got more data on your Mac, it could take much longer. You’ll also find that your Mac will run much slower while the backup is in progress. So watch a movie or some TV… Maybe go outside fore a while and come back when the transfer is finished. You can KILL the backup by clicking the X above the #3 in the image above.

Time Machine Green

You might have noticed that your backup hard drive has turned Time Machine Green (sweet!) and sports the rockin Time Machine Logo (double sweet!)

Optional Time Machine Settings

1. (Optional) Click the check box next to “Click the lock to prevent further changes” to make sure nobody can edit the Time Machine Preferences. After it’s locked, you’ll need a password to unlock it and make changes. Make sure you know the password before locking the settings!

2. (Optional) Click the check box next to Show Time Machine Status in the menu bar and guess what it does? It shows the Time Machine status in the menu bar!

3. Click the Question Mark to open up the Time Machine help files.

Time Machine Is Ready And Rockin!

When the first Time Machine backup is finished, you can relax because all of your data is safe (finally!) Anytime you need to see your backup files, just click the Time Machine Logo in your Dock. And to change the Time Machine Settings, you’ll have to go into the System Preferences – also in your Dock.

And that, my friends, is how you set up Time Machine.

Requirements For Time Machine

1. Leopard. If you don’t already have Leopard, you can get it at any Apple Store or you can grab it online, with free shipping, from the Apple Store.

2. External Hard Drive. Time Machine must have an external hard drive to work so you’ll have to get one. I got the Verbatim 160GB SmartDisk hard drive from the Apple Store. Why the Verbatim 160GB SmartDisk?

• It’s very small and can sit behind my iMac, out of the way.
• The 4 reviews at the Apple Store said it was a great hard drive
• Given 4 stars by Macworld Magazine
• It’s extremely quiet. It’s only 2 feet away and I don’t ever hear it. And it doesn’t vibrate like older hard drives
• Gets power from the USB or FireWire cord. No 2nd power cord required – Awesome if you’re short on plugs in your surge protector
• The drive is already formatted for Mac OS X Leopard and Time Machine
• It’s cheap! The 160GB is only $129.00 (US) at the Apple Store – free shipping too!
• Here’s the link to the customer reviews on the Verbatim 160GB Hard Drive I use

I went with the cheapest option, but if you’ve got a few extra bucks, you’ll love Apple’s New Time Capsule. It’s an automatic, wireless backup hard drive for your Mac and Time Machine. Huge 500GB or insane 1TB models available.

Have you ever seen a Mac Mini that looks exactly like a Mac Pro? Now you have. (That picture is a Mini Mac!). Hideo Takano has created a number of absolutely impossible modifications to the traditional Mac Mini and Mac Cube – yes, the Cube.

Takano has reworked the Mac Mini into a flawless, tiny replica of it’s big brother – the Mac Pro. It’s a stunning silver finish with a vented front panel, housing a USB port, CD drive and power button.

But, that’s not all. Other Mac Mod creations include a Frankenstein-like “G5 Mac Cube Pro” – It’s a Cube dressed up as a Mac Pro – and every bit as impressive as the Mac Mini Pro.

Then it gets weird.

The other creations are out of this world mods of Mac Mini’s are a giant Lego© and a spare gas tank. Not sure why you’d want a gas can / computer, but it sure is unique and exceptionally crafted.

You’ve got to check out Hideo Takano’s website and see his incredible inventions.

Thanks to: Gizmodo & 123MacMini

Ben wants to know which Apple monitor he should buy. (He asked the question in a comment over here.) Great question.

FYI: Apple uses the term display instead of monitor as you can see on the left navigation of the Apple Store. I could care less what they call it, but this is AppleSlut.com so we’ll kiss Saint Steve’s feet and step back in line. Moving on…

To find the answer to this question Ben, we have to know which Mac you’re buying.

The fact is, the Mac Pro and the Mac mini are the only Macs that don’t come with a monitor (sorry) display. Think about it – iMacs and the MacBooks are all-in-one computers. All the hardworking innards, plus the gorgeous display wrapped in an exquisite outer case.

All you’ve got to do in this scenario is follow my “Rule of Three.”

Figure out what you can afford… then tripple it.

It’s a Mac – it’s worth it.

However, my guess is that you’re looking for a display to plug into your 8 Core Mac Pro – you lucky dog Ben! If so, you’ll be getting a Cinema Display!

Apple Cinema Display

These wide-screen displays only come in 20 inch, 23 inch or the whopping 30 inch models. According to the Apple Store, there isn’t much difference between them.

Both the 20 and 23 inch models have a Pixel Pitch of 0.258 mm and the 30 inch is slightly better at 0.250 mm.

What’s Pixel Pitch?

Just a number to represent the sharpness or clarity of the display. A LOWER number is clearer. Some displays are in the .26-28 range while others fall to .30. It doesn’t seem like much because the measurements are in hundredths of millimeters, but the difference between .26 and .30 is drastic.

Personally, I find the sharper displays (.26 and below) are much easier on my eyes. The lower Pixel Pitch provides sharper edges on text and everything else so I don’t have to squint while reading online.

The good news is that I’ve never had a problem with any of the Apple Displays I’ve used.

MacBook & MacBook Air Display

The standard MacBook and the MacBook Air displays seem to be identical in a couple of ways. Both are 13 inches and only available in the glossy finish. What’s interesting about the MacBook Air is it’s been touted by Saint Steve as the “greener” choice with its mercury- and arsenic-free display.

If you’re buying the greenest Mac available to date, it’s the MacBook Air.

MacBook Pro Display

With MacBook Pro, you’ve got to make the decision to get the 15 inch or 17 inch first. Then you’ll have to decide between the glossy or antiglare finish.

iMac Display

The new, smokin’ hot iMac comes in two sizes; 20 inch and 24 inch displays. Again, there’s not much to sway your decision other than the price of the entire system.

What about Pixel Pitch for the MacBook and iMac displays?

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find any information on the Pixel Pitch for any of the MacBook or iMac computers. In fact, the only display in the Apple Store with this information is the Cinema Display.

Which Apple Display Should You Buy?

The most obvious factors will be price and size because all of the Apple displays are exceptionally high-quality.

The Church of Apple divides the world into two kinds of people—those who love great design and will pay for it, and those who don’t understand the concept.

Apple products, almost without exception, are the best-designed industrial products of the last half-century. Nothing comes close. Jonathan Ive, the British-born designer and perhaps the greatest industrial designer since Raymond Loewy in the 1950s, gets a lot of the credit, but so does Steve Jobs. It’s Jobs’ conviction that design and function should be one and the same that makes Apple products so beautiful and useful.

If you’ve ever sent messages on a Blackberry, punching out numbers with your thumb on tiny keys, you understand. You’re doing that not because it’s the most efficient way of typing on a small device but because that’s the keyboard the engineers provided, so that’s what you use. That’s function at odds with design.

Even Apple’s failures, such as the Cube, have been gorgeous, though the public couldn’t grok them. As to those of us of the Church, we’ve bought into Jobs’ aesthetic and love Ive’s implementation. There is no in-between.

(Oddly enough, Apple may be the only large company in America that does no consumer research—none—as in zero, nada, zip. No polls, no focus groups. They design them the way they think we ought to want them and you can either buy them or call Hewlett-Packard).

But where are all the bells and whistles?
Their aesthetic makes me a little crazy: I love gadgets, as my wife will attest. If it has buttons and lights, I want it, and the more buttons and lights, the more I want it. I have a watch with four dials and a solar cell. I just bought a car with so much electronics, it took me a week to figure out what button to press to adjust the bass on the radio. (Actually, I had to bring in my teenage daughter, who had it all down in 10 minutes).

Yet Apple’s aesthetic runs directly contrary to this. The Mac PowerBook has the fewest buttons of any laptop, and nothing lights up. And while you can buy keyboards with lots of buttons and lights for your Mac, they come with the bare minimum because the machine works better that way.

Your basic Dell laptop was designed by an engineer for people ostensibly like me; the PowerBook was designed by a designer. Big difference. And I’m devoted to the latter. Weird. By the way, anyone know the person in charge of design for Dell? Didn’t think so.

Elegance = design + function

So, the iPhone, a triumph of design and function. They got rid of the keyboard. In fact, the iPhone has only one actual button, the thing you turn it on with. You perform every function with a touch screen, using beautiful icons larger than the mechanical buttons on your Blackberry and its ilk. The touch-screen isn’t an accident; it’s the whole point. It’s the Jobs-Ive aesthetic at work.

In the words of Thoreau, “simplify, simplify, simplify.” But unlike Thoreau, Apple only needs to say it once.

Here’s my 2 cents on this MacBook Air thing:

The target market for the MacBook Air has got to be the business travelers… The workaholic, jet setters who skip from New York to L.A. brokering deals and earning ungodly amounts of cash. These upscale folks demand the lightest laptop imaginable and can write off the outrageous $1799 sticker price.

To me, the basic home user, the MacBook Air doesn’t come close to satisfying any of my needs. In fact, the MacBook Air is like going to the strip club – it’s an expensive substitute that only succeeds in making you hunger for the real thing even more. And your money back.

With all the chaos surrounding Macworld 2008, I forgot to mention the New 8-Core Mac Pro – The fastest Mac ever!

(Don’t they say that every 6 months? Sure seems like it.)

Could it be that Apple has some sort of exclusive deal with Intel that allows the Mac to promote and use the latest and greatest processors?

Apple always releases the new, top-of-the-line processors months before any Windows machine.

How’s that work?

Luck? Marketing genius? Keen business skills?

Lemme get Steve on the iPhone…

Anyway, a quick search of Dell.com and AlienWare.com show the top Windows PCs promoting 4-Core processing. We’ll have to wait and see which PC maker is next to jump on the 8-Core bandwagon.

Engadget has posted a hands-on video of the MacBook Air. Damn it’s skinny!

Have a look.

Buy an Apple computer online and you can save a few hundred bucks or more. Would you be interested in hearing about that? Check this out…

When I got my iMac, I saved about $300 instantly. (No, the computer wasn’t on sale, and I didn’t get it on eBay either.) It was brand spankin new and I bought it from the Apple Store website.

There’s a little unknown area of the Apple website where you can buy Apple computers, iPhones, iPods – and everything else – for cheap.

All you have to do is visit the “Refurbished” section of the Apple Store website.

You’ll see tons of sweet deals on all Apple products – and you can buy them and save hundreds of dollars.

Some computers, like the killer Mac Pro Quad 3.0GHz have huge price reductions. Normally that bad ass system is about $3,850 (US), but if you buy it refurbished, you can save $550 and steal it for only $3,299.

Oh yeah, if you wanted to buy the 30 inch Apple Cinema Display (who doesn’t?!) but can’t fork over $3,299 – You’re in luck because the refurbished 30 inch Apple Cinema Display is just $1,499!

I don’t do math good… (or English) but I know that buying an apple computer from the refurbished section of the Apple website is the way to go… Only if you’re interested in saving a crap-load of money.

How do I buy an Apple computer and save a crap-load?

Glad you asked… Just go to the Apple Store website (http://store.apple.com) and scroll down to the bottom of the page. On the left side of the page, you’ll see an area called “Special Deals.”

The image on the left of this paragraph is what you’re looking for.

When you get to the Apple Store website, click on any one of those options and you’ll get access to the sweet area where you can buy all Apple computers, iPods, iPhones – or whatever – for cheap.

You might want to go there often because the inventory changes DAILY. Yeah, if there’s a killer system on there today – it might be gone tomorrow.

What’s a “Refurbished” Apple computer?

Refurbished is just another way for Apple to say…

“We screwed this computer up at our factory. To make it up, we’ve spent extra time and effort making sure it’s the freshest, fastest, coolest thing ever, And slapped our iron clad warranty on it… Oh yeah, we went ahead and took a few hundred bucks off too. Sorry.”

Yeah, they double check everything, give you the same warranty as every other product and… AND give you the discounted price.

Now you know why I got my first iMac there and why I’ll only buy Apple computers from the “refurbished” area of the Apple Store website.