Starbucks

Aug 13 2010

BookBook from Twelve South

The BookBook from Twelve South offers cushioned leathery protection in a stealthy disguise. With sizes for 13, 15 and 17-inch MacBook Pros, the BookBook comes in Vibrant Red and Classic Black. Details include zipper tabs that look like bookmarks and the texture of the edge pieces show embossed ridges that simulate  book pages.

I’ve had a couple of days to wander around with the BookBook and I love it. As I said in the video, I was able to mark my table at Starbucks and not only did no one take the table, no one took my MacBook Pro.1 The protection offered is comparable to a higher end padded sleeve but I’d say it’s definitely superior to a Neoprene sleeve.

One suggestion I’d make is that you remove the MacBook Pro from the BookBook if you’re doing and processor-intensive work for an extended period of time—cases like this will decrease the airflow to the cooling vents and that is something you’d want to avoid.

Prices range from $79.99 US to $99.99 US depending on the size. iPad cases are coming soon.

I love creative cases like this and products that take tired, predictable product types and do something clever with them. Have you seen anything you think qualifies as Mac/iPhone/iPod/iPad awesomeness? Post a comment and let me know about it—I’ll give you credit on camera for the tip.

No Flash? No problem—click here!»

  1. I would NOT recommend leaving your MacBook Pro unattended no matter how clever the case [↩]

By RickMacMerc • Featured, gadgets, MacMerc.TV, Mini Video • 1 • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Aug 9 2010

The pursuit of Mac Awesomeness

I’ve been thinking of doing quick-and-dirty videos to accompany the stories here at MacMerc for quite a while but the first video is always the toughest. I finally got my inspiration as I was sitting in the local @Starbucks trying to post a story using their free wifi. It was taking me far too long to upload a simple story. Far, far, far too long. This was not going to work.

I looked across the street and noticed my local Mac dealer, Mac Station, and thought, “I bet they have better wifi… I wonder if they’d let me blog from their store.” I assumed they’d want to get something out of the deal—not just let some guy leach wifi and not buy anything. That’s when I came up with the idea to offer to do those nearly-daily videos I wanted to do, but do them from their store. I help get the word out about the awesome store and their fun, knowledgeable staff and in return I get a base to blog from and a gentle nudge to get something compelling done every day.

So here it is, the first video1 . The first video is always the toughest.

No Flash? No problem—click here!»

Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed and follow @RickMacMerc and @MacMerc on Twitter. Me and the staff here at Mac Station have a lot of great ideas we’re going to share with you, but if you know of any Mac/iPod/iPhone/iPad awesomeness you want us to feature, post a comment or send me a Submission of Awesomeness and I’ll give it a look.

Thanks for reading this far, as a reward, you get to watch a video of me rescuing a kitten from my car engine»
  1. and, no, this doesn’t take the place of MacMercTV [↩]

This also happened today…

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By RickMacMerc • Featured, macmerc, MacMerc.TV, Mini Video, Site News • 3 • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Jun 25 2010

Build a Window Management App with Apptivate and AppleScript

l 398 253 E2B8C194 978C 403B 8429 245F36234004 300x190 Build a Window Management App with Apptivate and AppleScriptOnce I get going again, you may notice a slightly new direction in the content here at MacMerc. I’d like to get away from reporting and repeating the news and focus more on tutorials and reviews of the awesomeness that can be done and had with our little technological gems from Cupertino.

To that end, I bring you a link to a tutorial I found from AppStorm. With this ingenious little system, you will quickly and easily build your very own window management app using nothing but a cigarette butt, a Starbucks splash stick, AppleScript and an app called Apptivate.1

What’s a window management app? Good question. Sounds like a big bag of boring, but if you often need to work in several different windows on a single screen and you spend any time at all sizing and positioning windows so you can see them all, you’ll dig this simple method to solve that dilemma.

What productivity hacks and and systems do you use to rock the Mac to save time? I want to know. Please leave a comment.

If you’ve written a tutorial or posted a video about it, I want to post it here. Please leave a link in the comments.

  1. I totally lied about the cigarette butt and the splash stick [↩]

By RickMacMerc • blogs, Featured, Tutorials • Comments Off • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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