When we started the MacCore Podcast, we produced both an Enhanced AAC feed that included chapter markers and additional artwork as well as a standard MP3 version. We al love the Enhanced AAC feed, it takes significantly longer to produce and can add as much as two hours to our post-production process. As our lives have gotten more hectic, that’s simply time we do not have. We were therefore faced with the decision to either put the show out less frequently, or do a show only in MP3 format. We’ve decided that most listeners would rather have more frequent shows than the Enhanced AAC feed.

Since most listeners are subscribed to our Enhanced AAC feed in iTunes we are going to use that as our primary feed and those subscribed shouldn’t have to do anything. We hope that we can switch all of our current MP3 feed listeners over to the primary feed without any action needed on your part. But, just to be sure, we would ask those of you who are currently subscribed to our MP3 feed in iTunes to please subscribe to the Enhanced AAC edition. Although the name says otherwise, this feed is already using MP3s. We’re working with the iTunes Podcasting Staff and they’ve advised we do this transition in a few stages over the course of several weeks in hopes of not loosing any subscribers in the mix.

We need to do a little work on our end to clean things up and standardize our feeds. When we “flip the switch” it’s likely that this will cause all of our shows to “republish” making them show up as new episodes which may cause your client to re-download everything. We’ll issue a warning before this happens so you can make adjustments in iTunes that will allow you to avoid to avoid this. Again, the switch won’t happen for a few weeks, we’ll let you know.

Thanks for your patience and understanding. Hopefully we can come through this transition with a minimum level of annoyance for everyone.

Next week, Corey and Katie will sit down with Steve Stanger of The Mac Attack and devote a special podcast to the topic of becoming Apple Certified. This is a little different show for us, but we’ve gotten a ton of listener feedback on this topic and thought it warranted its own show.

You asked for it, now we’re doing it but in order to make it a success, we need your help. Please send in any questions or comments you may have on this topic no later than Monday, September 1st. You can send an email question or attach a standard audio file to an email and send it to themacccore@gmail.com you can also call our listener hotline at 206.905.4119 or use the Grand Central link in the sidebar and we’ll save you the long distance charge by calling you.

We hope to hear from you. Read More...

Congratulations to Chris from Springfield, Virginia! He's our lucky winner of our AudioEngine W1 giveaway. Our thanks to all of you who entered the contest, we hope to bring you more promotions like this in the future. For those of you who didn't win the W1, there is good news. We have teamed up with AudioEngine to give all MacCore listners a 10% discount off any AudioEngine product. Simply use the code MacCore10 at checkout. You can learn more about the great line of AudioEngine Products at www.AudioEngineUSA.com

I just wanted to give you all a heads up that I'm going to be doing some under the hood work on the website. I'm considering moving the site over to WordPress but wanted to play around a bit with the current version, the podcast feeder, and such to make sure that it does everything I need and see if it works any better than our current system. I'm going to be experimenting in a separate directory of the site, and if things work, may transition things over and move them over to the main directory of this site. This work should not in any way interfere with the operation of the current website or the feeds. However...you know how these things go when geeks start tweaking with things they shouldn't. If you have any problems with the site or the feed over the course of this weekend, please email me at themaccore@gmail.com or shoot me a note on Twitter. Please, don't just assume that I know there's a problem. Thanks!

The good folks over at AudioEngine have graciously given us a set of their W1 Wireless Audio Adapters to give away. AudioEngine make a slew of excellent audio products including their flagship product the A5 desktop speakers. Their newest product, the W1 wireless adapter allows you to transfer music wirelessly from any audio device or computer to your Audioengine powered speakers, surround receiver, any other speakers or powered subwoofer in CD-quality HD stereo sound with no reduction in audio quality.

The contest runs between now and May 15th. To enter simply send us an email with the words "AudioEngine W1 Contest" in the subject line to themaccore@gmail.com and include your contact information. One winner will be chosen by random to receive a band new set of W1 Wireless Audio Adapters complements of AudioEngine. You can find more information about the W1s over at http://www.audioengineusa.com

Well, I was hoping to get a new show out to you last weekend, unfortunately life got in the way. In addition to the podcast feed problems we had, which thankfully now seem to be resolved, I ended up coming down with the "Macworld Crud" and spending most of the last few days in bed. Thankfully I'm feeling much better now and will have our next show out for you sometime this weekend. This will probably be the last of the Macworld episodes as it will contain the best of the audio interviews I conducted from the show floor. Stay tuned, I'll be back with more this weekend.

You may have noticed that many of your favorite podcasts are not downloading right now. There are apparently a few separate issues going on. FIrst off, Talkshoe's servers have been down since sometime late Sunday night. They're supposed to be back up by mid-day on Wednesday. This is why you can't download my latest podcast, Show 55, where I was a guest host on the Typical Mac User Podcast. Since that was a talkshoe show, the actual file is hosted on their server and therefore unavailable. Apparently a few hundred of you got the show before the server went down, but as of now it's unavailable. It's a great show, Victor and I had a lot of fun so hopefully you'll be able to download and enjoy that soon.

Additionally, there is apparently a separate issue going on with some feedburner feeds as well. My feeds also go through feedburner to serve them so I've been hit with a double whammy. As far as I can tell, no one has been able to access any of my content in the last 48 hours or so. Hopefully that issue will be resolved soon. It's surprising that both of these outages happened at the same time, but these things sometimes happen in the podcasting world. Stay subscribed and hopefully you'll be hearing from me soon.

Katie will be the co-host on this Sunday's edition of the Typical Mac User Podcast with Victor Cajiao. Victor and Katie will talk all about our first experience at Macworld and the recent keynote announcements. This will be a live show on TalkShoe on Sunday, January 20th at 8pm Eastern, 5pm Pacific where listeners can interact with the hosts and guests by calling in to the show and participating in a live chat.

I you've never had the opportunity to participate in a live talkcast, this is a great time to start, with the new talkshoe software you don't even have to setup or register an account. To participate, go to www.talkshoe.com and search for the Typical Mac User Podcast. If you wish, you can also register for a free account. You can also call in to the show at (724) 444-7444 and enter Talkcast ID 3097. Call in on any regular telephone (great for those night and weekend minutes), use Skype or Gizmo Project.

Click here for more information.

Welcome to the new home of The MacCore Podcast! When we first launched the show (nearly two years ago now - yikes!) we did so very quickly and without really thinking through a lot of the details. We really bought into Apple's idea that anyone with a Mac and a mic could start a podcast so we grabbed a domain name, threw up a logo and started recording. Apparently we did something right because all of you joined us along the way. We figured it was about time we "relaunched" the MacCore and a few months ago announced a contest on the show to design our new logo. Many of you sent us some great entries and we ultimately picked a design from listener Darren, who is a very talented graphic designer from the UK. You can find Darren's blog over at macwingnut.com.

Like the new logo? Looking for a Christmas gift for yourself or another Mac fanatic? That's great because we've also launched a CafePress store where you can buy T-shirts, coffee mugs, sweatshirts and all other kinds of MacCore branded merchandise. Not only do you get some really cool new gear, but a portion of your purchases also comes back to us so that we can continue to keep the streaming bills paid and keep the podcast coming down the tubes. You can access the CafePress Store by clicking on the link to the right.

It's been an amazing few years and we look forward to bringing you many more. Thanks for your continued support and dedication.

-Katie & Corey

Well, it's official, I've booked my trip to Macworld. Because January is a crazy time for me at work I unfortunately couldn't attend the entire conference, but I will fly in to San Francisco Wednesday afternoon and fly out Saturday afternoon. This means I'll miss the Keynote, which has always been a dream of mine to see, but this was the only way I could make the trip fly with work so it will have to do. Besides, there's always next year.

This will be my first Macworld, and it will in fact be my first trip to San Francisco. Not only do I plan to take in the sights of the convention, but also plan to see the city as well. I'd like to plan some kind of "meet-up" with my listeners so if you're interested in getting together and have suggestions for time and places nearby drop me an email (themaccore@gmail.com) and as the time draws near we'll try to arrange something. I'm in touch with several of the other mac podcasters so I'm hoping to coordinate with them to do a group event and also attend some of the parties. I'll keep you updated.

Now, let's hope that Apple doesn't release anything really compelling, because I'm already out the $800+ just to get to the party, I'm not sure I can afford to get caught up in the reality distortion field while I'm there. Of course if you feel the urge to help defray the cost of my trip, there's always the PayPal donation link over there to the right. Your support of the show is always appreciated. I'll be in touch...

My apologies to anyone who may have had the entire podcast feed refresh in their podcast catcher of choice. Because of some of the issues I and other podcasters have had with Libsyn I've decided to move my feed off libsyn (the files are still hosted there) and onto Feedburner. This is something I should have done at the very beginning, but live and learn. One of the unexpected consequences was that all the old shows showed up as new shows in your aggregators. Apologies for the inconvenience, but this should improve the overall quality and reliability of the feed and give me more options for hosting the show in the future. Thanks for your understanding.

Unfortunately, as of the time I write this post TalkShoe is still not working with Leopard and I've not heard anything from the development team. One alternative if you don't have a bootable copy of Tiger and you've already upgraded to Leopard, you might want to consider (although I hate to say this) running TalkShoe via Windows. I was able to participate in the MacCast Loop chat earlier this morning using TalkShoe on Windows through Parallels while still booted into Tiger. If you have Boot Camp or VMWare this should still work for you. You'll want to allow a little extra time as you'll need to download and install the TalkShoe client into Windows.

I'm loving Leopard, and I can't wait to talk to many of you about it in the Live Talkshoe chat that I'm co-hosting with Victor Cajiao of the Typical Mac User Podcast tomorrow, Sunday, October 28th at 5pm Pacific/8pm Eastern time. While I may love Leopard, unfortunately, TalkShoe does not. There is some kind of incompatibility with the TalkShoe chat client and Leopard. In my experience, the client will not properly render, then will quickly eat up system resources and will have to be force quit. This is a problem, because I know many of you who were planning to join the chat will most likely have already upgraded to Mac OS 10.5 Leopard. Victor has put a video blog posting on his website talking about this issue in more detail.

Both Victor and I have contacted TalkShoe about this issue, though as of the time I post this message, we do not have a fix other than using a non-Leopard mahchine. I am hopeful that an updated TalksShoe client will be released in time for the podcast, but with it being a Sunday, I'm not all that confident that it will be. I'll, of course, post any updates I get throughout the day. You do have some options though. If you still have Tiger or a previous version of the OS installed, you should run TalkShoe from that machine in order to use the chat interface. If you don't have access to a computer with a non-Leopard OS, you can still participate via phone. Simply call 724-444-7444 and enter Talkcast ID 3097. Victor knows that many people will be on the phones but not on the chat, so we'll make a point to allow for your input on the show.

While I'll admit this is a disappointment, I want to reiterate to you all that the show will go on, and it will be great. This just gives us another topic to discuss. Overall, I've been thrilled with Leopard and this has been the only program I've come across thus far that has had a problem. I can't wait to talk with Victor and our listeners about their thoughts and first impressions of the operating system. If you're unable to join us in the chat, the show will be posted sometime on Monday to our feed as a regular podcast. Please come if you can...

Katie will be the co-host on this Sunday's edition of the Typical Mac User Podcast with Victor Cajiao. Victor and Katie will take your calls and chat all about the release of Apple's newest operating system, Mac OS 10.5 Leopard just two days before. This will be a live show on TalkShoe on Sunday, October 28th at 8pm Eastern, 5pm Pacific where listeners can interact with the hosts and guests by calling in to the show and participating in a live chat.

Talkcasts are a lot of fun for both the hosts and the audience, if you've never had the opportunity to participate in a live talkcast, this is a great time to start. To participate, go to www.talkshoe.com and register for a free account. On the day of the show, simply log in to talk shoe to enter the chat. You can also call in to the show at (724) 444-7444 and enter Talkcast ID 3097. Call in on any regular telephone (great for those night and weekend minutes), use Skype or Gizmo Project.

Click here for more information.

First off, our apologies for not getting a podcast out to you last week. If you've been following Katie on Twitter you know that it's been a crazy but amazing past few weeks for her. Shownotes for the new podcast is in the works and hopefully we can find sometime to sit down and record next week.

Now, we do need to let you know of some upcoming changes. Corey is going to be taking a hopefully brief hiatus from The MacCore. Don't worry, everything is fine. Corey is just in the midst of some big things going on in his life and he has other commitments that are unfortunately taking all of his attention right now.

So, here's how things are going to change a bit in the next several weeks. Katie is going to try to get a podcast out to you every two weeks. We'd like to be on a weekly schedule but with only one of us there's now twice the work. Corey's going to pop in from time to time as he can and as his schedule allows. We're also looking into the possibility of having some guest co-hosts and already have lined up interviews with guests on a variety of topics. Keep checking the website, www.themaccore.com as Katie plans to post an extensive review of the iPhone and along with other updates

Seeing as Katie is going to be doing this solo for a while, now more than ever, we need your help. Send in those audio comments and voicemails and let us know what you think about the state of affairs in the Mac Community. There are a lot of hot topics out there right now, everything from the iPhone firmware update that has locked down the phone and turned many iPhones into iBricks, along with the upcoming anticipation surrounding Mac OS 10.5 Leopard. You can reach our voice mail hotline at 206-203-CORE that's 206-203-2673 or attach a standard audio file to an email and send it to themaccore@gmail.com

It's going to be an interesting next few weeks, but we hope you'll like the new content that we have planned. If this new format isn't for you, stay subscribed and hang in there, things will be back to normal hopefully soon. Thanks for your patience and understanding, we'll talk to you soon...

Just a quick note to all of you out there having trouble downloading our podcast. No, there's nothing wrong with your computer. We, along with many other podcasters, use a service called Libsyn to deliver our podcast feed. Libsyn makes our life easy because it provides low cost storage, configures the RSS feed, and integrates with iTunes. Unfortunately, it appears that Libsyn is going through some growing pains and as of the time I write this post has gone completely down. We've had some minor problems off and on for a few weeks and have heard reports from other podcasters about sporadic outages. We have no information right now as to what's going on or how long it will take to resolve the issues. Libsyn has been a great service for us up until this point so we're inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt for now. Of course, if this continues then we'll have to look at other options.

We know that we're not the only podcasters being impacted by this issue, in fact as I look at my podcasts in iTunes I see about a third of them are giving me error messages. For now we ask for your patience and hopefully these issues will be resolved in the near future. For the time being, you can always download the MP3 version from our website, or subscribe to our MP3 feed using the XML link to the right which is hosted off our server. Thank you for your patience and understanding. Stay subscribed...we're not going anywhere.

Don't worry, we haven't gone anywhere...it's been a crazy past few weeks for us and as a result we haven't been able to get podcast out. As many of you know Katie has been studying for the Bar Exam and just took that exam last week. (Think good thoughts, results won't be in until mid-September.) As if that weren't enough she's packed up her life and moved across the state for a new job. (And now she lives less than 2 miles form an Apple Store - very dangerous!) Now that Katie is all settled and back up and running Corey and his family have taken off for a much deserved week-long vacation.

We were going to strive to get a podcast out this weekend, but with the Apple Special Event announced for Tuesday, August 7th it only makes sense to hold off and release our podcast with all the details of that announcement. For the time being, you can follow us on Twitter and also check out the new reviews we released on the website.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Feel free to send us an email to themaccore@gmail.com or call our audio hotline at 206.203.2673

We'll talk to you soon...stay subscribed.

Katie will be the featured guest on this Sunday's edition of the Typical Mac User Podcast with Victor Cajiao. This will be a live show on TalkShoe at 8pm Eastern, 5pm Pacific where listeners can interact with the hosts and other guests by calling in to the show and participating in a live chat. To participate, go to www.talkshoe.com and register for a free account. On the day of the show, simply log in to talk shoe to enter the chat. You can also call in to the show at (724) 444-7444 and enter Talkcast ID 3097.

Click here for more information.

Hope to see you Sunday, July 15th at 8pm Eastern, 5 Pacific time.

The World Wide Developers Conference is just a few short days away. What do you think Steve Jobs will unveil at his Keynote address? What are Leopard's "Top Secret" new features? When will there be any iPhone surprises, and what will be the "One More Thing..." Send your WWDC predictions to us and we'll try to talk about as many of them as possible on our upcoming WWDC preview show.

Voicemail Hotline: 206-203-CORE (2673)
Email: themaccore@gmail.com

I'm back from my vacation to Europe and had a wonderful time. I've been away from the Internet for about two and a half weeks and have a LOT of catching up to do. I'm working now on putting together notes and hopefully Corey and I will record a new show soon and have it out to you next week.

For the time being, you can have a look at some of the snapshots I took at the Apple Regent Street in London. Unfortunately it was the only Apple Store I had a chance to visit on my multi-country tour.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/themaccore/sets/72157600202511301/

We'll be talking to you soon...
Katie

Katie and Corey are playing around with Twitter. If you're interested in learning a little more about us you can follow us online at http://twitter.com/MacCore. Enjoy!

For more information about Twitter go to http://twitter.com/

'Tis the season, Katie and Corey are plased to bring you some of their top picks for holiday gift giving this year. These are products that are either on our own wishlist, gifts we've given to others or products that we just really like. We'll add a few more gift ideas with each episode between now and the end of the year. We hope this will help you find that perfect gift for the geek in your life.

We'll record an unscripted podcast the evening of Tuesday, September 12th after Apple's "It's Showtime" special event announcements. We'll have the highlights from the announcement and, of course, our thoughts and opinions on the event. If all goes well, the show will immediately be uploaded and available for download late Tuesday or early Wednesday.

Have something specific you'd like us to cover? Send us an email and we'll try to incorporate your suggestion into the show.


To receive the Podcast the moment it is live, make sure you're subscribed...stay tuned!

Subscribe
Enhanced AAC - iTunes (recommended for iPod and iTunes users)
Standard MP3- iTunes
Standard MP3 - XML Feed

Sorry for the delay, folks.

We've been very busy with school starting back here and a variety of other commitments. We'll be sitting down to record a podcast in the next day or so and should have a new episode posted soon.

Stay tuned...

Yes we know we can't broadcast a "live" podcast, but this is the next best thing. We'll will record an unscripted podcast the evening of Monday, August 7th after Apple's WWDC announcements, The show will include the highlights, and of course our opnions on Apple's new offerings. If all goes well, the show will immediately be uploaded to our serves and available for download late Monday or early Tuesday.

To receive the Podcast the moment it is live, make sure you're subscribed...stay tuned!

Subscribe
Enhanced AAC - iTunes (recommended for iPod and iTunes users)
Standard MP3- iTunes
Standard MP3 - XML Feed

Sorry for the delay folks, we're still recovering from the holiday weekend and summer vacations here. Have no fear, we're working on a new show and hope to record in the next few days. Thanks for listening, stay tuned!

The MacCore Podcast is pleased to announce our upcoming interview with Parallels Marketing Director Ben Rudolph. Assuming Tropical Storm Alberto doesn't cause any disruption, the interview is scheduled for Wednesday, June 14th and should be released to subscribers a day or two later. You can subscribe to the podcast using the links to the right or download individual episodes from this website as they become available.

Parallels Desktop is virtualization software for Intel-powered Macs that will allow uses to run Windows, Linux and any other operating system at the same time as Mac OS X. Parallels is currently in it's 2nd Release Candidate version and available for free download. Once Parallels is officially released it will cost $79.99, however users can pre-order the software for $39.99.

We are asking our listeners to submit any questions they may have for Ben and we'll try to incorporate as many questions as possible in the interview. You can email your text or audio questions to themaccore@gmail.com or submit an audio question by leaving a message on our listener hotline, 206.600.4524.

We look forward to hearing from you, please submit questions for consideration no later than 5pm Eastern on Tuesday, June 13th.

We've decided to make some changes to the way we produce our podcast and hopefully decrease the time between when we record a show and when the show is actually available for download. Starting with the next podcast, a basic MP3 version should be available within 24 hours of recording. The enhanced AAC feed will follow a day or so later and will include photos, bookmarks and links.

The AAC version is available through iTunes or download individual shows from the website. The MP3 version will be available in iTunes, through an XML feed or as individual shows from the website. You can choose how to subscribe, or even subscribe to both feeds if you wish.

We've been wondering why we haven't received any audio comments through our voicemail hotline recently. Well, today we found the answer. The voicemail account was somehow deactivated without our knowledge or permission. We're in contact with the company that runs the service but we're unsure at this time if we'll be able to get our old number re-eavtivated. For time time being, we have a new number number, 206-203-2673.

If you have sent us an audio comment in the past few weeks and have not received any kind of acknowledgment, we have not received it. Please re-send your comment to the new number. We'll keep you updated, but for the time being please use the new number.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience.

The MacCore is pleased to now offer a standard MP3 version of our podcasts. For listeners who regularly use iTunes and listen to this podcast on their iPod, we encourage you to subscribe to the enhanced AAC edition through iTunes. However, for those who want to listen to the MacCore Podcast using other applications can subscribe to our MP3 feed by using the link on the right of our webpage or by using the following feed with your preferred application:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/themaccore/xqOu

Katie loves to find great deals on Mac products and accessories and will regularly feature what she finds on the Podcast and this website. Check out our new deals and shopping page to find great bargains and, as an added bonus, you can support the MacCore while you save money. The MacCore will receive a small commission off any product you ultimately purchase after clicking on one of the links on this site, you don't even have to buy one of the products we feature. Thanks, and Happy Shopping!

After much anticipation we’ve finally released our first show. We have both an enhanced edition as well as a standard MP3 available for download. We’re also now listed in iTunes After listening to the show we’re overall very pleased (though we’re biased.) We have  few audio and quality issues to work out but we hope that you’ll find it enjoying. We’re still learning here so we appreciate your comments. Please drop us a line via email or send us an audio comment through our Voicemail hotline. We look forward to hearing from you.

We’re hard at work on finishing up our first show featuring an in-depth review of Apple’s iLife ’06 software. Since this is our first show it’s taking a little longer than expected to produce and there are lots of details to attend to. We’re still finalizing the details with our web hosting and file serving company today and hope have the show published in the next day two.