shuffle July 2007 content

[Magnus]

A word from the editor
WWDC in the shadow of iPhone
by Magnus

By the time you read this, WWDC has been over for almost a month, and Steve Jobs’ keynote has started to fade in our memories. Especially since, as a keynote, it was quite forgettable. It’s not often I feel like “this is boring” when I watch an Apple keynote but this time I did. My first reaction was this is nothing new, but later I got thinking about some of the things and felt a bit better about everything. A big problem was that the whole business of the iPhone’s then upcoming launch loomed large over the keynote. And even though a part of the keynote was about the iPhone, or more correctly how developers could put together their applications for the mobile device, everyone was anticipating the launch. That meant, I think, that Jobs would have had to come up with something really spectacular, something on the same scale as the iPhone announcement, and that was not going to happen. Leave aside that we didn’t really learn that much new about Leopard for a second, that there was no new iMacs or other computers, and give Apple a break. But when it comes to Leopard I think many of us expected something more and something new. All we got was a new Finder, a somewhat new interface, and of course Safari for Windows. And that last piece is arguably the biggest, and most important announcement, I think. But it’s not something that the average user gets excited about, but this was WWDC after all. With Safari on Windows, and what they revealed about application development for the iPhone, Apple is setting the stage for something exciting, I’m sure. And it’s probably bigger and better than what we can even dream of today. So let’s give Apple a break over the WWDC keynote, and look forward to the next event.

[Magnus]

Coda: a first look
by Magnus

It’s not every day that I get really excited about a new application. But some weeks ago when Panic released their latest application entitled Coda (Panic - Coda - One-Window Web Development for Mac OS X), I was instantly excited as soon as I read a little bit about it. And since it came from Panic, makers of Transmit, one of the best FTP applications for Mac OS X, I was even more interested.

Four in one
So what is Coda? It’s an attempt by the people at Panic to replace a set of tools and applications that many developers of web sites use. FTP for transferring files, text editor for writing and editing the code, CSS editor, and SSH client. So today you may be using Transmit for FTP, TextMate for text editing, CSSEdit for CSS editing, and Terminal for SSH. Coda replaces all of them in one application. Or at least it attempts to.

The site is the core
To start working with Coda, you set up sites. Each site has it’s own URL, FTP and SSH login details, as well as a local copy of the files you’re working on. Once a site is set up you can double click to connect to it, and Coda will restore the files you had open from when you worked on it before.

Interface
The interface is a bit different from many other applications and for the most part Panic got it right, I think. The main parts are the files, over on the left, which you can switch from local and remote view. Then there are buttons along the top for Sites, Edit, Preview, CSS, Terminal, and Books. What’s a bit confusing is that some of these pertain to individual files (Edit, Preview, and CSS), while Sites is obviously for setting up and connecting to sites, and Books is for reference. Let’s say you’re editing a remote file, and you click on Terminal. Would you expect the Terminal to open as a new tab or “over” the existing tab (which is the remote file)? I would say it would make more sense for the Terminal to be a new tab, but it “replaces” the tab that is already there. Then you have to click Edit to see the remote file again. Little peculiarities like this makes an otherwise excellent user interface a bit lacking.

References
If you’ve done any web development you probably know that you often have to look up something in a book or online. Panic thought of this as well and included easy access to online reference books in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP.

Share the load
Programming and web development is often a collaborative effort. Panic thought about that and included functionality so you can share a document over a local network via Bonjour (see “What is Bonjour?” in the May issue of shuffle).

What’s lacking
I’ve not used Coda for very long, in fact I’m still within the 15 day trial period, and most things are excellent. It’s a very nice text editor, the CSS editor is not quite up to CSSEdit’s class but it’s close, the Terminal is good for any SSH work, and it’s also a good, overall FTP program (but I won’t get rid of Transmit anytime soon). One thing I would like to see is built in support for version control, like CVS or Subversion. Perhaps a special Coda server version that could be installed on a Mac, that would seamlessly integrate with Coda clients. That way you could collaborate with more people and over the internet, not just on the local network.

Final thought
Coda is a breath of fresh air into a somewhat stagnating segment of applications. The integration of different applications is well executed, and the individual tools are almost good enough to stand on their own. To some Coda, at $89, may seem a bit expensive, but if it can replace four applications, it’s well worth it.

[Magnus]

Podcasting with Garageband
by Magnus

Garageband, part of Apple’s iLife, is probably one of the least used applications in the suite. But it’s a wonderful application for making music and podcasts.

Preparations
Before you even start doing anything in Garageband you need to think about a few things concerning your podcast. First of all, what is your podcast about and who is going to listen to it? Decide on the main theme or topic for your podcast, e.g. gardening, racing, Macs, etc. Combined with that you should also consider who the intended listeners are. Where are they located, who are they, what do they do, etc. This is a bit of basic marketing research you should do before starting to record and edit. Something else to consider is a publishing schedule. If you want to get regular listeners of your podcast, it’s good if you can publish on a regular schedule, e.g. once per week. All the work involved in making a podcast takes considerable amounts of time so you should consider what your schedule will be before committing to one.

Recording
After the initial preparations, you come to the part of recording your raw material, most likely you and perhaps some other people speaking. You want to make sure that you get as good quality recording as possible, so the output is as good as possible. You can record with a mobile device like your iPod or even mobile phone, with a computer like your Mac, or with some other device. If you are using your Mac, consider an external USB microphone, like the Bluemic Snowball (BlueMic :: Blue Microphones). You can also connect a regular microphone with something like the M-Audio FastTrack (M-AUDIO - Fast Track USB - Record Guitar and Vocals on Your Computer—Complete with Effects).

Edit for content
Once you have the audio in Garageband, preferably different voices on different tracks, you start editing the audio for content. This means listening through it in order to remove the audio you don’t want. When you find a section you want to cut out, place the playhead at the start of the piece you want to remove, and select Edit > Split. Then place the playhead at the end of the section you want to remove and again select Edit > Split. Then you can click and remove the section. You can also put two segments back together by selecting both of them and clicking Edit > Join.

Adjust volume
Garageband has an automatic feature for ducking. Ducking basically means the volume of one track is adjusted according to the volume of another track. For example, the volume of a track playing some music can be automatically get a lower volume when a voice comes in on another track. You can do this manually, and sometimes you have to, but Garageband does a pretty good job of adjusting the volume automatically via ducking.

Add loops
At this stage you should have one or more voice tracks with the content edited. Then it’s time to add loops, jingles, and effects. Like before you’re going to have to Split your tracks in the appropriate places, if you haven’t already done so. Garageband comes with many loops and effects which you can add to your podcast. It could be a jingle between two segments of the podcast, or a special effect for something. You can also buy Apple’s JamPacks (Apple - GarageBand - Jam Packs). There are four JamPacks and they add thousands of jingles and effects. With all four JamPacks you’re well set to take on most any podcasting subject.

Enhanced podcast
By default Garageband outputs M4A format files. Apple refers to this format as being enhanced podcasts. This means you can add features to the podcast file, that users can take part. For example, you can add photos to the podcast track of an audio podcast in Garageband simply by dragging a photo from the Media Browser over to the Podcast Track. Then you can add chapter titles, and even URLs. These will show on an iPod but also on a Mac, when someone listens to the podcast. It’s a way to make your podcast a bit more user friendly, and add some value to it. This only works for M4A format files, and not for MP3 files.

Publish
Once everything is done, the simplest thing you can do is to select Share > Send Podcast to iTunes. Garageband then prepares the podcast, which may take a few minutes, and sends it to iTunes. From iTunes you can then listen to it. If you have a .Mac account you can send it to iWeb (Share > Send Podcast to iWeb) and it’s published for you. You can also send it to disk (Share > Export Podcast to Disk) and later upload it yourself (see review of Podcast Maker in this issue of shuffle). If you want an MP3 file, you send the podcast to iTunes, then set iTunes import to MP3 format (iTunes > Preferences > Advanced > Importing > Import using), and right click on the podcast in the playlist and select “Convert Selection...” Then you end up with an MP3 file which will play on pretty much any mobile device and computer.

Final thoughts
Podcasting is exciting, and it’s a great way to reach a lot of people with little cost. That doesn’t mean little effort though. To get a regular audience you have to put in a lot of hard work into scripting, recording, as well as editing. Garageband is a great application for editing audio, and Apple built in a lot of functions especially targeting audio podcasters.

You can find a lot more information and resources about Garageband and podcasting at Apple - Support - GarageBand - Working With Podcasts.

If you edit and publish podcasts with Garageband, remember to keep the original Garageband files somewhere even after you’ve created your final podcast. Once you’ve saved to MP3 or M4A format, you can’t go back and do all the editing in Garageband as you could if you had saved the original file.

[Magnus]

Family-friendly podcasts for summer
by Crystal

Summer travel is coming up and parents are always looking for a way to entertain their children on those long trips. One way may be by giving them an iPod and maybe some podcasts to keep them occupied. Depending on the iPod, you can give them video podcasts or just audio podcasts. Since we do not have iTunes here to down load movies or shows for your iPod, I am going to try to find some fun free podcasts, that you can use instead, to keep your children and yourself happy on those long summer vacations.

1-2-3 Listen 2 Me (123listen2me.com)
This podcast is for ages 4-15 and it has music, jokes, and is a place where kids interview kids. Sarah and Nina bring their podcast from South Africa, but it is really for children from all around the world.

Marina’s Kool Car Radio Podcast (marinaspodcast.com/car_podcasts)
This is a happy go lucky podcast, that I am sure your children will sing right along with. You never know you might just find yourself singing along too. Marina is a motivation speaker, so I am sure she can get the whole family ready for your trip.

My Baby Monsters (mybabymonsters.com)
This is a great podcast where you and your child can write an amazing story for your trip and add it to the already great stories on this podcast. This website has much more than just wonderful stories that you can listen to with your child, they have games and all the ideas that you can get from this website is endless.

Those are just three of the many great websites with podcasts. If you want to spend some extra time with your child and make some wonderful memories, you can make your own podcasts for that long trip. Have your child help you write a play and have them with their friends act out the play, or let your child write songs for the trip. There are endless ways you can make your podcasts, all you need is your imagination. For more information and discussion about family-life in the Emirates, go to Emirates Baby.

[Magnus]

Podcasting - what you need to know
by Magnus

According to Wikipedia, a podcast is “a digital media file, or a series of such files, that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers. A podcast is a specific type of webcast which, like radio, can mean either the content itself or the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also termed podcasting.” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting) That may be a technically accurate definition but what does it really mean and where did it all start?

It all really starts with something called RSS (for more information about RSS, see “RSS 101” in the March 2007 issue of shuffle). In 2000, David Winer came up with RSS as a means to “push” out content to subscribers. Think of it as you subscribing to a show on TV (the podcast “feed”) and whenever there is a new episode of that show, it’s automatically downloaded to your TV and you can watch it. Soon, and it seems to have happened in 2001, people started at add digital audio “enclosures” to RSS feeds. The feed then can point to audio or video files for new content. This means you can subscribe to a feed, and when there’s new content, it’s downloaded to your Mac, and by extension, copied onto your iPod. Even though we currently don’t do any podcasting at EmiratesMac, we do offer several RSS feeds, for the blog, the newsletter, the gallery, and more.

Podcasting has also become popular in education, where you can find both student- and teacher generated podcasts covering many different subjects and pedagogical approaches. One podcast example in education is Abu Dhabi Women’s College (podcast.adwc.hct.ac.ae).

[Magnus]

Podcasting 101
by Graham Day

The first thing you need to know about Podcasting is nothing! Well actually If you have never seen or heard a Podcast what I would recommend is you go and either watch one or listen to one before attempting this tutorial. Right, once that’s done then your well on the way to making your first Podcast. I recommend for the complete newbie that you first try making a simple Podcast using iPhoto & iMovie, before going onto Final Cut Pro Studio 2 with motion & soundtrack etc. I think it is always best to walk before we run.

I would also suggest that first you master importing stills/Photos or AVI’s from your camera into iPhoto. Now as reference will use the Podcast from this tutorial Surfs Up! St Ives 2006, this was edited entirely on iMovie with stills/photos from an IXUS 50 Canon camera and the music was composed in Garageband. So it is a combination of stills and graphics. (N.B. for the sake of this tutorial I will use the word “stills” to mean photos.)

From the Podcast you can see that I used a lot of Ken Burns effects from iMovie with the stills, especially the panoramic still as this gives the effect of motion. (I’ll cover photo stitching another day.) In TV we used to call this technique ’action stills’, because it gave life to the still picture/photo. We would rig a video camera up and point it at the photo and then Pan & Zoom the camera. Now you just need a Mac.

So lets start as I said by importing some stills into iPhoto. First step is to create an album and call it “PodCast 101”.Then drag and drop your stills/photos into the the Album “PodCast 101” we do this so it makes the searching for the stills easier when we are in iMovie rather than having to trawl through the whole of you iPhoto library. Now once they are in the Album if you haven’t already done this name the stills. So we have in iPhoto a series of named stills like shown. Okay now it’s time to open iMovie, one of the most under rated applications in iLife ever, in my opinion. The way this handles media files is quite impressive, and before you all run off to buy Final Cut Express try getting your head around this first. I assure you, as an FCP user and trainer, if I want to cut something quickly in DV or HDV I will use this first. It is a nice and simple application with good integration with the other iLife apps.
Okay first thing you need to do is create a New Project and choose a resolution.
Seeing as we are making a Podcast which will end up as MPEG-4 lets go for MPEG-4 as our resolution and name our Project PodCast 101. You’ll notice by default that iMovie wants to save it’s Projects in to the Movies folder, so let it. Click on “Create”.

Now a Project is really just like a blank document in word or pages. Your creating a place where all your resources and settings will be stored. (N.B. iMovie is based around Quicktime the same as FCP.)

So quickly to get you familiar with the iMovie interface you should have a window that looks like this: On the Left Hand Side is a large viewing window, that looks a little like QT Player, and to the RHS is a series of blank squares. In the centre below the large viewing window is what is known as your transport keys (Go To Beginning, Play & Play Full Screen).
And below that your Clip Viewer/Timeline.


To the left of the transport keys are two icons the camera & scissor Icon make sure the slider is over to the right next to the scissors. (It should be by default.) To the left of them is an icon like a piece of film and a clock, make sure the piece of film icon is active (blue). Now to the RHS below the squares should be a series of buttons called “Clips, Themes, Media, Editing, & Chapters”. If you are seeing the squares then you will have the “Clips” menu active. Okay, now select the menu button Media. You will notice that the squares have disappeared and in it’s place is a window showing folders of either Audio or Photos. Select Photos, this should take you directly to iPhoto.
Scroll down the folder structure till you see the Album/Folder PodCast 101 and select it, the window below the folders should now show you your selected stills/photos.

Now click on a photo and it will appear in the big window to the LHS. Make sure you have Show Photo Settings active in the lower part of the window on the RHS, and make sure you tick the Ken Burns Effect box. At this point save your project (Command + S or from the file menu). Now get used to doing this as it will save a lot of tantrums and tears later. Be creative explore the effect of the Ken Burns plugin, you can zoom in, you position the photo, you can adjust the speed of the zoom.

You use a Mac so let the creative juices flow. When your happy with the effect then in the Ken Burns box hit apply. You should see your first photo drop to the beginning of the Timeline. You’ll also notice a little red line on the clip slowly move across the frame in the timeline, this is creating the rendered file of your picture and the Ken Burns effect. Now once your happy with your first clip hit save. Now select your second photo and do the same. Once you have hit save, select the icon that looks like a clock and it will transform the Timeline from a frame based view to a time based view. Now press Goto beginning in the transport keys and then press play, you should see all you clips play back with the Ken Burns effect on them.
To adjust a clips effect just switch the timeline back to frame view select the frame you want to adjust and hit Show Photo Settings.

This time you will see that the Ken Burns now says update rather than apply.
Don’t forget to keep saving your project while you work. Now keep on adding your clips and reviewing the timeline sequence once your happy with the sequence try putting on some titles and effects by selecting the Editing Menu.

Right now you’ve completed your visual masterpiece it should look a little like mine. Now to add some audio go to the file menu and select share, and from the drop down menu select Garageband.
First thing you will notice it will import your iMovie sequence in to it’s timeline at the top, now you can start to rock & roll! Okay once you’ve done your Hip Hop or Artic Monkeys soundtrack you have two choices from here, as iLife is so well integrated, you can either select share from the file menu and save the finished Podcast straight in to iTunes.
Or you can save your work in Garageband step back into iMovie and open Audio in the Media Menu and drag your music straight to the timeline and re-sync it to your pictures, you might want to do this if you need to trim some of the pictures to hit beats on your newly composed music track.

Check your pictures & music then select share from the File Menu & choose iPod.
Your movie will be exported and compressed straight in to iTunes ready to sync with your iPod. Congratulations to your first Podcast!


Right how to get it out in the wild. When you hit the Share button in the File Menu you’ll notice the line “Share” right at the bottom of the pulldown select that and it will show you all the options you have for your movie. In our case we selected iPod, but we could have selected iWeb and created a Podcast to be uploaded to your iWeb site.

I will finish with some tips to remember when creating a Podcast, whether it’s video or audio. First, have a rough idea of a theme and perhaps even do a storyboard. When starting, check how much space you have on your had disk and make sure there’s plenty of room for your creation. Don’t waste too much time refining your edits and instead get a rough cut together first. Choose the MPEG-4 format as it takes up less disk space. And finally, and most importantly, remember to have fun!

SIDEBAR/BOX:
You can download Graham’s finished video podcast episode from EmiratesMac.com (http://www.emiratesmac.com/newslette...podcast101.m4v). See for yourself what the end result looks like.

SIDEBAR/BOX:
Graham Day, a Director at TriMedia Middle East (TriMedia Middle East) has previously worked at companies like Granada TV, Avid, and Abu Dhabi TV. TriMedia Middle East offers a comprehensive Broadcast Consultancy comprising Channel Management, Project Management, Training and Recruitment services. They are based in Dubai Media City with clients throughout the Gulf region.

[Magnus]

Experiences of an Apple fan around the world – Thailand
by Senthil

Thailand – For me it is synonymous with Bangkok, Phuket and Pattaya because these are the three cities in Thailand that I have visited frequently. And Bangkok, Phuket and Pattaya evokes images of fun, beaches, and late night partying. You must be wondering in a place like this could there be any signs of Apple? Few years back, the pre-iPod era, you could hardly find any Apple related products in the IT malls of Bangkok (there are three huge malls that I know of which are dedicated to only IT & IT related products). Now as you walk into these malls you can see the iPods hanging at almost all the shops in the malls. My favorite is the Pantip Plaza. Even thinking of Pantip Plaza gets me nostalgic, as I used to spend at least a day of my holiday roaming around this mall.

If you are a IT nut, like most of us are, then Pantip Plaza is the place, a Mecca for all of Bangkok’s computer users (I must add it must be the hub for all of South East Asia IT users) as well as tourists. For me a trip to Bangkok is incomplete without visiting Pantip Plaza. Here you will find more than five floors of the most competitively priced hardware and software in Asia. Rumors are that, it has been the target of several police raids for selling pirated stuff. But after a few hours almost all of them are back in business.

Plenty of software and hardware for PC, Mac and peripherals of all types are available for you to window shop or buy. Lots of things that are hard to find in UAE are available and that too at rock bottom prices. This is also a good place to bring any damaged equipment for repair; they are particularly skillful with notebook PCs and printers. Though they may not be as skillful with Apple stuff as they are with the Wintel world.
Once I have done my browsing at the shops on the first two floors, I straight away hit the Apple store on the 3rd floor. Though this is not a true Apple store, I found the range of products quite amazing. Almost everything that is released in US is available immediately. I guess Thailand gets Apple products faster than other parts of Asia, with the exception of Hong Kong and Singapore. Also at Pantip, you could lay your hands on all kinds of older Apple models. There is a floor dedicated to selling second hand stuff. I think I saw a lot of older Apple Macs during one of my visits here.
As soon as you walk into the store, you find some extremely helpful salespeople. Majority of the salespeople I found in this store were women. They are polite, knowledgeable and extremely helpful. You could spend hours in the store browsing the net, using the Apple notebooks, iPods. Practically you can touch and feel all the products in the store. I like the way they treat their customers, never being pushy and at the same time letting you know that they are there to help you when you need it and the prices are amazing. Though they may not be at par with Hong Kong prices, but very close to Hong Kong prices.

My first purchase here was an iPod mini. I just walked in, checked out all the available models of iPods and then picked up a mini. As soon as the salesperson knew that I was an Apple fan, use an eMac at home and am crazy about Apple, she downloaded almost 100 songs from her personal collection to my mini. I still have those songs.

I think it is the Thai culture, which makes them so friendly and welcoming. This could be felt in the store also. Imagine haggling on the list price of an iPod mini. This could happen only in Thailand.

If you are planning a trip to Thailand, then a visit to Pantip Plaza is a must and the 3rd floor where the Apple store is located is a definite must. Not only is Apple present in Pantip Plaza, you could also find iMacs, MacBooks and iPods at MacBook Pros, which again is a big mall but only the 4th and 5th floors are dedicated to IT stuff. This is another great place to browse for Apple stuff. The other IT dedicated malls in Bangkok are Fortune Mall but there is not much of Apple stuff here. If you plan to go to Thailand, I am sure some of you might be planning a holiday to Thailand this summer, then a visit to Pantip plaza 3rd floor is a must. You will surely enjoy it.

[Magnus]

Peel the Apple
by Magnus

Q: I’ve decided to leave .Mac and go to other alternatives. So I need to get my mail from .Mac to GMail, for example. I’ve got a lot of mail, so how do I do that?
A: This is not a straight forward operation.
I’ve done similar things myself in the past and once I tried Mark Lyon’s GMail Loader (marklyon.org/gmail/) which is not for everyone. It requires you to download a few things, install them, and then it’s not a real Mac OS X application so using the GMail Loader will be awkward for some. You can also do this with just Apple’s Mail application. If you select an email and the chose Redirect in the Message menu, Mail will send that email on to the email address you enter. You can also set up a rule (Mail > Preferences > Rules > Add rule) that automates the process some. Add a rule that for “Every message” redirects to your desired email address. Then you can select all emails in a folder, for example, and by selecting “Apply Rules” in the Messages menu, they will all be redirected. In my experience Thunderbird is however a better choice for this. There is a redirect add-on for Thunderbird but it seems to only work in versions of Thunderbird up to 1.5 (Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5). Get the add on (addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/550), install it, and you can then redirect all emails in a folder to a specific email address. When I’ve done it, it has worked a lot better than Apple’s Mail.
Q: I have some private photos. Is there any way to protect the folder containing
these photos with a password even iPhoto should request the password before displaying these photos?
Q: I dont understand how to make my Airport Express bridge!! I bought the new Airport Extreme and it’s working fine, but I want to make my Express bridge. And I dont understand what to do.
A: No problem. Connect to the Express with Airport Utility. In the Airport icon, click the Wireless tab, then in the Wireless mode drop down, select Join a Wireless Network. Enter the details of the network you want the Express to join. That’s it. Your Airport Express should now extend the Airport Extreme network. Keep in mind by doing so you lower the potential speed of the network
since the Express is “only” 802.11g while the (new) Extreme is 802.11n.
Q: I use Thunderbird for email. How can I back up my email?
A: All your Thunderbird emails are stored in one folder, so it’s as easy as copying that folder. In Finder, go to your home directory >Library > Thunderbird
> Profiles. There is probably just one folder there, with a strange name, something like “8hhhttsp.default”. Open that folder and you should see a folder called “Mail” inside of it. All you need to do now is to copy that folder to another hard drive, burn it to a disc, or even perhaps upload it to a server online. Whichever way you do your backups normally. It may be a good idea to compress it before copying it. You can do that by right clicking on the folder and

[Magnus]

Switcher interview
by istara

Name: Klaus Lovgreen
Job: CEO
Mac: iMac and Macbook Pro
Date you bought it: October 2006 and January 2007 respectively


Q: Why did you switch? What triggered the decision?
A: I was impressed with the design and was fed up with Windows always hanging. The fact that the new Macs were able to run Windows gave me the comfort to switch as I could just run Windows if I needed it.

Q: How did you find the Mac to start with?
A: Very easy and intuitive to use - I faced no problems at all.

Q: What were the best things about it?
A: It generally just works and you can focus on what you are trying to do on your machine instead of spending a lot of time figuring out why something is not working and patching.

Q: What did you find difficult?
A: Converting all media to Mac friendly formats - not really difficult - but time consuming.

Q: Do you still use Windows at all?
A: Not unless I really have to - which has been a while now

Q: Would you ever switch back?
A: Not unless Apple suddenly loses it completely or Windows dramatically outperforms OSX - both scenarios highly unlikely.

Q: What would your advice be for other Windows users considering switching?
A: Just try it out - and if you are not impressed with OS X at least you will have a really pretty Windows box running it better than most PCs.