It's been a busy few weeks at MacFormat Towers, as we gear up for this year's Mac Live Expo. We've got a packed schedule of events running at the MacFormat stand (550), so we wanted to give you a heads-up on what to expect. The below timetable will run every day of the expo, so if you miss the one you want to see one day, you can always come back the next. We'll have pro presenters walking you through each segment – including MacFormat's own Trevor Middleton – and some are even giving out freebies at the end of their slot. We'll have nine Macs set up so you can follow along with what's happening on the presenter's screen, too.

10:30–11:30 Get started with Mac OS X
11:30–12:30 Watch, record, and edit TV with EyeTV
12:30–1:30 Burn great CDs and DVDs with Roxio Toast
1:30–2:30 Get more from iLife ’08
2:30–3:30 Create a website with RapidWeaver
3:30–4:30 Run Windows on a Mac with Parallels Desktop for Mac
4:30–5:30 Converting video with Roxio Popcorn 3 and Crunch

We've also put together a killer subscription package that includes a copy of Crunch, a pair of earphones from iSkin and an exclusive, limited edition MacFormat t-shirt that's genuinely pretty cool. If you're not a subscriber, this is the perfect chance to sign up for a regular dose of the UK's best-selling Mac magazine and take home some free kit too!

At half past two in the morning of October 19, I got an email from Apple telling me that, thanks to changes to the .Mac infrastructure to accommodate Leopard, syncing would no longer work unless I was running 10.4.10, starting essentially that same day. You probably got one too if you're a .Mac subscriber.

Two things annoy me about this. One is that I essentially got no warning at all from Apple, and the other is that, because of Future Publishing's understandably strict IT policies, by work Mac is stuck on 10.4.8 until the entire company makes the move to 10.4.10. Normally, I'd just bluster and say, well just update to 10.4.10, then; it's free so what's the problem? But enough folks have had problems with 10.4.10 or, like me, are stuck in corporate environments where the updating of machines is mandated by a central department, that this decision really rankles.

It's worse if your company hasn't made the investment in 10.4 – if you're stuck on Panther, you're limited to syncing between other 10.3 Macs. If, say, you're nice and up to date with 10.4 on your home Macs but your work Mac is still running 10.3, you're stymied.

You might think that practically everyone – spurred on, perhaps, by Apple's decision not to protect its operating system with even a serial number – would be running 10.4, but Apple's own figures suggest otherwise. At this year's keynote, Steve Jobs told us that two thirds of Mac users were running Tiger, and that 90% of the user base was on the current release (10.4) or the current release minus one (10.3). Assuming this is true, a quarter of Mac users in January of this year were running 10.3, and that's a substantial chunk.

Regardless, I'm annoyed. I can't simply upgrade my work Mac to 10.4.10, and so one of my essential tools for doing my job properly – keeping my diary and contacts database synced between work and personal Macs – has been yanked.

Thanks for listening. You're cheaper than therapy.