I think, therefore iPod: all things Apple and beyond.

Free Aperture Trial

2006-11-02T23:11:00.000-05:00

Again, apologies for not posting in ages - I've been super busy and I'm still making the transition to ithinkthereforeipod.net. I need to switch hosting providers to get rid of the darn ads, but hopefully the look and feel of the site is nice and familiar-looking!

In the meantime, Apple just released a fully-functional, 30-day trial of its magnificent Aperture software, which you can get here. If you've been curious about Aperture, but haven't wanted to fork out the money before properly trying it, this is the perfect chance to give it a spin. I know I'll be giving it a thorough testing. I particularly want to see how it performs in comparison to the excellentAdobe Lightroom, which I use for my photography, and will definitely consider purchasing when it comes out of beta.

Update

2006-09-13T03:28:00.000-04:00

You may have noticed I haven't updated too much recently. This was partly because of a very busy summer holiday, but also partly because I'm working on a move to ithinkthereforeipod.net, so I'll let you know when that change happens!

Apple 'Showtime' Event

2006-09-12T15:18:00.000-04:00

New iPods. All 3 models.

iTunes movies.

iTV announced - the Apple home theatre?

'Nuff said.

Just kidding - much more later!

Random Miscellany, Widgets on desktop

2006-09-04T10:14:00.000-04:00

Personal bits and pieces
Well, a wonderful summer has come to an end, and tomorrow I get on a plane and fly back to jolly old Toronto, leaving Hong Kong behind. Apparently they've opened a third Apple Store in Toronto in my absence, what nerve :P! But lucky ol' Toronto is now home to all 3 of Canada's Apple Stores.

What has been a very fruitful summer me ended with a production of Jean Anouilh's interpretation of Antigone, in which I acted and had an absolute blast. Why is this even remotely relevant to Apple? It isn't really, except for the fact that every laptop in the theatre was a Mac, which was very pleasing. Two Powerbook G4s and my iBook G4 were ubiquitous throughout the entire duration of the production, and the sheer percentage of the actors and crew who were Mac users was quite staggering. It's quite possible that we were a majority for once! Three cheers for the arts!

Dashboard Tip
One tip that's been floating around on sites like Digg and podcasts like the MacCast is how to get your Dashboard widgets on your desktop, permanently.

Now, by default, you can pull one widget onto your desktop from your Dashboard. All you do is simply click and hold a widget whilst in dashboard, move it slightly, and whilst still holding down the mouse button, deactivate Dashboard. Then you can drop the widget on your desktop. However, you can only do this with one widget at a time by default, and as soon as you activate Dashboard again, it goes back.

It is possible, however, to get multiple widgets out of Dashboard and onto your desktop, permanently, using the same method. All you have to do is enable Dashboard developer mode. To do this:

Open the Terminal.

Type defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES and press return.

Then either log out and log back in, or type killall Dock and press return.

To disable developer mode and make things go back to the way they were just type defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode NO and then logout and log back in or type killall Dock again.

Now if you repeat the process mentioned earlier - click and hold a widget in Dashboard, move it a bit and then deactivate Dashboard whilst still holding down the mouse button - you can drag as many widgets to the desktop as you want, and they'll stay there, even if you reactivate Dashboard.

One word of warning with this tip - enabling the Dashboard developer mode will make widgets use up a bit more memory than they would otherwise do (which perhaps is why it's disabled by default). The amount of extra memory used varies between widgets. But the thing to bear in mind is that if you use a lot of widgets, enabling devmode could eat up a substantial amount of your system's RAM.

And now to finish packing and get on that plane...

Google's Eric Schmidt joins Apple's board

2006-08-30T00:11:00.000-04:00

Apparently Eric Schmidt of Google has joined Apple's board of directors in what I see as a very interesting move. Of course, Apple's board of directors already includes some very big names including Al Gore, and of course Steve Jobs himself. Steve Jobs highlighted Google's innovation and Schmidt's experience as the main reasons for wanting to bring him on board to help Apple in the future.

I see this as a very positive and interesting move on Apple's part. Apple and Google have always had a good relationship - Google is the default search engine in Safari, Google searches will return iTunes Music Store links, and perhaps Leopard will have Google searches integrated into Spotlight.

The biggest plus I see to this addition to the board is for the future. Both companies are aggressively innovating and releasing new products and services. Google is starting to offer a wide range of office-like web applications, from Google Calendar to Writely and Google Spreadsheet. On top of that, they have a fantastic range of downloadable apps too such as Google Earth and Picasa. One complaint I've had is that often, Mac versions of these apps are slow to be released. Hopefully with Schmidt on board, Mac and Safari compatability with Google apps and services will arrive more swiftly.

Of course, one could argue that joining the board does not necessarily make much of a difference, but given that Jobs specifically cited Google's innovation as something he wanted for Apple's future, I see this as a very deliberate move. Look at what happened when Jobs joined Disney's board - Disney owned content on the iTunes Music Store skyrocketed.

But perhaps there's more to it than that. There's been recent speculation about Jobs' health (which I wouldn't take too seriously), and one thing is clear - Jobs can't forever be at the helm at Apple. Without a figure like Jobs leading the company, with his drive and his desire for perfection and innovation, Apple wouldn't be what it is today. Any potential successor to Steve Jobs would have to be one hell of an individual, and the likes of Eric Schmidt just might be the right type to fill Jobs' enourmous shoes should the need ever arrive. I'm not saying Schmidt will take over from Jobs, I'm just saying that when the time comes for Apple to face life without Steve Jobs, a very big name would have to fill his shoes, someone perhaps, like Eric Schmidt.

'Snakes on a Plane' tattoos

2006-08-24T12:10:00.000-04:00

Completely unrelated to Apple, but I just got back from watching 'Snakes on a Plane' at the local AMC here in Hong Kong, and much to my delight, the cinema was giving away free 'Snakes on a Plane' tattoos (you know, the fake, stick-on kind). I managed to get my hands on 3! I wonder if this happens everywhere? Check it out.

I apologise for the image quality and the flash, but at least it's visible!

Now I have to decide what to stick them on, and if the answer is my skin...when...?

Apple product placement in 'Miami Vice'

2006-08-18T12:54:00.000-04:00

I just got back from watching 'Miami Vice', and whilst I won't comment on the movie too much, I noticed that it has followed the trend of such shows as 24, Sex and the City and many other films and TV shows by featuring Macs and glowing Apple logos. But it's not the fact that one often sees Macs in movies that amuses it me, it's who uses them. One common trend I've seen in numerous movies and shows is that the good guys use Macs, and the bad guys use PCs.

Miami Vice is a perfect example of what I mean (I'll try my best not to spoil anything for anyone who hasn't seen the film yet). Jamie Foxx's character and the girl that Colin Farrell's character falls for both use Macs, and there are at least 2 scenes in which the back of either a Powerbook or a MacBook Pro is featured, which of course means a glowing Apple logo onscreen. But on top of that, the bad guys in the movie don't use Macs. There's one scene in which one drug dealer shows a video to his boss, and to do so, he drops a clunky PC notebook on the table. Interesting eh?

Now I'm pretty sure that Apple doesn't pay movies to feature their products, if anything it might be the opposite. So why does this phenomenon exist? Why do good guys use Macs, and bad guys use PCs? It could have a lot to do with the images and ideas associated with Macs. I would speculate, and this is probably especially true in Hollywood, that Macs and other Apple products have the cool and sexy factor not associated with other PC manufacturers or tech companies. So what better way of reinforcing your main characters then to have them use shiny, sexy Macs, and have the bad guys use ugly, dull PCs?

Just a fun little thing I noticed that I thought I might share. What's even better is that when I pointed it out to my best friend whom I was watching the movie with, I received a prolonged groan in response and was asked why I had to notice things like that. Who wouldn't?

Wireless Mighty Mouse thoughts

2006-08-15T10:07:00.000-04:00

This morning, I woke up to find a nice little package waiting for me - the Wireless Mighty Mouse that I had ordered. I've been using it all day now, and there are some things about it that I absolutely love, and others...not so much.

Out of the box
On opening the box, I found 3 small packages: one containing the manual, warranty and Software Install disc; the mouse itself, and finally, much to my surprise and delight, two Energizer batteries.

I skipped the manual-reading step (it's a mouse for heaven's sake!) and immediately popped the Software Install disc into my iBook G4 and installed the Mighty Mouse software. After it installed, I had to restart my computer. I then popped the batteries into the mouse, moved the slider into the 'on' position and paired it with my computer via Bluetooth - all of this worked seamlessly.

Once I got the mouse working, I headed to System Prefences to configure it. In case you don't know already, the Mighty Mouse has a left click, a right click, a 360 degree scroll wheel (which can also be clicked) and it can be squeezed for one extra 'button'. The default settings are set so that clicking the scroll wheel launches Dashboard, and squeezing the sides invokes Exposé for all windows. I went right ahead and switched these round - tweaking the settings is incredibly simple.

Overall very nice out of the box, the Mighty Mouse was up and working in a few minutes.

Performance
Certain elements of the Mighty Mouse's performance are amazing, others less so.

The decision to replace the optical sensor with a laser one was definitely a great move. The Mighty Mouse's ability to track on various surfaces amazed me. I first used it on my wooden desk, no problems there. I then moved it onto my leg, it still worked flawlessly. But what impressed me the most by far was the final test I did. I took a transparent plastic DVD case and placed the mouse on top of it. It still tracked just as well as it did on the wooden surface. The thing works seamlessly on see-through plastic and glass!

The ability to run on one battery is a huge plus as well; it makes the mouse much lighter, which makes it easier to use for things such as gaming. Another cool feature that I applaud Apple for. The mouse's energy saving ability seems to be very advanced as well, and it manages to maintain flawless Bluetooth connectivity without draining the batteries.

Unfortunately, the Mighty Mouse is not without its problems.

First of all, I haven't been able to find a tracking and scrolling speed that feels both 100% accurate or comfortable; sometimes scrolling seems erratic, but most of the time tracking and scrolling is not really a problem. However, the right and left clicks need changing. The problem is, because there's only really one button, it is physically impossible to right click with your middle finger whilst keeping your index finger on the mouse. You can only have one finger on the mouse in order to right click, which feels very unnatural and it means that a large proportion of my right clicks end up being left clicks.

On top of that, the side buttons take an extraordinary amount of effort to activate. I have to squeeze the mouse quite hard in order to get the side buttons to work, and there isn't any way of increasing this sensitivity. I've also found the on/off slider very difficult to operate, it takes loads of effort to turn the mouse on or off. This might get easier with time as the slider loosens up a bit, but I'm not a huge fan of the slider switch on Apple's wireless mice.

Overall
Overall, whilst it has its problems, the Wireless Mighty Mouse is a purchase I'm happy with. The ability to track on almost any surface and to operate with only a single battery make the mouse incredibly versatile, and since I travel quite frequently, this is a huge plus for me. The ability to launch Dashboard, invoke Exposé or launch applications definitely increases productivity.

One thing I am trying to do is to use the Mighty Mouse to make drag-and-drop even more seamless than it already is. I want to use the scroll button to invoke Exposé for all windows, and the side squeezing buttons to invoke Exposé for the desktop, so I can use the mouse to drag things from my desktop to other open windows. This however is proving difficult, as it's impossible to click on more than one button at once! If anybody can teach me how to do this, or if anybody knows how to get a kind of drag-lock feature on the Mighty Mouse, I would be most appreciative! One thing I love doing is using Exposé to drag files between loads of different windows, but I want to be able to do this with my new mouse!

WWDC 2006 Keynote thoughts

2006-08-07T13:19:00.000-04:00

The World Wide Developer's Conference has well and truly kicked off now that Steve Jobs and his team have finished giving the keynote. If you haven't had a chance to check it out yet, head on over to Apple's site and watch it.

Now, I'm not going to go through every single thing covered in too much detail, but basically what we got were the Mac Pro - the successor to the PowerMac G5, new Xserves, and a preview of some of the features of OS X Leopard. There was an absurd amount of competitor bashing, Dell got some stick, but Microsoft and Vista bore the brunt of the harshness. It seemed a bit excessive to me, but hey, it's an Apple event, it's their time, it's their moment of glory! But anyway, let's take a closer look at what we've been shown.

Mac Pro
It might look just like the PowerMac G5 on the outside (why change such a wonderful case?), but believe you me, on the inside, these are complete new beasts.

Sporting the new 'Woodcrest' Xeon processors, the Mac Pro has a far better performance per watt ratio than the G5s had. What this means is that a lot of the cooling inside the enclosure has been removed...which of course means that a lot more other stuff can be put in! The Mac Pro can include two optical drives, up to four hard drives (we're talking 2 terabytes of internal storage), four PCI Express slots, and a whole lot of other stuff. What's awesome about this system though, is that the standard basic system only costs $2,499 (almost $1,000 cheaper than an equal-spec Dell, according to the keynote), although by 'basic' I mean a quad 2.66GHz, 1GB RAM, 250GB hard drive monster, but it's FULLY configurable, which is fantastic! I've always loved the customisability of systems you buy off the online Apple Store, but this brings that to a new level. One standard configuration. Customise it any way you want.

Now these machines are no slackers, these new chips are server chips, and pack quite a punch. They are all dual core, and EVERY Mac Pro has two of them, effectively making every single one a quad core system. Each core can reach frequencies of up to 3GHz, and finally, like the G5, they support 64-bit. On top of that, these things have massive 4MB L2 caches and 1.33GHz frontside buses. The internal buses on the Mac Pro also clock at 25GB/s, which is sweet, it's always nice when your internal components can communicate to each other at those kinds of speeds :).

But in summary...these machines are monsters, and I can't wait to test one out. The Xserves are very similar in their configurations, and I don't wanna spend too much time talking about them.

Instead...let's talk about...

Leopard!
Now the first thing to point out is that I am confident that we have not by any stretch of the imagination seen all that Leopoard will have to offer. Steve Jobs very conveniently pointed out that there are a lot of 'Top Secret' features in Leopard that haven't been revealed yet, because they don't want Microsoft to 'start their photocopiers' too early :P. So expect many more features, probably at Macworld. But let's take a look at what we have been shown in Leopard, because a lot of it excites me quite a bit.

64 bit support and Core Animation
A couple of treats for developers here. Leopard will support 64-bit apps up to the UI level, instead of just at the Unix level as was the case with Tiger. This means that 64-bit and 32-bit apps can run side by side, natively. This should open up a whole new level of applications for systems like the Mac Pro. Core Animation is added to the OS as well, which allows developers to develop animations and interactive sequences with far greater ease. I will admit to not knowing very much about this aspect of OS X, but I expect this addition to bring a lot more eye candy at the very least. I'm not a developer though, so I won't spend too much time writing about things I don't fully comprehend.

Time Machine
This is absolutely insane. There are backup solutions. There is date recovery. There are cool interfaces. This is all three of those. On crack. Built with Core Animation, what Time Machine does is it automatically backs up your system to a hard disk or to a server, and recover things that may have been lost in the past. Nothing special right?

Think again. Just check out this interface.

It's really difficult to explain just how cool this is. Time Machine allows you to actually go back in time and restore your system to the state it was in at some point in the past. What's even cooler is that you can restore individual folders, files or parts of applications to past states, whilst keeping the rest of your system the same. You can even do Spotlight searches into the past within applications like Address Book. This is far too cool and amazing for me to explain, you really just have to watch the keynote and check it out on Apple's Time Macine site. The kinds of situations and uses for Time Machine they describe are absolutely spot on. From finding that's disappeared from a folder you know it was in, to recovering data you unintentionally saved over, or to recover important photos, contacts or files, Time Machine's interface just makes all of this look easy.

All I'm wondering about is how much extra hard disk space this is all going to take up.

Spaces
Now if you've ever used Linux, you'll know that many distros have multiple virtual desktops that allow you to keep different windows and different applications in separate desktops. A great way to reduce clutter when multitasking. This is one of my personal favourite features of many Linux distros.

Now this has come to the Mac, with a whole new interface. You have the standard four desktops, and you can put different applications and different windows in each desktop, but the interface that Apple has implemented looks phenomenal. First of all, you can move between desktops, or 'spaces' with hotkeys, and you can tile your desktops in an Exposé-like fashion. You can also rearrange their order. But what's even better is that a) clicking on any application in the dock will take you to the 'space' that it's in, and on top of that, when you are viewing all of your spaces at once, you can click and drag applications and windows from one space to another - that is a great feature. I love Exposé, and this seems like a natural addition to it.

Mail
If you use Mail a lot, like me, it's about time we got an update. Three major changes to Mail were demostrated: a) 'Stationery', b) The addition of notes, and c) To-Dos.

Stationery sounds like a cool addition; this essentially gives you a bunch of templates (think Pages and iWeb) that allow you to send really good-looking HTML emails that you can customise. Whilst this is eye-candy more than anything else, what this might do is make it very evident when somebody is emailing you from a Mac. Gone could be the days of boring looking emails with attached photos at the bottom. If asked how your emails look so professional and so nice? The simple answer would be 'I'm a Mac user'.

Notes is a cool addition too. Basically you can take notes within Mail instead of having to email stuff to yourself. You can imbed things such as photos, PDFs and the new To-Dos within Notes, and there's a special mailbox for these. This is cool, because since so much information these days is exchanged via email, it'd be nice to be able to take notes within the same application.

But it's the final addition that really excites me - the To-Dos. Adding the ability to make any mail message or any line in a Note a To-Do (think iCal-style To-Do lists) could increase productivity a LOT! How many times have you gotten an email asking you to do something, and then jotted that task down somewhere and forgotten about it? I know I have a few outstanding email tasks as we speak. So this could be very useful. But what's best is that this is SYSTEM-WIDE! So any To-Do you make in Mail will show up in iCal's To-Dos, and vice versa. And developers can build this into their software, which would be a very useful feature in a lot of productivity software such as FileMaker Pro. I approve wholeheartedly. I still would like a way of using different kinds of flags, so I can flag certain emails as ones that I want to reply to, and others as emails containing important information. I've wanted this kind of feature for a long time...and it still seems like I'm not gonna get it.

iChat
iChat has been GREATLY improved, with some amazing additions. The most significant of these are to video chat, which is good, but unfortunately, until (or unless...rather) most of the people I know switch to Macs, it's going to mean that not everybody will get to experience all these wonderful new features, which is the only drawback to iChat (which isn't its fault, obviously).

Photo Booth's fun effects have been added to live video chat, which could make for hours of timewasting. But more significantly, iChat Theatre has been added, which allows you to show off Keynote presentations, iPhoto slideshows and more within video chats, whilst you talk people through them. Provided you have enough bandwidth, this could really revolutionise instant messaging and videoconferencing. And I use that word 'revolutionise' very rarely, but seriously - if more people used Macs, iChat would be the greatest thing ever.

iChat also lets you add a backdrop to your video chat, to make it look like you're chilling out in the Bahamas or anywhere else. The backdrop can be either an image or EVEN a video. This and the Photo Booth effects could really be quite fun.

Dashboard
Dashcode, a widget and general development tool has been released officially. I actually picked up a copy of this when it was leaked earlier, and it's pretty cool. If you know some Java, this is a really powerful tool for building widgets very quickly.

But the coolest addition is Web Clip, which basically lets you take any section of any webpage and make it a widget, which will update that piece of the webpage in real time. An AWESOME idea, great for doing things like keeping up with web comic strips, tracking activity or eBay auctions, watching webcams, and many other things. What's cool about this is that a lot of sites have really useful info in a very small space, which one might check regularly. But more often than not, the rest of the page is filled with useless junk and ads. Web Clip is the perfect solution! I like it, and it might make me use Dashboard much more frequently!

That's it!
Lots of other stuff was shown off, including improved Universal Access, particularly VoiceOver, and Spotlight and iCal have been improved too. But whilst these changes are good and cool, I don't want to go on and on about these in particular. If you're interested, check them out on Apple's Leopard page for the details.

So that's Leopard and the new Mac Pro. I can't wait till to see what remaining features there will be, and as soon as it ships in Spring, I'm definitely going to pick up a copy.

All in all a good keynote. People have been moaning about how there wasn't an iPhone or new iPods, but this is the WWDC! Developers don't care about iPods! If there are new iPods and even iPhones on the way, expect them to be rolled out in a different way. It's high time we had a new iPod, but a developer's conference is not the time to be talking about music players. They kept it about the hardware and operating system. Good stuff.

WWDC 2006 Banner

2006-08-03T11:14:00.000-04:00

Whilst harmlessly browsing Digg earlier, I happened to stumble upon this image, which is apparently a banner being set up for the World Wide Developers Conference, which kicks off on the 7th of March:

Most of the icons there are familiar-looking, and any secret ones are probably still covered by those black pieces of cloth, but there are some obvious additions. I haven't quite been able to decipher all of them...but the DVD with the big black X on it is clearly the logo for OS X Leopard, I would think. It's much darker than I thought it would be, but nonetheless it looks good. There's also a very noticeable '64-bit' icon, the same that Apple used when the G5 was released. This isn't entirely surprising, as Intel's newly release Core 2 Duo chips support 64-bit processing, but this probably means we're going to see at least one Mac with these chips in them. Not entirely surprising perhaps, but exciting nonetheless!

Some of the logos I just don't recognise. If anybody knows what they are, do let me know! These would be...(roughly from left to right) those 4 little spheres, the green ball with the part-border under the black MacBook (and the orange one above the Xcode hammer, and the blue under the 64-bit icon), and the orange thing above the Java cup. These...I don't quite recognise, but I don't think they're anything new, as they look quite familiar. I just can't quite figure out what they are; for example, it took me a while to recognise the Quartz Extreme logo above the Finder logo on the right.

But if this is anything to go by...Leopard was expected, but also expect at least a Power Mac (Mac Pro?) that looks more or less the same, but with new Intel Chips that support 64-bit. But, Robert Scoble claimed on the bottom of one of the entries to his blog that Apple will unveil a 'dizzing' amount of new products at the WWDC. To quote him exactly:

"Speaking of Apple, they are readying a dizzying amount of new products. I wish I could camp out at an Apple store during the World Wide Developer Conference on August 7th. I wish I could say more, but that'd get me sued by Steve Jobs and I don't need that kind of heck right now."

Exciting stuff eh?

Random app: kip - grab it for free while you can!

2006-07-30T10:53:00.000-04:00

I just stumbled upon this interesting looking new application, called 'kip', found here. This version (1.01) is currently FREE, but the next version will not be free and will require purchase.

The site describes kip (spelled with a lower-case 'k') as 'iPhoto for your documents', which strikes me as an intriguing idea. I've downloaded the application and will spend a bit of time playing around with it. What it does essentially is display PDF files much like iPhoto displays images, and it also allows you to tag the documents. This is similar to iPhoto's keywords, but having seen the way it's implemented, it's probably more accurate to compare it to bookmark tags on del.ico.us (which is a personal and social bookmarking site that is definitely worth checking out if you haven't used it before).

The reason kip strikes me as a particularly promising idea is the fact that it handles PDF documents. This doesn't surprise me, as the PDF format is tightly and excellently integrated into OS X: Preview is one of the best PDF readers around, and every application that you can print from gives you the option of saving as PDF. If you're like me, and you like to convert and save text files, web pages and other documents as PDFs, kip could actually be very, very useful indeed. One problem I have with documents is that they end up all over the place (I don't dump all my random documents in OS X's 'Documents' folder). If kip provides a simple way of storing, organising and displaying all of my documents, I just might find myself using it on a regular basis. We'll see...lots of great ideas for apps end up being poorly implemented.

If this application turns out to be fabulous, I will definitely come back and write about it again. For now, I need to spend more time fiddling with it to see what it can do. And remember, this version is free, and future versions will not be...so if the idea interests you, go and grab a free copy while you can.

Apple releases wireless Mighty Mouse

2006-07-25T10:05:00.000-04:00

Apple finally released a wireless version of their Mighty Mouse today, shortly after AppleInsider released photos of its prototype.

The wireless Mighty Mouse costs US$69, compared to the $45 pricetag on the wired version, and connects via bluetooth. All of its features are essentially exactly the same as the original Mighty Mouse, with one rather notable feature as well - it can run on either 1 or 2 AA batteries. This, I think, is pretty cool. Running the mouse with 1 battery in it will obviously mean that it has a shorter battery life, but it will also make the mouse lighter, which is a plus. A lot of people, especially gamers, steer away from wireless mice because they're too heavy with the batteries in them. A wireless Mighty Mouse, combined with 1 rechargeable AA battery, could be a wonderful combination, as it would likely be light enough to appease a lot of people.

I must say, this really is the best of both worlds. I am a fan of the Apple Wireless mouse, but the one thing I don't like about it is that it only has one button. I'm ok with a one-button trackpad, but I like my mice to at least have a scroll wheel. I like the Mighty Mouse too, but my only problem with it is with the cable - I don't have enough USB ports in my iBook G4 to be able to spare one for a mouse. This solves all those problems!

I think I'm definitely going to go and grab one of these. There's nothing nicer than carrying a bluetooth mouse around with a laptop; we all get sick of trackpads eventually. Now if only Apple would make an ergonomic mouse...

Microsoft finally confirms iPod rival, Zune

2006-07-22T01:41:00.000-04:00

It's official, Microsoft has finally confirmed that it will be launching 'Zune', it's much-speculated about iPod competitor. They had recently quite adamantly denied any plans to develop such a player.

Reports say that the player will be hard-drive based, and will feature extensive Wi-Fi technology, allowing Zune users to do things like recommend music to each other, view each other's playlists and purchase music via Wi-Fi directly to the Zune.

These features, to be honest, sound pretty cool. Apparently the guy running the project is the same guy who headed the XBox project, and to be honest, he did a pretty good job of it. It does look like Microsoft is pushing in the right direction in order to offer a true iPod competitor, but there are still a couple of problems.

Firstly, Microsoft really does lack experience in the consumer electronics department. Many of its 'ideas' seem cool, but when implemented, generate far more initial buzz than they do demand. Take, for example, the recently release 'Ultra-Mobile PCs', which I wrote about in this post. Lots of hype. Very little effect when released.

The problem I think, is that Microsoft honestly doesn't seem to fully understand the concept of the end-user experience, unlike say, Apple. Although to be fair, the XBox did seem to get it right - maybe they can continue with this momentum. Though if this is the case, I don't understand why they don't just market the XBox name as well. It's just about the only Microsoft product that can match the iPod in the 'cool' department.

Finally, if the Zune is to be paired with the Microsoft/MTV Urge service, I don't know how well that will go down. Why? Because Urge doesn't let you keep the songs you purchase; instead you are just granted the right to listen to the ones you 'buy' on a subscription basis. You don't technically own what you buy from it, unlike say, things you buy from the iTunes Music Store.

Either way, Apple probably needs to unveil some new iPod innovations at the WWDC in order to counterbalance this report from Microsoft. With the Nike+iPod sports kit, it does seem like they're pushing in the direction of Wi-Fi in iPods, which would be awesome. Now it's just a waiting game to see what both Microsoft and Apple do.

Happy iCal Day!

2006-07-17T10:32:00.000-04:00

July 17th. Sound familiar? That's because this date is the default date icon for iCal! Why? Because iCal was launched on July 17th! So today we celebrate iCal day. For those of us who use iCal religiously, it makes organising life a breeze. For those who don't, perhaps today would be an appropriate day to give it a try. For the free spirits who don't plan anything ahead of time...well...you guys can still toast iCal today with everyone else!

I may or may not be in the wrong time zone right now actually, but it's July 17th where I am, and that's good enough for me!

I'm back!

2006-07-16T12:48:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone! I know I've been a bit AWOL for a few weeks, but that's because I've been off travelling! Sometimes life gets in the way of Apple technology. But now I'm back and I promise there'll be plenty more regular posts and podcast episodes to come, once I get over jetlag perhaps.

Apple Releases Mac OS X 10.4.7

2006-06-28T00:20:00.000-04:00

Apple today released the latest update to Mac OS X Tiger, 10.4.7, which you can get via Software Update or via Apple's downloads page.

10.4.7 adds numerous fixes, which are documented on the site. If you are using a MacBook Pro, apparently it adds the feature that was released with the MacBook that allows you to Ctrl+Click (right-click) using the trackpad by placing 2 fingers on the trackpad and clicking.

I've installed 10.4.7 and my system appears to be running a little bit more smoothly. It was a bit sluggish at times under 10.4.6, with far too many spinning beachballs of death for my liking. But at the moment, it seems to be a bit more responsive, which is not unusualy after an update from Apple.

That's one thing I love about Mac OS X. When it updates, it's usually the case that performance improves, unlike many other operating systems, which increase the required system specs with each upgrade, thus rendering older machines less usable. Upgrading from Panther to Tiger, for example, usually improves performance substantially.

There haven't been many reported issues that I've seen with this update, so I had no reservations in just jumping in and downloading it; 10.4.6 was getting on my nerves. Did anybody else find OS X 10.4.6 very sluggish compared to 10.4.5?

WWDC approaching; Digg 3.0 released today!

2006-06-26T10:37:00.000-04:00

The Apple world has been noticeably devoid of news in recent days, but a lull in activity is not unusual before an important event. I'm talking about the World Wide Developer's Conference of course, which is coming up this August. Probably second only to the Macworld Expo in terms of significance in the Apple world, the WWDC has been one of Apple's favourite outlets for showing off awesome new products. This year is no different, and the most highly anticipated event at the WWDC will of course be the promised preview of the next version of OS X - 10.5 Leopard. Apple today announced, unsurprisingly, that Steve Jobs will be doing the keynotes speech - expect him to make Leopard look like the greatest thing ever, which it quite likely will be.

But since there hasn't been much going on in the world of Apple otherwise, I haven't had much to write about! One announcement worth a note though, is that Digg has launched the latest version of its website, Digg 3.0, today. If you haven't checked out Digg before, it's a great site. It's a social news network, where users submit and vote for stories, and the most popular get posted to the front page. Not too exciting for mainstream news, but Digg is the best source of interesting, amusing stories out there that you might not otherwise have discovered. It has a whole section devoted to Apple as well, so it's a great source of unique, user-submitted stories. And all the major stories make the front page too. I've been using Digg for a long time, and I really recommend that you go check it out if you haven't before!

HoudaSpot now free from MacZOT!

2006-06-18T02:05:00.000-04:00

HoudaSpot, which I reviewed in this post, is now available for free from MacZOT!

Hurry though, there are only just under 3000 free licenses left, and once they're gone, if you want a copy of HoudaSpot, you'll have to pay for it. When you sign up for your free copy, you get a license emailed to you, which you can then use to register your copy of HoudaSpot.

If you haven't heard of MacZOT before, I really do recommend that you go and check it out, and bookmark it. They have great discounts on great Mac software every day, and they have offers like this very frequently. I got my copy of AppZapper this way, for free. And one can actually understand why software developers support them. In order to bring the price of HoudaSpot down to $0.00, people had to blog about it, and for each blog, the price went down by $0.05. That's quite a lot of blog entries, considering that the original price was $14.95, and as such, quite a lot of publicity for the developers of HoudaSpot.

Even though the software itself isn't something I'd use regularly (it's not a bad piece of software though, very well designed), free stuff is always good, and MacZOT is just a fantastic way of promoting quality Mac software. It's a great concept that benefits developers and consumers alike.

Google Earth - downtown Baghdad light beam

2006-06-17T02:20:00.000-04:00

I was trying out the new Google Earth 4 beta, which runs beautifully on the Mac by the way. But anyways, I was browsing around downtown Baghdad, and I came across this weird looking light beam:

What the heck is that? There are coordinates on the bottom of the image so you can check it out for yourself if you have Google Earth (click the image to enlarge).

Edit: Apparently it's a charge overflow in the CCD chip in the camera of the satellite that took the image, i.e. there was a spot that was too bright.

Either way, if you haven't checked out Google Earth for the Mac, do check it out, it works wonderfully, and it's great fun to stare at your house from a satellite photo. It also has improved integration with the newly released Mac version of SketchUp, which is a 3D modelling and design application that I really like. You can download both for free from the links provided.

Review: HoudahSpot - on MacZOT

2006-06-16T22:22:00.000-04:00

MacZOT.com is offering a new application, HoudahSpot, today. And the deal is that for every blog entry that reviews HoudahSpot, MacZOT brings down its price by $0.05, with the eventual goal of having it available for free.

So here's my (brief) review of the software.

First and foremost, it's the interface of HoudahSpot that stands out. Upon launch, you're greeted with a crisp, simple looking Aqua interface that looks like this:

This window allows you to easily specify complex search terms, and once you're done, HoudaSpot essentially performs a Spotlight search on your system.

To be honest, whilst its interface is great, I don't see why this software is necessary. I don't see why you can't just create a Smart Folder and specify search terms within that to achieve the same effect that HoudaSpot does. Moreover, HoudaSpot didn't perform much better than Spotlight does, which would be necessary if I were to consider using it. For example, the reason I use Quicksilver (a phenomenal application which I can't live without) as a launcher, rather than Spotlight, is partly because it's lightning fast, among other things.

So whilst I wouldn't recommend the purchase of this particular software, it looks nice nonetheless. And if you haven't heard of MacZOT before, I definitely recommend checking it out; they offer great discounts on awesome Mac software every day, and sometimes you can get lucky and get free stuff. For example, I got AppZapper (which I have written about here) and SubEthaEdit for free off MacZOT, and they're both excellent pieces of software.

I'll probably be using AppZapper on HoudaSpot now - but whatever you make of this review, if you see this post on the 16th of June, do blog it and submit your review to MacZOT. Why? Because free stuff is always nice :).

From apple.com - Leopard to run Windows apps?

2006-06-14T04:38:00.000-04:00

I was navigating Apple's website and checking out the new 'Get a Mac' pages, when I came across something that excited me quite a bit. I went to the part of the website that tries to dispel reasons why one wouldn't buy a Mac, specifically the 'Macs aren't slow' page, which you can find here.

On that page, I came across this paragraph:

"Plus, since Apple designs and tests the operating system and new hardware at the same time, the company can optimize software and hardware to work well together. That means on such well-designed hardware, that MacBook Pro runs even some Windows software faster than PCs themselves, according to third party results. (They’re able to get these results with beta software from the next version of Mac OS X, Leopard. Apple Computer does not sell or support Microsoft Windows.)"

This both startled and excited me. What beta software are they talking about? Is this suggesting or confirming that Leopard will be able to run Windows applications without having to install Windows? So many questions spring up - if this is true, how has Apple been able to adopt the Windows API? Surely Microsoft didn't license it...is this their own virtualisation technology?

I normally don't really like rumourmongering, but this is off Apple's own website!

Now I really can't wait to get a peek at Leopard during WWDC.

Passwords trick

2006-06-11T23:18:00.000-04:00

In my last podcast, I shared one of my favourite tricks in OS X, which I use to store passwords and logins in one place in a secure, easy-to-access way. I thought I'd write it out for you, because it is definitely one of my favourite tips of all time.

It's the perfect solution to the age old problem of passwords and logins. Nowadays we have so many of them: for our email accounts, for our online banking, for individual websites and so much more. With so many passwords, it's difficult to keep them all safe. But at the same time, it's also difficult to remember the ones you don't use frequently, especially if you keep them too safe. This solution keeps passwords safe, but it also keeps them all in one easily accessible place - on your computer. By using an encrypted disk image, you can password-protect a text file, and use that text file to store all of your passwords and logins! Here's how to do it.

How to create the encrypted disk image:

Go to disk utility.

Press the 'New Image' button.

You'll receive a 'Save As' menu for your disk image.

Give your disk image a name and select where to save it.

Select the size of your new disk image from the first pull-down menu (for passwords, the smallest size will do).

Select AES-128 encryption from the second pull-down menu.

Make sure it says read/write disk image in the third pull-down menu.

Your final selections should look something like this:

Press 'Create' to finish creating the encrypted disk image.

Once you've done this, you'll be asked to enter a password (twice for verification) for the encrypted disk image. This will be the password you need to access the disk image and all of its contents. Create your password and enter it. Remember this password.

And voila! You have an encrypted disk image!

How to save and protect your passwords using this disk image:

Mount your disk image by double clicking it to open it.

You will be asked for the password that you entered when you created the disk image. Enter the password, and the disk image will mount like any other virtual disk image or external disk. You can now treat it as though it were such a disk, and edit its contents however you wish.

Create a text file (Word or TextEdit will do fine), enter all of the passwords and logins that you want to remember/protect and save this file to the mounted disk image. Do not keep an extra copy on your hard drive, that copy won't be protected.

Eject the mounted disk image.

Now your passwords and logins are protected! Nobody can access the disk image and its contents without your password. But at the same time, you can access all of your passwords and logins easily just by mounting the disk image and opening your text file! To edit or add passwords and logins, just mount the disk image, enter your password and edit the text file.

And there we go! A relatively simple way of keeping passwords both accessible and protected. I see this method as the perfect solution to the problem of keeping passwords and logins both a secret and easily accessible, and so far this is the only thing I use encrypted disk images for. However, this method can obvioulsy be used to protect any files that you might want to keep encrypted, and definitely feel free to do so (just make sure the size of your disk image is large enough to store what you want to encrypt).

Feel free to give me some feedback if you found this tip helpful!

Urge: Microsoft and MTV's iTunes competitor's terrible DRM

2006-06-08T02:05:00.000-04:00

Recently, Microsoft and MTV launched Urge, an online music service aimed aimed at competing with the iTunes Music Store. In doing so, they made a point of providing content in a WMV-only format, effectively alienating all iPod owners, as the Windows Media format is not recognised by the iPod. Some, including myself, would say that as a consequence of this, they are also shunning a large portion of their potential market. After all, most people who buy music online own MP3 players...and most people who own MP3 players own iPods, funny how Microsoft and MTV didn't do the math there. Thus, these people like myself argue that by using a format whose DRM shuts out the iPod market, Urge is essentially setting up its own demise. Why would you, as an iPod owner, switch to an online music service that doesn't support your MP3 player, when you have a compatible, easy-to-use alternative sitting right in the application that syncs your music to your library? I'm talking about iTunes of course.

Well it seems like Urge may have further shot itself in the foot with its DRM. According to this article, it seems that the Urge service has some odd DRM and licensing restrictions in its terms of use. First of all, it only allows you to authorise 3 PCs to use your purchased music, which isn't that bad...so far. But on top of that, the article claims that each PC is only allowed to authorise 2 MP3 players to hold your purchased music, which seems reasonable...but this restriction is apparently for life. So, as the article says, if your MP3 player breaks or gets stolen, or you simply want to buy a new MP3 player, Microsoft and MTV are essentially saying that you have to go and buy a new PC as well...which I suppose would sell more Windows licenses...or not.

Whether or not this article is accurate remains to be seen, and I do not attest to ever having used, considered using, or even checked out Urge, so I can't claim to be familiar with their terms of service. But if this article is true, then unless you want to stick with 2 MP3 players for life (and take extra good care of them), or risk having your music confined to your PC, never to be played on a portable device again (unless...you buy a new PC), then Urge probably isn't going to be the service for you. And heck, if you own an iPod, they don't want you either.

I think I'll stick with iTunes.

Apple relaunches Back-To-School program, offering free iPod nano

2006-06-05T09:17:00.000-04:00

Good news for all college students out there, Apple today relaunched their back to school program. Through this program, with any Mac (other than the Mac Mini) purchased between now and September 16th, you not only get the traditional education discount, but you also get a US$179 rebate - equal to the price of the 2GB nano with the student discount applied - on any iPod purchased with the Mac in the same order. This basically means that you get a free 2GB nano, or an equivalent discount of another iPod, if you buy a Mac in this period.

The way the offer works is that you pay for both initially in the same order, and then you submit a rebate form (keep the boxes of your products for this), and get the $179 back.

I took advantage of this offer last year, when I purchased my iBook G4 in August, and it is definitely worth it if you need to/want to get a Mac before the next school period.

Right now the offer seems to only exist on the US online store, but it's just been launched, so it should hit other countries' stores shortly.

Podcast #6

2006-06-03T06:44:00.000-04:00

In today's show:

News

Apple + Nike partnership

Competing with the iPod

Apple OS on Dell support site

Apple Fifth Avenue time lapse marriage proposal story

Rumours

Apple Gaming project?

Apple phone? Simple or complex?

Apple Quality Control

Is it getting worse?

MacBook Pro story

Trying to understand the problems - a period of transition

BitTorrent on Mac

Intro + 3 BitTorrent clients

Official BitTorrent

Azureus

Tomato Torrent

Tip!

Great way of keeping passwords secure and easily accessible

Using an encrypted disk image

Listen to today's show here.

Subscribe to my podcast! Go to iTunes, open the 'Advanced' menu, select 'Subscribe to Podcast', and paste the following URL into the box: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ithinkthereforeipod

MacBook impressions

2006-05-28T23:02:00.000-04:00

I was at the local Apple retailer yesterday, and noticed that they had a brand new white MacBook on display! This got me very excited, because I wasn't expecting to be able to test one until the end of the summer. I must say, I liked what I saw...in general.

The first things to mention of course, are the big changes. Let's start with the keyboard. I was really surprised as to just how flat and spaced apart they are, but I must say I like it! It felt strange at first, but I tried typing on it and found that I could type very quickly, and since the keys are further apart, I didn't have very many typos. I also love the fact that it's sunk into the case, so it doesn't touch the screen when you close it.

The little hook-latch that's traditionally been on iBook G4s has been replaced by a magnetic latch. The magnet was much more powerful than I expected, and when I closed the lid of the MacBook, it slammed shut pretty quickly when it was almost closed. I found that it took a little bit of effort (not much, but there isn't a button that unhinges the latch like on other Apple notebooks) to pry the MacBook open once it was closed, and I don't know if I like that. I actually prefer being able to push a button and have my iBook G4 spring open.

Wireless on this MacBook was AMAZING. It picked up on wireless networks from shops that were REALLY far away, whilst other Macs that were sitting centimetres away from it couldn't pick up on them. I've heard great things about the MacBook's wireless sensitivity, but seeing it in action was tremendously impressive.

To be honest...I don't like the display. Yes it's very bright, and yes the colours look great, but there are two things I don't like about it, both related to how it looks too much like a PC to me. First of all, the display lacks the bevel of other Apple notebooks, in that the display is level with the border encasing it, instead of having a little indent, and being slightly behind its border, as is the case with say, the iBook G4, the PowerBook or MacBook Pro. Secondly, the gloss really does bother me. I never realised how MUCH I like the matte finish of iBook, Powerbook, MacBook Pro and Apple Cinema Displays, the layer of gloss makes it look cheap and PC-like. Both of these factors make the MacBook's screen look so much like a PC, that at first glance, I actually thought it WAS a white PC (the retailer doesn't only sell Macs). If Apple gave the option of purchasing a MacBook with a matte-finished screen, I'd love it.

Software ran very well; the iSight camera and microphone worked fine with Photo Booth and Garageband, and all the bundled apps ran pretty smoothly. Photoshop took ages to load on Rosetta, but it was still usable. All in all, it felt and worked just like a Mac, because after all, that's what it is. I also got a chance to run Boot Camp on it and boot into Windows XP! The shop had kindly installed Windows XP on all their Macs to demonstrate Boot Camp at work, and they had formatted the Windows partition in Fat32, meaning you could see the partition and access its files in OS X. Booting into Windows wasn't a problem, I just held down Option after hearing the restart chime (they had set it to automatically boot into OS X by default), and the choice between booting from 'Macintosh HD' or from 'Win XP' appeared, and I selected the latter. After I selected it, the traditional (ugly) Windows boot screen appeared, and in less than a minute I was running XP. But...it felt a bit dirty, so I switched straight back to OS X. However, I did try XP out eventually on an iMac. At first, it was annoying, because it took Windows quite a long time to recognise the keyboard and the Mighty Mouse, but once it did, it was up and running, and everything looked and worked just like XP is supposed to. Cool for gaming, annoying otherwise...and to be honest, it just doesn't feel right running Windows on a Mac.

Overall, I like the new look and feel of the MacBook, although the screen bothers me quite a bit. Nevertheless, it was quite a joy to finally be able to get my hands on one.

Random note:
On an unrelated note, it appears that I've been comment spammed! Any comments that are posted on this site get emailed to me at ithinkthereforeipodcast@gmail.com, and when I checked my email today, imagine my surprise when I saw 63 new comments, scattered throughout my archives, on posts like this one and this one. Many of them followed very legitimate comments by both my wonderful readers and myself, and were all brief and, thankfully, quite uplifting and pleasant in nature. However, what gave them away was the fact that a) they were all consecutively posted by an anonymous user, b) many of the comments were repeats, and c) (here's the kicker) each comment included a tiny embedded link to various URLs, which was the hard proof that this was indeed, spam.

So I either got unlucky, or this blog's grown enough to merit being spammed. I'm far more amused than concerned at the moment, but I might look into some security.

Microsoft advises running Word in 'Safe Mode'

2006-05-24T22:00:00.000-04:00

This PC World article is absolutely hilarious, though I admit, not entirely Apple-related.

Apparently there's a new Trojan horse (malware that we Mac users don't have to deal with), which buries itself in a real Word file attached to an email, and executes itself when you open the Word file.

Basically, this Trojan, whilst not widespread, exploits a HUGE vulnerability in Word, which Microsoft is working on patching. In the meantime, they advise running WORD in "safe mode", which I find absolutely hilarious. Of course, they claim that it's a simple two-step process; I quote the article: "the first step is to disable the Outlook feature that uses Word for editing e-mails. The second involves creating a new desktop shortcut that adds "/safe" to the Word command line."

Brilliant...I can just imagine Steve Ballmer and the people at Microsoft going "uh...yeah...until we fix it...run Word in safe mode."

The people at Microsoft never fail to make me...'LMAO', so to speak.

It seems appropriate to watch this Apple ad again.

SanDisk's "iDon't" and the iPod's click-wheel success

2006-05-22T23:24:00.000-04:00

SanDisk recently launched the website iDon't in an effort to combat the iPod. It portrays iPod users as sheep...following a crowd and being unoriginal. The site features rather aggressive, anti-iPod ads and links, as well as the 'Alternative', SanDisk's own e200 music player.

Now...this just seems a tad immature and unnecesarry on their part. Is it really effective marketing to express bitterness over a more successful product and try to topple it by attempting to insult it? For me, it just stinks of bitterness.

So the interesting question here is, what makes the iPod so ridiculously successful? After all, alternatives such as the Sandisk e200 and new players such as the iRiver Clix and many MP3 players from Samsung, Mobiblu, and many others offer greater storage, greater compatability with audio formats, better battery life, and extra features, such as an FM tuner, all at a cheaper price than the iPod. So why is the iPod able to maintain its dominance?

Well, iPod fans (such as myself) have a lot of standard answers. The iPod has the best, most inuitive and user-friendly interface, it's got the sexiest, simplest design and is synonymous with 'Cool'. Add Apple's customer service with the plethora of accessories out there, and you've got the world's best MP3 player.

Whilst all of these reasons and explanations make sense and are true to some extent, for me, one thing sets the iPod apart from all competitors. The click wheel. See, the thing is, when it comes to scrolling through thousands of artists and songs to find one specific track, no design out there beats the iPod's scroll wheel. It works so intuitively and feels so responsive; if you move your finger faster, it scrolls faster. All other interfaces, no matter how sexy they might look, are not as effective as the iPod's menus and click wheel in finding exactly what you want.

So until someone replaces the click wheel with a better way of navigating through tens of gigabytes of media files, the iPod will always be the only mp3 player for me. And, if I might add, it ought to be the mp3 player for you too. It's still by far the best.

Digg this.

Podcast Alley!

2006-05-22T02:45:00.000-04:00

Here's some fun news; you can now find my podcast on Podcast Alley, and at the Pod Lounge. All you have to do is search for 'I think, therefore iPod'. Feel free to vote for my podcast on Podcast Alley if you want, but that doesn't really matter, at least not until I'm up on iTunes. It's just good fun to finally be on these listings!

If you do like my podcast though, please feel free to spread the word! I'd love to have more listeners, and I promise I'll make an extra effort to release episodes more regulary. I still need some better art for the podcast though; I'll get round to that some day.

Apple's new flagship store

2006-05-20T03:50:00.000-04:00

Apple opened its new flagship retail store on Friday in downtown Manhattan, and it's quite simply unlike any other Apple store I've ever seen. Here's a video (on YouTube) of Steve Jobs himself talking to CNBC about the store.

Apple's making a pretty big deal out of the store; they have a page on their website with a constantly-updating Quicktime video feed of the crowd and the line outside the store, and they're giving a new MacBook away every hour for the first 24 hours that the store's open. This isn't a big surprise, because it is, after all, their flagship store.

The store's design is phenomenally, and incredibly unique. It's an underground Apple Store, which is unheard of, the entrance to which lies in the heart of a big plaza in downtown Manhattan. The entrance is a giant, 32 foot glass cube, designed by Steve Jobs himself, leading down into the store. In the centre of the cube hangs a giant, white Apple logo; it's quite a beauty to behold. I think it's a BRILLIANT design, because in my opinion, in order to attract customers to an underground store, there's got to be a pretty noticeable above-ground entrance or indication of the store's existence, and my goodness, has Apple done that. Isolated from other retail stores, the Apple cube stands alone in its plaza, just screaming for people to go in. But pictures say far more than words in this case, so take a look:

The cube in all its glory. I love how it lights up at night, it looks quite stunning.

The store viewed at an angle. One can clearly see how the Apple logo hangs in the centre.

The entrance to the store. It must be very exciting to walk into the cube and down the glass stairs.

The view from inside the store; notice the glass staircase leading down from the entrance.

Here's a fun little piece of trivia to end off: if the store closes, or when Apple's lease expires, Steve Jobs wants to keep the glass cube for himself.

So, who wants a trip to New York?

Photos courtesy of Apple and Apple Insider.

Podcast #5

2006-05-18T21:18:00.000-04:00

Finally! Another episode!

In today's show:

New Segments

News

MacBook

Lawsuits galore! Apple vs Apple, Creative

Creative Fable

Softbank Apple phone reports

Rumours

Will anything be revealed at the new flagship store?

Windows API in Leopard?

Apple Store

Desktop Buttons

Project

Skinning a PC to look like a Mac

FlyakiteOSX

Objectdock

Garageband 3

Podcast Studio features

Art

Uninstalling on a Mac

Click and Drag

AppZapper

More MacBook Madness!

2006-05-17T22:29:00.000-04:00

So there are a couple of things about the new MacBook that I didn't mention earlier (mainly because I wasn't particularly aware of them) which are worth a note.

The first is the display. The MacBook features a glossy display, unlike the MacBook Pro or previous Apple notebooks, which didn't feature a layer of gloss on the screens. Now some people seem to dislike glossy screens, and others seem to love them; most PC laptops nowadays use glossy screens. The main disadvantage of glossy screens is that there can be a lot of glare reflected off of them, particularly when viewing the screen at an angle. Now most would argue that nobody uses their computer at an angle, which is quite true, but at the same time, some feel that the glossy screen looks cheap compared to the matte-finished displays of other Apple products. The glossy display apparently increases contrast and boosts colour, which is a plus I suppose. I personally don't like the layer of gloss, in terms of aesthetics, but that's a general preference. I prefer matte finishes on photographs, casings, and I suppose PC displays now. However, if the gloss was necessary for the 79% brightness increase in the screen, then that's something I'm willing to accept, because the lack of brightness on the iBook G4 display is something that genuinely bugged me a bit.

More can also be said about the keyboard. As well as being firmer, the MacBook's keyboard also features flat keys, unlike the concave keyboards that we've become used to. Again, for some, this is a bad thing, because flat keys, many argue, provide less tactile feedback than concave keys. However, the flat keyboard makes for firmer typing, and it also quietens the keys, according to Cyrus Farivar, which would be a big plus, seeing as two major complaints about the iBook G4's keyboard are its flimsy feel and excessive noise whilst typing. Finally, the MacBook keyboard also doesn't touch the screen when the laptop is closed, which means no more keyboard markings on the display! Hoorah!

And finally, changing RAM has become much easier on new Macs, and this is still the case with the MacBook. But another big plus is that the hard disk is also now easily replaceable! For those of you who like tweaking your Macs, Apple has kindly made the task a lot easier than in the past. Good stuff.

Apple releases MacBook

2006-05-16T17:59:00.000-04:00

So I wake up this morning at 5:30am, completely jetlagged, I check my email and I see an anonymous comment that says 'Write about the new 13'' white and black MacBook' and my immediate reaction was 'What? Dude, it's just a rumour, it's not out yet...' So I visit Apple's website and I see the bomb that they've dropped. Sure enough, the new 13", black and white MacBook has been released. Any my goodness, I haven't been this excited about a new Mac in a very, very long time. I can't wait to get my hands on one, but for now, let's take a look at what it boast.

Features and Design
So the MacBook sports all of the new features we expected: Intel Core Duo chip at 2Ghz, built-in iSight, Front Row with the Apple Remote, MagSafe connecter, iLife '06, basically the whole package.

There are however, a few new features of the MacBook worth drooling over.

The first is the keyboard. One major complaint I got from a lot of people about the iBook G4 was that the keyboard seemed flimsy and was too loud. I completely agreed. The MacBook features a newly designed keyboard, with firmer keys sunk into the bed of the machine. This is a HUGE plus. The keyboard is something that we use all the time when we're on a computer, and improving the keyboard should really enhance the overall experience of using the machine in a very subtle way. There's also a larger trackpad, which is one of my favourite little additions to the MacBook Pro; nice to see it one the MacBook too - I find that a bigger trackpad really enhances usability.

The latch has also been redesigned: it's now a magnetic latch. I applaud this new design. I absolutely love the MagSafe power adapter, and to add this same feature on the latch is a plus as well, because I always felt that the little pop-out metal hook looked a bit flimsy.

And finally, of course...it comes in black. Obviously borrowing from the popularity of the black iPods, the MacBook is now the perfect iPod companion, and sets itself apart from the Apple pro-line by moving away from the titanium colour of the Power Mac and the MacBook Pro, aligning itself with the iPod. I personally think black notebooks are too common, and that Apple's white set the iBook apart, but hey, choice isn't a bad thing. I wonder how well the black models will sell. And of course, the next question is, will we see a black iMac to complete the consumer line?

Aesthetically, it's beautiful. A sleek white or black shell without the slight tone variation of the iBook, it's like a little iMac or an oversized iPod without the silver back. Stunning, I love it. I've been looking at photos of it, and my only question is - where the heck are the speakers? It has them...I just can't see them! Maybe it's like the iMac, with the speakers hidden away or something.

Specs
Specifications are generally positive and exciting: 1.83Ghz or 2Ghz Core Duo processor, 1280x800 widescreen display resolution,

There are some specifications that are worth a note.

Firstly, whilst the display's resolution sits at 1280x800, the MacBook can support resolutions of up to 1920x1200 on an external monitor, which is awesome news if you own a large display or are using a projector.

Here's an interesting one: the power adapter is 60W, unlike the MacBook Pro's 85W, which I wrote about earlier. Hopefully this will mean a normal sized power brick, unlike the MBP's gigantic one.

There are a few specs that make me sigh a little. The first is the 64MB Intel integrated graphics processor, like the one in the Mac Mini, which shares memory with the rest of the computer. Whilst 64MB is a boost on the iBook's 32, many people frown at the idea of integrated graphics and sharing graphics memory with system RAM.

The optical drive doesn't go higher than a 4x DVD burning Superdrive, as is the case with the 15.4" MacBook Pro. A little bit worse than the iBook G4, and a disappointment if you like burning DVDs. But, given that they couldn't stuff a 8x into the MBP, I'm not surprised that it didn't show up in the MacBook.

Overall
Overall, I'm blown away by the MacBook. I can't wait to get to test one, or to see some benchmarking. Right now though, I can safely say that I want one! And it's shipping already. Nice job Apple, very, very nice job.

Price-wise, it's $100 more than the old iBook G4, starting at US$1,099, but since the Mac Mini got this same price increase, it's not incredibly surprising. Not a big plus for the MacBook, but you get what you pay for, and it seems to more than justify its price.

Random Miscellany
I thought it was interesting to note that the image on the 'design' page of the MacBook is an image of the laptop showing the upcoming Disney Pixar movie 'Cars'. A little bit of Steve Jobs' subtle marketing at play perhaps?

The iBook G4 has also been removed from the online store...meaning that my Mac has now officially been discontinued.

On an unrelated note, the price of the 15.4" MacBook has dropped, well actually no, the price hasn't dropped, the high end 2.0Ghz model has just been subtly upgraded to a 2.16Ghz Core Duo chip, fixing a price disparity that I wrote about here. The 1.83Ghz model has also been subtly upgraded to 2.0Ghz.

MacBook Pro Impressions

2006-05-16T02:39:00.000-04:00

I've just had my first opportunity to spend some serious time using a MacBook Pro. My previous experiences were limited to the Apple Store and to online reviews. But yesterday, I spent half a day playing around with a 15.4", 2Ghz model, with 1GB of RAM. It's an interesting machine, with a lot of pluses, but isn't without its problems.

Hardware
The MacBook Pro is a beautiful machine. It looks, as we all know, just like the old PowerBooks. The display, first of all, is stunning. I placed it next to my iBook G4 and its brightness and clarity just blew the iBook away. It actually made me feel a little bit bad, because it really is that much crisper and brighter; it's by far the most gorgeous display I've ever seen on a laptop...I can't wait to check out the 17".

One strange thing that immediately struck me was that the power adapter for the MacBook Pro is HUGE. The 85W adapter is bigger than my Airport Express, which I had plugged in next to it. This could genuinely be a problem, because lugging something that big around could prove quite a burden. However, I love the MagSafe connector. I think all cables should attach like it does.

The iSight camera is sweet, and images look just as good if not better than images taken with the stand-alone iSight. I ran iChat AV and Photo Booth, and the camera worked wonderfully on both. It's really fun to be able to move a laptop around with the built in camera, it adds a whole new level of versatility when videoconferencing: you can show people hard-to-reach places in your room, or spin the computer around for trippy visual effects - it's good fun!

So let's talk about heat and noise. There have been lots of complaints about the MacBook Pro's heat levels and about strange sounds coming from it. And indeed, these were definitely issues with this machine, particularly the heat. The MacBook Pro got so hot in just a few minutes that it actually hurt to touch the back of the machine just behind the keyboard, near the display latch. It was genuinely too hot to touch for more than a few seconds. I also noticed bizarre sounds coming from the machine at times, a kind of high-pitched whirring. These sounds were almost certainly caused by the MagSafe connector or the power unit, because once I unplugged the power cable, the sounds would disappear. Whilst mildly noticeable, the strange noises were generally quiet enough not to be a problem.

Performance
Fast. That just about sums up the MacBook Pro. I've never seen a Mac, or any computer for that matter, boot so quickly in my life. Granted, the unit is relatively new, so there aren't many login items and the hard drive is pretty empty, but the boot speed was astonishing nonetheless. I'll time the startup the next time I get my hands on it.

Applications launched at blistering speeds; iTunes and Safari for example, launched in one dock bounce. I also tested standard, Universal, bundled apps. Garageband ran extremely smoothly, tracks imported from iTunes much faster than they do on my iBook, and there is a very pleasing absence of spinning beach balls of death. Without going into too much depth, because plenty of benchmarking has been done for the MBP already, it suffices to say that Universal apps run beautifully, faster than on any other Mac I've used.

Now...what about Rosetta? Benchmarking and reviews are one thing, actually using it first-hand is completely different. I haven't tested it as much as I would have liked, but in general, I have mixed feelings about Rosetta. For non-intensive apps such as Office, the speed of the MacBook Pro basically compensates for the performance dip brought about by Rosetta. However, when I tried to run Halo, things were quite different. First of all, the video performance was amazing; I could push Halo up to the highest resolution with all details to the max, and it was quite breathtaking to behold. However, gameplay was non-existent. At both the lowest and the highest video settings, the game just could not be played. It was choppy, laggy, and just did not perform. The fact that it was the same at every video setting indicated to me that it was Rosetta that was to blame for the horrendous performance. So basically, you're not going to be gaming using Rosetta.

Problems
This particular MacBook Pro has some strange problems, enough that would warrant sending it back to Apple. Apart from the sounds and the unacceptable heat levels, the machine would often reset itself without prior warning, which would result in you losing anything that hadn't been saved at the time. This would happen most frequently after waking the MacBook Pro from sleep. I don't know what causes this issue, or how it can be resolved, but as long as it keeps happening, it renders this particular MacBook Pro unusable for serious projects, for fear of losing one's work.

Battery life isn't that great either. Whilst I can frequently get 4-5, and sometimes even 6 hours on my iBook G4, the MacBook Pro has trouble hitting 4 hours, and usually lasts just over 3 hours before the battery dies.

Final thoughts
I'm actually slightly disappointed with the MacBook Pro, not because it doesn't perform (my goodness, it's SO fast), but because of all the little issues and problems associated with it. Whilst I acknowledge the fact that Apple is in a period of transition with the switch to Intel, it just isn't like them to have such widespread problems with their products. The heat, sounds and bugs are not isolated to this particular unit, and all seem to point towards poor quality control more than anything else. Perhaps Apple spent too much time making sure that the MacBook Pro would be the most powerful notebook available, and overlooked a lot of little issues. The problem is, part of the beauty of the Mac experience is the lack of annoying little things that are ever-present on PCs that distract you from the end user experience. Let's face it, Mac users are used to not having any problems with their computer. These little issues effectively take away from the overall computing experience of the MacBook Pro, making it feel less like the Macs we know and love. If Apple addresses these problems and improves Rosetta (or all apps go Universal), then the Macbook Pro would without question be the fastest and the best Mac notebook ever.

Overall, whilst the MacBook Pro is incredibly fast and performs better than any other Mac I've used, the heat, sound and bugs, coupled with Rosetta's poor performance on higher-end applications means that I'll hold off on getting one for myself.

New Apple Ads

2006-05-02T03:28:00.000-04:00

Wow, have you seen the new ads on Apple's homepage? Their agenda seems to be clear now: Macs are the best computers for running both OS X and Windows and PC software. The ads are very direct and blatantly targeting the Mac vs PC rivalry. It's also interesting to note that 'Switch' has now been replaced with 'Get a Mac'.

The ads are really quite funny, featuring two people, a square-looking guy in a suit named 'PC', and a chilled out, almost Jobs-esque character as the Mac. Quite effective personification of computers if you ask me. Ever since Apple's first Intel Mac ad, there seems to have been a very aggressive movement in the PC-bashing direction. Whilst this entertains me, and I very much agree, the tinge of arrogance that Apple's showing might not go down well with everybody.

All of the ads can be seen here.

Apple Store Opening

2006-05-01T21:31:00.000-04:00

Apple's apparently opening its second Toronto Apple Store at the Eaton Centre on the 6th.

Be there! Hopefully this report is true...

Jobs fuels speculation at annual meeting, 17" MacBook Pro

2006-04-24T11:21:00.000-04:00

Here's a brief little report that might titillate the imagination. Apparently in the recent annual shareholders meeting, Steve Jobs said that new Apple products in the pipeline are the best he's ever seen in his life. An incredibly bold claim considering some of the marvellous, revolutionary products that have come out of Apple. This could of course mean two things: a) Apple's current line of products is already the best he's ever seen, and there are sets of improvements, updates and/or add-ons in the works, or b) there are new products just waiting to be revealed. It certainly gets the imagination working: an iPod with a built-in iSight, anybody?

On top of that, Jobs said 'we hear you loud and clear' in response to calls for some kind of media centre product from Apple, and it does seem like Apple has been pushing strongly in that direction. Front Row, and its new ability to stream via a network, the Apple Remote, and updates to iTunes' media content and delivery methods all see Apple expanding from the study to the living room.

On a separate note, Apple of course released the 17-inch MacBook Pro last week, and there are a number of noticeable differences between it and the 15.4-inch model. Aside from obviously, having a bigger display than the 15.4-inch model, the new model comes with the faster 2.16Ghz Intel Core Duo processor (which you can upgrade the 15.4-inch model to include). Most notably, though, is the inclusion of a better, 8x Dual Layer Superdrive, a big improvement on the 4x Single Layer Superdrive of the other model. This inclusion is not surprising though; the 8x drive was omitted from the 15.4-inch MacBook Pro because it simply couldn't fit; by virtue of being a larger computer, it follows that the 8x drive could be fit into the 17-inch model. On top of that, there are two extra ports: a Firewire 800 port and an extra USB 2.0 port, making it three in total. The inclusion of the Firewire 800 port is a big plus; I'm a big fan of Firewire, and there was a lot of word a few months ago of it being phased out, with the omission of the 800 port from the MacBook Pro as an indication perhaps of Apple's willingness to lead the way in this phasing out (much like they were among the first to omit floppy drives from the old iMacs).

Interestingly enough, though, the 17-inch model is only $300 more than the 15.4-inch model, and this means that, strangely enough, one could potentially save a lot of money buying the larger model. If you upgrade the processor on the 15.4-inch MacBook Pro to match the 17-inch's 2.16GHz, that upgrade alone costs $300, rendering the prices equal! But on the 17-inch model, not only do you get the better processor for the same price, you get the larger screen, 8x Superdrive, extra ports and all! So...why would anybody buy a 2.16 GHz 15.4-inch MacBook Pro? Is this deliberate on Apple's part? Or are we going to see a price change in the MacBook Pro soon?

All in all, a sweet, sweet computer. Who wants one? I know I do!

Boot Camp thoughts

2006-04-18T15:01:00.000-04:00

First of all, I know it's been a long time since I've made a post, and I must apologise for that, I've been incredibly busy lately. But anyways, this post's been a long time coming.

Apple's post-30th birthday release of Boot Camp, their software that allows a user install Windows XP on Intel Macs, has been the biggest news in the Mac community for the last couple of days. Here are my thoughts.

What?
So what exactly is this software that's been causing such a stir and how does it work? Well, essentially, as I mentioned earlier, it's Apple's public beta release of piece of software that simplifies the process of installing Windows XP on an Intel Mac; something that was originally shown to be possible by the people at the On Mac project. After installation, it becomes possible to dual boot into either OS X or Windows XP, and for both to run natively on the new Intel Macs.

How?
To use Boot Camp, you need to install Apple's firmware update, which is available on the Boot Camp website, and then simply download Boot Camp and run it. You do however, need to purchase your own copy of Windows XP separately and use its installation disc.

When you run Boot Camp, essentially what you get is a standard 'Assistant' interface, similar to the interface of the Migration Assistant or the Airport Setup Assistant, that guides you through the process, step by step. It looks something like this:

The interface provides a beautifully simple slider that lets you partition your hard drive and select how much space you want to assign to each OS. It also asks you to select which Windows file system you want to use; FAT32, or NTFS. Which file system you select will determine the extent to which you can read and write files between the two operating systems; Mac OS X can read an write to FAT32, but cannot write to NTFS. Whilst this may make the decision seem like a no-brainer, bear in mind that if you allow Windows XP to see your Macintosh partition, it might be easier for viruses to access the files on that partition to, but more on this later. Boot Camp also helps you burn a CD of drivers for XP that solve a number of hardware compatibility issues.

The Assistant basically takes you through the whole process in the usual, simple and user-friendly Mac manner. Almost anybody can do it now, and reports generally say that it takes less than an hour to get XP up and running. In contrast, the On Mac hack is highly complicated, and can take many hours, or even days to perform, and requires a high level of user experience. Apple once again makes a difficult task simple and elegant.

The only real danger in the entire process is to make sure that you select the C: Drive when you are installing Windows; selecting the wrong partition could erase your entire Macintosh HD. If you do feel the need to try Boot Camp out, I would highly recommend backing up your entire hard drive before doing so.

The last great thing about the Boot Camp installation process is that if, at any point you decide that you don't want Windows on your Mac any more, you can simply launch Boot Camp and tell it to restore your Mac to the way it was before, and it will completely destroy your Windows partition.

Should I try it?
Before jumping out of one's seat and downloading Boot Camp, I think it's important to bear in mind that this software is still a beta, and so it will likely have bugs and kinks that haven't been worked out yet. Also, it delves into rather uncharted and advanced territory, so I would say that it's probably not for the average consumer. Problems have been reported, ranging from mere inconveniences and little bugs with certain programs or pieces of hardware, to serious issues: some users have reportedly been unable to boot back into OS X after using Boot Camp, and who wants to be stuck in Windows XP on a Mac?

On the other hand, if you're curious about how this software works, or desperately want to run certain Windows apps or games on your Mac, then Boot Camp might be worth a shot. After all, you can always just get rid of Windows if it doesn't turn out the way you want it to, you can always just restore your Mac. So if you're brave and curious, by all means give it a go. But remember, you have to buy your own copy of XP, the updater or a burned CD won't work.

I personally wouldn't use Boot Camp, mainly because I use my Mac for too many important things to risk experimenting with such a huge beta as this. On top of that, I'd rather not fork out over 200 US dollars to feed Bill Gates. Oh yeah, and I don't have my own Intel Mac either =P. It's up to the consumer really, but I would say, use at your own risk.

How well does it work?
As mentioned, I haven't tried Boot Camp out myself, but the vast majority of the reports and benchmarks so far indicate that XP runs at least as well on a Mac as it does on PCs with similar specs, if not better. There have been reports citing (with a tinge of irony) the MacBook Pro as the best laptop available for running Windows XP.

One thing is for sure, Boot Camp beats the On Mac project for two main reasons. First of all, its simplicity leaves less room for error, and the fact that it's provided by Apple almost guarantees more comprehensive support and documentation (though some might disagree with me on that point). Secondly, and more crucially, the drivers provided by Apple make XP actually usable; the On Mac project was plagued by a lack of drivers: video, wireless, and many peripherals didn't work. Boot Camp addresses this, making the XP gaming experience (among other things) on a Mac actually enjoyable.

So whilst there may be bugs and viruses, if you must run Windows on your Intel Mac, Boot Camp is definitely the way to go; heck, if you must need to run Windows, period, maybe getting a Mac is the way to go! Again, more on this later.

Why?
This is the first question that comes to mind; why on Earth would Apple provide a way to run Windows on the Mac? After all, it has its own operating system, OS X, which is far superior, why settle for less?

Well, the answer seems quite obvious; Apple appears to be aggressively pursuing greater market share. The idea, I think, is that by allowing Windows to run on Macs, people who might be interested in switching and buying a Mac, but are reluctant to do so due to unfamiliarity or compatibility concerns, will be swayed and will be more willing to purchase a Mac. Ideally, as more and more people become exposed to OS X, more will be convinced that it is better than Windows, and as such, Mac sales will grow. Pretty simple, right?

There are other theories as to why Apple might be doing this, the most notable again being John Dvorak's article claiming that Apple will ditch OS X. But I've discussed this already in an earlier post.

Whilst Apple clearly wants to increase its market share, what the actual consequences of this release might be remain to be seen.

Consequences?
The consequences and implications of Boot Camp is where most of the discussion and controversy lies, and this can be roughly split into two main areas: the implications for consumers, and the effects it might have on Apple. However, these two are by no means the only parties that will be affected by Boot Camp's release, many others, such as developers, Microsoft, and the computer industry as a whole may feel the impact of Boot Camp.

Consumers
There are a number of groups of consumers who I think will be salivating over the prospect of running XP on their Macs. The first group is gamers. The lack of quality games for the Mac is a well documented complaint, and one that I discussed here. Until Mac gaming expands, XP on a Mac might be the best available method of attaining an enjoyable gaming experience on the Mac. A number of Mac owners (myself included) own a PC for the sole purpose of gaming, with Boot Camp, all that would be necessary would be to buy a copy of XP; why purchase an entire PC system now?

A second group of consumers who will likely be affected by Boot Camp are those who use PCs running Windows at work, either because their company demands it, or because they require certain Windows-only apps to do their jobs, but who own and prefer Macs. XP on a Mac would allow them to do work at home without having to buy a PC, or even to use a Mac at work.

But what about normal consumers, like myself, who love OS X, but might install XP just for the heck of it? What would this bring to our Macs apart from a usable Windows system? Well, first of all, it would bring viruses, spyware, adware and the like.

Consumer systems - Malware
So let's talk about malware: viruses, spyware, adware, you name it. Common to the Windows operating system, such malware is almost non-existent on the Mac. Installing XP on your Mac will bring malware to your hard disk, no matter how safe you think you are. Believe you me, unless you don't use the internet at all, you'll get infected almost instantly when running Windows. The question is, will Windows viruses affect your Mac partition? Many claim that if you make your Mac partition hidden to Windows, or format your Windows partition accordingly, malware will not affect your Mac, and that in any case, Windows viruses can't do much to Mac files. However, a friend of mine argued that anybody who made such claims didn't think like a hacker, and that malware can be written to access other hard disk partitions, even if they are hidden. Indeed, he used this method to hack into our University's system (as part of a school-sanctioned security test, nothing illegal going on here), so it is almost a given that Boot Camp will dramatically reduce the security of your computer.

Apple
Apple will have thought long and hard about the consequences of such a big release. As mentioned above, the move is probably one to increase market share, with the release of Boot Camp possible aimed at potential switchers who need that last little bit of convincing. Ideally, there will be a knock-on effect, with these switchers realising that OS X is superior to Windows and, that by preferring the Mac platform, will convince more Windows users to switch.

Some have predicted a reverse effect; Andrew Kantor of USA Today predicted that Boot Camp will lead to a mass exodus away from OS X to Windows. Now, this is one of the STUPIDEST arguments I've ever seen, and Jason Snell of Macworld refutes it beautifully.

But there may be other consequences. One of the things that Boot Camp allows the market to do is to more fairly compare Apple hardware to third party manufacturers. Direct comparison might reveal the true quality of Apple's hardware, and if it is shown that Apple lags behind in certain areas, there might be even more incentive for innovation and improvement on Apple's part, which can only be good for us consumers. Apple might finally be able to prove a point without having to use explanations such as the 'megahertz myth'. Indeed, PC World is now entertaining the prospect of Apple being listed on their top desktop PC charts.

Others
Plenty of other parties may be affected by Boot Camp too:

Developers
This is an interesting area. Will developers now turn their backs on the Mac, now that it can run Windows? Mac-only developers will probably stay, but there is an argument that developers who write for both Macs and PCs, especially game developers (who have to pay more to port games due to middleware costs), will simply stop developing for Macs, banking on the notion that if Mac users want their software, they will run Boot Camp. Will big companies like Adobe also turn their backs on OS X?

I would argue that this is not necessarily the case. First of all, if Apple's market share increases, that gives more incentive to produce Mac-compatible software. On top of that, if any company does turn their back on the Macintosh, it would provide huge incentive for other developers to provide alternatives. And finally, a lot of professional software, particularly in graphics and audio, prefer the Mac platform, so I wouldn't predict a developer exodus, with the possible exception of the gaming industry.

Microsoft
If Apple's computer market share increases due to Boot Camp, Microsoft will likely make money. Since they make their money off of their OS and don't produce their own systems, increased sales of Windows will rake in cash for Microsoft. Thus, there's no surprise that Microsoft is supportive of the move. However, if an increase in Mac sales takes market share away from companies like Dell or HP, Microsoft's actual income might not change as much.

If Boot Camp users and switchers decide that they prefer OS X though, a long term effect of an increase in Mac sales might be an exodus away from Windows, and to OS X. I don't see this happening any time soon, but exposing Windows users to OS X could very well spell the beginning of the end for Windows...or so we can hope.

The industry as a whole
As mentioned, increases in Mac sales could result in decreases in sales for other PC manufacturers. However, Apple, unlike the rest of the industry, remains very protective of its technology; so unlike Windows, you can only legally run OS X on a Mac, so Apple won't be making any money from extra OS X sales. Dell has expressed interest in offering OS X on its PCs if the option should become available, but Apple has said 'no'.

I personally do not want to see 3rd party PC manufacturers offering OS X, because it is the tight integration between the operating system and the hardware that makes the Mac experience what it is. Whilst it is possible to get OS X running on a PC if you're an enterprising hacker, it won't run as sweetly as it would on a Mac. So Apple not opening up its technology isn't necessarily a bad thing for the consumer, though some would argue that more choice is always better. I say keep the Mac OS on Macs so that the Mac experience as a whole is preserved. If Apple ends up dominating the industry...well...I'm not complaining.

Final Thoughts
Whilst Boot Camp is an interesting prospect, and will certainly be embraced by many parties, it's by no means the be all and end all of running Windows apps on the Mac. Full virtualisation (running Windows apps natively within OS X) is what I would like to see - who the heck wants to reboot into Windows each time they want to play a game?

Would I install it now? No. It's still a beta, and with the benefits of Windows come its drawbacks; and I'm perfectly happy with my computer being virus-free.

Windows apps on a Mac? I'm all for it.

Windows on a Mac? No thanks, I'll stick with OS X.

Boot Camp

2006-04-05T16:45:00.000-04:00

Wow.

More to follow...

AppZapper now free!

2006-04-04T00:56:00.000-04:00

Uninstallation on a Mac has always been one of the more confusing and frustrating tasks that your average user might regularly perform. Yes, you can just drag apps to the trash, but that doesn't delete preference files, application support files, and other files associated with any application's installation. There are unistallers out there, and most aren't very good. The tool I have that does uninstallation, Spring Cleaning, is a piece of junk, as I detailed in this podcast episode. Well, it looks like we finally have a free, elegant solution, though possibly only for a limited time.

And what an awesome solution it is. Meet AppZapper 1.3, a fantastic uninstaller for Mac OS X, is now being offered for free! All you have to do is go to this site, and once you've entered your name and email, they'll email you your license information. Then, download the application, enter the serial number from the email that you receive, and boom, you get $12.95 worth of software for free, with updates for life. What could be sweeter? I would wholeheartedly recommend going and picking up your free license right now if you haven't done so already.

Thanks to digg for this.

iLife '06, Mac OS X Update 10.4.6

2006-04-03T16:56:00.000-04:00

Well, Apple's 30th birthday has passed without any big announcements. Nevertheless, this week does signal a week of big updates for my Mac!

I just received my copy of iLife '06, and I just finished installing it. I've given each of the apps a little bit of a spin, but I haven't used them anywhere near enough to write full reviews quite yet. Nevertheless, here are my initial thoughts.

Overally, the first thing I noticed was a different look to the applications. Instead of the brushed-metal look that we get in other OS X apps and iLife '05, the iLife '06 suite has adopted the cleaner, solid grey look of iTunes. The other thing that struck me was just how fast iPhoto 6 is. It really does "scroll like butter" compared to iPhoto 5. I also can't wait to try out Garageband 3's podcast studio; it should make recording my podcasts so much easier.

I'll have more thoughts on iLife '06 once I've had a chance to really dig into the applications.

On top of that, Apple released Mac OS X 10.4.6, which you can download using your software update. It's just under 66MB, so it's quite a decent-sized update. I'm installing it as I type this, and am hoping that it'll give my system a nice boost.

All in all, it's been a day of updates and more updates!

Happy 30th Birthday, Apple!

2006-04-01T15:17:00.000-05:00

It's April Fool's Day, 2006. 30 years ago to this day, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer, Inc. Who could've guessed that it would become what it is today.

Everyone was expecting some kind of event to celebrate Apple's 30th. As of yet, we haven't seen one, but of course, Apple doesn't like to hold events and release things on a Saturday, so who knows. I've been keeping an eye on the Apple Store online to see if there are any subtle discounts on offer =P.

But for now, here's to a great company. Cheers!

iPod Update allows Volume Limit

2006-03-29T16:36:00.000-05:00

Apple just released a new iPod update (1.1.1) that installs a new feature into 5G iPods and iPod nanos that allows a 'Volume Limit' to be set. Basically what this does is allow users to customise the maximum volume on their iPods. You can get the update using your Mac's Software Updater in the System Preferences, or from Apple's iPod Downloads Page.

I've just installed this update into my nano, and have played around with it for a while. It's very intuitive and easy to use (just like the rest of the iPod). All you have to do is go to Settings->Volume Limit, and there's a little blue arrow that you can move along the volume bar and set your own maximum point. If you're playing music whilst setting this limit, the volume of what you're listening to changes as you're moving the blue arrow, meaning that you can preview the limit that you're setting - I found it very intuitive to use. And if you want, you can set a combination code to lock your maximum volume and prevent it from being easily altered.

Apple of course got into a little bit of trouble when a class-action lawsuit was filed against them, claiming at the iPod causes hearing damage. I wrote this article on why I found that lawsuit to be a little bit frivolous (to put it lightly). But nevertheless, Apple seems to have heeded public concerns, and has been applauded for this release. I see it as a nice gesture of goodwill on Apple's part, good on them.

I don't know if this addition is purely a response to the aforementioned lawsuit and to appease the public though. I actually think this feature could be incredibly useful, and improves the iPod as a player in general. Why? Well, one issue I've had with all MP3 players I've owned (including the iPod) is that I've had to turn it on and check the volume first, before putting the headphones on. I do this because if I'm not aware that the volume is set too high, I don't want to find out the hard way by being deafened when turning the device on whilst wearing headphones. Whilst this might be a prudent practice that owners of music players ought to engage in, not all do. And on top of that, I get annoyed by it. I want to put my headphones on before turning my iPod on, not the other way round. This volume limit lets me do that; finally, I can turn my iPod on whilst wearing headphones and not have to worry that the volume will be set so high that it'll hurt my ears. Great! This might not seem like a huge thing, but I find that when leaving my room, what I want to do is put my headphones on, and pick what I want to listen to as I'm walking out. Before, I had to hold the headphones in one hand, iPod in the other, check the volume, put them on, and then pick my song. It also stops you from accidentally brushing the click wheel and turning the volume way up. This addition should make using the iPod an even more enjoyable experience than it already is, it's a pity that it doesn't work for older models .

So the Volume Limit isn't a huge addition; it's not an earth-shattering new feature, but it's definitely one that I whole-heartedly welcome. And not just because it might stop Apple from being sued for dumb reasons again.

By the way, I forgot to mention this when it first came out: BusinessWeek recently announced the BusinessWeek 50; the top 50 performers of the year. At the very top, that's right, at number 1, sits Apple Computer Inc. Nice.

Happy Birthday, OS X!

2006-03-24T13:50:00.000-05:00

Mac OS X celebrates its 5th birthday today. This naturally calls for a little tribute to the greatest operating system I've ever had the pleasure of using.

Let's take a moment to reflect on how the birth of this operating system has changed the face of the Macintosh, signalled a revival of Apple Computer Inc., and revolutionised the way that many of us use our computers. What is (in my humble opinion) by far the best overall commercial operating system available is also surely the biggest reason why the Mac is such a wonderful system. OS X is what makes a Mac a Mac; the hardware might change - our chips might be being built by Intel now - but as long as it runs OS X, it's still a Mac. And the Mac experience is still more enriching than, and unlike any other computing experience out there.

In the last 5 years, Apple has released 5 major commercial versions of OS X; from their purchase of Jobs' NeXT in 1996, and the development of Darwin, Mac OS X Server and the first OS X Public Beta, we've since seen the release of Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, and of course, Tiger. Leopard is due before the end of the year. In contrast, during the same period of time, Microsoft released...Windows XP. Vista's release has been delayed from November to January.

So lift your wine glasses to a toast - to Mac OS X! Happy Birthday!

Podcast #4

2006-03-22T16:37:00.000-05:00

In today's show:

Follow up to last podcast.

Built-in dictionary

Windows XP on Mac

Check out my recent article on it

OnMac, where it all happened.

Video of XP booting on a Mac

Garageband

Some fun I had playing around with it

iTunes
Rating Songs

Why?

Uses with Smart Playlists

Correction: iLounge doesn't use a 5 star rating system, they use a grading system. But the point that very few reviews receive top ratings still stands.
Movie downloads

Discussed in my previous post.

My thoughts

French iTunes law controversy

Why Apple is unhappy with it

My thoughts

Quicksilver

One of my favourite applications of all time

Get it here.

New Macworld/Playlist case!

2006-03-20T20:29:00.000-05:00

Before I start, I need to apologise for this post in advance; it's going to be one of those childish, 'YAY!' type posts. Why? Well, a couple weeks back I was having an email conversation with Cyrus Farivar of Macworld, and he was kind enough to send me an iSkin case for my 3G iPod. It's one of those sweet glow in the dark ones too, and it has the logo of the MacWorld iPod blog, Playlist, emblazoned on it. So...here are some photos! And again, I apologise in advance; iPod photos are never great quality, and the room's lighting doesn't help.

The envelope that the case arrived in:

My iPod in the case; note the nice red Playlist logo:

Same thing, but with the iPod's backlight on:

The left hand side of the case, with the Playlist logo:

The case in the dark:

Pretty sweet eh =)? Huge thanks again to Cyrus Farivar.

This iSkin case, the eVo Ghost is actually the one case that I've ALWAYS wanted for my 3G iPod. It stays true to the lovely white colour of the iPod, the screen protector fits perfectly, and the glow-in-the-dark is just a sweet addition. I'll always love these old-school iPods, and it's great to get something like this to remind me of how cool they are. They occasionally get forgotten in a world swarming with nanos and iPods with video.

What else can I say? Yay!

Windows XP boots on Mac

2006-03-18T14:07:00.000-05:00

It's official, Windows XP boots on Intel Macs. This site is where it all happened. A contest and almost $14,000 later, users Blanka and Narf concocted a legal way of booting XP on the new Intel Macs. It doesn't work perfectly, because not all of the hardware drivers have been sorted out yet, but the contest website's forums are constantly being updated. Nevertheless, it looks like it runs more or less properly; the guys at MacBreak demonstrated it working on a Mac Mini in their latest podcast. This story came out a few days ago, but I didn't want to report on it until I was more or less certain that it was true. Apple and Microsoft have both stated that they have no objections to legally booting Windows on a Macintosh.

Now, I went on little bit of a rant regarding this topic a while back, which you can read here. But in hindsight, perhaps I was being a bit unfair on the people trying to do this, given my (obvious) Mac-bias. Yes, the cash incentive helped a lot, and I'd probably have raised more eyebrows had this been done without the $14k prize, but I do see legitimate reasons for wanting to dual-boot Windows and OS X on a Mac. The Mac operating system, I still maintain, is far superior, but there are a lot of people who, for some reason or another, have to use a handful of Windows applications from time to time. For these people, a dual-booting Mac actually eliminates the need to purchase a PC at all. And I must admit, if you watch the MacBreak video of the dual-boot screen in action, it looks pretty slick.

There are of course a huge number of questions raised over the implications of being to boot Windows on a Mac. The most notable one being John C. Dvorak's infamous article arguing that Apple would ditch its OS for Windows. There's been a lot of debate over this, which I don't really want to get into, but in a nutshell my response to Dvorak would be, "uhh...no." Why? Because yes, whilst Apple might primarily be a hardware manufacturer (at least it was when it was founded), it's really the (superior) operating system and the software that makes the Mac experience so special. On top of that, I just don't see Steve Jobs ever allowing Dvorak's theory to happen. Predictions of Apple's demise are always floating around, and needless to say, I'd be heartbroken if any of them came true, but considering the fact that Apple's value has multiplied astonishingly in the last couple of years, I'd like to think that they're doing pretty well.

But then there's the question of reciprocity. Is somebody going to try and boot OS X on a PC? First of all, whilst Apple and Microsoft have nothing against booting Windows on a Mac (bearing in mind that Microsoft, unlike Apple, doesn't produce both the computers and the operating system they run), it would not be legal to run Apple's operating system on a non-Apple machine. If somebody were to do this, it'd have to stay out of the public's sight, or Apple would sue them into oblivion. On top of that though, pirating OS X and booting it on a PC just seems to cheapen the overall experience. One of the reasons I love Macs is the overall experience that they give you; it's the ultimate symbiosis of hardware and software. When you buy a Mac, you're not just getting a computer; you're getting a machine whose overall user experience is a beauty to behold. Trying to run OS X on a PC would be to shackle the spirit of the Macintosh and to lock its soul in chains. 'Welcome to Macintosh' would become 'Loading...'

All in all, I still don't like the idea of booting Windows on a Mac. I'd be really happy if Virtual PC got sorted out and could actually work properly (hey, maybe I'd be able to play FIFA on my iBook!), or if Windows applications could just run on OS X, be it natively or under emulation. But for me at least, it just wouldn't feel right to be using Windows on a Mac.

And who wants to deal with viruses and spyware anyway?

iTunes Full-Length Movies?

2006-03-14T13:27:00.000-05:00

Hmm, it appears that the iTunes Music Store is taking its first steps towards offering full length movie downloads. I found the link to this MacRumours.com story on digg. The link in the story takes you to a page on the iTunes Music Store offering a standard $1.99 download of 'High School Musical', which is 1 hour 39 minutes long. You can't find the video listed on the Music Store, nor does it show up in searches, but the link seems to be legitimate.

Is this a preliminary test by Apple? It would make sense; they did recently purchase a huge data centre, which could probably be used for hosting such a service. Given the success of TV and video downloads, this would be a natural next step. On top of that, 'High School Musical' is a Disney Channel movie. And as Steve Jobs said, he knows those guys!

Anybody else think that Apple might unveil this at their 30th birthday celebration? Makes me want an iPod with video. An intriguing story nonetheless!

On an unrelated note, what is Microsoft's beef with Safari? Their live.com beta search engine (remember, Google is still technically beta too) just does not work properly on Safari, just like their Vista and UMPC sites. Either this is deliberate, in which case they're immature w***ers, or it's not deliberate, in which case...well, I guess they need to do more thorough testing.

Update:
Well, the movie got pulled from the ITMS, but then put back up, only this time at $9.99...well done to those who bought it at $1.99. Will people really pay ten bucks for an iTunes quality video? Let's see how this continues to develop.

Mac gaming...or not

2006-03-14T00:30:00.000-05:00

Many people I know who've spent some time using a Mac (or who have sat through one of my Apple demos/rants) have been impressed enough to switch over to the platform, or to at least express the desire to 'Get a Mac'. Those who don't usually fall into two categories: a) those who aren't willing to spend the money, or b) hardcore gamers.

The first category is pretty self-explanatory, but the second is something that bugs me constantly. Now I'm not a huge gamer, but I'm enough of one to have a PC at home almost solely dedicated to running FIFA and Quake. So what's up with the lack of Mac games?

First of all, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with the Mac platform that makes it inappropriate for gaming. In fact, most games that do make it over end up running better on Macs, because, well...because Macs are better! The problem is, Windows has such a huge percentage of market share that it just isn't profitable enough to make games for Mac users. As a friend of mine (a big PC user) once said, 'PC users who don't want Macs are either ignorant, broke or gamers' (Needless to say, he doesn't fall into that first category =P). This irks me, because if all the games that were available for PCs were to be made available for Macs, a Mac would be the PERFECT computer.

The problem is, there'ss a bit of a vicious circle at work here between game designers and gamers. Game designers want their games to sell. Who buys the most games? Why, the people who own the most computers of course; PC users. People who want to game prefer PCs, and most don't even consider getting a Mac. Why? Because all the games are written for Windows! It just isn't worth it for either gamers or game designers to even glance at a Mac.

When games do become Mac-compatible though, they are almost always ported from PC games. Without any disrespect to the likes of Pangea (developers of Nanosaur, Otto-Matic), Mac-only game developers rarely develop any epic games. All the best games are developed for Windows, and then Mac versions are sometimes released, either subsequently, or more rarely, simultaneously. Now I have nothing against this, but it does mean that there are very few good games developed only for Macs. And until that happens, we're just going to have to hope that the best games keep getting ported.

One good thing is that this seems to be happening more and more often. With the likes of Doom 3, Call of Duty 2, Sim City, Stubbs the Zombie etc., the repertoire of games that Mac users can boast of having access to is becoming more and more impressive. But there's still the problem of versions. For example, a couple of buddies of mine were getting a game of Baldur's Gate 2 running, and yes, there's a Mac version of it. Unfortunately, nobody actually owned the Mac version, so whilst they played the night away, I sat around and played Chess (or something like that).

One company that's really bucking this trend is Blizzard, and I really must take my hat off to them. They develop and release their games with cross-compatibility. This means that the CDs of Starcraft, Warcraft 3, World of Warcraft and Diablo 2 can be read by both Windows and Mac OS users. Brilliant! If more companies follow this trend, then the term 'Mac gaming' might one day no longer seem like an oxymoron.

My final pet peeve on this topic though, is the COMPLETE lack of good sports games available for the Macintosh, especially football games (or soccer, for y'all North Americans). There are plenty of quality games available in almost every other genre, including first-person shooters (Doom 3, UT 2004), RPGs (Diablo 2, Baldur's Gate), and strategy games (Warcraft 3). But there is absolutely nothing like Winning Eleven or FIFA '06, or any other epic sports game for that matter, available to us Mac users, apart from those of the 'management-style' genre. Please...somebody, anybody, make a good football game that I can play on my Mac. Pretty please? I'll be your friend :).

I dream that one day, this will no longer happen.

Podcast #3

2006-03-11T21:51:00.000-05:00

In today's show:

My trip to the Apple store:

Review: iPod Hi-Fi.

Briefly: MacBook Pro, Aperture and Final Cut Studio on the PowerMac G5.

Browsers:
Which is the best OS X browser?

Safari

Camino

Firefox

Worth a mention:
- Opera
- Internet Explorer
- Netscape

Optimization and maintenance:

Is maintenance necessary?

What I do to optimize and maintain my system.

OnyX

Listen to today's show here.

Subscribe to my podcast! Go to iTunes, open the 'Advanced' menu, select 'Subscribe to Podcast', and paste the following URL into the box: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ithinkthereforeipod

Origami, Interfaces

2006-03-10T01:50:00.000-05:00

Well, for a couple of weeks now Microsoft has been keeping people on their toes with their 'secret' project, dubbed the 'Origami Project', and they set up this teaser website for it. From the very beginning, it was obvious that this was going to be some kind of tablet PC, and indeed, that's what it is. Check it out:

Produced by Samsung, Asus and others, these things have been dubbed 'Ultra-Mobile PCs' (and, in typical PC fashion, they continue a long trend of terrible sounding names). A few of the UMPC's features are: it runs Windows XP (a great start...), is smaller than a laptop, but by no means tiny (think perhaps...the size of a chunky book), and doesn't have a keyboard or mouse type input devices, touch-screen is used instead, so keyboards are virtual, and show up on the screen.

Now, I don't actually want to talk about the UMPC itself too much, instead, it's gotten me thinking about interfaces. Whilst keyboards and mice with the GUI are wonderful, fast input methods that we've grown so fond of (largely thanks to Apple, mind you), perhaps there will be a next generation of interfaces on their way that will completely change the way we interact with our computing devices. I doubt there'll be a text input method quicker than a keyboard anytime soon, mainly because we've all grown accustomed to them, but that doesn't mean there can't be better interfaces out there just waiting to be invented. After all, keyboards and mice cause repetitive strain injury, and aren't immediately natural and intuitive; unlike say, the iPod perhaps.

So is touch interaction the next step? We've all used it before; public terminals and many bank machines are equipped with touch screens. No doubt you're aware of all the rumours of a touch screen iPod. But I'm skeptical about touch-screen and media devices - won't touching a screen leave hundreds of fingerprints? Indeed, Adam from the MacCast mentions that on videos showing the Origami PCs in action, one can clearly see fingerprints on the screen.

So a touch-screen iPod like device would have to overcome this massive issue (not to mention scratches), which makes me raise my eyebrows over such an idea. But what about PCs? After all, I don't mind it that much when my iBook's screen has some smudges or fingerprints on it. Perhaps the computer is the place to start when it comes to experimenting with new interfaces. Indeed, according to this Apple Insider article, Apple employees have filed for a number of patents relating to touch interfaces. And individual touch-buttons may not be the way to do it. At the O'Reilly Emerging Technology 2006 conference, Jeff Han of NYU demonstrated a new, multi-touch interface that apparently stunned audiences. There's even this AMAZING video of it in action. This really blew me away (and apparently it struck a chord with Cyrus Farivar of MacWorld too). It's intuitive, fast, and just downright incredible to watch. I really, really recommend that you take a look at this video.

Where does the future of human-computer interaction lie? I don't know, but perhaps we're taking the first steps towards a completely new computing interface. Exciting stuff.

Oh yes, on a different note; you may have noticed that there's no podcast accompanying this post. That's because I've decided to separate posts and podcasts, giving each podcast its own post. I think this is the best way to it, and it has two huge advantages; first of all, it helps ensure that the content in posts and podcasts won't overlap - I don't want to compromise the quality of either my posts or my podcasts (after all, who wants to read a post and listen to a podcast that says the same thing?); and secondly, it stops the entire post from getting copied over to the podcast's description in iTunes, which is a little bit annoying. Hopefully this will all become clear when my next podcast gets posted.

Anyway, to finish off, I'll be going to the Apple Store (hooray!) tomorrow to give the new iPod Hi-Fi a spin. Hopefully they'll have one or two in stock. I want to see how good this baby sounds in person.

Podcast 101, More security issues

2006-03-07T14:34:00.000-05:00

So I finally got my podcast up and running; it's not listed on iTunes yet, but hopefully will be soon. To subscribe, go to iTunes, and in the Advanced menu, select 'Subscribe to Podcast', and paste my feed URL into the box, which is: feed://feeds.feedburner.com/ithinkthereforeipod

How did I do it?
- Firstly, I created an RSS feed for this site, which I did via Feedburner; a fantastic service that creates feeds for sites, and has specific instructions for blogger! If you haven't used them before, RSS feeds are really sweet. They are feeds that automatically update whenever a site is updated. They're a great way to keep up with news, Safari fully supports them, and a lot of sites now have such RSS feeds.
- I then had to record the podcast via Garageband, not the hardest thing to do. Export to iTunes, convert to MP3 and voila! We've got our podcast! Apple's advice on podcasting provides some great tips.
- The next step was to upload the audio onto a server; I used an application called CCPublisher, which lets you upload stuff onto an online archive, complete with Creative Commons licensing and copyrights You can find that application here, or if you have your own FTP server, you can use that too.
- In your Feedburner settings, make sure that in the 'Optimize' tab, your 'SmartCast' settings are fully enabled to create podcast enclosures, and ensure that your blogger settings fully enable a site feed as well. Once that's done, just make a link to the audio file that's been uploaded in the blog, and voila!

I'm going to add some artwork to be the cover of my podcast, but if anybody wants to make any submissions to help me out, please do so. You can email me at ithinkthereforeipodcast@gmail.com

Anyhoo, let's talk about security. Some guy on ZDNet Australia claimed to have hacked Mac OSX in under 30 minutes. But turns out our friend there failed to mention that he has SSH (Secure Shell) access to the computer, which I discuss briefly in the podcast. But basically, consumer level systems like ours don't have to worry about this. So in response, the University of Wisconsin posted this challenge to demonstrate the security of Mac OS X when SSH isn't enabled. The task is to breach a Mac Mini.

Honestly, we've had 3 security issues now in the last couple of weeks, and PC users have started wagging their fingers at us and saying 'I told you so'. But Leap-A was a bit of a joke, you had to be a real moron to get infected by that: you don't give admin passwords out frivolously! And certainly not to .jpg files! The Safari vulnerability was patched by Apple and easy to prevent anyway, and I've already shown you how this last security issue conveniently omitted the SSH point.

Sure we should be vigilant, but there's still very little to worry about when it comes to OS X and security! If every PC virus or security issue got blown up like these Mac issues, can you imagine how much crap would be on the news sites? I mean, 3 low-risk issues compared to...the millions of security problems Windows users face. Sometimes it just feels like they need something to whine about when it comes to Macs. Face it, Macs are just, to put it simply, better.

One last thing I'd like to mention, on an unrelated note, is that the band Nine Inch Nails released their song 'The Hand That Feeds' as a Garageband file. I LOVE this idea, and really wish more bands would do it - but if you have some spare time, visit their website, go to 'Downloads' and click on the file. It's really great fun to edit it and see what you can do with it, but it also provides some wonderful insight into how the professional recording industry prepares its tracks.

Listen to today's show here!

Macs and photography, Podcast test

2006-03-05T23:59:00.000-05:00

It seems to me that a lot of Mac users (myself included) seem to be particularly drawn towards photography, and I've been wondering as to why this might be the case.

Now, the answer seemed obvious at first; Apple produces superior software (and hardware, for that matter) for handling digital photos. And I think that to an extent, this might be the primary reason behind the affinity that exists between Apple and photographers. After all, every Mac comes with iPhoto, and there really isn't an easier consumer level product for importing, organising, tweaking and sharing photos. The ability to easily organise and manipulate one's photos would naturally encourage one to take more! As Apple says in its 'Switch' campaign, "Taking pictures is the fun part. Getting them onto your PC? Not so much. But with a Mac, organizing your photos makes for almost as much fun as snapping them." There's a genuine point to be made here; with Macs, users can let the photography do the talking, and not waste time being frustrated by their computer (sounds a bit like using a Mac in general compared to PCs, doesn't it?). On top of that, Macs seem to be the preferred platforms for working with any kind of media; images, video, audio, you name it. With software like Aperture for professional photographers, and Final Cut Studio for other forms of media, Apple gets singled out as a superior provider of media-oriented software. But on top of that, third party developers seem to favour the Mac platform too; is it really surprising that Adobe's Lightroom Beta was initially released for PowerPC Macs only?

So, in a nutshell, software and the Mac system probably have a lot to do with photography's place amongst the higher echelons of Apple-related activities.

iPhoto: in a few clicks one can turn this...

into this:

But on top of that, there seem to be other factors that come into play. There seems to be a culture of photography amongst Apple fans, and a culture of Mac use amongst photographers. Professionals and amateurs alike can get more out of their digital imaging by using Macs, and it's almost become an industry standard platform. Furtheremore, major magazines and websites on Macs also cover photography: Macworld, the most obvious example, frequently has in-depth reviews and articles on digital photography; Apple stores often host events related to photography, for example, in Toronto, there was an exhibition held by 'Toronto Area Photobloggers' at the Apple store. Perhaps this increased exposure to photography (excuse the pun) is what draws Mac users to it too.

Whatever it is, Macs and photography seem to be a match made in heaven, and it doesn't look like anything's going to ever tear them apart.

Podcast!
On a separate note, I've ventured into the world of podcasting! Here's my first attempt at a podcast, it's just a test so there isn't much substantial content in it. I'm hoping to get this on iTunes sometime soon, but that involves a) getting an account, b) figuring out how all of this stuff works!

If you want, you can listen to it here.

EDIT: Apparently you can subscribe to my podcast on iTunes, I'm just not listed because I don't have an account yet. To subscribe, open iTunes, go to the 'Advanced' menu, click on 'Subscribe to Podcast' and paste this URL into the box: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ithinkthereforeipod

On a slightly relevant note, here's something that amused me greatly: the Pope has an iPod nano! Apparently cardinals in the Vatican gave him one as a gift, complete with engraving and Vatican content. Isn't that sweet :).

New Stuff, Media, Security

2006-02-28T21:37:00.001-05:00

I'd like to discuss three areas today; Apple's unveiling of 'Fun new products', using the Mac as a home media centre, and security.

So, Apple a while ago invited a few select people to attend a special event, which took place today and saw them release 3 new products: a leather case for the iPod, an iPod Hi-Fi, and the Intel Mac Mini, which shipped a new version of Front Row alongside it. I must say I'm slightly underwhelmed and bemused by the first two, but the new Mac Mini tickles my fancy.

Leather Case:
OK, it's sexy; yes, it has the Apple logo on it...but ultimately, what the heck is it for? There are SO many iPod cases out there, many of which are really, really sweet. This one looks like a nice, pretty version of the slip that comes with the iPod, and given that Apple claimed to have spent a long time over the design of this, its lack of access to the controls and stand-out features make a very uninspiring product, despite it being made of Italian leather.

Now, I'm not saying Apple shouldn't be venturing into this market; the iPod case market is HUGE, and this will no doubt generate extra cash (face it, an Apple brand case for an iPod is always gonna be that little bit sweeter than a non-Apple case with equal features), but this will really only irk third party companies that make cases whilst bringing in those extra pennies. Nor am I saying that Apple is incapable of designing nice, low-end products and accessories, granted, in general they're better at designing the high end stuff that needs accessorising, but some things like the iPod Sock (this is just asking for an argument) are really cute and creative. This...isn't really. Well, at least it isn't a bad product, and I'm not one to criticise Apple a lot, as you may have noticed. And oh yeah, it's US$99.

iPod Hi-Fi:

Again, slightly perplexing, but for different reasons. I actually quite like this product, and I'd love to have one around the house because it supports AirTunes and is so beautifully integrated with the iPod. A typically simple, elegant Apple design sporting wonderful features such as the Apple Remote, the ability to charge your iPod and communication with it, i.e. when you plug your iPod in, you get a special 'Speakers' menu.

Pretty cool!

But at the price of an iPod itself, it's not the cheapest accessory. However, my main concern is with some of the reports and analysis I'm reading that suggest that this move might seriously peeve off competitor's, possibly driving them to back other products. Whilst this is unlikely, as the iPod has such huge market share, the many accessories out there are undoubtably part of the reason why the iPod is so popular. Apple, maybe it'd be friendlier to let some people share some of the pie!

Intel Mac Mini:
Now this seriously excites me. Why? 2 main reasons: a) The SPEED, b) The inclusion of Front Row and its new features.

Speed
This thing is a FAST. The 1.5GHZ Intel Core Solo and 1.66GHZ Core Duo mean that the new Mac Mini crushes its predecessor in benchmark tests; 4.7 times faster in integer calculations, and 5.5 times better in floating point calculations. On top of that, the 667MHz frontside bus is HUGE; for comparison, my iBook G4 (which runs beautifully), has a 142MHz bus. Real world tests obviously won't be this fast, but will still represent a huge increase in performance. It can now support up to 2GB of RAM, which I'd recommend as it now uses integrated graphics technology, instead of a simple graphics card; this will improve performance, but won't use separate memory for graphics.

On the downside, there is an increase in US$100 in price, which means no more sub-$500 Mac...but you have to remember that a) this is a BETTER machine, b) it now includes Airport and Bluetooth on all machines, which would have cost more than $100 to add onto the previous machine. And heck, you get 4 USB ports (instead of 2), an Apple Remote and a Superdrive on the high end machine.

But what really excites me is this...

Front Row
Why, you ask? After all, it's only Front Row. Yes, and no. The new version of Front Row now supports media sharing over a network, using Bonjour, I believe. And Apple's emphasised the relative ease of hooking this thing up to your TV. What does this mean? Plug your Mac Mini into your TV screen, turn on Front Row, and you can play all your media that might be stored on your iMac in the other room, without having to copy it to your Mac Mini. Sit on your sofa, use the Apple Remote, and enjoy. With things like the Belkin flip switch, you can also use one keyboard, display and mouse (Apple dubs it BYOKDM) to switch between say, that PC you use for gaming, and this peach of a Mac system. Dual core, Superdrive, all these features for $799? Go look up the word bargain. There's so much potential to use this machine as a home entertainment system.

Home Media Centres
Speaking of home entertainment systems, I'd like to move on and briefly discuss the notion of using your Mac as one.

Now, we all know how beautifully the Mac handles your photos, videos, music and DVDs, and this makes them ideal candidates for home media centres. With the new Mac Mini, why buy a DVD player? With Front Row now supporting Bonjour, and AirTunes, you can now easily access your media over a home network from anywhere in the house. This is made even better by Front Row's cinema-like, media centric interface - it no longer feels like you're working on a computer when Front Row is invoked, and it's quite an experience.

A brilliant concept, but what about those, like me, who don't have one of the new, nifty Front Row-enabled machines? Well, there are alternative ways of using your Mac as a home entertainment system, and here are two that I found on the MacCast.

First of all, you can get Front Row to work on your system, you just need to run this hack to get it going.

I tried this on my iBook, and found that it wasn't very reponsive and had a few glitches, for example, I couldn't watch movie trailers. But when it did work, it was SWEET, and I had a lot of fun just switching between my OSX interface and Front Row.

Remember, this is a hack, not supported by Apple, so it might have side-effects, and I actually wouldn't really recommend it, except just to see that it works. Getting rid of it is easy though; delete Front Row and its preferences file (I found both by Spotlighting 'Front Row'), and run the latest Combo Updater for Mac OSX.

A second, and much better solution, is to try this; e-Quinix's MediaCentral. It's free, and allows you to watch streaming internet TV as well; I love being able to watch the BBC news from my computer. It's a great concept, and best of all, it's free - I'd definitely recommend giving this a shot.

It isn't perfect though; its transitions are slow and it just generally doesn't run that smoothly. It also loses out to the Front Row hack in a few areas. With photos, it can't do slideshows anywhere near as well as Front Row, and it doesn't support AirTunes like Front Row does. However, movie trailers work beautifully on it and it supports lots of different formats (e.g. Real Media for streaming).

Security
The last thing I want to talk about is this issue of Mac security that's come into the spotlight in Mac news lately. The Leap-A malware was reported as what is essentially the first ever Mac OSX virus, and a serious Safari vulnerability has been highlighted too. PC users have been wagging their fingers at us and going 'I told you so', but let's be realistic, the sub-50 people who go infected by Leap-A either did it intentionally, or were probably really stupid. Why? Because to get infected you have to download it, unzip it, run it, and TYPE IN YOUR ADMIN PASSWORD when it requests it. Now this malware was disguised as jpegs...jpegs don't do that. And to spread it, you have open iChat and enable Bonjour, where the person you're spreading it to must accept your file transfer. Secondly, the Safari vulnerability can be eliminated by either going to preferences and unchecking the 'Open safe files automatically' option, or using another browser like Camino or Firefox.

Our Macs are safe. 1 piece of malware compared to however many thousand Windows viruses are out there. On top of that, in order to really mess with anything, malware would need your admin password. Well, I know I'm not installing anti-virus software. Plus, the Mac's UNIX base is inherently safer too; a technical issue I won't get into. But it's partly to do with software needing to be given your admin password before it tries to perform potentially unsafe tasks, unlike PCs, where viruses can access your registry, and anything else for that matter, without you knowing.

One possible way of beefing up security is to not run on an admin account on a daily basis. If you do, you can change this easily by creating a new account, allowing it to administer your computer, and then unchecking admin capabilities on your main account. I did this, but then changed back to my normal accounts because I simply couldn't be bothered to deal with an extra admin account, and also because I couldn't think of a good name for the account, hehe. It really doesn't make that much of a difference anyway, because you can do admin stuff on a standard account if you have the password. The only real security measure I take is to disable automatic login, but even that seems kind of pointless, seeing as I am the only one who uses my main Mac.

Face it, Macs are still safe, just like iPods are still not hazardous. But let's remember to be vigilant, in case things change in the future.

Sorry about the extremely long post; I'll try to keep it shorter next time.

Podcasts galore

2006-02-19T16:36:00.000-05:00

With the world of audio and video podcasting exploding with content, from news to comedy to hobbies, there's bound to be something for everybody. But with so many different podcasts available, how is one supposed to go about writing on them in general? Well, I'll try my best. Let's take a look at the plethora of different kinds of podcasts out there, and then I'll tell you about some of my favourites.

But first, let's talk a bit about podcasts in general. If you don't already know what they are (shame on you!), podcasts are online, radio (and now even TV) style programs that you can subscribe to or download. They cover a phenomenal range of information, and a lot of people have a few podcasts that they listen to or watch regularly and religiously. If you haven't joined the podcasting revolution, head on over to the iTunes Music Store, click on 'Podcasts', and browse away to your heart's desire. Best of all, they're free. And they're so flexible. You can treat them like shows, and have iTunes automatically delete all but the newest episodes; or, for those really sweet podcasts, you can keep every episode and indulge in their brilliance again and again.

Why are these things so cool? Well, if you have an iPod, there's nothing better than turning your computer on in the morning, downloading your favourite daily news show, plugging your iPod in to sync it, and then listening to it while you're on your way to work, school, or wherever the winds may take you. If you have a video iPod, even better; you don't need to wait for these programs to air, you can watch them any time you want.

Now let's take a look at some of the content available on podcast. One of my favourite things about podcasts is that you'll find content from all corners of the Earth. Huge news conglomerates like the BBC, CNN, Newsweek, Businessweek, ABC; you name it, they've all joined the podcasting revolution. Big businesses and entertainment networks such as Disney, Fox TV and loads of radio stations have joined the bandwagon too. But on top of all that, there are thousands, nay, millions of independent podcasts, many of which are incredibly captivating. These come from anyone and everyone: the bored kid in front of his computer; the enthusiast eager to share his passion with others; the ranting lunatic, foaming at the mouth, you name it. Individuals like you and I, sitting at home, can make our own podcasts, put them on iTunes and share them with the world, but more on that later.

News
Podcasts are a fantastic way to keep informed. The vast majority of news providers are now available on podcast, and if they aren't, then they're clearly lagging behind. The BBC, CNN, CBC and many others provide daily news roundups, opinions and insight. On top of that, you have your weekly publications, such as Newsweek and Businessweek, whose weekly shows often offer valuable analysis and intriguing food for though. Now, some news networks, such as ABC, are even providing video podcasts. Watching these every day feels just like watching the daily news slot on TV.

Of course, news need not be restricted to broadcast journalism. Newspapers ranging from the Independent to the New York Times have their own podcasts, and you'll find a lot of specific event coverage too, such as podcasts covering the ongoing Winter Olympics. There's plenty of politics in podcasting too, heck, US Senator Barack Obama has his own podcast.

Then there are the special interest news podcasts. If you're a Apple enthusiast (like me, obviously), there are a lot of Apple, Mac and iPod podcasts that help to keep one up to date with Apple news and reviews. One ought to be able to find news podcasts for any area of interest; technology news, sports, photography and so many more. Podcasts are an absolutely amazing way of staying up to date with your favourite current events.

Special Interests/Hobbies
One of the most beautiful things about Podcasts is the opportunity for learning that many of them provide. A lot of podcasts on specific hobbies or interests are produced by experts, professionals and talented enthusiasts, and these podcasts are designed to teach, explain and introduce these interests to people of all levels. If you're interested in bartending, photography, or snowboarding, there are podcasts for the beginner, as well as those covering highly advanced techniques and information. Want to learn how to salsa dance? No problem, subscribe to a video podcast that provides daily or weekly salsa lessons! These shows can range from daily, one-minute tips, to weekly, in-depth coverage of a specific technique or concept.

This ability to cater to different levels of listeners is nowhere more evident than in the realm of technology podcasts. There are shows covering advanced Photoshop techniques, high-level post-production tools used by professionals, and of course, programming and hacks galore. But then there are the shows that try to teach the listener how to, for example, use a Mac at the most basic level. No matter what level of expertise you are at, if you want to learn more about an area of interest or a hobby, or if you're an expert and want to hear what other experts think, podcasts are an ideal medium to do so.

Comedy
Who doesn't enjoy a good laugh? Comedy podcasts can be a real delight. Available podcasts vary from the earth-shatteringly brilliant, soon-to-be classics like the Ricky Gervais Podcast (possibly the greatest podcast ever?), to the short, daily snippets of fun like the Onion Radio News (bizarre, pointless news stories, updated daily), to the sadistically hilarious video podcasting phenomenon that is the Happy Tree Friends Podcast.

Obviously, not everyone is going to find every comedic podcast funny, but if you can find one that amuses you, it can really become one of life's daily, weekly, or monthly joys.

The VIDEOS
Video podcasting has boomed lately, and there is enormous potential. There are TV-style, professional looking shows like Mac Break; official videos such as ABC news, and cartoons, cartoons and more cartoons. It's like having another TV. Another awesome thing that video podcasts can do is give video demonstrations; what better way to learn to salsa dance or how to boot your Mac in Firewire Target Mode than to see it done right in front of you?

All I can say is, I'm sure video podcasting will grow and grow and grow; and if you have an iPod with video...I envy you.

The Rest
There's so much more out there, far more than I can cover, but here are some other areas of podcasting that might be worth a mention.

Music
Obviously, radio and iTunes would be nothing without the content that forms their very foundation, and podcasting is no different. Podcasts were originally designed to be online radio shows; radio shows and channels were originally designed to broadcast music to the public. And this original purpose has not been diluted one bit; there are few better ways to sample the newest and hottest jazz tunes, hip-hop beats, classical serenades, the list goes on. If you like music, the obvious avenue of using podcasts, well...makes itself quite obvious.

The Utterly Strange
If you allow anybody to broadcast content to the world, you're bound to encounter some...unique...content. Call them insane, call them genius, call them what you will, what cannot be disputed is that there is some unusual stuff out there. For example, there's the Ask A Ninja podcast, which is dedicated to answering email questions...with a twist - some dude dressed as a ninja answers them.

Others
There are some unique, one-off podcasts that I found really interesting, such as the 22-minute, behind-the-scenes video featurette on the making of the film 'Hoodwinked'. Only one episode, but definitely a novel idea, and worth watching.

Some podcasts are just, well, fun. The hugely popular Tiki Bar podcast for example, is just a helter-skelter of entertainment, packed into a small, video broadcast. With podcasting, creativity can truly be allowed to shine.

One final area that might be worth a mention is the personal podcasting that can be found. Some people use podcasts to keep their friends across the world informed as to what they're doing; kind of like an audio blog or diary. An interesting concept, let's see if it grows.

My Favourites!
Let me tell you about some of my favourite podcasts before I let you go off and find your own. These are the ones that I listen to religiously.

The MacCast: This podcast is a beautiful, bi-weekly podcast that covers Mac news, reviews, troubleshooting, and any other questions of interest that might tickle the fancy of the Apple enthusiast. Always relevant, very well done, always captivating and worth listening to. "For Mac Geeks, by Mac Geeks" My favourite podcast that I look forward to every day, and listen to as soon as I see that little blue dot next to it.

ABC World News Now - Video: This is brilliant. I have my opinions on American news coverage, but the fact that ABC provides a daily video news broadcast just blows me away. I can watch the news every day, on my computer, as if it were a TV. If this expands to other networks (BBC, anybody?), I will be ever grateful to ABC for taking this first step. Please please please let other networks catch on to this.

Happy Tree Friends: This is sick. If you haven't heard of Happy Tree Friends, they're a bunch of cartoon characters who are extremely cute, but always die horrible deaths in their episodes. This never fails to make me laugh, and truly appeals to that little bit of sadism hidden away in the depths (I'd hope) of my dark, dark soul.

Mac Tips Daily: Really helpful, daily Mac tips that rarely take over a minute to listen to. If I read the title of the episode and know it already, I just skip it. Nice to have.

BBC Today: News as it ought to be; insightful, professional and not too long. A valuable daily dose of British information.

BusinessWeek: Weekly analysis of their cover story; this is a podcast that makes me think, and that can never be a bad thing.

The Ricky Gervais Show: Quite possibly the greatest podcast ever. One of the most popular and funny podcasts available. Only twelve episodes are being made, and there's only one more to go. I'm a huge Ricky Gervais fan, but this podcast is all about his producer, Karl Pilkington. If you haven't heard this yet - GO AND GET IT AND LISTEN TO IT!

Whew! That was a lot of stuff! One last thing to mention is that if you are unlucky enough to not find anything that interests you, you can always make your own podcast! It's really easy; but that perhaps...might be more appropriate in another post.

1GB Nano, Price re-Shuffle

2006-02-08T14:52:00.000-05:00

Well, yesterday Apple released a new 1GB iPod nano for US$149, and slashed prices on the iPod Shuffle to US$69 for the 512MB model, and $99 for the 1GB model.

So, let's take a look shall we?

At US$149, the pricing on the 1GB nano is competitive. I see this as an awesome entry-level iPod, and these should sell quickly. So the obvious question that comes with this new model is...what happens to the 1GB iPod Shuffle? I mean, who's gonna want one of those when they could get a nano instead?

Well, Apple answered that question emphatically, they cut the price of both Shuffle models to less than 100 US dollars. The Shuffle is now really, really cheap, and just as sweet (I have a personal soft spot for it, because it serves such a specific purpose so beautifully).

I've always seen the iPod Shuffle as a unique, cheap-but-sweet product, unlike a bigger investment like a Mac or another iPod. The way Apple Stores have them stacked on top of each other at checkouts echoes the sentiment that buying an iPod Shuffle could be an impulse purchase. A lot of companies give them away for free in promotions, and they make brilliant presents or thank-you gifts. I've seen people buy them in 10s; yes, these are iPods that can be bought in bulk.

So, what consequences will the price cut bring? On the one hand, one could argue that Apple will lose revenue and profit from the cheaper Shuffles, I don't subscribe to this. Why? First of all, the flash memory that the Shuffle uses is cheap, and the price of producing such memory has gotten cheaper; iPodNN reports that the price of components has dropped as much as 70%. So Apple's still definitely going to make a profit from selling iPod Shuffles. I also get a feeling that Shuffle sales will get boosted quite substantially by this huge price drop, because of the different nature of this iPod compared to the nano and the 5G.

Another great thing this price cut does is that it clearly differentiates the product lines; there's no chance of an overlap between the 1GB Shuffle and the 1GB nano because of the 50 buck price difference between them. The 3 lines are also clearly separated now - clearly catering to different parts of the market and different customer needs.

All of this should mean that overall iPod sales rise. Again. Nice. Good call Apple.

On a final note, have you seen this contest by Apple? The billion song countdown is a SICK, sick contest; the grand prize is a 20 inch iMac (doesn't specify what chip), TEN 60GB iPods, 5 black and 5 white..TEN iPods! And on top of that, Mr. Grand-Prize winner gets a $10,000 iTunes Music Store gift card. My goodness gracious me. But on top of that, to stop all of us from just sitting around and staring at the song counter (yes, it has a counter), and buying like crazy when it gets near 1 billion, Apple is giving away a 4GB black nano and a $100 ITMS gift card for every 100,000 songs bought. Given that the iTunes Music Store sells what, 20 songs per second (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm really not sure, I'm just looking at this obviously inaccurate song counter), that's pretty sweet.

Oh, and who loves video podcasts? In fact, who loves podcasts in general? In my next post I'll try and discuss some of the amazing array of content available on podcast that many may not have known to exist.

Lawsuit

2006-02-05T08:13:00.000-05:00

Recently, a class action lawsuit was filed against Apple, claiming that the iPod causes hearing damage, and that Apple doesn't adequately warn users against the potential harm to one's ears that improper use of such devices can cause. This was covered on numerous websites, and on the MacCast, which shares my sentiments.

First of all, if you listen to music loudly, your ears can get damaged. It doesn't matter if it's an iPod, some other music player, at a concert or out of a stereo, if you blast too loudly, too often, expect some hearing damage.

Secondly, there is a bleedin' warning in the iPod manual. Let me quote it; it says:
"Warning: Permanent hearing loss may occur if earbuds or headphones are used at high volume. You can adapt over time to a higher volume of sound that may sound normal but can be damaging to your hearing. If you experience ringing in your ears or muffled speech, stop listening and have your hearing checked. The louder the volume, the less time is required before your hearing could be affected. Hearing experts suggest that to protect your hearing:

Limit the amount of time you use earbuds or headphones at high volume.

Avoid turning up the volume to block out noisy surroundings.

Turn the volume down if you can't hear people speaking near you."

How clear do you want it?

The lawsuit claims that the design of the iPod earbuds exacerbates the problem due to the amount of sound that is lost through them, also alleging that the iPod is louder than other music players because the engineers upped its volume due to the fact that Steve Jobs is partially deaf. It also points to the fact that iPods do not meet France's standards of portable music players having a maximum output of 100 dB. Fair enough, but it also fails to point out that the iPod does meet European standards of 104 dB.

Either way, a) what kind of feeble, frivolous excuses are these? b) Who in their right mind listens to their iPod at full volume anyway? If you do, fair enough, but you probably deserve or already have some form of hearing damage, regardless of what headphones you use; at in any rate, it shouldn't be surprising if damage develops.

Things like this really irk me; I mean, if I buy a belt, and I fasten it so tightly that it ruptures my insides, do I go and sue the beltmaker for not warning me that fastening a belt too tightly can cause injury, even if they do have a warning against that? Or do I go and slap myself a few times for being a moron? I apologise for the terrible analogy but I think you get my point.

Honestly...

Hazardous? I think not.

iMac G5 20"

2006-01-31T19:31:00.000-05:00

Apple just slashed US$200 off the price of their 20-inch iMac G5s, to $1499; that's about the price I paid for my iBook G4. The fact that pro software like Aperture doesn't run on Intel yet makes this a VERY...VERY tempting offer.

Clearly Apple are trying to clear inventory, but this brings us back to the debate we had before - pick up the cheap PPC chip Macs now, or hold out and get an Intel based one later when software becomes native?

Hmmm...

XP

2006-01-31T01:17:00.000-05:00

I saw a brief link in MacNN's RSS feed about somebody who posted instructions for getting Windows XP to run on a MacBook Pro. The link got pulled, probably for a lot of different reasons, but here's the thing that gets me - I really don't get why you would want to do that.

I cannot, for the love of anybody, even begin to comprehend WHY one would even CONSIDER running Windows on a Mac. Ok, so it can be done, good for you, but that's like me installing...windows media player on an iPod and going "LOOK! IT WORKS!" Or for a less technologically relevant example, it's like taking the engine out of a car, replacing the wheels with 4 deformed hamsters, and saying "LOOK! IT MOVES!"

WHY would you want to run an INFERIOR operating system on a SUPERIOR machine that COMES with a SUPERIOR operating system? Whilst I appreciate the value in showing that it can be done...it just seems oh...so pointless

I apologise for the shouting, it's just...don't waste your time when you could be spending it developing a useful piece of code instead. Honestly, if I ever catch anybody running XP on a Mac...

Disney

2006-01-24T22:05:00.000-05:00

Here's something that sparked my interest - Disney just agreed to take over Pixar for $7.4 billion in shares. They're issuing 2.3 Disney shares for every Pixar share. Nice merger, two great companies who I wanna see continue working together, but here's the thing: by doing the takeover, Steve Jobs essentially becomes Disney's majority shareholder, and automatically gets a spot on their board of directors (in fact, remove the word 'essentially' from that last sentence). The studios will continue to operate as they are, same people, same places, under the name Disney Pixar.

Soooo...Apple's CEO on Disney's board? He's not gonna be a quiet one, that's for sure. On top of that, the iTunes Music Store added a bunch of new Disney content immediately after the announcement.

I'm now imagining a world where Steve Jobs has a large amount of power over Disney film production, product distribution (can you say 'more Disney content on iTunes?) and the Disney-Apple partnership. Don't forget, Disney has the rights to a lot of TV shows as well as their awesome movies.

Jobs said he wanted to make a dent in the universe; he's well on his way to doing that with the iPod and the Mac...now with Disney, how big a hole in the universe does the guy wanna make?

On an unrelated note, according to this Macworld article, real-world applications running on Rosetta seem to run at about half their normal speed...which sucks if you want a new Mac and need to use old applications frequently. Hurry up and bring out those native apps!

Converting video to iPod

2006-01-22T16:27:00.000-05:00

Just a brief post...I thought this would be difficult but shake that thought. Mac users, if you have a video iPod...if you have videos on your computer, iSquint is your solution. If you have DVDs, Handbrake Lite gets those videos on your iPod. Both of these apps have been around for a while, I've been using them for a while, but just realised that I'd never actually posted about them since my 'how the heck do you get videos on an iPod?' post. Enjoy!

Nano scratch?

2006-01-15T11:40:00.000-05:00

I've been looking at the scratches on my nano (there are a couple, nothing too bad), and comparing them to my other iPods, most notably my 3G iPod, and I've come to an interesting conclusion.

Yes, the thing scratches. No, it doesn't scratch any more than any other standard iPod has. The scratches are almost exactly like those on my 3G iPod.

I think the hype over the nano scratches has been a result of a couple of things:
a) The thing is a lot smaller (duh), so the scratches do seem more prominent.
b) On the black, the scratches are far more noticeable due to the contrast between the scratches and the...err...blackness.
c) Because the front is flat, as opposed to rounded as my 3G is, the edges can get scratched more easily, but that's due to the shape of the thing - flat, sharp edges always scratch more than rounded ones do.
d) The screen is really bright, and when it's on you can't notice scratches. When it's off, it looks like any other iPod screen. On my 3G, whether it's on or off, unless the backlight is on, the scratches are equally noticeable. Because you don't always notice the scratches on the nano, when you do see them, I guess they seem more prominent, or at least more annoying.
e) All of this damn internet hype over the scratching makes people SEARCH for scratches, and treat their nano as if it's a fragile artifact. And if one scratch appears, OH NO! I TOLD YOU SO! iPods scratch, nothing new there. You don't want scratches? Get a case.
f) The nano is so unbelievably small and pretty and sexy, that people (well...at least myself) have to spend hours staring at it from all angles and under every possible lighting. And that's when scratches get noticed.

I do feel like the nano has a lot more show-off power than the standard iPod, so when you start using the thing as an aesthetic symbol, as opposed to a purely functional, brilliant music player like the iPod, then things like scratches become more important.

But hey, I don't complain about my 3G, and I'm not complaining about my nano.

I admit though, that I've bought a Crystal Film set from Power Support. It's one of those sets of films that you put over the front and the back of your iPod nano and it protects the wheel, front, and back. I got this set because it uses static cling technology, meaning it can be removed and reapplied easily. I hate the thought of putting anything permanent on an iPod. Although it was a bitch to apply, I'm perfectly happy carrying my nano around without it's case. It's just too sexy to keep in a box :P.

Macworld

2006-01-10T14:15:00.000-05:00

So, Steve Job's Macworld keynote is done - and boy did he leave the bombshell till the end. Hopefully you've all seen it by now, if not, go and watch it now! Here are my thoughts on what was revealed:

iLife '06:

A pretty damn big update to iLife - quite impressive, but it felt like Steve spent waaay too much time on this; I'm not going to spend that much time on it.

iPhoto updates are great - its about time, iPhoto always needed a speed boost, and new features like one-click effects look like they could be really useful and save a lot of time. Photocasting I'm not too sure about yet, it seems like it could be phenomenal though, and whilst the idea is good, I find it even cooler that the photocasts automatically get updated in iPhoto. iMovie's big addition was the new animated themes, which look pretty sweet; you could make some pretty good quality movies with those themes. iDVD, good piece of software; FINALLY 3rd party DVD burners are supported! The new iTunes has that little ministore that's stirring a little bit of controversy about privacy, but given the popularity of the ITMS, I think it might be an ideal way for ITMS users to find new music. Heck, if you don't like it, just turn it off by selecting 'Hide Ministore' in the Edit menu, or press the little button in the bottom of the iTunes window.

Garageband's new podcast studio looks awesome, and I loved Jobs' 'Super Secret Apple Rumours' skit, haha...8 pound iPod. I'll definitely try experimenting with podcasting if I get my hands on it. A lot of great podcasts are already made on Garageband, like the MacCast, and it looks like it just got a whole lot better as a podcasting tool.

Finally...iWeb. What to make of it? It's definitely beautifully designed, and like many Apple software products, functions brilliantly as a complete package. It looks like it will be a lot easier to make a stunning website with lots of different features using iWeb, as it seems to handle page editing, photos, podcasts, RSS, blogging etc very effectively, making it quite comprehensive. The templates, naturally, look very nice, like the ones in Pages. I think iWeb is designed to, and indeed will, make website creation far more accessible and appealing to your average end user. I approve wholeheartedly - I for one would rather not deal with too much HTML formatting, and things like manually putting a podcast or a video podcast on a page.

I think we see a clear emphasis on .Mac and internet services with the introduction of photocasting and iWeb. If these apps are well received, I wouldn't be surprised to see a surge in .Mac usage. Perhaps Apple's overall strategy is to make .Mac the centre of all of one's personal internet related activities.

All in all a huge update to iLife, making an already fantastic software bundle even better.

iWork '06:

Jobs spent very little time on this, but I'm going to try and find more information on iWork '06, because I sincerely hope that there has been a lot of change to Keynote and Pages. I love both pieces of software, but they don't quite have the snazzy Apple feel to them that iLife has at the moment.

Update: I've taken a look at the new features of iWork '06 in this Macworld article, and I LIKE the look of it! The new add-ons to Keynote aren't spectacular, and so may not have warranted a place in Jobs' keynote, but when it comes to making presentations, the new features look like they'll be fantastic, especially the interleaved bullet builds. The Pages update looks nice too, new templates, an easier way to view your pages...good stuff. I can see why Jobs didn't talk about these too much in the keynote, but I'll be ordering my copy very soon.

iPod remote:
A nice little accessory I guess. I like the look of it, clearly inspired by the iPod shuffle (which I am madly in love with). Lots of other accessories out there that do similar things, but this remote is an FM tuner as well, and the nice thing about it is the interface that shows up on your iPod when you're listening to the radio - looks real sleek. A pleasant accessory, but nothing to get too excited over.

Whilst most of the keynote seemed off-pace and even, dare I say, duller than usual, of course..the HUGE news was the switch to Intel and the new iMac and MacBook Pro.

iMac Intel Core Duo:

So, we finally have it. The first Intel based Mac. Basically this thing is exactly the same as the iMac G5, with all the same features, except that it has the new Intel Core Duo chip, and as such is meant to be 2-3X faster.

Whether or not it's really 2-3X faster in practice of course, depends on what software you're running. I'd expect all Apple software (iLife, iWork etc.) to run beautifully, as it's all universal now. Jobs said that non-native software running through Rosetta will only show signs of slowing down for pro users of processor heavy software, like Apple's Pro software and heavy work on Photoshop.

All in all, this Mac seems to be just a souped up iMac - nice to see the chips out so early; but we all expected that anyway :P.

2-3X faster for the same price? I say good deal.

MacBook Pro:

Now here's the absolute whopper. Apple tried and failed and failed again to put a G5 chip into a notebook, and now FINALLY we have a laptop that crushes the G4 barrier of the past. And wow, Apple's stats are phenomenal; 4-5X faster than the current PowerBook G4. That blows me away - I consider the Powerbook to be a PHENOMENAL system, and to shatter it by that much...wow. I can't wait to see one of these in action. The MacBook Pro sounds like the laptop to end all laptops (except for its name...can't say much about that).

And check out it's new features! These blow me away as much as the system does.

Built in iSight: When I first saw this on the iMac G5, the first thoughts that came into my head were 'HOLY CRAP that's small!' and 'It'd be so sweet to have one of those on a laptop...I wonder if they can do that...nah.' Now we have it on a laptop! This thing is supposed to have twice the resolution of the commercial iSight camera, and seeing as I have that attached to the top of my laptop all the time, this'll be a big plus. Now we can close our laptops without having to remove the iSight, and we don't have go through the process of attaching the damn thing either! An awesome, awesome addition.

MagSafe: A magnetic power adapter! This thing is pure genius. When Steve said in the keynote, 'how many of you have had your notebook go flying after somebody tripped over your power cable?', I was bouncing up and down going 'ME! ME! Almost everyone I know! What're you gonna do about it huh?!?'. Then he revealed the new plug; held in magnetically, comes off when tugged on. All I can say about this is...I WANT IT, NOW. Pure GENIUS, and Patent Pending for Apple :P.

Built-in Front Row: Whilst I still have issues with this thing using an IR remote instead of Bluetooth, I love the fact that this has been added. Plug the MacBook Pro into your TV, and boom, you have a home entertainment super hub. Sweet.

15.4-inch Cinema Display: Sporting huge resolutions, this thing is apparently as bright as the Apple Cinema Displays. Now, I thought the PowerBook's newest display was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in a laptop, but now this? If you haven't seen one of Apple's Cinema Displays in action, trust me, they're stunning. This computer will look stunning as well as run beautifully. And with the addition of Front Row, imagine how awesome it's gonna be watching movies on the MacBook Pro.

All in all, unless Apple releases something better in the next few months (don't count against them doing that...), this is the laptop to end all laptops. And at the same prices as the 15" and 17" PowerBook, I can't see why anyone would buy those anymore...no matter how sweet they still are. I WANT A MACBOOK PRO!

Overall, a pretty off-paced keynote, until the end, when Steve dropped the atom bomb that is the MacBook Pro on us.

New Year cheer

2006-01-05T00:49:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year!

Well, we've entered 2006, and there's less than a week until Macworld. Meanwhile, the Consumer Electronics Show has kicked off in Las Vegas, with good ol' Bill Gates delivering an opening keynote, unveiling some of the 'new' features of the upcoming Windows Vista. In an interview with Bloomberg at the CES,Gates discusses the new Windows operating system and calls Vista a 'big, big milestone'. So let's take a look at some of their 'breakthroughs' and some of the new technology he unveils. I'll add my thoughts after each one...just for kicks.

1. New search features built into the operating system, with Vista including 'great desktop search capability', as well as new internet search services. Gates says that search should improve a lot, give straight answers, and not require a treasure hunt to find what you want.

- What's that thing...one of the most powerful features of Mac OSX Tiger, that genuinely allows you to find anything on your system with relative ease? Oh yeah, Spotlight. Oh, and Google figured out the whole internet search thing a while ago. You know, upon reflection, the only major search engine/tool that frustrates me the point of it feeling like a treasure hunt is the Windows 'Find' function.

2. New software called Photo Gallery will provide users with a way of organising photos, even allowing them to resize them and remove red-eye.

- Wow...that's exactly what I use iPhoto for.

3. In an interview on BBC's World Business Report, Gates talked about how software could allow users to better interact with and organise their music and photos, and how important these new features were to Vista.

- Hey, iWonder where he got the idea of having an operating system complete with software and integrated functions that let you organise and handle music, photos and movies with ease? Big breakthrough for Windows users I guess, who haven't had an update since...oh...2001, when they released XP. Too bad he didn't copy the Finder layout too.

4. The new version of MSN Messenger will include capabilities to place phone calls over the internet, with a handset to go with it.

- What innovation! I hope MSN Messenger's VoIP features are good, seeing as iChat doesn't work on PC's and there aren't any better alterna..[ahem] Skype [ahem]...tives for making calls over the internet.

5. A new built in service, Urge, will allow users to download songs off the internet for a fee. A few music players, built by companies like Toshiba, use Microsoft software for handling portable media and syncing with devices. These will benefit from Urge.

- What can I say...there are some things in life that Urge will be ok for...for everyone else, there's iTunes. I wonder what the ratio of Apple:Toshiba is in the portable media player market?

6. Gates talks about how HD DVD representing a 'big deal' for PC users, allowing users to have a jukebox of movies on their hard disk.

- Remember Macworld 2005, when Jobs said more or less the same thing? If iLife didn't come with OSX, I'd hug the box right about now. And why doesn't Windows have a 3rd party utility like Handbrake Lite?

7. New security features will be built into Vista, eliminating the need to download loads of add-ons.

- Security? Isn't there a HUGE security flaw in XP that you should be working on first? And a quick poll, who here downloads hundreds of add-ons to protect their Mac? Anybody? No? Didn't think so.

Hmmm...

Basically the jist of Bill Gates' hype over Windows Vista is improved internet services, improved security and how it will allow users to organise their photos, music and movies, as well as search for files easily on their systems. I would say, if you wanted that so badly, you could've bought a Mac a few years ago.

In the Bloomberg interview, Gates is asked whether or not Microsoft has learned anything from competitors such as Google and Apple, and he responds by saying 'we know all about rapid growth'. Straight answers eh? Maybe we should build a search feature into his brain.

Here are a few more things I love about Microsoft:
- The Xbox 360 uses 3 IBM PowerPC chips. The Xbox 360 overheats and crashes. Apple has just switched away from the IBM PowerPC chips.
- They delayed the release of Vista 'Longhorn' by 2 years. As Jobs so beautifully put it, in the time that Apple released Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger and announced Leopard, Microsoft released...XP.

It's also probably worth mentioning that we'll have to wait until about the end of the year before we can get our hands on Vista. Apple should be releasing Leopard around then. You gotta love Microsoft's breakthrough innovation.

Ladies and gentlemen, I've said it once, and I'll say it again. Buy a Mac.

By the way, PC World just gave the iPod nano an award.

"Unfortunately, people are not rebelling against Microsoft. They don’t know any better." - Steve Jobs

Nano thoughts

2005-12-29T01:41:00.000-05:00

Well, I've been playing around with my Nano for a few days, and I absolutely love it. It serves the exact purpose I wanted it to serve; to carry all of my favourite songs, instead of my entire library (we'll let my 3G iPod do that), in something that is not only sexy, but also weighs next to nothing, so I can hardly feel it, even when it's hanging around my neck. The flash-based memory is a BIG plus too; instant load times and no hard drive glitches, brilliant.

I haven't been able to find one of those Podstar devil cases yet (see previous post), but I'm still looking. In the meantime, I picked up one of these leather Capdase cases; which I find really sleek and good looking, and it's a perfect fit as well; thumbs up.

Nano

2005-12-27T10:36:00.000-05:00

So...Christmas has come for Apple Whore. I just got my hands on a new, 2GB, white iPod Nano. I'm gonna take this baby for a spin, but first I'm going case shopping tomorrow. I want one of these Podstar cases, but might have some trouble finding one...I hope I run into some place that carries them.

God's Keynote Speech

2005-12-25T19:59:00.000-05:00

Here's a little gem I came across whilst listening to the MacCast; it's a little audio skit, featuring a Jobs-esque keynote speech, delivered by God. It's from The Catholic Insider, a podcast from the perspective of a priest. I found it incredibly amusing, and definitely think it's worth checking out if you're an Apple enthusiast. I love the little stabs at Windows and how accurately the keynote style is reproduced.

Here's a link to the keynote:

God's Keynote Speech

This is the site you can find it on, if you're interested:

The Catholic Insider

Happy Holidays!

2005-12-24T19:31:00.000-05:00

Seasons greetings!

Things have been quiet in the buildup to Macworld, but one issue that's popped up is how to get video onto the 5G iPod. How, oh how do we convert our .avi's and other video formats to iPod compatible formats? There's a bunch of third party software out there, most of which isn't free, sucks or leaves a watermark on your video unfortunately, and Quicktime Pro is both not only incredibly slow, but I also haven't figured out how to consistently convert (for free) to iPod compatible H.264 or MPEG-4 formats that contain both audio and video.

Though I approve of Apple's long-term strategy, employing the iPod to get 3rd parties and media producers to switch to H.264, it'd be cool to be able convert all video extensions to formats playable on iTunes right now. I don't know that much about this area, unfortunately. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

To buy or not to buy?

2005-12-20T01:17:00.000-05:00

We're now less than a month away from Macworld, and the web is rife with rumours, the hottest of which being of course whether or not Apple will release its Intel Macs in January, instead of June as Jobs originally set out. All indications point to a 'yes, they will' answer, but regardless of this, an interesting point was raised by my dad the other day.

Apple will release its Intel systems this coming year, be it January or June. The question is, would it be worth buying some Macs still running the PowerPC chips before the new chips are fully introduced? Or do we wait and splash out for Intel systems in preparation for the future? Presumably, value would drop once the new systems are unveiled, but aside from money, there's a point to be made about performance.

So software developers have been advised to switch to XCode and write all future software with Universal Binaries, providing support for both PowerPC and Intel architechture. However, the new Intel systems won't be able to run a lot of old PowerPC software natively, and instead are going to have to rely on Rosetta to translate. But at the same time, presumably developers will stop optimising their new software and updates for PowerPC architecture. So what we might see I think is a dip in performance on the new Intel systems when it comes to running PowerPC native software, but a dip in performance on the PowerPCs when it comes to running new software.

Either way, firstly, if PowerPC system prices drop, buying one would basically be getting a great system for cheaper than it's worth. Secondly, there is a higher resale value for older, used Macs than old crapboxes...sorry, PCs...and if the current PowerPCs meet your needs, it certainly does sound tempting to go for it.

So...to buy or not to buy?

Worries dispelled. First Post.

2005-12-20T00:12:00.000-05:00

Thought this would make an appropriate first post, to sum up what this blog will be all about. When I have a bit more time I'll work on the layout.

I'd just like to extend a warm greeting to Creative, I thought they might have been onto something when they created the Zen Vision:M and marketed it like this (albeit minus the iPod sexy factor).

Pretty sleek looking, eh?

Instead, it turns out that in reality Creative's new product looks like this when placed next to the masterpiece they're trying to replace:

That is why Apple has 92% market share and Creative has 2.3%. And I was actually worried for a few weeks about this.

Shame on them. I used to like Creative products.

Apple forever baby.