Apple Upgrades
Powermac
These now have 4 processors instead of 2. The chips are now dual core. This means in basic tersm that in each processor chip there are two independant processors. So two sets of two makes for. This makes them almost twice as fast as they were before. You can also now have 8 20″ or 23″ screens connected to one of these computers if you have a powerful enough graphics card to do that. The top of the range G5 box will set you back £2300. And more for a really powerful graphics card. You can also have 16gb of high performance RAM. So most people could have all the music that they have on their computer put into a G5’s RAM and it would still run smoothly.
Powerbook
The 17″ model will now display a maximum resolution of 1680x1050. This is also a widescreen resolution. Which it a lot since you are probably viewing this at 1024x768. This graphics card will also run an external 30″ cinema display if you happen to have one of those. The 17″ model also has a 120gb hard drive and weighs in at a tidy 3.1kg! One final thing that you can do, if you have a 15″ or 17″ then you can swap the battery in it without turning it off, just put it to sleep and change without having to save your work!
Flock
Flock is a new internet browser which is presumably aimed at PC users that are currently using internet explorer and are looking for something better that isn’t Firefox. At the moment it in in Beta. On Flock’s homepage it says (more…)
iPod Nano
I went to my local Apple Dealer (Farpoint Developments) and asked to see one of the new iPod Nanos. And sure enough someone pulled it out of his pocket. And it is so small!! Even though I had seen the size in numbers on the internet, and even twizzled it about with a 3D thing too, I had just not realised how small it actually is when it is in front of you. It is tiny. And so thin. You must go to an Apple Dealer or Store and try out a Nano. The click wheel handles the same as all the other iPods, and the screen is a bit smaller than the Mini’s. Go. Try. Nano. (As you can see I am in shock over how small and nice they are).
9600 Baud Modem
This is a modem believe it or not. I am not sure if it is compatible with Windows XP but somehow I think not. Anyway if you have a really old computer and are looking to upgrade your 300 baud or maybe 1200 or a fastish 2400 to an ultra fast 9600 then this is the product for you. You can transfer data with this product at a fantastic rate of 0.96kb/sec. This means that is would take 3 hours to send the amount of data you can get on a 1.44mb floppy. (I think that is right). If you are not sure what all this baud stuff means then I will explain. Baud is the number of signals an analogue modem can send in a second. Pretty much all computers these days ship with a 56,600 baud modem, which enables a data flow rate of 56.6kb/sec. If you have a broadband modem the speed will not be measured in baud because it is digital. You can receive data at a rate of at least 512kb/sec which in analogue terms would be 512,000 baud. If they would go that fast. So here folks we have a modem that will receive data 53 times as slow as you standard broadband modem. So stick with broadband unless you are stuck in the 80’s.
OS X Tiger on a PC
The biggest item of news from Apple this year was of course the switch to intel. Apple are giving up on the Power PC chips and are going to start using chips made by intel. The same chips that are used in PCs. All version of OS X have been made for intel but not been put on sale. If you are a member of the Apple Developer Connection, then this year your company has had the option to rent an intel powered G5, to test out your company’s Apps for intel chips. And one of the members of the developer connection has taken the OS X tiger for intel software and hacked it to run on his PC. It wasn’t quite as easy as just putting it in and pressing install but it was rather easier than Apple were hoping. If you interested in putting OS X on your PC, then here is the website of the hacker that did it. And here is a direct link to the instructions on how to do it. I think I might try this although I am not completly sure if my PC is compatible.
Windows Vista Screenshots (Yawn!)
The XP virus, I mean operating system, from Microsoft has been around a while. Microsoft have been ‘working’ on the next version of Windoze. As you know from an earlier post, Microslop have decided to call it ‘Vista’. I don’t know why. I wonder what XP stands for. Maybe is is eXPerience. Vista according to google define means view (amongst being the abbreviation for various organizations). So it is Windoze View. Which means that there will be lots of nice things to look at like fancy loading bars and ridiculous 3D effects, which will drain away all system resources forcing everyone to upgrade, or get a Mac. These things have been put there to try and keep you pleased while you watch your PC crash. Which is why you should, switch to Mac. Anyway, on some website which I found on digg there are pictures of what ‘Windoze View’ will look like. [If you are actually interested].
Mighty Mouse
As all you Mac users out there know, the ‘current’ Apple mouse only has on button. You just press down on the front of the mouse and that is the only button that you have. All PC mice though have two buttons, and now nearly all have a scroll wheel. Well now Apple have put a scroll wheel in their mouse, to come up to speed with the PC mouse market. Apple have redesigned their mouse and called it, the Apple Mighty Mouse. Might Mouse now has two buttons which are touch sensitive, just like iPod click wheel, Mighty mouse also has a button in the middle at the front. You can scroll vertically and horizontally with it. It is also touch sensitive, so does not physically move like all PC mice! You just slide your finger over it, and all the scroll bars move according to the direction of movement. And Apple, not to be outdone have put, on the sides of mighty mouse, two more touch sensitive buttons, which, if you have a mac, can program to expose, and switch to dashboard and stuff. It is the worlds first mass produced completely touch sensitive mouse. But, Apple had to put a tiny speaker in might mouse to make all the sounds that you don’t get with touch sensitive buttons!! [Pointless] If you like this Mighty Mouse, and you have a PC, the Apple Mighty Mouse is compatible with it.
Mac OS X Tiger Review
This morning, my copy of Mac OS X Tiger arrived. I know it came out a while ago, but there are always a few bugs on release day which people haven’t noticed, and I did not want to get affected by these, so I waited a while. And then when I couldn’t wait any longer I sifted through all the Tiger auctions on eBay. There are a lot of fakes, and ones that people have made with their own DVD burner. “Comes on plain disc with no documentation” came up all too often. There were of course lots of legit versions too. Once I had been through them all, I bought the cheapest legit version available. And sure enough this morning it arrived.
Ever since Apple released Tiger there has been loads of talk about it. And nearly all of it has been good. I haven’t read a bad review of it. There have been a few people reporting compatibility issues but press seems to be very good. And now I can see why. It is the best OS ever. I have used 10.2, (for a couple of hours), and the interface isn’t that great, and I there is no fast user switching or expose. Then I used 10.3 for about a year. And that was the best OS, although there were bugs, help was slow, searching was slow and my user developed a tendency to log out after a fast user switch. All of these bugs have been mended in 10.4.
Here are some of the main additions to Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger: (more…)
iWork Review
A ‘Trail Version’ of iWork ships with Tiger. You will find out why I used inverted commas later. iWork is Apple’s productivity suite. That is probably what they call it anyway. As far as I am concerned it is a complete waste of time. It contains only two apps. A word processor, called pages, and a presentation app, called Keynote. I really don’t know what the point of Pages is. All macs ship with Appleworks as far as I know, and that is just fine for pretty much all word processing needs. The rest of the Appleworks components are awful, and virtually impossible to use. But since I never make presentations, and if I need to do a spreadsheet I have a copy of office for mac OS 9, and can make it with that. If you were mad enough to go out and buy iWork it would set you back £49. That is £49 to much in my opinion.
Pages is really crap, along the top (more…)
Optimus Keyboard
This is a next generation computer keyboard. Instead of each key being plastic with a character painted on it, it is a little OLED screen. This means that you have the alphabet on your keyboard when you need to type stuff, and then when you go into a game, or specailist program, each the screen can change, and the function of the key will also change. So say the you wanted the X key on it to be the shoot key, you could tell the keyboard driver that, and then assign the key a little picture. So then you could have a cross hair on it, so you wouldn’t have to keep checking what each key does, because its little screen will tell you. It will be out in UK in 2006, and will aparently cost the same amount as a decent phone. (Which probably means around £100, but it would not surprise me one little bit if it was more than that when it comes out.) So click here to go to the Optimus keyboard website.
Free iPods!!
‘There is no such thing as a free lunch. But there might be such a thing as a free iPod, or a free flat-screen TV’. You are probably aware that there are quite a few websites that are giving away free iPods amongst other things, if you can get people to subscribe to various online offers. People are so keen to get these services known the the public, there are now auctions on eBay that are advistising these websites that give away iPods when you get people to subscribe to certain services.
I know what you are thinking; you are thinking that this is a scam. Well that is what I thought at first, but then I found a page on the BBC website all about this free iPod thing. (more…)
WWDC 2005 Keynote
Every year Steve Jobs, (Apple’s equivilant of Bill Gates,) makes a Keynote presentation all about what is going on at Apple. There is always loads of news about upcoming products, a nice load of statistics about how Apple are doing much better than retched Microsoft, and various product releases. Also, there is one big piece of news. The big item this year, as most of you know, Apple are giving up on Power PC, and changing to Intel. Many of you will be wondering why they are doing this. I could tell you, but I won’t. There is a far better way to find out what Apple were thinking when they decided that they were going to change from the Power PC to the Intel chip. The way to do this is to click the picture above. This really is the best way to find out what is going on at Apple. In two years time, all Apples will be running Intel Chips. My final item. For all of you who thought that Tiger is going to be that major competitor with Longhorn, it won’t be; by the time Microsoft have brought out Longhorn, apple will have realized their next OS. Leopard.
Gmail for Web Hosting
At Seekers on Friday, someone suggested using Gmail storage space for hosting a website. I am not sure if there is an attachment size limit, but if there is it should be pretty high judging by the amount of space they give you. With attachments on Gmail you download them, and that gives you an address of the file, you could then use that address, for hosting files for a website. If it would work in practice or not I don’t know; but that will be something to do today.
UPDATE:The picture within this post is hosted on Gmail.
ANOTHER UPDATE:The picture in the post only displays on my computer; you need the gmail login cookie for it to work.
Why switch when you can have both?
This is a rather cool hack for PC users who are looking into getting a mac (now that should be all of you; if you aren’t , why not??). The idea is you have one mouse, one keyboard, two operating systems (Windows XP and Mac OS X), two screens, but just one mouse pointer. You can’t drag windows between the two systems, but you can copy and paste stuff over the gap and move files. You move the mouse from OS to OS just by moving the mouse. This is for people who have a mac, but just can’t do without some Windows software. I am not sure how it works, but it involves a very clever software hack called Synergy. And then once you don’t need your Wintel anymore, you can use the second screen with Mac OS X :) Have fun!
Dual Screen Setup
This may seem a little sad to some, but I now have a dual screen set up. This means I have double the desktop space. I have an Apple eMac, which is not officially meant to support dual screen. The only Apple computers that support Extended Desktop off the shelf are PowerBooks and Power Mac G5s. But some German geek noticed that the graphics cards in all the current macs on sale, have a graphics card that will support Extended Desktop. So he made a little script which enters the apple firmware (where the setting is that stops Extended Desktop resides) and changed some values and now all Macs can use Extended Desktop. If you have an eMac and are interested in having a Dual Screen Setup, then click here to go to the site to download the firmware crack. You use the patch at your own risk so it is worth checking out the forum for any known problems before downloading. You also need to get a mini VGA to VGA adapter (depdending on the second monitor you wish to use), which are easy to get from Apple for £15 (or eBay cheaper). You may also need to get Switch Res to configure your second monitor, although in some cases this may not be necessary.
