Tomorrow, Oct. 20, Apple will host its much anticipated “Back to the Mac” media event. Many industry observers expect Apple CEO Steve Jobs to announce a new MacBook Air ultra-portable computer, among other things. But what do those who make a living calculating odds think? Read More »
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Charles Moore
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Opera Software released version 10.63 of their flagship browser on Tuesday, with another round of tweaks, enhancements and bug fixes. Being a consummate Opera fan, I wasted no time checking it out Opera in both Snow Leopard and on my old G4 PowerBook running Tiger. Read More »
Does the Mac community need another Web browser? Probably not if we’re talking conventional browsers, as there’s a luxury of choices already available: Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and a gaggle of others. But Fake is different, and it could just be the time-saver you’re looking for. Read More »
My main computer for the past 19 months has been a Core 2 Duo unibody MacBook. It’s fast, has an excellent LED backlit display, is quiet and reliable. Nevertheless I still log some three to four hours per day on average with my 10-year-old Pismo PowerBooks. Read More »
It’s looking like Firefox version 3.6 may well be the end of the road for Power PC holdout fans of Mozilla.org’s flagship web browser. In a posting on Tuesday, Mozilla affirmed: “the likely outcome is that we will not be supporting PPC [PowerPC] for Firefox 4.” Read More »
Apple has closed a deal to access all the intellectual property of LiquidMetal Technologies regarding an amorphous, non-crystalline, metal alloy with unique atomic structures that can be used to create products that are stronger, lighter, and harder than is possible with alloys of titanium or aluminum. Read More »
After nearly a year in release, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard still seems to still be a work in progress. I keep trying to upgrade to Snow Leopard, but always end up back with Leopard for a number of reasons including bugs and hardware stress. Read More »
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A university professor friend and recent platform-switcher jestingly refers to “the Church of the Mac.” He’s become an enthusiastic Mac evangelist and is perceiving some loose parallels. My learned friend is far from unique in drawing analogies between computer platform affinities and religion. Read More »
Rumor mills churned after Digitimes reported last week that Apple is readying to launch a new generation MacBook Air. This as-yet vaporous machine will allegedly sport an even more svelte form factor facilitated by an 11.6-inch display and an Intel Core i-series ultra-low voltage processor. Read More »
The biggest speculative conundrum for Mac laptop watchers is, “Whither the MacBook Air?” It’s been over a year since the Air received its last refresh, and the puzzler is whether it will be getting another or just be allowed to fade away from relevance through neglect. Read More »
Multitouch user input is the current “latest big thing” in mobile computing. However, little is yet known about long-term stresses that using multitouch input systems may inflict on our muscles, nerves, and tendons. Read More »
My daughter loves her iPhone, and recently observed that the iPhone OS reminds her a lot of Mac OS Classic System 6 — the operating system on which we both cut our computing teeth some 18 years ago. I think she has a valid point. Read More »
Is the iPhone a more important invention than the humble water closet? As one who has lived for extended periods of time in houses and cottages without indoor plumbing, I would say not, but according to your typical British consumer, it is. Read More »
Given Apple’s increasingly evident distractedness from Mac OS development as it concentrates more on the mobile space with the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, some are suggesting that Ubuntu captures the traditional “Mac” spirit and vision better than the actual Mac OS does these days. Read More »
Ackerman thinks that something being largely overlooked amidst the tsunami of iPad hype is what he deems its biggest potential “achievement” — that Apple’s touchscreen quasi-PC might have finally struck a fatal blow to the longstanding standard of computer input devices, the computer mouse. Read More »
Have a hankering to be a published author? With the iPad’s launch expected to exponentially increase interest in and demand for e-books, a new e-book publishing and distribution platform called Smashwords could be your ticket to , if not necessarily literary fame and fortune, at least … Read More »
So here we are, just past the six month mark since Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard was sprung last August 28, and I’m still using OS 10.5 Leopard. I have lots of company. The NetApplications HitsLink Market Share data for February 2010 shows that Leopard is still … Read More »
Writing in the Huffington Post, Larry Magid raises the point that PC netbooks are hot sellers for very good reasons — namely that these small laptops, which typically cost between $300 and $400, can do most things a large portion of users want to do … Read More »
Two years before the Macintosh was unveiled, Apple’s then-and-future CEO was photographed by Charles O’Rear for a National Geographic Magazine feature on Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, riding a 1966 BMW R60/2 motorcycle. 27 years old, with longish hair (no helmet), wearing tan boots and a light-colored shirt with … Read More »
The Register’s Tony Smith notes in a report that the last 12 months have been good for netbook makers, who cumulatively shipped 30.2 million of the mini laptops in that period. According to market watcher Strategy Analytics, that’s 79 percent more than they moved in … Read More »
Another nail in OS X 10.4 Tiger’s coffin was recently hammered in a post by Mozilla Foundation’s Josh Aas. Support for Tiger Already Terminated Aas reveals that development support for OS X 10.4 Tiger was terminated as of September 2009, but much of the code required to support … Read More »
Still running a PowerPC Mac and hurting for some serious browser speed, up-to-date security and web standards compatibility? Being open-source applications, Mozilla’s web browsers and Thunderbird email client are open to being breathed on by third-party developers, several of whom specialize in optimization of particular versions … Read More »
Steve Jobs says the iPad is better than a laptop, tacitly implying that the notebook’s days are numbered. Don’t be too sure about that, though. Read More »
Macworld’s Joe Kissell observes that there are many fine Mac Web browsers to choose from, and there’s no reason not to have several installed so that you can switch among them as needed. Indeed, I virtually always have at least three up and running at … Read More »
PC World’s Jeff Bertolucci recently posed the rhetorical question, “Could a tablet replace your notebook?” He referenced not only Apple’s anticipated tablet computer but also new PC tablets like the one from Microsoft and HP that was pitched at CES, the chatter about which inclined … Read More »
Laptops are great; I’m an uber-fan and have been almost exclusively a laptop user since 1996, but for the long hours of production work that many web workers like myself do, conventional laptop ergonomics are a horror, and can lead to a variety of painful or … Read More »
Most modern Macs, except for the MacBook Air and some MacBook models (such as my late 2008 unibody, alas), offer both FireWire and USB connections, so when shopping for an external hard drive you have plenty of options for something that will work with your Mac, … Read More »
InfoWorld’s Randall C. Kennedy thinks not. Sounding a sour note about Apple’s anticipated tablet plans, InfoWorld’s Randall C. Kennedy says that even clever engineering can’t overcome fundamental limitations of tablet computing, “Tablet PCs suck,” says Kennedy, categorically, elaborating that tablets are underpowered, only marginally portable, and … Read More »
The title of a recent Mac Night Owl column by Gene Steinberg grabbed me as a question that might have been more relevant 10 years ago. “Can You Survive Without a Desktop Mac?” Gene queries rhetorically. From my perspective, and I think that of many others … Read More »
Computers get dirty, especially their human interface surfaces — keyboards and pointing devices. In some instances, dirt can even affect input device performance as well as appearance. Some time ago the faithful SlimType gave me a scare when the F and W keys stopped responding properly. … Read More »
The rhetorical question du jour on the Mac Web seems to be whether the traditional Mac advantage is eroding due to increased reliance on “the Cloud,” or not. Are online applications and utilities, such as the impressive suite of free functionality marshaled by Google, making the … Read More »
I’ve been partitioning my hard drives since my very first Mac — a used Mac Plus back in 1992. Yes, I divided the Plus’s commodious 20MB external SCSI HD into two partitions so I could boot either System 6 (for speed) or System 7 (for Internet … Read More »
Back in 2007, the Mac web rumor mill was abuzz for a while about a reported September meeting in California between Steve Jobs and Volkswagen CEO Winterkorn over possibly integrating the iPod, iPhone, and other Apple products into an automobile — with blogosphere speculation about possibly … Read More »
Google’s Chrome Browser was released to the public as a beta version for Microsoft Windows in September 2008, and currently enjoys 3.6 percent marketshare worldwide (NetApplications data November 1) putting it in fourth place behind MSIE, Firefox, and Safari. There was initially no Mac version, but last … Read More »
The second wave of H1N1 swine flu is here. Vaccine’s in short supply, so we need alternate strategies for coping with the pandemic, the consequences of which could include a lack of Internet bandwidth capacity if large numbers of workers opt for staying home and telecommuting … Read More »
AppleGazette’s Kevin Whipps addresses the quandary over how to choose between a MacBook and a MacBook Pro, noting that it used to be that if you wanted a 13-inch Mac laptop (excluding the MacBook Air), the only option was the original MacBook. Now with a … Read More »
The new plastic unibody MacBook is arguably the second-best MacBook model Apple has produced yet (trumped only by the late 2008 aluminum unibody MacBook). So why am I finding myself unexpectedly underwhelmed and disappointed with it? When rumors began circulating in late summer about an imminent new … Read More »
Apple is putting a lot of emphasis on its “green” initiatives lately. But is it the real deal? For example, Apple’s new energy efficiency page says that because 53 percent of Apple’s greenhouse gas emissions are a result of the power its products consume, it’s designing … Read More »
ChannelWeb’s Steven Burke says that in the manifold comparisons of Windows 7 with Snow Leopard burning up the Web, what all the reviewers and pundits seem to be forgetting is that it’s not about the operating system, which he maintains is simply the engine that … Read More »
I’ve finally got computer glasses, after years of gradually increasing difficulty focusing at mid-range between distance and close-up vision. My optometrist first suggested bifocals back in ’02, but I resisted. In hindsight, this was not my wisest decision. My reasoning wasn’t vanity; I was getting along … Read More »
I usually have at least three browsers open at any time. One will be a Mozilla Gecko app (Firefox, Camino, or SeaMonkey) and one an Apple WebKit based program (Stainless, Cruz, iCab, Shiira, OmniWeb, or especially since Safari 4 was released, Safari itself). Interestingly, I find … Read More »
There are alternatives to Photoshop Elements, including a gaggle of online image editing programs offered either for free or a modest fee. None of them holds a candle to full-fledged bitmap image editors like Photoshop Elements, Pixelmator or Acorn in terms of power and sophistication, but … Read More »
MacNewsWorld’s Chris Maxcer addresses the abiding conundrum of whether to upgrade one’s existing system or buy a new Mac, noting that when you’ve had your Mac long enough, it’s only natural to start thinking about more speed and more memory. So the operative question is whether … Read More »
Writing on Fast Company, Farhad Manjoo says that not long ago, he got his hands on “one of the slowest, ugliest, and least-user-friendly Macintosh laptops the world has ever seen” — and he loves it, since it sports a couple of features that others can’t … Read More »
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the original release of the Macintosh Portable — the first truly untethered Mac, thanks to its internal battery. There’s a quote attributed to Steve Jobs: “Do not trust a computer that you cannot lift.” The original compact desktop Macs were offered … Read More »
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