At my desktop workstation I use an external keyboard and mouse with my Mac notebooks, and one keyboard function I really miss when I use them in actual hands-on laptop mode is the freestanding keyboard’s dedicated Forward Delete key. It’s something I’m accustomed to having, use […] Read more »
Last weekend, New York Times’ Virginia Heffernanhit a resonant chord with me in a wonderfully crafted piece eloquently relating why she hated the iPhone experience so much she returned her iPhone to AT&T, replacing it with a BlackBerry. The nexus of Ms. Heffernan’s iPhone discontent was […] Read more »
It seems that some new iPhone games in the App Store have the British anti-gun lobby’s knickers in a knot. Macworld UK’s Nick Spence says reports in British newspapers claim the series of iPhone and iPod touch apps developed by the French firm Damabia, such as […] Read more »
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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer set the proverbial cat among the pigeons last week with his contention at the McGraw-Hill Companies’ Media Summit in New York that Mac buyers pay a $500 price premium for merely a designer logo. “Apple gained about one point, but now I […] Read more »
Sometimes it’s the little things that make your day go more smoothly. One such thing is the cool and elegant freeware utility, Search It. With Search It installed, when you press a hot key a simple search field pops up (sort of the way the Quicksilver […] Read more »
Earlier I referenced a report by Australian news site Smarthouse’s David Richards saying Apple is close to launching a touchscreen “netbook type” computer according to unnamed Asian sources. Richards is now citing sources at Korean OEM components supplier LG who tell him not only will Apple […] Read more »
Software innovations are often over-hyped, so I approached the Opera Turbo Labs preview version of the Opera 10 browser with — how shall I say? — hopeful skepticism. As one who has suffered (not too strong a word) with a slow rural dial up Internet connection […] Read more »
I’m a fan of automobile-computer analogies, and Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu came up with a dandy in a research note last week, noting that “sources” in Apple’s distribution channels are seeing a “stronger-than-expected reception” to new Mac desktop computers, especially the Mac minis announced a […] Read more »
An interesting bit of scuttlebutt from Australian news site Smarthouse’s David Richards says Apple is close to launching a touchscreen “netbook type” computer according to new sources in Asia, which is a pretty widely-disseminated rumor this week. But what I hadn’t got wind of before is […] Read more »
Our old 700 MHz iBook G3 passed away quietly on Saturday evening. My wife had used it to check her email that morning, and all had seemed well, but when she tried to wake it for a late-night check just before retiring, it refused to respond. […] Read more »
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Many Mac experts recommend purchasing the AppleCare Protection Plan extended warranty — particularly for laptop users, arguing there are just too many things that can go wrong and that replacing notebooks and their parts can be very expensive. But is it really worth it? I’ve heard […] Read more »
Mozilla recently released Thunderbird 3 Beta 2, another stop along the road to the final release of Thunderbird 3. Thunderbird is a full-featured, open-source email client originally based on the old Mozilla suite browser’s Mail module, which in turn derived from the ancient Netscape Communicator Messenger […] Read more »
Last month, reinstalling Leopard on my G4 PowerBook broke Photoshop Elements 6, and one reason I’ve been able to procrastinate about the necessary application reinstall (there oughta be a better way, Adobe — nothing else broke) is that Pixelmator is getting so darned good that I […] Read more »
While my new unibody MacBook is pretty state-of-the-art, and indeed the most contemporaneously avant garde computer I’ve ever owned, I’m still a fan of good older hardware and getting a lot of useful work out of my two nine-year-old Pismo PowerBooks. The Pismo, for a variety […] Read more »
A Mac writer colleague and I have been engaged in a friendly debate for the past several months over whether the 13″ unibody MacBook is a worthy successor to the 12″ PowerBook as a serious road warrior machine. My friend is not anti-unibody by any means […] Read more »
Apple computers have frequently been compared to Volvo automobiles, more due to the perceived political and ideological leanings of a prominent cohort of their respective users (ie: urban liberals) rather than commonality of design and engineering philosophy. Indeed, while Apple has tended to be a design […] Read more »
DEVONtechnologies this week released the second public betas of their new DEVONthink and DEVONnote information manager applications, and I downloaded Professional Office Version 2 to take a looksee. Already one a powerful productivity tool for OS X, this major update adds even more convenience, functionality and […] Read more »
Apple is taking a lot of stick (even more than usual) about hanging tough with premium pricing despite the global financial meltdown, and it almost never offers discounts or sales. So how can budget-constrained Macheads economize on system upgrades? One solution is to buy a less-expensive […] Read more »
I quickly became addicted to Spotlight when I upgraded to Tiger back in 2005, but why, I wondered, did Apple have to ruin easy filename searches in the Tiger Find dialog, after just finally getting them working right in Panther? Of course you can run filename […] Read more »
I was pleased that Apple resisted going to the ultra-wide 16:9 (WXGA/HDTV) screen aspect ratio that’s becoming popular in PC laptops for the new unibody MacBook revisions, sticking with the 16:10 (WXGA+/WSXGA) proportions carried over from the aluminum PowerBooks and older MacBooks. By my lights, 16:10 […] Read more »
In the lull between Christmas and New Years, Intel released its new Q9000 quad-core mobile processor, and PC maker Acer almost simultaneously its Q9000-powered Aspire 8930G-7665 “extreme gaming” and multimedia notebook computer with an 18″ 1920 x 1080 pixel 16:9 aspect ratio display. Many Mac notebook […] Read more »
A tip of the hat to fellow TheAppleBlog contributor Clayton Lai in his recent column NVIDIA Killed My 2007 MacBook Pro, and the people who commented with similar tales of premature hardware failure woe, for finally convincing me to cross the late 2008 MacBook Pro off […] Read more »
There’s pretty universal consensus in the Mac portable community that Apple jumped the gun in dropping FireWire support from the new unibody MacBooks, with nothing adequate to replace its full functionality. Sure, you can transfer and backup files reasonably efficiently over a USB 2.0 connection, but […] Read more »
Disappointed? Not me! I thought Apple’s farewell Macworld Expo keynote had plenty of substance, notwithstanding that Phil Schiller lacks Steve Jobs’ on-stage presence and charisma. Phil had an unenviable assignment, and I think he carried it off well. I’ve been astonished and saddened by a quite […] Read more »
I imagine most people using OS 10.5 have become acquainted with Quick Look, which is one of my favorite Leopard features. Quick Look’s basic function, as its name suggests, is as a quick and convenient way to take a peek at what’s in a file without […] Read more »
Got a MacBook for Christmas? I’ve used laptop computers almost exclusively for a dozen years now, and they’ve been great, but for day in, day out, workhorse duty the standard laptop configuration does have serious ergonomic deficiencies. If you position the computer high enough for comfortable […] Read more »
Mouse technology has advanced a lot over the past two decades. The Apple Lisa-derived mouse with its DE-9 connector and thumb screws that attached it securely to my first Mac, a 1988 Mac Plus, was a pretty crude piece of engineering, with an analog ball of […] Read more »
Apple’s new notebook-oriented 24-inch LED Cinema Display is certainly a glorious piece of equipment. If you’re not up to speed, this 24-inch LED-backlit 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution glossy-finish widescreen unit includes a built-in iSight video camera, mic and speakers in an elegant, thin aluminum and […] Read more »
Apple’s decision to not equip the new unibody MacBook with a FireWire port has been as popular as the proverbial skunk at a garden party, at least with seasoned Mac users. Aside from the MacBook Air, which suffers from manifold deficiencies in the I/O department, the […] Read more »
How many Mac fans are still using OS 9? It’s a difficult statistic to track, or at least I’ve found it so. Hitslink’s November 2008 market share report shows pre-Intel Mac operating systems still represent a respectable (nearly three times the penetration of Linux) 2.35 percent […] Read more »
Have a MacBook that is a hottie, literally? Today’s laptop computers, from the 1.6 GHz MacBook Air on up, have more performance than most of us need, but the downside is heat. When I first reviewed Targus’s Chill Mat product nearly four years ago, it was […] Read more »
An unheralded new feature Apple quietly added to OS X 10.5 Leopard is the ability to create, expand, or shrink hard drive partitions without erasing the entire drive. Several third-party applications can repartition drives as well, but it is a function that had never previously been […] Read more »
Funtastic Photos is an amazingly powerful, feature-packed, easy to use little photo editor application. The user interface is clean and uncluttered in homage to iLife conventions, but a vast array of photo correction and enhancement tools are included. Funtastic Photos taps into OS X technologies like […] Read more »
The 13″ aluminum MacBook is an “almost” machine. It appeals to me in many aspects, being a roughly three-quarter-sized unibody MacBook Pro at a substantially lower price. But it falls just short of the slam-dunk it might have been. For me, probably the biggest negative is […] Read more »
One of the reasons I’m a die-hard laptop aficionado is that I live in a rural area where power blackouts are not uncommon. Late November usually brings at least one with the arrival of the first major winter storm. This year proved no exception, with a […] Read more »
One of the things I loved about the old Mac OS Classic was that to create a bootable disk, all you had to do was make a folder named System Folder, drag in System and Finder files and an Appearance Folder, then drag your bare-bones System […] Read more »
For basic photo editing, if you’re running OS X 10.5 Leopard you don’t need Photoshop Elements or Pixelmator. Leopard’s Preview graphics viewer application is much more than a viewer; it now incorporates some very handy image correction tools that are not only user-friendly and intuitive to […] Read more »
According to a rumor making the rounds last week, Apple is said to be exploring potential for using more exotic materials in the next revision MacBook Air. Appleinsider’s Kasper Jade reports that scuttlebutt suggests Apple is unsatisfied with the Air’s three-pound weight and looking into substituting […] Read more »
Targus, a company more popularly associated with its extensive line of laptop cases, also markets computer accessories. One of their newer introductions is the Targus USB 2.0 4-Port Bend-A-Hub, a modestly-priced, useful add-on and an excellent gift suggestion or stocking stuffer for computer users on your […] Read more »
Whatever system hardware you’re using, including the port-impoverished new 13″ MacBooks, SimpleTech’s new Duo Pro Drive should have you covered. The Duo Pro supports a variety of different backup options, including Apple’s OS X 10.5 Time Machine as well as SimpleTech’s own Fabrik Ultimate Backup, and […] Read more »
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