Category: Apple

If you are in the process of buying a Mac now put your purchase on hold. Why? Apple has a habit of introducing new products or upgrades during one it large events which are held throughout the year. Steve Jobs usually starts these events with his famous keynotes and then introduces the new products. Next month is the Apple Expo in Paris in which the new iMac G5 was introduced last year. During these expos it is expected that Apple would introduce new hardware and software products, or at least some hardware and software updates. Below is a list of the Apple products divided into two sections, “Likely to be Updated” and “Not LIkely to be Updated”.

Likely to be Updated
Powerbooks (Last updated in January)
iPod Shuffle (Last updated in January)

Not Likely to be Updated
iBooks (Last updated in July)
Mac Mini (Last updated in July)
iPod (Last updated in June)
PowerMacs (Last updated in April)
iMacs (Last updated in May)

To keep up to date with Mac rumors and news I would recommend checking the following sites before making a Mac purchase:

MacRumors Buyers Gude Excellent Source
MacRumors
Think Secret
AppleInsider
Apple Nova Forum

Its finally out and now available on Mactopia. [Link]

Update: I just tried it out, sooo not worth the download. Will continue using Adium instead.

I am going to order an iBook this week and was planning on using my old Waterfield Design Vertigo bag of mine which Nataly is currently using. But I was talking to Nibaq earlier and we were discussing bags and I remembered how fun it was to shop for my last bag iBook bag. This is why I decided my new iBook would deserve a new bag. Nibaq and I both have different requirements when it comes to bags. As he puts it he is “technical” when it comes to bags. Meaning, they must be big, ugly and fit his laptop, 20 cameras, 2 desks, his favorite blankey, half his wardrobe and 2 book shelves. Me on the other hand, I like bags that look good, are compact, simple and barely fit my stuff.

Its like the difference between a 60GB iPod and a 4GB iPod mini. One allows you to carry all your songs with you, while with the other you only carry the songs you need. So basically, I like to be choosy when it comes to deciding what I need to carry with me since this will be more of my everyday bag and not my “I will travel the world and need to take all my stuff with me” bag.

I just started my quest for the ultimate bag today but already I have a qualifier. I first checked the award winning Cargo bag at Waterfield Designs but I found it looking too much like a regular boring laptop bag and it was also overly priced. My second stop was at the Crumpler shop. I previously purchased the Budgie Smuggler for my Nikon D70 but got mixed results. The bag looked really good and was of excellent build quality, one of the best I have ever seen, but, it was a bit too bulky for my needs. I guess this comes with the territory of purchasing stuff online, you can’t try the stuff before you order them. But, the Crumpler bags are great and the companies personality is really down to earth. This is why I now have my eye on The Breakfast Buffet. I am thinking of getting the blue one and its priced nicely at $95. Its small, enough to fit a 12inch iBook and still has enough room to throw in my PSP, iPod, PDA and notebook. So, until I find something better, it seems this will be the bag I will be getting.

I finally decided it was time to upgrade my aging PowerMac. My Mac at home currently is a Digital Audio Graphite PowerMac with a G4 733mhz processor, 1GB of RAM, 260GB of Hard Disk space, Geforce2 MX and a 8x CD writer. Its a pretty ancient machine but its stable and it has a nice personality. I was stuck between what new Mac to get, I though about getting the soulless PowerMac G5, I have one at work, a Dual 2GHZ G5 and it reminds me of hospitals… it basically lacks character and gives a very sterile feel. Also I would rather wait and get the intel versions that will come out next year. I thought about getting the sleek 20inch iMac but they are very limited when it comes to upgrading. I thought about the 12inch PowerBooks but I dislike them a lot. I have played around and used both my brothers and Nat’s powerbooks and they seem fragile and look PC-ish. The 15inch and 17inch Powerbooks I believe are too big to carry around often and I really also didn’t want my primary Mac to be a laptop.

So, in the end I decided to stick with my current PowerMac except upgrade the hell out of it. I just ordered a Dual G4 1.6ghz chip upgrade from GigaDesigns. I will be upgrading the crappy 8x CD writer to a Pioneer 8x DVD writer (finally will be able to read DVDs on my mac!). I will upgrade the VGA card to an ATI with dual monitor support so I can hookup my extra Sony 17inch monitor to my 21inch Sony monitor I am currently using. I will also get another 160GB hard drive (this brings the total of 4 internal IDE drives, 2 running at ATA66 and 2 at ATA133) since with my recent movie downloads I started running of space. To top things off I will also order a beautiful 12inch Snow White iBook. I had a G3 700mhz iBook a few years ago but it died a tragic death.

This way I will have a total of two Macs. The PowerMac will serve as my primary computer where I will do all my design work on. The iBook will be my secondary computer where I will do all my web browsing on, most probably from the living room. Will take before and after pictures of my PowerMac and posted them here when I am done.

Fadibou sent me a link to an article comparing Vista to Tiger. Whats cool about the article is that it shows how superior Apple’s OS X is. Through out the whole article the writer compares the 2 products and then talks about how Apple does it better and the coolest thing about all this is that Vista is coming out late 2006 while Apple’s OS X has been around since 2001! Microsoft is still playing catchup to Apple, and now that Apple is going to be using Intel chips, Macs will be cheaper and their market share will grow. Next year is going to be a great year for Apple. [Link]

Wow, this was a surprise! Apple just released a 2 button mouse a minute ago, the MIGHTY MOUSE! AMAZING! [Link]

Mac users, install this, specially if you are a video games fan. I just installed it and opening applications now feel like a great accomplishment! [Link]

Found this old Mac magazine ad, its really funny reading about it now. Technology really has come a long way since then. [Link]

New iBooks
– New trackpad lets you scroll horizontally, vertically or pan around the screen
– Sudden Motion sensor protects the hard drive in free-fall
– Built in Bluetooth 2.0 and Airport Extreme
– iLife ’05

12″ 1.33GHz G4, 512MB RAM, 40GB HD, Combo Drive – $999
14″ 1.42GHz G4, 512MB RAM, 60GB HD, Super Drive – $1299

New Mac mini
The updated Mac mini comes with 512MB of RAM and built in wireless options:

1.25GHz G4, 512MB RAM, 40GB HD, Combo Drive, $499
1.42GHz G4, 512MB RAM, 80GB HD, Combo Drive, Airport Extreme and Bluetooth, $599
1.42GHz G4, 512MB RAM, 80GB HD, Super Drive, Airport Extreme and Bluetooth, $699

More info on Apple.com

Wow, this was unexpected. Konfabulator is a company that created widgets for Mac OS X. When apple released Tiger with its own software called dashboard which used their own set of widgets (Apple basically stole the idea from Konfabulator) it hurt Konfabulators business. They vowed to seek revenge by creating widgets for the Windows operating system. Now it seems Yahoo purchased them… good for them. [Link]

According to the very reliable source Think Secret, Apple is preparing to introduce the new updated iBook anytime this week. [Link]

Shiira is a web browser written in Cocoa. It uses the KHTML rendering engine provided by Apple’s Web Kit. Since this is the same rendering engine used by Safari, HTML content rendered by Shiira will look the same as in Apple’s own browser. Its pretty compact at only 2.5MB and has some cool features… its only 2.5MB! [Link]

Note: Mac Only

Update: Ok I have decided to make Shiira my primary browser for the next few days. So far its better then Safari and a lot quicker and lighter then FireFox. One major disadvantage is that the WordPress admin area isn’t very compatible with Shiira or Safari.

“It’s fast,” said one developer source of Mac OS X running on Intel’s Pentium processors. “Faster than [Mac OS X] on my Dual 2GHz Power Mac G5.” In addition to booting Windows XP at blazing speeds, the included version of Mac OS X for Intel takes “as little as 10 seconds” to boot to the Desktop from when the Apple logo first displays on screen.

sigh… [Link]

Since our agency is not allowed to have pirated software and since we recently cleaned up and deleted our pirated software, the whole creativity department was left without a copy of Microsoft Office. So, I have taken it upon myself to hook everyone up with NeoOffice. NeoOffice is based on OpenOffice, which is both a multi-platform and multi-lingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute. This means this free software will allow us to open and save word documents without having to pay a gazillion dollars in licensing fees. My department aren’t heavy Office users anyway so this will be more then enough. [Link]

Now available via Software Update:

The 10.4.2 Update delivers overall improved reliability and compatibility for Mac OS X v10.4 and is recommended for all users. It includes fixes for:

– file sharing using AFP and SMB/CIFS network file services
– single sign-on authentication and reliable access to Active Directory servers
– autologin for managed user accounts
– AirPort and wireless access
– Core Graphics, Core Audio, Core Image, including updated ATI and NVIDIA graphics drivers
– Finder updates including finding on Kind and using Slideshow
– synchronizing your iDisk with .Mac
– installation reliability
– managing Dashboard widgets
– Address Book, Automator, iCal, iChat, Mail, Safari, and Stickies applications
– compatibility with third party applications and devices

For detailed information on this Update, please visit this website: https://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n301722

For detailed information on Security Updates, please visit this website: https://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n61798