The Author – Bart Busschots
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Apr
30
OS X Leopard 6 Months On
Filed Under Computers & Tech on April 30, 2008 | 1 Comment
It’s hard to believe it’s only been six months since Leopard’s release. At this stage most of the commentary and reviews have been done and dusted for months and people are just getting on with using Leopard. Although it’s only been six short months we’ve already had two major updates to the OS and we’re expecting a third any day now. The reviews ranged from un-fettered admiration to utter condemnation. Reality is of course somewhere in between. I’ve heard a lot of comparison’s made between Leopard and Vista and at least one of them is correct. Like Vista, the first release version of Leopard should have been called a public Beta. Like Vista Leopard was late yet still only half-baked when it did finally ship. However, other comparisons to Vista don’t hold. Leopard has delivered substantial new functionality and it has done so without adding significant bloat. Sure, Apple’s list of 300 changes was hyper-inflated but there were still some real gems in that list. Also, Leopard runs just fine on my first generation Mac Mini which was underpowered even when it was new over three years ago!
The ultimate question is whether or not Leopard was enough of an improvement on Tiger to warrant the price of the upgrade? Are many of the new features actually useful or are they just eye-candy and fluff? Six months on I’m taking the time to reflect and ask myself which Leopard features I’d really miss if I was forced to down-grade to Tiger in the morning.
[tags]OS X, apple, Leopard, Tiger[/tags]
Mar
7
iPhone – the Successful Newton
Filed Under Computers & Tech on March 7, 2008 | 3 Comments
It’s been over a decade since Apple released the last of it’s Newton message pads. The Newton was revolutionary, technically advanced and a head of its time. Technologically it was a marvel, commercially it was a flop. The world simply wasn’t ready. What has changed? I’d suggest that the most important change is not the advent of the iPhone’s amazing touch screen, or it’s fancy graphics capabilities. There are all great but they are not the crucial difference that will make the iPhone a success. That big difference is wireless connectivity. A Newton was a dead-end. The only way to get things in or out of your Newton was by tethering it to your computer. With the iPhone you are permanently connected.
What we’ve seen of the iPhone so far has been fantastic. It’s little brother the iPod Touch is also a fabulous machine. But we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg. With the unbelievably full and open SDK released yesterday we’ve seen the birth of the second phase of the iPhone (and the iPod Touch), the point where it becomes more than a cellphone, PDA, mobile internet device & music player. The iPhone has become a real computer you can carry in your pocket. Remember, the iPhone has more computing power than the desktop you were using only a decade ago. The demos during yesterday’s Apple event really brought that home to me, particularly the one by EA Games and SEGA. I hadn’t dared to hope for such an open SDK. I’m so glad my predictions were wrong.
Keep an eye on the iPhone/iPod Touch, we haven’t seen the half of what this great platform can do yet!
[tags]Apple, iPhone, Newton, SDK[/tags]
Feb
28
iPhone Comes to Ireland in March
Filed Under Computers & Tech on February 28, 2008 | 8 Comments
Well, it’s official, Ireland is getting the iPhone on the 14th of March 2008 exclusively from O2. You can get all the details on this page on the O2 site. That pretty much settles it, my next cellphone will be an iPhone. However, I’m not going to be rushing to buy one on the 14th. I have a perfectly functional cellphone and until that changes I won’t be getting and iPhone. Mind you, if I was less broke I might be more inclined to go out and grab one sooner.
The prices are as I’d expected. The Dollar prices with a Euro sign instead, in other words, standard Apple prices. I’m not impressed by the available contracts though. The lack of an unlimited data plan really stands out as a shortcoming in my book. Mind you, our cell networks are rather poor once you leave the confines of Dublin city so it will probably be a non-issue for quite some time to come. One nice thing is that it’s ‘only’ an 18 month contract, longer than the average here, but shorter than the two years in America.
[tags]iPhone, Ireland, O2[/tags]
Feb
12
OS X 10.5.2 Arrives at Last – A Worthy Update
Filed Under Computers & Tech on February 12, 2008 | 7 Comments
Well wha’ d’ ya know, Apple DO listen to us when we complain. They’ve removed the excessive transparency in menus, they’ve made the translucent MenuBar optional, and they’ve added some nice options to Stacks. If, like me, you thought that having a pile of icons super-imposed upon each other was a terrible way to represent a Stack, then you’ll be happy to hear that there’s now an option to have a stack be represented by the icon for its folder. If you used to like the way Tiger let you navigate a folder in the Dock then you’ll love the newly added ‘List’ view for Stacks, it basically lets you do things the way you used to. Another nice usability improvement is that addition of a MenuBar icon for TimeMachine. This means you can it out of your Dock where it wastes way too much room IMO and just work off the MenuBar. You can now see when TimeMachine is working its magic at a glance and also easily stop an on-going backup or trigger one at any time. Needless to say there are also a myriad of bug fixes, security updates, and a few other tweaks. You can get more details in the uncharacteristically detailed release notes from Apple. 10.5.2 is like a Microsoft Service Pack, it gives the OS a really significant update.
Oh, BTW, if, like me, you were too impatient to wait on Apple to fix the stupid MenuBar transparency and applied the fix I suggested a few months ago you’ll notice that toggling the new checkbox for MenuBar transparency doesn’t work. To roll back that change just issue the following command in the Terminal and then reboot (courtesy of John Gruber on Twitter):
sudo defaults delete /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer 'EnvironmentVariables'
[tags]Apple, OS X 10.5.2, Leopard[/tags]
Jan
25
iTunes 7.6 – A Step Backwards for the iPhone & iPod Touch
Filed Under Computers & Tech on January 25, 2008 | 2 Comments
A few months ago I happily reported that iTunes 7.5 had fixed one of my major gripes with the way photos are synced to iPods and the iPhone. When Apple introduced iLife ’08 they made a big deal about how iPhoto now automatically organised your photos into events for you so you no longer had to waste your time creating albums for everything. Albums and smart albums were now for creating special sets of related photos where the photos could come from any event. This makes perfect sense so I use iPhoto Events extensively.
Before iTunes 7.5 only albums were synced to iPods and iPhones. This made is much harder than it needed to be to find a particular set of photos. This was one of my initial gripes with the iPod Touch. However, iTunes 7.5 improved things dramatically. It treated Events as albums and dutifully synced them. regular Albums and Smart Albums were also synced, and given priority by placing them at the top of the list of albums, above all the Events. The only minor issue with iTunes 7.5 was that events were not in reverse order so you had to scroll to the very bottom to get to your most recent event.
With iTunes 7.6 Apple have thrown all that good work out the window. All the had to do was change the sort-order on events and they would have had it nailed. Instead they added an option so you can now sync EITHER events OR Albums, but not both. This is a real step backwards and nothing short of retarded in my view. It’s an uncharacteristically stupid and negative thing for Apple to do. They had better fix this again in iTunes 7.7 and they had better leave it fixed this time!
[tags]iPod, iPod Touch, iPhone, iTunes, iPhoto[/tags]
Jan
17
Wacworld 2008 Steve-note in 60 Seconds
Filed Under Computers & Tech on January 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment
If you’re just too busy to sit down and watch an entire Steve-note the good people at Mahalo have condensed it down to 60 seconds for you. The scary thing, it doesn’t miss any of the important points!
(thanks to Allison for the link)
[tags]Apple, Steve Jobs, Macworld, Mahalo[/tags]
Jan
16
The iPod Touch Upgrade – Money Well Spent
Filed Under Computers & Tech on January 16, 2008 | 19 Comments
Normally with a Mac keynote you don’t get instant gratification. Sure, you can surf right over to the Apple site and pre-order immediately but you won’t get hold of the goodies for weeks. This keynote was different. My iPod Touch feels like a whole new device today. That’s what I call instant gratification! When the iPod Touch was announced Apple made it very clear what the device would and would not have. The Touch was a very shinny iPod, not an iPhone without the phone, and not a PDA (a point I re-itterated strongly in my initial review). Yesterday Steve announced that from now on all new iPod Touches will literally be iPhones without the Phone, and that those of us with old Touches can upgrade for $20 (or just under €18 in Ireland). That’s $20 to turn an iPod into a PDA. Needless to say I grabbed the upgrade as soon as it became available via Apple’s software update system 🙂
[tags]iPod Touch, Apple[/tags]
Jan
16
Macworld 2008 Keynote – First Thoughts
Filed Under Computers & Tech on | Leave a Comment
Well, another Macworld has been and gone, we have a new stock of Apple goodies to slurp up our disposable cash, and we get to tally our score and see how well we did with our predictions. In some ways this keynote was rather disappointing, so many of the rumours were true! That’s the second year in a row that we’ve had the big news leak before the show. Then you have the fact that there was no ‘and one more thing’ announcement. On the other hand though, if you just look at what was actually announced it was a very impressive Macworld. There were also some wonderful surprises in the details. Sure, we knew we were getting movie rentals, but with so many studios? Sure, we knew we were getting the 1.1.3 mobile OS X (as I call it) firmware, but we had no idea we’d be getting mail and Google Maps on the iPod Touch! Then we come to the ultra-portable, sure, we were expecting it, but really, I wasn’t expecting something quite so thin yet big. So, although there were no surprises in the over-all structure of the keynote, there were some wonderful surprises in the details. Oh, and I did well with my predictions 🙂
[tags]Macworld, Steve Jobs, Apple, Keynote[/tags]
Jan
12
What’s Steve Got Up His Sleeve – 2008 Edition
Filed Under Computers & Tech on January 12, 2008 | 5 Comments
Next Tuesday Santa finally comes for the Mac faithful when Steve Jobs takes the stage for his Mac World 2008 keynote. Each year I like to make an idiot of myself by trying to predict what santa Steve will deliver for us, so, here I go again! I’m gonna start by putting my neck on the line straight away. I think the focus for this keynote will be home entertainment. I think the reports about video rentals will turn out to be correct and I think there’ll be more to it than what has been reported this week. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Apple TV got a make-over and a new lease of life. Some are even predicting that Apple will sell TVs with Apple TV built in. I’m not convinced, but it’s possible I guess.
Nov
18
The Irony Of Leopard – Old is Better than New
Filed Under Computers & Tech on November 18, 2007 | 5 Comments
I have Leopard running on a range of machines from a first generation MacMini with a G4 processor and 32MB of graphics RAM, to a 17″ MacBookPro with a CoreDuo and 256MB of graphics RAM. Leopard runs brilliantly on both machines, however, there are some subtle differences in the visual window-dressing Leopard chooses to use on these two machines. This results in Leopard being a little more visually pleasing on one machine than on the other. Naturally you’d assume that it’s the modern machine that gives the best experience, but you’d be wrong. Surprisingly and somewhat ironically it’s the old G4 on which Leopard looks the best. This is because some of the fluff is disabled on older machines like the G4 MacMini. The two biggest differences are in the presentation of the Menubar and TimeMachine.
[tags]Apple, OS X, Leopard[/tags]