The Author – Bart Busschots
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Jan
9
MacWorld 2007 Imediate Reaction – WTF, Leopard?
Filed Under Computers & Tech on January 9, 2007 | 4 Comments
OK, first off, WTF … what happened to Leopard? I want to know when the next OS X will be out and more importantly what will be in it! I’m just shocked that software did not feature at all in the keynote. No new iTunes, no iLife 07 and no Leopard. What can I say, that’s a pretty big aspect of my predictions blown right out of the water!
So, in short I expect to hear lots about Leopard, very little about the Macintosh line (apart from the usual gloating about its greatness 🙂 ), and a good bit about iTunes in the form of the iTV, movies for more people and a cool iPhone.
On the plus side I did say more movies and TV Shows, iTV and the iPhone so I guess three out of four ain’t bad!
[tags]MacWorld 2007, Apple, Steve Jobs[/tags]
Jan
9
.Mac – The Devil is in the Implementation
Filed Under Computers & Tech on | 6 Comments
Apple really go out of their way to push .Mac so a little over three months ago I decided to give their 90 day free trial a go. I may as well see for myself what all the hype is about right! On paper .Mac is great. The iDisk is a wonderful idea, the idea of syncing your application settings, calendar, contacts email …… is wonderful. However, I’m sure we’ve all heard the phrase the devil is in the detail, well, with .Mac it’s similar, the devil is in the implementation.
[tags]Apple, .Mac[/tags]
Jan
8
Musings on What iLife 07 May Bring
Filed Under Computers & Tech on January 8, 2007 | 2 Comments
A pretty major omission from my MacWorld 2007 predictions is iLife 07. No idea why my brain wasn’t tuned in to the fact that every MacWorld I remember seems to have brought an iLife release, so why would the year be any different? You could argue that with Leopard on the way iLife may come later in the year, and that was my view for a while, but I’ve changed my mind. Anyhow, regardless of when it does come out I want to discuss what I’d like to see in it.
I don’t really use iMovie or iDVD enough to have anything interesting to say about them. I used both twice in iLife 06 and each time it was a problem-free and rewarding experience. I have a lot more experience with the other iLife components so I’m going to concentrate on those, namely iTunes, iPhoto, iWeb & GarageBand.
[tags]MacWorld, Apple, iLife, iTunes, iPhoto, iWeb, GarageBand[/tags]
Jan
4
MacWorld 2007 Prediction Time
Filed Under Computers & Tech on January 4, 2007 | 6 Comments
Well, it’s that time of year again, Steve Jobs is hopefully about to release some totally unexpected surprise on the Mac community, I am of course talking about MacWorld. As normal I’m going to put my money where my mouth is and make some predictions. So far my success rate has been descent but this year I feel I’m shooting in the dark much more, what with the Intel move being complete, the Macintosh line-up being all fresh and complete, and the iPod line looking pretty fresh and up-to-date too. So, now that I’ve made my excuses, on with the predictions!
[tags]MacWorld, Apple, Steve Jobs[/tags]
Aug
8
Reflections on the WWDC 2006 Keynote
Filed Under Computers & Tech on August 8, 2006 | 5 Comments
First off, I'm very annoyed with myself for forgetting to write up my predictions before WWWDC 2006. I put this oversight down to the fact that I was on Holidays till today but I'm still annoyed, now you'll just have to take my word on what I predicted rather than having a post to prove it! Anyhow, in this post I'll just give you the highlights of the keynote and particularly the Leopard preview and also lay out some of my concerns. Read more
Jun
25
MBP Update – Gets a Little Warmer Than I First Thought
Filed Under Computers & Tech on June 25, 2006 | Leave a Comment
Just a quick follow-on from my initial review of my new 17″ MacBookPro. In my initial review I had said that the MBP does not get very hot but that is not entirely true. It is true that when just running on the battery it gets significantly less hot than my old Pentium 4 Fujitsu-Siemens LifeBook however, while it is charging it does get annoyingly hot. Still not quite as hot as the LifeBook but the battery it self gets hot enough to be un-comfortable on the legs. However, the base of the 17″ MBP is more than big enough so you can easily sit it on your lap in such a way that the hot bit is not resting on your legs!
Jun
19
The Black MacBook – Disappointing
Filed Under Computers & Tech on June 19, 2006 | 1 Comment
Following on from my review of the 17″ MacBookPro yesterday I got to play with a 13″ Black MacBook today. I was, to say the least, underwhelmed. The black is horrible and tarnishes instantly. The machine I was playing with had had nothing more done to it than have it’s initial setup done and it already looked like it was a few years old. I could get over the look of it but the screen is just too small for me with too poor a resolution and the keyboard is terrible. It looks ‘unique’ which I can live with but then I tried to type with it and was not at all impressed. On a more positive note it is not too heavy and feels much more sturdy and robust than the old iBooks. It’s also very fast to boot and apps load quickly (as you’d expect from a CoreDuo machine). I guess if you had an iBook the MacBook will feel like an upgrade but if you had one of the small PowerBooks you’ll really feel like you’ve gone down in the world. Having said that I only got to play with it for a few minutes so this should be taken as nothing more than ‘first impressions’, this is FAR from an exhaustive review.
Jun
18
17″ MacBookPro Review
Filed Under Computers & Tech on June 18, 2006 | 2 Comments
I’m typing this in a swelteringly hot terminal in Valencia Spain waiting for my plane to arrive and hopping that the thunder and lighting in the distance stays in the distance long enough for us to get outta here! Anyhow, I’ve had my 17″ MacBookPro for a week and a half now so I think I have enough experience with it at this stage to go a head and give it a review! BTW, the machine I got has the standard 1GB of RAM, the glossy 17″ monitor and I opted for the smaller but faster 100GB hard disk. Read more
May
31
On Third Thoughts – iWeb REALLY Sucks
Filed Under Computers & Tech on May 31, 2006 | Leave a Comment
Having recently updated my opinion on iWeb from “it’s OK” to “it sucks”, I’ve now gone one step further and decided that it REALLY sucks! I just did a very minor upgrade from iWeb 1.1 to iWeb 1.1.1 and it broke my site. I can’t really put it any simpler than that, it just broke my site. Read more
May
21
On Second Thoughts – iWeb Sucks
Filed Under Computers & Tech on May 21, 2006 | 10 Comments
When I first reviewed iLife 6 in my article about creating my first podcast I was a little hard on iWeb but gave it a generally OK review. Turns out I was a little hasty! After a few more weeks of use I’ve come to the conclusion that it sucks! Yes, the interface is very nice and yes you can easily make a podcast by dragging and dropping but it still sucks because everything goes most terribly pear-shaped the moment you go to publish your web page. To see what I mean have a look at the site for the IFAS podcast which I’ve been using as a test case for iWeb: www.minds.nuim.ie/~ifas/podcast.
You might say my sample page looks alright on the surface, because it does. But, now try to highlight some text. Oops, you can’t because it isn’t in fact text but an image. Everything is in fact an image. All text everywhere. WTF! That’s not web design, it’s desktop publishing! The result is not so much a web page as a poster or flyer for printing! So much for getting indexed by search engines …. oh well, it’s not as if you publish stuff on the web for people to find and read is it …. oh wait …. bugger!
Things go even more pear-shaped when publishing though. If you remember last time I told you that you could only publish directly to the web if you had a .Mac account (which I don’t because I don’t need one). This means that you have to publish to a folder on your local machine each time you want to update the site. You might not think that’s too bad. You’d think you just publish it and then use a good SFT client like Transmit 3 to sync with the server so you only upload changed files. Well you’d be in for a nasty shock. Each time you re-publish the site everything gets re-generated so your sync will result in ALL files being uploaded again. This is inconvenient when your podcast has two episodes, positively annoying when it has three (like mine now does) and simply impossible when it has 10, 20, 30 or more.
Conclusion
The simple truth is that iWeb is totally impractical and un-usable in the long term. Nice Try Apple but absolutely no cigar this time. Version 2 had better be a major major improvement!