Gone are the days when ladies would accessory with purses, shoes, or makeup. The new hotness — Designer Tasers.
It’s understandable though, given the nature of humans these days, you can never be too safe. Now your significant lady friend can take some power back from the baddies and look stylish while shockin’ the shit out of them too! Super!
Alright Mac gamers (is there really such a thing?), the moment you’ve all been waiting for — Steam for OS X/Mac! As you can see, it doesn’t look all too different from it’s Windows counterpart. In fact, it’s the exact same UI. If you were hoping for something completely revamped and “Mac-ified”, your dreams will probably be irrevocably shattered. But we move on I guess…
I stumbled on a thought provoking article on MacDailyNews that really got my mental juices flowing…
Looking at the title above and taking into account the various bits of information surrounding a so called Apple tablet that has been beaten and flogged across the digital waves the last year would lead most to believe that any actual device would feature an iPhone-esque OS. I mean, why not? If you want to keep things simple and battery friendly while also tapping into the app store, staying inside of the iPhone ecosystem is a must.
On the flip side, I couldn’t find myself paying $600+ for a glorified (and bigger screened) iPhone/iPod Touch. Many others have this same feeling. With that said, would Apple see this problem and instead push OS X onto the “higher end” 10″ tablet that is also reported to be in development? You see, it’s a tricky thing to speculate on. Ease and apps or power and expandability?
Those hoping for both don’t have much to look forward to I’m afraid. Apple isn’t one to stratify their own products or cause undue confusion. A smaller 7″ iPhone-like device and a bigger 10″ OS X device would erect a large immovable barrier between the two sister devices, effectively killing any cross device support.
One other thing that I’ve thought about would be a revamped App Store, including not only iPhone/Touch apps but also these new OS X/Tablet inspired apps. Of course if the tablet runs OS X in full garb, would Apple move the entire library of OS X software into the App Store/iTunes?
It’s bittersweet. Having all Apple software for iPhone and desktop under one roof is highly beneficial. At the same time, iTunes needed a drastic weight loss multiple versions ago. Asking it to take on more makes me want to puke. Still, if executed correctly, the nausea can at least be dampened.
Personally, I’m on the fence. I would really like full blown OS X on a tablet device. Though the iPhone OS is a looker (if a bit dated) and is far more finger friendly. Guess I’ll just have to be surprised.
So which way is it going to go and how will Apple market/position the device(s)?
I’m a tinkerer by heart. I love to fine tune my gadgets and software until they break — then I do it all over again. Nature of the beast I guess. Mac OS X has usually been a rather simple more simplistic OS in that without help from 3rd parties, it is generally pretty involved to make any system tweaks. It doesn’t matter if you actually don’t know how or don’t have time, I’m sure if a solution existed to drastically reduce your time spent tweaking you’d be all for it. What about something that allowed you to access “hidden features” or those features which Apple had added at some point of the 10.6 development process only to remove from the final version. Again, such things aren’t hard to find online and re-add yourself. But why waste time?
Secrets, a cleverly named free download allows you to access all kinds of hidden Snow Leopard tweaks ranging from more utility based ones that change how things operate and function to UI based tweaks that let you tweak everything to and including the dock. Hate the 3D dock? Click a checkbox and bam, it’s done. Now changing the dock is rather simple as a short terminal command can achieve the same thing. Though searching for and entering the command is precious seconds wasted. Don’t like the login background? Bam, it’s done. There are a ton of settings and hidden secretes to unleash with “Secrets”. Snow Leopard isn’t Blacktree’s first venture into the underground of the Mac OS X OS mind you. Over the years, Secrets has garnered quite a loyal following bringing with them various other tweaks and hidden features that aren’t just specific to the OS, but other OS X apps as well. See, there is a ton.
If you are any type of tinkerer, you need this app. Oh and don’t forget, it’s FREE. Ya, that’s compelling isn’t it. Get goin’…
Where to start. I guess we’ll lead of with the smallest and work our way up.
First on the line, the new Magic Mouse brings multi-touch/gesture to the mouse world. Operation is as one would expect, 2 finger swipes and pinches do all sorts of panning, zooming, and moving actions on your screen. The Mighty Mouse isn’t so mighty anymore (was it ever?)
The bargain basement Macbook, once $999, is still….$999. What happened to “newer” and “cheaper” products? To be fair, the new Macbook receives some respectable upgrades such as a Core 2 Duo bumped up to 2.26GHz, 2GB of RAM (upgradable to 8GB), an NVIDIA 9400M GPU, and a 250GB hard drive. Oh, Blue-ray hopefuls are out of luck, this one is packin’ the old school Super Drive. Wrapping it up, the plastic Macbook now includes that love it or hate it integrated battery. I’m sure some of the sting will be taken away when you realize you get true 7-hour battery life complete with outlet freedom. A pretty sweet deal for $999 don’t you think?
Ah finally, we make our way to the iMac. While a Mac Pro is arguably the top of Apple’s lineup, to be quite honest, a spec’d out iMac is plenty for me. Not to mention, that new 16:9 27-inch model packs a visual wallop at 2,560 x 1,440! If 27″ is too big, the smaller 20″ 16:9 21.5″ model should do the trick. I loved the size of the 24″ and can only expect the 27″ to be even more pleasing. Especially now that it’s a wider ratio. Oh yeah. This is sweet. The cherry on top though will require a tad bit more waiting. What’s this cherry I speak of? The top end 27″ iMac starts at $1,999 and will ship in November with a 2.06GHz 2.66GHz Core i5 Quad-core processor tag teaming your senses with either a Radeon HD 4850 512MB graphics too boot. (Good-bye Nvidia) Movin’ up even further, $200 more will bump you up to a Core i7 Quad-Core running at 2.8GHz. Speed…lovely speed. However, If all you’re looking for is the bigger screen, the 27″ comes in base config starting at $1,699 with a 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo and Radeon HD 4670 GPU.
Rounding up the bottom end, the 21.5″ begins at the same $1,199 for a 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics, 4GB of RAM and a 500GB spinner. Another aspect worth highlighting is the Multi-Display port. Your iMac can go it alone or buddy up with another display for dual screen action or become the display for your laptop/second computer. Simply awesome!
So the updates aren’t that big of a deal, though that Core i5 and i7 are looking mighty nice don’t you think? My money, heart, and all over being are fixated on the 27″ behemoth.
An interesting war could soon be starting. No it’s not a war of man and military machines, but instead a war between an underdog and seasoned veteran. The underdog, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch teamed up with a Singapore tech startup, Fusion Garage to get his CrunchPad idea into reality. From the beginning, the CrunchPad was to be a $200 touchscreen tablet device that would eschew the typical local storage and focus primarily on the web in both program usage and storage (as the device doesn’t have any local storage) — all programs and data transferred will come from online sources. Another handy feature built in to the CrunchPad is the ability to use the tablet as a 3G modem for other electronics effectively doubling the usefulness of said gadget as it will also help many other gadgets. The ultra low price of $200 doesn’t appear to be sticking however as the Strait Times is reporting that at launch in November the device will ship with a new, larger $400 pricetag. Building you own wonder gadget is never easy. With a new Apple tablet rumored to be released in September, one has to compare the two and wonder who will win. The Apple Tablet will more than likely look better and have some form of OS X on it…whether it’s a modified iPhone OS or modified Leopard OS still remains to be seen. Current rumors foretell of the Apple Tablet coming with an iPhone OS of some sorts, but, it is a rumor so anything is possible. After reading a slew of reviews on each, spending countless hours drooling over pictures and videos, which device do you think you would choose. The sure to be gorgeous mega giant Apple Tablet or the underdog Crunch Tablet?
Source: Venture Beat
Faithful OS X fans who were hoping for Snow Leopard to bring about a freshening to the aging look of Leopard were surely let down when Snow Leopard was revealed earlier this year with the same exact face as Leopard. The lack of change was to many hardly a surprise however as Snow Leopard is being marketed as a simple “re-tooling/re optimization” of Leopard — why go UI crazy on a “minor” update. Save that for OS 10.7…right? It seems that Apple as of late has been getting impatient on waiting for future OS X releases to alter the look of 10.6.
In many computer users’ lives, the time will come when your computer isn’t acting quite as happy and peppy as it once did. The computer golden years aren’t as fond as the human variant not only in the demands required of aging technology, but also in the fact that “old” comes about relatively quickly in the tech world. With Apple’s latest addition of an SD card reader on the MacBook Pro line, new possibilities are now available such as actually reading SD cards without having to use some stupid adapter and the ability to boot form an SD card. In order to begin, an 8GB or larger SD card is needed. After that, the standard process of formatting, installing, and other common install procedures are needed. The full rundown of how to get your four legged, anti-pc, SD card loving action on is lined out in great detail over at Macworld. By the way, if you were hoping to run OS X straight from an SD card on a Windows machine, you’re out of luck. It won’t work. Happy Formatting!
Source: Technabob
Those of you who a part of the growing user base of OS X, particularly the Leopard flavor (10.5), will be pleased to know that TetherBerry, a tethering solution of Mac OS X was has just been been updated. As far as actual features go, it’s a tethering app…what more do you want. Instead of “features”, this latest update brings with it more stability which is always a good thing. No one likes having to constantly reconnect to the internet after constant disconnects. OS X users who are using a pre-Leopard OS, more specifically Tiger can take a deep breath and breathe as Tiger support is planned at some point. Given the implied connotation in my voice, it should be easy to tell that a date has not been set. Beta users of TetherBerry need to keep up with the bug reports and feedback so that we Mac OS X users can have a reliable and efficient Blackberry/Mac tethering solution. If you’re interested in getting in on the beta, point your browser right over here.
Source: Blackberry Cool
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When it comes to marketing your product it's essential to understand the visitor patterns in your shop. Heatmap software allows you to do just that by producing reports and visualizations that help you make the best decisions for your business.
