The May issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.
Wes has a great round-up of the Mac blogosphere’s reaction to the Psystar Mac clone, as well as bits on Adobe Creative Suite, e-mail clients, Apple’s proceeds from Google referrals, profitability of potential iPhone software sales, and user interfaces. Finally, the blog about the column returns as Son of Bloggable. It’s about time, Wes!
Mark’s understandably unhappy with actions of the MBG (Britian’s RIAA), and notes the fallacy of DRM in light of the closing of MSN Music. Ed has a revised list of GTD applications in this month’s Next Action, while Lee dodges and burns up Photoshop for the Curious.
This month’s desktop pictures are courtesy of David Siebecker, and are from a six-day hike through New Hampshire’s White Mountains. All seems lost for Cortland and company as Lisa makes a last bid for victory, any way she can take it.
Yours truly pounds out a review on Apple’s latest keyboard, while Linus grills Blue Crab. Sylvester is impressed with Drive Genius 2, while ATPM’s Official Pilot™, Flight Officer Lawson, puts the Flipp Premium Leather Case for his iPod through its paces. ATPM is a labor of love, with no staffer receiving compensation, so we really can’t complain when Paul takes time to play with SpacePig.
As always, About This Particular Macintosh is available in a variety of formats for maximum reader comfort. Thanks for reading!
Tag: Mac
The April issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.
Wes kicks things off with a look at what’s been popular in the Mac blogosphere of late, and that’s namely been about a product that isn’t a Mac, but works with your Mac: the iPhone. The announcement of the software development kit (SDK for short) for the iPhone has generated quite a lot of discussion amongst developers and pundits.
Mark talks about chips of all sorts, from his uniquely Brit point of view, as well as the latest DRM nonsense across the Pond. Charles has another Filemaking, and walks through relational databases.
This month’s desktop pictures are courtesy of several ATPM readers, and feature views from all around the globe. Thank you, all, for sharing!
Back in meatspace, Todd turns the tables on the enemy with a reprogrammed Lisa. Cortland and Angela arrive safely from the Mudrix, but Cortland has paid a heavy price…
My good friend Tom Bridge returns to the pages of ATPM with a look at The Book of Wireless. Lee rounds up the latest iPhone accessories from Newer Technology, while Ed puts PhotoAcute Studio through its paces. Paul is pleased with Take Control of Permissions in Leopard, and Ellyn closes out the Tome Edition™ of ATPM by digging through Wikipedia: The Missing Manual.
As always, you can read ATPM online, as well as in three other formats of your choosing. Thanks for reading!
What is ZDNet trying to tell us, I wonder?
Click to see a larger size
The March issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.
Wes has analysis and the roundup from the blogosphere on Microsoft’s attempts thus far to acquire Yahoo!, as well as bits on the MacBook Air, a disastrous HP PC (is “disastrous” redundant there?), the iPhone, and Aperture. Mark notes Apple’s approach to design, compared to others. Chuck takes a break from the normal workflow of Filemaking to look at what’s new in FileMaker 9.
Time warp with us back to the 1950s and 60s with ATPM reader Jennifer Curry’s shots of automobiles in and around Havana, Cuba, from a trip she took there in 2006. Sorry, Marty, no De Loreans. Meanwhile, Lisa is history, and the Mudrix code dissolves to nothing as Cortland makes a huge sacrifice to save the woman he loves. But is that sacrifice enough to save Angie from Cortland’s enemies in meatspace?
Lee puts Microtek’s ArtixScan M1 Dual Media Scanner through its paces, while Eric sees if LicenseKeeper can keep track of all those pesky software serial numbers every computer user tends to accumulate. Ellyn shoots a little pool with her Mac, but after finding it really hard to get the chalk off its case, she elected to shoot pool on her Mac, with MacPool. Chris tries to extend the wireless range of his PowerBook with Wi-Fire, while Linus reclaims some space on his hard drive with Xslimmer. As always, we get to the nitty-gritty of Mac and technology products so you don’t have to!
Every month, About This Particular Macintosh is available in a wide variety of formats for your reading pleasure, and this month is no exception: on the web; as an offline webzine; a PDF optimized for reading on your computer screen; or a PDF optimized for printing. On behalf of the entire staff, I hope you enjoy our work.
I love the little aliens from the Pizza Planet vending machine in Toy Story. Thanks to my friend Heather, and a long ago giveaway of some kind, I have two of the little guys guarding my favorite Mac, which is a little otherworldly in its own right…
Click on the photo to see the entire set.
The February issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.
Yes, he’s a month late for such reminiscing, but Wes weighs in on the comings and goings of 2007 in this month’s Bloggable. He also looks at the blogosphere’s rumblings over the new MacBook Air, and other items of interest. From across the pond, Mark offers an Englander’s point of view on Steve Jobs’ Macworld Expo Keynote, while he waits for a CyTV update, due to an incompatibility with Leopard.
Angus offers the pros and cons from this year’s Macworld Expo, as he sees it. Ted offers a progress report for this month’s ATPO, pre-announcing (pre-pre-announcing?) an outlining product he’s endeavoring to build, as well as offering his thoughts on Macworld Expo (anyone else see a theme here?) and an opinion regarding software business models.
Photoshop For the Curious returns from its brief hiatus, as Lee introduces us to Photoshop’s wonderful world of Masks. And, yes, while I didn’t attend Macworld Expo in person, this will not stop yours truly from offering his impressions of Steve Jobs’s keynote address to open the 2008 Macworld Expo, which took place in San Francisco last month. (There it is, again.) This month’s desktop pictures are courtesy of ATPM reader Kim Lee, from a November 2007 trip to Manado, Indonesia. Thanks, Kim!
Linus looks at Chameleon 5.0.881M Legacy, a Photoshop plug-in for combining images, while Ellyn plays around with Flip Words 2, something of a combination of Boggle and Hangman. Chris, ATPM’s official pilot, puts the Kinetik 15.4 Backpack through its paces, and Ed puts a few balls in to play with MacPinball 2.6.
As always, this month’s issue is available in a variety of formats for your reading pleasure.
So the big news in the tech world yesterday was what Steve Jobs talked about during his keynote address at Macworld Expo in San Francisco. The annual technology conference geared toward the Mac OS, and all things Apple, Inc., is often used for the announcement of new products from my favorite fruit company. Yesterday was no exception. Here are some of my thoughts on what was announced:
Time Capsule
If I hadn’t bought an Airport Extreme Base Station last year, to replace a router that died, I’d be buying a new 1 TB–yes, that’s a T, for terabyte–Time Capsule right now. Merging an Airport Extreme Base Station with a “server-grade” hard drive, the Time Capsule allows for wireless backups from all of your Leopard-based Macs via Time Machine. Jobs called it a “back-up applicance”.
Backing up your data is very important, and too few people do it, realizing the value of doing so only when it’s too late. Time Capsule is a dead-simple way, for most people, to ensure their Macs are getting backed up. Plug in and power on the Time Capsule, open up Time Machine on your Mac and point it to the Capsule, and you’re done.
Time Capsule comes in two sizes, the 500 GB version for $299, and the aforementioned 1 TB version for $499. That’s an amazing bargain, a terabyte of storage and a full wired/wireless router for five hundred smackers. As I said, if we didn’t already have the AEBS router, my credit card would have already seen one of these charged to it.
iPhone Update
Today was the 200th day the iPhone had been available for purchase, and Apple’s sold 4 million of them, an average of 20,000 iPhones sold per day. This means that in terms of United States smartphone market share, Apple has nearly 20% of the national smartphone market.
The rumors of a 1.1.3 update to the iPhone proved to be true. The home screen can now be customized, and the Maps application–the underrated killer feature of the iPhone in my humble opinion–is now even more super-powered. The new Location feature in Maps is great. Combining data from Google and Skyhook Wireless, your iPhone can now, without GPS on board, triangulate your position within a couple of blocks. It pulled up my location at home with no problem.
You can, finally, send a SMS message to more than one person, something my lowly Motorola v557 was capable of two years ago. The WebClips functionality is pretty neat; you can create a WebClip from any web page or portion of a web page and pop it on to your home screen, so it’s easy to just go to Google, or The New York Times, or whatever web page you wish, with one touch.
I’ve had quite some fun this afternoon playing with all of this new stuff, and it’s almost like getting a new iPhone for free. All in all, it makes the iPhone an even better communication device.
iTunes Movie Rentals
In addition to buying movies through the iTunes Store, you can now rent them as well. Library movies (viz: older titles) are $2.99, and new releases are $3.99. From the time you click “Rent Movie” in the iTunes Store and it downloads, you have 30 days to watch the movie. From the time you click “Play” on the movie, you have 24 hours to watch it. You can also transfer the movie to another device, such as your iPod or iPhone, and watch it there as well, before your 24 hours or 30 days, depending on where you are when you perform the transfer, are up.
The thirty days requirement is pretty decent, but I find the 24 hours one to be a little restrictive. It should be at least 48 hours, and 72 would be better, with 96 being the ideal.
Going hand-in-hand with the new rental service is an updated Apple TV, or as Jobs put it, “Apple TV Take 2”. Whereas the original Apple TV pretty much required you to have a computer to sync it up with, the new version acts as a stand-alone box. You can rent movies from the iTunes Store in HD through the Apple TV, for only $1 more than the standard resolutions. So library titles go to $3.99 and new releases are $4.99, and no trip to the mailbox or corner Blockbuster is required.
I’m still not convinced that we have a real use for this in our house, given our movie viewing habits. For now, Netflix will continue to suffice, but I’ll be keeping my eyes on the Apple TV, and I’m sure I’ll try out the new rentals even without the new box.
MacBook Air
This had all the buzz, and was the announcement I was most looking forward to. I was ready to pounce on ordering Apple’s new subnotebook, provided it met my personal expectations.
Apple has created the world’s thinnest notebook computer. At its thickest point, the MacBook Air is 0.76 of an inch, and it weighs only three pounds. It comes with a full-size keyboard, a 13.3-inch LED backlit display, and a 1.6 or 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. Two gigabytes of RAM, an 80 GB hard drive, 802.11n wireless networking, Bluetooth, and a built-in iSight camera. A pricey option is to ditch the standard hard drive for a 64 GB solid state drive (viz: no moving parts), and when I say pricey, I do mean pricey: $999 on top of the base $1,799 cost.
You won’t find much in the way of ports on it, either: MagSafe power port, a single USB port, headphone jack, and a micro-DVI port which requires adapters to hook up to external displays. That’s it. The trackpad is larger than on previous MacBook versions, and features multitouch, so you can perform some of those pinch, zoom, and rotate gestures you may have seen with the iPhone.
The downsides to this incredible piece of tech? For me, the hard drive size is the first. I put a 160 GB drive in my four year-old 12-inch PowerBook last year, and have gotten quite used to the extra room it gave me. I’d hate to step back down by half. Only two gigabytes of RAM? And no way to upgrade it? My two year-old iMac is maxed out at 2 GB, and some times I bump against that particular ceiling. I’d really prefer a machine that can handle up to four. The battery is also not replaceable by the user. This might be okay on an iPod or iPhone, but in a full-size computing system devoted to the ultimate road warriors?
Ultimately, I decided this was not the next notebook computer for me. It’s a really awesome system, and if someone were to buy one for me, I wouldn’t hesitate to take it, but that’s not happening. I think I’ll be better served ultimately by a MacBook Pro, and with seven and a half months since the latest edition of those came out, they’re due for a refresh, even a “silent” one like we saw with the Mac Pros last week.
Summation
In the end, it was what I would call a typical Steve Jobs Macworld Expo keynote address. There were the requisite ooohs and aaaahs, Apple’s making some evolutionary gains in all facets of its business, and there was a great new product introduced that has the entire tech world talking. It wasn’t a blow-me-away sort of keynote, as was last year’s with the announcement of the iPhone, but then they can’t all be like that. Still better than anything Bill does on stage.
The January 2008 issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available to help you ring in the new Mac year.
Mike Chamberlain looks back at the first of 2007, and how his desire for a “MacPhone” panned out, and surprisingly so, later in the year. Mark notes how smaller cars might not always be a good thing, but smaller iPods are, and wonders what lies ahead for Apple’s music player line. Mark’s also thankful that FileMaker has remained easy to use, lo these many years. ATPM reader Tricia Roach becomes an ATPM contributor, with a Segments piece on how she uses her Mac’s video capabilities to stay involved in the lives of her grandkids.
This month’s desktop pictures are courtesy of ATPM reader Jennifer Curry, from her 2006 trip to Cuba. They feature the island nation’s buildings and cityscapes. Meanwhile, Angie flashes back to 1984 as she and Cortland face off against Lisa in the Mudrix for a final showdown.
Linus takes Baseline, a utility which helps you look at file and folder sizes on your Mac, through its paces. Ed uses BusySync to get things done, allowing others to subscribe to or read his iCal calendars, thus assuring everyone’s on the same page. Chris Lawson tries out, and really likes, the Fin Laptop Handle/Stand, while Lee pairs his iSight up with Iris for some fun. Reader Mark Stoneman contributes a review of Mellel, a word processor I’m fond of, and a must-have for those who work with right-to-left languages such as Hebrew or Arabic.
This issue marks the entry in to the fourteenth year of publishing for About This Particular Macintosh, and we hope it’s a great year for our readers, and Mac users everywhere!
The November issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.
Wes kicks off the month by covering–what else?–the blogosphere’s reaction to Mac OS X Leopard. He also has a choice bit regarding the ZFS file system, which I encourage you to read. I realize that particular topic sounds boring–I teased Wes I was printing out that part to help me get some sleep–but he’s done a stellar job of condensing a boring subject in to easy-to-understand layman’s terms. Our intrepid blog investigator also dishes out the links on the forthcoming iPhone development kit for application programmers, as well as a few other choice bits.
Mark–who seems to have the same attitude toward mobile phones as my parents–talks iPhone from the Brit perspective, while also pondering the Google goings-on in the mobile phone space. Speaking of pondering, Mark’s also beginning the laptop or desktop? dilemma. He gets extra points for using a title from one of my favorite authors. Lee’s taking a break from his great column, Photoshop for the Curious, returning in our February edition. To tide you over until then, he documents some other Photoshop-related links you may be interested in.
Sylvester offers a great how-to on extending iTunes’ abilities with content presets. ATPM reader Graham Lindsay was nice enough to share photos from his native Australia for this month’s desktop pictures. Just as all seems lost, our intrepid hero reenters the Mudrix to save the woman he loves in this month’s Cortland.
Small business owners may be interested in Ed’s review of Billable, whereas many folks may be interested in Paul’s look at Graph Paper Maker. Yours truly makes an appearance this month, as I contribute to the iPhone Case Roundup, with Lee and David. Lee likes XtremeMac’s Luna, and Ed is impressed with Nisus Writer Pro. Finally, Eric puts SuperSync through its paces.
As usual, you can read this month’s issue in a format of your choosing.
The October issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading enjoyment.
If you haven’t gotten enough iPhone news in the past month, or if you’ve just been vacationing in the Eastern Hindu Kush with Osama, Wes has a big round-up in this month’s Bloggable. Speed is on Mark’s mind, as is, um, more speed. Of a sort. And referencing the first in a certain series of science fiction movies many would know by name, but few will recall by the included reference.
Lee delves in to one of Photoshop’s premier features, layers, while Sylvester talks about your Mac’s speed. (Was there a theme for this issue that no one told me about?) Matthew has a how-to for installing a cooling fan in our beloved Cube. (For the record, he installed it in his Cube, which is not the same as my Cube. We don’t share a Cube. I was using “our” in a communal sense, as in all Cube owners everywhere. Oh, never mind…)
Tim Allen–the photographer, not the actor (though that would be pretty cool)–shares with us some shots he’s taken around the United Kingdom, including his home town of Kent, as part of this month’s desktop pictures selection. The Usual Suspects it ain’t, but to paraphrase Bill and Ted, “Strange things are afoot at Wieser Graphics” in this month’s Cortland.
Chris Lawson tries out a pair of iPod cases, the Claro, and the PodFolio, while Linus puzzles the ins and outs of Crossword Forge. Chris Dudar dives in to digital watermarking with iWatermark, while I am underwhelmed by DLO’s TuneStik. Lee hauls around the Velocity Matrix Backpack, and yours truly reviews Apple’s latest game-changing device, the iPhone.
As usual, ATPM is available in a variety of formats, so you can read it however you choose.