Comments OffOctober 2nd, 2006
Apple has begun emailing .Mac subscribers (myself included) announcing a soon to be released makeover that will transform the tired .Mac mail interface, as we know it, into a Web 2.0 clone of OSX Mail (based on AJAX of course). I’m not sure a desktop UI is well suited as an embedded interface, but we shall soon find out. Considering I access my .Mac account through Mail as an IMAP account it really makes little difference to me. But hey, you do it your way…I’ll do it mine.
Technorati Tags: Apple, Mail, .Mac
No Comments »September 27th, 2006
iTunes 7 is with little doubt the best “new” application Apple has released in quite some time. But as early adopters (like yours truly) soon discovered, this release is a roach motel of bugs and software glitches. Some of which can be downright critical. One issue in particular struck a blow below the belt to any iPod user; after installing iTunes 7, podcasts can no longer be played back on your iPod. Any attempt to play recently downloaded podcast in your playlists results in crashing the iPod. The only workaround to this problem is to pre-play the track within iTunes on your Mac or PC. Then and only then will the audio file successfully playback without failure. Imagine having to do that with every audio file in a podcast playlist that contains nearly 50 feeds? Yeah, lots of fun that is.
Another issue I experienced deals with iTunes best new feature: Coverflow. Coverflow, for those of you that don’t know, is a new way to view and interact with your music library; displaying a horizontal animated side-scrolling CD cover interface that works much like a Roldex. With this visual interface, one can navigate through their music library in much the same metaphor as a bookshelf filled with Vinyl records. After using this feature for a few weeks now I am completely hooked! I often find myself thumbing through music I haven’t played in a long time or nearly forgotten about. Best of all, iTunes will grab album art for any albums you’ve burned off of CD. Well, most albums anyway. Coverflow is ingenious!
Unfortunately, as iTunes 7 was clearly a release that was rushed out the door, Coverflow doesn’t work very well. It’s slow to navigate, and more often than not CD album art fails to load in system cache without reading from disk. Scroll quickly from left to right, or vice versa, and the only music you’ll hear is the sound of your hard drive crunching away as it fights like hell to keep up with Coverflow’s demands. Sigh.
Thankfully Apple seems to have addressed most of these issues with the release of iTunes 7.0.1, available as of today. Coverflow is still a bit sluggish at times, but at least in a more tolerable state than before. So far I can report no problems.
Download iTunes 7.0.1 from within System Update (Mac) or click here (Windows)
No Comments »September 6th, 2006
Apple unveils new Intel Core 2 Duo (Conroe) based iMacs, including a new 24″ widescreen whopper that retails for $1,999. In addition, prices have been slashed across the product line, and the entry level model can now be had for a mere $999. Not a bad deal.
Learn more.
No Comments »September 5th, 2006
Over the Labor Day weekend I and a fellow Mac fanboy decided to pay a visit to our nearest Mecca to all things Apple…the Apple Store located at Keystone, in Indianapolis. The store was oddly vacant when we first arrived at around 10:00 AM on Monday, but a couple hours later we returned after some shopping and a bite to eat. The store had suddenly become packed with customers during our absence. It was a madhouse!
My friend (actually a client of mine) purchased a Mac Pro with 23″ Cinema Display, which is an upgrade to his existing G5 iMac. I think he was jealous of my Mac Pro with 20″ Cinema and thought he would upstage me by getting a larger display. Curse him!
I will say this about the staff at this Apple store; they are absolutely well trained and on the stick in customer relations.
View my photos on Flickr.
No Comments »August 3rd, 2006
Some spy photos taken from the floor of the Moscone Center, where workers are setting up for next weeks World Wide Developers Conference, are quickly circulating around the web. The image reveals a banner depicting a 64bit processor icon. This could be further evidence that Apple will announce the much anticipated Intel-based professional workstation at the event. Not that any further verification is needed, as we know almost for certain the Mac Pro (the official name for Apple’s PowerMac successor) will be unveiled. The reference to 64bit could also have something to do with OSX 10.5, codenamed leopard. We shall soon see.
No Comments »June 13th, 2006
Apple has quietly added three new TV spots to its current nationwide ad campaign called “Get a Mac”. As before the ads show the same two characters who symbolically represent a PC and Mac, played by actors John Hodgman and Justin Long, respectively. These particular ads I find much more humorous than the previous roll, especially the Out of the Box sketch. Funny stuff. See the ads here.
No Comments »May 20th, 2006
Ever since Apple ported OSX to the Intel x86 architecture, bootleg copies of the PC-compatible OS have flowed through peer 2 peer networks like a pandemic virus. In fact, an entire community of PC “Mac users” was born almost overnight, devoted to the cause of running OSX on mainstream PC hardware.
Being the curious lad that I am, I have longed to experience first hand how OSX 10.4 Tiger performs on generic PC hardware. All in the name of research of course. As I’m sure you have already figured out, I’m quite a Mac fan. However I still remain largely a PC user. Much as I love Apple and Macintosh platform as a whole, I still have a parallel affinity for the PC side of the computing market. Windows XP, despite its numerous flaws, is a viable and fairly reliable platform that I use daily, right alongside my Mac. It’s not politically correct to endorse Windows or Microsoft, but then again I’ve never been politically correct.
(Behold…the ancient Dell Dimension 8100…in all its…uh, glory?)
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