A Cursory Glance at Apple’s New Airport

Posted on January 11, 2007 by Adam S

I was just glancing at Apple’s new 801.11n capable Airport Extreme base station. Having just purchased an Airport Extreme Base Station within the last month, I’m trying very hard to get my MacMall contact to allow me to exchange and upgrade to the new one.

Of course, the big feature is 802.11n capabilities. No Mac has this yet, but recent models, including my 20″ iMac, have capable hardware, so a nice firmware update via Software Update ought to remedy its max speed limitation.

The new base station has something called “Airdisk” built in. Apparently, you can plug in an external hard drive and share it over the network. How cool! This feature is a fantastic killer feature I haven’t seen elsewhere yet.

I am very excited about this. I can’t believe Steve Jobs didn’t mention this AT ALL during Tuesday’s keynote!

2007 MacWorld Keynote a Bust

Posted on January 9, 2007 by Adam S

I’m sorry to report that Steve Jobs’ MacWorld keynote was a bust for me. The entire keynote focused on two new big products: AppleTV and the Apple iPhone. While both look neat, and I may well end up with an Apple TV in the not too distant future, this is supposed to be Macworld, not Appleworld. And Macs were barely touched on.

There wasn’t a squeak about Leopard, which doomsayers will suggest indicates it’s not on schedule. There was nary a peep about quad core Mac Pros, no word of slim MBPs that everyone was expecting, no new iMacs, no iLife ’07 and no iWork ’07. No “Numbers” or “Charts” and no completely revamped Keynote 4. All iPhone and AppleTV.

Apple also changed their name officially from Apple Computer, Inc to Apple, Inc. This signifies the first step away from being a computer company and towards being a generalist technology company. It scares me a little because I would really like them to continue to push computing forward, but it appears the drive is to cash in on media serving, which is now their bread and butter. With over 2 billion tracks sold, it’s hard to argue it.

Anyway, here’s hoping that we still see Leopard this spring.

Thoughts on Windows Home Server

Posted on January 9, 2007 by Adam S

I’m kind of disappointed in OSNews readers right now. We have an article running right now called “Gates Wants a Server in Every Home.” It discusses the upcoming “Windows Home Server.”

Now, as anyone who reads my blog knows, I am very into Mac hardware and software these days, but this product has me legitmately excited. It’s great, and I see TONS of need for something like this. You see, as computers become more like TVs in that families begin to routinely have more than one in the house, it becomes necessary to have a central storage hub and a decent redundancy system. No one has anything like this today, pretty much you have (1) burn to DVD, (2) external hard drives, (3) iPods, which some people use this for backing up music, and (4) actual server OSes, which is generally limited to techies.

So, read the comments on OSNews and you’ll find a general anti-Microsoft vibe. If Apple announced this, people would be going bat shit for Mac Home Server. Seriously, imagine if you could buy some sort of $299 Mac device and set up .mac on your computer to sync to it. People would go absolutely bonkers to get one. But Microsoft releases it and people call Bill Gates crazy or just ramble on about how it’s a bad idea.

I’m so tired of the online tech crowd being so black and white. I’m tired of the battles. I’m tired of the stupid fighting – Gnome/KDE, Microsoft/Apple, Ubuntu/Fedora, Microsoft/Google, it goes on and on. And it’s tiring. No company is truly 100% good or bad, and Microsoft is capable of releasing hits (Windows 2003, VSC, GroupShot) just like Apple is capable of releasing misses (Aperature 1.0, Backup 3, the entire .Mac product). I just prefer Apple, but I don’t carry on like a fourth grader about it and whine about everything that comes from Redmond.

Windows Home Server will probably be a mild success, but 2.0 and 3.0 will probably see even wider deployment and success. Companies know that early is good. Sony knows Blu-ray will lose money, just as Hitachi and whomever else know HD-DVD will lose money. Because geting out there and establishing your technology will mean big things in the future, when the world is ready for these things. In the case of high def DVDs, sadly for the above, there may be another format change before the world cares. Because what exists today is “good enough.”

But not so with home server needs. What exists today is “pain in the ass” at best. And it’s rarely done at all. This is a completely untapped market. Bravo to Gates for seeing the need and pouncing early. And Mr. Jobs: boo to you. You already play nice with NTFS. How cool would it have been to release an Apple appliance that can backup everything on your Mac, not to mention your Windows PCs – profiles, documents, etc – and all iTunes music, cross platform? Too bad you didn’t jump on that one.

A Suggestion for Apple in 2007

Posted on January 8, 2007 by Adam S

Dear Apple, the first 30 years were only the beginning, or so you say. You’re poised to make HUGE inroads this year, with some sources saying you’re going to claim up to 20% of laptop sales on college campuses. You’re also going to sell a ridiculous number of iPods again, an obscene number of tracks on iTunes, and very likely a substantial number of iPhones and iTVs if, in fact, they show up soon. Let me tell you what you really ought to do then, and quickly: port Safari to Windows.

Read on, I’ll tell you why.
Continue reading →

The Quest for PN on OS X, Part II

Posted on December 8, 2006 by Adam S

Success! Unfortunately, I was not able to get PN2 running on ReactOS. However, I’m pretty impressed with ReactOS and will probably keep abreast of the development. If, on day, it’s more stable via Parallels, I’ll be all over it.

In the meantime, I fired up a copy of Windows XP inside Parallels and it installed quickly, easily, and painlessly, actually, and kind of surprisingly, a lot easier than it ever was to install Windows FOR REAL. It took about 40 minutes, and I never had to interact with it even once – Paralles installed XP, configured and entered the CD Key, and even added Parallels native drivers. I am impressed.

I installed PN2 as well as AVG antivirus and AVG anti-spyware (new app? Never used it before!). Then I tried out coherence mode. Beautiful. Absolutely beautfiul. Did I mention that Parallels put XP on my Mac network and I easily opened files on my Mac from my new Windows installation? Gorgeous.

So, here is the finished product: XP running on my Mac. Note that PN2 is sandwiched *between* Mac windows. Cleartype is on and works. The apps feels great. The whole thing is just … awesome. This is an amazing feat.

The Quest for PN on OS X

Posted on December 7, 2006 by Adam S

As many of my readers know, my favorite application on Windows is called Programmer’s Notepad. I’ve been using it for about 6 years or so (since at least early 2000) and I am really comfortable in it. This is my story – still in progress – of getting this thing to run on OS X. It covers the first part of the quest – including SciTE, ReactOS, Q, and Parallels. Read on for more.
Continue reading →

Video Vault (11/07/2006)

Posted on November 7, 2006 by Adam S

Hey’s gay… er, blind
How you confuse these terms is beyond me. Someone, I’m sure, had some ‘splainin to do when the red light went off. And I’m betting a pissed off mountain climber, who may or may not be blind and/or gay was waiting for it. Via Google Video.

Ah…bananas.
Proof that there is a God. The funny thing is, every single species of monkey and ape eat bananas the other way. It appears we eat them “upside down,” despite “God’s pull-tab.” Via Google Video.

Black Macbook
The first and only “I’m a Mac” spoofs that was actually funny. Via YouTube.

Faith Hill is a Sore Loser
This has got to be a joke. Look closely, it’s quick. Vai break.com

Yikes.
This is actually called “The Man With Exploding Arms.” That alone is scary, but when you see his freakish arms, you’ll probably have to choke back your own vomit.

My Dream App More Like A Nightmare

Posted on October 27, 2006 by Adam S

So, awhile back, someone came up with this idea – invite users to dream up an application, then hold a contest and actually develop the best ones. I mean – how cool is that, right? ANYTHING you can think of! What a great opportunity to see some incredible ideas come to life.

Let me cut to the chase: it appears the vote has been hacked. Clearly, something fishy is going on here!

The winners are – get this – a cookbook, a sync manager, and a thing that makes your desktop look like the weather. I cannot believe it. I’m stunned. THIS is what Mac users wanted? THIS is the best we could come up with?

One guy dreamt big: you hum into your computer and it pitch corrects and allows you to create a song. Whoa! Cool!

One girl had an interesting idea: you take pictures of your clothes and then can keep a “virtual closet” where you can look at your clothes together and design outfits.” Holy crap – NOTHING I know of does this, even if I don’t have much of a need for it.

But you see, these are REAL apps that are the first of their kind. Who needs a new sync manager? And who but chefs will really use Cookbook? And I couldn’t care less about my desktop wallpaper matching the weather, being as though I can LOOK OUTSIDE if I want to know!

What a letdown.

smallaxesolutions.com v2

Posted on October 17, 2006 by Adam S

So last night I rebuilt smallaxesolutions.com using iWeb. It took a lot longer than expected because I did so much customization, and let me say: iWeb has a LOT of limitations.

Simple, basic stuff like changing link colors and styling the navigation bar are simply omitted. iWeb, in some respects, is as dumb as Front Page.

That said, it’s also MUCH MUCH better than many of these programs, because it generates such clean HTML. It’s so clean that I simply used the fantastic mac freeware MassReplaceIt to build a few queries to immediately clean up the output. I was able to integrate some PHP into it, and I think we’ll see it expand quite a bit over the next few weeks or months.

I’m pretty pleased with the design, thus far, particularly the angled images, which is really nice looking. The only problem I see is that the pages are VERY image heavy, and will be murder over dial up. Even on our T1 they still take a second to load.

I’m happy with the site, and I’m looking forward to iWeb 2.0, where Apple hopefully introduces some much needed features.

iChat AV

Posted on October 8, 2006 by Adam S

I have not really used iChat much since owning a Mac. For one, I’ve been very happy with Gaim, and the premier third party IM tool for Macs is Adium, which is based on libgaim. Adium has been wildly successful for me, it’s easy to use, gorgeous, themeable, integrates very well into the Mac UI, and above all, supports all the IM protocols I use.

Recently, I’ve noticed that I rarely use any of the IM tools but Google Talk. In fact, there’s only one person on my contacts list that I regularly IM that doesn’t use Google Talk. So when my buddy Benny got an iMac recently, it never even occured to me to use the video chat built into iChat. That is, until Friday.

iChat is one of the coolest apps for your Mac if you’ve got an iSight camera to accompany it. First off, the video from broadband connection to broadband connection is excellent. The audio is extremely clear; while it may not be cell phone clear, it’s still more than clear enough for regular conversations. In fact, it really makes the phone second rate. I’m encouraging my parents to think Mac not just because of all the reasons I’ve outlined before, but also because of iSight, which I honestly think can change how a family keeps in touch.

Anyway, I hope Adium can integrate a voice/video library soon, but until then, I’m going to be sticking to iChat.