Entries Tagged 'Macintosh' ↓

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Exhibit C

4GB RAM; effective 3.2GB of RAM on a 2G MacBook. But that’s fine — the 1GB can be used in case I dual boot.

Thanks, Longbeard.

GarageBand is a neat application for podcasting. It was made in such a way that it can interface with iChat for as many as 10 simultaneous people in one room, recording each person as a seperate track. This is pretty neat as you will definitely find it useful to edit the levels of each guest.

Gabe Mercado was stuck in Quezon City so we had to do our podcast project over the air. Both of us being Mac users allowed us to fire up GarageBand and record via iChat. As it turns out however, we had to redo several segments of the podcast due to GarageBand crashing 10 minutes into the recording. We’ve figured out two solutions (UNluckily only after recording three separate sessions which we would stitch to one long episode) - the first is to repair your disk permissions using Disk Utility. The second would be to delete your GarageBand preferences and let the GB redo the file when you relaunch.

Ugh. Utter hassle. I highly doubt this is a Leopard issue as the support forums say this is more of a GarageBand glitch. With online voice recording, I’ve come to believe that the two most stable applications would be Skype and Gizmo Project, the latter having a default recording feature. Anyone would like to share their VoIP solution?

P.S. The Photo Booth video on top has really nothing to do with this post.

My gosh! I am speechless! This can only mean that the Macintosh’s market share is really increasing, putting Mac users at an awkward position for attacks. This is the inevitable turnout for these sorts of things.

Miscreants have released a sophisticated Trojan into the wild that targets Mac users, according to Intego, a company that markets security software that runs on OS X.

The malicious Trojan, dubbed OSX.RSPlug.A, is making the rounds on several porn websites. When Mac users try to view some videos, the site feeds them a page that says QuickTime is unable to play the file unless a special codec is installed first. If the user proceeds, a form of DNSChanger is installed that hijacks some web requests sent to eBay, PayPal and some banking websites, according to this write-up from Intego. [Oh noes!]

Such is the price of beauty!

Rumor has it that Apple will be unveiling the new line of MacBooks this coming 4Q complete with biometric scanner built into the trackpad. But its not really the thumb signature that intrigues me, but the fine print of the “unusual features” that the new trackpad will contain. Here are some of my guesses:

• pinching of the trackpad to zoom in and out of the cursor area (the old default command was to scroll with two fingers while holding CTRL)
• iPod-like circle scrolling for certain applications
• Flicking the trackpad to scroll quickly through lists
• reconfiguration of the tapping motion on the track pad to do other things (like zoom a photo to fit to browser)

The new track pad should, by induction, sport some of the innovations of the Apple iPhone touch screen.

I have been trying out the new iMovie ‘08 that comes with the iLife ‘08 package. This is a completely reworked version of iMovie and Apple makes this distinction by changing the dock icon from a clapper to a star.

You can check out my very first project in my previous post as I recorded something with Kate Alvarez on this oven fresh software version.

The philosophy behind the rewritten application states that anybody should be able to make a movie in less than 10 minutes. All you need is the feed from your digicam and no editing skills at all.

So what did I think? iMovie ‘08 allows you to create video projects faster than the previous iMovie HD because all you need to do is cut and paste clips from a real time track and add transition effects. However, when it comes to more advanced editing tools such as extracting audio from video clips, pasting multimedia over tracks (let’s say I want to put a picture over a video without disrupting the sound), I would have to do this using the old version of iMovie. The new version also lacks transition features and themes! Despite my Mac fanboy admittance, I do find this move very disappointing.

Apple admits this huge flaw in the new version of iMovie to such an extent that they are making iMovie HD (2006) available for download for free — that is if you already have a copy of the new iLife ‘08. It’s a bummer though to have to rely on two copies for separate purposes.

Don’t get me wrong - the new version of iMovie is good for beginner videographers like me or for those who need to whip out a presentation in ten minutes! But as you move up the design chain, you will quickly outgrow this piece of software and settle for iMovie HD or Final Cut Pro. I would like to believe that iMovie ‘08 is what GarageBand was when Apple first introduced easy-as-pie podcasting. This new version makes it so much easier to churn out video podcasts.

Some resources to read:

10 Missing Features from iMovie ‘08
Buy iLife ‘08, Get iMovie HD for free!

Apple has just released a free 30 day trial of iWork ‘08. This version includes Pages, Keynote, and a new application called Numbers which is a replacement for Microsoft Excel. Hannibal from PhilMUG writes:

ladies and gentlemen, after fiddling with Numbers for about 30 minutes, i am so proud to announce that, i am leaving Microsoft Excel for Mac in favor of the new iWork ‘08. All my current formulae have their equivalent in Numbers and my worksheets definitely look far better. For one, the cells with the infamous #DIV/0 are now replaced by just a red triangle symbol with an exclamation point inside. it may not be a big deal for some but it sure makes the sheets look neat.

i love the ease and convenience of using intelligent tables. the usual formulae such as sum, average, variance and standard deviation as well as financial like CAGR are all just drag and drop. spreadsheet work has never been this easy and FUN.

Installing the latest version of iWork ‘08 will not overwrite your old iWork version. The application costs $79.00 for a solo copy and $99.00 for a family pack.

There is a poll currently being conducted by the Yahoo! for Macintosh development team. Since YM for OS X has very long graduation dates between versions, the team is letting the users decide whether it deserves to be updated now or later.

I am honestly apathetic to whatever verdict they come up with as the new version of the Macintosh OS is set to be released come October. The survey results favor releasing the new version now as not a lot of people are using OS 10.3.

Free applications are always a boon. Today I showcase three free applications for OS X that can help you become more productive in your creative endeavors. Tody I showcase CYBERDUCK, an efficient and free FTP app, THINK, a simple “getting things done” app and BEAN, a text editor on steroids.

CYBERDUCK: It also looks cute on your dashboard
Though I was a user of Fetch, I had decided to migrate to Cyberduck because it was simple to use and best of all, free. it has never been lacking in features, allowing you to do multiple connections, support for Keychain and Spotlight search and best of all - ultra simple navigation. [DOWNLOAD]
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MacHeads unite! Nothing like an iChat conference with PhilMUG for the running account of the 2007 WWDC. The most interesting annoucement will be the fate of .Mac accounts, allegedly to be handed over to Google’s development. Argh. There was no announcement for the .Mac toolkit. Nonetheless, the most intriguing announcement was when Steve showed how the iPhone’s Safari is not just a browser, but now an operating system too.

Some other features of Leopard were discussed and Steve did an in-your-face to Microsoft with their new pricing scheme:
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This is just a friendly note that for those who have been trying to email me at my .Mac account email address, you will no longer get replies from there as I have decided not to renew it. See my about page if you want to contact me.

If its one thing I do hate about Apple. its the fact that they charge a steep price for a perk that doesn’t even deliver much in terms of value for features. They’re stuck in the old days (late 90’s) where not everyone could put up their own blog for free, buy your own domain and email address, share photos online, backup files, or establish a file sharing system. I can think of dozens of free Web 2.0 services today that outmatch purchasing a .Mac account, and costing you so much less too.

So the switch from a .Mac to a Dreamhost account made perfect sense. I’m paying almost the same yearly price for 160GB versus a measly 512MB of storage and getting over 1TB of bandwidth. I can install all the blogs and forums I want and create unlimited email accounts. The need came when I reached my fourth podcast episode. I felt that I would be needing a lot more space to host my online show, The BuggedCast and half a gig worth of space wouldn’t hack it in the long run.

So adieu, .Mac. It was a fun one year, but I’ve moved on to other things. My priorities have changed, but really, at the end of the day, its not you. It’s me.