journals

Leopard debuts October 26 [UPDATED]

By Nick, October 16, 2007

It’s official: Leopard will ship this month--by a thin margin as usual.

Today Apple announced that Leopard will be available on Friday, October 26 at 6 PM, quoth their press release.

Leopard was initially scheduled to arrive in late 2006 or early 2007. In August 2006, Apple announced Leopard to ship in Spring 2007. Earlier this year, it was pushed back to October so that Apple engineers could focus on getting the iPhone out the door.

Apple advertises over 300 new features. Leopard will retail for the customary $129 US. Also, Mac OS X Server will ship on October 26 as well.

Get your fill at http://www.apple.com/macosx/!

Deep Thought’s Take: Naturally the Mac users on our staff are looking forward to Leopard, including myself. There doesn’t seem to be anything more in the way of big features listed on the Leopard site, so you won’t get much more information from that front on the new Leopard site. What is intriguing, however, are some of the smaller features. For example:

DVD Player can now recognize scratches on a DVD and play back scratched discs without a problem. Sweet!
iLife Media Browser now accessible via the Open dialog box.
Disk utility now supports dynamic partition resizing.
Leopard includes a handful of new fonts.
Parental Controls includes a Wikipedia content filter.
Preview now includes the Instant Alpha feature like PAges and KEynote.

See anything else intriguing? Leave a comment!

UPDATE: There seems to be a little controversy over the fact that Leopard’s price for…
(Continue)

	1	1836
Nick	comment	views

10 easy ways to become a greener geek

By Nick, October 15, 2007

Today is Blog Action Day, where thousands of blogs worldwide are teaming up to raise awareness of environmental issues. I’ve been kicking around this article idea in my head for a while, but I figure that today is as good as any day to actually write it! Here are some simple simple ways to be more environmentally friendly with your computer and technology purchases. Some of these may be pretty obvious, but a refresher course never hurts.

Recycle

In many areas there are periodic electronic waste recycling collections. Also, check with your local city or county governments for any other computer recycling or reuse programs. Alternately, do a google search for such programs in your area. Some cities, such as Alameda, California, may have web sites set up with environmental information. Also, be on the lookout for cell phone and ink cartridge recycling programs.

Purchase with recycling in mind

Some computers, such as the current generation iMac, are designed with recycling in mind. In this case, the iMac makes heavy use of aluminum and glass, two highly-recyclable materials. Do what you can to check how recyclable the computer you’re interested in is.

Reuse when possible

Perhaps you have an older computer that still runs fine for word processing or email but no longer cuts it for your gaming. Put it to use elsewhere; give it to your kids instead of buying a new computer. Use it as a home server. Give it to a friend. Sell it. Donate it to a…
(Continue)

	0	1822
Nick	comments	views

Site news: Cast of Geeks returns for second season

By Nick, October 11, 2007

Cast of Geeks, the Deep Thought podcast, returns for season number two! In this episode we discuss the RIAA, iPhone lawsuits, gaming geekery, Leopard, and more.

Cast of Geeks is a (now) bi-weekly podcast where we discuss news and issues surrounding the tech world, as well as hold interviews and present other features.

Listen to this week’s episode - AAC “enhanced” podcast - 31.2 MB/67 minutes

Do you like what you hear? Subscibe to the podcast feed. Also visit our podcast page for a listing of all previous episodes. Lastly, you can visit our page on iTunes.

Do you want to contribute? Send an email to

Shopping experience trying to buy an iMac at a Best Buy and Apple Store in Topanga

By SogniX, October 9, 2007

OK, this is a double-feature!

How hard is it to make a purchase at Best Buy or Apple Store in Topanga?

Very very hard if not impossible!

Our tale starts off at the Best Buy in Topanga.

A client wants a new computer, so we go to Best Buy. She decides on an iMac! Awesome! We wait… and wait… and wait for a salesperson… nobody around! Uh, okay… we start hunting for and chasing down workers; we hunted down four and none of them were able to help us - claiming, “I don’t work in this department,” or, “I don’t have the key,” and some other bullshit excuses. One even totally forgot that we needed help! As for the ones we were able to talk to—one was saying we need a driver for the printer because the Macs come with iLife ‘08… wait… what??? And another said they didn’t offer a rebate on a printer when I knew specifically that there is a rebate.

Frustrated, we finally storm out of there—and as luck would have it—what we think was a manager was near the exit as we were leaving and we let him get an earful of what we thought, and continued on our way to the Apple Store.

The Apple Store is in the Topanga Mall, which means a lot of walking and trying to figure out just where you are going. Hopefully you are not making a big purchase because you will have to figure out a way to…
(Continue)

	4	3361
SogniX	comments	views

Yahoo! Mail Beta is Beta No More

By Liam, October 9, 2007

Yahoo last week begun quietly transitioning their new AJAX-based webmail interface from beta status. This is going on while Yahoo! is celebrating the 10th anniversary of Yahoo! Mail, the initial user interface of which was still in use up until recently. Yahoo! is the third webmail provider to rewrite their interface in AJAX, behind Google’s Gmail and Microsoft’s Windows Live Hotmail, and the second to create an interface that behaves like a desktop email client, behind WL Hotmail.

Users who wish to go back to the old interface may do so by clicking "Switch to Yahoo! Mail Classic..." under the Options menu.

Deep Thought’s Take: Well, it’s good to see Yahoo! finish with this project for now, unlike some people (Google.) As for the interface itself, it is certainly full-featured, if a bit sluggish and ad-heavy. That’s the price to pay for unlimited storage of email messages, I guess.

More Info

Is Yahoo! dropping the beta from Yahoo! Mail Beta?

Yahoo! Mail