journal: mac

Deep thoughts on thin

By Nick, January 16, 2008

You’ve all heard about the MacBook Air by now, I’m sure. Bad name aside (MacBook Air? Seriously? Is this the best they could come up with?), there are some who wonder who would buy it, or whether it’ll be a flop.

Yes, people will buy it. No it won’t be a flop.

First, let’s quickly look at who might benefit from something like the MacBook Air:

Students

Having been a student not too long ago, I can tell you that hauling books from class to class all day is no fun. After a while, you feel every single pound, every single ounce of what you’re carrying. Sure, two pounds doesn’t seem like much weight, but when you’re loaded down with books, you’ll take whatever weight reduction you can get. There are a couple drawbacks, however. Since it’s a 13.3-inch screen like the MacBook, it won’t take up any less desk space, which is disappointing and makes it a little less pleasant to use on the tiny desks in lecture halls (I’d love it if Apple brought back something the size of the 12” PowerBook G4, but so it goes). Also, the lack of an Ethernet jack is a drawback, since…
(Continue)

	12	1003
Nick	comments	views

A quick look at Scribbles 1.0

By Nick, December 5, 2007

I just spent the last 20 minutes toying around with Scribbles, a new drawing application for Mac OS X. Let me do away with the formalities and jump right into it:

Scribbles is flat-out cool.

First off, Scribbles doesn’t do a whole lot in comparison to most graphics apps out there. In fact, it’s probably the simplest graphics app you’ll ever see. And yet, underneath that amazing simplicity, you’ll find some unexpected power.

When you launch Scribble for the first time, you may notice that some things are missing. Like words. All of the controls in the main window have no text labels. That said, the user interface is incredibly intuitive. It took me only a few minutes to get the feel of what everything does. You will also notice that the user interface is absolutely slick. You get the feeling that every tiny little detail was thought out. The window controls are beautifully rendered. And there are a fair share of clever little touches. For example, when you click on the brush control, you get a brush control pane taking up the contents of the window. To get out, click the big “X” close button. The close button is…
(Continue)

	3	1139
Nick	comments	views

Report: Apple to hike iTunes movie prices

By Nick, December 3, 2007

There’s a report floating around the interwebs tonight that Apple will be raising the price of a movie on the iTunes Store in order to appease Hollywood studios. Ars Technica reports that, according to a claim by Pali Research(membership required), Apple will raise their wholesale movie price to $15 US a pop. The Ars report does note that it is uncertain exactly how this price increase will affect the actual selling price (aside from the obvious fact that it’s going to go up!).

As of right now, Apple charges $12.99 US for new releases sold on iTunes, and $9.99 US for older titles. What does this get you? A 640 x 480 digital copy of a movie that you can’t legally burn to a DVD and pop into your DVD player.

As of right now, Apple sells movies from Disney and Paramount, and those companies’ subsidiaries. Keep in mind this report is very much unconfirmed.

Deep Thought’s (very annoyed) take: Oh, how I hope this isn’t true. Say it ain’t so, Steve. Say it ain’t so!

More movies. Good. Higher prices not so good. As Ars notes, it doesn’t seem like movies on iTunes have really set the world on…
(Continue)

	2	959
Nick	comments	views

Fun Stuff: Chi Pet widget for Dashboard

By Nick, November 30, 2007

You don’t have a green thumb. You tried a little gardening and failed miserably. You even killed a Chia Pet or two. Maybe you need to try a virtual Chia Pet before you take on the real thing. Enter Chi Pet. Chi Pet is a Chia Pet-like widget for Dashboard. Unlike the real thing, you don’t need to remember to water it; just remember to click the water droplet from time to time to keep your Chi Pet nice and green.

Come on, you can do it! If you’re successful, who knows? Maybe one day you can grow a Chia Pet for real!

Sure, this little guy looks naked now, but in time it will grow a lovely green
coat of sprouts--provided I don’t kill it first.

via Mac News Online. And no, I am not the same Nick who wrote the Mac News Online article.

	0	941
Nick	comments	views

A first look at CandyBar 3

By Nick, November 29, 2007

Believe it or not, I’ve never used CandyBar ($29, $24 to upgrade) until now. I’ve never really had the need to tinker with the appearance of OS X.

Well, until Leopard, anyway. I switched off the 3D Dock, and have even modified the 2D Dock to something, uh, less white-border-y (I use the so-called Niqu Dock, but with the standard divider and active app indicator). And with the mixed reactions to Leopard’s folder icons and semi-transparent menubar, there’s no better time for developers of Mac UI tweak apps (ShapeShifter aside—Unsanity’s still working on that). So let’s take a quick look at this tasty morsel known as CandyBar.

The delicious chocolate coating

Icon Quick Look in CandyBar 3.

First and foremost, CandyBar is Leopard-only, as it makes use of some Leopard-only technology. At first glance, it certainly looks like a Leopard application: no side window borders, blue sidebar, medium-gray window theme. Beyond that, CandyBar 3 includes support for Leopard’s monster-sized 512 x 512-pixel icons, Quick Look for icon previews (it also includes a Finder Quick Look plugin for previewing icontainers), and Dock modification support. Sweet!

The soft nougat filling

Modifying the Dock is simple: drag replacement images into their respective image…
(Continue)

	3	1492
Nick	comments	views

Page 7 of 109 pages « First < Prev 3 4 5 6 [7] 8 9 10 11 Next > Last »

more stuff

Page 1 of 6 pages
[1] 2 3 4 5 Next > Last »

0 members and 23 guests now online
Most online: 746 visitors on 12/14/05

Current Time: 2:09 pm (PST)

Hello guest!