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NetRestore follows Cinema Display |
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Written by Chris Tangora
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Tuesday, 18 November 2008 |
 For any of you who have to work on a large number of Macs, either in a commercial or educational lab, we have some bad news. Mike Bombich has officially retired NetRestore at version 3.4. On his website (bombich.com) he states that the code was becoming to fragile and difficult to maintain and a complete re-write would have taken to much time. If you are looking for an alternative he is suggesting that you can check out Deploy Studio, a freeware application that Mike says is a lot like how he wanted NetRestore 4 to be like.
But alas, it's not all bad news. Mike assures us that Carbon Copy Cloner will continue to be developed and supported for the foreseeable future, and his boot picker is available again (on the Apple educational site).
More at Bombich.com
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Written by Chris Tangora
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Wednesday, 12 November 2008 |
 Ever wonder how Apple got its name name? I did to, but never really searched for it. Then wham, the internet comes through again and delivers the answer to my inbox. So I thought I would share with you. In true Apple fashion, the name Apple comes from Steve Jobs. Apparently Steve's company was three months late in filing their name. Apples were (I wonder if they still are) Steve Jobs' favorite fruit, so he said to his colleagues that if they didn't come up with a better name by 5pm, he was going to name the company "Apple Computers".
The name stuck.
To find out more about some of the names of now large corporations (Oracle came from a CIA project, and Intel was almost called 'Moore-Noyce’), check out akmal eky's blog on wordpress.
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Parallels Desktop 4, with iPhone control |
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Written by Chris Tangora
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Tuesday, 11 November 2008 |
 Parallels released their latest Windows Virtualization today, Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Mac. The new release comes with some added bonuses, like faster gaming graphics and better battery life. One of the cooler things is iPhone control of the virtual machine. Using your iPhone you can start, stop or restart your virtual machine.
Using the iPhone to control computers is no new task, but this is a nice feature added to a solid program. Parallels also claims improvements with the Coherence (Windows & Mac combined on the Desktop), and a 50% increase in performance. While these claims have yet to be tested, if history is an lesson soon VMWare will come out with an update that matches Parallels. But for the time being, it looks like Parallels is a step ahead.
Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Mac on Parallels.com
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You're A PC but support Apple |
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Written by Chris Tangora
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Monday, 10 November 2008 |
So I was over surfing Microsoft's "I'M A PC" site, and was pretty much un-amazed. It was really blah, there are some people that I just laughed at their pictures, some people's I just didn't understand, then there was the Sneaker Pimps. Sneaker Pimps is an artist show that travels around the globe. What the guy says is that he needs a machine that can be turned on at 6 am and run it until he goes to sleep, and he has never had any problems with Windows. Okay. But then he goes on to say if you need a computer that works every time, you need a PC. That line of BS got me looking into this guy.
So where's the first place I go, to their website, sneakerpimps.net, and what is the first thing I see? An advertisement for Apple's iPod. Okay. Come on now. I respect your right to choose your OS, and Peter Fahey's opinion as to what computer you should use is questionable. But to imply that an Apple computer doesn't work as a well as Windows computer, then to go and have Apple be your "Official Music" sponsor of your tour? That is poor taste. If Windows really works so well, why doesn't he have the Zune as the Official sponsor?
Just my opinion, but I think it is going to be harder and harder to find someone who isn't affiliated with Apple in some way for the future "I'm a PC" ads. Yes, Microsoft will still have some hard core guys, like this guy ... 
or this guy 
... but overall, I think that more and more people who try a Mac will buy one, and more and more people will use iTunes and will buy iPods.
But the MOST interesting "I'm a PC" is the one by Eva Longoria, the Desperate Housewife that really uses a Mac (posted on MacMod in September 2008). In her clip she goes into further details about Microsoft. She doesn't say that she uses Microsoft rather she says that she uses "my PC" daily, then goes into how Microsoft donated computers to Eva's Heroes a program that Eva started for people with disabilities. So, now it makes more sense. I'm glad she was able to get computers for disabled people to use to write their name and letters, that is awesome. I'm glad that Microsoft was kind enough to donate them to that cause. The only thing that really irks me is that the focus of the "I'm a PC" is about her stardom, not about what the computers were used for. This really seems to me to be yet another opportunity missed my Microsoft. A series of 30-second commercials showing how people who donate their time to disadvantaged or disabled people and how Microsoft supports that. That would probably sell more computers than their entire Jerry & Bill / I'm A PC / Mojave Experiment put together.
I applaud Microsoft for contributing to worthy causes. But I shake my head at their Marketing team for being so out of touch that they walk right over a gold mine.
More About Eva's Heroes at evasheroes.org.
Have fun looking at all the PC's and thinking of your own comments and remember ... "I'm a PC" without the P is an iMac.
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Written by Chris Tangora
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Saturday, 08 November 2008 |
 While there is no official declaration of what computers will be used in the White House in 2009, there will be at least two or three MacBooks. The first family-elect used MacBooks to keep in touch with each other during the campaign, and will probably continue to use them after they change their address.
Obama is for Net neutrality, and is going to have a Chief Technology Officer that makes sure all of the government systems are kept up to date and functioning correctly. The good thing about this (and I really think this will happen), is that we'll see a lot less of the requirement for Internet Explorer. That push is going to come from two sides now. First the consumers who want to use something else, and now possibly from the government. If all government Internet activity was on Safari, imagine how many people would be working OT to rewrite their website in a neutral manner?
Obama's Technology Plans
Biden with MacBook on election night
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Written by Chris Tangora
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Friday, 07 November 2008 |
 Leopard vs Heron, no it's not the sequel to Eagle vs Shark, it's a battle of the Unix OS's, specifically Ubuntu (Hardy Heron) vs Macintosh (Leopard). The comparison comes from Phoronix.com, when they started looking at the speed difference between major releases of Ubuntu.
For those of you who may be new to Ubuntu, it is a version of Linux (open-source OS) that is very popular worldwide due to its ability to be localized to a plethora of languages.
But now down to the good stuff. Both an Ubuntu and an OS X machine are Unix machines at heart. So Phoronix took a Mac mini and ran some tests on it to compare Ubuntu to Leopard. The results aren't completely in favor for either OS. There are some things that the Mac does better, and Ubuntu had its own strong points. The Mac had a higher average FPS, and really shot up (over 350% faster) when running a Quake engine (Urban Terror 4.1). Another strong point for the Mac was during the Bonnie++ test, as well as the GnuPG encryption, which the Mac easily edged out the Ubuntu build. Perhaps one of the most surprising results for the Mac was the SQL injection. 12,500 inserts into a SQLite database took about 25 seconds on the Mac, and over 110 seconds on both the 32-bit and 64-bit Ubuntu builds.
Not everything was rosy for the Mac though, the Java SciMark was really disappointing overall on the Mac. Ubuntu is also using GCC 4.3 for compiling as opposed to Apple's GCC 4.0, which might be why Ubuntu was able to compile PHP and ImageMagik so much quicker than the Mac. Overall, it would be a tie in my opinion. However, each had its strong points and that reflect both time spent designing the OS and who the target market is for the OS.
Ubuntu is still in its infancy; technically it is on version 8, but it still has some hurdles to overcome. One advantage that Apple has is that they know what systems they are building the OS for, so they can optimize and conentrate on that code, while Linux developers have to cover a much larger range of computer components, much like the Windows developers, but Microsoft can pass the weight of that development to the third party developers. To me, Ubuntu still seems like the future of consumer desktop Linux.
Leopard vs. Heron at Phoronix.com
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Written by Chris Tangora
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Wednesday, 05 November 2008 |
 There's a nice little video tutorial over at the Mod Brothers about polishing metal for your mods, drive bays, PCI pplates, or any kind of exposed metal. If you have metal, why not make is shiny? The low-down is to use Mother's Billet as well as some fine grain wet and dry sandpaper. But if you have never done this before, take a look at the Mod Brothers for some pictorial references.
The Mod Brothers do Polishing.
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NetFlix Now Mac Compatible |
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Written by Chris Tangora
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Tuesday, 04 November 2008 |
 NetFlix's video streaming service is now available to Mac users, if they opt-in via a web form. NetFlix is using Microsoft's Silverlight to power their video on demand queues. Previously, the only way to watch your Netflix Instant Queue was either on a Windows machine or via the Roku NetFlix box (about $100). I opted in to get the Roku for a birthday present and I liked it. Nice and simple, easy to use However it is yet another box to keep track of the remote and place next to the tele. So if you already have the NetFlix subscription and you have your own Mac Media Center, give this a look. While the content isn't as new as the Apple Store, and it isn't HD either, there is a lot (and I mean a lot) of movies and other things you can watch on it.
NetFlix opt-in form for Mac Users
Roku NetFlix Box
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