Category: Apple

  • Back in the New York Groove thanks to HBO

    One of the wireless phone companies, I think it was, some years back concocted a crazy service to help identify random songs by calling them in to some all-knowing, tune-analyzing super computer. You know — hear a great tune on the radio, dial up the supercomputer, hold your phone up to the speakers, and find…

  • Netgear’s nearly identical powerline adapters

    After my recent whiny post about Netgear’s confusing line of networking adapters which run over your electrical wiring, a friend this week volunteered to take my medium-speed powerline adapters off my hands. So it’s on to the grown-up stuff: the supposedly 200 megabit per second bad boys. Annoyingly, the faster version has no model with…

  • Anyone wanna buy a used Airport Extreme?

    Had to expect this but, still… “Two peripherals also reached the Apple Store on Tuesday without a separate announcement. AirPort Extreme revision The AirPort Extreme Base Station introduced in January now adds gigabit Ethernet without a price hike ($179).” (via AppleInsider)

  • Blaspheming in the temple of the Mac: Boot Camp

    Ah, the crazy things we do to play a silly computer game known as Civilization, or in this case Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Beyond The Sword expansion. Each and every version of Civ comes out first for Windows and some months later for Macs. And so, each and every time, I have to obtain, borrow…

  • Hardware updates galore

    I happed to glance over at the “Tools I use” link that sits on another part of my web site this morning and I realized that it was horribly out of date. Using a few minutes snatched from my lunch break, I’ve deleted the verbiage about my trusty old Powerbook G4 and added a description…

  • Doh, hit by a MacBook Pro revision

    So after advocating avoiding the first iteration of new gadgets and programs, I finally ponied up for the latest revision of Mac laptops, the Macbook Pro with Intel’s Santa Cruz Core 2 Duo chip. It also happens to have a new generation of video controller chips, Nvidia’s GeForce 8600M GT. Ho hum…or not. One reason…

  • Don’t rush out for an iPhone (really)

    (Updated 6/21) With the release of the undeniably super-cool iPhone just around the corner, I have a plea for gadgetistas everywhere: Please don’t camp out, queue up or generally make a fool of yourself on the evening news in front of an AT&T wireless store next week. Like I’ve said over and over, there’s no…

  • Curious Aaron solves iPhone voice-over mystery

    It was driving me a little crazy — no, make that A LOT crazy. Couldn’t sleep, couldn’t focus on reading the paper, couldn’t think about washing my hair in the shower — WHO was the voice behind Apple’s compelling new iPhones ads? You know the one where the guy is watching “Pirates of the Carribean”…

  • Not all EMI content available sans DRM yet

    With one day left in the month of May, Apple and record label EMI made good on their promise to start selling higher-quality digital music without annoying copying limits (so-called digital rights management, or DRM, technology). The new files are $1.29 each although buying a whole album of these “iTunes Plus” files doesn’t cost any…

  • It’s Lightroom by a full length over Aperture

    (Updated 6/21) Some time last year, I can’t say exactly when, I crossed a threshold with Apple’s iPhoto software. The program had already slipped from the “greatest thing since sliced bread” category down a few notches to just “really useful” as my growing photo collection had slowed basic operations and made the program’s tagging deficiencies…