Category: os x

  • Test bed Leopard upgrade reveals some issues

    Well, the UPS man finally brought my family pack upgrade copy of Mac OS X 10.5 aka Leopard. As I mentioned the other day, I have no immediate plans to install it on either of my main systems, the 24″ iMac or 15″ MacBook Pro, known respectively as “Gigantico” and “Lunar Excursion Module” or LEM…

  • Leopard upgrade? Not today, baby

    Excited about Apple’s new Leopard OS X upgrade? Me, too. It’s got plenty of desirable new features, great and small. Did the Fed-Ex guy just drop it off and you’ve ripped open the box and got the shiny disk right in your hands? You’re drooling as you read the back of the package and start…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • He marched in the animals, two by two

    …And he called out as they came through Hey Lord, I’ve got green alligators and long-necked geese Some humpty backed camels and some chimpanzees Some cats and rats and elephants, but Lord, I’m so forlorn I just can’t find no unicorns. Ah, the Irish Rovers and The Unicorn Song. Brings back fond memories of rainy…

  • Cool new snapshot feature in Fusion

    I’ve been messing around with VMWare’s Fusion software that lets you run virtual machines under OS X. In my case, it’s Windows 2000 which is good enough to run Outlook 2003 and Sony’s horrible digital recorder software. Today I installed the latest and greatest beta version and it has a cool new feature. At the…

  • A scanner, a keyboard and other Macworld goodies

    Continuing last year’s tradition, I’m listing a few things featured at the Macworld show in San Francisco that caught my attention. I didn’t attend so this is just stuff that I read about… First, solving an annoying shortcoming of most USB keyboards, Canadian peripheral maker Matias introduced some Mac keyboards with USB 2.0 ports. Most…

  • WriteRoom getting better

    Version 2.0 of the retro word processor WriteRoom is out today (tip o’ the cap to MacMinute.com) with some nifty new features. I’ve been messing around with the initial release because it helps me to concentrate on writing and avoid getting sucked in to answering email or making new iTunes playlists or anything else. Essentially,…

  • Phew, that’s a mighty back up

    The year is rapidly drawing to a close, prompting the usual rush to get those last tax deductions in order, clean out the closets and, of course, update my off-site back up. As I’ve mentioned before, I have a thing about backups after having experienced hefty data losses several times, including the time when my…

  • Speedy blogs, speedily updated on VoIP

    Once upon a time, I kept stacks of computer magazines on hand just in case I was suddenly in the market for some gadget reviewed months earlier. Now a days, of course, the Internet has completely subsumed that role and it’s usually not the web sites of big magazines that even run the best reviews.…