I don't run Leopard, so I can't speak for it, but the Tiger OS definitely falls short in providing cool screen savers. Sure, that squiggly 3D tentacle light beam is cool, but other than that, the options pretty much consist of photo slide-shows.
The Hills is an open source screen saver developed by Chris Kent. It depicts a beautifully rendered 3D landscape of rolling hills that you fly over in what must be a virtual helicopter. It includes options that let you change the height of the hills and the speed at which you fly, add different colored fog, and even reveal the wireframe structure of the hills.
Originally hosted on the developer's .mac account, his bandwidth limits were exceeded, and the app was yanked. Fortunately, the good folks at Cult of Mac have stepped up and are hosting it themselves.
Screen savers might not serve a functional purpose anymore, but it's nice to be greeted by serene rolling hills when you return to your idling Mac. Check it out.
One of the casualties in the .Mac to MobileMe transition was iCards, a service that allowed you to send free greeting cards to your near and dear ones on special occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries, and weekends--what, you don't consider them special?
If you'd been wandering around listlessly on the interwebs, trying to figure out how to tell that special someone that you miss him/her/it, you'll be glad to know that a solution still exists. And a better one than iCards. Right on your Leopard-powered Mac.
One of the much hyped, but not very enthusiastically received, new features in Leopard was stationery in Mail, a feature that allows you to choose from a variety of predesigned themes, plug in your own photos, add some text, and email it to anyone. Sound familiar?
Yes, stationery in Mail is the new iCards, only more customizable, extensible, and with better designs to choose from. How do we know? Well, Apple was gracious enough to point us in the right direction themselves through this neat MobileMe news blog thing they've got going on. See, and you thought they'd never post anything except apologies and free extensions!
I once learned the hard way that when a Mac OS 10.3 Panther disc is inserted into a MacBook, the computer suffers a kernel panic and general lack of "doing anything useful." But my 10.5 disc could travel from MacBook to Intel-based iMac to a MacBook Pro without causing a system-wide "abandon ship!", which is nice to know. And with some fine-tuning, who knows what you could do?
The real fun comes when trying to clone older versions of Mac OS (why hello, Classic!), but victory is still out there! For instance, here's what happened when an OS 9 disc, a clamshell iBook (god, why didn't those come in purple?), and a CRT iMac all party together:
This procedure also works with the Classic Mac OS, though I find one must be more careful with version numbers than in OS X. Through time I ended up with a clamshell iBook and CRT iMac and only one set of OS 9 discs for an even older clamshell iBook that no longer functioned. I could install the system on the iMac, as it was the only one that could boot from the discs. Then, after updating the system to 9.2.2, I would copy the contents to the iBook, which would work flawlessly. Unfortunately, when I tried to clone the system to my eMac, I ended up with no sound or 3D graphics. I suspect that the problem lies in an old ROM file in the System Folder that predates the eMac.Bah, it's always the old ROM files in the System folder, ain't it?
But seriously though, I see this as another example of the Mac rightfully dancing around going, "I am so great! I am so great! Everybody loves me, I am so great!"
I admire people who plan ahead. So while I have no idea what I'll be doing in the next 90 days (beyond the usual: eat, sleep, and work), it's nice to know that others will likely be Mac shopping. Yay!
(It's Friday. I want the weekend to get here. What else can I say?) A ChangeWave Research survery queried more than 4000 Americans on whom they planned to buy a personal computer from, with 32 percent saying they planned to purchase a Mac. Nipping at Apple's heels was Dell, with 28 percent of survey participants saying they would check out the Land that Inspiron Forgot.
Did Apple's plan-to-buy data increase between July and August? Why yes it did, thank you for asking. It increased among Apple desktops and laptops: planned desktop purchases rose from 27 percent in July to 30 percent in August. Planned laptop purchases rose from 30 percent in July to 32 percent in August.
So is this Apple-buying frenzy the result of an "iPhone halo" as ChangeWave's research director suggests? Or are people just getting sick of Blue Screens of Death and Windows Vista woes? Or is it a little of Column A and a little of Column B?
Since setting up my media vault (more to come on that, I promise), Leopard’s screen sharing has been an invaluable resource. With it enabled, I can access my Mac mini’s screen from anywhere in the whole wide world with no problem (as long as the mini doesn’t decide to log off the wireless network—but that’s another story).
But if you’ve ever forgotten to enable screen sharing or found that it was disabled for some reason, you’ll be glad to know that a quick Terminal command can turn it on or off (as long as you’ve enabled Remote Login in your Mac’s sharing preferences). No, this won’t display your remote Mac’s screen as animated ASCII art (bummer!).
Just connect to your Mac via Terminal and issue the following commands to enable the screen sharing goodness:
$ cd /Library/Preferences$ echo -n enabled > com.apple.ScreenSharing.launchd
Done and done. Want to disable the service? Here you go:
$ cd /Library/Preferences$ rm com.apple.ScreenSharing.launchd
Erm. Yeah. So that’s it. The whole post. What are you still doing here? I’m not your monkey!
Unless you’re a bit of a UNIX geek, you probably don’t run into permissions issues a lot. And those that you do encounter can usually be solved by going into the Disk Utility and running Repair Permissions. Done and done, right?
Well, if you’ve ever been curious about just what permissions are and how they work, boy do I ever have a Knowledge Base document for you. “Troubleshooting permissions issues in Mac OS X” is everything you’ve ever wanted to know about permissions, but were afraid to ask because it might make you look, well, weird. You’ll learn about how to translate permissions into numerical codes (quick—what does 542 mean?), default settings for files, and all about the glories that are root.
This is heady stuff, to be sure. And if that doesn’t get your fingers itching to dive into the Terminal, well, wait until I rundown the fsck article. Eh? Ehhh?
You love iTunes. Admit it: you do. You love it like you love the sweet smell of fabric softener or the glorious taste of pure sugar melting on your tongue. You want to take your music with you everywhere you go, but there’s just one eensy-weensy little problem: instead of an iPhone, you’re using some other phone.
Salling wants to help you out. The company that brought us the Salling Clicker, which allowed you to control your Mac via your cell phone, has now launched Salling Media Sync. The idea is simple: sync your iTunes music and playlists directly to your non-Apple phone. Of course, you’ll still need to be using one of Salling’s approved phones, which means a handset from Nokia, Sony, or Sony Ericsson. And, obviously, the phone won’t be able to play back music protected with the iTunes Store’s DRM.
Salling Media Sync is free for “basic” use, though if you shell out $22, apparently you get a version that syncs faster. In addition to a compatible phone, you’ll also need to be running iTunes 7.6 or 7.7 and at least OS X 10.4.11 (or Windows XP or higher).
After many rumors and conjection, it’s official. Comcast is bringing its customers back to the days of metered internet. Remember when you used to run a little timer that would track your monthly internet online time? Get ready to have a little meter measuring your downloading for the month.
As of October 1st, Comcast thinks you’re abusing your internet if you download or upload 250 GB. Of course, the internet really started to take off when unlimited plans were offered and people could stop thinking about and worrying about what they were doing and for how long. Comcast argues that most users won’t run into this based on these stats:
Add in data synchronization, Skype, high definition movies, a Slingbox, online gaming, and maybe a little Bit Torrent (don’t tell). 250 GB doesn’t seem like that much anymore, now does it? I’m glad I moved off Comcast and onto FiOS. My sympathies to all you Comcast users.
Samsung is jumping into the ultra-thin notebook market with its new X360 notebook. Set for worldwide release in October, the X360 is aimed primarily at the MacBook Air's target market of people willing to spend a boatload of money in exchange for a smaller, weaker notebook.
Described by Samsung as being "lighter than air" (get it?), the X360 is indeed lighter than the MacBook Air at a mere 2.8 pounds compared to the Air's 3 pounds.
Of course sacrifices had to be made in order to achieve this level of lightness. Samsung used a slower, ultra-low voltage Core 2 Duo processor, and made the notebook a bit thicker than the Air. So in effect, it's lighter than air, but not thinner.
The X360's ports, however, put the MacBook Air to shame, including Ethernet, an ExpressCard/34 slot, and a multi-format card reader—all of which the Air lacks. The X360 also offers three USB ports, HDMI and VGA out, and even a (assumably optional) fingerprint reader.
This looks like another case of a manufacturer stepping up to Apple and besting their niche product, much like how Dell bested the Mac Mini with their Studio Hybrid line. Once Apple updates their product line, however, I think they'll get the last laugh.
