Such memories looking at these Apple computers over the years.
What have I owned? Let’s see if I remember…
and throw in a Newton MessagePad. 🙂
Have you seen Apple’s new marketing campaign called Why You’ll Love a Mac? Gone are the humorous adventures of Mac and PC, replaced by these factoids that explain why you’ll love a Mac.
Kinda on the boring side, but it lays out the Mac advantages quicker than watching numerous videos of John Hodgman and Justin Long.
I’m on the hunt to find a new Mac app launcher to replace my favorite but aging launcher, Quicksilver. Quicksilver hasn’t been under active development for some time and each Mac OS X release and update is one step towards Quicksilver’s demise.
After upgrading to Mac OS X 10.6.3, QS stopped launching at startup. Even after manually starting QS, it just didn’t act right. This problem might be fixable, but it’s also a good time to see what other app launchers are out there. But I am baffled that with all the MacHeist deals and MacUpdate bundles I’ve bought in the past, there isn’t an app launcher among them?!
I found this review which is a good start. I was told about Butler which seems to do a lot but has its own menu interface. I love the simplicity and speed of Quicksilver’s Control-Space key combo to kick things off. And of course, free is good.
Sorry, I still think Mac OS X’s Spotlight is too slow. I’m trying out Namely right now and customized the key stroke activation to mimic Quicksilver. We’ll see how this app launcher performs.
Anyone have recommendations for a Mac app launcher?
For today, January, 20, 2010 only, independent Mac software developers have joined together to offer their support for Haiti relief efforts. If you buy their software today, proceeds go to supporting Haiti.
Check out the great list of apps at IndieRelief and make a buy today!
Update: Hope you made your purchase to help support the relief effort in Haiti. This win-win promotion raised $143,000!
An Apple fanboy recommending a Dell netbook? What’s with that? With a little bit of work, you can transform this sub-$300 netbook into a full blown Mac OS X laptop.
Good as a secondary machine or when going on travel. Get a Dell Mini 10v and hackintosh it!
CNN Geekologist, Chris Pirillo, shows Windows 7 running on a Mac via VMWare. Here’s his segment.
And yes, Chris will be attending the upcoming [re]thinkHawaii.
Quick, what are your guesses of the top three social media sites used by corporations for marketing purposes? Is is MySpace? How about Facebook? Is YouTube used?
My limited, unofficial research brought me across these sites:
Here’s the gallery of screen shots from these sites:
From these various sites, the most popular that are surfacing are Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. This trio is becoming the big three of social media marketing used by companies to engage and interact with their customers.
But is there room for one more? The inclusion of iTunes (and the App Store) in the above samples is very interesting and could hint at Apple’s next move. No, I’m not suggesting that Apple enter the social media space to challenge the current contenders. That’s not Apple’s way. Historically, Apple only enters the fray when the company feels it can dominate the space or effectively change the game.
This is where Apple could make a definite impact, providing users with the preeminent means of engaging with social media. No, Apple should not make their own version of Facebook (sorry MobileMe), but instead get people connected to Facebook. As in mobile or desktop access to Facebook using an iPhone, iPod, or a Mac, as in publishing pictures to Facebook using iPhoto, as in sharing musical tastes with Facebook using iTunes, as in sharing movies on Facebook using iMovie, as in feeding other content to Facebook via integration with an iPhone app. Same with YouTube, iMovie ’08 included exporting to YouTube, the recent iPhone 3GS supports mobile movie uploads to YouTube, and now Snow Leopard’s QuickTime X can export to YouTube straight from the OS. You see a trend here?
By approaching the social media space not as a service, but as a connector to these services, Apple can change the game and really ingrain itself in the social media landscape. That is Apple’s way.
Amazon is pre-selling the next Mac OS X version aka Snow Leopard. Current 10.5 owners can upgrade to Snow Leopard for only $29. Great price!
How timely! Apple’s MobileMe got a feature upgrade allowing users to easily share big files with others. After uploading a file to your MobileMe iDisk, you can share it and get an accessible URL for the file. You can even assign a password and expire the shared file for added protection.
I needed to send a 20-MB PDF file to someone but email wouldn’t allow it. So instead, I shared the file using MobileMe and sent the user the public link. Cool!
I’ve installed iLife 09 twice now (with the multi-user Family Pack of course!) and on both occasions, Quicksilver got messed up. Quicksilver is installed and still working, but it looks like its catalog of apps gets jacked.
Invoking Quicksilver to startup apps doesn’t bring up the correct app. For example, trying to run “Disk Utility” to correct disk permissions, I type in control-space to envoke QS then enter in d-i-s-k. Disk Utility is usually the top choice but not anymore. Not sure what’s up. Rebuilding the QS catalog fixes this so it’s not a permanent mess up, just an inconvenient one.
At the Macworld Expo 2009, an HP product surprisingly generated a lot of interest. The HP MediaSmart Server ex485/ex487 is hot! With this home server, you can save backups to it, even with Mac OS X’s Time Machine. You can store all your iTunes libraries on the MediaSmart and serve them out to all machines running iTunes. You can even backup the MediaSmart Server to Amazon’s S3 cloud.
There are a few downsides for Mac users though. The MediaSmart runs Windows Home Server, and you initially need a Windows box to configure the server. And because it runs Windows, you have to take the typical Windows security precautions.
Here’s a very detailed review of the MediaSmart Server ex487.
You can pre-order your MediaSmart ex485 for $600 from Amazon. Looking better than a Drobo.
