03 Oct 07
Oh come on, someone buy my old computer. It’s been cared for, the price is good, and surely it’s soaked up lots of creative vibes over the last few years. It needs a home …
Update: At last, my computer found a buyer. A nice guy, a photographer, who assured me it will continue to be taken care of. There was a sad moment as I packed it into his car and waved it goodbye—we’ve shared a lot of work hours together, that computer and I. You can easily get attached to Macs.
Tech Macs
01 Sep 05
I just got my new Apple Mighty Mouse this morning, and while it still isn’t the perfect mouse, I like it. But then I don’t have to use it continually; my favoured input device is a Wacom pen and tablet.
Highlights: lovely sensitive little scrollball that scrolls in all directions; great clicking action; two buttons—at long last; smooth, simple design.
Lowlights: hard to press double side button action (who thought that was a good idea?); still wired.
Tech Macs
02 May 05
Well, I suppose it’s traditional for every self-respecting Mac-using blogger to make a little post about the OS 10.4 Tiger upgrade, so here’s mine. It didn’t start well—something was wrong with my hard drive, according to Disk Utility, so I had to spend hours backing up my stuff to the other drive and my Powerbook before doing the big Erase. The Tiger installer wasn’t very helpful in working this out of course, simply telling me several times that there was an ‘error’ and to ‘try installing again’. Lucky I know roughly what I’m doing. Now that everything’s shiny clean and fresh though, and my programs are re-installed, I’m impressed. Spotlight is nice (though not quite as responsive as Quicksilver), my G4 starts up twice as fast, and things feel a little snappier (though that could have something to do with the clean install).
Nothing mind-blowing—hey, I already had Dashboard with Konfabulator (damn those guys got ripped off)—but a tasty upgrade nonetheless.
Oh and by the way, you can hear the collective sigh of satisfaction from web designers worldwide—Internet Explorer for the Mac is no longer bundled with the system (though thankfully Microsoft web fonts such as Verdana and Georgia still are). Yippee! To the nethermost pit of damnation with you, damn browser! If you’re using it now, what the hell are you thinking—get rid of it!
Tech Macs
31 Jan 05
I’ve been casting a covetous eye on my girlfriend’s iPod mini, so when we dropped into our local AppleCentre this weekend (so she could get the mini’s malfunctioning battery repaired, ironically) I couldn’t resist snapping up a new iPod shuffle.
Now—mwha ha haa—the tables have turned. She thinks the shuffle is exactly what she was looking for in the first place.
Let’s face it, at AUD$149 this one’s a no-brainer. The thing is unbelievably small and light, it recharges from your USB port, you can set up playlists in iTunes for any occasion —about 120 songs worth—and despite the catchline you can play your songs in random order and in order. Like so many others, I’m hooked on random playback; you sometimes segue from one song to another in beautiful ways. Did I mention how small and light it is? Man, this is the best thing Apple’s made since the Newton (hey, I loved my Newton!)
The best thing about that visit to the AppleCentre was however, I actually found myself waiting for my girlfriend to finish looking around. Wow … and she was a PC user up until a few weeks ago.
Tech Macs
10 Nov 04
If you’re a Mac user, you’re using Safari. If you’re a PC user, you’re using Firefox.
Ahh, wouldn’t the world be a wonderful place for us web designers if that were true? Firefox 1.0 is finally out and to the great pleasure of designers and coders who have to cater to the insane niggardly vagaries of the old, buggy and frankly crap Internet Explorer, it’s gaining momentum. If there’s proof to be found about how crap Microsoft is, it’s in the way they worked so hard to grab the monopoly in the so-called Browser Wars and then, once they had it, allowed Explorer to languish without improvement for years. Tell them where to stick it! Use a fast, efficient, standard-compliant browser and vastly improve your internet experience! Make life easier for me! Viva la Safari! Viva la Firefox!
Tech Macs
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