SimCity 4 Rush Hour Intel Update
Monday, April 30, 2007
Aspyr Media has released a free patch for SimCity 4 Rush Hour to add Intel-based Mac support. The patch is not yet an official launch, rather a public beta, asking that you provide feedback of anything that still needs fixing. It is available for download here.Labels: Mac Software
Sling adds Apple TV to SlingPlayer
Sling Media today launched a new version of SlingPlayer for Mac, which amongst other things, adds support to control Apple-specific devices. SlingPlayer can now control the Apple TV and play its content from any broadband connection, meaning you can now remotely control and listen to your iTunes library. This is great news and shows that Sling definitely wants to support and improve functionality for Mac users.Labels: Mac Peripherals
Samsung start shipping 16GB flash memory
Samsung have started shipping 16GB flash memory NAND chips. These new chips are built on a 51 nanometer process, that means they can squeeze 16GB onto a single chip. This new process also improves data read and write rates, so these new 16GB offerings will work faster too. Apple has reportedly ordered a large amount of memory from Samsung for their future iPod devices and no doubt the iPhone too. Who knows, maybe we will see a laptop using flash memory too.
Labels: General News
Folkestone Kent - Hit by Earthquake
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Not exactly tech news, but being based in Folkestone I felt I should bring you this news. At around 8.18am this morning (GMT) we were the victims of an earthquake. Reported to have measured 4.1-4.3 on the richter scale, things shook for around 15 seconds.My own experience was pictures crashing to the floor, ornaments and bottles falling over, but most saddening was losing half of my morning cup of tea and my internet connection. All of my family were pretty scared, this being our first experience (and hopefully last) of such an event.
On a more serious note, there was also an explosion of someone's gas boiler pretty near to us. There was also a complete house collapse and many chimney stacks had fallen in the roads nearby. Emergency crews have been very busy making sure everyone is safe and also evacuating unsafe buildings. I would like to put my thought out there, to hope that everyone is safe and well.
Labels: General News
iQuiz Maker for iPod - Free App from Aspyr
Friday, April 27, 2007
Aspyr Media, Inc. has released iQuiz Maker, a new program that allows anyone to create their own custom trivia packs, sync them to their iPod and share them with friends. Users of iQuiz, the fast-paced entertainment trivia game from Apple, can download the free iQuiz Maker from Aspyr at iquizmaker.comiQuiz Maker works seamlessly so you can write, create, and package your very own quizzes. Download the free application today to begin putting the world to the test. Included with iQuiz Maker, or available as a separate download, is Quiz Installer, which allows for easy loading of quizzes onto an iPod.
Currently iQuiz Maker is only compatible with Mac OS X 10.4. The PC version is scheduled for release in May.
Labels: Mac Software
Apple Reports Second Quarter Results
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Good news all-round for Apple and the faithful…
Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2007 second quarter ended March 31, 2007. The Company posted revenue of $5.26 billion and net quarterly profit of $770 million, or $.87 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $4.36 billion and net quarterly profit of $410 million, or $.47 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 35.1 percent, up from 29.8 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 43 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
Apple shipped 1,517,000 Macintosh® computers and 10,549,000 iPods during the quarter, representing 36 percent growth in Macs and 24 percent growth in iPods over the year-ago quarter.
Labels: Apple News
Griffin Technology Air Dock for iPod
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Griffin Technology Inc., today announced their AirDock, a charge/sync/play docking station for the iPod, which has been designed to position your iPod as the centerpiece of any home entertainment system.Griffin's AirDock is much more than just another dock for iPod. AirDock provides the output connectors for integrating your iPod with your TV and home stereo. Connect the included AV cable, and soon you are enjoying your music, audiobooks, TV shows, movies and music videos, and your own photo slideshows, direct from your iPod to your TV and sound system. Living up to its name, AirDock even includes a RF remote control, so you can control playback from your couch. It also lets you connect your iPod to your computer for data synchronization and charges its battery while you work. Just connect AirDock to your computer with the included USB cable.
AirDock features:
- Connect AirDock to your computer's USB port to sync or play your iPod while it's charging
- Connect AirDock to your home entertainment system to share your iPod with the whole room
- Included RF remote controls audio and video playback from your iPod
- Works with 4th & 5th generation iPod, 1st & 2nd generation iPod nano, and iPod mini
AirDock for iPod (9803-AIRDOCK) is priced at $69.99, and is available from Griffin's website and most major retailers nationwide.
Labels: Apple iPod
More new UK Get a Mac Ads
Monday, April 23, 2007
Apple have posted yet more UK versions of their Get a Mac adverts. Office Posse (pictured) shows the various elements of Microsoft Office, in aptly coloured suits, all in the Apple Camp. Ramping up maybe for the new MS Office for Mac release.Labels: Apple News
Markzware ships FlightCheck 6 for Mac
Markzware has today started shipping version 6 of its FlightCheck software. The updated preflighting software now offers support for XPress 7, Adobe's CS3 products and Intel Macs.FlightCheck Designer and FlightCheck Professional v6 for Macintosh are being shipped now for those of you who need to purchase. Upgrades are available free of charge for registered FlightCheck 5.8 users who purchased from 1st February, 2007 onwards. UK upgrade details for pricing have yet to be announced.
Labels: Mac Software
Adobe Media Player - iTunes Challenger
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Adobe announced the planned launch of Adobe Media Player later this year. This new player offers multi-format playback, along with the ability to deliver paid for content. It will also enable the playback of high quality flash-based content, and certainly sounds (on paper) to be a strong challenger.
Quote: "Adobe Media Player is developed using Apollo, the code name of Adobe’s recently announced application runtime that empowers content publishers and web developers to build and deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) on the desktop using technologies such as Flash, PDF, and HTML. Adobe Media Player is planned to be available as a free beta download from the Adobe Web site later in 2007 with full availability expected by the end of the year, from Adobe and a wide range of media and technology partners."
You can check out the full press release here.
Labels: Mac Software, PC Software
Steve Jobs & Bill Gates Comedy Sketch on BBC
Friday, April 13, 2007
A very funny comedy sketch just appeared on "Ruddy Hell! It's Harry and Paul", starring Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse. They played the parts of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (respectively) and were turning each other on talking about tech stuff. Bill wanted to shoot his downloads all over Steve at one stage. Very funny, I just hope it appears somewhere online soon, so you can all enjoy it.
Check back here soon for some screenshots, that I managed to grab from scrambling for my remote control when it was shown tonight at 21:30.
Labels: Apple News
Apple - Leopard Delayed until October
In a statement issued by Apple, we bring you sad news. Seems like Leopard (OS X 10.5) will not make it for a June release. This is a shame, but I suppose we can at least be sure that Apple are concentrating on delivering us a quality product. The statement can be read below;"iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is. However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard's features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we're sure we've made the right ones. [Apr 12, 2007]"
Labels: Apple News
Apple posts new Get a Mac ads
Thursday, April 12, 2007
A couple of new Get a Mac ads have been posted on Apple's website. "Flashback" and "Computer Cart", both very funny and well worth a look.Labels: Apple News
Apple TV and HD quality: It's not the hardware
We quickly realized that the Apple TV wasn't going to be a HD powerhouse and our tests have indicated as much -- we have also discovered that the problem is not the hardware. We opened up our Apple TV and added a few codecs and we were very surprised at the results...via engadgethd read more | digg story
Labels: Apple Hardware
Subscription Service for iTunes within 6 months
Les Ottolenghi, CEO of INTENT MediaWorks, said he’s had meetings with people from Apple and he believes the company will announce a subscription service for iTunes within the next six months. “I think Apple is seriously considering a subscription offering right now even though they will probably tell you otherwise.via cnnmoney read more | digg story
Labels: Apple News
Google Desktop - now for Mac
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
If you use Google to search for things on the internet (and who doesn't?) then this will be of interest to you. Google Desktop brings searching to your Mac desktop, so you can search for files and applications, and launch them easily, all within this neat little app. It has been available on the PC for quite a while, so it is nice to see it launched for the Mac. The application requires OS 10.4+ and is available for download here.Labels: Mac Software
Sticky Windows - Tabs for your Desktop
Monday, April 09, 2007
I liked this feature in OS9 where I could drag a window to the edge of the screen and it would become a tab. Well, now you can do this in OS X thanks to StickyWindows. You can have multiple windows dragged around every edge of your screen, they can even be set as auto or manual tabs, and they support drag and drop. The application is shareware ($20) and a Universal Binary (in this latest version), you can demo it too before stumping up the very reasonable shareware fee.Labels: Mac Software
Awesome Furniture Inspired by Scrabble Game
A very interesting piece of furniture that allows you to make words and leave messages with the screen printed letter cushions. Check out the pictures !via freshome.com read more | digg story
Labels: General News
Super Mario Brothers on Apple TV
Best Apple TV hack yet: A reader, Rusty, sent in this video of himself playing Super Mario Bros. on his Apple TV. Who cares about running XviD files—or hell, even the legit functions—when you can play Mario?via gizmodo read more | digg story
Labels: Apple News
Tom’s Hardware Sold for $15-$20 Million
Tom’s Hardware Guide and its parent company TG Publishing have been sold to an undisclosed buyer for an undisclosed price. The deal will close later this month, said Omid Rahmat, CEO of Tom’s Publishing, in a letter to the Inquirer. The rumored price, however, is $15-$20 million.via mashable.com read more | digg story
Labels: General News
Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station Review
Friday, April 06, 2007
The new Apple Airport Extreme Base Station (AEBS) got me all excited when it was first announced. Imagine 802.11n wireless connectivity, all wrapped up in Apple goodness. When I received the unit at my office, there was one big low that I had overlooked, but this was over-shadowed by what seemed to be an awesome product. Read on to find out if this new piece of kit will remain in my set-up…
First up is the product design (and packaging). Apple manage to make what should really be a boring run-of-the-mill product into their usual fulfilling unboxing experience. Everything neatly tied and once unwrapped the AEBS oozes quality. It is the same shape as a Mac Mini and about half the height. The front sports a single LED light and the back has the input for power, a USB port, 3 ethernet ports, and a third ethernet port to go to your ADSL or broadband modem/router. There is also a pinhole reset button and a security port for if you want to lock your device down.Now let's get the negatives out of the way. The big low that I mentioned earlier is that the AEBS does not have a modem built in. This is a shame, as with a modem a lot of people (including myself) could have replaced their existing connection to the outside world completely with this unit. The only other feature I would like to have seen is gigabit ethernet ports, instead of 10/100 speed.
OK, back to the set-up, which is really a case of plugging the unit into either your existing network, or to make a completely new one. The software installation consists of two main items, the AirPort Utility and the AirPort Disk Utility (with a few other bits installed into the background). There is also the 802.11n enabler, for anyone who has a compatible Mac, which includes most of the MacBook range. Running this patch enables the 'n' part of your Mac, so you can take full advantage of the speed increase of your AEBS. Of note, the software included has been upgraded a couple of times, so make sure you grab the latest AirPort Base Station Update 2007-001 to ensure things run smoothly.
Setting things up once the software is installed is really easy, and one of the nice features of the AEBS is the ability to attach a USB hard drive. You can then set (via the software) the access privileges, plus the hard drive can be set to mount on your desktop every time you log in. I tested this with a couple of different USB drives and it worked flawlessly, with data transfer rates more than acceptable. It is also possible to connect a powered USB hub, which in turn can be connected to multiple hard drives and even printers.
Getting things working as a new network was really easy. Things were a little more tricky when trying to extend an existing wireless network, mainly due to compatibility issues with my Belkin N1. It was also a shame that I could not configure the AEBS via an internet browser, only a minor complaint, but I found the Airport Utility a little restrictive in the way it presented the options.
The Verdict is pretty easy to predict. The Apple Airport Extreme Base Station is a fantastic piece of kit. Very nicely designed, and extremely (pun intended) easy to set up. If you run an all Apple network it just works, in other environments it works with a little cajoling. Once up and running, it is virtually impossible to fault and the ability to connect external hard drives is fantastic. I can highly recommend the AEBS if you are looking to add wireless connectivity to your home or office.
Product: Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station
Price: £119.00
Supplied by: Apple UK
Contact: 0800 039 1010
Labels: Apple Hardware, Mac Peripherals, Reviews
Apple New 8-Core Mac Pro - sizzling
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Apple have released a blazingly fast 8-core Mac Pro. This new machine is going to fly, and when the new Adobe CS3 ships things will be blindingly fast. Adding two Quad Core processors to the configuration in the Apple Store, takes the price up to £2,659 so by no means cheap, but think of all that power. Maxing out everything to 16GB of RAM, an NVidia Quadro FX4500, 4 x 750GB SATA hard drives, two Superdrives, Bluetooth and Airport, brings the price up to £7,864… now where am I going to get that from Mr Bank Manager?Labels: Apple News
ckIN2U - New Fragrances for us
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Calvin Klein's new fragrance for men and women, takes on a different angle for the online world. Not only does it give you the opportunity to smell good, the new ckIN2U gives you the chance to join their social network and share what you are into. You can also view the top ten films submitted by students all over the world. So smell good, and connect with people by checking out the ckIN2U website and fragrances… for the online community.Labels: General News
Using a 24 yr old Lisa for Real Work
Some people simply can't understand why anyone would want to use an old computer. One person asked me: "Why use a Lisa (or any machine more than three years old) for writing or anything else? I can't believe how naive some people are. I mean, really, just because something is old doesn't mean it's useless.via lowendmac.com read more | digg story
Labels: Apple News
Two-Finger-Scrolling for older Macs
iScroll2 is a modified trackpad driver that adds two-finger scrolling capabilities to supported pre-2005 PowerBooks and iBooks on OS X 10.3 and up. Supported models include most aluminum PowerBooks introduced from 2003 to 2004 as well as most G4 iBooks.via sourceforge.net read more | digg story
Labels: Mac Software
A better, faster desktop search for Linux!
Beagle desktop search, while useful, tends to consume way to much system resources, which leaves out Linux users that care about high performance or have older machines. Tracker is a high performance search engine written in C, uses only 3-9 megs of ram and is very Laptop-friendly. Features nautilus and deskbar support for seamless integration.via gnome.org read more | digg story
Labels: Linux News
Apple iPod Prices Reduced in UK
Monday, April 02, 2007
Apple have done all us UK buyers a favour today, by reducing the prices of the 5th Generation iPods. The 30GB model is now £10 cheaper at £179 and the 80GB is £20 cheaper at £239. This is a welcome reduction, thanks Steve.Labels: Apple iPod
iSkin launch new laptop sleeves
iSkin has launched SOHO, their new laptop protective sleeves for 15-inch MacBook Pros, and the MacBook. They are made of synthetic leather, have a slim two two design, with contrasting stitching, and have a reinforced outer shell. There are also inner elastic straps to help keep your laptop in place, and allows use of the laptop whilst still inside the SOHO.The MacBook model costs $59.99 and $64.99 will buy you the MacBook Pro version.
Labels: Mac Peripherals
Apple iTunes - EMI part DRM Free
Apple today announced that EMI Music's entire digital catalogue of music will be available for purchase DRM-free (without digital rights management) from the iTunes Store worldwide in May. DRM-free tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording, for just 99 pence per song. In addition, iTunes customers will be able to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free versions for just 20 pence a song. iTunes will continue to offer its entire catalogue, currently over five million songs, in the same versions as today —128 kbps AAC encoding with DRM — at the same price of 79 pence per song, alongside DRM-free higher quality versions when available."We are going to give iTunes customers a choice – the current versions of our songs for the same 79 pence price, or new DRM-free versions of the same songs with even higher audio quality and the security of interoperability for just 20 pence more," said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. "We think our customers are going to love this, and we expect to offer more than half of the songs on iTunes in DRM-free versions by the end of this year."
"EMI and iTunes are once again teaming up to move the digital music industry forward by giving music fans higher quality audio that is virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings, with no usage restrictions on the music they love from their favourite artists," said Eric Nicoli, CEO of EMI Group.
With DRM-free music from the EMI catalogue, iTunes customers will have the ability to download tracks from their favourite EMI artists without any usage restrictions that limit the types of devices or number of computers that purchased songs can be played on. DRM-free songs purchased from the iTunes Store will be encoded in AAC at 256 kbps, twice the current bit rate of 128 kbps, and will play on all iPods, Mac or Windows computers, Apple TVs and soon iPhones, as well as many other digital music players.
iTunes will also offer customers a simple, one-click option to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free format for 20 pence a song. All EMI music videos will also be available in DRM-free format with no change in price.
Labels: Apple News
15 Javascript Snippets You Can't Live Without
"You either love Javascript or you hate it. Either way it can provide great functionality that users love. And it doesn't have to affect usability. Here are my top 15 Javascript snippits for making great sites that bit extra special."via igglo read more | digg story
Labels: Mac Tips
Plextor Launches USB HDTV Receiver
Plextor unveiled a new mini digital HDTV receiver on Wednesday that the company says will transform a user's laptop into a wireless personal video recorder.extremetech read more | digg story
Labels: PC Peripherals
Ubuntu Stickers - from Down Under
Do you run Ubuntu? and want to get some cool “Powered by Ubuntu” stickers?via clickonline read more | digg story
Labels: Linux News
Linux: Mac, it's ok, we are friends.
Linux runs in both PC and Mac. Advertisement video by Novell.via YouTube courtesy of Novell read more | digg story
Labels: Linux News
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Dave
Dave has been in the graphic design industry for 14 years. Long time reviewer of technology related products, he is Owner/Editor of Geekanoids.
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