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Much Ado About Mac Snobbery
The Mac Owners' Conceit
10.5: Switch Spaces using fn keys with Quicksilver
Who? Me? Switch
Marc Andreessen's Newspaper Deathwatch
Force Time Machine Drives to Unmount
Why Google Apps is a Serious Threat to Microsoft Office
The Browser Choices We Make
Apple Keeps Chipping Away At Microsoft
Apple's MagSafe Powercord Issues
iGame Radio Interviews Streamline Sound, Reviews Neon Tango
Viewsonic's Big LCD Monitor For Power Users
eWEEK: Sun Readies Supercomuter in Texas
Much Ado About Mac Snobbery
The Baltimore Sun's David Zeiler says:
Oh, we Mac users are a sensitive lot.
Last week numerous Mac-oriented Web sites made note of a video report by Brittany Umar of TheStreet.com that had a little fun with some statistics on what sort of people use Macs. (The research by Mindset Media was published originally in AdAge Jan. 28.)
Most of those sites had several pages of comments from less-than-amused Mac users pointing out how few, if any, of the characteristics described in the video – provocatively titled "Mac Users Are Snobs" -- applied to them.
Citing the Mindset Media report, Umar says Mac users are apt be "self-centered," "arrogant," "conceited" and "self-important."
To read more, click here.
The Mac Owners' Conceit
thestreet.com's Brittany Umar says:
Everyone's buzzing about my recent video that was based off of a Jan. 28 AdAge report that research by Mindset Media called Mac users "snobs."
Once a small group, Mac users have grown by infinite proportions, on their way to taking over the world (perhaps why we should wary of invoking anger in the masses). As a collective unit, the study calls them Starbucks-frequenting, hybrid station-wagon-driving, teeth-whitening, green perfectionists.
A lot of Mac users are up in arms about my video. In perusing the Web, many of you deny your five-sneakers-per-year purchases, while some have even threatened to break out paint cans in effort to spray away any idea that you might be an environmentalist.
Be proud, o Mac user! Do you not see the positives in some of these characteristics? Being green is the new black, after all.
To read more, click here.
10.5: Switch Spaces using fn keys with Quicksilver
Mac OS Hints contributor whatcould says:
Adding to the multiple ways to switch spaces: here's a way to do it with just Blacktree's Quicksilver, without running any (other) third party apps.
You can check it out at:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080213191101254
Who? Me? Switch
South Jersey News Online's Senitra Horbrook says:
Choice of computers, whether Mac or PC, is a very personal thing for most people
Macs and PCs have similar capabilities, but asking a Mac user to switch to a PC or asking a PC user to switch to a Mac is almost like asking someone to move to another country.,,,
While PCs have long dominated the marketplace, Apple's Macintosh computers are gaining steam....
Apple shipped 2,319,000 Macintosh computers in its fiscal 2008 first quarter, which ended Dec. 29, 2007. That represents 44-percent unit growth and 47-percent revenue growth over the year-ago quarter....
If you're in the market for a new computer and not sure whether to go with a Mac or PC, consider the primary uses of the computer.....
For the full commentary visit here:
http://blog.nj.com/southjerseylife/2008/02/who_me_switch.html
Marc Andreessen's Newspaper Deathwatch
FORTUNE's Josh Quittner says:
Internet wunderkind Marc Andreessen has turned his sights on social networking and the death of the New York Times.
I would like to apologize in advance to the New York Times for getting Marc Andreessen so worked up. That was not my intention when I met him for lunch the other day. AOL had just announced that it would no longer support Netscape, the ur-browser that Andreessen co-wrote back when the web was young. I wanted to know how he felt about his first baby, now that it's been taken off life support and is destined to die just shy of its 14th birthday.
"I don't want to talk about it," he says... Like me and everybody else I know, he stopped using Netscape years ago. In fact, he's a major investor in Flock, a competing "social browser" that's designed to work seamlessly with blogs and web services like Flickr and Facebook.....
So how does the Times figure into this?...
To read more, click here.
Force Time Machine Drives to Unmount
LifeHacker's Kevin Purdy reports:
Tech blogger Phil Windley grew tired of trying to eject his external back up disk, first the suggested Apple+E way and then by yanking a cord, just to see that ominous red stop sign of warning every day, even when he knew his disk operations were (or should have been, at least) done. His suggestion for others suffering from clingy back up drives........?
You can check it out at:
http://lifehacker.com/359591/force-time-machine-drives-to-unmount
Why Google Apps is a Serious Threat to Microsoft Office
readwriteweb.com's Bernard Lunn says:
This is the perspective of a "skeptical, later early adopter"; the sort of person who Microsoft needs to retain and should have been able to retain easily. I don't spend time on productivity tools that may at some date make me more productive, but which today are just a frustrating time sink. That describes the majority of people. MS Office can be annoying, but it does work. So any serious alternative has to offer a significant advantage and at the same time make adoption a total breeze.
I think Google Apps has reached that point. The significant advantage is collaboration.
For the full commentary visit here:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_apps_serious_threat_to_microsoft_office.php
The Browser Choices We Make
New York Times blogger Miguel Helft says:
TechCrunch noted Thursday that Mozilla was about to celebrate its 500 millionth download of Firefox, the open source browser that has made inroads into Microsoft's dominant market share. By this morning, the official Spread Firefox site was claiming an additional 340,000 downloads, putting it over the half billion mark.
That's an impressive download rate — one that has given Firefox an approximately 17 percent share of the browser market. Looking at visitors to NYTimes.com, a much larger share of our online readers, about 28 percent in February, were Firefox users. The bulk of our online readers use various versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (about 60 percent) and Apple's Safari (about 10 percent).
To read more, click here.
Apple Keeps Chipping Away At Microsoft
On .insidebayarea.com:
As I look at a newly arrived MacBook Air laptop, it occurs to me there has never been a better time to switch to a Mac.
That's not something I say lightly. With the exception of a couple of years working at a magazine, I have never been a Mac user. After all, I'm a game player and games on the Mac are always light years behind games on Windows. I've not been smitten by Steve Jobs' famous "reality distortion field," and have decades behind me as a Microsoft user.
But Apple keeps moving forward, and Microsoft took a step backward with Windows Vista. Both systems crash. I've heard tech-support complaints on both sides and witnessed a few myself. Vista is noticeably slower than its predecessor, while Apple's newest operating system, Leopard, is a big improvement on a lot of fronts.
For the full commentary visit here:
http://www.insidebayarea.com/business/ci_8344850
Apple's MagSafe Powercord Issues
inluminent says:
I have issues with Apple's new MagSafe power cords. Specifically - they suck.
I have had to purchase four power cords for my MacBook Pros over the past twelve months or so… why? Because the stupid connection between the cable running up to the connector and the connector comes apart. And when you touch that connection while the connector is connected to the laptop, the damn thing shocks me. Why is that? Why does the connector shock me? Why can't Apple make a proprietary connector that doesn't crap out on me?
Also, the plane adaptor doesn't seem to actually keep my laptop from losing power?
For the full commentary visit here:
http://inluminent.com/2008/02/23/apples-magsafe-powercord-issues/
iGame Radio Interviews Streamline Sound, Reviews Neon Tango
This week on iGame Radio, the original Mac game podcast, host Omaha Sternberg interviews Tom Pearce, Audio Director of Streamline Sound. Also, she reviews Freeverse's new shooter Neon Tango, available exclusively for the Mac. Listeners can catch the podcast at iGameRadio.com.
Streamline Sound was announced in the past few weeks as a joint venture between Streamline Studios, an independent game developer, and Black Hole Recordings, an independent music publisher. Envisioned as a one stop solution for game developers to contract music created for their games and then exploit that music in non-traditional ways, Streamline Sound is also intended to bridge the gap between traditional music publishers and game developers so that musicians can get their music into games. Omaha chats with Tom Pearce about how the venture got started, how it will help everyone, and where it is going from here.
Plus, a review of minimalist arcade-style shooter Neon Tango by Freeverse. Released in February, Neon Tango takes geometric shapes and interesting colors and blends them together for true arcade shooting fun.
Omaha will also offer Mac gaming news, commentary, and a selection of music from popular Mac games.
These episodes are available as a basic or enhanced podcast or streaming MP3 on iGameRadio.com, where listeners will also find archives of past broadcasts. QuickTime 5 and above, or iTunes 4.9 or other MP3 enabled software (such as iPodderX), are required for access to the podcasts and MP3 stream. Listeners can also subscribe to the enhanced podcast through the iTunes Music Store, and other popular podcast aggregator sites.
Viewsonic's Big LCD Monitor For Power Users
Viewsonic's latest big LCD monitor offers features that put it at home on the power user's desktop.
To read more, click here.
eWEEK: Sun Readies Supercomuter in Texas
The new supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center will handle some of the biggest problems in physics, astronomy and medicine.
To read more, click here.
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