Applelinks Tech Web Reader - Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Essential Mac Maintenance: Get Set Up
Five Mac Maintenance Myths
Introducing the Mac Basics Superguide, Leopard Edition
Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Penryn) Review - 15 Percent Better Battery Life?
Man Cuts B irthday Cake With MacBook Air
No Apple at Apple Expo, 2008 - Apple snubs Europe
Newest Apple iMac Is A Great Deal
Upgrading a Digital Audio G4 to Work Better in Leopard
Leopard Still Holds Some Small Surprises
Apple releases Mac OS X Leopard Security Guide
The Mac Night Owl: Can Microsoft Be Saved?
Macworld is running an interesting series on Mac maintenance. Some highlights:
Essential Mac Maintenance: Get Set Up
Macworld's Dan Frakes says:
Setting your system up right can not only prevent problems but also make a difference if a problem arises in the future - be it a hard-drive meltdown, a natural disaster, or theft. Taking these steps when your Mac is brand new is easiest, but it's never too late to get organized.
Does your Mac have what it needs to run smoothly, safely, and efficiently? Here are some essentials....
You can check it out at:
http://www.macworld.com/article/133671/2008/06/macmaintenance1.html
Five Mac Maintenance Myths
Macworld's Dan Frakes says:
You know you need to change the oil in your car every 3,000 miles, clean your house's gutters every fall, and brush your teeth at least twice a day - but do you know what's necessary to keep your Mac in good shape? For the most part, Macs run smoothly. But as with most machines, a little preventative maintenance goes a long way toward keeping things running smoothly.
....first, let's talk about what you don't need to do, despite what you may read in online forums or on email mailing lists. I call these things maintenance myths.
Myth #1: "You should repair permissions regularly."
Myth #2: "You need to run the Unix maintenance scripts."
Myth #3: "You should periodically defragment your hard drive."
Myth #4: "You should consistently clean your caches."
[Editor's note: I feel a bit presumptious quibbling on these matters with Dan Frakes, whose erudition I respect, but most automobiles have a much longer recommended oil-change interval than 3,000 miles these days, and it can be stretched substantially longer if you use synthetic oil. I also have cleared problems in OS X by running sets of Repair Permissions/ Cron Scripts/ cache dump routines, lalthough I can't say which of thise was key to resolving the issue, and I still maintain that doing a system cleanup before installing an OS update (eg: OS X 10.5.3) is a good idea]
For the full commentary visit here:
http://www.macworld.com/article/133684/2008/06/maintenance_intro.html
Introducing the Mac Basics Superguide, Leopard Edition
Macworld's Jason Snell says:
We're very lucky here at Macworld. Both in print and on the Web, we've got an amazingly diverse readership. Among our readers are some incredibly geeky, tech-savvy people who could code a perl script in their head or disassemble a MacBook Pro with the power of their mind. And also, some people who are relatively novice Mac users, who avidly read what we write in order to flex and improve their Mac skills.
The latest book in our Superguide series, The Macworld Mac Basics Superguide - Leopard Edition, is for both kinds of readers. If you're someone who's struggling with the basics of operating a Mac, or someone who's a new user of Mac OS X—perhaps you've made the switch from Windows to Mac—this new 88-page guide will get you up to speed.
You can check it out at:
http://www.macworld.com/article/133717/2008/06/mac_basics_leopard.html
In other news:
Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Penryn) Review - 15 Percent Better Battery Life?
PCMagh's Cisco Cheng reports:
Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Penryn), at $3,149 (direct), isn't the first laptop to undergo an Intel brain transplant in the form of a next-generation Penryn processor , but it's among the most sizzling we've seen so far. At the heart of this MacBook Pro, the 2.6-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9500 CPU and 4GB RAM played a pivotal role in tearing up performance tests, including a compelling 15 percent increase in battery life. There are other new additions worth talking about, but performance enhancements alone should encourage first-generation MacBook Pro owners and frustrated Windows users to take the plunge. For that, it retains the Editors' Choice for mainstream laptops....
For now, I can't think of any mainstream laptop other than the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Penryn) that does as good a job of combining fabulous design elements with top-of-the-line performance parts. Nonetheless, if Apple continues to upgrade processing parts every six months without any design changes, someone else will take the lead...
For the full review visit here:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2279376,00.asp
Man Cuts B irthday Cake With MacBook Air
Blogger Rahul Sood cut a birthday cake with a MacBook Air, noting:
"I immediately used it to cut the cake, it's so damn sharp it did a fine job. People thought it was funny enough to blog. So before this thing spreads, I thought I'd explain myself: It was a combination of some fantastic wine, constant ribbing from my friends, and a hand rolled cigar that did this.
"As I see the Mac fans are coming out in droves, much respect... and um... it was a joke - I guess you had to be thereI assure you no Macs were harmed in the taking of this photo."
You can check it out at:
http://www.rahulsood.com/2008/05/ugh-it-was-my-birthday.html
No Apple at Apple Expo, 2008 - Apple snubs Europe
Macworld UK's Jonny Evans reports:
Apple has once again decided to snub its European users, cancelling its booth at the 25th anniversary Apple Expo, Paris event.
The company had been expected to stage the biggest booth at the show (17-20 September, 2008), but changed its mind "recently", MacGeneration reports.
For the full report visit here:
http://www.macworld.co.uk/business/news/index.cfm?newsid=21515
Newest Apple iMac Is A Great Deal
Computerworld's Scot Finnie reports:
When Apple Inc. recently sent along one of its new iMacs - a sweet 24-inch model with a 2.8GHz Penryn processor - I agreed to take it home and give it a dose of family testing at the Finnie household. And with three kids aged 3, 6, and 16, that's saying something.
I barely had it set up before the younger two were locked in a battle to gain control of the wired Mighty Mouse and svelte aluminum keyboard. The 16-year-old nonchalantly leaned over and pushed the On button, which is located in an out-of-the-way spot behind the one-piece computer's screen on the left side. Even though it's the first iMac in this house, it clearly wasn't his first iMac experience. (By the way, when you have a three-year-old, trust me, a concealed power button is a blessing.)....
My 24-inch test model offers the best blend of power and price, with a 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB RAM, a 320GB 7200-rpm serial-ATA hard drive, an 8x double-layer SuperDrive, and ATI's Radeon HD 2600PRO video with 256MB of memory. Compared to the previous generation iMac, you get twice as much RAM and the next-generation Core 2 Duo processor at 2.8GHz instead of 2.4GHz for the same price: $1,799.
For the full review visit here:
http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=48627
Upgrading a Digital Audio G4 to Work Better in Leopard
Low End Mac's Carl Nygren says: :
...I thought I'd give you a piece on my 533 MHz dual CPU Digital Audio Power Mac G4.
This Mac ran Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) at incredible speeds, but I wanted Leopard (OS X 10.5), as I wrote in my Leopard article. It installed fine using LeopardAssist; however the speed was s-l-o-w. I had to go back to Tiger.
After installing Leopard on my Hackintosh, eMac, PowerBook G4, and G4 Pismo, the only machines stuck on Tiger were my Dual USB iBook, the Graphite Clamshell, the G3 iMacs, and the Digital Audio. The G3 machines won't ever run Leopard, but since the DA was actually capable of running it, I thought it'd be a shame not to.
For the full report visit here:
http://lowendmac.com/myturn/0805my/nygren-digital-audio.html
Leopard Still Holds Some Small Surprises
MacFixIt's Ted Landau says:
Leopard is a surprising cat. Here it is, more than half year after Mac OS X 10.5's release, and I'm still discovering new features. I'm not talking about the big time features that are well publicized on Apple's Web site. Rather, I am referring to those much smaller, tucked-away features - ones that tend to appeal more to "techies" than the mass market. These are features that Apple barely mentions in its PR, if it takes note of them at all. Of course, that's probably not unrelated to why it took me so long to discover some of them.
I now have a list of about a half-dozen of these quite recent discoveries (at least they were recent for me). For example, just last week, I came across a new "Reset Permissions and ACLs" feature in Reset Password, a utility accessed by booting from the Leopard Install DVD....
You can check it out at:
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20080602100629270
Apple releases Mac OS X Leopard Security Guide
The Apple Core's David Morgenstern says:
Apple offers sys-admins almost 250 pages of security best-practices and tips to protect Mac OS X Leopard clients.
Released on Monday, the guide document is a 3.4MB PDF. The guide is aimed at experienced users, Apple says, familiar with the Terminal application and its command-line interface.
For the full report visit here:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=1809
The Mac Night Owl: Can Microsoft Be Saved?
All right, I recognize that the title of this article is apt to inspire a number of strange responses. After all, Microsoft is still laughing all the way to the bank, with great profits and rising sales. However, there have been troubling signs for a number of years now, although the forces of inertia just keep them going.
Here's the link to the story:
http://macnightowl.com/2008/06/can-microsoft-be-saved/
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http://www.macnightowl.com/rss
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