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All USB Ports Aren't Created Equal
Existing USB Ports May Face Trouble Powering New Breed Of Peripherals
Apple promo references 2.6GHz MacBook
Free Time Machine Editor Does One Thing and Does It Well
BSD Bug Found And Fixed After 25 Years
Web Cam Images Undo MacBook thieves
From Mac Tinkerer to Full Time Mac User
The Mac Night Owl: Consumer Reports Flips a Finger Again at Mac Users
All USB Ports Aren't Created Equal
The Apple Core's Jason D. O'Grady says:
Remember my theory about 10.5.2 causing poor audio quality in Skype? I pretty much convinced that 10.5.2 is the culprit, but there's another theory floating around out there – that it's related to USB ports.
....It seems that only the front USB port on the MacBook offers a full powered, full speed bus. On the MacBook Pro the magic USB port is the left one, the right one is hubbed.
The rear USB port, the one nearest the screen, is in fact already on an internal hub, shared with everything USB inside the case: the keyboard, the Bluetooth, the trackpad, the iSight camera and the infra-red receiver. Adding a four way hub to this is bound to end in disaster.
For the full report visit here:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=1717
Existing USB Ports May Face Trouble Powering New Breed Of Peripherals
Pertinent to current blogosphere discussion of USB port issues on MacBooks, last August ZNet's David Berlind reports:
Contrary to popular belief, at least from a power perspective... not all USB ports are created equal. Yes, they all offer 5 volts. But where they often differ, according to Verenkoff, is on amperage which could be equally important to the peripheral people are looking to power — particular power hungry devices like hard drives....
[The first issue] is Amps vs Volts....
Where as all USB ports support the 5 volt requirement in the USB specification, amperage varies from one system to the next. 500 milliamps (ma) appears to be the standard with many notebooks supporting more....
Devices like USB keychain flash drives and mice run at 5v but only require limited amounts of power (or amperage). However, larger devices like 3.5" USB Drives, external speakers, etc. require significant power and often need to be plugged into the wall.....
Every computer has different amperage at their USB ports. For example, even in some of the new Macbooks, we've observed a low amperage of 500ma.....
For the full report visit here:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Berlind/?p=736&tag=btxcsim
Apple promo references 2.6GHz MacBook
Engadget's Ryan Block briefly comments on Apple's Hot News site is running this promo for a 2.6GHz MacBook, suggesting it's probably a typo, not premature announcement.
You can check it out at:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/11/apple-promo-references-2-6ghz-macbook/
Free Time Machine Editor Does One Thing and Does It Well
Low End Mac's Alan Zisman reports:
I had a bit of a problem. I had purchased a new to me (but used) DVD, and wanted to make a copy of it. Yes, you can make legally make copies of DVDs you own for personal use.* This is convenient in a couple of ways: If you make a copy in standard video DVD format, you can watch that disc instead of the original, so any wear and tear will affect the copy while keeping the original safe on the shelf.
And you can rip the video into a format watchable on an iPod, iPhone, MacBook Air, or other device that lacks a built-in DVD drive - or rip a bunch of them to store on your laptop's hard drive for a trip. You'll use less battery life watching it that way than in spinning a plastic disc for a couple of hours.
The widely-used Roxio Toast burning application won't directly make a copy of a copy-protected DVD, but there are a couple of handy free Mac applications: HandBrake generally does a nice job of extracting individual chapters - or all the contents - of a disc, saving it in MP4 or other format, and it can be easily set to optimize the contents for viewing on a standard TV, iPod, etc. These files are generally quite a bit smaller than the original 4-7 GB of your DVD.
MacTheRipper does a different job - also extracting the files from your DVD onto your hard drive, but rather than creating a single file playable in, say, Quicktime, it leaves them in a DVD-like format, playable using your Mac's DVD Player application. This results in a folder that's about the same size as the original DVD.
For the full report visit here:
http://lowendmac.com/zisman/08az/time-machine-editor.html
BSD Bug Found And Fixed After 25 Years
ZDNet.co.uk's Matthew Broersma reports:
A Unix developer has discovered and fixed a filesystem bug in Berkeley Software Distribution, a widely used, open-source, Unix-like operating system, discovering in the process that the bug was at least 25 years' old.
BSD's variants include OpenBSD, FreeBSD and NetBSD, and it forms the basis of Apple's Mac OS X operating system. All BSD derivatives were found to contain the bug, according to Marc Balmer, a Swiss developer closely involved with OpenBSD.....
Balmer said he was alerted to the problem by an OpenBSD user who found that Samba, an open source networking protocol, would crash when serving files from a filesystem using Microsoft Disk Operating System (MS-DOS) formatting.
He found that the problem was not with Samba but with OpenBSD itself, and that the bug was known to Samba developers......
For the full report visit here:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39415287,00.htm
iPod And Bluetooth Lead To Prizes
The BBC reports:
iPod creator, Jonathan Ive, has been widely recognised for his ideas
The designer of Apple's iPod and one of the biggest names behind Bluetooth chip technology have received honours from the Royal Academy of Engineering.
Jonathan Ive, Apple's vice-president of industrial design, won the coveted President's Medal for his contribution in promoting engineering excellence.
The UK's engineering body also awarded CSR the prestigious MacRobert award for its single-chip BlueCore technology.
For the full report visit here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4605881.stm
Web Cam Images Undo MacBook thieves
The Register's John Leyden reports:
A pair of clueless US crooks were brought to justice when they went online using an Apple employee's stolen laptop.
For the full report visit here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/ 05/12/macbook_betrays_burglars/
From Mac Tinkerer to Full Time Mac User
Low End Mac's Mike Tessitore says:
...the biggest compliment I can think of for the Mac (any of the ones I've owned) is this: With PCs, I always seemed frustrated by what I couldn't do after a period of time owning them. With Macs, I always seem amazed at what they are capable of, even when doing a tasks that they "shouldn't" be able to do, like run the latest operating system.
Name a 400 MHz PC that could run Windows Vista, were you able to load it at all. But we have folks out there successfully running Leopard on computers as slow as a 450 MHz Power Mac.
That, simply put, is amazing.
You can check it out at:
http://lowendmac.com/myturn/0805my/tessitore-mac-tinkerer.html
The Mac Night Owl: Consumer Reports Flips a Finger Again at Mac Users
When I read an article the other day that Macs were finally getting a better break in the June 2008 issue of Consumer Reports, in an article entitled "Best & worst computers," I felt optimistic. Up till now, although Macs routinely get good marks in their tests, the magazine's editors do little or nothing to distinguish them from the generic PCs they review.
Here's the link to the story:
http://macnightowl.com/2008/05/consumer-reports-flips-a-finger-again-at-mac-users/
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