News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
Late last week Palm Inc announced the closure of 30 retail stores -- its entire bricks and mortar presence in the United States -- ending one of Palm's worst years, in my view. One way to measure the depths that Palm has plumbed is to compare it with two other companies. Let's start with Taiwan's High Tech Computer Corporation, better know as HTC. Over the last couple of years HTC has moved from little-known manufacturer to market leader. 2007 saw sales accelerate and the release of a number of different devices. The smartphones it has released have come in a range of form factors and cater for the needs of an increasingly diverse range of users. In my view, HTC has been the most important hardware innovator of the last year or so. Apple has plans in place to open a number of new stores in the coming year -- not only in the United States but in territories where Apple has thus far been absent. The iPhone has achieved for Apple what the original Palm Pilot did for its maker -- putting Apple into the consciousness of all shoppers.
Anthony Caruana | Jan 28, 2008
What we really need in a photo printer is not what any vendor is offering right now. Almost every vendor offers a postcard-only photo printer, for three times the money they’re asking for an all-in-one A4-sized scanner/copier/printer/coffee-maker. Those postcard-sized photo printers are just plain wrong for several reasons.
Ian Yates | Jan 28, 2008
This isn't merely a Weekend Edition blog, of course, this is an Australia Day Long Weekend Edition blog, so I thought it would be fitting to tell you about some of the less-reported-on stories from the Macworld Expo in San Francisco -- the Australian exhibitors. This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the Australians I found at the Expo (who were surprisingly numerous) but just a few of the highlights. It's like the "cocktail party effect," whereby no matter how crowded and noisy a room is, you'll always hear your own name. At the Macworld Expo, there's a constant cacophany of music, loudspeakers, attendees and exhibitors -- but an Australian accent cuts right through.
Matthew JC. Powell | Jan 25, 2008
Fleur Doidge introduces her series of blogs for Australian Macworld, featuring the interesting and sometimes unsung heroes of the Australian Mac landscape.
Fleur Doidge | Jan 24, 2008
Microsoft Office:mac 2008 may not have had a walk-on role in this year's Macworld Expo keynote address, but out on the show floor the story was different, The first major release of Office for Mac in four years was attracting enormous interest from longtime Mac users and Windows switchers alike, and the question on all of their lips was compatibility. We sat down with Geoff Price of Microsoft's Mac Business Unit to talk about that very thing.
Matthew JC. Powell | Jan 23, 2008
I’ve done a fair bit of macro photography —- both in stills and video—- and, while the current crop of digital cameras promise amazing specs in the closeup department, most them fall down quite badly when the practical aspects are taken into account.
For instance, the Ricoh Caplio GX100 is quite a nice camera and seems to promise the world inmacro shooting.
When I first got into multimedia in a big way in the early '90s, the word was on everyone's lips. As an early member of The Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA, founded 1992) all we talked about was this new thing -- multimedia.
Keith White | Jan 21, 2008
It's been a long week at the Expo. It always is, because we manage every year to time the print deadline for our February issue to be the same day as Steve Jobs's keynote. That's either very smart or very dumb -- I'm too tired to decide. Now that the dust has settled a little, it's easier to get aclear view of the MacBook Air (to say nothing of the fact that the crowd around the table in the booth isn't six people deep anymore). The first thing you notice is that it really is startlingly thin. Thinner than it looked on stage, thinner than it looks in the posters with the slogan "Thinnovation" that seem to have cropped up one very flat surface in San Francisco the past few days.
Matthew JC. Powell | Jan 18, 2008
A young guy with this modification of John Lennon's famous "Imagine"printed in white on an Apple classic black T-shirt is high fiving hisfriends who have just produced "Lotus-eaters", a short music video warning of the dangers of unthinking submission to seductive technologies. They did this in less than 24 hours using the facilities of the new John Lennon Bus, being shown at Macworld Expo 2008 in San Francisco, after its re-launch at the Consumer Electronics Show in LasVegas earlier this month. (The concept has been in existence since 1998).
Martin Levins | Jan 17, 2008
Before I start, a quick confession. While I've been an avid gamer for most of my life, I've not really been a Mac gamer per se. Well, actually, I should clarify that statement -- I haven't been a Mac gamer in the most recent phase of my gaming life. I've come across some of my favourite games ever on Apple platforms, just not all that recently. Titles that have eaten up countless hours of my life first came to my attention on Macs -- titles like Sim City or Prince Of Persia spring immediately to mind. Going back a little further in Apple's history,there were titles like Karateka and B.C's Quest For Tires. Stop giggling in the back there, or I'll thwack you with my old-man stick... if I can remember where I left it.
Alex Kidman | Jan 17, 2008
"Don't forget to get there very, very early", was the advice given to me by practically everyone prior to this morning's Macworld Conference Keynote. "Things get pretty hairy", they claimed -- and they weren't referencing Australian Macworld's fine editor. So at 5am, having been woken by the loud gentleman speaking German VERY LOUDLY, I prepared towander down the chilly streets of San Francisco and wait. And wait, and wait, and wait. Annoyance doesn't quite cover my mood when another Australian journalist makes an appearance two hours later, right behind me.
Alex Kidman | Jan 17, 2008
Myvu has announced that its Crystal video goggles now work with the iPhone. The Crystal glasses require a new cable which costs $US24.95.
