News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
There are two superb applications for Mac that make taking the plunge and doing e-mail and calendaring online vastly easier. I’ve finally decided to rid my e-mail and calendar of this earthly life — I decided after a recent MacBook Pro upgrade that it was time for them to go and live in the cloud. I’m talking, of course, about Google’s “cloud” — thousands of computers sitting somewhere in the middle of a desert, powering the web applications in my browser. Until a few days ago, there was no way I’d have been prepared to make this switch.
Dan Warne | Mar 31, 2008
Yet again this morning the blogosphere is alight with the news that a Mac has been hacked. Those safe-as-houses, indestructible, impregnable, unsinkable Macs have been shown yet again to be riddled with holes so big and so obvious a child could drive a truck through them. Yet again the long-suffering Windows apologists take heart, poke their tongues and say "nyeah" while they download today's patches for their systems. The cause of this derision? A hacking contest in Canada.
Matthew JC. Powell | Mar 28, 2008
The CEO of Mozilla, John Lilly, has had some choice words to say about Apple's methods for increasing the market penetration of Safari on Windows. It's an undesirable user experience, he says. It's a security flaw, he says. It undermines the trust between users and developers, he says. Does he have a point, or is there something else on his mind?
Matthew JC. Powell | Mar 26, 2008
As a member of iMug (and a past president) I participate in a very vibrant and switched-on Mac user group. Every few months there's a discussion around mobile internet services and which offer the best performance, price, technical support and hardware. The problem is that there's no single answer that points to one service provider and service offering that's going to be perfect for everyone. All you can do is try to wade through the different options to make a considered decision.
Anthony Caruana | Mar 24, 2008
Down in Sea Change country, the Bellarine Mac User Group is one of the newest Mac User Groups in Australia, having formed just over a year ago, yet it is one of the most vibrant and dynamic groups in the world. BMUG is situated down on the Bellarine Peninsula just over an hour's drive from Melbourne and about 10-15 minutes from where the outdoor shots of the ABC television show Sea Change were filmed. When it first formed, BMUG met in a local neighbourhood centre in Ocean Grove, which comfortably supported 30-odd people each meeting, but already the group has outgrown that venue and now meets at Marcus Hill Community Hall, on the corner of Bellarine Highway & Banks Road, Marcus Hill (about half way between Ocean Grove and Queenscliff).
Nicholas Pyers | Mar 24, 2008
Melbourne's very own Les Posen, clinical psychologist and Apple aficionado, was invited to the giant Macworld expo in California this year. Did he go? You betcha. While Posen has gained a certain amount of fame by his habit of sourcing and distributing Israeli folk dances online — see 05.2008 Australian Macworld magazine for more on this -- he has also won accolades for his skill with a presentation, using Keynote rather than death by PowerPoint. As Posen argues, Microsoft PowerPoint has become the standard presentation software in use in the workplace. "It has become the standard — because it seems to make the presenter's job easier by acting as projected index cards to keep your notes."
Apple is reportedly contemplating, for its iPhone customers at least, a change to its iTunes business model that would allow customers unfettered access to the iTunes Store. It would fund this by adding a premium to the price of the devices, and that premium would then be divided between the major music labels based on their market share. Up until now, Steve Jobs has been vigorously opposed to similar models offered by other download providers. The problem is ...
Matthew JC. Powell | Mar 20, 2008
From cruising the various blogs it’s obvious that users are getting very savvy about the techy details of digicams. Quite often the comments posted indicate a surprising depth of knowledge on the consumers' part. However, there also appears to be a surprising wad of knowledge about subtler aspects: one of these is the quality of light for superior picture taking. And that means "sans flash". Get the most of the natural light that surrounds you. If you’re shooting a portrait or a group make sure there’s light on your subject: not speckled light that has filtered through tree leaves, not a direct full on blast from the sun — but something in between. Light from the side is ideal as it outlines the subject and allows any front light to be softer and more flattering to the human face.
Barrie Smith | Mar 18, 2008
One of the attractions of using a Macintosh instead of that other operating system is not having to futz around with command lines and arcane code you barely understand but have been assured by some guru or other will be “alright as long as you type exactly this string of gibberish”. Imagine my surprise when Apple’s Time Machine code turned up on my desktop and refused to do a backup to anything except an attached drive. At first glance I thought I’d stepped into a real time machine and been transported back to the days when Apple did networks its own way.
Ian Yates | Mar 17, 2008
Hasn't Bill Gates gone yet? He announced like a year ago that he was leaving Microsoft and heading off into the world of philanthropy. Since then he seems to make another farewell address somewhere every couple of weeks. He's done more farewells than Kiss at this stage, and unless he shows up at the next one wearing giant platform boots and face makeup, I'm going to be very unimpressed. His most recent tearful goodbye to the technology industry he has dominated for the best part of his life came at a breakfast presentation to the Northern Virginia Technology Council ...
Matthew JC. Powell | Mar 14, 2008
To continue my Mac love life from last month ... I ushered in the millennium with a Blue and White G3/400 accompanied by a G3 Wall Street PowerBook which I'd picked up on the rebound from a kind lady at AppleOz. The PowerBook is a lovely machine with beautiful rounded edges and I still have her. She'd been born just before the USB revolution which soon became a serious disadvantage. Then her removable floppy drive however was rendered inoperable by a former friend who insisted on ramming in a cheap disk whose metal bit was obviously about to break free. Which it did. Inside the drive. He then tried to make amends by removing it with a screwdriver ...
Keith White | Mar 13, 2008
I ordered a photo book from Apple the very day the service was made available in this country. The saga that followed revealed a few easily fixable bugs in the system and a few options that maybe ought to have been thought of beforehand. Since I know Apple likes to get advice, I thought I'd offer a hand.
Matthew JC. Powell | Mar 12, 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.
