News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
Apple very quietly added TV shows to the content of Australia's iTunes Store yesterday, not even issuing a press release about it until early this morning (and that with no subject line). The shows, from three American producers and two Australian ones, cost $2.99 each and finally provide a fully legal way to populate an Apple TV, iPod touch or — in a few weeks — iPhone with compelling content. Up until now the only video content available from the iTunes Store has been Pixar short films, music videos and movie trailers.
Matthew JC. Powell | Jun 25, 2008
Traffic — particularly pedestrian traffic — in the middle of Sydney was disrupted on Thursday as people lined up around the block into York Street to be among the first to enter the Apple Store. The excitement of those in the line was palpable, as was the disbelief of many passers-by. "Why are you waiting in line," they cried, "it's just a shop." I heard that phrase a lot: "just a shop". I'm sure the people who queued overnight heard it many more times than I did. But, in truth, is the Apple Store "just a shop"?
Matthew JC. Powell | Jun 20, 2008
The 3G iPhone, to no-one's surprise, debuted this morning at the WWDC in San Francisco. The feature set, however, did come as a surprise, as did some of the features of the enhanced and rebadged .Mac service, hereinafter known as MobileMe. And who was expecting a white iPhone? Not us. Read all about it and join in the chat on the Australian Macworld Forums.
Matthew JC. Powell | Jun 9, 2008
Since Leopard was released in October last year, Apple has asked users to download over a gigabyte of stuff to fix it. Some of that is security fixes and you’ll have no complaints from me, and some of it — especially in 10.5.2 — was features that really needed to be rethought from the original release. The remainder, one has to assume, is stuff that was broken. Stuff that wasn’t ready for release when Apple released it. Stuff that it should have got right. In 10.5.3, there aren’t any snazzy new features, no interface changes to note. For most of us it’s a really big download that changes nothing except a digit on the “About this Mac” box.
Matthew JC. Powell | May 30, 2008
This coming Tuesday marks the tenth anniversary of the official end of the clone era in Mac history, when the last of the licensed Mac cloners finally threw in the towel. Psystar's recent activity with unlicensed clones has reminded people of those heady days, and this article by US Macworld's Rik Myslewski has taken a nostalgic look at the era when Apple almost ate itself in an attempt to survive. It's a good article, strong on historical fact and analysis that's hard to fault. The conclusion, however, is questionable.
Matthew JC. Powell | May 24, 2008
I’ve often said, quite unashamedly, that Apple’s oft-discussed market share was not an accurate representation of its position in the market. The figures are skewed, I contend, by the inclusion of markets in which Apple does not compete. A recent analysis by market-research firm NPD bears this out. According to NPD, Apple’s overall share of PC sales at traditional bricks-and-mortar retailers during the first quarter of this year languished at about 14 percent. However, if you exclude computers costing under $US1000, Apple’s share rises to a staggering 66 percent. Two-thirds of all computers sold at traditional retailers to customers with over a grand to spend are Macs. These are iPod numbers.
Matthew JC. Powell | May 20, 2008
As I type this it's the second of May 2008, and just a few days after the release of Apple's updated iMacs with Intel Penryn processors. While much has been said on various sites about how the changes to the new models are fairly minor, the timing inevitably puts me in mind of the sixth of May 1998 — the day, ten years ago, when Apple first unveiled the iMac. The changes since then are, to put it mildly, pretty radical. Ten years ago there was only one iMac model. It was made of blue translucent plastic, incorporated a 15-inch CRT display, and had a PowerPC 750 (G3) processor manufactured by Motorola, running at 233MHz. It came with 32MB of RAM standard, and a massive 4GB hard drive — that's right, 4GB! How could you ever hope to fill all that? The operating system was a modified version of Mac OS 8.1, amended to include support for this newfangled USB thingy. It cost $US1299 (I don't recall the Australian price, but when I find it I'll update this).
Matthew JC. Powell | May 2, 2008
In this week's bumper edition of the Australian Macworld Weekend Edition Podcast, Keith White interviews Adam Engst — of TidBits and Take Control e-books fame — about how he got his start in computing and when he became a Mac devotee. In amongst the discussion Engst makes an interesting observation: that despite being a Mac community "A-lister" he's never had an actual discussion with Steve Jobs and, most interestingly, that if he did get the chance he doesn't know what he would ask.
Matthew JC. Powell | Apr 27, 2008
Psystar, a small company in Florida that hasn't yet opened its offices, made ripples around the tech world last week by saying it would offer a Mac clone somewhat cheaper than what Apple charges for comparable hardware. In spite of reports that the company kept changing its physical address, and in spite of several site outages, and in spite of the company being dumped by its credit card provider, the orders apparently kept flowing in. The price difference is obviously a factor in this demand for a Mac clone, but surely not enough to offset the unease of dealing with a company with that kind of record. Obviously Psystar is offering something people want — a lot.
Matthew JC. Powell | Apr 23, 2008
Way back in January we decided to do something a little bit rash: give away a MacBook Air to any AMW reader who could demonstrate their ability to review it. Little did we know then that the competition would end up being massively popular, and turn into one of the hardest (and at the same time most enjoyable) competitions to judge in the history of the magazine. Almost every day for the past two months I've read through new entries in the competition, and almost every day I've been struck by the creativity and skill of AMW's readers.
Matthew JC. Powell | Apr 11, 2008
No Starch Press is trying a bold experiment to discover whether distribution of copyright content via peer-to-peer networks is harmful to sales or helpful. It's releasing two of its (well worth having) books in BitTorrent form, with no digital-rights management protection whatsoever. Either it will boost legitimate sales or it will kill them off. Either way, the implications of the experiment are huge for anyone who publishes content and needs to know how to make it profitable in the era of "information wants to be free".
Matthew JC. Powell | Apr 4, 2008
America’s presidential election is over, and we can all be grateful for that. But in politics, the race never really ends. I think that’s the metaphor at work in Freedom Run by Spiralstorm Games. The game’s imagery is ripe with symbolism: Republicans and Democrats are bound to each other, struggling to achieve a common good just out of reach. One cannot succeed without the other. And the run, just like the ever-expanding quest for freedom, is endless. There is no finish line. And if you fall down, you get up and try again.
