News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
I've spent the last week mouseless, eschewing a handheld pointer in favour of living and working completely on the trackpad of a MacBook Pro and the multi-touch screen of an iPod touch. I did this pretty much on a dare: last week I said the MacBook Air's trackpad was large enough that I could imagine using it without the fallback of a mouse, and I decided to put that to the test. I don't have a MacBook Air yet, so my mouseless week had to be on a borrowed MacBook Pro (I'll buy one when Apple updates the trackpad -- soon ... soon ...). I've also made a point of using the iPod touch as much as possible, for instance when posting to the Australian Macworld forums.
Matthew JC. Powell | Feb 8, 2008
Well, that kind of came out of nowhere, didn't it? With little fanfare and even less fuss, Apple Australia flicked the switch on its iPhoto printing service this morning, meaning that for the first time ever Australian customers have the full feature set for our digital shoeboxes. And not a moment too soon -- we've been paying full price all these years too. It appears that the books at least are beeing printed overseas, so it's not a matter of Apple Australia having done a local deal in that regard -- just that Apple US has discovered international shipping. It's a little less clear with the prints, as the ordering process doesn't indicate they're shipping "from abroad" as the books do, plus a little "Print @ Fujicolor" logo appears on the print ordering page, indicating that Apple might be subcontracting that work out to www.fujicolor.com.au — which offers the same range of print sizes at comparable prices. This should mean that the prints are delivered fairly quickly. I'll be ordering a bunch, and I'll let you know when they arrive. The next question is of course printing from Aperture, Apple's somewhat higher-end application that does much the same as iPhoto but for professional photographers. In the US, Aperture users have the same range of services available as iPhoto users. In Australia, not yet. For all we know, that's this afternoon's news.
Matthew JC. Powell | Feb 6, 2008
Having used the MacBook Air's amazing multi-touch trackpad, I've been hooked. Now I just need that same functionality in a more powerful machine. Any help, Steve?
Matthew JC. Powell | Feb 1, 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
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
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
It was one of those days. There's a maxim that to err is human, butto really stuff things up you need a computer. Robbie Burns also oncesaid (in my imagination) that "the best-laid plans of mice and men haveno chance againt modern technology". We had planned our coverage of the keynote so well. We had rehearsed, tested and run through. Nothing could go wrong.
Matthew JC. Powell | Jan 16, 2008
The world has been rocked this week with the news that Apple has added Andrea Jung to its board of directors. That's right, that Andrea Jung, the CEO of Avon. That's right, that Avon, the door-to-door cosmetics company. Clearly this indicates a radical new direction in Apple's retail strategy: as well as mass-market retailers, specialised independent resellers, company-owned stores and of course online, Apple is now going to recruit an army of enthusiastic salespeople hoofing it from house to house with sample cases.
Matthew JC. Powell | Jan 11, 2008
Bill Gates has given his last Consumer Electronics Show keynote address. It was, it must be said, much like all of them: big on promise, low on delivery -- but at least it was funny. The question now is: what does he leave behind?
Matthew JC. Powell | Jan 9, 2008
With Warner Brothers' announcement that it would be dropping support for Toshiba's HD-DVD disc format in favour of the Sony-developed Blu-ray Disc, many have declared the format war over with BD the winner. There are reasons to be happy about this, and reasons to be unhappy. And reasons not to care either way.
Matthew JC. Powell | Jan 8, 2008
Microsoft has had a change of heart about the non-disclosure period for beta-testers of its Office 2008 for Mac. So it's time to spill some beans.
Matthew JC. Powell | Jan 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.
