Archive for the 'Opinions' Category

These days it seems like Mac shareware is all hype and no delivery. The new app comes out with fanfare… as a beta. A few days, weeks, and months later, it finally gets to version 1.0 and everyone is happy. Over the next few weeks 1.0.1 comes out, 1.0.2, and maybe even 1.1.0, but then things go silent. The blog isn’t updated, nagging issues go unfixed, and everyone forgets about it. Then the cycle picks up again, either with a new app or a new version.

Fortunately for us, though, there’s hope. Here are some apps that, if the rumblings are to be believed, may see some solid releases soon:

Well, folks, it looks like Apple’s really taken their “Tuesday Newsday” philosophy to heart here; yet another major announcement hit the feeds this morning as the new generation of MacBooks was released, along with their beefy brothers the MacBook Pros. This latest iteration of the lean machines is as impressive as ever — displaying a variety of new features on the surface as well as brand new Intel Penryn chips under the lid (as it were).

Tuesdays are nearly always the Apple day of the week. It’s Apple’s release date of choice, and rightly so; it allows stock to be in stores, and hence people’s hands, by the weekend.

But 2008 has been an interesting year, and it all started with a comment at a small event, known as MacWorld from a Mr Steven P. Jobs (ever heard of him, I certainly haven’t):

It isn’t often that the world of software design generates newsworthy controversy with its products. After all, the whole point of creating new software is to help people by allowing them to be more productive, more organized, more speedy…right?

What it doesn’t generally do is force them to be more aware of their moral boundaries. One software developer, named Reza Hussain, decided to be a bit more ambitious in his design.

Much to the chagrin of numerous eager users, it was discovered that his seemingly-innocuous screen capture program called Display Eater had a much bigger appetite than they expected: if a pirated serial number was entered during registration, the software would delete the offending user’s home files; effectively killing their poor Mac.

Since we previously put the MacBook Air in perspective, it was high time we talked about the price. Starting at $1799, the MacBook Air may not float in everyone’s boat.

Yes, the Macbook Air is quite sexy. I think that a lot of the Apple products get instant “wow” power, based on great design, and ease of use. But in the long run, is the Macbook Air a laptop that YOU would buy? Is it powerful enough for your tasks?

Let’s take it to the polls to get an idea.

Today the MacEnterprise project will be hosting a live webcast on the Leopard Wiki Server. The MacEnterprise project is a fantastic resource for IT professionals who need to support Macs in the enterprise. Apple’s Senior Product Manager, Nader Nafissi, will provide an overview of the features and services in Mac OS 10.5 Server’s newest collaboration and communication tool.

Unlike a lot of Apple’s bundled open source server tools, the wiki is a homegrown solution. Apple’s engineers have done extraordinary work, which is saying quite a lot considering we are talking about a wiki.

If you missed the last installment, read it first. In the previous article I discussed how to organize your files to be processed. In this article I will show you how to access your files, and how to process through them.

So if you remember I told you about how my mother’s desktop was a wreck: files everywhere, with the desktop full with icons. I could hardly find her hard drive on the desktop. Chaos!

After its initial shine in the spotlight, the MacBook Air bashing began. It has been attacked from every angle. It’s expensive. The battery isn’t user-replaceable. It doesn’t have firewire. It doesn’t have ethernet. It doesn’t have an optical drive!

What everyone is missing in all this however, is that the people this notebook is targeted towards couldn’t care less about any of that stuff. Let me break it down for you right after the jump.

Hmm, that sounds like a good deal, if we’re talking about Mac apps designed to run on your Mac desktop/laptop. With most Mac shareware priced at (much) more than $10 a pop, it certainly sounds like a good deal.

But what about the iPod touch? iPod touch apps aren’t as fully-fledged as their desktop/laptop counterparts, so is the $20 that Apple is charging for an additional 5 apps still reasonable? Let’s take a look.

At the top of everyone’s Macworld 2008 prediction lists was the unveiling of a new small form factor notebook. Most rumors center on the machine being cast in aluminum like a MacBook Pro, very slim with a 13.3″ display, and utilizing some type of flash based memory (maybe something like the new 1.8″ SSD hard drives shown at last week’s CES08). Further rumors suggest some type of HD capable reader/writer, possibly an external Bluray drive, but I think that’s maybe just conjecture. If you remember, many major media outlets like The Guardian hinted at Apple’s subnotebook sans optical drive last November.

Everyone in the Mac community, MacApper included, has been wondering what Stevie J will have for us this year at Macworld. Our own James Matarrese wrote an opinion article today on why he thought the Apple TV won’t have a DVR. In a somewhat unusual welcome for this new writer, I’m going to tell you all the reasons he’s wrong!

This years Macworld event running January 14th-18th in San Francisco is easily the most popular and widely discussed Macworld event ever. With over 400 exhibitors, tons of buzz about potential hardware releases, and lots of BOOM from the Steve, we will all surely be encompassed by the reality distortion field well before the week ends.

The blogosphere has been super busy the last few weeks with rumors, red herrings, and buzz on what to expect at this years Macworld. Here is a list of my favorites.

There’s been a lot of speculation about what will be released at Macworld this year, and one thing that keeps coming up is the AppleTV. Among some of the hopes for the device, the one that stands out to me most is the suspected DVR. Now, at first glance, it would make a lot of sense for Apple to include DVR functionality. The hardware is there, and the software wouldn’t be very hard to implement, plus, it gives Apple entrance into yet another market yet uncharted to them, competing against the mighty TiVo.

We here at MacApper love Mac freeware, and try to write about it whenever we can. If we can find a program that does as good a job as commercial offerings, we will do our best to bring it to your attention. Following along that vein of thought we prepared something we think you guys might find useful. It’s a list of the best and most popular freeware for OS X.

The list is sorted alphabetically by category and currently has 57 freeware mac apps.

As a fairly recent Mac convert, I’ve found that the one of the biggest differences between programs on Windows and applications on Macs are how easily they install. Drag, drop, done. Genius. But, besides that, the second biggest difference is where the applications actually come from. For people on Windows, most of their applications come from CDs that they bought in a store, or downloaded online.