2008: The iPod very much dominates the MP3 player market, the iTunes Store dominates the digital music market (and probably video as well), the iPhone has redefined the smartphone market, and the Macintosh is the #3 personal computer brand in the US – and the #2 personal computer operating system, growing at an impressive rate […]
Author Archives: Daniel Knight
Some programs seem to do a thousand different things. Others are one trick ponies. HyperDither falls in the second category, and compared to image editing powerhouses like Photoshop and even Photoshop Elements, its feature-set is incredibly sparse. In fact, it only does one thing – it dithers images.
2008: Has it really been five years since Apple introduced the Power Mac G5? Yes, and the new enclosure introduced on June 23, 2003, lives on as the housing of the Mac Pro.
2008: Bigger, more, cheaper! Those are the cries of computer buyers – and successful manufacturers answer in spades with faster CPUs, more RAM, bigger hard drives, and higher density displays. Oh, and sometimes smaller, cheaper computers as well.
2008: It’s called the KPC. It sells for $99 bare bones (no CPU, RAM, or hard drive), and as low as $229 configured. And it makes me wonder, “Can it run OS X?”
Is Microsoft a monopoly? Has Microsoft been guilty of monopolistic behavior? These are questions we’ve been asking for well over a decade, and the subject surfaced again this week [mid March 2008] after the US Supreme Court cleared the way for Novell to file an antitrust case against the Redmond behemoth over the way WordPerfect […]
I’ve had this Blue and White Power Mac G3 in my office on and off for a few months. I spent several weeks working on it and a Mystic Power Mac G4/450 trying to get them both working reliably. Long story short, the problems turned out to be bad RAM.
2008: It’s been the hallmark of serious photographers – professionals and advanced amateurs alike – for nearly 50 years now. It’s the single lens reflex (SLR) camera, and it’s seen a lot of changes, especially in the digital era.
2008: I’ve been into photography since the mid-1970s, and I’ve worked in camera stores several times over the intervening years. For me, one of the banes of good enlargements is dates in photos. I’ve seen more nice candids, animal shots, sunsets, etc. that would make excellent large prints – but they have a big, ugly […]
2008: Last month we looked at the megapixel myth. As we noted then, “in the rush to market megapixels, images can actually be worse with a high megapixel camera than from a lower megapixel one.” The sad truth is that it’s worse than we thought.
We’ve already suggested reducing your screen resolution, switching from millions of colors to thousands, and using Mac OS X 10.3.x Panther as ways to get better playback of YouTube videos. Several readers have written in with other suggestions, including adjusting video quality and using other programs to view the videos rather than using a web browser.
The most important part of this mailbag is the analysis of how to get the best performance from YouTube an an older Mac. YouTube Videos Run Poorly on Older Macs How Many Dead Pixels Are Too Many? Which iBook G4 Is the Better Deal? Increasing Safari Problems in Panther Quartz Extreme Support for PCI Video […]
2008: The prayers of many for an ultralight MacBook have been answered, but in an unexpected way. And that’s pure Apple.
2008: In the world of computers, you can never have too many megabytes or megahertz. That sounds dated in this day of gigahertz and gigabytes, but the principle remains the same: More is better, whether you’re looking at CPU speed, system memory, hard drive space, or graphics processor speed and VRAM. Where it’s not necessarily […]
2008: There’s been a huge buzz in the past week about an Apple patent application for “Run-Time Code Injection To Perform Checks”, which many liken to Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage program and speculate could result in Mac OS X and Apple apps including the kind of serialization and headaches that Windows users are familiar with.
I’ve been carrying on an extended email conversation with Bill Brown for months. Bill is more-or-less the IT guy for an intense volunteer Mac program at a senior center. Certainly a confirmed Mac lover, he has made some interesting discoveries and developed some interesting techniques for refurbishing, repairing, and updating older Macs, particularly G3 iMacs.
I have found that, by far, the easiest way to install Leopard on unsupported G4s is to spoof the clock speed in Open Firmware before installing. Spoofing will have Open Firmware tell OS X that your G4 is up-to-speed until you reboot. This will allow you to install without hacking an install disc or working in […]
Thursday is Thanksgiving Day here in the States, our once-a-year day dedicated to looking back at all the good things that have happened. We’ll be spending the next week with family, so this is the last new column we’re posting until next Wednesday.
My track record with eMacs has not been the greatest. My first was a 700 MHz with a Combo drive. I purchased it refurbished after the second generation eMacs came out, which meant I got a great deal on it – and Apple’s one-year warranty. Good thing, as it ended up in the service department […]
The good news is that Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard seems to be able to run on any Mac with AGP graphics built around a G4 processor – and even on the 2000 Pismo PowerBook (the first PowerBook with AGP graphics) as long as it has a G4 upgrade. The bad news is that the […]
2007 – Primate Labs picked up a copy of OS X Leopard and posted the first Geekbench results for the iMac (2.0 GHz Core 2) and Power Mac G5 (single 1.6 GHz) on Saturday. Leopard was tested in both 32-bit and 64-bit modes and compared with OS X 10.4 Tiger, which is strictly a 32-bit operating […]
2007 – Apple announced the system requirements for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard last week: a drive that can read the DVD install disc, at least 512 MB of memory, and an 867 MHz G4 or better. Although 700-800 MHz eMacs aren’t officially supported, we have lots of tips on installing Mac OS X 10.5 on unsupported Macs […]
Yesterday (October 22, 2007) Oobject published a list of the 16 worst Apple products ever (since updated to 18) – and we just have to disagree with some of them.
2007 – Apple announced the system requirements for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard last week: a drive that can read the DVD install disc, at least 512 MB of memory, and an 867 MHz G4 or better – and there’s only on G4 iBook that’s not officially supported. For that one, we have lots of tips […]
In October 1992, Apple introduced two updated PowerBooks, a new PowerBook Duo series, and the last members of the Macintosh II family. You couldn’t ask for a greater contrast.
2007 – Apple has announced the system requirements for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: a drive that can read the DVD install disc, at least 512 MB of memory, and an 867 MHz G4 or better. Several G4 iMacs aren’t officially supported, but we have lots of tips on installing Mac OS X 10.5 on unsupported Macs in […]
2007 – Apple has finally announced the system requirements for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: a drive that can read the DVD install disc, at least 512 MB of memory, and an 867 MHz G4 or better.
2007 – Apple introduced a new look to the Power Mac G4 in August 2002 with the first Mirrored Drive Doors (MDD) models. They also fully embraced dual processors, as the three models introduced then each had a pair of PowerPC 7455 CPUs. With Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard rumored to require an 867 MHz G4 CPU, […]
2007 – In January 2001, Apple moved the Power Mac to a 133 MHz system bus and adopted AGP 4x for video cards while retaining the look of the original G4 Power Mac. Seven months later, Apple introduced a new look: Quicksilver.
2007 – The earliest G4 Power Macs had a 100 MHz system bus and ATI Rage 128 graphics on a 66 MHz PCI bus or an AGP 2x bus. The following generation of Power Macs adopted a 133 MHz system bus and included AGP 4x graphics. The Digital Audio models were the first Macs to offer […]
2007 – In November 1997, Apple made the leap to the G3, the first PowerPC CPU optimized for the kind of software Macs ran. Less than two years later, Apple abandoned the 300-450 MHz G3 in its Power Mac line when it introduced the first Power Mac G4 models.
The past two weeks have been quite busy with musical rehearsals at church and some design projects – creating postcards, water bottle labels, tickets, and programs for Rishalina and the River, a musical our church’s music and arts director cowrote in 1976.
When we think of ethernet today, we think of wired networking with RJ-45 ports and plugs. These connectors look like an oversized phone jack. But that was only one of several competing connectors in the early days of networking.
Apple’s new aluminum keyboards have received mixed reviews, and some of our readers share their opinions of the new style keyboard. Also the reliability of Dual USB iBooks and adding USB to the Beige Power Mac G3.
2007 – For writing at your computer, the ideal tool is word processing software. It lets you play with fonts, type size, boldface and italic – all the tools you need to write a short story, a novel, an essay, a review, whatever. For creating code, the ideal tool is a text editor. It doesn’t […]
