2003: In my previous column, The Digital SLR: Affordable or Overpriced?, we looked at the drawbacks of using 35mm lenses with digital SLRs that have image sensors smaller than a 35mm frame. Dealing with the “conversion factor” is frustrating, and it only seems reasonable that we’ll eventually see digital SLRs that take 35mm lenses and produce […]
Author Archives: Daniel Knight
2003: Nothing has more typified the advanced amateur photographer in recent decades than a good SLR camera. That was true when I got started in photography 30 years ago, and it remains true today.
2003: In the May 2003 issue of Popular Photography & Imaging, editor-in-chief Jason Schneider declares that digital has achieved the quality of film. More specifically, the Kodak DCS Pro14n digital SLR matches the resolution of Kodak Max Versatility 400 color print film in a 35mm camera.
2003: There are lots of variables in digital photography, but the most important one is megapixels. Even a lowly 1 megapixel (MP) camera can give you just great 4-by-6 snapshots, assuming a good lens and exposure. I’ve printed pretty sharp 5-by-7 photos from my 1.3 MP Canon PowerShot A50 on my Epson Stylus Photo 870 inkjet […]
2003 – The good news: The Mac OS X v10.2 Jaguar upgrade CD can be turned into a full install CD using nothing more than Disk Copy, the Terminal, and a CD burner. Terminal seems to be the crucial piece; without it I wasted two CD-Rs trying to make an installer.
Claris Home Page was one of the finest applications ever made for the Mac. Version 3.0 has been around since 1998, and a lot of us have yet to find a better program for writing and publishing on the Web.
2003 – It’s been a good week for OS X users. First, Apple released an update to Safari that fixed some really obvious errors, such as text not wrapping around graphics properly (as mentioned in my previous installment) and problems with secure sites. Then they finished OS X 10.2.4 and made it available.
February 10, 1993 was one of the biggest days in Mac history. Apple introduced six new models at once.
2003 – It’s been a month since I upgraded from OS X 10.1.5 Puma to 10.2 Jaguar and tried to make OS X my primary operating system. It worked, and now that I’ve done it, I don’t like going back to OS 9. Classic Mode is fine for all of my software – except for backup, and […]
As we discussed last Friday, Apple has never been a dominant player in the personal computer industry. However, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been a significant player.
Despite the myths, Apple has never been a dominant player in the personal computer industry. Although the Apple II once accounted for nearly one-sixth of the market, the Mac has never had more than a 12% market share.
The new PowerBooks (Big Al and Little Al) are nice enough, but I think that the new five-times-as-fast AirPort Extreme will have much more impact in the long run.
2003 – Today marks 10 days since I installed Mac OS X 10.2.3 Jaguar on my 400 MHz PowerBook G4.
2003 – It’s only a beta, but Safari – Apple’s new Jaguar-only browser – won me over the first time I launched it. And it continued to impress me as I visited site after site. And then I headed off to Yahoo Games to unwind.
2003 – I’ll be rebooting my 400 MHz PowerBook G4 into OS 9 sometime today so it can be backed up over the network by Retrospect, but the more I work in OS X 10.2 Jaguar, the more I like it. I may have to invest in that ten user Retrospect client upgrade real soon now.
2003 – I made it over 72 hours before I had to reboot Jaguar – details on that below. Today I’m going to look at the things that are different about Jaguar.
2003 – Last Friday, I received a copy of Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar in the mail from a reader. After finishing the morning site update, I rebooted my 400 MHz TiBook into Mac OS X 10.1.5 Puma, inserted Install Disc 1, and began the long, slow task of updating Quicksilver, my TiBook.
2002 – There are several attitudes toward Mac OS X on the Mac Web. Some have become cheerleaders, strong advocates that everyone abandon the classic Mac OS as quickly as possible and jump on the OS X bandwagon. Some even go so far as to recommend you dump all your Classic Mode software and replace […]
I sometimes wonder if there’s a special place in hell for self-important, small-minded people bent on destroying things they don’t like, understand, or approve of.
When we published Flash Cards: A Solution for Low Memory Macs in June 2000, Maxwell Cabral suggested using CompactFlash (CF) for virtual memory. The scenario: Pop a CF card into a PC Card (formerly PCMCIA) adapter, plug that into the PC Card slot on your PowerBook, format it as a Mac volume, open the Memory control panel, and […]
2002 – I was going to spend last Wednesday putting a bigger, faster hard drive in our Beige Power Mac G3 and tell everyone what a big difference it made on Thursday. Well, things didn’t work out that way.
2002 – I had big plans for today. I was going to tell everyone how easy it was to put a big, fast hard drive in a Beige Power Mac G3 – and how much that improved performance. At least that was the plan.
2002 – As I said last time, the more I use Mac OS X, the more I like it. This is especially true since replacing the stock 10 GB Toshiba drive (4200 rpm, 1 MB cache) with a larger, faster 20 GB IBM Travelstar drive (5400 rpm, 8 MB cache).
The latest thing in laptops is using them as desktops. Devices such as the Lapvantage Dome and forthcoming Oyster Laptop Dock let you move your ‘Book off the desk to position the screen at a more comfortable, more ergonomically correct height.
2002 – For years the Mac faithful heard promises about Apple’s next generation operating system. Copland or Rhapsody (or whatever it was being called at the time) would be fully buzzword compliant, would run on any Power Mac ever made, and have us chomping at the bit to upgrade.
As commentator Paul Harvey is fond of saying, “It’s not one world.” The events of September 11, 2001 brought that home to Americans, who usually felt safe and secure at home. And now we worry about terrorism.
2002: All memory cards are not created equal. CompactFlash and SmartMedia have been duking it out over price, speed, size, and capacity for several years. Sony threw a wrench in the works with its Memory Stick technology (which hardly anyone except Sony uses), and just recently the tiny Secure Digital card has come into play […]
2002 – There’s been a fair bit of talk on the Mac Web this week about people going 100% OS X. I have a feeling that I’m never going to be one of them.
Rodney O. Lain was one of the most erudite, informed, opinionated, and iconoclastic writers on the Mac Web. In other words, he thought for himself, spoke his mind, and did it well.
These articles penned by the late Rodney O. Lain are from websites that no longer exist. We’ve fixed a few typos but essentially left these articles as they were originally published.
2002 – It was nearly two months ago that I shared my frustration at trying to install the Mac OS X 10.1.4 update on the 2 GB partition I’d created for OS X when I bought my TiBook.
2002 – I tried to update Mac OS X to version 10.1.4 last night – and ran into the same problem I had with one of the earlier updates.
The first Mac didn’t quite cut it. With 128 KB of RAM, a single-sided 400K floppy, and no native support for a hard drive, it was a proof of concept machine…
Luddite Mac is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek celebration of vintage Macs — and even Apple IIs. The point we always try to make at Low End Mac is that until it dies no computer is ever less capable than it was when you bought it, so try to make the most of it. Our other focus […]
2002 – I’ve spend a few more days working in and out of Mac OS X 10.1 Puma. I sometimes ask myself why I’m doing this. It is just to be on the cutting edge, just so I can be familiar with OS X, just to attract readers (you seem to love articles about OS X), or for […]
