Mac Lab Report
is a longtime Mac user. He was using digital sensors on Apple II computers in the 1980's and has networked computers in his classroom since before the internet existed. In 2006 he was selected at the California Computer Using Educator's teacher of the year. His students have used NASA space probes and regularly participate in piloting new materials for NASA. He is the author of two books and numerous articles and scientific papers. He currently teaches astronomy and physics in California, where he lives with his twin sons, Jony and Ben.
And there's still a Mac G3 in his classroom which finds occasional use.
Our index below includes Mac Lab Report published since 2005. We've sorted all Mac Lab Reports into the following categories on a separate index page:
- Teaching and the Mac
- Astronomy and the Mac
- Writing Grants
- Mac How-To and Tutorials
- 75 Mac Advantages Revisited
- Other Mac Advocacy
- Reviews
- Opinion
- Humor
2008 Columns
- Word 2004 vs. Pages 05 for Writing a Book, 01.10. Microsoft Word is great for technical writing, powerful yet slow, while Pages lets you concentrate on just writing, making it great for novels.
2007 Columns
- iWeb a Great Tool for Quickly Creating an Attractive Website, 09.11. Apple's iWeb software isn't just easy to use, it also integrates nicely with .mac and other programs in the iLife bundle.
- Use Your Bluetooth Phone to Control Your Mac? Maybe, 02.27. Salling Clicker software turns many Bluetooth phones into remote controls for Bluetooth-equipped Macs.
- Two more markets the iPhone could conquer, 02.01. How Apple could redefine the ebook and calculator markets with a pair of free apps for the iPhone.
- How to Infect a Mac with a Virus or Other Malware, 01.30. Mac malware exists, but you have to jump through some hoops to get it to infect your Mac.
- Preparing images for better reproduction on laser printers and photocopiers, Jeff Adkins, 01.26. Simply printing or photocopying a color image can lead to a contrasty image with a lot of lost detail. Here's how to prepare images for better output.
2006 Columns
- 2 free programs that give you more space on your Mac's hard drive, 12.13. Is your hard drive filling up? Monolingual and iPhoto Buddy may free up 1-2 GB for you.
- Turn any old Mac into a gameshow buzzer, 10.07. Want to set up a game show where players have to buzz in? This Chipmunk Basic app makes it easy and may work with any Mac running System 6.0 or later.
- Embed a Blogger Feed in Your Web Page, 08.24. Instead of linking to external content, here's a way to display it within your page.
- Education the key to killing spam, 08.09. The only reason spam exists is because it works. If we could only teach people not to respond.....
- 23 Reasons Microsoft's Zune Is Doomed, 07.25. The iPod's mantra is simplify, simplify, simplify. Microsofts seems to be complexify, complexify, complexify. And we all know which consumers prefer.
- After music, photos, and video, how about ebook support on the iPod?, 06.15. With a delivery system already in place, Apple could do wonders for the small ebook industry by putting an ebook reader on the iPod and selling ebooks through the iTunes Music Store.
- OS X Tip: Save PDF to Web Receipts Folder, 04.24. Tired of printing out online receipts only to misplace them or discover you're out of paper? This new Tiger feature saves them on your computer.
- How to disable Blogger's sometimes problematic 'next blog' button, 03.28. Blogger provides a "next blog" button as a convenience, but sometimes it may send visitors to entirely inappropriate sites. Here's how to disable it.
- Astronomy podcasts and videocasts for the classroom, 03.22. There are several interesting podcasts and some good video material available for free download and use on your iPod or in iTunes.
- Capture Stills from OS X DVD Player with a Simple Hack, 03.16. Although Mac OS X doesn't support screen captures from Apple's DVD Player, this hack adds a screenshot menu item, making it easy to create your own stills.
- Macs a big presence at Computer Using Educator's conference, 03.13. Apple had a booth, more vendors than ever seem to be supporting the Mac, and the author received an Outstanding Educator of the Year award.
- Replacing your iPod's battery: A bit of work, a big money saver, 03.02. If you iPod's battery isn't holding much of a charge, you can easily replace it yourself for a lot less than Apple charges.
- If Apple won't support Classic on Intel Macs, it should liberate OS 9, 02.14. Although a lot of Mac users depend on Classic mode in OS X, Apple has seen fit to drop it on their newest hardware. That being the case, they should declare it unsupported and give it away for free.
- Macintel stumbling block: Sometimes you need Classic, 01.25. As nice as the new Intel Macs seem to be, the lack of any Classic environment makes it impossible for some people to upgrade.
- OmniGraffle a Great Tool for Big Presentation Graphics, 01.18. If you need to make a big poster presentation, OmniGraffle may be exactly the tool you're looking for.
- Even Apple's user interface has room for improvement, 01.11. There are parts of the Mac and iPod user interface that are anything but intuitive - and that can drive a user bonkers.
- Evolution and Intelligent Design in the classroom, 01.04. Intelligent Design is not science, but that doesn't mean it can't be discussed in science class.
2005 Columns
- iChat with iSight makes for pretty good video conferencing, 12.14. It's not perfect yet, but Apple has given us video chat with high enough quality that it's practical.
- Negative synergy: Godaddy redirect problematic with Safari, 12.09. Godaddy's redirect service works well with almost any browser, but a lot of Safari users are finding that it doesn't work for them.
- Thoughts on two-fingered scrolling, Mighty Mouse, and optical mice, 12.07. A tip about two-fingered scrolling, pros and cons of Apple's Mighty Mouse, and the end of gunked up mechanical mice.
- The yin and yang of Apple hardware flaws, 11.01. Looking at the ebb and flow of poor Apple product design since 1984.
- EasyFind a fix for Spotlight's flawed searches, 10.25. Apple's Spotlight search just can't find some things. This free program provides a real alternative.
- A big oversight in Spotlight's searches, 09.02. Believe it or not, Spotlight can't locate file names that begin with a number.
- Apple should make OS 9 free, 08.31. Apple has little to lose and much good will to gain by making OS 9 a free operating system.
- Lux: World domination, online or off, 08.29. "If you loved Risk as a board game, you're going to like Lux. Give it a try."
- One more sign Henrico doesn't get it, 08.19. "Apparently the people of Henrico County have a different attitude about the value of older low-end iBooks than the officials running the district."
- Palm Desktop won't install? You're not root, 08.17. Having software installation problems? You just might have to have "admin" access to do it.
- How to limit network access for OS X users, 06.16. How to allow access to some network resources while restricting it for others.
- First Mac minis in classroom a big hit, 05.25. They're tiny, affordable, and much more powerful than anything else in this classroom.
- Hands on: A new PowerBook with Tiger, 05.18. The new 15" PowerBook has some nice improvements over the titanium model, and Tiger is icing on the cake.
- Mac minis for the classroom despite 'no new Macs' policy, 05.03. The Mac mini is small, affordable, and powerful enough, but it took one more important argument to get them in the classroom.