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News & Opinion
Software
News & Opinion
Why Don't You Have a Mac?
The Union-Recorder's LaToya Davidson notes that of the top three
systems - Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux - Windows is the system for
everyone, Mac is for the super cool, and Linux is for techies.
She says that she used to love her Windows computer because it
offered so many different options. You could build your own or get an
HP, Dell, or an Acer. For years she liked that while she couldn't
really customize the Windows experience in the way that she wanted, she
could be unique in the computer she purchased.
She says what makes that recollection funny is that she's now
exclusively a Mac user - fully immersed in the one computer and its
operating system known as much for its sleek style as it is for its
assimilatory practices, including its now almost singular casing
'option.' On her Mac she can use any of the top three operating
systems, and given her years of experience with a Windows-based
computer and as someone who ditched Windows PCs in 2005 and never
looked back, she can honestly say, "Why don't you have a Mac?"
Davidson notes that that the Mac experience is superior to that of a
Windows computer, much simpler to use, and makes using a computer fun,
plus there is the major coolness factor with a Mac.
And don't be fooled, she says, by those who claim that Macs are too
expensive, observing that if you were to get a Windows computer with
similar specifications, you'd pay the same or more.
Link: Why Don't You Have
a Mac?
Play Blu-ray Movies on Your Mac without Converting
Them First
OWC blogger Chris H says lots of people want to watch Blu-ray movies
on their Macs, but until now, doing so required ripping the movies to
your hard drive and playing them that way. However Mac Blu-ray Player
from Macgo (see below) is a movie player that plays
back Blu-ray movies from the original source discs.
How does it work?
However, first you need a Blu-ray drive, and OWC just happens to sell
some.
Chris provides an outline of how to proceed from there.
Macgo gives you a free three month trial to try the application
before you purchase it for $59.95. If you hurry and purchase before
October 1, you get a reduced price of $39.95. Try it out and see if it
works for you that's the beauty of Shareware :-)
Link: Play Blu-ray
Movies on Your Mac without Converting Them First
Mac Thunderbolt Ports Will Support Future Optical
Cables
IDG News' Agam Shah reports that Thunderbolt ports on Apple's
current Macs will be compatible with upcoming fiber optic cables, which
should be ready by next year, according to Intel spokesman Dave
Salvator, although exact release timing and prices are yet to
determined. The Thunderbolt I/O technology, introduced in February on
Apple's MacBook Pro, is copper-based and supports data transfer at
speeds of up to 10 Gbps per channel.
Link: Apple Mac
Thunderbolt Ports Will Support Optical Cables
Apple Q4 FY11 Earnings Conference Call Scheduled
for October 18
Apple plans to conduct a conference call to discuss financial
results of its fourth fiscal quarter on Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at
2:00 p.m. PT.
You will be able to listen to Apple's conference call webcast
discussing Q4 - 2011 financial results beginning at 2:00 p.m. PT/5:00
p.m. ET on October 18.
Note that comments made during this call may include forward-looking
statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, and that actual
results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements.
For more information on the factors that could influence results, refer
to Apple's SEC filings.
To attend the conference call, QuickTime is required.
Webcast Begins: October 18, 2011 art 2:00 p.m. PT/5:00 p.m. ET
Link: Apple Financial
Results
Software
Mac Blu-ray Player Debuts
PR: Informed by 10 years of experience in video
conversion, Macgo introduces the world's very first Mac Blu-ray player
- a unique video conversion tool that supports both Mac and Windows
systems. Mac users are now able to watch Blu-ray movies on our beloved
computers.
The uniqueness of this tool doesn't end at the fact that it is the
very first Blu-ray player for Mac. With the arrival of Mac Blu-ray
Player, Mac users will now be able to enjoy Blu-ray quality and
experience on their desktop. What sets it apart as an innovation in its
truest sense is the fact that it is also the world's very first
universal media player. It can not only play Blu-ray HD movies on Mac
or PC, but support any formats of movie, video, audio, music, and photo
that exist today. The Mac Blu-ray player supports Blu-ray decryption as
well as DVD decryption.
Mac Blu-ray Player supports all models of Mac, including MacBook
Pro, Air, Mac mini, iMac, and Mac Pro. It can not only play Blu-ray HD
movies on Mac or PC, but support any movie, video, audio, music, and
photo.
Mac
Blu-ray Player allows users loading commercial Blu-ray discs directly
from Blu-ray Disc and Blu-ray Folder, and DVD player as well.
Supporting DVD decryption and DVD menu, Mac Blu-ray Player can play DVD
discs as well.
Blu-ray Decryption and Processing Capability
With advanced Blu-ray decryption and processing capability, the Mac
Blu-ray Player can read commercial Blu-ray discs released in different
regions, as well as removing BD+ and AACS encryptions up to MKB v24
from latest Blu-ray movies.
Universal Media Player Performance
All media formats supported here: Blu-ray, DVD, VideoCD, MOV, MKV,
AVI, FLV, WMV, MP4, MPEG, RMVB, MP3, WMA, AAC, AC3, and more.
Lossless Quality
Mac Blu-ray Player can directly play Blu-ray and DVD movie without
any quality loss. It allows full preservation of all audio tracks (like
DTS HD Master Audio, Dolby TrueHD Audio, etc.), substreams, chapter
markers, and videos.
System requirements Mac:
- 1 GHz or above Intel processor.
- Mac OS X (including Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and v10.6 Snow Leopard )
on iMac, MacBook, Mac Pro, etc.
- Intel Core2 Duo 2.4 GHz processor or higher recommended,
- 1 GB physical RAM (memory) or above
- 250 MB of free disk space.
- A external Blu-ray drive.
- USB 2.0 or FireWire 400
- 1024 x 768 or higher resolution display.
- Optical Drive: DVD drive.
New in version 1.8.3
- Added AppleScript support.
- Apple Remote supports forward and backward which could be realized
through a long press of Previous/Next button.
- Fixed bugs in using the forward and backward functions.
- Multi-language fill updated to the latest version.
- Smaller install package.
New in version 1.8
- Added audio device on menu, support 5.1 audio.
- Added video deinterlace on menu.
- Added forward and backward on menu and right-click menu.
- Better support for seeking.
- Smaller install package.
- Fixed some bugs.
Macgo Inc. is offering a three-month giveaway campaign on Mac
Blu-ray Player. This campaign is not a trial activity of new product,
but free trial of the formal version. Customers who have downloaded Mac
Blu-ray Player can get an activation code to activate the software for
free. The activated free version has the same functions as the formal
one without limitation. However, the free formal version of Mac Blu-ray
Player is good for three months, after which if you don't purchase the
software, it will revert to a trial version automatically. At that
time, as long as it plays video, there will be a watermark over the
video window of the trial version.
Sale price until October 1: $39.95
Regular Price: $59.95
Link: Blu-ray
Player for Mac
TenFourFox 7: Optimized PowerPC Port of Firefox
7
PR: "Mozilla left you. Apple left you. But we didn't," says
the TenFourFox development team, noting that like many PowerPC Mac
holdouts, they were horrified when Mozilla delivered the one-two punch
of dropping support for both Tiger and our beloved PowerPC Macs with
the release of Firefox 4.
A quad 2.5 GHz G5 isn't worth using to surf the Web? Really? And you
guys still support Windows XP?
And, of course, Apple's been giving us Power Mac users the
proverbial middle digit since 2006. Remember: think different. That's
why your MacBook has the same hoary old architecture in ye old generic
Wintel box, and if you want to use your perfectly good OS 9
software, you're using Tiger or bust. Heck, Lion won't even run any
PowerPC software anymore. (And don't get us started on SheepShaver. It's a great hack, but
Classic beats it cold.)
But if there's one thing we've learned from our years of using Macs,
it's that they outlast anything else out there. Why shouldn't an iBook
be able to look at embarrassing pictures on Facebook, or Twitter about
our lunch break? These are our computers, dang it. We paid good money
for them. They still work. They may not be as fast, but there's no
technical reason they can't do everything that a MacBook can. So if you
want something done, you do it yourself, and we did. The result is
TenFourFox.
Tuned for Your Operating System and Processor
Why is this TenFourFox and not Firefox? Because even
though it uses the Firefox code base, it's not Firefox. It uses code
tuned for OS X 10.4 (and compatible with 10.5), adds new
PowerPC-specific improvements, and restores the glue necessary to get
most of modern Firefox's advanced features working on our older
computers, offered in separately hand-tuned builds for G3, G4/7400,
G4/7450, and G5 processors to get the most from your specific
computer.
Nevertheless, it's still almost all the same code as today's Firefox
and has nearly all the same features, including dramatically faster
JavaScript, WebM video, compatibility with most Firefox add-ons, and
HTML 5 and CSS 3 support. You'll find TenFourFox significantly faster
overall than Firefox 3.6, yet it supports so many more new and emerging
Web features that your dear old Power Mac will still be able to do what
you need online for years to come
The Fastest JavaScript on Power Macs
No, that's not chart trickery: TenFourFox's JavaScript interpreter
really is faster than Safari 5 and over twice as fast as Firefox 3.6,
as proven on both the SunSpider and Dromaeo industry-standard browser
JavaScript benchmarks. Thanks to its exclusive native tracing
just-in-time (JIT) compiler, TenFourFox powers through today's
JavaScript-intensive web applications faster than any other PowerPC
browser on both Tiger and Leopard. We've sent our work back to Mozilla
so others can benefit, but with TenFourFox, you can wring the best
online performance from your Power Mac now!
AltiVec Acceleration, from Server to Screen
Remember how AltiVec was going to change
the world? Well, it did, because everyone else did it too, and now
vector and SIMD extensions are in every new Intel CPU and every new
browser. But no one brought those new algorithms back to the PowerPC
browser world - until now.
In TenFourFox 4, we brought you pixel compositing and WebM video
accelerated by AltiVec. In TenFourFox 5, we brought you scaling and
colour conversion powered by AltiVec. In TenFourFox 6, we even
accelerated HTML itself. Every step of the content chain is faster
already, and will get faster in the future. It's the power your G4 and
G5 Power Macs always had that TenFourFox finally unlocks. (Don't worry,
G3 owners, you can still enjoy all the other benefits of
TenFourFox.)
You Asked For It. Now You Can Get It.
So what are you waiting for? Download TenFourFox and accelerate your
Power Mac's Internet experience today. We're (almost) exactly the same
code as Firefox 7 and surf the same sites, but with the code needed to
keep your Power Mac functional and fast.
Be sure to read the Release Notes, the official TenFourFox FAQ and
the list of known bugs before you begin. Then pick the version for your
processor (older versions also available):
- TenFourFox for G3
- TenFourFox for G4: 7400 or 7450 ("G4e")
- TenFourFox for G5
TenFourFox requires a G3 or later Power Macintosh, Mac OS X 10.4.11,
100 MB of free disk space, and 512 MB of RAM. Systems with 256 MB of
RAM are no longer supported as of 7.0. 768 MB of RAM and a G4 or G5
processor is recommended. Video playback is likely to be poor on
systems slower than 1.25 GHz; a G5 is recommended. Mac OS X 10.5.8
is supported.
Intel Macintoshes are not supported, but the G3 build is known to
run under Rosetta in 10.5.8 and should run under Rosetta in 10.4.11. It
is not tested with Snow Leopard. TenFourFox will not run under
OS X 10.7 Lion, as Lion does not support Rosetta and TenFourFox is
not a Universal binary.
TenFourFox is free software.
Publisher's note: TenFourFox 7 has been running just fine with
OS X 10.4.11 Tiger on a
dual 1 GHz MDD Power Mac
G4 from 2002 and OS X
10.5.8 Leopard on a dual 1.6 GHz
G4-upgraded Digital Audio Power Mac
G4 from 2001 at Low End Mac headquarters. I also tested the G3
version with OS X 10.6
Snow Leopard on my 2007
Intel Mac mini, and everything appears to be working - although why
you would want to do that when you could run Firefox 7 natively is
beyond me. dk
Link: TenFourFox
Ohanaware Updates Funtastic Photos Image
Editor
PR: Taiwan-based Ohanaware, a family team specializing in
intuitive photo editing software, are proud to announce an update to
their flagship product Funtastic Photos.
A user friendly Photo Editor for the Macintosh platform, Funtastic
Photos features an advanced effects engine and sharing capabilities.
This update (free to existing customers) features a multitude of bug
fixes and more built-in creativity.
Funtastic Photos is a 'non-permanent and easily reversible' photo
editor, with over 60 simple to use 1-Click Styles, Advanced Effects
engine, direct sharing via Fun Cards, Cell Phone (inc. iPhone) and
popular photo sharing sites (Flickr, Facebook, Picasa). Funtastic
Photos features a creative print layouts system, with awe-inspiring
projects, including photo mosaics, greeting cards, photo cubes, mini
photos books and more.
New in Version 1.0.7
This latest version improves Lion compatibility, has improved speed
in several areas, a couple new 1-Click Styles and some new effects. A
new Specific Size layout has been added to the Print & Layouts,
this allows photos to be printed at traditional photo sizes on regular
sized photo paper.
System Requirements
Funtastic Photos 1.0.7 requires a Intel based Macintosh computer,
running Mac OS X 10.5 or later. It is recommended to have at least 1 GB
of RAM.
Funtastic Photos is available today for the price of $34.99 before
taxes. A free unlimited trial can be downloaded from Ohanaware's web
site, during the trial Funtastic Photos will watermark any exported or
shared photos. Ohanaware provides a wallet friendly family pack, up to
5 people can install and use Funtastic Photos, for the great price of
$49.98. Gift Vouchers are available, enabling anyone to give the gift
of Funtastic Photos.
Also see Charles W. Moore's
review of Funtastic Photos on GigaOM.
Link: Funtastic Photos
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