News & Opinion
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News & Opinion
How to Use Your Mac as a WiFi Hotspot
MacTuts+'s Andrew Lee notes that while WiFi hotspots and networks
abound these days from coffee shops to airports, there still may be
occasions when you find yourself without a wireless connection and have
five friends who need to get online. Lee shows us how to create a WiFi
hotspot from a wired Internet connection with our Macs using
functionality built into OS X - and also covers how to set up
computer-to-computer networks for sharing files, screens, and more, no
routers required. Lee says this system works great when you're
traveling and only have a single cable to connect several gadgets.
Everything gets to connect to the Internet from just one cord.
Link: Quick Tip: Use
Your Mac as a Wi-Fi Hotspot and More
How to Make a USB Recovery Drive for Mountain
Lion
In an excerpt from his new book Master Your Mac,
MacInstruct's Matt Cone says:
"Its a good idea to have a bootable emergency drive on hand, just in
case disaster strikes your Mac. An emergency drive (also referred to as
an OS X Recovery Disk) can help you repair the hard disk,
reinstall the operating system, and restore from a Time Machine backup
to get your computer back fast.
"With previous versions of OS X, you could have used the
installation DVD to fix problems. But OS X Mountain Lion is sold in
the App Store as a digital download - no physical disk is provided.
What's a maintenance-minded Mac user to do?
"Create your own bootable OS X USB drive, of course! Its easy, and
if you've already purchased OS X and have a USB drive that's
1 GB or larger, its completely free. Carry it in your pocket or
put it on your keychain so it's available if the worst-case scenario
occurs. You'll thank yourself for taking the time to complete this
project."
Also see Charles W. Moore's recent
review of Master Your Mac at MacPrices.net.
Link: How
to Make an OS X Recovery USB Drive
Sitting Is the Smoking of the PC Generation
Harvard Business Review blogger Nilofer Merchant cites metrics
indicating that nowadays we sit more than we do anything else - 9.3
hours a day, compared to 7.7 hours of sleeping - but that health
studies tell us people should sit less, and that after just one hour of
sitting, the body's production of enzymes that burn fat declines by as
much as 90%, while extended sitting slows the body's metabolism
affecting things like (good cholesterol) HDL levels in our bodies, and
moreover that research shows lack of physical activity is directly
related to 6% of the impact for heart diseases, 7% for type 2 diabetes,
and 10% for breast cancer or colon cancer, and the death rate
associated with obesity in the US is now 35 million compared to 3.5
million tobacco-related deaths.
Merchant advocates switching to more standing desks and walking
meetings as strategies to mitigate the ravages of our sedentary
lifestyles.
Publisher's note: I've build a standup desk into a closet (see
photo) using wall-mounted shelves to hold the monitors and books, an Ikea
desktop and legs as my work surface, and have two Power Macs and a
scanner on a low table beneath the desk. And when I want to take a load
off, I have a barstool, but mostly I work standing up nowadays.
dk
Link: Sitting Is the
Smoking of Our Generation
Preinstalled Windows Crapware: Why You Should Just
Buy a Mac
StableyTimes blogger Greg Bussmann recently bought his daughter a PC
laptop for high school based on price and features - but after the
latest round of hours spent cleaning, pruning, and otherwise tuning up
the machine, a regular chore necessary to simply keep the machine in
working order, says he was ready to throw it out the window.
The problem, he says, as with all other PCs, is crapware - the
gateway drug to malware - pieces of software you neither need nor want
that come preinstalled on your PC: six month trials, free downloads,
alternative search engines, etc. that the manufacturer loads onto your
PC before you even buy it.
The problem is insidious, and it's not going away, because - as PC
manufacturers will tell you - consumer desire for affordable computers
necessity this subsidy.
Happily, Mac users don't have to struggle with this, because Apple
doesn't load any crapware on new Macs, nor do they permit software
developers to bundle it with their programs when you download them from
the Mac App Store.
Editor's note: That's one of several reasons why Macs cost more, but
I agree with Bussman that if you take the price of a bargain PC and add
in the hours you will spend keeping it in working order, you will
actually come out way ahead by buying a Mac, with the bonus that the
user experience will be superior in every way.
And that's why so many of us are happily willing to pay the
so-called "Apple Tax" price premium in order to use Macs. It's not
fanboi-ism or a Steve Jobs personality cult. It's pure self-interest
and we likely save money (time is money) to boot. cm
Link: Why Windows
Crapware Still Exists; or Why You Should Just Buy a Mac
IDC Study Highlights New Roadmap on the Future of
Personal Computing
PR: The industry is at a tipping point as computing is
redefined by user experience and the evolution of transparent
computing, says market research firm IDC, predicting that tablets will become an
extension of PCs just like notebooks were for desktops over 20 years
ago.
Looking into the future of computing, IDC deduces that the
advancement of computing no longer starts and ends with the personal
computer. Since the first smartphone in 2000 and the introduction of
the tablet a decade later, we have witnessed an explosion of mobile
form factors and a breakneck rate of innovation in hardware and
software. These form factors are now extensions of personal
computing.
Complacency and a lack of innovation among OEM vendors and other
parts of the PC ecosystem has occurred over the past five years. As a
result, PC market growth flattened in 2012 and may stagnate in 2013 as
users continue gravitating to ever more powerful smartphones and
tablets.
This year, over 2 billion users will access the Internet, IDC notes.
What makes this compelling is not the number of users going online, but
rather the number of devices that will be used to gain access. Over
half of these users will access the Internet with mobile devices, which
means that system OEMs and semiconductor suppliers need to emphasize
technology that offers better performance, optimizes power for all day
mobility, and drives integration and cost savings by leveraging
heterogeneous SoC-based solutions across every form factor.
The introduction of a new category of Ultrabooks comes at an
important time for the PC industry, which is at a crossroad as
established vendors struggle to reinvent their business models and
remain relevant in personal computing. IDC expects that this year the
industry will see an acceleration in investment and innovation in
technology, design, materials science, and software platforms that cut
across personal computing form factors. This is the reinvigoration that
the PC market needs to change course, and initiatives like the
Ultrabook category are just the first step in the PC industry's new
path.
"The growth of the industry is very clear; the key challenge will
not be what form factor to support or what app to enable, but how will
the computing industry come together to truly define the market's
transformation around a transparent computing experience. In the end,
consumers will demand the same level of simplicity and convenience on
any device and for any service," says Mario Morales, Program Vice
President, Semiconductors and EMS at IDC.
IDC's latest study, The Ultrabook Experience: How It Will Redefine
Personal Computing (Doc #238999), provides IDC's perspective on
upcoming features and user experiences that consumers should expect to
see over the next two years in mobile computing. Where is the
innovation going to be in form factor, and what is the market timing of
key technologies and user interfaces that enable a richer computing
experience?
Original TV Batmobile Sells for $4.2 Million
Your editor is I'm old enough to remember when California-based
"King of the Kustomizers" George
Barris created the original Batmobile
for the campy Batman ABC television series that aired from 1966
to 1968 starring Adam West in the title role. The show wasn't very
good, but the car was cool - although West has been cited noting that
it was a handful to drive, with poor road manners.
George Barris, now 88, was and is a folk-hero to a generation of
car-culture hotrodders and customizers, and kids like me who built car
models from AMT plastic kits, for which Barris was a design
consultant.
Batmobile from the 1960s TV series.
The platform for Barris' quintessential Batmobile was a 1955 Lincoln Futura
concept car that he bought from Ford Motor Company for the princely
sum of one dollar, then spent a still-modest 15,000 1965 dollars
converting into Batmobile trim. The car had also appeared, painted red,
in the 1959 movie It Started with a Kiss, starring Debbie
Reynolds and Glenn Ford.
Barris retained ownership of the car, displaying it displayed in his
own Barris Kustom museum in
California, until Arizona automobile collector Rick Champagne was the
successful bidder at the Barrett-Jackson collector car auction last
Saturday in Scottsdale, Arizona, paying $4.2 million.
Wikipedia notes that the twin bubble top Lincoln Futura concept car
was originally designed by Ford Motor Company lead stylists Bill
Schmidt and John Najjar. Unlike many car show concepts then and now,
the pearlescent white Futura was a functional automobile - powered by a
368 cubic inch Lincoln V8 engine and powertrain, and built on a Lincoln
Mark II chassis and running gear by coachbuilding firm Ghia entirely by
hand in Turin, Italy, at a cost of $250,000 - which was serious money
in 1955
The virtual giveaway to George Barris after the car made the rounds
of the the auto show circuit would presumably have been a tax write-off
for Ford.
Thanks for the memories, George!
Link:
Original TV Series Batmobile Sells for $4.2 Million at Auction
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