I love my iPhone 4, but how does it stack up against similar spec’d Android handsets. Sleek looks are very nice, but it’s performance that counts when in the real world.
USB has been around since 1996, but it didn’t come into its own until Apple unveiled the first iMac in May 1998. While the PC world was content to add USB as one more port in addition to parallel and serial ports, the iMac dispensed with legacy ports in favor of a USB-only architecture. Anyone […]
One problem with personal computers is that you can’t run full diagnostics of your boot drive when booted from it. It’s very helpful to have an emergency drive you can boot from to run diagnostics on your primary drive, whether that’s a DVD, hard drive, or USB thumb drive. This article explains how to build […]
Apple introduced a new feature, Safe Sleep, with Mac OS X 10.3 Panther in 2003. When enabled, Safe Sleep writes the contents of your Mac’s memory to a file named sleepimage on its hard drive before putting the computer to sleep (this works like the Hibernate command in Windows). In case the Mac loses power […]
Would you like an iPhone but cannot justify the high price tag? Don’t need all the bells and whistles of a new one? If you think an older one might suits your needs take a look at the 3GS.
It seems like increasingly, at least for most people, digital cameras don’t matter. Sure, just as there were (film) camera professionals and serious hobbyists, there are people buying and using high-end digital cameras.
The first time I heard about Pandora, I was intrigued. The streaming music service analyzes music using 400 different factors and attempts to create playlists that will work with the performer or song you use to seed the playlist.
We listen to radio, podcasts, my iTunes collection, and iHeartRadio at work while we assemble high pressure air hoses. The air compressors in the next room over are noisy, and so is the machine that crimps the ends on each hose. It’s a good thing the stereo has lots of power and a big speaker […]
When I upgraded to an iPhone 4S this past summer, I had the option of trading in my iPhone 3GS for $100 credit or keeping it. I decided to keep it, as I was sure I could find many ways to use it. One of those is as a music player connected to a stereo […]
The iPhone grew out of the iPod, Apple’s first digital music player launched well over a decade ago. Listening to music was the reason the iPod existed, and Apple wanted to make sure that its iPhone (and later iPod touch and iPad) did it well.
Macs have had hard drives for nearly as long as Macs have been available, as is true of PCs, and a lot of those very early hard drives didn’t have great life expectancies. In addition to higher capacity and lower cost per data unit, hard drives have become far more reliable than those from the […]
This is the tale of three operating systems: Windows XP, its presumed successor Vista, and the recently displaced as king of the hill Windows 7.
I am a Mac user and have been for over a decade. No matter how much Windows changes, it will never be enough to pull me away from the beauty that is Mac OS X. But does Vista deserve the stick it gets?
OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is widely regarded as one of the best versions of Mac OS X ever released, but its successor, OS X 10.7 Lion, is often pushed aside. Let’s look at why.
I’ve been using iOS 7 on my iPhone 4S since a day or two after its release, and while the new interface and rearrangement of some things frustrated me at first, I very much like it now. That isn’t to say I’ve had no issues with it.
Imagine if you could seamlessly open any document and run any program on your computer. Wouldn’t that be great? Read and edit old word processor files – MacWord, anyone? WordStar? Run PC games on your Mac, Super Nintendo games on your Windows PC? Like the peaceful utopia in John Lennon’s Imagine, we’re not there yet. […]
If you don’t have a data allowance on your iPhone or other mobile phone, could you survive by just relying on places offering free WiFi?
The infamous BlackBerry Messenger (a.k.a. BBM) has made it to iPhone, another messaging service to iOS. How well does it work, and why might you want to use it?
Over the last 12 months, I have had the opportunity to upgrade both Mac OS X and Windows. Here I compare the experiences.
Since installing OS X 10.9 Mavericks, I’ve been plagued by problems with security certificates. I couldn’t visit Twitter or LastPass using Safari or Chrome. And I couldn’t log in to Messages or FaceTime. But after a fair bit of research, I found a solution.
I have OS X 10.9 Mavericks installed on my Late 2008 Aluminum MacBook, one of the older Macs to support OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and Mavericks. Until now I’ve held off upgrading past OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard because of software I’d have to leave behind, but with Mavericks available for free and a […]
Apple certainly knew what it was doing when it made OS X 10.9 Mavericks a free update available to anyone running OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, 10.7 Lion, or 10.8 Mountain Lion. Released on Tuesday, Low End Mac site stats show that it passed Mountain Lion on Wednesday.
News (or rumoured news) dropped today that perhaps there is more than meets the eye behind Apple offering OS X 10.9 Mavericks for free.
Linux distributions (a.k.a. distros) are a great free alternative to Windows for both PCs and older Intel Macs. With hundreds of distros available, it can be hard to decide, but Elementary OS stands out.
At first glance, you’d think this was the original iPad mini, but the 2G iPad mini (unofficially iPad mini 2) runs Apple’s A7 processor and has a Retina Display. The 64-bit A7 takes performance far beyond that of the earlier A5-based iPad mini.
OS X 10.9 Mavericks has just been released by Apple. Here are my initial impressions.
Eight months after first upgrading the MacBook Pro with Retina Display, Apple moved to the Intel Haswell chipset in October 2013.
The Late 2013 Retina MacBooks have embraced Intel’s latest energy efficient Haswell technology, which provides more processing power per GHz with reduced power consumption. Additionally, the Late 2013 13″ Retina MacBook Pro is a bit thinner and lighter than the Early 2013 model.
Apple previewed OS X 10.9 Mavericks at the June 2013 Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), and it appears to be a big step forward for OS X – perhaps the biggest since Apple made the transition from the “classic” Mac OS 9 to OS X 10.0 way back in March 2001.
On October 22, 2013, Apple introduced the first 64-bit iPads, including a thinner, lighter version of the 9.7″ model. The iPad Air runs a 1.3 GHz 64-bit Apple A7 processor nearly twice as powerful as the A6X used in the 4G iPad.
I must admit to having Mac Pro lust for the new Late 2013 Mac Pro that Apple has promised to deliver “later this year”. From its radical styling and cutting edge features to its sheer power, this Mac in a black can is definitely lustworthy.
In early 1983, Steve Jobs and several other Apple employees visited Brown University for a tour of its computing lab, where they showed off brand new Apollo workstations. Andy van Dam was shown the Apple Macintosh before its introduction. He told Jobs that they were waiting for a “3M” machine (a term used in the […]
Apple surprised everyone by finally offering ‘last compatible’ versions for those running an older iOS. But is there a flaw in this?
When Apple introduced the iPhone 5S, it brought the first 64-bit smartphone to market – and Samsung immediately promised that it would have 64-bit in its next generation as well. But what’s the point of a 64-bit processor in a smartphone?
The Late 2013 iMac takes last year’s slimmer than ever design and powers it with Intel’s energy efficient Haswell Core i5 CPU (with i7 build-to-order options).
