As I’ve said before, Apple is a frustrating company that offers both improvements and out-of-date features that confound expectations. This has some tech writers railing on Apple for introducing the $329 iPad mini with lower resolution (1024 x 768) than other similar sized models. It may be a valid complaint if you limit your view […]
Let’s get the gripes out of the way first: The iMac has always involved some compromises and forced some changes on Mac users. Back in 1998, it meant giving up ADB mice and keyboards and SCSI peripherals for something new called USB, and it meant no built-in floppy drive. But until now, every iMac has […]
Apple is a secretive company that keeps information out of the hands of the media, but more importantly away from the competition. Now if two close partners, like Samsung and Google, switch to become competitors, your control of information happens in a leaky bucket. How can Apple design and build the next iPhone using Samsung […]
2012 – When Apple introduced the 13.3″ MacBook Pro with Retina Display last week, we learned that the 13.3″ MacBook Pro (MBP) is Apple’s best selling Mac. That’s quite an accomplishment for an $1,199 laptop, especially since it isn’t Apple least expensive notebook computer. (That honor goes to the $999 11.6″ MacBook Air (MBA), and […]
Much has been said about the rivalry between Apple and Microsoft. I agree with those who said that Microsoft has used its monopoly power to kill off competition. But times change; Apple and Microsoft no longer want or need to defeat the other. They have become dependent in strange ways. The biggest changes are the threat of regulation and […]
The littlest Mac has become a powerhouse. Apple updated the Mac mini last week, and while the entry-level 2.5 GHz dual-core i5 model is only about 5% faster than last year’s “better” Mac mini, the $200 more expensive model has made the leap from a 2.5 GHz dual-core i5 to a 2.3 GHz quad-core i7.
Surprise! Apple didn’t introduce a $249 or $299 iPad mini last week. Instead, the 7.9″ Mini starts at $329, a bit higher than anyone predicted.
A little over seven years ago, on October 19, 2005, Apple introduced the Hi-Res PowerBook G4. These 15″ and 17″ notebooks were the last Macs that would don the PowerBook moniker. 15″ and 17″ hi-res PowerBook G4 The biggest thing I remember about them is how they flew in a bit under the radar, since […]
A lot smaller and just half the weight of a full-sized iPad, the iPad mini squeezed the features of the iPad 2 into much more portable package with a 7.9″ screen.
Four months after introducing the 15″ MacBook Pro with Retina Display, Apple introduced the 13.3″ Retina Display MacBook Pro, making Retina technology available in a smaller, lighter, less expensive package.
The 2011 Mac mini Server was a normal Mac mini with two hard drives, a quad-core i7 CPU (vs. dual-core CPUs in regular Minis), and OS X Server installed. The 2012 Server is essentially the same as the top-end consumer model, but with OS X Server installed and two hard drives instead of one. You […]
“Way more power” is Apple’s claim for the Late 2012 Mac mini, and that’s certainly true for the top-end quad-core i7-based model. It has the highest Geekbench score yet for a Mini at 10642 (vs. 6741 for last year’s 2.7 GHz dual-core i7 model), which is an impressive 58% better. However, at the entry level, […]
Slimmer than ever, the Late 2012 iMac is the first iMac ever not to include a built-in optical drive. Apple has also managed to make the iMac’s glossy screen 75% less reflective than before.
In the wake of iOS 6, it is easy to forget those older devices running older version of iOS (or iPhone OS, as it was previously named). Apple certainly likes to forget them quickly and move on with its shiny new beast. A big gripe of mine is the fact that the App Store is […]
After the somewhat shocking announcement that the iPhone 3GS, introduced in 2009, would be getting the latest iOS offering from Apple – that is iOS 6 in 2012 – I have been eagerly awaiting that day.
2012 – One of my Facebook friends recently posted, “Getting a phone at the end of the month. Droid? iPhone 5? Are you happy with your decision? Which one should I choose?”
As evidenced in my review of the Matshita UJ-267, Blu-ray is clearly the way to go in terms of video playback and internal storage.
With the iPhone 5, Apple left behind the 3.5″ display every previous iPhone had used, replacing it with a taller (or wider – in landscape mode) 4″ screen displaying 1136 x 640 pixels, the same 16:9 aspect ratio of HD TV. That’s 18.3% more pixels.
The 5G iPod touch uses the same 4″ widescreen display as the iPhone 5 and the same dual-core Apple A5 CPU as the iPhone 4S. It was also the first iPod touch available in colors other than black and white and the first to use the Lightning port.
Apple had done a marvelous job marketing OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, resulting in over 3 million downloads over its first four days on the market. That’s an impressive number, but what does it mean?
Apple had introduced the G5 processor with the Power Mac G5 in June 2003, and the amount of heat the G5 processor generated required a case designed to keep air flowing so the computer wouldn’t overheat. The G5 also used much faster memory than the G4, running at one-half or one-third of CPU speed rather […]
The original idea behind PowerPC processors was to create a Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) and focus on making those instructions as efficient as possible. This was in direct contrast to Complex Instruction Set Computing (CISC), which kept adding more and more instructions, which meant more decoding and processing had to be done by the […]
Dan Knight (Mac Musings): It’s hard to believe that it was just three years ago that Mac OS X went Intel only. Macs had uses PowerPC processors from the System 7.1 era up until 2006, when the first Intel-based Macs arrived running a special Intel-only version of OS X 10.4 Tiger. With OS X 10.5 […]
Could Apple TV save you money over Dish Network?
Until 1995, Microsoft Windows took a back seat to the Macintosh. Although Windows 3.x supported 256 color 320 x 200 VGA mode, by default is used a higher resolution (and thus sharper) 16 color mode. There wasn’t the least thing pretty about it. By contrast, Macintosh System 7 was very impressive, with its support for […]
I haven’t always been a Mac user. I started my computing days out on a Commodore 64 and an Acorn 3010. I bought my first PC from my employer in 1997 – a massive, heavy beige tower containing a 486DX2-66 processor, 64 MB RAM, 500 MB hard drive, a CD-ROM drive, and a 15″ SVGA […]
In my previous two articles, we looked at how to get Apache Web Sharing and PHP up and running in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion via some quick trips to the Terminal. While Apache and PHP are a powerful duo indeed, with their ability to serve up web pages and dynamically script the creation of web […]
Last time, we looked at how to use the Terminal to start and stop the Apache web server that comes bundled with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion now that Apple has removed its checkbox from the Sharing pane in System Preferences. This is fine and dandy for all your static HTML files, but if you are going […]
According to ExtremeTech, NASA’s Curiosity rover is powered by a RAD750 motherboard that contains a PowerPC 750 CPU, which is equivalent to a PowerPC G3 in the Mac world.
The Mac OS has had a web server bundled with it since Mac OS 8 debuted in 1997. Traditionally, Apple has referred to the included server software as Personal Web Sharing or just Web Sharing. While little is known about the web server that shipped with OS 8 and OS 9, OS X has included Apache, the most […]
