Last year I began fiddling around with a program called A-OK! The Wings of Mercury, a computer program written by Joe Nastasi that completely simulates a Mercury space mission from the 1960s. Nastasi realized that today’s computers are sufficiently advanced that they can replicate not only the interior of a Mercury capsule and simulate its […]
2003: The iTunes Music Store (in spite of the annoying commercials) has been selling a steady stream of songs since its inception. Breathless accounts of downloads passing the 1 million and then 2 million mark make it clear that Apple has made some good progress in making downloadable music a viable business.*
2003: If the first week of sales at Apple’s iTunes Music Store is any indication, Apple may have a monster hit on its hands – again.
2003: In my previous column, The Digital SLR: Affordable or Overpriced?, we looked at the drawbacks of using 35mm lenses with digital SLRs that have image sensors smaller than a 35mm frame. Dealing with the “conversion factor” is frustrating, and it only seems reasonable that we’ll eventually see digital SLRs that take 35mm lenses and produce […]
After a year on the market, Apple speed bumped the eMac from a top speed of 800 MHz to 1 GHz while moving from a 100 MHz data bus to 133 MHz and adding support for 802.11g AirPort Extreme WiFi. Apple also switched from the Nvidia graphics of the original eMac to Radeon 7500 on this model […]
2003: It seems my previous column (Mac Myths and the Apple Challenge) touched a nerve or two. In particular, the claim that Macs are not, in fact, more expensive than Windows machines seemed to raise the ire of more than one reader. If anything, this only proved that Apple has a hard slog ahead of […]
With the third generation (3G) iPod, Apple replaced the four buttons surrounding the scrollwheel with a row of round buttons between the scrollwheel and the display. The 3G iPod also introduced the 30-pin dock connector and no longer had separate Mac and PC versions.
2003: Nothing has more typified the advanced amateur photographer in recent decades than a good SLR camera. That was true when I got started in photography 30 years ago, and it remains true today.
The April 2003 14″ iBook runs at 900 MHz, 100 MHz faster than its predecessor and has a larger (40 GB) hard drive. It is priced $100 lower.
Apple once again improved the popular iBook by boosting CPU speeds 100 MHz. The entry-level model still has a CD-ROM drive, but it now has the same 32 MB of VRAM as the faster model. Hard drives are also larger: 30 GB for the 700 MHz iBook, 40 GB for the 800.
2003: In the May 2003 issue of Popular Photography & Imaging, editor-in-chief Jason Schneider declares that digital has achieved the quality of film. More specifically, the Kodak DCS Pro14n digital SLR matches the resolution of Kodak Max Versatility 400 color print film in a 35mm camera.
2003: I’m the lone Mac user among my circle of friends. This makes me a bit of a black computer sheep for some reason or other. Occasional digs from my PC friends are lobbed my way – along with the inevitable questions regarding how to get their Wintel boxes to work correctly.
2003: There are lots of variables in digital photography, but the most important one is megapixels. Even a lowly 1 megapixel (MP) camera can give you just great 4-by-6 snapshots, assuming a good lens and exposure. I’ve printed pretty sharp 5-by-7 photos from my 1.3 MP Canon PowerShot A50 on my Epson Stylus Photo 870 inkjet […]
2003: A recent report from MacUser UK indicates that some analysts believe that Apple may have missed the Tablet PC boat. One can just hear the vultures circling.
2003 – The good news: The Mac OS X v10.2 Jaguar upgrade CD can be turned into a full install CD using nothing more than Disk Copy, the Terminal, and a CD burner. Terminal seems to be the crucial piece; without it I wasted two CD-Rs trying to make an installer.
2003: As mentioned by Steve Jack at MacDailyNews, there’s likely a bit of head scratching as the Wintel crowd tries to process the claim that the 1.6 GHz Centrino performs just as well as the 2.4 GHz Pentium 4-M.
Q. How can I upgrade my G3 iMac? A. The iMac was and remains one of Apple’s best selling computers. Now in its umpteenth revision, sporting LCD screens and faster than ever processors, the iMac has come quite a long way from the original 233 MHz Bondi blue bombshell. While many people lust for the […]
2003: When Napster became the biggest thing going some years ago, the record companies were clearly peeved – peeved enough to sue the company into extinction. Of course, people loved the service. It provided free, easy access to music. Downloads were free, and pretty much every type of music could be found.
2003: Last week I dropped by my old high school. Unlike most people, I appear to have a certain attachment to the old place, and my former teachers are always happy to sit down and catch up on one of their prodigies (ahem).
Claris Home Page was one of the finest applications ever made for the Mac. Version 3.0 has been around since 1998, and a lot of us have yet to find a better program for writing and publishing on the Web.
2003 – It’s been a good week for OS X users. First, Apple released an update to Safari that fixed some really obvious errors, such as text not wrapping around graphics properly (as mentioned in my previous installment) and problems with secure sites. Then they finished OS X 10.2.4 and made it available.
2003 – It’s been over a month since Apple surprised us all with 12″ and 17″ PowerBooks, their smallest and largest laptops ever. (The Mac Portable still takes the cake for heaviest at nearly 16 pounds!)
February 10, 1993 was one of the biggest days in Mac history. Apple introduced six new models at once.
Nine months after introducing the Xserve as a 1 GHz server, Apple bumped performance with one or two 1.33 GHz processors, a 167 MHz system bus, and Ultra ATA/133 support. The Early 2003 Xserve also includes FireWire 800 ports.
2003: New iMacs and eMacs were released yesterday and were greeted with less than effusive praise. “Yawn,” seemed to be the general response, even from the usually zealous Mac press. The real excitement seemed to center around the price drops and improved options instead of the iMac speed bump.
Remember this oldie but goodie?
2003 – It’s been a month since I upgraded from OS X 10.1.5 Puma to 10.2 Jaguar and tried to make OS X my primary operating system. It worked, and now that I’ve done it, I don’t like going back to OS 9. Classic Mode is fine for all of my software – except for backup, and […]
The first iMac to reach 1 GHz, the 17″ G4 iMac has a wide aspect ratio “cinema” type screen and displays 1440 by 900 pixels – just perfect for DVDs. Other improvements over the old 800 MHz model include a slot for an 802.11g AirPort Extreme card, space for internal Bluetooth, 64 MB of video […]
Apple decided to simplify the iMac lineup by offering just one 15″ model and one 17″ model. The Early 2003 17″ iMac has a 1 GHz G4 processor, a SuperDrive, and 64 MB of video memory.
As we discussed last Friday, Apple has never been a dominant player in the personal computer industry. However, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been a significant player.
