mac

As Tuesday's Apple event gets under way and journalists from all over the world are waiting with bated breath to see what Steve Jobs has to say, it's abundantly clear that the vast majority of people going and those who read the news, will be disappointed.

No, it's not because Apple will waste time or that all those people are Windows fanboys and want nothing to do with Apple. Instead, it's because Apple, unlike every other company in the technology industry, has created such a hype machine that unless it offers something major like a touch-screen Mac or a new iPhone, it'll disappoint even the most giddy fanboy.

See, the problem with Apple's success is that it's expected to keep up with it. How many times has the company announced a press event, carted Jobs onstage, who then announced a few minor upgrades, only to see less than shining press opinions later on because it wasn't "newsworthy" enough? Probably more times than we can count.… Read more

These days, people are managing so much information on a daily basis that being able to find it quickly and efficiently is becoming crucial.

With its Spotlight desktop search tool--part of Mac OS X--Apple made it possible to search not just text-based files like Word documents, but also things like PDF files that don't have modifiable text.

Windows users, too, have choices for desktop search, like offerings from Google and Microsoft.

But now, Windows users will have a more powerful tool at their disposal, Rebus Technology's Recollect Desktop, a search tool that, according to Rebus, can find just … Read more

Most of the time our Macs run smoothly due to the well-designed Mac OS X (choose your big cat) operating system. But over time, as you download more applications, visit more Web sites, and begin to use up space on your hard drive, your Mac won't run as quickly and smoothly as it did out of the box. Some users reason that it must be a RAM or hard-drive issue, but more often than not it's a question of maintenance rather than inadequate hardware.

I've talked about programs for uninstalling old or unused apps in an earlier post, … Read more

QNAP Systems announced on Thursday its QGet Utility application for Mac. The software, which used to be available only to PC users, allows for managing the Download Station features of its Turbo NAS series from a computer.

The Download Station is a function of QNAP's Linux-embedded Turbo NAS which supports BitTorrent, FTP, and HTTP downloads. This lets users download directly onto the NAS drive without having to leave a computer running, thereby saving energy. Generally, you can access a NAS's Web interface to manage the downloads; however, it's more convenient to do this via a desktop application. … Read more

For Mac users, one of the best pieces of news of the year was the announcement in January by Electronic Arts that it would be releasing a version of its long-awaited evolution game, Spore, on their beloved platform.

But if you're one of those Mac users who is shaking with anticipation at playing the new game by SimCity and The Sims creator Will Wright, and you don't have both an Intel-based machine and the Leopard version of the Mac OS X operating system, I'm afraid you're out of luck.

This news isn't new, as it'… Read more

Following up on the success of their FireWire Speakers, LaCie has announced another collaboration with designer Neil Poulton. This model retains the same minimalist design aesthetic but draws power from USB instead of Firewire for plug-and-play compatibility with most PC and Mac computers.

Created with the "en vogue" consumer in mind, the USB Speakers let you forgo standard audio cables and replace them with a single USB cord. All the juice needed to power the set is drawn from the computer's bus, and a single wire connects the left and right speakers.

The speakers are shaped like … Read more

While it's significant that the Mac has risen to nearly 8 percent market share in operating systems (with Windows dropping from its lofty heights to a still-lofty 90.66 percent), according to Net Applications, I find the iPhone's rapid increase even more impressive:

While still a small player, it is amazing how fast the iPhone is growing as a web browsing device, and the increase is a steady trend, not merely a momentary rise.

If any other device manages to catch up with the iPhone, we could well be seeing the future of most web browsing going forward, … Read more

For years now, Samsung has made laptops for pretty much every market except the US, and generally, we've been pretty fine with that arrangement (the Q1 Ultra UMPCis as close as they've gotten here).

But now, we're eager to get our hands on the just-announced Samsung X360. This 13-incher apes the super-slim look and feel of the MacBook Air, but adds a lot of the ports and connections missing from Apple's system. The X360 has a multi-card reader, three USB ports, an ExpressCard/34 slot, Ethernet jack, and HDMI and VGA outputs. And it still manages … Read more

I've noted before that we use the Mac because we want to, but are resigned to using Windows because we have to. Well, now there's some data to back up that assertion.

The Faces?rch blog did a quick review of when people search for the terms "Microsoft" (Blue), "Linux" (Red), and "Apple" (Orange), and found two interesting trends in the data, more easily viewed over the last 90 days:

First, Linux and Windows have declined as a trend since 2004, while Apple has boomed. Second, and more interestingly, Windows and Linux … Read more