Tuesday September 12, 2006 at 2:08 pm | Filed under Mac
Apple had a press conference today to announce the refreshed line of iPods. New colors for Nanos, larger capacities for both Nanos and the Video line, plus the Video iPod gets a brighter, higher resolution screen. New software across the iPod family was introduced too, AND a whole new iPod Shuffle that is about as big as a quarter. Whew!
They also unveiled iTunes 7, which has a “music store” in it that has now seriously outgrown music. It now has full length movies as a greater resoluton (640×480) using the H.426 codec (amazing if you haven’t witnessed it) available for purchase.
Near the end of the presentation, Steve introduced a consumer electronics device that’s “coming soon” (Q1 2007) that will cost $299. It’s a “set-top box” that goes in your livingroom and can wirelessly receive and display videos, photos, and music that are located on your computer. Not much is known about this thing yet, but at that price point, it doesn’t appear to be a DVR at all. Just a way to view the stuff on your network, and perhaps purchase new stuff through the iTunes Music Store. So essentially, this is Apple keeping up with Microsoft’s Media Edition biz, but doing it with a stand-alone device that lives in your livingroom. The iTV (as it’s tentatively named) will have HDMI out and wireless component out. That part makes me drool a little bit.
Sunday September 3, 2006 at 1:51 pm | Filed under Mac
First there was Boot Camp from Apple. It allowed you to choose whether you wanted to boot Windows or OS X on any Intel-powered mac. Then came Parallels Desktop, which added the convenience of being able to toggle between Windows and OS X like you were hot-switching users. Later Parallels even made it so you could run a window containing the Windows OS and you could run that on your OS X desktop! Well, now it’s getting really easy to run Windows-only apps with the release of Crossover. This thing is only in BETA, and it has a list of “Compatible” things you can run, but it allows you to run windows apps on your mac without even having the Windows OS installed! Not too shabby.
Now that I’m not moving for awhile, I don’t really have a need for Visio, so I’m pretty sure the only reason I would run one of these peeks into Windows would be to play a few games that aren’t available for the Xbox 360 that I just simply must play. I think it’s more of a fun thing to learn how well it works and tweak with it. We’ll see how it all works out in a couple of weeks when my Mac Pro is finally delivered. I’ll keep you all updated with how it goes.
Tuesday August 8, 2006 at 12:07 am | Filed under Mac, Me
One please!
Apple just released my next computer. The Mac Pro. I’ve put my order in but since I’m going to upgrade the video card from the standard one, it’ll take 3-5 weeks to get it. Oh well, it’s worth the wait, and will give me some time to get my files in order on my current system. Getting a new system is always a good time to get organized, but most of the time that’s just wishful thinking, of course.
The Mac Pro’s announcement was all part of Apple’s annual developer’s conference in San Francisco. This morning at 10am Steve Jobs did his thing by announcing the Mac Pro and also giving a developer’s preview of Leopard, the new Operating System that comes out in the Spring of next year. Leopard looks very impressive, it’s got those 5 or 6 major improvements that make you not want to wait for it to come out. It’s also got a few secrets in it that Steve wouldn’t talk about. It seems that when Apple previewed Tiger, their current OS X version, later that year Microsoft showed a version of their new, yet to be released OS called Vista that had a very similar feel to Tiger, even borrowing some of the technologies and design! Well, they’re being a bit more cautious with Leopard, and I can’t wait to see what it is. But for that I’ll have to wait. For the new Mac Pro, I’m going full steam ahead. It’s been 4 years this month that I’ve been a full-time Mac user at home. I’m replacing my first Mac with a new version and I’m very excited about it! (If you can’t tell) I’m probably going to sell my 4-year old mac as they’re still going for $600 on ebay! Not only have I never had a PC for 4 years since my Commodore days, but the thing is still worth a bunch of money! WOW!
