For all of you who have been waiting patiently for the new 10.5.2 update, the wait is over. 10.5.2 is now available on software update. I’m installing all 350 MB of it right now. For all of you about to update, I salute you. Oh, and for all you people on shitty broadband, you should know I just downloaded 352 MB in 4 minutes here. ...

Tomorrow I should be getting a brand new 8-core MacPro for my desk at work. In honor of that, I did up a little Mac desktop last night for anyone who likes to laugh from time to time. Enjoy. if (is_single()) { ? digg_url = 'http://www.digg.com/apple/The_MacPro_When_Seven_Cores_Of_Porn_Doesn_t_Quite_Cut_It'; } ? ...

This guy just did a huge Apple comparison with the new Air notebook computer, both with and without the solid state add-on drive. The verdict? The Air in general is slower than both the Macbook Pro and the Macbook, and the battery life is only average. Photo by John BiehlerThe writer was optimistic that the solid state drive would be a good investment. Unfortunately though, it provided rather lackluster performance, and hardly increased battery life at all. I’ve had my own Macbook Pro for a long time, and most of my friends have Macbook’s. I’m purposefully holding off the Air because it ...

I woke up to my phone ringing basically non-stop thanks to Hesty and Sean at work. There’s a big career fair out at UBC today, and I guess they are all going and wanted me to go too. I woke up with a nasty sore throat though, so I’m going to leave the recruiting to those guys. I’m going to pass around a bit of link-juice this morning. First, we have Rebecca and Keira, who are packing up and heading to the island for some licking and snowboarding. That means John is currently wifeless, so I think him and I are going to figure out something fun to do this weekend. Judging by the weather, ...

As of October of 2007, Apple has sold approximately 120 million iPods worldwide. At approximately $250 each, that’s $30 billion dollars in revenue. It is without a doubt one of Apple’s crowning technical achievements, both for the ingenuity of the hardware and for the revolutionary integration with software on several platforms. And yet lately, as I’ve trekked the 30 minute walk between my home and work with my iPod blaring away, I’ve started to wonder what the impact of this technology really is. For starters, those of us who listen to iPods frequently are subjecting ourselves to potential ...

Eight easy steps: 1. Toss and turn all night 2. Fall asleep at 5am 3. Get up at 9:30am and try to head to work 4. Call a cab, and tell him to take you to work 5. Pay cab driver. Drop money all over the cab and look dumb. 6. Exit cab and close door, making sure to slam your iPod touch in the door 7. Stand there looking at iPod touch drive away with cab driver, only to fall off a half block away 8. Pick up iPod touch on the concrete, now without headphones ...

I’ve been using Leopard now for around 3 months, and to be honest, I’m really not impressed at all. It’s an extremely buggy OS with a bunch of mediocre improvements, many of which I haven’t really found a use for. Spaces? I actually thought these would be cool, but I just haven’t been able to find a good use for them. In fact, I find myself accidentally switching between spaces from time to time thanks to how heavily I rely on the control and option keys for other things. Stacks is another completely useless feature, mainly because you can’t really see enough icons. Plus, it’s generally ...

Apple just announced an ultra-think notebook computer called the Air. Photo by Gnackgnackgranck on Flickr Looks pretty cool, but it doesn’t have a DVD drive, and is sealed shut like a big iPod. Based on my experiences with my Macbook Pro and Leopard, I think I’m definitely pulling myself out of the “early-adopter” crowd with Apple and waiting a while this round to see what happens. ...

I know everyone is absolutely dying to know the current state of my laptop, so here’s an update. I called down this afternoon and they said the LCD is toast on it which is why I’ve probably been having a pile of problems with sleep and things of that nature. A new one has been ordered and hopefully I can pick it up in a few days. It will be weird having a laptop again as I’ve gotten fairly used to using my desktop machine at home now. Also, I’m going to do a blog entry tonight on the end of Heroes season two. Should be awesomely nerdy. ...

My iMac has been a bit slow when using photoshop or garageband, so today, after picking up Hesty from the airport, I stopped at NCIX and picked up some more memory for it. When I got home, I actually had a hard time figuring out just where the memory went. I finally found out where — there’s a little panel on the very bottom of the iMac that comes off easily with one screw. After that, you just slide in the SODIMM chip and you’re up and running again in just a few minutes. Pretty slick, especially compared to how much trouble it was to upgrade the Mac Mini at work (I actually had to use ...

From hereWindows Vista rated one of the worse products ever by CNET: Any operating system that provokes a campaign for its predecessor’s reintroduction deserves to be classed as terrible technology. Any operating system that quietly has a downgrade-to- previous-edition option introduced for PC makers deserves to be classed as terrible technology. Any operating system that takes six years of development but is instantly hated by hordes of PC professionals and enthusiasts deserves to be classed as terrible technology. Windows Vista conforms to all of the above. Its incompatibility with hardware, ...

For all of you people who upgraded to Leopard and are using GMail, you have have noticed a few weird things going on. For me, my contacts no longer auto complete properly, and periodically all the javascript in gmail stops working. I’ve checked a lot of newsgroups and many people are having the same problems. Apparently gmail has tried moving to a newer version that isn’t really compatible with Safari 3.0 yet. The solution is to just go up to the top right in gmail and click “old version”, which will roll back your GMail version to one that does work with Safari. You’re welcome 🙂 ...

Wow. I just spent the last 30 seconds walking around my apartment looking for my laptop so I could pack it up and take it to work like I usually do. Then I remembered that I no longer have a laptop, as it’s in for servicing. Which means I can leave my big bulky bag at home today. Which is weird, and honestly, sort of feels a bit freeing. I can walk to work today and actually just enjoy the nice sunny day with my iPod. I tried finding a nice sunny autumn shot for this entry, but this Central Park Shot came up from last year, and it made me miss New York. So enjoy. PS – My new iMac kicks ...

As everyone knows, I’ve spent the last six months battling my Macbook Pro. It’s been plagued with various problems, the most severe of which lately is intermittent connectivity wherever I go. Not coming back whenever it sleeps it pretty lame too. Anyways, I went to drop it off at the repair facility, and they said it would be gone for at least two weeks. So, being the impulsive buyer that I am, I decided to pick up an iMac for home. And to be honest, I used to always use a desktop computer, even though I had a Windows laptop before. But when I got my Mac, I ended up formatting my Windows machine ...

I know for a fact that Leopard seems to work fine with Apple’s router, but I’ve been having a lot of problems with Leopard and my Linksys Wireless N router here at home. Once and a while it will just give itself a self-assigned IP address and that’s that. The only way to fix it is to reboot my Mac and my router, which usually causes it to grab a real one. Funny thing is I can switch to my neighbours connection (sssh, don’t tell), and it works fine even in that state, so it’s something about the Linksys it doesn’t like. Seems like there’s a problem with 10.5.1 and some wireless routers. ...

I’ve been waiting patiently for this update, since I’ve had quite a few problems with wireless since switching to Leopard. I also need to drop my Mac off at the repair facility to probably replace the logic board in it, since I’ve been having weird LCD and sleep problems on my Mac. Unfortunately, there seems to be over a week delay at MacStation for even looking at these things, which means I’ll basically be computerless for a while. I’m sure I’ll survive, but will be weird not to have a computer at home. Maybe I can go back to doing “normal” things again for a while. To get the ...

So, I know there are a bunch of programs available on the Mac for doing photo work and what not, but I’d like to ask everyone what they use on a daily basis. I have for the most part made due with iPhoto, but the organization capabilities of it suck, and I end up with directories full of photos without any real means to identify them. Unfortunately, I also need something with a relatively quick workflow (photoshop is too slow to use for me except in extreme cases). Any recommendations? ...

I just read an article online that did a comparison between a bunch of different machines running Windows Vista. You know who the winner was? A Macbook Pro. The fastest Windows Vista notebook we’ve tested this year is a Mac. Try that again: The fastest Windows Vista notebook we’ve tested this year–or for that matter, ever–is a Mac. Not a Dell, not a Toshiba, not even an Alienware. The $2419 (plus the price of a copy of Windows Vista, of course) MacBook Pro’s PC WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 88 beats Gateway’s E-265M by a single point, but the MacBook’s score is far more impressive ...

This should be my last Apple post for a while, but I thought this was newsworthy. Photo from here A friend sent me an email this morning which basically talks about Vancouver being chosen for a new Apple store. After years of speculation and anticipation, there is finally confirmation that that an Apple store will occupy a space inside the Pacific Centre Mall in downtown Vancouver (BC). The three-block indoor mall has been undergoing a long-term and extensive renovation that included demolition, construction and the juggling and moving of several retailers, along with the addition of new stores. ...

A few weeks ago I went down to the Bell Mobility store and asked how much longer I was shackled to their service. Unfortunately, it’s on the order of two more years, which means I really can’t get a iPhone and switch to Rogers (although, I’m still not sure that’s a great option either). So tonight, while talking to Jason, he was telling me about his recent iPod Touch purchase. It’s basically the same as the iPhone, except it doesn’t have a camera or obviously a phone. But the user-interface is roughly the same, and it has Wi-Fi, so you can surf the web wherever you are. The first ...