You would think that these Argentineans would know about Psystar’s legal ‘issues’ with Apple before they decided to release an unofficial OS X machine, but whatever. The company is selling two Mac Clones for a reasonable amount of cake. The OpeniMac is only $990 and ships with 2GB of memory, 320GB HDD, and a 256MB ATI Radeon HD Pro. The OpeniMacPRO will run ya, $1,710 but is a 3.0GHz machine with 4GB of ram and a 20-inch widescreen LCD. Legal concerns aside, if you’re jones’n for a Mac but don’t want to pay the Steve Jobs’ Tax – and can speak Spanish – this might be an option.
OpeniMac via AOL
Just a friendly reminder to all Netflix subscribers who own a Mac that the Silverlight-based streaming service is out of beta. That is all.
I’ve been using an Android G1 phone for more than a month now on a daily basis, but I still haven’t given up my iPhone. The more I use them both, the more that I realize my iPhone is a Mac and my Android is a PC.
That is not necessarily a bad thing—except for when my Android crashes (which is a lot). Okay, it does not actually crash so much as it freezes up, forcing me to wait until it figures things out. Which it usually does. Except that one time when I plugged it into the wrong mini-USB charger and it gave me the screen of death: a white danger triangle with a cell phone flat on its back next to it. (Sorry for the fuzzy picture, I took it with my iPhone).
Whose fault was that crash? I’m sure it was mine. But believe me, I’m equally careless with my iPhone. It’s just a lot more stable. That’s kind of what you’d expect since Apple goes to such lengths to control every aspect of the device, including the kinds of apps that can run on it. Android apps also have to go through a vetting process, but it does not seem to be as strict as Apple’s.
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Right on time for Thanksgiving day, µTorrent – client of choice for many BitTorrent users – has released a Mac version in beta, after a rudimentary alpha release was leaked a couple of months ago (on a BitTorrent tracker, at that).
The lightweight µTorrent client for Windows was first publicly released in September 2005, and was acquired by BitTorrent in 2006, who continued development on the application and promised to release a Mac version. It has now arrived, but as Torrentfreak points out, the Mac release only runs on Leopard/Intel Macs at the moment and may still contain serious bugs.
UPDATE Nicholas here, CG’s resident pirate. Yeah, this beta, while neat and everything, isn’t usable on private BitTorrent trackers yet like What.cd and HDBits. So unless you’re one of those people who think BitTorrent = The Pirate Bay this release is fairly limited. Given the pedigree of the µTorrent name, however, private sites are likely to approve its use within a reasonable amount of time. (Unlike Transmission, the Mac’s traditional lightweight BitTorrent client, which has a history of misreporting stats and being generally unreliable; it’s garbage, so instead use Vuze even though it requires a terabyte of RAM to work properly.) I’ll let y’all know when I start seeing µTorrent for Mac usable on “real” BiTorrent sites. Thank you, and may God bless America.
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Apple retail stores will now price match any item that can be found more cheaply somewhere else. So, if Amazon is selling, say, the iPod touch for $100, you can walk into your nearest Apple store, printout in hand, and get the same price then and there.
This price matching only applies to authorized sellers of Apple products—the guy on the corner of the street selling MacBooks for $200 a pop doesn’t count.
via MacBlogz
Not content to pay lip-service to greenness from the sidelines, Apple has decided to sell its latest MacBook line as the “greenest family of notebooks,” a noble statement indeed.
I’m totally OK with companies going green but heres hoping that Apple actually starts manufacturing locally now that it can essentially mill Macbooks out of one solid lump of aluminum it should be able to do all of its work closer to the customer. Will it? Probably not, but a girl can dream.
Work on Plex, the Mac-enhanced port/fork of XBMC, continues, with the media player having been updated to version 0.7 two days ago. It’s not just a bugfix or anything—I wouldn’t bother mentioning it here if that were the case—as the developers have added several features that should compel you to upgrade. One word about upgrading, though: because so many internal settings have been altered with this latest release, the developers recommend that you trash your old preference file in order to prevent conflicts. Yes, that means you’ll have to re-do your Library, but it takes only a few minutes to re-scan everything.
So what’s new? For one, the settings menu has been revamped. Now you’ll find more Mac-like names for settings (“Ken Burns effect,” à la iPhoto versus “Pan and Zoom,” a Windows anachronism) and legacy settings that didn’t really affect anything have been removed. Less junk to navigate through, then.
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“Advertising, advertising, fix Vista, advertising, make $19 T-shirts, advertising, make $15 polyester trucker hats, advertising, advertising, fix Vista, advertising, forget Vista and move on to Windows 7, advertising, forget Windows altogether and turn the focus to general PC users while making it seem like none of them use Linux, advertising, advertising, $60 skateboard decks, $18 canvas tote bags, advertising, advertising, send out e-mail blast to Hotmail users, advertising…”
I got an e-mail sent to my old Hotmail account from Microsoft late last night announcing “I’m a PC” merchandise along with a request to “Show your PC pride” by buying any number of hats, buttons, ties, shirts, shoes, mousepads, skateboards, bags, and mugs with the words “I’m a PC” emblazoned somewhere on each item.
Not that I don’t think $18.95 plus $4.99 for shipping isn’t a GREAT price for a T-shirt that says “I’m a PC,” in an aqua-blue font from 1986, I’d just rather use a PC quietly and unassumingly because it suits my personal needs better than a Mac is currently capable of doing. As the sole Windows-only guy at CrunchGear, I apologize on behalf of Microsoft and urge you to use whichever system works best for you. That is all.
I’m A PC Store [Zazzle.com]
A $50 cable from Belkin will alleviate the headache of switching from a PC to a Mac. Easy peasy, folks.
Microsoft might have everyday users proclaiming themselves Window’s fanboys, but both royalty and politicians prefer Macs. Above is Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah bin Abdul Al Saud monitoring Mecca and below, President-elect Obama on the campaign trail. When Obama talked about change, a President that uses Mac is a change as he will be the first to do so. Dare we call Bush a PC and Obama a Mac? Guess we just did.
This is completely beyond my abilities as a whatever, but perhaps you’re handy with The DIY? It’s a step-by-step on how to create a USB-based remote control receiver. Or, in English: you plug this doodad into your PC and then you’re able to use a remote control (“channel changer” or “clicker”) to control your media player.
The methodology can be applied to Windows, Mac and Linux-based systems.
The best part is that the whole setup costs $12 to create. Even I have $12!
via Make Blog
Once thought to be wildly overpriced (by me, anyway), the MacBook Air almost seems like an okay deal at $1,349. It’s refurbished, yes, so you’ll have to decide if that’s a big deal to you or not. It still has a one year warranty and you can extend it if you like.
The $1,349 version is the one with the 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, 2GB of RAM, and the 80GB hard drive. The 1.8GHz version is also available for $1,499 along with the 64GB solid state drive version for $1,799. Have at it.
Refurbished MacBook Air (scroll down) [Apple Store via dealnews]
It’s every Mac fanboys wet dream to embed an OS X touchscreen computer inside their ride. When RIDES does a mobile Mac workstation though, it’s more of an Apple Store on wheels with – get this – two Mac Mini’s, a MacBook Air, iPod Touch, iPhone 3G, 20-inch Cinema display, along with a bunch of car audio wares all within the surprisingly sexy Hyundai Genesis sedan. Words cannot do this car justice though. Even if you are on the PC side of things, head over and check out the car anyway; it’s a work of technology art.
This is sorta neat. It’s the OWC Memory Pro Blu-ray Quad Interface—a mouthful to describe an external Blu-ray drive that can connect to your Mac or PC four ways. That is, Firewire 800, Firewire 400, USB 2.0 and eSATA. Too bad Firewire 400 is on its way out, though.
The drive, which starts at $499, can read and write Blu-ray discs, DVD, DVD-RAM (that’s still around?) and CD-R/RW. Those of you looking to add Blu-ray burning to your fancy new MacBook can now choose between this guy and that Amex model.
Being that we’re dealing with OWC, Mac users can rest assured that the drive works just fine with the likes of iDVD and Toast. Speaking of toast, if you pony up an additional $80, to $579, OWC throws in a copy of the latest version of Roxio Toast.
When you’re a Mac you’re a Mac/You’re a Mac all the way/From your first cigarette to your last dying day. Slightly NSFW.
via BBG
John Hodgman, the PC from Apple’s Mac vs. PC advertisements was recently caught in the act on the New York subway — “the act” meaning “using an iPhone”. This should actually come as no surprise since A) he’s part of the Apple ad machine and probably got the iPhone for free and B) he was on The Tonight Show one time and joked about the irony of playing the part of “PC” even though he’s a long-time Mac user.
[gadgetsonthego.net via GearFuse]
What will 10.5.5 bring to Mac users? It updates a gaggle of things and is 136MB of Apple fury.
General
* Includes recent Apple security updates.
* Addresses stability issues with video playback, processor core idling, and remote disc sharing for MacBook Air.
* Addresses an issue in which some Macs could unexpectedly power on at the same time each day.
* Resolves a stability issue in TextEdit that could be found when accessing the color palette.
* Improves Spotlight indexing performance.
* Fixes an issue in which contacts might not sync properly with PalmOS-based devices.
* Improves iPhone sync reliability with iCal and Address Book.
* Includes improvements to Active Directory (see this article for more information).
* Improves Speech Dictionary.
* Fixes Kerberos authentication issues for Mac OS X 10.5 clients that connect to certain Samba servers, such as Mac OS X Server version 10.4.
* Includes extensive graphics enhancements.
The rest can be found after the jump.
Thanks for the tip, Jameson!
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I just wanted to remind my fellow Mac users that they really ought to be using Plex to play back all their movies. (And I do mean movies—a quick clip here and there, you’re best served by VLC or mplayer.) A new version, 0.5.15, was released two days ago, and includes all the usual bug fixes that you’d expect. What’s unexpected, though, is the complete revamp of the application’s branding: new logo, splash screen, default skin, etc. (Again, I recommend the skin Aeon, though it’s a bit of a pain to set up.)
In conclusion, Plex is neat. Use it.
It’s all rumor and hearsay at this point, but Kevin seems to have decent sources, so we’ll believe him for now. Tasty salted pretzel from the corner vendor. Yum. Video detailing new iPods, iTunes and OS X after the jump. I may have to eat my hat or something now.
Latest rumors:
- Revamp of entire iPod line.
- Small cosmetic changes to Touch, Nano to see significant redesign (see pic below).
- iPods to see fairly large price drops to distance itself from the $199 iPhone.
- iPod touch 2.1 software, iPhone to get update very soon after.
- iTunes 8.0 (”it’s a big update w/new features”).
- All of this coming in the next 2-3 weeks.
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