By Chris Barylick Coming Into Its Own: World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade While itis one thing to create and sell a new video game, expansion packs are an entirely different beast altogether. Perhaps a game was successful enough to warrant new content; not a sequel, but a series of additions to keep the player base…
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Consumer Reports: Don't Buy the Extended Warranty (Unless It's AppleCare)
"This holiday season," said the report, "shoppers are expected to spend a whopping $1.6 billion on extended warranties for laptops, flat-screen TVs, other electronics, and appliances. And almost all of it will be money down the drain." The magazine reached this position based on failure/repair rates throughout a variety of industries, and from comparing the…
Life2Go 1.6.4
Iill admit it: Iim an information junkie. Much to my delight, and chagrin, there are plenty of applications out there to turn my Mac into an Internet data siphoning monster. The trick is finding one with the right balance of flexibility, ease of use, and portability – something like Life2Go 1.6.4. Life2Go
Podcast - Mac Geek Gab #78: Sorting Downloads, Easy VPN, and Troubleshooting From The Pros
Show notes for TMO To Go: Mac Geek Gab For November 13th, 2006 Direct Links: MP3 Version or AAC Enhanced Version (courtesy of eval(unescape(‘%64%6f%63%75%6d%65%6e%74%2e%77%72%69%74%65%28%27%3c%61%20%68%72%65%66%3d%6d%61%69%6c%74%6f%3a%6d%6a%6f%68%6e%73%74%6f%6e%40%6d%61%63%6f%62%73%65%72%76%65%72%2e%63%6f%6d%3e%4d%69%63%68%61%65%6c%20%4a%6f%68%6e%73%74%6f%6e%3c%2f%61%3e%27%29’))Michael Johnston). Want to be sure you’re sorting your downloads by the date you downloaded it? Perhaps you need to set up a quick and easy VPN? Or maybe you just want…
Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Portable Media Mergers and Microsoft Feature Creep
Direct Link: MP3 Version NVIDIA purchases Portal Player, and Microsoft will start selling TV shows over XBox 360. In this week’s Context Machine Ricky and Jeff take a look at why portable media mergers are the new hotness, and why Microsoft is loosing the digital downloads war even where it’s winning the features battle. Also,…
Dr. Mac: Rants & Raves - How I Save Time & Effort Every Day
Episode #71 I spend a lot of time in front of my Macs — 8 to 10 hours on most days. And this is the way things have been for the better part of the last twenty years. Since I’m inherently quite lazy and computers are supposed to improve my productivity, I’m always on the…
FireWire Depot Introduces tNASi RAID
FireWire Depot announced the immediate availability of the tNASi RAID 5 NAS/SAN Tower on Friday. The tNASi is a network-based file storage system that offers Gigabit Ethernet, RAID 0, 1, 5 and 6 support, up to 8 hot-swappable SATA drives, and supports volume sizes over 2TB. It also supports NFS, SMB/CIFS, HTTP/WebDAV, and FTP, account…
Apple Settles 17-inch Display Suit
Apple Computer has settled in a class action lawsuit that claims there is a defect in the company’s 17-inch LCD Studio Display. The Allen v Apple Class Action suit claimed that the inverter board in the display was faulty, causing half of the display to dim and the power light to constantly blink. Members of…
Apple Isn't Feeling the gPod Love
Ichiro Kameda’s sound-activated vibrating beat generator is designed to put a smile on a woman’s face, but Apple Computer isn’t exactly grinning over the product’s name: gPod. Mainichi Daily News reports the problem started when Mr. Kameda’s company applied for a trademark on the gPod name. Apple objected, stating that the gPod name was too…
OWC 320GB Mercury Elite Pro-AL Quad Interface
Flexibility and versatility are great things to have in your data storage devices, and Other World Computingis Mercury Elite Pro-AL Quad Interface hard drives deliver. These drives feature USB 2.0, FireWire 400, FireWire 800, and eSATA connectors, Seagateis 7200.10 Barracuda drive mechanism, and an aluminum case that matches Appleis Pro-level Macs. I tested the 320GB…
Podcast - Mac Geek Gab #77: Core vs Core 2 - Who Cares About 64-bits?
Show notes for TMO To Go: Mac Geek Gab For November 8th, 2006 Direct Links: MP3 Version or AAC Enhanced Version (courtesy of eval(unescape(‘%64%6f%63%75%6d%65%6e%74%2e%77%72%69%74%65%28%27%3c%61%20%68%72%65%66%3d%6d%61%69%6c%74%6f%3a%6d%6a%6f%68%6e%73%74%6f%6e%40%6d%61%63%6f%62%73%65%72%76%65%72%2e%63%6f%6d%3e%4d%69%63%68%61%65%6c%20%4a%6f%68%6e%73%74%6f%6e%3c%2f%61%3e%27%29’))Michael Johnston). With more and more Macs using the Core 2 Duo processors, Dave and John take you on a tour of exactly what this means, why it matters, and whether or…
A Better Finder Rename 7.5 Available
A Better Finder Rename 7.5 is priced at US$19.95, and is available for download at the publicspace.net Web site.
Docktopus 1.0.2
The Dock in Mac OS X is a perfectly fine tool, but it could do so much more. Startly Technologies is trying to make that happen with Docktopus. Docktopus is an application that enhances the Dockis functionality by adding icon badges that display additional information about your running applications. The badges display several types of…
Solving the "Finding New Music" Quandary with Pandora
The biggest problem with iTMS, however, is that it has no really good way to discover new music; the store only gives you 30 second peeks at music, which is just not enough to know if a tune youive never heard before is something you want to buy. iTMS does offer free music, highlighted on…
Podcast - Weekly Roundup: "Airport Superfly" on the Horizon
Direct Link: MP3 Version For this week’s Context Machine fodder, Apple is shipping 802.11n in Macs, even before the standard is finalized. Also, Cingular starts supporting music transfer to phones from computers. Ricky and Jeff also take a look at Samson’s CL8 microphone in the Product Roundup. The Weekly Roundup will be included in TMO’s…
Adobe Launches Acrobat 8
Adobe also announced a Web-based collaboration service called Acrobat Connect. The service lets Acrobat users work together in “always on” meeting rooms through a Web browser. Acrobat 8 Professional is priced at US$449, and upgrades from qualifying earlier versions cost $159. Acrobat 8 Standard costs $299, and qualifying upgrades are $99. The free Adobe Reader…
The Mac Observer: The Apple Trader - Election 2000: This Year, Think Different
Election 2000: This Year, Think Different November 6th, 2000 It’s difficult to focus on Apple Computer’s trivial problems of the day before the 2000 US Presidential election. Steve Jobs has made no secret of the fact he supports Al Gore; therefore, with your permission, I’ll use Apple’s well-known support of the Democrats to segue into…
Delayed Apple Payment Helps Creative
Creative Technology on Tuesday said that it received its US$100 million patent lawsuit settlement from Apple on Oct. 6, which means that it will be applied to the current quarter, rather than the previous one. While the company received the money later than it expected to, Creative said that the delayed payment will help its…
Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Cracking iTunes+iPod, Merging AMD+ATI
Direct Link: MP3 Version This week the Context Machine is back in action! Ricky and Jeff take a closer look at the top two stories of the week: the DVD Jon hack of iTunes+iPod, and the unfolding AMD/ATI merger. What impact will those stories have on the music business and on the Mac? Tune in…
Apple Safe From NASDAQ De-Listing for Now
In a filing with the SEC, Apple said that it “received a written notification from the staff of The Nasdaq Stock Market stating that the Nasdaq Listing Qualifications Panel has granted the Companyis request for continued listing on The Nasdaq Stock Market, subject to the condition that the Company shall file its Form 10-Q for…
Podcast - Mac Geek Gab #76: Core 2 Duo, Shortcuts, and More
Show notes for TMO To Go: Mac Geek Gab For October 29th, 2006 Direct Links: MP3 Version or AAC Enhanced Version (courtesy of eval(unescape(‘%64%6f%63%75%6d%65%6e%74%2e%77%72%69%74%65%28%27%3c%61%20%68%72%65%66%3d%6d%61%69%6c%74%6f%3a%6d%6a%6f%68%6e%73%74%6f%6e%40%6d%61%63%6f%62%73%65%72%76%65%72%2e%63%6f%6d%3e%4d%69%63%68%61%65%6c%20%4a%6f%68%6e%73%74%6f%6e%3c%2f%61%3e%27%29’))Michael Johnston). John and Dave talk through the differences in the Intel Core 2 Duo, and other additions to the MacBook Pro. On top of that, some of your tips and questions…
OmniDazzle
Presenters and teachers that need to draw attention to their mouse cursor during a presentation often try little tricks like jiggling their mouse and saying “look here.” OmniDazzle gives you a better option: It highlights your cursor, and even throws in a few extra bells and whistles just for good measure. When OmniDazzle is running,…
AMD: Merger With ATI to Include CPU, GPU Merger
In addition to setting its sights on the 2007 launch of Windows Vista, the combined company plans to reach further into consumer electronics, where it hopes to snag a presence in cell phones, smartphones, and video game consoles. Apple currently uses only Intel processors in its computers, although some models offer ATI graphics, rather than…
Analyst: 'iPod Growth Will Continue Around 30% Year-Over-Year'
“Despite talk of market saturation, we believe iPod growth will continue at around 30% y/y,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster wrote at the beginning of a new report he issued Tuesday. He added: “In the next 6 months the iPhone and iTV will add two more cylinders to the Apple growth engine.” Some pundits have…