| Google Chrome for Mac (and Some Smack-Talk) |
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TechCrunch alerts me that a beta version of Google Chrome is available for the Mac. Note to wife: I downloaded the beta. It’s getting installed on the Mac. Oh, yes. You can’t stop me. Oh, no. You gotta sleep sometime. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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Comments (0)November 24, 2009
| I Hit the Jackpot Yesterday |
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I had the (dubious) pleasure of trying to get things done using 5 different computer operating systems: Windows XP, Windows 7, Mac OS X, Crunchbang Linux, and Google Chrome OS. The latter is a very early pre-release version that I’m running as a virtual machine on my Windows XP laptop. I was stoked about Chrome OS when Google announced it back in July. I thought a stripped-down, lean OS made sense — you know, less-is-more. But I have to say I’m underwhelmed. Chrome OS just feels sort of dumbed-down. The applications tab strikes me as cartoonish. (It sort of reminded me of the Linux distro gOS.) I know Google’s got a lot of work to do on it, so I won’t presume to judge until I get to play with a more-developed version. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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October 20, 2009
| Can I Have Your Attention Here? [UPDATED] |
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You, in the back, pipe down. Alright. Got some product announcements to go over with you. I’ll do ‘em in alpha order. Apple They had a good 4th quarter: 3 million Macs (up 17% over last year), 7.4M iPhones (+7%), and 10.2M iPods (-8%). Almost $10 billion in revenue, with $1.67 billion in profit. These numbers beat Q3. So, to celebrate, Apple’s just announced enhancements to the MacBook (polycarbonate unibody shell), iMac (new LED display), and Mac mini (more memory and faster processor), as well as a new mouse, called the Magic Mouse, that sports a multi-touch surface. BusinessWeek has a good summary of the details. Barnes & Noble The WSJ is reporting (sub required) that Barnes & Noble will release an eBook reader called the Nook. They got their scoop by reviewing an ad scheduled to run in the New York Times Book Review on October 25: “A new electronic book reader is expected Tuesday from bookseller Barnes & Noble Inc. that will challenge devices from Amazon.com Inc. and Sony Corp. with a color touch screen and $259 price, according to a planned ad for the device. The price for the reader, called the Nook, matches that of Amazon’s Kindle … Details of the reader appear in a full-page advertisement viewed by The Wall Street Journal in the New York Times Book Review section dated Sunday, Oct. 25. The advertisement says the Nook will enable its owners to ‘lend eBooks to friends.’” Books and tools, electronic or otherwise — I never lend ‘em, ’cause I never get ‘em back. UPDATE: On a related note, yesterday Plastic Logic introduced its new eReader. B&N will power the bookstore for the device. Free wifi on every Virgin America flight between November 10, 2009 and January 15, 2010. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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August 27, 2009
| Never Marry An Artist [UPDATED] |
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As I mentioned on Tuesday, Mac OS X Snow Leopard will be released tomorrow. It’s going to be faster, take up less space, and costs only $29. Many people are stoked. Does it get any better than that? Um, little problem here. It so happens that the artist I live with happens to use Adobe Photoshop CS2. That changes the dynamic. According to the Snow Leopard Compatibility Wiki, the Adobe CS2 Suite ne marche pas with the new Mac OS. So here are my options:
Looks like I’m gonna be stuck with Mac OS X Leopard for a while. UPDATE, August 31: I’m guilty, too. Looks like SL won’t play nice with Parallels, which I used to test Lexis Thru Jenkins. Sigh … I could have bought VMWare, which isn’t on the list. But noooo … |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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August 25, 2009
| Snow Leopard Available This Friday, August 28 |
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Apple has announced that Mac OS X version 10.6, called Snow Leopard, will drop this Friday, August 28. As I posted back in June, the price will be $29 for a single upgrade and $49 for a family pack. Compare this with the ten different prices for upgrading to Windows 7. That’s what kills me about Windows. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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July 23, 2009
| 2.6, 5.2, and, um, 10.2 |
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Apple reported its 3Q results on Tuesday: revenue of $8.34 billion with a profit of $1.23 billion (compared to $7.46B and $1.07B a year ago.)
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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June 16, 2009
| This Is Cool. I Just Don’t Know What To Do With It Yet. |
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Opera, the browser people, have introduced a service that turns your PC or laptop into a Web server so that you can share your files and images with other people, stream your MP3 files, host a Website, and more, without uploading anything to the Web. It’s called Opera Unite. I managed to share a folder living on my USB flash drive with 2 colleagues at Jenkins. After I told Opera Unite which folder I wanted to share, it created a URL that I emailed to them. They clicked on the link in the email and could view, but not edit, the files. They didn’t need to install Opera to look at the files, either. Interesting. But is this something I want to add to my digital toolbox? I’m thinking yeah, but I need to play with it some more. (It’s still a bit wonky. After an hour I started to get a weird proxy error and couldn’t even view my own files.) I also have to read the intro and an article written by one of its developers. Anyway, until I get access to Google Wave (and I’m not holding my breath, either), this is the next best thing. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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June 8, 2009
| Snow Leopard for $29? I’ll Jump On That. |
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Mac OS X Snow Leopard (version 10.6) will ship in 3 months. It’ll be faster and smaller (by 6GB). Price: $29. For twenty bucks more, I can get the family pack and upgrade my daughter’s Mac Book. Honey, don’t worry, I swear you won’t even notice that I upgraded the OS. Trust me. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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March 4, 2009
| It’s Opposite Day For Web Browsers |
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The WSJ (sub required) reports that the desktop and mobile browser market shares are like weird mirror-images of each other, to wit: “New figures released Sunday by NetApplications show that Apple dominated global Web browsing from mobile phones in February with the iPhone, with 66.4% of all Web surfing from mobile devices occurring on the Apple device. Microsoft accounts for about 6.9% from handsets running its Windows Mobile operating system, according to NetApplications. That’s nearly a perfect reversal of the balance of power in the Web browser market overall , which mainly consists of Internet surfing on personal computers. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer in total accounts for 67.4% of Web browsing, while Apple’s Safari accounted for a little over 8%.” When you consider that 2/3 of the people on the planet have a cell phone, I’d rather be Apple than Microsoft. I know, I know — not all of ‘em have an Internet-enabled smartphone. But that’s where the future is. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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February 24, 2009
| Netbooks, Revisited |
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Netbooks are all the rage. I’ve blogged about them before. I haven’t followed up on that original post, because most of the articles I’ve been reading are written by propeller heads who argue about cache speeds or screen refresh or some other esoteric thingie that 99.99999999% of computer users do not know or care about. But Wired has a quite interesting article about the Netbook Effect. Here’s one quote that jumped out at me: “For years now, without anyone really noticing, the PC industry has functioned like a car company selling SUVs: It pushed absurdly powerful machines because the profit margins were high, while customers lapped up the fantasy that they could go off-roading, even though they never did. So coders took advantage of that surplus power to write ever-bulkier applications and operating systems. What netbook makers have done, in effect, is turn back the clock: Their machines perform the way laptops did four years ago. And it turns out that four years ago (more or less) is plenty.” So true. And even though I have 2 pricey — at least by *my* standards — Macs at home, I am quite fond of my 6 year-old, hand-me-down Dell Inspiron 1100 running CrunchBang linux. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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