Tag Archives: Windows 7

My Apple Life

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In his editor’s note in the March 2010 edition of Macworld, Jason Snell penned a great quote

“ The entire point of Apple’s products is that they are not interchangeable with anybody else’s. Only one company makes Macs, iPhones, and iPods, and that’s Apple.”

That statement was never more truer then after last nights experience I had trying to hack my Apple TV with Boxee. The hack ended up rendering my Apple TV useless, leading me to  a factory restore (hold down the menu button and the minus button at the same time until it reboots). In the past I loved to tinker with computer related equipment and normally the Boxee hack would have proceed, that was until I purchased my first Mac back in 2006.

You see I have swallowed the Apple Kool-Aid and like a cold glass of Grape, with a little extra sugar, its fantastic. I own a iMac, a MacBook, a iPhone, a Apple TV and several iPods. I would eventually love to own an iPad.

The geek in me loves new gadgets and over the last few years my gadgets have centered around Apple. All my Apple devices work with each other without any issues and the software is top notch. I have run 3 versions of OS X as a Mac user. I enjoy the community of MacHeads as they are simply head and shoulders above the rest.

Back In January in an attempt to get back to my tinkering ways, I purchased an HTC Droid Eris. Though I thought it was a great phone for the price it just didn’t fit my Apple lifestyle, and as Jason stated, it just wasn’t “interchangeable” with Apple. Not only that the Android community was not up to the challenge like my fellow MacHeads. So I took the phone back to Verizon Wireless and purchased an iPhone, ending my 12 plus year relationship with Big Red.

As a side note I later came across an article in the March 2010 issue of MacLife that listed the 10 steps in which you could sync your Android phone with a Mac. Yes ten steps to match the one you complete with an iPhone and iTunes. Not this is not the 10 steps upon set up but rather the ten steps each time. Setting up an iPhone takes a few steps at first but after that is is simply one step. Best of all I don’t have to tell the iPhone to mount on my Mac like an Android phone.

When it comes to my Apple products its like what Steve Job’s says “it just works.” Yes they all just work and that is alright by me. Now that may not be for everyone. At times I wish Apple would do a little more, but I don’t complain. Typically search google and find the third party app that will do what I am looking for.

I also love my OS X software that I have purchased over the years, and iTunes had been the go to app for me since I first used it on the Windows side. I still work in a Windows environment during the day and its in an operating system (XP) that is nearly 10 years old. It is safe to say it is an operating system that has gone past its recommended shelf life. Like an old gallon of milk, it needs to be thrown away. After a week at work its nice to come home and work with my Apple gadgets and delve into my Mac Life.

The Mac lifestyle has been good to me and I for one am satisfied living in my Apple Lifestyle.

What Came Accross this Week

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Something New
Apple released the latest version of the Safari web browser. safari4-225x160Beta Version 4.0 in my opinion beat Google Chrome to the finish line, well on the Mac side of things anyway, as the upgrade adds new features such as top sites, cover flow, tabs on top and windows users will get a look and feel that looks natural on the OS. The most important feature is the “Nitro Engine” which increases the load time of websites.

Something Free
Not having much time to tinker with the latest version of Apple’s iLife suite of applications I cam across this. doubletwist-225x176Double Twist, Mac and PC (Public Beta due in March) compatible, is a piece of software allows users to move their iTunes music to any music player seamlessly. What caught my attention is that it comes equipped with the ability to publish photos to Facebook & Flickr as well as post video to Youtube. These are features that just recently came available in iLife 08 & 09. Couple this application with other iLife like programs and one could simply skip upgrading to the latest version of iLife.

I Tried it, but it needs more work
Back in mid January I download the public beta of Windows 7, Microsoft’s follow up to Vista. windows72-225x83Initially I installed it on my 17″ iMac using Parallels 4.0.3810 under the the Windows Experimental. The new attempt by Microsoft was decent early on. I then installed it onto my MacBook via Boot Camp. After a few weeks Windows 7 started to have some real problems. Now given it is a beta I chalked it up to the typical bugs. I am encouraged by this new version of the Windows family. It will go along well with Microsoft’s Windows Essentials program suite as well as the forth coming Sky Drive. Needless to say I fully expect I will be able to buy a significantly less expense PC or Laptop my daughter in the coming year.

I tried it and like it
All you U.S Hotmail users rejoice, Windows Live opened POP3 access to all of its online email users.  This is an obvious attempt to compete with Google’s Gmail, who has allowed POP3 and IMAP access since its conception.  Life Hacker put together a post with instructions.  As I have never been a fan of a web interface for email, adding Windows Live Hotmail to Apple’s Mail program was very easy and now extremely useful.

A link I found useful
If your on Twitter, Facebook or simply want to shorten web URL, well look no further as Tiny URL has solved your problems.  This site has been around for some time.  I use it when I want to shorten down a 100 charactor or so URL and post it on Twitter or FaceBook.  The site has prime real estate in my Bookmark’s Bar.