Not too long ago I accidentally dropped my MacBook Air onto a hard floor and the screen cracked. I knew that I did not have the time or patience to let Apple take it away for repair for what, in my experience, would be at least two weeks (not to mention the exorbitant cost). I ended up putting TechRestore.com to the test after a suggestion from a reader (Thanks Mike!). Continue Reading »

I have been using the iPhone 3G ever since I waited in line and bought one a bit over two weeks ago. The big question people ask me is if it’s worth the $199 USD and increase in monthly service fees. It is, but only slightly. For the most part, the 2.0 firmware provided most of the improvements, like the App Store, and that’s completely free for first generation iPhone users. Continue Reading »

Unlike the name implies, Apple’s MacBook Air laptop is not lighter than Air nor does it float on Air or any such nonsense. It is actually quite prone to falling and the minimalist nature of the laptop does not protect internal components as do the larger MacBooks. I accidentally put this theory to the test when I dropped my MacBook Air two feet onto a hard surface. Continue Reading »

Now that I have recovered from my jet lag, I have been catching up on news, the biggest story being the iPhone 3G launch that I missed. Well, not entirely - there were quite a few stores in Rome that had the new iPhone. Today I began standing in line for an iPhone 3G at the Apple Store at 7am. Five hours later I had a shiny new black 8GB iPhone 3G. Continue Reading »

Macbook Air owners know what I’m talking about - the dreaded core shutdown. When the MacBook Air gets too hot, there is a built-in thermal shutdown feature that turns off one of the two cores in the Core 2 Duo Intel processor found in the MacBook Air. The problem is that one of the cores often shuts down at temperatures Continue Reading »

I’ve had my MacBook Air for 15 days now. It has been serving as my primary computer and I have used it to do everything I usually do with my MacBook Pro. I’ll cover how it has stacked up to the MBP in this review in addition to how the MacBook Air’s smaller size has changed the way I do things. Continue Reading »

Today Apple announced an updated Airport Express base station supporting the 802.11n wireless standard (technically draft n, almost a standard) that every other Apple product to date currently supports. Like all Apple gadgetry it’s sleek, somewhat overpriced and somewhat feature-lacking compared to other competitors Continue Reading »

Ah, the joy of an impulse buy with a high interest rate credit card. I wasn’t really interested in the MacBook Air until I started reading about it more and more last week. Then I realized I lug my MacBook Pro around everywhere and I naturally just had to get the MacBook Air. Continue Reading »

One of the main criticisms of the Nike+ iPod system is that it only works for running and similar activities. It won’t accurately track workouts on a stair-master, elliptical trainer, stationary bike and other such gym equipment. Nike and Apple both listened and have been working with gym equipment manufacturers to solve Continue Reading »

Earlier this week Apple updated the MacBook and MacBook Pro lines. The update wasn’t too crazy. Performance got a boost with 45nm Intel Penryn processors (decreased system temps being the main advantage) while the MacBook Pro now dons a multi-touch trackpad and upgraded Nvidia graphics. The only thing not really publicized by Apple is that the new notebooks no longer include the Continue Reading »

I had the misfortune of having a flight back to Atlanta during the same time the MacWorld 2008 keynote was set to take place. As soon as I landed I turned off airplane mode on my iPhone and loaded up some Apple news sites. First I saw an image and brief description of the MacBook Air and was relatively pleased, Continue Reading »

It’s January 2008 and the annual MacWorld Expo is less than 2 weeks away. Naturally, the internet is a flurry of rumors and predictions for what will be happening at MacWorld. As a sidenote, I have no inside information and this post is pure speculation based on market research, past Apple moves and the state Continue Reading »

By default, recent Macs ship with their hibernate mode set such that when your Mac goes to sleep, contents of the RAM remain stored in the powered-on RAM in addition to written to the hard disk. The is called safe sleep mode because in the event that your computer loses power during sleep, the contents of the RAM can be read from the hard disk Continue Reading »

I’ve been using Mac OS X Leopard for a few weeks now and have started to form my thoughts about it. For the first few days, I really didn’t think Leopard was all that different than Tiger. Yeah, it had little things here and there, but none of them changed the way I interacted with the OS in general. That’s starting to change. Continue Reading »

From the not-sure-how-useful-this-is department comes a simple method of changing the default desktop wallpaper shown when logging into OS X Leopard if space and stars aren’t your cup o’ tea. All you need to do is replace the file DefaultDesktop.jpg located Continue Reading »

Just tonight Erica Sadun, a well-known iPhone tinkerer and TUAW blogger, announced the launch of jailbreakme.com. The site enables its iPhone/iPod Touch visitors to “jailbreak” their units in mere minutes, with a single touch. Jailbreaking is a term for opening Continue Reading »

While I was content with my BlackBerry Curve mainly for my ability to type rapidly on the keypad, recent events including the ability to easily change ringtones through iTunes and Google providing free IMAP access influenced me to pick up an iPhone along with Leopard this weekend. I was going to wait until January to see if any GPS and Continue Reading »

Prediction: Hard drive manufacturers will love Apple for boosting external hard drive sales. Apple’s upcoming operating system, OS X Leopard, contains a powerful system backup tool that makes use of an external hard drive rather than using a portion of the main hard drive’s space, as Windows Vista and XP do for “System Restore” points. Continue Reading »

By now you’ve no doubt heard that the latest Mac OS X version dubbed 10.5 Leopard will be dropping on Friday, October 26th at 6pm. Usually I don’t need convincing when new software comes out, and I upgrade regardless. However, when reading through the new Leopard features list on Apple’s site, one thing became apparent - I could care less about every single Leopard feature with the exception of Continue Reading »

When spending hours in front of the computer, it’s important to incorporate some physical activity into your daily routine. Unfortunately, physical activity usually brings up ideas of slaving over a treadmill and doing something you’re repulsive about. At least those were pretty much my sentiments Continue Reading »

No that’s not a cheesy allusion to an altered saying in the V for Vendetta movie, alright well maybe it is, but today will be the day that Apple releases its first touch-screen iPod. That is, assuming you take Think Secret’s latest post verbatim. Apple scheduled a media event to be held later today (10AM PDT) and they will without a doubt be announcing some changes in the iPod product line. Continue Reading »

Transmit, my favorite FTP client for OS X, can now connect to Amazon S3 accounts. I never saw this coming but it only makes sense with more and more people using the affordable S3 as a static file host and personal file server. This quite literally makes my day, thank you Cabel and crew. Continue Reading »

CNET’s Crave blog beat me to the punch and published a comprehensive article comparing Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion, virtualization software for OS X, as well as Boot Camp and plain OS X. As you might expect from reading my VMware Fusion launch post, Fusion performed Continue Reading »

Just as the rumors expected, Apple updated the iMac line with a substantial design refresh - aluminum & glass body, black accents and a slimmer physique. While I appreciate the move from using plastic for the body to aluminum, such as with the MacBook Pro, I’m not Continue Reading »

VMware, the creator of native x86 virtualization in the late ’90s, has released their first consumer-directed product for Mac users. VMware Fusion allows OS X users to run virtual machines with support for over 60 Operating Systems. You might be thinking, “well Parallels Desktop does this too, what of it?”. I learned of Fusion’s remarkable features and advantages while Continue Reading »