iPhones & shiny stuff - fluffypig.com » mac

Happy Birthday Mac!

Shaun — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:47:34 +0000

It’s quite common knowledge that i’m a MASSIVE Apple fan, I own 4 Macs, one of which is connected to my 42″ Plasma TV as a Media Centre, an iPhone, more iPods than I know what to do with, a 1TB Time Capsule and lots of other bits & pieces.

Core Business

I love Apple products, the iPhone is the best thing i’ve ever owned and the iPod revolutionised an entire industry, but however great these products are it’s Apple computers that are their core business. If it wasn’t for the popularity of the early Apple computers, the iPod & iPhone would probably never have existed.

Game Changing

This weekend marked the 25th Anniversary of the first Apple Macintosh computer being released! After being relatively successful with their early Apple I and Apple II computers, it was in 1984 when Steve Jobs the Apple Macintosh that things really began to take off.

In typical Apple style the machine was launched with a now famous $1.5 million TV commercial directed by Ridley Scott. It was aired during Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984. You can watch the commercial below, it’s amazing to think that I was 2 years old when it was aired, it would feel modern even today and it shows why Apple was such a success. But as well as this great campaign they also needed great products and the Macintosh was!

Keynote

You can also watch Steve Jobs unveiling the Macintosh at the keynote, he’s a lot less thin and got a lot more hair but his speech is as good as his recent keynotes have been. I doubt Apple would be anything like the company they are today without his presentation skills. As for the product itself, Steve makes fun of existing ‘dull & ugly’ competitors computers before ‘amazing’ the audience by taking the Mac out of a small bag (Macbook Air out of envelope anybody?). Dramatic music playing over the product demo. Using the revolutionary speech capabilities of the Mac there’s even jokes from the Mac itself such as “Never trust a computer you can’t lift” about IBMs.

Happy 25th Birthday!

I did intend on this post being a history of the Mac range, from this first Macintosh right up to the iMac, MacMini and Macbooks of today. Unfortunately I don’t have the time at the moment and I don’t want to miss the big 25 year date so I will leave it will the original.

Enjoy the videos and here’s to another 25 years of great computers!

Steve Jobs Unveiling Macintosh

Original Macintosh Commercial ’1984′

Things Now Syncs Between iPhone & Mac

Shaun — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:03:19 +0000

Things has been my favourite Task Management app for a long time, after previously loving OmniFocus.

When I got my iPhone 3G the very first thing I did was purchase Things App for it. Imagine my disappointment when I learned that it was not yet capable of syncing lists with the desktop version. This effectively rendered it useless as there was no way I was going to have two versions of my list and edit them manually.

Things Updated

Yesterday the Things iPhone app update finally arrived and syncing is now supported. Not only is it supported, but it’s brilliant! It syncs over wi-fi and is amazingly fast. All you need to do is have both the iPhone app and desktop app open and they will instantly sync.

This means that I can now add things to do throughout the day on my iPhone and automatically sync them with my MacBook when I get home.

I love it!

Buy It Now And Save Money!

Things for OSX is currently free, when the final version is released it will cost $39.99 (£20) you can download it here.

Things for iPhone is currently $9.99 in the US App Store and £5.99 in the UK store. The developers say that this is an introductory price and it will be increased as more features are added. You can download Things for iPhone from here.

Protect Your Mac For FREE – iAntiVirus Mac OSX

Shaun — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:18:44 +0000

One of the reasons I left the world of Microsoft was because of the amount of trojans, viruses and spyware that Windows would pick up. I literally spent hours removing it all, sometimes it was impossible and the only solution was to wipe everything and reinstall Windows.

Since getting my first Mac years ago (and several more since) I have never once installed anti virus or spyware software and thankfully I have never needed to.

That is still the case today, but unfortunately things may change in the future. With the success of the iPhone, the increase in Mac sales every year and iTunes & Safari being on PC the possibilities of trojans and viruses being aimed at Mac users is increasing all the time.

Trojan Found

It’s not a serious problem yet but the first major Mac OSX trojan was discovered earlier this year. AppleScript.THT Trojan Horse if installed turns on File Sharing, Web Sharing, and Remote Login granting hackers complete control over your system. It was found being distributed over Limewire and iChat.

iAntiVirus

So perhaps now would be a good time to invest in Mac AntiVirus software, something totally new to me! Luckily we don’t need to invest any money as I discovered a great FREE program iAntiVirus!

What’s great about iAntiVirus is that it looks for malware which is specifically targeted at the Mac, rather than many of the other antivirus solutions out there which include a vast database of Windows trojans, which the Mac is immune too anyway.

Simple, Stable, Secure

iAntiVirus is supposedly still in beta. But in the weeks i’ve been using it it’s never crashed and seems very stable and secure. It’s small and lightweight, only a 15mb download and installs in seconds.

Once installed it’s as simple as a Mac application should be! There are two main functions, Scan My Mac and Turn ‘Protect My Mac’ On or Off. The first thing I did was perform a quick scan and was happy that nothing malicious was found after the scan completed in under 5 minutes. I later tried a ‘normal scan’ which is more thorough but understandably takes a lot longer, around 3 hours, again the results were clean.

We don’t have anything to lose with iAntiVirus, it’s free, small, clean and although maybe not necessary at the moment, it may well be in the future. You can download it from here.

Help Firefox create a Guinness World Record!

admin — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 16:31:55 +0000

Firefox has been the web browser of choice for many people, particularly in the web design industry for some time.

Internet Explorer Sucks

Firefox 2 is a great browser, only Camino and Safari for Mac OSX can rival it. It’s by far the best Windows browser and shows Internet Explorer up big time.

To be fair to Microsoft, the beta of Internet Explorer 8 already looks impressive and it seems they are genuinely committed to producing a quality browser this time. But until it is officially released, it’s still fair to say that Internet Explorer sucks!

Firefox 3 = FAST!

Firefox 3 promises to be even better! With new features such as improved 1-click bookmarking and a new smart location bar. However, the biggest improvement in the beta I have been using is speed, Firefox 3 is lightening fast on my MacBook and MacBook Pro and beats Safari hands down.

Importantly the majority of plugins/add-ons which we all rely on for Firefox 2 will now work with Firefox 3 so there is no reason not to upgrade!

Set a Guinness World Record on Download Day

The official date for the launch of Firefox 3 is June 17, 2008 which is also Download Day 2008. Mozilla will attempt to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloads in 24 hours.

I will be downloading the official release of Firefox 3 on Download day and I hope you will too! Not only will you get a great new browser but you might just help create a World Record! Visit SpreadFirefox.com for more info and sign up to receive an email reminder on the day.

10 Mac OSX Apps I Could Not Live Without

admin — Sun, 11 May 2008 09:59:50 +0000

I know these lists have been done many times before. In fact, a lot of the apps on this list I picked up from lists just like this one. So they can be useful, even if there is only 1 app on here that you have never tried it’s worth it.
There are plenty of others that I could have chosen but I wanted to stick to 10. I tried to steer clear of Apples own apps like Mail and iTunes and also other obvious choices like Office and Photoshop.

If you have your own suggestions please leave them in the comments!

1. Quicksilver

Quicksilver: The first thing I do when I get a new Mac or reinstall OSX is set up Quicksilver. I’m sure there can’t be many people who don’t know about it but if you’re one of the few, Quicksilver is the ultimate extension to OSX and particularly Spotlight.

At it’s most basic level it’s a very fast application launcher. I never use my applications folder or even the dock. Any application is just a couple of keystrokes away.

However it does so much more as well. There are extensions available for a whole number of Mac apps which allow tasks and processes to be completed from within Quicksilvers interface (again with just a few keystrokes) rather than the apps themselves. I use it in conjunction with Mail, Yojimbo & iTunes the most.

2. Yojimbo

Yojimbo: There are a number of apps that do a similar job as Yojimbo, I’ve tried them all and Yojimbo is the best for me. It’s basically a storage system for all kinds of information, files and pictures.

Any information can be organised into folders, tagged and there is excellent search functions. I use it to store ideas for future websites and blog posts, bits of code, shopping lists etc… It’s also capable of storing pdf files, bookmarks and even entire archive copies of websites. Another very useful feature is it’s ability to store passwords securely. I have all of my Mac and internet passwords saved there as well as credit card and bank details. It syncs between all of my Macs via .mac too!

The following 3 apps are so small and neat that I sometimes forget they are apps and not part of OSX itself. I use them countless times every day and it’s only when I reinstall OSX that I realise I how much I miss them.

3. MagiCal

MagiCal: Not much to say about Magical except it is incredibly small but incredibly useful. It’s first use is to put the date in the menu bar which OSX is still lacking for some reason. Clicking the date brings up a neat little calendar of the current month and can cycle forwards and backwards.

4. Growl

Growl: Again this is an app that works in the background almost unnoticed but I really miss it when it’s not there. It simply acts as a notification system within OSX. A small alert appears in the top right hand corner of the screen when events occur in other apps. Such as when email is received or downloads are completed.It doesn’t sound like much but once you get used to it being there you begin to rely on it.

An extra that comes with Growl is GrowlTunes which works in exactly the same way but for iTunes. It displays the track and artist information when a new song starts.

5. Default Folder X

Default Folder X: This is an app I really could not live without. I never thought anything bad about the way OSX handles opening and saving files until I tried this and saw how much better it is.

Basically it attaches to the right side of any Open or Save windows and adds several ways of locating files or folders. For example you can select ‘Favourite Folders’ which are always immediately available or you can chose the last saved folder. You can rename or move files to the trash directly in the save window.

One of it’s best background features is that it will take you back to the last file you were working on. Incredibly useful and I’ve no idea why OSX doesn’t do it.

6. Things

Things: I have tried several of the task management products available for the Mac. I thought I had settled on the best with OmniFocus but then Things came along and is my productivity app of choice at the moment.

Most of these programs follow David Allens ‘Getting Things Done’ system. Which is great as I have read the book and am a fan. Things however isn’t strictly a GTD app but it has an advanced tagging system which allows it to work as a GTD app but is actually a lot more powerful. It’s repeat tasks feature is particularly useful.It looks great, is easy to use and has been very reliable for me so far. It took a lot to get me to switch from OmniFocus. It is just missing some sync features at the moment, once they are implemented it will be the killer task management app.

7. Transmission

Transmission: Another of those apps that doesn’t need much talking about. It’s just a torrent client. But it does it’s job very well. It’s tiny, it’s lightweight, it is simple and clean and just works.

8. Transmit

Transmit: Similar to Transmission though not made by the same company and this time for FTP rather than Torrents. Again it just does it’s job well and is small and lightweight. There is also a widget that allows you to FTP files without launching the app itself.

9. Ecto

Ecto: This app solves many problems associated with WordPress blogs.

Don’t get me wrong, I love WordPress but there are issues, some not it’s own fault. One that is though is the WP text editor which I have never been comfortable with using.Using Ecto means you never have to see the web text editor again! All posting and editing is done from within the app. This is great as the editor is a huge improvement but it also solves another problem.

As it’s a desktop application you can write and edit blog posts offline, even without an internet connection and then simply publish them when you are next online.If you have multiple blogs you can update them all from within Ecto!

10. VMWare Fusion

VMWare Fusion: As much as I love OSX and this list proves how great the software is for it. There are times when I need to run big bad Windows. Actually it’s pretty much every day as unfortunately I have to test all of my website designs in Internet Explorer.I have Boot Camp installed which works great, it runs Windows better than my last PC did.

However you have to reboot each time you want to switch between Windows and OSX which is frustrating an time consuming. Fusion allows you to run a virtual Windows installation from within OSX! Not only that but you can run Windows apps and Mac apps and switch between them, you can even minimize Windows apps to your Dock! Perfect for website testing!

iPhones & shiny stuff - fluffypig.com » mac

Happy Birthday Mac!

Core Business

Game Changing

Keynote

Happy 25th Birthday!

Steve Jobs Unveiling Macintosh

Original Macintosh Commercial ’1984′

Related Posts

Things Now Syncs Between iPhone & Mac

Things Updated

Buy It Now And Save Money!

Related Posts

Protect Your Mac For FREE – iAntiVirus Mac OSX

Trojan Found

iAntiVirus

Simple, Stable, Secure

Related Posts

Help Firefox create a Guinness World Record!

Internet Explorer Sucks

Firefox 3 = FAST!

Set a Guinness World Record on Download Day

Related Posts

10 Mac OSX Apps I Could Not Live Without

1. Quicksilver

2. Yojimbo

3. MagiCal

4. Growl

5. Default Folder X

6. Things

7. Transmission

8. Transmit

9. Ecto

10. VMWare Fusion

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