Posts Filed Under ‘Desktop’
Snow Leopard Benefits for Users
September 2nd, 2009, 4 comments
My positive take on Snow Leopard published over at Lifehacker this morning, where I tackle what all the non-developer-specific improvements 10.6 offers to upgraders. In a nutshell, it's speed, a better Dock and menu bar, Microsoft Exchange support, QuickTime X and helpful Finder tweaks. Here's the full article: Snow Leopard's Four Best Improvements (for Civilians)
August 30th, 2009, 21 comments
ZDNet reports that Snow Leopard has changed the way it calculates disk capacity from earlier versions of OS X: now it matches the advertised size of the drive you purchased it's actually accurate. When it's running Snow Leopard, your Mac shows you the same gigabyte count on your drives as appear on the manufacturer's box, calculated in base 10, and not in base 2, which is what Leopard, all earlier versions of OS X and all current and earlier versions of Windows uses. This Apple knowledge base article explains:
A 200 GB drive shows 200 GB capacity (for example, if you select the hard drive's icon and choose Get Info from the Finder's File menu, then look at the Capacity line). This means that, for example, if you upgrade from an earlier version of Mac OS X, your drive may show more capacity than in the earlier Mac OS X version.
My own tests confirm: a 4GB Cruzer thumb drive in my Snow Leopard Mac shows up with a capacity of 4.01GB. Leopard reports the same drive's capacity as 3.74GB. (Click to enlarge the screenshot on the right.)
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August 28th, 2009, 18 comments
Merlin Mann's tweet about Snow Leopard hits the nail on the head. Even though David Pogue says this is an "uninformed wisecrack," I'm still calling Snow Leopard a service pack. "Snow Leopard Fixes Leopard's Bugs" is not the headline you're going to see in the NYT or WSJ. Instead the tech press told just the story Apple served them on a silver platter: that they did something noble and interesting and efficient by making their operating system smaller, faster, leaner, and even improved in a couple of "subtle" ways (a word I used). And for only $30!
It's not a very original story. In the wake of a bloated Windows Vista, with netbooks and smartphones offering smaller but less powerful hardware, the "smaller/faster/leaner" sell is the marketing tact of the year, and everyone's trotting it out. Look at Google Chrome (which is taking a piece of Firefox's bloated pie) and Google Chrome OS and Windows 7.
Don't get me wrong, "smaller/faster/leaner" is exactly what Snow Leopard is, but it doesn't deserve a +.1 version number increment. To end users, it's just a faster Leopard. While we all swooned over Apple's cheap-cheap pricing, on further thought, this is an upgrade I'd expect to see come down for free via Software Update.
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August 27th, 2009, 3 comments
Major tech pubs put out their Snow Leopard reviews last night, and they're all predictably positive. Snow Leopard offers lots of small and subtle improvements to your Mac plus gets speed boosts out of even older hardware for an affordable $30. This jibes with my experience of the developer build the last few months. Here's the rundown of reviews I've seen so far:
Best way to see how much faster Snow Leopard is than Leopard doing a simple task like opening a few high-res photos in Preview? This video clip, courtesy of Gizmodo.
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August 27th, 2009, 3 comments
Even though Apple suggests Mac users without Leopard buy the $169 Mac box set to get Snow Leopard, anyone can purchase the $29 Snow Leopard disc and install it. This means the Snow Leopard DVD isn't an "upgrade" at all, it's the full-on Mac OS X operating system for 30 bucks, $100 cheaper than Leopard was. I suspected this was the case, since it is with the developer build I'm running, but The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg confirms it's true for the final release as well:
For owners of Intel-based Macs who are still using the older Tiger version of the Mac OS, Apple is officially making Snow Leopard available only in a “boxed set” that includes other software and costs $169. The reasoning is that these folks never paid the $129 back in 2007 to upgrade to Leopard. But here’s a tip: Apple concedes that the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade will work properly on these Tiger-equipped Macs, so you can save the extra $140.
So if you're jumping from Tiger to Snow Leopard, you saved $129 bucks never purchasing Leopard and you can save $140 skipping the box set. Guess being a late adopter does pay off.
August 26th, 2009, 4 comments
An operating system update like this Friday's release of Mac OS X Snow Leopard is a perfect time to clean up your computer and start fresh. Let's prepare your Mac for this weekend's 10.6 upgrade.
To install Snow Leopard, all you need is the $29 Snow Leopard DVD, no matter what Apple says about the Mac box set. You do, however, do need an Intel-based Mac. you can either go from Leopard using the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade disc ($5 off at Amazon), or go from Tiger using the $169 Mac Box Set ($20 off at Amazon). Here's Apple's full set of system requirements.
In short, there are two ways to get Snow Leopard on your Mac: upgrade and install over Leopard, or wipe your hard drive clean and start from scratch.
Read the rest at Lifehacker »
August 25th, 2009, 7 comments
Apple's latest $29 update to OS X Snow Leopard ships this Friday--but will all of your essential applications run when you install it? This application compatibility list is a good place to find out. I've been running various builds of the Snow Leopard preview for two months now, and every single one of my most important applications (with the exception of one*) is working just fine.
* I happen to use an abandoned beta of Synergy KM to share my mouse and keyboard between my PC and Mac, and its System Preferences pane requires a restart every once in awhile to get it to connect. Overall, a minor annoyance for other worthy updates.
Notable non-compatible apps to look out for from the list: Adobe CS2 Suite, Adobe Photoshop Elements, CoverSutra, Cyberduck, (maybe) Disk Inventory X, Disk Warrior, and (maybe) Google Gears. (Google Gears occasionally does this weird thing where it launches a virtual disk and then closes it again; otherwise it has worked for me. Disk Inventory X also works for me, albeit slowly, in build 10A421a of Snow Leopard.)
“It’s Not As Bad As You Might Think”
August 5th, 2009, 3 comments
Like Bing, this might be the most passionate thing we can say about Windows 7. (For the record, I'm looking forward to upgrading to Win7. However, just putting Vista's sins behind us is indeed a low bar.)
July 9th, 2009, 11 comments
Never been very good at being right on top of breaking tech news, but the other night I happened to be on Twitter when rumors of Google's new Chrome OS came out on Ars Technica less than half an hour before Google dropped the official announcement. (Thanks to ReneePie for the screenshot to the right.)
Much has been written but not much is known yet about what Google Chrome OS will bring--except some stiff competition in the operating system arena. There will be much to say about all this, especially on my upcoming podcast on Google and cloud computing (starting on August 1st at TWiT.tv). Until then, my cronies at Lifehacker did a nice roundup of features we'd love to see when Chrome OS gets released next year.
June 18th, 2009, 4 comments
Former cubicle jockey Jonathon Wilson now works from home, but it's almost exactly as if he's at his desk at the office. In the comments of my recent article on working remotely, Jonathon explains his unconventional setup:
I still have my computer at work, in my office cube (right in the middle of things). I set up a webcam there along with speakers. I have second cam at home, and I simply Skype in to my own cube at work. Skype can be configured to auto-answer, if desired, so my 'cube' Skype simply picks up when I dial in...
... for hours at a time.
I also pipe my home desktop onto my cube's monitor (using VNC). This combination is very close to actually being there in the cube. People walk right up to my cube and talk to me, just like they do when I'm in the office. Because my code's up on the screen, we can work through issues there at my desk just like normal. Similarly, people glancing at my screen can see exactly what I'm doing (coding), so there's never a question of whether I'm actually doing my work from home.
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iPhone and Mac Talk on Copper Robot
June 15th, 2009
Had a blast last night on Mitch Wagner's Second Life interview series, Copper Robot, where TUAW's Mike Rose, ArminasX Saiman, Mitch and I got to chat about Apple's new iPhone and Snow Leopard announcements last week. Thanks to Mitch and my co-panelists for having me; if you missed the event in-world, you can watch and listen to the video here. I also posted a couple of screenshots from the event on Flickr.
June 8th, 2009, 6 comments
Among other things,* Apple announced the release of the next version of Mac OS X dubbed Snow Leopard today. Mac owners can get the 10.6 version hike this fall and it will cost a modest $29, a full $100 less than previous OS X updates.
Why is that? Well, while Snow Leopard has had much work done under the hood, there aren't a whole lot of user-facing new features--and that's what sells operating systems at a $129 price point. Instead, this time for 30 bucks you get "enhancements and refinements" (Apple's words).
Still, even though you might have to dig for them, it looks like a few nice tweaks are on the way with Snow Leopard. Here are the ones I'm most looking forward to.
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May 27th, 2009, 4 comments
Last week I downloaded and installed the Windows 7 release candidate (free for anyone to use till June of next year) and the whole process was much easier because I've got my PC's hard drive well-partitioned.
I've got to be conversant with many operating systems, so right now I'm triple-booting XP, Vista, and Windows 7 on my PC (not to mention using OS X on my MacBook Pro). This is definitely overkill for non-tech writers, but I do think it's a good idea for power users to separate their data onto a standalone partition.
This morning at Lifehacker I ran down exactly how to do that, and what the benefits and drawbacks are. Here's the full article: How to separate your data from Windows on a standalone partition.
May 19th, 2009, 14 comments
Once you get past a simple to-do list and start getting into the heavy-lifting of complex team projects, it's time to look into project management software. My only memories of my project management course in college are dreadful words like milestones, Gantt charts, and critical paths. Still, when you've got a group of people at work on a long-term undertaking with lots of tasks associated with it, you need something to help manage the flow.
I asked my Twitter followers what project management software they use at home and at work, and how they like it on a scale of 1 to 10. I got fewer replies to this question than usual, which makes me think lots of people don't use a PM app to begin with. Out of the 97 replies I did get, 17 said they use 37 Signals' Basecamp (and gave it an 8 out of 10 average rating), 12 said they used Microsoft Project (it averaged a 6.6 out of 10 rating), and, interestingly, 9 people said they like Things (which averaged a 7.7 rating) and OmniFocus (which got a rating of 9), both for Mac OS X.
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Clean Up that Crufty Mac
May 13th, 2009, 1 comment
My MacBook Pro has taken a beating lately: it's been across the country and back, staying awake all night running hourly cron jobs, acting as my media center and development web server, and suffering through multiple software installations and uninstallations. So this week I made with the overdue Mac TLC and wrote it up over at Lifehacker. Here's the full rundown on how to Clean Up and Revive Your Bloated, Sluggish Mac.
ZDNet reports that Snow Leopard has changed the way it calculates disk capacity from earlier versions of OS X: now it matches the advertised size of the drive you purchased 
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