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Archive for August 2007

Sad But True: The US DOJ Thinks It Did Good Against Microsoft.

In Uncategorized on Friday, 31 August 2007 at 16:55
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See this article. According to the US Department of Justice:

“”competition and consumers have benefited from the final judgments entered because of the Department’s antitrust enforcement efforts against Microsoft.””

How clueless can these people be? Read on to see:

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What Would A Windows Service Pack Be Without Paul Thurrott…

In Uncategorized on Friday, 31 August 2007 at 16:40

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I discussed Vista’s announced first Service pack in an earlier post. Paul Thurrott has also commented on SP1 on his Internet Nexus site. In it he references his lengthy article on his SuperSite for Windows. Seems to me if a service pack requires that much explanation as to why it’s not really a big deal, it is a big deal.

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Oh Goodie, In Another Six Months Vista SP1 Will Be Here.

In Uncategorized on Thursday, 30 August 2007 at 16:30
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Even though Microsoft pleaded with users not to wait for SP1 to upgrade to Vista, it’s clear that many are wary of the new OS from an upgrade standpoint. In fact, given Dell, HP and others are offering XP as an option (and Dell even offers Linux), it seems even new users are wary of Vista.

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More Proof of New iMac Speed Gains.

In General on Tuesday, 28 August 2007 at 14:11
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As I mentioned in a previous post, the overall performance of the latest iMac is amazing given what was considered top of the line just two years ago. A MacNN article points out how the iMac 2.8 GHz Extreme falls just shy of a current Xserve Quad-Core Xeon 2.0GHz. Pretty impressive stuff. Further, the article states:

“the top-end Mid-2007 iMac is faster than the Power Mac G5 (Late 2005) with two dual-core G5 processors at 2.5 GHz”

As in my previous article, this thing is easily besting a Quad-Core 2.5GHz PowerMac from less than two years ago! Wow.

A Detailed iMovie 08 Review, Part II: Wax on, wax off, or how to polish your movie.

In General on Sunday, 26 August 2007 at 23:10



In the first installment of this review I imported video and discussed skimming, selecting clips, trimming clips to the desired length, and changing their order. I then reviewed my work. Now it’s time to polish the movie. The following four items are the most common elements used to polish a movie. They’re available at the far right of the toolbar. The leftmost image in the top picture above shows this section with the audio button (Music and Sound Effects) selected.

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A Detailed iMovie 08 Review, Part I: Timeline? We don’t need no steenkin’ timeline!

In General on Saturday, 25 August 2007 at 11:03


This review is lengthy, so I’m publishing it in two parts. In this first installment I’ll go through the initial description, video import, selection and trimming of the clips for a movie, then review the work so far. In the last installment I’ll polish the work with transitions, titles, sound effects, photos, and other tools, then provide my conclusions.

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Nyuk Nyuk: The Three Stooges And DRM-Free Music Online.

In Uncategorized on Wednesday, 22 August 2007 at 23:06

“What are you, a wise guy?”

What would happen if the three stooges tried to take on Apple’s iTunes Store? Well, now we know, because its happened.

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You should never anthropomorphize computers. They hate that.

In General on Wednesday, 22 August 2007 at 19:41

The title is an anonymous oldie, but a goodie, and fitting for this post. See this article.

Thank you, Alliance for Eating Disorders Awareness, for not knowing the difference between a human and a computer.

Thanks also for ignoring your self-proclaimed mission to “seek to establish easily accessible programs across the nation that allow children and young adults the opportunity to learn about eating disorders”, and instead hounding Apple for cheap publicity.

Eating disorders are very serious, and have not one damn thing to do with the ad for a new, thinner iMac. But you already knew that.

I’m sure it got your site lots of visitors, and many of them probably hit that Donate Now button, which was likely your real purpose. Good work.

PC to Mac Migration, Part 3: iPhoto 08 Review.

In General on Tuesday, 21 August 2007 at 23:18


Unlike my media files, for photos imported from the PC the only metadata I was interested in were keywords. Since they’re in the file I didn’t have to worry about missing any data when imported.

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PC to Mac Migration, Part 2: iTunes Media Transfer

In General on Monday, 20 August 2007 at 23:03

Tackling the transfer of iTunes media from the PC to the Mac is complicated by the fact that not all data in iTunes is stored within the file itself. Date last played, ratings, number of plays, and potentially even album art are stored via an XML file. Simply transferring the data files (i.e., the MP3s and AACs) will not retain this data.

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PC to Mac Migration, Part 1: General Setup and Transfer.

In General on Sunday, 19 August 2007 at 23:25

This is the first of what will be several posts about my experiences with moving from my Windows XP PC to my new iMac.

This first part discusses general setup for the “basics,” such as initial setup, registration, internet connection, and other items that get me ready to do more lengthy data import. Future posts will detail my experiences with iMusic media import, iPhoto import and usage, transferring other document types, and iMovie usage. There may be other posts as well, but the preceding are what I know I’ll be covering.

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My first post from the new iMac.

In General on Friday, 17 August 2007 at 0:41

To be honest, I’ve been so busy with the new iMac (it arrived a day early) that I have nothing to post.

I’m primarily posting to ensure I will have no problems using Firefox Mac with Blogger (Safari doesn’t work with Blogger at all, on the Mac or PC).

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Mac performance: Now THAT’S progress!!

In General on Wednesday, 15 August 2007 at 23:10

PC Magazine published a detailed and enthusiastic review of the new 20″ 2.4GHz iMac.

You can read the review for the superlatives, of which there are many, but the upshot is that it scored a 4.5 (out of 5) and received the magazine’s Editor’s Choice.

In fact, it came close to a perfect rating:

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Mac Daily News asks if Apple should buy Adobe. That would be no.

In Uncategorized on Tuesday, 14 August 2007 at 23:06

In their commentary about a story that postulates Adobe writing office apps, Mac Daily News suggests Apple should buy Adobe. The idea is that they would kill Photoshop on Windows and shake up the industry.

I vote no.

Personally, I think killing Photoshop on windows would deluge Apple with lawsuits, but that’s not my point. My point is that Apple should buy companies that fit into their overall goals, business pursuits, and corporate culture. Is that Adobe? Seems to me Apple and Adobe haven’t exactly been best buddies lately.

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Finally! A PC that’s as good as a Mac!

In Uncategorized on Tuesday, 14 August 2007 at 14:16

At last! Something that will make a PC as good as a Mac on the inside.

Now if we can only get some designers to perform similar magic on the outside

Preparing a new Vista machine not quite like a Mac.

In General on Tuesday, 14 August 2007 at 13:43

Based on past experience, I plan to take my new iMac out of the box and be happily using it in less than 15 minutes. Windows XP isn’t quite that fast, but it’s not too bad.

Looks like Vista is worse:

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Not sure why, but I thought this headline was funny…

In General on Tuesday, 14 August 2007 at 11:51

Heck, I’m not even an intern and I have shot at full-time work. My problem is that I miss every time; I can’t seem to kill the damn thing.

Macs in the enterprise, or maybe not.

In General on Sunday, 12 August 2007 at 23:28

(ACCURACY ALERT: No quotes from John Dvorak or Rob Enderle were used in the making of this post.)

There’s an article in PC World about corporations slowly considering Macs.

The article starts pretty typically, outlining the new iMac configurations and mentioning how they’re price competitive with PCs. Then we get this quote from IDC’s Richard Shim:

“”Apple isn’t necessarily selling on just hardware either,” Shim said. “They’re innovating on the experience that the customer has, and a lot of other vendors are disadvantaged because they haven’t done that.”"

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Apple Mac Software: Spend much less (but get much more) than on a PC.

In General on Friday, 10 August 2007 at 23:15

I wrote earlier about the lower price of the new iMac, but didn’t discuss how I’m able to spend less money on software, and yet get more, as opposed to a PC.

To explain this I’ll recount the primary software on my current Windows PC and the new Mac.

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Microsoft Windows security revisited: One reason I’m Macintosh bound.

In Uncategorized on Wednesday, 8 August 2007 at 23:07

I wrote about Microsoft’s latest security ploy last month (link at the end of this article). This is a “prequel” to that piece…

For the six years prior to January of this year, these were the perceptions about Microsoft Windows’ security:

1) It is weak.
2) XP SP2 is going to fix it.
3) It is weak.
4) Internet Explorer 7.0 is going to fix it.
5) It is weak.
6) Vista is going to fix it.

Those are simple, but they sum it up well.

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A quick price comparison between a new iMac 24" and a Dell XPS 410.

In General on Tuesday, 7 August 2007 at 23:46

In a previous post I discussed the lower price of a high-end iMac (the 24″ model), and that I actually bought one.

For those of you who may want to regale me with tales of much cheaper comparable PCs, I priced a similar system at Dell for comparison.

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Wow! Apple really lowered the price for a high-end iMac.

In General on Tuesday, 7 August 2007 at 12:33

The new iMac has arrived, as expected. It’s thinner and, in my opinion, much better looking.

I always felt the white frame around the screen was a bit of a distraction, but now the chassis is aluminum, and there’s a beautiful black border around the screen. This not only looks great but also hides the built-in camera and microphone for an even smoother, cleaner finish.

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Microsoft dumping their OS in China, but to what purpose?

In Uncategorized on Monday, 6 August 2007 at 23:04

To set the stage for this article, consider the following:

From the above it doesn’t take a genius to see that Microsoft is trying hard to get a Microsoft OS, any Microsoft OS, on PCs in China. My question is simply this: Why?

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Fake Steve Jobs is unmasked: The reaction so far is a bit depressing.

In General on Sunday, 5 August 2007 at 23:16

The anonymous writer of The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs (a.k.a. Fake Steve Jobs or FSJ) has been identified.

OK, so what’s next? Sadly, I’ve seen posts about Daniel Lyons’ writing as FSJ that are kind of bleak.

For example, Daring Fireball had this to say:

“Lots of scathing critiques and mockery of Fortune and BusinessWeek (and their writers…) Not as much about Forbes, and nothing personally mocking any particular Forbes writers.”

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I’m back. A quick look at some events this past week.

In General on Saturday, 4 August 2007 at 8:27

Well, I’m back from the “out of town” portion of my vacation. I still have a few days off and some projects planned at home, but I’ll get to blogging as well. For my first post since coming back I’ll highlight some of the stuff that went on while I was gone. This is stuff I may have written complete posts about had I been here.

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