http://www.macdiscussion.com Your one stop for apple opinion, news, and reviews http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=267 I was recently given a Targus Chill Mat as a present by my other half, mostly to quit my 3-year whine about how hot my 17” Mac PowerBook gets on many an occasion. ... Vincent Roman 2006-03-07 11:59:33 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=266 It seems that Apple has jumped onto the bandwagon of many other companies that have online services or items to offer by self promoting their goods through an almost banner type window in the updated iTunes interface. Sadly also following the trends of other companies the latest iTunes update phones home with information about exactly what you are playing by default, which many consider to be a bad thing. Being the geek that I am I did some more digging on the communications involved and found s ... Mark Guertin 2006-01-11 11:56:48 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=265 Hardware firewalls are a very important part of any business or home network in this day and age. The quest for me was to find an affordable firewall/router combination that was robust, covered some or all of my company's requirements for Sabranes Oxley, and that would work well in an all Macintosh environment. After much research and reading I decided to go with the Symantec Gateway Security 360R. It fit all of our requirements after reading all the available information and was priced ... Mark Guertin 2005-08-26 11:38:11 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=264 Introduction ... Vincent Roman 2005-08-20 16:29:11 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=263 How could you not just fall in love with a song title such as: "Slaughterhouse/Chase Sequence", or a band with a name like "Kiss the Anus of a Black Cat". And no, I am not pulling your leg. Just ask the guys at Aquarius Records and they will validate it for me. Anyhow, is there nothing more annoying than the half-whacked names of such bands appearing in the iChat status message of your buddies? I should know, I get messages from my friends all the time when ... Vincent Roman 2005-08-20 12:19:58 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=262 Recently, while doing research as to why my SuperDrive was having problems burning at advertised speeds I came across this locked down thread on the Apple Discussions forum. With slightly over 300 posts in the thread, and seemingly no response from Apple, I, for one, find it very disheartening that the end users are paying for bad decisions Apple made in their design process and Apple is not acknowledging the issue as a real issue. ... Mark Guertin 2005-08-19 10:48:18 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=261 The idea of putting subway maps onto the iPod, and the recently created website for such content are a stroke of pure genius. Congratulations to that genius, Little Bill. ... Vincent Roman 2005-08-18 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=260 Yesterday I read an article by Jim Turley entitled: "iPod: Just a hard disk with a 'play' button." In it, he rather childishly picks through a list of criticisms of the iPod, and iTunes in particular, that at best can only described as a catalogue of human errors. ... Vincent Roman 2005-08-17 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=259 Sung to the tune of the Beverly Hillbillies theme ... ... Mark Guertin 2005-08-16 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=258 It's an exciting time of year for all of us who are affectionately known as 'mac geeks'. It's the night before expo. Are all the rumors floating around true? It's always hard to say, but in the interest lightheartedness at a time when some of the more hardcore of us take things way too seriously, I'd like to present this poem to all my fellow mac geeks. ... Mark Guertin 2005-08-15 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=257 There has been a lot of hype lately about a new piece of Mac OSX malware that is called opener. I'd like to take a few moments of your time to dispel the rumors about this piece of code and it's effects for the OSX community. There are a few sites out there that have been running stories on it. The main thread seems to have been started at macintouch and there is a lot of valuable information in that particular thread, but it seems that other sites have picked up on it and started t ... Mark Guertin 2005-08-14 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=256 If you are like many other users of recent Mac hardware, there's something coming up quite rapidly that you might want to be aware of with the Apple 2x speed SuperDrives, that came in very many machines. You may be in the same boat I am in at work right, and that is the 1x boat, even if you are using any new 2x media (or faster). ... Mark Guertin 2005-08-13 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=255 With the upstart of the browser, a lot of Macs have gained entry through previously closed doors. However, the corporate landscape still locks out many Mac users despite the availability of thin clients. ... Kevin Ledgister 2005-08-12 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=254 I’ve used a Dell laptop in a corporate environment for the last two-and-a-half years and added a 12” Apple PowerBook to the mix six months ago. Recently, I was given a brand new Dell laptop running Windows XP and couldn’t help but notice the differences between the two. ... Kevin Ledgister 2005-08-11 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=253 When Apple first announced the technology roadmap for OS X with Unix underpinnings, many people wondered why Apple didn’t choose Linux to form its foundation. But that question is moot as the larger, and more imminent question is how Apple will leverage the gaining popularity of Linux for its own advantage. ... Kevin Ledgister 2005-08-10 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=252 You say in your press kit that Intego "offers a full range of solutions for Macintosh ... covering every aspect of Internet security", does this imply that if a Mac user were to buy a full suite of the company's products that they would have nothing to fear from any internet based threats? ... Vincent Roman 2005-08-09 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=251 A few years back I wrote an op-ed piece suggesting that IBM license Mac OS X and create IBM-branded Mac boxes to be sold only the business market. I believe that IBM is close to that reality in concept, if not in detail. ... Kevin Ledgister 2005-08-08 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=250 First things first, I have to say congratulations to Aaron for writing the guide that has been missing for an ever growing genre to computing, and that is people that are very new to the whole computing experience. Many people that read this article may not understand this predicament immediately as they take their computing experience by osmosis much for granted. Many people have been exposed to and/or used computers in their everyday lives for a long time, so making a transition into your ow ... Mark Guertin 2005-08-07 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=249 Yes indeed, the drive is gone. It was a valiant effort on the parts of many people, but there was just no rescuing the ill-fated FW800 drive once Panther sunk it's teeth into it. I must be forthcoming though, the drive wasn't mine, but belonged to a colleague at work. I was merely the person who spent much energy and time to try and rescue at least a morsel of data from it. ... Mark Guertin 2005-08-06 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=248 Apple is making big and bold moves in grabbing market share, especially in the business world. With Panther just around the corner and the ever cooler line of machines they offer things can only look up from here. Apple has even started to move into the enterprise markets, with things like OSX Server and the Xserve line of servers. This is fantastic, but there is one place that Apple is sorely lacking in this move towards enterprise, and it is Enterprise caliber applications. ... Mark Guertin 2005-08-05 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=247 During the last two years, I have spent increasing amounts of time in the foothills of the US Rockies, west of Denver, in a place called Coal Creek Canyon. The canyon differs in so many ways from the urban environment of London that its refreshing to be able to escape there, even if it is to carry on the IT consulting business that takes me through out Europe and the USA. One thing that is clear to me in this area, and increasingly so as you head further into the mountains towards the remoter a ... Vincent Roman 2005-08-04 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=245 ... Mark Guertin 2005-08-02 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=244 This is a startling reality in today's digital world, and most people don't realize how much havoc it can cause when they decide that your are not following the rules. Let me tell you a little bit about this. ... Mark Guertin 2005-08-01 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=243 Apple has done something truly brilliant once again, which it took me a little while to realize, but let me fill you in on it. Apple has shifted their focus in the recent years, streamlining both their hardware and their software offerings. Yes, I did say streamlining their software offerings even though they have more software on the table right now than they have ever had, because things could have been greatly different. Let me explain. ... Mark Guertin 2005-07-31 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=242 Verisign has been accused of being very anti competitive with the debut of their 'site finder', which basically means that any top level domain (.com, .net, .org) that is not found on the internet will no longer tell you it's not found, but it will instead load a page on their website telling you that the site cannot be found and of course offer you links to use their search engine to find what you are looking for. This is most definately not the 'proper' way for a gove ... Mark Guertin 2005-07-30 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=240 Give a brief bio-view of yourself... I was born and raised in Rochester, NY where I currently live today. I have attended most of the local colleges here for one thing or another, mainly photography. I attended Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and earned my bachelors degree in Industrial Design. After graduation in 1993, I began working for a computer reseller, demoing Alias|Wavefront's PowerAnimator for several years. This gave me an education using some of the most powerfu ... Vincent Roman 2005-07-28 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=239 Is it helping you add new tricks to your skill set & what have you enjoyed working on most so far @ Ambrosia? Everyday is a challenge really... I work with a variety of programmers who have their own game engines (2D or 3D) that work a certain way and have different constraints and what not. So delivering the work is always different for each game. Each game is usually a step apart from the other too. So I always have something new and interesting to work with. I definitely get challeng ... Vincent Roman 2005-07-27 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=238 As hard drives grow in size on what seems to be a monthly basis, one can't help but be tempted to splash out the few dollars required in order to get yourself a nice large hard drive perhaps 160gb. Heck even the new G5's are shipping with 160GB as standard! ... Vincent Roman 2005-07-26 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=237 If you're anything like me, or a handful of other people out there using Macs today, then the chances are that you busily use iTunes to encode music, store, organise and play it, as well as now buy it! ... Vincent Roman 2005-07-25 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=236 When iChat AV first hit the download streams and it was reported to only support FireWire web cams such as Apple's very own iSight, one couldn't help but feel that many USB web cammers would feel hard done by and left out in the cold. I being one of them! ... Vincent Roman 2005-07-24 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=235 A long time ago, one of the biggest dilemmas for me moving to Mac OSX from OS9 was how I was going to handle my mail. Ordinarily, you would just startup mail and Bob's your uncle. If only it was so simple! ... Vincent Roman 2005-07-23 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=234 Well, as you may have guessed from the article title, my iPod recently celebrated it's first birthday (it's actually 13 months old today). This brought about mixed feelings for me. As you will see from this article. ... Mark Guertin 2005-07-22 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=233 Introduction ... Josh Whitver 2005-07-21 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=232 Well it has finally happened, Apple has entered the enterprise market with their debut product. For return readers you may remember that about two and one half years ago I was complaining that Apple needed this, and 'lo and behold here it is. (side note: to all those that publicly criticized my claims of Apple doing this who has the last laugh now ;) ... Mark Guertin 2005-07-20 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=231 Apple today introduced the eMac, a new computer aimed at the education market. Essentially an original iMac with a 17" CRT, this machine represents a bit of a backtracking on Apple's part; the company had claimed, upon the introduction of the G4 iMac, that CRTs were "dead." ... Josh Whitver 2005-07-19 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=230 After Apple's last teaser statements leading up to the iPod announcement every Mac user who ever looked at a Newton and smiled has been drooling as Apple branded PDA images dance in their heads. I'll admit, I was one of them. I knew full well Apple would not launch a PDA as the economy drooped, but I still wanted to see one. Apple defined the concept of the Personal Digital Assistant. And in many ways the market has still not gotten as close to Apple's vision as Apple did with ... David M. Ensteness 2005-07-18 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=229 ... Mark Guertin 2005-07-17 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=228 Yellow Dog Linux, one of the major PPC/Linux distributions is just releasing their long awaited Yellow Dog Linux 2.0. In the following interview I speak with Co-Founder and CIO Dan Burcaw on their new release, the PPC/Linux Community, and more. Mark It's exciting to see the long awaited YDL 2.0 around the corner. What kind of things do we have in store? Dan 2.0 brings us back up to speed with the latest and greatest in the linux world. We introduce X ... Mark Guertin 2005-07-16 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=227 Mark I am curious about the new installer. Is it perl script with a front end or something new? Dan Our new installer is python based. It has a common frontend api. We ship with two different frontends: newt and gtk, so basically the same code works in both environments. But it maintains enough traits similar to the old RH installer that it should be very familar to current users...but simplified in many ways for new users. Mark So it is definitely somethi ... Mark Guertin 2005-07-15 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=226 Mark Linux on the ppc is a very 'tight' community. It is nice to see people from various distro's work together to make PPC/Linux better for all of us. Does YDL take an active part in the PPC/Linux community? Dan :-) Absolutely. That's a lot of my role in the company. I started out as a member of the linux community...so I understand it. My job has a lot to do with making sure our direction benefits the whole. We often come up with ideas, etc. and ask ... Mark Guertin 2005-07-14 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=225 Sometimes, looking back on a month can really be interesting. February 2001 was such an example. The previous month meant a lot of things that made history for Macintosh. ... Yan Feng 2005-07-13 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=224 It's good to be back and writing once again. After a short hiatus my hectic schedule has now allowed me some more time to rant, so here it is! I've been keeping my tongue (and keyboard) in check lately, so this may not be pretty. ... Mark Guertin 2005-07-12 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=223 MacSoft is a company that I hate to love.  On the one hand, they do produce Macintosh games – something that’s not exactly common these days.  But they also cancelled Worms Armageddon, something for which they can never be forgiven.  Also, their games tend to be of dubious quality, as is the case with Monopoly. ... Josh Whitver 2005-07-11 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=222 Digital media is in, and one sector of that area that is now just coming of age is streaming media. With powerful processors like the G3, G4, and the Intel Pentium line III-IV (just to name a few) plus factoring in broadband Internet access, streaming media is making its way into the hands of consumers. Software vendors with their advanced video compression codecs, formulates for an impressive transport for content delivery Apple, Real, and Microsoft are waging war for these users. I want to ... Louis Pierce 2005-07-10 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=221 Yesterday, Apple gave a conference call where it warned that the first fiscal quarter of 2001 would stink like last month's unwashed gym shorts. Apple blamed this news on a number of things: First, there's a lot of unsold inventory in the channels, and to get rid of it, Apple has had to reduce prices to the point where they're really not making much of a profit per Mac. Second, the PC industry as a whole is slowing down, and Apple had a comparatively tiny slice of that pie to begi ... Josh Whitver 2005-07-09 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=220 Mac OS X has been some kind of cruel hoax, if you ask me. I'm talking already about the Beta version. It has been a thirty-dollar joke, some huge space hogger as I believe, and potentially dangerous. Just another day I heard about somebody talking about it on their beige Power Macintosh G3. The person said he had to repartition the entire hard drive to use the Beta. Apple, we have already repartitioned or reformatted our hard drives when you released Mac OS 8.1 with HFS+. We don't need ... Yan Feng 2005-07-08 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=219 In a press release dated November 15, 2000, Jason Haas of LinuxPPC announced the release of a public beta of the newest LinuxPPC distribution. Important information in the notes area states: "Before to installing, the user should read the pre and post-installation notes. After installing, the user will need to configure the system. Keyboard emulation of the middle and right mouse buttons is now radically different than in previous distributions, and users must boot from a new kernel that ... Mark Guertin 2005-07-07 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=218 * This article is my viewpoint on a column on dot-coms in a Mac magazine, Macworld. * ... Yan Feng 2005-07-06 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=217 Many Mac users still remember the sleek, cool Word 5. Word 5.1 added a simple toolbar at the top of the screen, which could be moved to any other side of the screen. We expected a great Word 6. Instead, what we got was a fat, massive 3D-greatly-beveled-push-button-mad interface, gigantic menus without meaning, stupid dialogue boxes with PC-like code, and terribly small font sizes. The whole application was also a MASSIVE MEMORY AND SPEED HOG. It was so bad, that you had more users doing two thin ... Yan Feng 2005-07-05 13:55:19 http://macdiscussion.com/article_show.php3?article_id_var=216 Yes I did it too. I jumped on the massive amounts of downloads as soon as the public pre release of Quicktime 5 was announced, and I did not get what I expected at all. After hearing the keynote (sort of through all the drop outs) I immediately went to the Apple site and downloaded and installed the preview release. I like living in the bleeding edge, and with this release that is exactly what you get, the bleeding edge. ... Mark Guertin 2005-07-04 13:55:19