I have been known as a bit of an Apple fan boy in the past, as I am a massive fan of the software, which I think is hands down better than anything on the Windows platform. Now I am working, I thought it was time to buy myself a new laptop, as my current Macbook has seen better days. But when I looked at the newly released Macbook, it made me think. The newly released white Macbook, has gone up from £700 to £800, which is a bold move to make as we are in the middle of a recession and seeing that average prices on laptops have gone down from £600 to £300 in recent years.
This overpricing of hardware, is known as the Apple Tax. Apple tries to make it impossible to install their OS (OSX) onto other vendor’s hardware. But there are groups that are working on hacking the software to work on any hardware. These computers are called Hackintoshes. The first main stream hackintosh device, was the Dell Mini 9, which I know friends have successfully installed Mac OSX on. Since then a number of netbooks have been hacked to run Mac OSX. In my research for this post, I found an impressively detailed compatibility chart for hackintoshs. With this number of netbooks being able to run Mac OSX, the question has to be asked, how does the Macbook shape up to other laptops. Below is a table comparing the Macbook to one of the more expensive netbooks in the compatibility charts.
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Mobile phones are an important part of all of our lives these days, but many of us don’t think about them very much. But with the iPhone and other so called smart phones, these devices are now not only phones but music players, GPS devices and cameras. This is something that I simply don’t agree with, for the simplest of reasons and it is two words, battery life. Battery life on phones is bad enough already, but by adding all this functionality means that the device is used for so many different things that the battery life can never match up. For example if you use your phone as a music player for any length of time, the battery will be dead by the end of the day. By putting these devices together, it means that your phone maybe able to do lots of things, but none of them well, a jack of all trades.
What is the reason for this? People complain that they don’t want to carry around lots of devices with them. How lazy are these people? Music players like the iPod Nano or creative zen series fit easily in a jacket pocket with a phone. It is not like anyone carries a brief case anymore, all most people have to carry these days, is phone,wallet and keys. You can’t carry a music player to? Personally, I have a Nokia phone, iPod touch and a Casio camera, which is how I like it. Each device is amazing what it does by itself, I can’t see how putting these devices together would give me any gain what so ever. But with all these devices coming together, the standalone devices may stop being sold. There is already talk about getting rid of the iPod Classic. Well I tell these device makers, I am not buying your toaster phone!
I have been noted in saying that I love my iPod touch. It has been an extremely useful tool for me as a student to have portable computer in my pocket. I have a second generation iPod touch and recently they update the software version 3.0, which cost £5.99. But once I installed the update, I was extremely disappointed. It added many new features, such as copy and paste, but didn’t fix problems with the device that already exists. What follows is a list of a couple of features that were missing in the update that I would have liked to see on the iPod Touch (not iPhone).
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With many of my friends, either traveling lot or at University, it is not always easy to get to a TV set. But most people have a laptop with them at all times(or is that just me) so is there a way of using the screen and the internet to catch-up on what I missed. This is a question I am asked all that time and the answer is yes. More than ever, more companies are putting their programming online. All five main channels in the UK are doing this. Here are some of the best and how to get them.
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Normally I don’t write posts on my web site personal site about computers, I have another blog called ComputingCorner for that but this time, I don’t feel like I can help myself. For Christmas I was lucky enough to get myself a brand new Macbook and I most admit that I love this thing. As a person that does computing and a little web designing this thing is prefect. It really has changed my life at University to have a working laptop in my lectures. The only thing that I have not enjoyed about this wonderful computer is the number of people that talk to me about it. I can’t seem to get it out of my bag without someone wanting to explain why their laptop is better. I am really am sick of it. The number of people that talk rubbish about Apple’s computers, is amazing. Some of these people have shocked me with what they think you can’t do or just sillyness. For example, you guy told me that you can not print on a Mac. I am sorry but WHAT! I have installed three printers on my macbook and have not had a single problem with any of them. In fact it was easier than installing a print on Windows. I have also heard that Macs are really slow, which is the stupidest thing I have ever heard as my macbook boots and runs faster than most high end Windows laptops.
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In case you didn’t heard, Apple’s much fated touch screen mobile phone the Iphone has finally hit the UK. It has only been a matter of days and I am already sick of the thing. The amount of press coverage this stupid little device has got makes me want to be ill. It seems to turn everyone from the press to the nerds into small children, who want to play with a new shiny toy. I can’t believe how much people are talking about this one thing. Has a fan of new and technology news particularly, the coverage of this small device has blown me away. The best example of this is BBC news website, which is one of the most trusted news web sites in the world, wrote a review. I asked you, how on earth is a review of a phone, news? I try and keep up to date with all the new stuff happening in the world of tech, but the news is all about the iphone. I used to really used to enjoy listening to tech podcasts like Buzz out loud and TWIT but it is nothing but pointless detail about this stupid phone and it is making my life a living hell.
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These days it is not always easy to find the time to read, specially in Britain, with the longest working hours in Europe. It is not always easy to find the right time or novel to sit back and read for fun. But if you enjoy a good novel but don’t have the time ( or for that fact money) to sit down with a good book, there is an answer. The site is called LibraVox, that has volunteer based service that has tonnes for free audio books to downloaded and used how you like.
How they do it ( quote from LibriVox site)
LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain, and then we release the audio files back onto the net (through a podcast, catalog, and bit torrents). We are a totally volunteer, open source, free content, public domain project, and we operate almost exclusively through Internet communications. We have a flat structure, designed to let people do just what they want to do, but we do have several slightly different types of volunteers:
The site only reads only out of copyright books, from sources like gutenberg, so while looking at the titles on offer, remember there will be no Harry Potter or da vinci code. There are still lots of really cool titles, including some of my personal which are
The site has a wonderful catalog system that allows for easy searching, so you can find something that takes your interest. There site also has a Podcast, which is updates weekly, of little shorts and poems. This is a nice site, made by people that give up there time to help others enjoy literature.
Now that everyone seems to have got an IPOD or other mp3 player these days and this is a wonderful idea for helping people access classic stories/novels.
