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.

Name	ASUS EEE PC 1000HA	Apple MacBook
Price	£250	£800
Processor	Intel® Atom™ N270, 1.6GHz	Intel Core 2 Duo 2.26GHz
Hard Drive	160GB	250GB
RAM	1GB DDR2 SO-DIMM	2GB DDR3 SDRAM
Screen	13.3-inch – 1280 x 800 pixels	10.1-inch – 1024 x 800 pixels
WIFI	b/g/n	a/b/g/n
Network	10/100 Ethernet	10/100/1000 Ethernet
Bluetooth	Built-in Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR	Built-in Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
USB	£250	£800
Mouse	Multi-Touch trackpad	Multi-Touch trackpad
Optical Drive	None	DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW
SD Card Reader	Yes	No
Audio	Head Phone & Mic-in	Single input/output jack
WebCam	1.3* megapixel	1.3* megapixel
Colours	White, Black, Pink, Blue	White
Weight	1.27Kg	2.13 kg

Admittedly this is a bit like comparing apples to oranges (mind the pun) as the speed of the Macbook is far in a way better than the netbook, but as for features, I think the 1000HA stands up pretty well. For many the £550 difference, could be a months rent and for me, it is a large percentage of my monthly wage. I think personally that I may end up getting a Macbook Pro, but I am not sure that I could talk others into doing the same.

Bluetooth The recent updated added Bluetooth A2PD support. However it doesn’t give support for any other uses of bluetooth. For example the iPod can not to be paired with bluetooth headsets. This is seems like an odd move as the same update added a voice memo app to the home screen. Not allowing audio input seems like a move to stop Skype app from users from using a bluetooth headset and help the sells of the iPhone. The bluetooth can only be used with stereo headphones, it can not be used to send pictures, audio files or anything. The bluetooth connection not even be used to send and recieve contact information. I hope that this will be fixed in later updates.
Fix coverflow This is something that has been broken since version one of the iPod touch/iPhone. If your viewing music and turn the device to it’s side then, it shows the album art in coverflow view. This is very nice and very easy was of finding music, however turn the device while browsering either podcasts or audiobooks, then the current podcast/audiobook is shown surrounded with all the music cover art. It should really show the other podcasts/audiobooks so that they are be browsed this like. This may seem like a small thing, but it hasn’t been fixed in all the updates to the device. Other libraries such as TV shows and movies can not be viewed in coverflow.
Battery indercator Something that was added to the new iPhone update and not the iPod OS 3.0 update was the battery indercator. This seems like such a small thing not to include, but on a portable device, battery life is all important. Not including this is just lazyness on apple’s part.
Remote speakers One of the little known features of iTunes is the ability to add remote speakers is called airtunes. AirTunes takes the music from the iTunes library on your computer and sends it wirelessly to any stereo or speakers in your home. At the moment is only used in Airport Express and Apple TV, but this functionally could be extremely useful in an iPod. If added, you could listen to your music library streamed to your device, while around the home. As many people have more music on their PC when on the iPod itself. This is the reason why this hasn’t been implemented, as it would MIGHT drop the sales of a 32GB version of the iPod touch. I still think apple should add this in, as promotes the airtunes feature which many people do not even know about.
iPod gestures One of the problems with the iPod (and iPhone) is that as a media device, they are not user friendly. For the most part, most iPod/MP3 players are used on the way to work/school or in the gym. At both of these times, your hands are busy, driving, holding things or handling machines. The device needs at least one hand and eyes contact to even change tracks, as the device most be unlocked using the screen, unlike other music plays with buttons. The perfect way of fixing this would to add gestures. Pictured right, the user wouldn’t even need to look at the device.
Alert clock One of the thing that really holds the iPod touch from being a good alarm clock is the fact that songs can not be used in built-in alarm clock. I can not explain why this is, the Ipod touch and iPhone both have a loud speaker that could be used for this. The options that are given are a limited selection of what sound like default text tones from a 1998 nokia phone. As applications can not be set to run in the background, this can only be fixed by apple.

What would you add in if you had the chance? Leave your comments below.

	BBC iPlayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/ The BBC puts all their original content from TV and radio from the last 7 days on the Iplayer. A copy can be downloaded to your PC and kept for 30 days. There is also a web based version that uses flash, like youtube that can be streamed online and can be viewed full screen. It doesn’t only work in your browser, but also works on the IPhone/Ipod Touch, Wii and Media Center/XBOX 360. There are some really good shows on the iplayer, like Mock the week and Nevermind the Buzzcocks. This is an amazing service, easy to use, quick and lots of great content.
	ITV Catchup http://www.itv.com/catchup/ ITV were extremely slow about getting around to putting their content online unlike the other channels. The most important thing to note about ITV’s service is that it requires the installation of Microsoft’s Flash like plug-in called SilverLight. The biggest problem with this service is that there is nothing good on ITV, so there is nothing to watch.
	Channel 4 http://www.channel4.com/watch_online/ Channel 4′s is very impressive offering, as it includes many of the American shows it has the rights to in the UK. My personal favorite is My Name is Earl. The range of content is impressive. Viewing the content requires Windows Media player 11 and a large download of DRM codex. This means that you must be viewed on a Genuine version of Windows XP or higher, meaning I can watch anything on my Macbook.
	Channel 5 http://demand.five.tv/Home.aspx Channel 5 seems pretty good as well, it uses Flash and includes American content like my beloved House and Home and away. The only problem that it requires you to create a user.

These are just all the web based video that is just coming out the UK, there are lots of other services from America, many of which can not be accessed from the UK. There is one site, revision3, is a completely internet based Television network. It is mostly geek shows but there is really entertaining stuff on there like Diggnation, The totally rad show and Tekvilla.

With all those options, you now have no reason not to be glued to your Computer’s screen.

It doesn’t work on every site, which is a bummer, the site has to go out of it’s way to support it but some sites but the most important sites like Facebook, Flickr and Google images. It works extremely with Flickr and Facebook, it is not only does it do a slideshow of all the images on the current page, but all the images in the current album. When looking for an image for a night out, now all I need to do is scroll through the whole album using my mouse. The best bit it that it works with Youtube as well, so you are easierly browser through videos. Best of all on Youtube, becuase it is not reloading adverts and comments on the page, when you view a new video it is so much faster to stream the video.

To me, this pluggin is one of the best piece’s of software that I have ever used. For me it has changed the view I interact with the internet to the point where I can not do with out this pluggin. I have even enabled this site with Piclens, try it on the footer images. I have installed it on all my friend’s computers and blown them away with the amazingness of this simple piece of software. Take a look at it in action.

Well of course, I have had university work to do; I am working on my second year of my degree at the moment so I have had lots to do there. I created a couple of pieces of work that I was extremely proud of. For one of modules, I had to write a Java program which was a massive undertaking. The Java program was a simple piece of network mapping software. It worked out amazing; I can’t say I have been more proud of anything, work wise, than this. Check out a screenshot of it in action on my Flickr account.

Now that I do not have as much work to do, I think it is time to kick back and getting to having some fun. Of course, there are lots of things I can now do like to see films out, going drinking and the like I can now do. I have been enjoying talking to friends and really finding out what people have been up to, that has been amazing. The thing that really is getting to me, is that now that I have got used to working really hard on my university work, I it find it really hard to unwire and just chill out. It is funny that the first thing I wanted to do when all my work was over was to get back on my computer and start playing around with Spacedmonkey.

I think instead of just chilling out, for the next couple of weeks I am going to end up arm deep in writing for my many web sites. I have already added Live search to Spacedmonkey this blog. Try it out today, it really is cool. I also have lots of other plans. So watch this space for updates as I go and first looks at the cool stuff I am doing.

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.

Now you may as, oh, look just another Apple fanboy saying how much he loves his laptop. I have talked before about how much I hate the Iphone. I really hate Apple most of the time, the way that everything is closed off or locked down. But as computer makers, they can not be faulted. It just seems like the people who design Mac PCs use a computer and know what users what. They was things to work seemlessly together and not to have muck around to get things to work. For example, in the built in email client, Mail, when I installed my Gmail account to try it out, all I had to do was put in my email address and password then pessed enter. The settings for popular email services were already saved into the program. Whereas outlook, I still have to enter in the addresses of the servers.

Lots of people talk about the fact that there are no games for Mac’s which isn’t true as games like Gears of War and UT3 coming and there is also Halo. I don’t play PC games anymore anyway anyway, I have an Xbox 360.

To some up, I love my Macbook, but that doesn’t make me a fanboy. I just like having a well design, well thought out computer to use.

The only thing that I do not like about the Xbox 360 is the Achievements. These Achievement points are awarded for the completion of game-specific challenges like completing a level etc. You may think that it is a nice way of getting a reward for completing a game but it is not. It is a about showing off and comparing yourself to your friends. As I am new to the gaming world of Xbox 360, I started off with no points, whereas all my friends that have had the constole for nearly two years now have from 6000-20000 points. As each game, when completed is only has 1000 points, it means to catch up with these guys I have to complete 10 games ompletely.

Other than that I love the thing. If you want to add my on Xbox live my gamertag is Spacedmonkeyj or check out my profile page on the profile site.

If you wanted to play Hexic on your PC on from the MSN games.

Most interesting is a product called Optimus keyboard (pictured left). Every key of the Optimus keyboard is a stand-alone display showing exactly what it is controlling at this very moment. Personally, I don’t think that I am going to be rushing out to get one just yet as, looking at the Art. Lebedev store, the prices that seem to start at $1400, which is a little out of my range. It is still very interesting to look around the everything part of the site and see all the idea they have.

There is also I never nice set of desktop backgrounds, which are entitled posters which are free to download and use on your own computer. Personally I love the background called, New directions and I used it as my background for many months.

It is nice to see stuff like this, with some much of the internet full of rubbish. Hope you enjoyed the site.

I am sure that many of you are starting to think about Christmas, as the adverts seemed to have already started on TV. Many of you will be thinking about getting yourself a nice shinny new 5.5G IPOD that were released a month or two ago. But have you heard about the Red IPOD Nano?

Choose the iPod nano (PRODUCT) RED Special Edition and Apple will give $10 of its purchase price to the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa.

The IPOD is the same price as the other IPODs, at time of writing, £129, from the Apple store. I mean, if you are going to be treating yourself to an IPOD this christmas, you might as well, cut into Apple’s profit to help a good cause. There is more info of the Apple website.