Macgasm

[Download This Episode]

In this episode, we talk about Star Wars: The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition for Mac OS X.

[04.0 MB] [00:12:30] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner] [Subscribe]

It’s happening. Capitalism is starting to take hold of the cellphone market in a way that any consumer would dream. Competition in the market? Check. Price competition? Check. Sales without a contract? Check.

You heard right! Apple’s going to be selling phones without proof of contract in the US of A. Electronistsa is reporting:

Those willing to buy an iPhone 3G or 3GS at full price will purportedly have the freedom to do so at a US store without having a new or existing AT&T plan. The sales would discourage bootleggers only by keeping the phones locked to AT&T and one phone per day.

Other sources are starting to confirm the same with evidence including leaked memos, and Apple store employees dropping the goods. We’re a little uncertain about the validity of the last bit considering Apple store employees generally know very little about what’s going on behind closed doors.

Who knows what this may mean for Apple? Who knows how effective the move will be to combat the Nexus One onslaught? It’s good news for consumers, though. A world without Telco contracts is a world we can get behind.

Memo in Question

Article Via Electronista, 9 to 5, and Apple Insider

Has hell frozen over? It appears as if it has as Apple’s finally given users the ability to “gift” an application. We stopped trying to figure out the iTunes store, and we’re still scratching our heads over why coupon codes for the iPhone only work in the US, but at least things got a little boost today.

We’ve been able to gift audio for a while now, and it seems like Apple’s finally decided it was time to let us gift an application in the iTunes store. It seems to be universal, and it “seems” to work both in the US, and Canadian AppStores. Now there’s a first: Canadians getting access to something in the AppStore at the same time as Americans.

There’s a slew of unzipping and archiving tools on the Mac. Most people have come into contact with Stuffit, and they either love it or hate it. For a while, Stuffit was my go to application, but I eventually got a little tired of it and the way it handled my archiving. It’s a long story. Since I’ve abandoned it, I’ve been hoping around from application to application but haven’t really found a home. I’ve been playing with Rucksack since it was in beta, and finally feel confident when I say it’s now my go to application.

This simple and light weight application actually makes a lot more sense then some of the alternatives out there, and it really sets itself apart from the competition in that respect. It’s intuitive in that it doesn’t make me think about what I want to do. You can either split an archived file, convert it, or extract it. What else would you need? Clearly, the Rucksack developers get that.

You can currently get Rucksack for free through the MacBuzzer giveaway.

Splitting an Archive

A lot of people could benefit from this simple technology. It’s been around for decades, but until recently you really had to know what you were doing to split up your archives. For those who aren’t aware of what splitting an archive means, you essentially take a bunch of files, wrap them in a container file (like a .zip file), and then split that container file into more manageable chunks.

Why is this important?

We live in a world of bandwidth and storage limit. It sucks, but unfortunately it’s a reality. Some people can’t accept big files in their email, and some people can only transfer medium sized files. Splitting your archive lets you break up a giant file and send them in pieces across the internet. It makes your transfers easier to manage.

Converting an Archive

The second great thing this application does is let you convert between archiving types. Have a zip file but need it in a .tar.gz format? Or have a .7z file and realize you have no idea what the heck that is, but that you could use a .rar file? Rucksack lets you convert these files pretty simply. Never again will you have to explain to someone how to extract a Tar.Gz file. You can just convert it for them, turn it into a Zip file, then send them something they can handle.

Keep your sanity. Get Rucksack.

Extracting an Archive

This is the most obvious utility of the application. What would an unarchiving tool be if it wouldn’t let you extract your files from an archive. Rucksack handles the process pretty ingeniously. Instead of dumping the files in your current directory, it lets you drag the expanding archive to what ever location you want in your file system. No longer do you have to cuss out your computer for dumping 100 files on your desktop, Rucksack solves the problem nicely.

Something I’d like to see in a future version

I’d love to be able to unzip things from a contextual menu much like the Archive Utility that’s provided with OS X. If I had the ability to set up my extraction settings in the application, then have the ability to unarchive my files without having to open up RuckSack every single time, I’d be ecstatic. I’m not sure what the feasibility of this would be, but it would certainly make the already great application slightly better.

Not everyone is in love with the app store, but it is a great resource. Instead of having to search all over the internet to find cool apps, we have one mega repository for our applications. Apple maintains a list of the top ten free apps and the top ten paid apps for each category of the app store. Also, the landing page for the app store has the top ten lists for all categories together. To give you a sampling of what it is like, here are the top five free and paid apps for March 22, 2010:

Top Five Paid Apps:

• Where’s Waldo
• AppZilla
• Doodle Jump
• Volt
• iVideoCamera

This top five consists of two games, two utilities, and one entertainment app. All five of these cost $0.99 each.
Top Five Free Apps:

• Simon: Classic
• Chop Chop Ninja
• Cops & Robbers
• A Snake
• Spearfishing 3D

In contrast, this top five consist completely of games. People without cash in their pockets are craving games, it seems.

Image Credit: Jose Arocha, Ludia, Category 5 Games

Apple dropped a major bomb on the Netbook industry when they introduced the iPad at $499.  Prior to the keynote, everyone was speculating that Apple would sell the base model iPad for $999.  I even heard that they might start out at $899, and end up in the lower $1000 range.  Netbook manufacturer’s were ready to sell their already no-margin Netbooks for even less, in hopes to win over the on-the-fence iPad purchasers.  Well, Apple turned the tide with their $499 introductory price, but some are saying that the iPad’s $499 price is still too much.  That said, they haven’t seen the price that HP is willing to go for with their slate product.

A staff writer for electronista is reporting that HP’s Slate will probably sell for $45 more than the base model iPad.  The Slate’s expected price is $544.00.  Here is the quote from electornista:

“The in-progress HP slate may actually be more expensive than the iPad when it goes on sale, a Spanish hands-on has revealed. The tablet is said to be shipping to the US in June, and in Europe would carry a price of 400 euros, or $544. While not a direct US translation, the price could make it more expensive than the $499 iPad even while it ships later.”

What I find strange is that the Slate is using Netbook parts, but they are going to charge more for it.  According to the article, the Slate will employ an Intel Atom processor.  This is the same processor used in Netbooks.  So, I gather that the Slate will be a Netbook with only the screen.  Unless Intel is charging more for Atom Processors, HP might be actually wanting to make a profit on the Slate.  For those who are not familiar with the Intel Atom Processor, it is a low powered processor designed for Netbooks.  The real downside of the Atom is that it is slower than most modern processors.

I used to own a Dell Mini 9 Netbook, and I found that it was only really good for checking email and surfing the net.  Moreover, I found watching streaming videos on the Mini 9 to be far from acceptable quality.  The video would lag behind the audio.  It was probably a combination of the processor and video card.  Fortunately, videos that were loaded on the Mini 9 or on the SD card played fine.

Whatever price HP decides to sell the Slate at, I don’t think it will hurt the iPad in anyway.  Unfortunately, the Slate is going to be running a version of Windows 7 on it that will probably not be fully optimized for the Slate.  As where the iPad is running the iPhone OS that has been optimized to run on the iPad with the A4 chip that Apple designed.  What are your thoughts on this?  I’d like to know.  Feel free to leave a comment in the comments section below.

Photo Credit: HP Consumer Notebook Slate

Article Via electronista

Working as an IT manager can be a fun job, and sometimes it can be rather annoying. A co-worker brought their PC in because it was ‘slow’. This is an older PC, a Pentium III 866MHz machine. I ran spinrite on the two hard drives, and one was in imminent danger of failing, while the other just sat on the first sector and kept reading it. After letting those sit for 72 hours I decided to take the hard drives out and put in a spare I had sitting around.

Instead of re-installing Windows ME on the machine, I chose to install Ubuntu (I had previously talked to this employee and they agreed to go with Linux) but I kept getting error after error whenever I tried to install the operating system. Sometimes it would be a segmentation fault when loading, sometimes it would be unable to write to the disk.  So installing Linux on the machine was going to be a bit of a trial.  I wasn’t able to install from the CD I had currently.

After doing much Googling, I came across a post that said that the media and/or reader was bad (the install CDs). Well, I know this isn’t a cd-reader problem since it could read other CDs I had put into there. So I decided to burn the Linux ISO at a slower speed, and inform others in case they wanted to know how to do this as well.

First thing you need is a blank CD or DVD. The second thing you need is something to burn, whether it be a Linux ISO or memtest86 or an iMovie project you created.

Here are the steps to burning a CD at a lower speed.

1. Open DIsk Utility.



2. Click on Burn.
3. Navigate to which ISO or DMG you wish to burn.



4. Click Burn on the Dialog box. The dialog should appear like this, if you haven’t used any other options before.



5. Click on the Down Arrow in the upper right corner.



6. The burn options should now appear, similar to this one.



7. Change the “Speed” option from Maximum Possible to a slower burning speed.



8. Click on the Burn button in the lower right corner. Your disc will now burn on the CD or DVD you put into the drive.

Burning at a slower speed will take longer, but you are more likely to get a better and more reliable burn. This is particularly useful if you’re making a master CD which well then be used to burn the same disc several times over the course of a few months or years. I would recommend using this technique to anybody who may have burn issues, or if you’re mac sounds like a jet plane when it’s burning a disc at maximum speed

Image Sources are from Mac OS X 10.6.2

[Download This Episode]

In this episode, we talk about multitasking on the iPhone.

[02.7 MB] [00:08:00] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner] [Subscribe]