Macgasm » Ranting

Google Speak to Search Available, and it doesn’t like Canadians.

Joshua Schnell — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:00:26 +0000

Like every other location based application on the Appstore, Canadians in any city not named Toronto get the shaft. It’s annoying that the national capital, once hailed as the Silicon Valley of the North, gets little integration into these applications. It makes me weep at night. The location-based findings for the Google speak to search application is cool, in concept, but is it working for anyone outside of San Francisco? It’s certainly not working in Ottawa, unless I actually add “in Ottawa, Ontario” to the search string. I might say “aboot” instead of “about,” but location-based searches have nothing to do with how I’m saying something, and everything to do with the GPS that’s built into it.

Looks like it’s more of the same for us Non-Americans–second class citizens to the north yet again. It’s not like we haven’t grown accustomed to it by now. I mean, when will we get Grand Central access? Not likely anytime soon.

*Quick aside: I tried searching for Macgasm and I got forwarded to some WWE Smackdown page. As much as I like to think we lay the smackdown around here on occasion, I have a hard time seeing how the two terms even sound remotely alike.

Safari updated to 3.2

Wayne Dixon — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:00:39 +0000

Apple released an update to their Webkit based browser, Safari. The new version is 3.2. This update is available for Windows , OS X 10.4 Tiger and Leopard .

The update has eleven total fixes. seven of these fixes are Windows only and the other four are for OS X 10.4, 10.5 and Windows.

For the geekier crowd, like myself, here is the link to the detailed bug fixes from Apple.

So go and do your Software Update to get the latest version.

World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich King expansion launched

Daniel Nowak — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:11:44 +0000

If you are a World of Warcraft fan, then today is that day you have been waiting for. The new expansion of the game has been released. With the exception of a small glitch creating a new Dealth Knight the upgrade process has been pretty much seamless. My first impression is that Blizzard has done an excellent job updating graphics and making the new world look excellent.

I think the biggest change in the game has been Blizzard’s attempt to make the game more fun. They have overhauled how most of the characters are played in an attempt to make each character more fun. If you enjoyed playing Warcraft before but quit for some reason, this might be the time to pick it back up.

While writing this short post, I logged out of the game. When I attempted to log back in, I found the servers were at capacity. It seems to be affecting more servers than just mine and that Blizzard has lowered the capacity of each game server. Unfortunately, with the wait to get into the game, I have to say that Blizzard has made a major mistake. Server queues are like giving someone a new electronic toy for Christmas but leaving out the batteries.

Random Posts

Lame Duck Crossover: Is it worth it?

Wayne Dixon — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:42:52 +0000

The President of Codeweavers, the makers of Crossover for the Mac, gave President George W. Bush a challenge to complete one of ten goals during the rest of his Lame Duck presidency. One of the goals set was for gas to hit $2.80 a gallon. Guess what happened. The price hit $2.79 in St. Paul, Minnesota. So, Jon Parshall lived up his end of the bargain and gave away Crossover for the Mac on October 28, 2008. He gave away one serial for Crossover, per person. I was one of those who opted for the free copy to try it out.

I installed it and gave it a go. It’s not a bad program. The basic idea of Crossover is to have the ability to run windows applications without the need for an entire Virtual Machine environment. So, being a gamer, I thought I’d try one of the thing that I miss the most from the Mac: Steam.

Crossover did install Steam from Valve, when I asked to do so, but there are a few things that aren’t working like they should.

I installed Steam, and played it for a while and it worked, and I did get up to part 4 in Half-Life (the part where you end up fighting the army) before I had to shut it down.

Gamers, as I’m sure most of you might know, get an itch to play the games that they want. I had this itch to continue blowing the crap out of the military soldiers and continuing my quest within Black Mesa. Trying to scratch this itch I went to load steam up again today, and to my horror and sheer disappointment, all of the installs I had done, are now gone. I haven’t changed anything nor have I deleted anything from my hard drive, so I don’t know why the hell it would do that.

This irked me beyond most other things. Not for the fact that the time I spent went to nothing, but that when I attempted to redo what got deleted and Crossover will no longer install any software. I can no longer manage any ‘bottles’ (basically containers that hold the basic Windows software that the program will need). Quitting the program and restarting doesn’t help, neither does rebooting the entire computer.

As much as I would like to be able to recommend Crossover, I cannot. As well as deleting my hard work, gaming with the application is unbearably slow, when it does work, not in terms of just load times, but in terms of the game freezing every 30 seconds or so, for 5 to 10 seconds. This is just unacceptable, and if any other Mac App would do this, nobody would tolerate it.

If you need to load office it might work, but my focus was on gaming and getting some of the Windows based games to work so I can further amortize the investment made in these games since before my switch to the Apple platform.

The software did come with a free year of support, but I do not think I will be renewing it when the time comes next year. I’d recommend sticking with Parallels, VMWare Fusion, or Virtual Box to run the games. I can fully understand if the game was something like Crysis or anything from within the last 18 months, but this is the original Half-Life, and it will not work. Again, either run A Virtual Machine program, or run Windows (if you have to) in boot camp.

Crossover to the free side!

Keyboard hack for the iPhone!

Corey Harris — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 01:34:16 +0000

Since the iPhone came out, one of the biggest complaints has been the lack of a real keyboard. I personally have never been upset about this, however, this is a complaint that I have heard a lot. Well, now it looks like it is possible to hook up an actual mini keyboard to your iPhone! This is making its rounds now for a couple of days, but there are pictures of a hacked iPhone attached and working with a mini keyboard. Could this be something that we see being more popular in the future with the iPhone? That I cannot answer. After looking at the pictures over and over again, I am thinking that this might be a good thing for Apple to jump onto. If Apple were to adopt this casing and really make it slick, and then offer it to the public, maybe even more people would switch. The problem, of course, would be losing the thinness of the iPhone. That would be the killing point of the entire thing. The iPhone would lose its slick stylish look. But if you had the option to spend additional money on a keyboard that would work on your iPhone, would you do it? Personally, I am more than happy with my virtual keyboard. I have never had an issue with it, and I rarely have a typo or miss a word, But if you are old school, this may be something you cross your fingers over that Apple might adopt someday, and someday soon.

Apple addressing trackpad issues

Joshua Schnell — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:00:03 +0000

It’s been well documented that Apple’s been having some quality control issues over the last year. Mobile Me is still being wonky, the iPhone 3G activation process didn’t go so well, the AppStore NDA debacle and take downs, and now glass trackpad issues.

What Apple has done really well, however, is fill us in on what has been going on, and taken the problems seriously. The blame might not be to the liking of most reporters or pundits, but how many other companies call customers who have reported issues? It doesn’t happen to often that’s for sure. Maybe Applecare should be changed to AppleCare’s.

Glass trackpads have been acting wonky as well, and Apple has apparently heard consumer outcrys. A blogger over at bigzaphod.org took it upon himself to email that trusty steve@apple.com address. He got a phone call from someone who clearly had previous knowledge of the issues, whom also alluded to the fact that Apple was researching the issue.

“He told me that Apple is researching the clicking issue. They have no resolution of it and, of course, there’s not really an official acknowledgment of it, but they are checking into it because they’ve heard the complaint frequently”

There’s a rule of thumb when dealing with new products, that seem to be holding true for Apple as well these days. When buying a first reivision of a new model (of anything really), you should be ready to have some issues. It’s not fair, and it should have come that, but new has become synonymous with wonky. Apple has been a whole lot of new lately, and even more wonky. But, take solace…they’re working on it!

What happens when you’re getting pounded by the competition?

Joshua Schnell — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 13:00:47 +0000

You fight back by putting up a recording booth where you can record your own “I’m a PC” ad in front of all of your competition’s stores. I’m not sure how effective it is to throw these booths up. If someone’s in the Apple store or heading to an Apple store, there’s probably a very good chance that they have made up their mind already. You’d probably be more effective sticking these booths right next to the calculator aisle (ZING?). A dorky ad and recording booth is not going to change my mind, would it change yours? I mean, you could either play with sexy computers in the store, or you could go and record an ad? What would you choose? Microsoft would come off a lot better if they just ignored Apple completely. Give it up guys. Go do your own thing because trying to beat someone at their own game doesn’t exactly work. It could be coincidence, or it could be that Microsoft just spent a lot of money on an ad campaign just as bad as the Seinfield ones. My guess is that it’s the later more than it’s the aforementioned “coincidence”. What do you think about the ads? Do you think they’ll be effective?

Here’s a call to arms! I’d love to see some people record an “I’m a Mac” ad at one of these booths with their isights. That would make my month.

There won’t be a Safari worth of browsers on the iPhone.

Joshua Schnell — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 19:00:48 +0000

I had a very interesting chat with one of our new bloggers (who shall remain nameless until she introduces herself. *ahem* *ahem*) about how cool some of the new android applications are. She said she might be “over” the iPhone. It got me thinking a little bit. Considering there is a kill switch built in to the android phones as well as the iPhones, why the heck does their need to be an application approval process? I mean, if something is wreaking havoc on the infrastructure for the carriers, it’ll be pretty quick to remotely kill it. The application approval process has pretty much become another name for stymying innovation. I’d much rather an application that could scan bar codes and give me price comparisons than two hundred flashlight applications.

Opera has become the last victim of Apple’s approval process. Something about javascript interpreters being against the SDK. Now, I am as big of a fanboi as the rest of you guys, but this is getting to be ridiculous. This whole thing has shades of the antitrust case that was launched by the Department of Justice against Microsoft back in 1998. I have a very hard time seeing how Apple is going to be able to avoid a similar lawsuit if this keeps happening.

Stymieing innovation isn’t apple’s catch phrase, and thinking different is. Please Apple, show us you’re not the Microsoft of 1998 all over again. The iPhone is awesome, but, it can be uberawesome if you let developers do their thing.

New Mac Kid On The Block

Chrissie Moulding — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:42:30 +0000

Hey readers. I’m Chrissie, the new inductee into the fold of Macgasm bloggers.

I am best described as a crafty geek girl who lives ɹǝpun uʍop - I am a mac user and social media addict. One of my pet peeves is when people use the word evangelist to describe themselves. I will just say that I do my bit to preach what I practice. That is, Mac love.

I have used computers on Mac, Linux and Windows platforms. My first apple experiences were fighting the geek guys at school for use of the only Apple Mac in the classroom. Later at University, the opposite occurred - a whole room of Macs and only one other person (that I knew of) used the Mac computer lab. The Mac lab was outnumbered 7:1 by the Windows PC labs. I never had to wait to use a computer to complete an assignment (unlike my course buddies).

It took me a while to own my very own Apple Mac, but when that day arrived it truly was love at first byte.

Seriously though, I have used Macs and other Apple products for a variety of science, work and every day applications. I look forward to making enjoyable and informative posts on all things Apple.

Many thanks to Josh and the team. It truly is an honour to be invited to post here.

Macbook and Macbook Pro Memory Upgrades

Wayne Dixon — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 13:00:20 +0000

Looks like the new aluminum MacBooks and MacBook Pros are capable of handling 6 gigabytes of memory total. At least, according to RAMJet. They are now offering a 4GB DDR-1066 Module. 6GB of Ram would be nice, unless you’re a glutton or just have way to much money and are willing to plop down $599 for the module.

Although 6GB of RAM combined with a couple of Virtual Machines would allow for a pretty sweet portable machine. Particularly if it’s a Macbook Pro.

I thought I’d let everybody know that the max is 6GB. Also, give it about a year, and you’ll see prices drop on these modules.

Macgasm » Ranting

Google Speak to Search Available, and it doesn’t like Canadians.

Related Posts

Safari updated to 3.2

Related Posts

World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich King expansion launched

Random Posts

Lame Duck Crossover: Is it worth it?

Related Posts

Keyboard hack for the iPhone!

Related Posts

Apple addressing trackpad issues

Related Posts

What happens when you’re getting pounded by the competition?

Related Posts

There won’t be a Safari worth of browsers on the iPhone.

Related Posts

New Mac Kid On The Block

Related Posts

Macbook and Macbook Pro Memory Upgrades

Related Posts