Macenstein

Troubleshoot your misbehaving Mac with Apple’s Hardware Test

Posted by Lab Rat On those rare occasions when a Mac starts acting a bit uppity, most of us turn to Apple’s Disk Utility as our first attempt at setting things straight. If Disk Utility cannot repair the problem, our next step is usually a 3rd party disk repair utility such as Alsoft’s Disk Warrior. However, there are times when the problem doesn’t stem from faulty software or hard disk corruption. Sometimes the problem can lie in the hardware itself. If you... Read More

Is Apple using the Dictionary Widget to push liberal politics?

Posted by Dr. Macenstein Probably not. But faithful Macenstein reader Skeezo sent in an interesting link to forum posting over at rave.ca. It seems if one types in the word “Democracy” into Mac OS X’s built-in Dictionary widget, and then switches over to the thesaurus, you are given the following example usage of the word: Democracy (noun) “a democracy in Iraq is quite unlikely for now or any time soon” Whether or not you feel the thesaurus may... Read More

Now THAT’S a memory leak!

Posted by Helper Monkey Running After Effects 7 (in Rosetta) on a Mac Pro with 4 GB of RAM.  Read More

Free on iTunes: Jack Black’s “Acceptable.tv Tutorial”

Posted by Helper Monkey VH1 is launching Jack Black’s new half-hour comedy show Acceptable.tv by making the premiere episode, entitled “Acceptable.tv Tutorial“, available for free on iTunes. From the description: Each week you’ll see five mini TV shows made by the Acceptable.tv team. Watch our funny shows, then vote on which shows you want to return for a new episode. You can also create your own shows for the website and maybe see them on TV. Wanna... Read More

NeoOffice® 2.1 released

Posted by Helper Monkey NeoOffice.org has released NeoOffice 2.1, a “significantly-enhanced” version of the Mac OS X-native version of the OpenOffice.org office suite that includes Microsoft Office-compatible word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and database applications. “This release is the culmination of many thousands of volunteer hours,” said Patrick Luby, CEO and Chief Engineer of NeoOffice.org. “As a result of this tremendous... Read More

Apple TV – No HDTV required!

Posted by Lab Rat For those of us who are drooling over the new Apple TV but have read reports that you’d be throwing away money unless you own an HDTV to hook it up to, it turns out a good percentage of regular “SQUARE” TVs will work just fine with the device. Apparently, despite Apple’s literature on the Apple TV saying the words “HDTV” over and over again, if you happen to own a high-end 4:3 TV with component inputs on the back, the Apple... Read More

Macenstein’s “Mac Chick of the Month” (March 2007): DeBranne

Posted by Dr. Macenstein Welcome to Macenstein’s “Mac Chick of the Month”. Each month we feature a different die-hard, Mac-loving girl who is (almost) as well designed as the Apple products they love. This month we present you with the lovely DeBrane, an artist living in Newport Beach, California long-time Mac fan. About DeBranne: • Location: California • Occupation: Fine Artist/Architectural Designer/Model/… •... Read More

Folks already hacking their Apple TVs

Posted by Dr. Macenstein The Apple TV only began shipping a few days ago, yet already there are reports of people cracking open the cases to see what trouble they can get into. Faithful Macenstein reader rico has returned from the abyss with a pair of links detailing a couple of warranty-voiding Apple TV hacks. First up is a posting on Gizmodo. A reader there claims to have upgraded his Apple TV’s hard drive to a healthy 120GB from the unfathomably small 40GB drive that... Read More

The Future is NOW: Apple begins selling entire seasons of shows on iTunes before they air on Network TV

Posted by Helper Monkey Perhaps the greatest allure of the iTunes store (or ANY digital media store, for that matter) is the idea of instant gratification. If you want to watch a movie, you no longer have to put on your “outside pants” and actually drive to your local video store, you can park your keister in front of your computer (where it probably was anyway) and with a few clicks, you can begin downloading yourself a movie from the iTunes store. Yes, in just... Read More

Apple iRack

Posted by iGor  Read More