Macenstein

Why so “critical”, Microsoft?

Let’s do a little free-association exercise. When you hear the words “Microsoft” and “critical update“, what do you think of? I know personally, my first thought is “OMFG another Microsoft security exploit!“. Given this knee-jerk reaction I assume I share with many, why do you think Microsoft would label the latest Office Mac update 12.1.1 “Critical”? A quick scan of the 153 MB update shows a bunch of bug fixes, but unless... Read More

Apple’s hinge-less “MacBook Pro Canvas”

I am a fan of Apple’s aluminum MacBook Pro/Air enclosures, and rumor has it the MacBook will soon be ditching its girly plastic and adopting the cool metal enclosure as well. As much as I would love to see this, it seems a little odd to me that Apple would bump their consumer laptop to aluminum without giving their pro offerings a much-needed redesign. Apple has always liked to visually differentiate the Pro and consumer models, and I think that as nice as the MacBook Pro... Read More

BOOM!

Last week coming back from a business trip, we had a little accident about 25,000 feet up. The battery in our 17-inch MacBook Pro exploded, literally. In hindsight I think we were lucky we weren’t taken in as Al-Qaeda, but all we could think at the time was “Sweet! finally something went wrong within the 1-year warranty!” (We got our new battery today). [UPDATE:] In answer to the questions of the MacBook Pro, no, it was not harmed. We were using it at the... Read More

What’s your favorite keyboard shortcut combination?

As someone who has more or less raised laziness to an art form, I am obviously a huge fan of keyboard shortcuts. This afternoon, it occurred to me that my current all time favorite must be hitting the “U” key in Adobe After Effects. This simple button press (when a layer is selected) brings up all the current properties that you have applied keyframes to in a layer, and I would say it has saved me something like 2 years of “expanding layer properties” time... Read More

Will Snow Leopard eat DiskWarrior?

One of the many big features in the forthcoming “featureless” update to Mac OS X (aka Snow Leopard) is the move to the ZFS file system. I had heard that ZFS was officially the “shiznit” two or three years ago when the rumor mill had forecast ZFS support in Leopard was an almost certainty. Well, the “almost” won that round, but it appears Snow Leopard may finally deliver what “regular” Leopard couldn’t. What’s ZFS, and... Read More

Nice tagline. Now let’s see them try to trademark it

Well, either iHome’s website got hacked, or they have just decided to adopt one of the most ballsy taglines for an electronics company we’ve ever seen. Forget “Sync with Style”, FTW just flows off the tongue better. Thanks to faithful Macenstein reader Rowlings for the tip!  Read More

Celebrity Mac Chick Sighting: Sophia Bush

You may remember Sophia Bush as Brooke Davis in the CW series One Tree Hill, but to me she’ll always be the celeb who was down to Earth enough to carry her iPhone in one hand, and her dog’s poop in the other. [via UseMyComputer]  Read More

iPhone users: If you can’t join ‘em, beat em

It looks like Apple may finally be catching a break on all that bad publicity surrounding the rash of “iPod muggings” in recent years. Unfortunately, the break may come at the expense of news of some new iPhone muggings. According to MacBlogz, Ohio police are looking for the “person” (and I use the term loosely) who is shown in the below video brutally attacking a fellow bus passenger in an attempt to steal his iPhone. Miraculously, the victim was somehow... Read More

Forget Psystar, why isn’t Apple suing THESE guys?

OK, WTF? Take a look at gOS, the “Linux operating system designed for the 100,000,000 MySpace users”, and tell me if you see anything that looks familiar… Stacks? Check. Dock? Check. Space theme? Check. Still stumped? A quick read through of gOS’s feature description provides some more clues… Linux meets MySpace With a stunningly beautiful interface and fun MySpace Apps, gOS Space 2.9 introduces a linux-based operating system designed for the 100,000,000... Read More

Psystar looks to grab its 16th minute of fame with its new Xserve clones

Oh Psystar, you incorrigible little rascal of a company! Despite largely unfavorable reviews of its Open Computer desktop which runs a hacked version of OS X Leopard, Psystar has decided to bring it special brand of loud and unreliable hacked Mac clones to the workplace. Behold the OpenServ 1100 and OpenServ 2400. Like Psystar’s $400 desktop offering, the OpenServ 1100 ($1599.99) and OpenServ 2400 ($1999.99) offer slightly better tech specs than Apple’s current server... Read More