Snow Leopard “Nail Painting” tutorial: Finally you can match your nails to your OS!
Hey ladies, have you tried everything to land that super-hot Mac Geek in your life with nothing to show for it? Well, assuming you’re not ugly, the problem might be your nails. Everyone knows a true Mac geek likes their woman’s fingernails to match their OS, and nothing screams OS X 10.6 like Snow Leopard Fingernails!
Above: Well, she’s certainly no stranger to makeup.
Check out JulieG 713’s video tutorial (below) on how to paint your fingernails with a wicked cool Snow Leopard print! And as a side note, yes, she’s using “MAC” brand makeup. Double win.
Thoughts on the new iDisk icon
Faithful Macenstein reader Kyle writes:
“WTF is up with the new iDisk icon!? I get it, “cloud computing”. But seriously, why purple? What was wrong with the blue globe? I guess this got snuck in with the MobileMe 1.1 update.”
Nice point, Kyle. Now I have a question for YOU. WTF is up with using the Apple “stones” desktop background? You don’t find that distracting?
-The Doc
Windows 7: The Search for Dock
Filed under: Apple Fanboyism, Leopard, Microsoft Bashing, Opinion, design
Based on these concept pics, the “future” of Windows looks remarkably like the “present” of OS X
Speaking of stealing… Is it just me, or are these shots of the upcoming Windows 7 looking a little too similar to OS X?
I can’t wait to see what Microsoft decides to call that transparent Dock-looking thing. Given that they call OS X’s Widgets “gadgets”, I’m going to assume it will be called the “Spock”.
[images via techdreams]
Apple begins 10.5.4 speculation by releasing 10.5.3
Filed under: Apple Fanboyism, Leopard, OS X, Software, Updates
Apple today released the highly rumored 10.5.3 update for Mac OS X Leopard, which means we can now begin looking for hints of a 10.5.4 update.
According to Apple, 10.5.3 includes a laundry list of fixes, far too lengthy and boring for me to bother copying and pasting. If you care, you can read about them here. I for one pretty much just install these things without questioning why, and have only been burned twice (Damn you QuickTime!), but until an OS update ruins my system, I will just keep on hitting “Install 1 item”, and trusting the almighty Cupertino.
Video: Multi-touch Mac OS X – Great. Now I need to save for a 150-inch monitor
Filed under: Apple Fanboyism, Cynicism, Leopard, OS X, Opinion, video
I will definitely not argue that this video isn’t cool, it is. Yet I have always been somewhat underwhelmed by the real world application of a fully mutli-touch computer interface. It seems to me you need a giant screen, small fingers, and a borderline made-up reason for why you need to zoom in and out of things with two hands. More often than not, the demos come across as technology without a purpose. Usually there is an example of some crazy genetic DNA data, and we are shown how you can zoom in, twist and rotate little molecules and such, and it all looks overly complicated. Likely the data presented in an Excel table would be more useful to scientists, but you only need 1 hand and a mouse for Excel, so it isn’t cool.
Seeing this lux demo with its oversized icons, weird “finger painting glow trails”, and messily spread out, unorganized photos strewn across the screen has done nothing to convince me I want to work this way, but yes, it looks damn cool.
Warning! This song WILL get stuck in your head
Filed under: Apple Fanboyism, Awesomeness, Leopard, video
Ah HA! See?! All of you who pissed on our giving away a copy of Office 2008, look how creative you can be with Word if only you put your mind to it!
This video for “Again & Again” by the Bird & the Bee was made by filmmaker Dennis Liu using only the Leopard interface and Mac OS X applications – and as a sometimes editor, I find this to be a very impressive display of some insane editorial skills.
Thanks to faithful Macenstein reader TheCos for sending this in [via TUAW].
Video proof of Bigfoot er… Psystar’s Open Computer running Mac OS X
Well, here you go. Video proof that the oft-maligned Psystar has made at least 3 computers – at least 1 of which can run Mac OS X Leopard.
To rub a little salt in Apple’s wounds, Psystar claims they edited the video using Final Cut on an Open Computer running Leopard. Ouch!
Now, if only they can provide video proof of the UPS guy picking up orders, and video proof of customers happily unpacking said computers, we’d be ready to place our order.
Apple swapping out defective x1900 XT cards for (some) Mac Pro owners
Filed under: Apple Fanboyism, Awesomeness, Hardware, Leopard, Mac Pro
And this is why I love Apple…
A while back I lamented how ever since upgrading to Leopard, my Mac Pro had been exhibiting some odd graphical glitches, mainly in the form of odd lines that would run across various windows in the Finder and apps. I eventually found that the problem was somewhat widespread, at least for owners of the quad-core Mac Pro model I ordered, and who, like me, had splurged for the $350 ATi x1900 XT card.
Above: That ain’t right… Click to embiggen.
Numerous discussion threads can be found by confused users such as myself whose machines were working fine under Tiger, but began experiencing graphics corruption since upgrading to Leopard.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1209998&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7035792#7035792
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6762160�
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6691646�
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6791972�
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6803482�
Well, even though I bought my Mac Pro on September 15th of 2006, and did not purchase AppleCare, I figured what the hell, let’s call Apple Support and see what happens. Well, what do you know, Apple was nice enough to send me out a brand new replacement card, free of charge (minus shipping). I didn’t even have to threaten them with Macenstein’s legendary bully pulpit – Apple Support just rocked all by itself.
Above: Out with the old…
Above: …and in with the new.
In looking at the two cards I can’t find any discernible differences, and they appear identical in Apple’s system profiler. So while I’m not sure what is different/fixed in this batch of cards, I have had my first “graphics glitch-free day” since installing Leopard, so it looks like the new card has done the trick.
Above: I’m not sure what the difference is between the 2 cards, but the new card seems to be doing the trick so far.
So if you are a Mac Pro owner experiencing x1900 XT card troubles, give Apple a call, even if you don’t have AppleCare. It could save you $350.
Why you probably shouldn’t check this box
Ever since getting my MacBook, my Mac Pro has been sitting in the basement, a bit neglected. Its sole job these days is to record Howard Stern off Sirius and throw bookmarkable audio files into iTunes for me. I use Audio Hijack from Rogue Amoeba to handle the recordings, and I had read last month that apparently the latest 10.5.2 update and/or Leopard security update were causing some troubles with ssh and Rogue Amoeba software in particular was throwing “internal access” errors. Since I didn’t want to rock the boat, I had let software update build up a healthy queue of updates it WANTED to install, but I wasn’t quite ready to let it do them.
Well, enter the Bride of Macenstein. She went downstairs tonight to burn some SpongeBob DVDs for the kiddies, and low and behold, the computer freezes. Now, I am not necessarily saying it is her fault, but the fact is the computer has been up for about 3 months prior without a hitch, and electronics seem to fear her sweet touch.
Anyway, long story short (too late) I had to reboot. Unfortunately, apparently at some point I had checked off that “Download important updates automatically” checkbox in Software Update (possibly even years ago on another machine I migrated to the Mac Pro) and upon reboot all those various OS, security, iTunes and QuickTime updates installed themselves.
I have since checked, and Audio Hijack does have an update that is supposed to fix the problems it was experiencing (I guess I’ll know for sure tomorrow morning if the recordings fire correctly), but let this be a lesson. That “Download important updates automatically” checkbox is likely a throw back to the times of slow internet connections, and has little place in the life of FiOS users and broadband users in general. Sure, these updates can come in at hundreds of MB, but what is that? 5-10 minutes? I can see checking that box on your grandma’s Mac because otherwise nothing will ever be updated, but for most users, I say it is better to be in control of what goes into your computer and when, even if Apple deems the updates “important”.
Where’s the 500 GB external hard drive?
Very cute commercial, and it actually explains Time Machine fairly well in 30 seconds. Although, simply saying “It comes on every Mac” sort of glosses over that you need to buy a $200 external drive in order to actually use Time Machine, but we’ll assume the 40 second “Director’s Cut” does.
