Macenstein

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

Review: MacPilot – Terminal’s missing GUI

Above: Have you ever wanted to set you Mac to have INSANELY large dock icons? MacPilot can hep you out (and more importantly, put them back to normal) One of the best things about using Mac OS X is the ability to dig deep into the UNIX-y guts of the OS via Terminal and tweak virtually every aspect of the system to your liking. Unfortunately, this power has 2 drawbacks; namely, Terminal and UNIX. If you’re like me, you have occasionally read about some cool Terminal trick... Read More

I think my Software Update is a little confused…

That’s either one hell of a secure Camera Raw update, or the most photo-centric Security Update I have ever seen. (A restart set things straight).  Read More

Apple begins 10.5.4 speculation by releasing 10.5.3

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,... Read More

iPhone vs. Mac OS X – Who has the correct forecast?

I noticed something odd when checking the weather today on my iPhone and my laptop… Above: My iPhone says I am in for a sucky week. Above: Leopard says I have a sunnier future. Does anyone else find it odd that Apple uses 2 different services for Weather? The iPhone uses Yahoo (which uses the Weather Channel) and Leopard apparently uses AccuWeather. (For the record, at the moment, looking outside, it appears the iPhone is more accurate). Thanks to faithful Macenstein... Read More

Video: Multi-touch Mac OS X – Great. Now I need to save for a 150-inch monitor

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... Read More

Apple’s “Word of the Day” Screensaver – keeping us all equally smart

I noticed this yesterday, and thought, this has “slow news day” written all over it. Above: Odds are your Words of the Day today (Sunday, April 20th, 2008) are glengarry, reflexology, aperient, alopecia, and Houdini. Like any true Mac geek, I have 3 Macs in my living room. When looking over at an old G4 PowerMac which had been left idle, I noticed that the word on the “Word of the Day” screensaver looked familiar. I moved my cursor down to my “hot... Read More

The Holy “headless” Grail – Psystar delivers headless “bargain” OpenMac – but is it a bargain?

Yeah, it kinda is. A company called Psystar has begun selling a Mac clone called the OpenMac, capable of running Mac OS X Leopard. Starting at $399, the specs are meant to compare favorably with the $800 Mac mini, yet offer more expandability options than the mini does. Above: The OpenMac is not as stylish as Apple’s CPUS, but we’ve seen far uglier. Plus, it’s what’s inside that counts! Base model – 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo – 2GB of DDR2... Read More

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”... Read More

Break out the Dramamine and download The Red Baron Screensaver

A friend of mine once took me up in his single propeller plane for a “joy ride”, and I have never felt so sick, or so little joy, in my entire life. After about 10 minutes I was curled up in a ball, eyes shut, wishing I was dead. I hadn’t thought about that awesome experience for years, until I installed Chris Kent‘s “Red Baron Screensaver”. I’ve never really had trouble with motion sickness before or since that fateful day, but for... Read More