Category: Apple Computing

The iPhone / iPad version of the ActiveGS Application version 1.22 is now available in the Apple App Store.    Changes in Version 1.22 include: + 60FPS support for iPad & iPhone4 + CRT Emulation + B&W & Green Monitor The application is freely downloadable from the App Store.  Users can also add their own disk images to the emulator. To get the application go to the App Store at: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/activegs-best-of-fta/id405115025?mt=8  

The new version of NeoOffice is out. The current version is 3.2. According to their web page at http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php there are updates to font support and support for Lion (OS X 10.7) when it comes out. Their download page insists on a donation to the cause. Considering the quality of this product and the cost of a fully commercial product, for most people a donation would be justified. Those who can not afford a donation can still download and use…

By now folks realise I’m into free stuff. I was looking around some of the social networking sites I frequent when I found this little gem. It’s a live CD with old DOS games for the PC. So why am I writing about it here? Simple answer… It works better on Intel Macs than it does on PCs. Well, at least it does on the machines I use. 😉 The CD contains a whopping 40MB of games. Back in the…

I can hear “Mac purists” complaining about “polluting their computer with foreign software”. Sorry to dissapoint, but no computer, Mac or otherwise, is the be-all and end-all of computers. There are some things which work better on other platforms and conversely there are some things which work better on a Mac. The objective here is to add to the basic functionality of an excellent machine and make it better. As the title suggest Macports is a way to add the…

Apple, Inc. has released an update for iOS.  (http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1358) Version 4.3.1 is intended to fix a number of anomalies in iOS 4.3 including: Fixes an occasional graphics glitch on iPod touch (4th generation) Resolves bugs related to activating and connecting to some cellular networks Fixes image flicker when using Apple Digital AV Adapter with some TVs Resolves an issue authenticating with some enterprise web services The update was not totally unexpected since many users were reporting issues with the iOS…

Plagued by inquiries from users with issues with their new MacBook Pros, Apple, Inc. has released an update for Mac OS X intended to deal with those issues directly.  Mac OS X 10.6.7 update has come more than a month after the release of the product and is “Intended to resolve stabilitity issues” with the os. The issues with the new line of MacBook Pros are graphics related according to an article in Engadget (http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/21/new-macbook-pros-freezing-under-heavy-load/) in which the machine feezes…

Many of you readers may have noticed that I have been rather absent in my postings to the website for the past two weeks.  Now, I am back, well shaken, radiated and ready to get this glow in the dark bod back into form here. News events here in Japan have been nothing less than heart breaking and absolutely horrifying.   The thought of so much loss of life and damage is beyond the comprehension of the average person, but I…

This morning while performing my daily internet news gathering I came across an update to an interesting program. Minitube is a You Tube downloader/player. One of the major points the author makes is it doesn’t use the Flash player. In my opinion this makes it fairly fast. This program is available in four forms, Mac, Windows, Linux (32bit binary), and source code. The Mac and Windows versions have demos. I would guess the Linux and source code versions are the…

I might be a little late to the game in all this but I never had an iPhone before. Mainly cause I was on verizon and was not going to jump ship to get it. Not after hearing how horrible the network was on AT & T. So my plan was up in February and I said, I am not going to get the iphone now because they were going to come out with iPhone 5 (rumor) and I would…

Almost any series of commands which can be run in the shell can be run from a shell script. Tying in some of the last few posts I published here this is an example. Let’s say I wanted to run the gedit editor from the shell rather than from the dock/GUI… I would first have to locate the executable program. I happen to know it is installed in “/Applications/gedit.app/Contents/MacOS/gedit“. By running this program the gedit editor will start. Since it…

I volunteer as a system administrator at a place which installs software for an “educational charity” on Fridays. Yesterday the repair guy (who is a big Star Trek fan) called me over to his table. He showed me a video on Youtube about an Android app which turned a tablet into a “Tricorder”. I thought that was pretty cool. A quick search on Google for “lcars ipad” turned up this link to a couple of videos from last year. The…

The annual Pwn2Own competition has had it’s first day results come in. The idea behind the competition is to present some “hackers” with a series of web browsers on various machines. These machines are configured by various software manufacturers. The first hacker to generate a remote exploit on a particular machine gets to keep the machine plus $15,000. Although armed with 62 last minute patches, Safari was the first to go down. It took only five seconds. Next to go…

For the second time this week, Apple has released a new version of their iTunes software.  10.2.1 was made available for download but the documentation of the changes in the program has not been mad available on the Apple website. This is the second update this week, and with the impending release of iOS 4.3 on March 11th looming ever larger in the windshield, Apple is obviously trying to cover all the bases with a slew of updates before hand….

Rovi Corporation announced the release of their latest version of the Roxio Toast DVD burning software.   Version 11.0 which is now available on the Roxio website, with the pro version 11.0 including such new features as: Adobe® PhotoShop® Elements 9 – the latest, full-featured version of the #1 selling consumer photo-editing software for the Mac. The application delivers powerful options that make it easy to create extraordinary photos, quickly share your memories in online albums and unique print creations, and…

Nest buy squashed the The initial rumor meant that Best Buy would have been purchasing nearly 200,000 units just for their employees.  This glut of machines would have likely meant very few machines for actual retail customers. According to the article in the Wall Street Journal (http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/03/07/best-buy-considers-tablets-for-salespeople/?mod=WSJBlog&mod=), they are looking into other alternatives and other tablets but it is highly unlikely now that they will ever give iPads to all their employees.

This is largely a repeat of an article in an earlier issue of the magazine. It works across all forms of *NIX (including OS X) and in a limited way Windows as well. Most professional *NIX people don’t recommend it. The reasons escape me at the moment. One thought some network analysts had a couple of years ago as to the slow loading of web pages was due to mis-configured or slow ad servers. Visiting some pages with numerous popups…

The FAA has approved the iPad as a replacement for paper maps in the cockpits of commercial aircraft.  Traditionally, airline pilots have carried reams of the maps of the airports they were flying into and out of, in a specialized flight suitcase.  Now they will really only need their iPad complete with the appropriate maps application such as the one from Jeppesen. According to an article in Bloomberg (http://bloom.bg/fFwLkH), Delta Airlines is one of the major players in the push…

Apple announced their new Garageband App for the iPad.  Complete with Touch instruments, recording studio and and Smart Instruments, the app not only makes the iPad a complete musical instrument but also gives musicians the ability to work on their tracks while they are on the go. The program features Drums, Drum machines, Synthesizers, and Keyboards as well as Guitars and other modern musical instruments.  The multi-touch ability allows the iPad to be played as if playing the original instrument,…

Snippetspace, the company known for it’s eazy to use iPhone App framework, has released a preview of it’s next version of the package.  iWebkit has been one of the most widely used frameworks for building iPhone Apps and iPhone compatible websits during the past few years.  Its author, Christopher Plieger, is also taking dontations for the purchase of an iPad so that he can begin building a version of the iWebkit framework for the iPad. According to the release on…

Over the past few months, I have been watching and waiting for someone to take an iPod (yes the small 6th gen Nano) and turn it into a usable wristwatch.  Many of my cohorts commented on the same idea in January and February with the first articles appearing about it this past 2 weeks or so.  No it seems that everyone is jumping on the band wagon including us. Having had a computer on my wrist since the early 1990’s…