Has anyone had any experience with the new slim mac keyboard? I'm thinking of picking up a wired one for my MacBook Pro, since it's on a stand of sorts most of the time. Does the Apple key still double as the Windows key under Boot Camp? How is the overall satisfaction with it?
I haven't used the new keyboards specifically, but my MacBook keyboard (same style) is my favorite keyboard I've ever used.
I had to use one of the new keyboards today at my school's bookstore (80 dollars for a paperback text is ridiculous, oh hello demo iMac with internet connection, can I go buy a book off amazon?), and it's an incredible keyboard. It's lame that the bluetooth version doesn't have a numpad though.
I see there's some mention of VMWare Fusion vs. Parallels in here, I just wanted to relate an experience I had to anyone considering a purchase of either - VMWare Fusion is ridiculously faster than Parallels, having tested them at VMWorld. Parallels was on a fellow attendee's MBP, so it wasn't a staged test. VMware's marketing claims 4 times faster, and I would say (without doing actual benchmarks) that it comes close to making that claim, based on load times for apps like Office components, etc.
I think I might pick one up then since it's getting good reviews and typing on my laptop keyboard with a USB mouse is a bitch, and I need me an apple key on it
I'm late to the party here, but boy does the mighty mouse suck ass. I know they're known for form over function, but Apple should be ashamed for foisting that poorly-designed piece of shit on their customers.
I was going to recommend a Mac Mini for an elderly relative of mine, since all he uses is Word and Spider Solitare, but having tried out Office for Mac in the store, I worry that the floating bars layout is too different for him to handle.
can it be changed and/or customized to look like the Windows version of Office?
I was going to recommend a Mac Mini for an elderly relative of mine, since all he uses is Word and Spider Solitare, but having tried out Office for Mac in the store, I worry that the floating bars layout is too different for him to handle.
can it be changed and/or customized to look like the Windows version of Office?
Unfortunatley I don't think so. The new Office 2008 coming out next year might be a little more like the Windows version.
However, I far prefer the floating toolbox layout on the Mac to Word for Windows....you never know, he might like it better...
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I am going to buy an external hard drive for external storage. I have about 50 gigs I want to back up, and then I also want it to be used with Time Machine in Leopard. How big of a drive should I look to buy? How HDD-hungry will Time Machine be?
Well, being the tech whore that I usually am, I finally broke down and got myself an Ipod touch. I'm really digging it too, just really a great piece of tech. Here's a question though.
I had all my music in my main computer, because I used the Zune software which can't run on my macbook. Now that I have the Ipod, I want to transfer my music to my macbook. I figured I just need it to put it on my Ipod, and it would be easy enough, but I can't seem to figure out how to do it Is there even a way to do it?
I'm not clear exactly where your trouble is, but I'll assume you were able to get the music onto the iPod fine. To get the music onto your MacBook, you need to use 3rd party copying software. I personally use Senuti, but there are plenty of programs out there. Just load up one of those, copy all your music over, then restore the iPod within iTunes so it'll be Mac-formatted (assuming you want to sync your iPod with the macbook and not your PC)
Nope, I think keeping your music locked down is something Apple does to appease the record companies.
Come to think of it, you may want to do some research before you assume it'll work... I remember reading something about how the new Classic/Nano firmware has special protection to prevent you from using such software, but I don't know how that affects the Touch and if people have found a workaround yet.
Nah, there's no real protection to stop you from getting the music off. I'd call it obfuscation at most. All the music is in these numbered, hidden folders. You can copy it out with the Terminal or with a simple Applescript. The more complex programs do all that and more by reading the iPod library to recreate your playlists and such.
I am going to buy an external hard drive for external storage. I have about 50 gigs I want to back up, and then I also want it to be used with Time Machine in Leopard. How big of a drive should I look to buy? How HDD-hungry will Time Machine be?
Time Machine can get pretty needy in terms of disk space if you see a lot of churn in your files, like if you're moving multi-gigabyte files on and off your drive all the time. If that isn't the case you could probably do with about 4x the amount of space you currently use and you probably will never have to worry about it. You can tell TM to only keep backups for a certain period of time so you don't need to have backups discarded files forever.
I found an awesome deal at Fry's last weekend, a 500GB FW/USB drive for $110. A few weeks before I found a 160GB USB2 drive for $50, you can likely afford a fairly large backup drive. Don't however trust Time Machine above all others, keep manual long term backups of important stuff as well as TM backups. Make a burn folder in Finder and drag oft-used folders into the Burn folder, that will create aliases to those in the Burn folder and so whenever you click burn it will put the current contents of all those folders onto a DVD-R for you.
Hey guys, I have an issue that I was hoping you could help me solve.
I have my MBP (with X1600) hooked up to an external monitor via DVI. Everything is all fine and dandy when I'm running on OSX, but things start going a little crazy when I try running XP.
The monitor detects fine, but I can't seem to switch the external as the primary monitor. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but the main reason I have XP in the first place is for HL2 and other vidya games I can't get on Mac. Needless to say, it isn't nearly as enjoyable on the dinky 15'' as it is on the big 22''.
Is there a way I can switch my external monitor to my primary? Failing that, does anyone know of a way to make HL2 run on the secondary monitor by default?
I'm late to the party here, but boy does the mighty mouse suck ass. I know they're known for form over function, but Apple should be ashamed for foisting that poorly-designed piece of shit on their customers.
One of my computing classes is in a lab full of Intel iMacs, which the university bought because they can dualboot and they use fewer cables than PCs. That's fine, except each one is equipped with a fucking Mighty Mouse, so most of people in that class just use their laptops, or bring their own mice. Eventually, one guy got so fed up with the wonky right-click behaviour that he waved a fistful of twenty dollar bills at the TA and offered to replace every mouse in the room himself. That didn't happen, but a couple weeks later they finally caved to the demands of hundreds of bitching students and replaced all the Mighty Mice with standard Logitech wheel mice, which is all anyone ever expected of Apple and I don't know why they can't just swallow their pride and fucking do it already.
The single-button trackpad on my Pro infuriates me to no end, but at least it's not as stupid as the Mighty Mouse.
When I bought a new Mac Mini a couple of years back, I sold my boxed copy of Leopard (the mini had it pre-installed). I bought Tiger for $69 and sold it on eBay, used, well above what I paid for it. Because of this, I never really minded spending the money to upgrade the OS because I could always sell it if I bought a new computer.
Needless to say I'm disappointed in the lack of a significant student discount as well.
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Garlic Breadi'm a bitch i'm a bitch i'm a bitch i'm aRegistered User, Disagreeableregular
edited October 2007
I'm gonna ask my parents to get me it as my christmas present. It's not worth ordering online/traveling to an Apple store for a student discount, though
I'm gonna ask my parents to get me it as my christmas present. It's not worth ordering online/traveling to an Apple store for a student discount, though
I don't think they honor software student discounts through the brick and mortar stores, anyway.
So what's new in Leopard? I've played around the Leopard website but couldn't find anything much, other than aesthetic changes. New look for finder, new look for spotlight, new look for the dock, new look for the menu bar, I've noticed windows have enormous drop shadows now... and the new features I see there don't excite me terribly: spaces and time machine.
Has anyone played around with the beta and can fill me in on the little niceties that Apple has added/changed?
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Garlic Breadi'm a bitch i'm a bitch i'm a bitch i'm aRegistered User, Disagreeableregular
edited October 2007
I like Stacks.
Oh, and I believe the new Delicious Library is only going to work on Leopard
I'm gonna ask my parents to get me it as my christmas present. It's not worth ordering online/traveling to an Apple store for a student discount, though
I don't think they honor software student discounts through the brick and mortar stores, anyway.
Yes, they do. Just show your student ID and they'll take care of the rest.
Leopard's looking pretty minor indeed, but I think there's something to be said for Quick Look. I've been enjoying the speed of Windows XP's built-in image viewer for years (thank you for screwing that up, Vista), and Quick Look looks like that, but better.
Aside from that, I often get huge projects going, which can get difficult to keep separate from simple forum surfing, so I know I'll use spaces, and I already use folders as stacks. Some of the improvements to Xcode look insane as well, and I'm really looking forward to making web clips with Dashcode.
And Azureus is in no way a good program. It's only tolerable because it's the only torrent app for Mac with its features, but it's really a slow memory hog with a terrible GUI. It's actually so slow I can't get it to even function on less than 1 GHz, and under Linux on my PC it simply won't do anything and then crashes. The latest version even comes with some bullshit content browser or something, for added bloat and general stupidity.
Edit: Oh shit, I just noticed the Leopard developer tools now include PHP editing. I bet the upgrade installation won't be smart enough to recognize my current PHP installation and properly replace it with Leopard's too. Yay Unix software headaches.
I'm gonna ask my parents to get me it as my christmas present. It's not worth ordering online/traveling to an Apple store for a student discount, though
I don't think they honor software student discounts through the brick and mortar stores, anyway.
Yes, they do. Just show your student ID and they'll take care of the rest.
As far as I know that's only for hardware (which is now limited to only computers). At least that's how it's been for the 3 stores I've gone to. They each told me you have to order online for software student discounts. These are the two in Austin and one in Houston, so maybe it's different nationally.
edit: hey, nice links, LoneI. I've not heard of Perian or NicePlayer. Is NicePlayer better than VLC or MPlayer? I'm at work, otherwise I would try.
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Dr_KeenbeanDumb as a buttPlanet Express ShipRegistered Userregular
Well, being the tech whore that I usually am, I finally broke down and got myself an Ipod touch. I'm really digging it too, just really a great piece of tech. Here's a question though.
I had all my music in my main computer, because I used the Zune software which can't run on my macbook. Now that I have the Ipod, I want to transfer my music to my macbook. I figured I just need it to put it on my Ipod, and it would be easy enough, but I can't seem to figure out how to do it Is there even a way to do it?
If you ever want to run Zune software on your macbook I strongly recommend VMWare Fusion. Fuck I just recommend it ayway.
I am aware this is not what you are asking, I'm just throwing it out there. I have been very impressed w/ fusion.
edit: hey, nice links, LoneI. I've not heard of Perian or NicePlayer. Is NicePlayer better than VLC or MPlayer? I'm at work, otherwise I would try.
For what it can play, yeah. It has much better integration into OS X, so you can use the remote with it and stuff, and it's performance and GUI are superior - e.g. you can jog around with the scroll wheel. Unfortunately, it's still limited by Quicktime's inability to deal with multiple A/V tracks, or subtitles.
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I haven't used the new keyboards specifically, but my MacBook keyboard (same style) is my favorite keyboard I've ever used.
http://carpeaqua.com/software/checkoff
This is what I use for a to do list.
we are talking about the same bookstore
I think I might pick one up then since it's getting good reviews and typing on my laptop keyboard with a USB mouse is a bitch, and I need me an apple key on it
can it be changed and/or customized to look like the Windows version of Office?
Unfortunatley I don't think so. The new Office 2008 coming out next year might be a little more like the Windows version.
However, I far prefer the floating toolbox layout on the Mac to Word for Windows....you never know, he might like it better...
3DS Friend Code: 0404-6826-4588 PM if you add.
Is there any way I can speed up the footage I add into a movie?
Like, if I have a 10-minute long movie, but want to speed up the footage 2x to make it go faster, is that possible?
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Yes.
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How?
http://www.spanningsync.com/
猿も木から落ちる
If you're willing to get nitty-gritty in the Terminal, GCALdaemon (http://gcaldaemon.sourceforge.net/) works great and is completely free.
I had all my music in my main computer, because I used the Zune software which can't run on my macbook. Now that I have the Ipod, I want to transfer my music to my macbook. I figured I just need it to put it on my Ipod, and it would be easy enough, but I can't seem to figure out how to do it Is there even a way to do it?
Come to think of it, you may want to do some research before you assume it'll work... I remember reading something about how the new Classic/Nano firmware has special protection to prevent you from using such software, but I don't know how that affects the Touch and if people have found a workaround yet.
Time Machine can get pretty needy in terms of disk space if you see a lot of churn in your files, like if you're moving multi-gigabyte files on and off your drive all the time. If that isn't the case you could probably do with about 4x the amount of space you currently use and you probably will never have to worry about it. You can tell TM to only keep backups for a certain period of time so you don't need to have backups discarded files forever.
I found an awesome deal at Fry's last weekend, a 500GB FW/USB drive for $110. A few weeks before I found a 160GB USB2 drive for $50, you can likely afford a fairly large backup drive. Don't however trust Time Machine above all others, keep manual long term backups of important stuff as well as TM backups. Make a burn folder in Finder and drag oft-used folders into the Burn folder, that will create aliases to those in the Burn folder and so whenever you click burn it will put the current contents of all those folders onto a DVD-R for you.
I have my MBP (with X1600) hooked up to an external monitor via DVI. Everything is all fine and dandy when I'm running on OSX, but things start going a little crazy when I try running XP.
The monitor detects fine, but I can't seem to switch the external as the primary monitor. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but the main reason I have XP in the first place is for HL2 and other vidya games I can't get on Mac. Needless to say, it isn't nearly as enjoyable on the dinky 15'' as it is on the big 22''.
Is there a way I can switch my external monitor to my primary? Failing that, does anyone know of a way to make HL2 run on the secondary monitor by default?
The single-button trackpad on my Pro infuriates me to no end, but at least it's not as stupid as the Mighty Mouse.
Are you using two-finger double click? Because of that little guy and two finger-scrolling, I can't stand using a trackpad that's NOT a mac.
For non game stuff, I don't even like using a real mouse after I got my macbook. Two finger magic is amazing.
At least that's what your sister tells me.
Why is it $116 from the school store? A ten dollar discount? Seriously?
Seriously though, that's the lamest student discount ever.
Eh, it covers sales tax.
Needless to say I'm disappointed in the lack of a significant student discount as well.
I don't think they honor software student discounts through the brick and mortar stores, anyway.
So what's new in Leopard? I've played around the Leopard website but couldn't find anything much, other than aesthetic changes. New look for finder, new look for spotlight, new look for the dock, new look for the menu bar, I've noticed windows have enormous drop shadows now... and the new features I see there don't excite me terribly: spaces and time machine.
Has anyone played around with the beta and can fill me in on the little niceties that Apple has added/changed?
Oh, and I believe the new Delicious Library is only going to work on Leopard
Yes, they do. Just show your student ID and they'll take care of the rest.
Aside from that, I often get huge projects going, which can get difficult to keep separate from simple forum surfing, so I know I'll use spaces, and I already use folders as stacks. Some of the improvements to Xcode look insane as well, and I'm really looking forward to making web clips with Dashcode.
Also, OP needs Perian, NicePlayer, Quicksilver, and Uno (because brushed metal blows).
And Azureus is in no way a good program. It's only tolerable because it's the only torrent app for Mac with its features, but it's really a slow memory hog with a terrible GUI. It's actually so slow I can't get it to even function on less than 1 GHz, and under Linux on my PC it simply won't do anything and then crashes. The latest version even comes with some bullshit content browser or something, for added bloat and general stupidity.
Edit: Oh shit, I just noticed the Leopard developer tools now include PHP editing. I bet the upgrade installation won't be smart enough to recognize my current PHP installation and properly replace it with Leopard's too. Yay Unix software headaches.
As far as I know that's only for hardware (which is now limited to only computers). At least that's how it's been for the 3 stores I've gone to. They each told me you have to order online for software student discounts. These are the two in Austin and one in Houston, so maybe it's different nationally.
edit: hey, nice links, LoneI. I've not heard of Perian or NicePlayer. Is NicePlayer better than VLC or MPlayer? I'm at work, otherwise I would try.
If you ever want to run Zune software on your macbook I strongly recommend VMWare Fusion. Fuck I just recommend it ayway.
I am aware this is not what you are asking, I'm just throwing it out there. I have been very impressed w/ fusion.
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For what it can play, yeah. It has much better integration into OS X, so you can use the remote with it and stuff, and it's performance and GUI are superior - e.g. you can jog around with the scroll wheel. Unfortunately, it's still limited by Quicktime's inability to deal with multiple A/V tracks, or subtitles.