Category: computers

Computer related stuff (and computer-related gadgets).

Mac Mini switches to Intel

It wasn’t more than a year ago when I wrote in my OSCON bio:

Terry Chay is the only Mac user at Plaxo, where he develops the web-based version of their product (they tolerate him because he stinks at CounterStrike).

A few weeks ago, IT purchased a couple of Mac Minis to ramp up Mac support now that Plaxo Mac Beta has been leaked. QA has decided to make support for Safari on peer with Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer 6+ for Windows in all future bug listings. Plaxo has gotten serious about the Mac and it looks like that part of the bio is now very, very false—well, at least the part about sucking at CounterStrike is still true.

Well when I heard they ordered it, I said, “Why not just wait until March, April at the latest, and get Intel Mac Minis? They’ll come out just after the MacBook (iBook replacement) gets announced at the end of February.”

Looks like I was wrong. Apple introduced the Mac mini replacement using the Core Solo and Core Duo.
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Posted on by tychay 11

Back to Palm…again

Palm Treo 650

Michael at work just got a Treo 650 and because I have a Palm T|X (review roundup), he was wondering how to get up using the Palm features.

In my opinion the two are not the same product, there are a lot of cool things that I could do with a PalmOS that are too inconvenient when spread across two devices. The fact is, I bought my Palm T|X as a stop-gap measure for the stuff that I used to keep on my Palm m505 years ago. These apps are probably outdated now, but I figure I can coast a while with it until the cell-phone and PDA integration wars end.

Instead, a much better source for him will this blog series I found of a Windows Mobile user who purchased a Treo 650. It’s a fresh perspective from someone whose primary interest is having a Treo for the things the Treo does well.

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Posted on by tychay 2

Rip Different

MacTheRipper icon

I saw on BoingBoing that Macrovision is threatening VersionTracker for listing MacTheRipper. I had forgotten what a wonderfully useful program MacTheRipper has always been mostly because I’ve taken it for granted.

Basically what it does is strip the CSS, Macrovision, region encoding and menu blocks from a DVD to allow you to create a usable VIDEO_TS file onto your hard drive suitable for burning or down sampling down to a single layer drive.

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Posted on by tychay 1

Opera 9 preview 2

Preview 2 of Opera 9 is out. The big thing is the integrated BitTorrent client.

I’m not planning on using Opera but because Microsoft Internet Explorer for the Mac is dead, it might be fun to have it lying around to learn some AJAX quirks it might have. Besides, Opera’s rendering engine might be used in a number of handheld devices.

Posted on by tychay 0

Moving to the Front Row

I’m always amazed that so many Mac users haven’t seen Front Row just because it is installed only on an iMac (G5 and Core Duo).

Now that the MacBook Pro is out with the Front Row installed, I recalled that there was some way to hack other Macs to run the software. I wondered what the status was and a quick web search shows that it is alive and well.

Following the instructions, I got it working on my Powerbook G4. As you can see from the video, it is a little sluggish when you are running it and SnapzPro to record it, and I think it may be related to some issues I might have with DVD Player crashing the first time I launch it. But other than that, the behavior is full of the usual Apple eye-candy goodness.

“Moving to the Front Row” by me
Front Row running on a Macintosh Powerbook G4 (sped up 2x).

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Posted on by tychay 5

MacRumors MacWorld roundup

MacRumors Logo

Arn posts a roundup of the Macworld 2006 rumors. I have always loved the work he has done there, even though MacRumors is an aggregator of rumors, not a news site itself, he seems to have a “taste” for what is good Mac news and what isn’t living up to his tag-line: “news and rumors you care about.” Truely.

One thing interesting in the report is the implication of 13″ widescreen Intel iBooks (“MacBooks”) and Intel-based Mac Minis in the spring. Caitlin notes that if true, it would leave a single non-Intel hole in the line up: pro desktops and servers (PowerMac G5 and XServes).Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 7

WMV on Mac OS X

After I read that Microsoft quietly discontinued support for Windows Media on Mac OS X, I didn’t know what to make of it. Just another free app for the Mac that Microsoft is discontinuing—guess MSN Messenger is next on the chopping block.

Flip4Mac WMV logo

As a consunmer, it reminded me that I needed to install a Windows Media Player solution on my computer again, as it begins its arduous recovery from a drive failure. At work, many people zip around video and given the platform predelictions here, many times that video is something in Windows Media. Well, I guess that leaves out Windows Media Player X 9.0.

Now normally I would download the latest MPlayer or VideoLAN Client to do this, but that always seemed a kludge. Oh, they have their uses, but I mostly I’m talking about a one-trick WMV playback-pony. Luckily, the article pointed out a solution I had bookmarked and forgotten about: Flip4Mac WMV.Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 1

Address Book sharing

Mac OS X Tiger is full of features you never notice until someone is looking over your shoulder saying, “What’s that?”

In this case, Joseph was looking over my shoulder and what he noticed was an accidental drop down sheet in Address Book that led me to realize that Address Book supports address book sharing through dotMac. I don’t think I ever saw it mentioned but is interesting given who I work for.

Address Book—Subscribe to .Mac Address Book

This is a sheet that pops up when you select “File->Subscribe to Address Book…” from the menu in Address Book. I had no idea it was there until today.

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Posted on by tychay 0