Even at training (Early 2009) our instructor warned us about ‘Old School vs. New School’ Geniuses. His emphasis was that the needs of the business change. Today’s Mac Genius are no longer required to have the same deep understanding of the Mac OS, its UNIX roots, or classic past. They can no longer troubleshoot the same impossible set of hardware symptoms with ease while working with multiple customers bar side.
If you have ever encountered a problem with your Macintosh you might have been advised to zapreset the PRAM, but what is the PRAM and what does it do? The PRAM, or parameter random access memory, is a small amount of non volatile storage on your Mac’s logic board. It uses a built-in battery or capacitor to retain specific system settings even after the power to your computer has been turned off.
Now that 2011 has come to a close, we are able to look back at Apple’s greatest year. Not only did 2011 show record profits and important product updates, but new technologies were released, and brand new versions of all of Apple’s operating systems were unveiled. Customer’s experienced new ways of purchasing products, while taking advantage of innovative cloud-based storage solutions. Developers learned a new integrated development environment for coding applications across all of Apple’s state-of-the-art operating systems.
NetNewsWire Lite is an almost perfect app. It does one thing, and one thing well, deliver RSS. Released on March 3rd of this year, NetNewsWire Lite has become my favorite news reader not because of the features it includes but because of the features it leaves behind. Rewritten by its creator Brent Simmons from the ground up to be fast, NewNewsWire Lite is the lite version of NetNewsWire for Macintosh. It doesn’t have features like Google Reader sync, browser tabs, or the combined view found in its full featured big brother.
Should you buy AppleCare? Every Apple product comes with 90 days of complimentary telephone technical support and a limited one year warranty. AppleCare for Mac extends your service and support coverage to three full years from the date you purchased your computer. It gives you global repair coverage, and direct access to Apple experts for questions on a wide range of topics. But at up to $349 per computer, AppleCare for Mac can be a considerable investment.
I have had a Mac.com email address ever since I had a Mac that could send email. iTools, the predecessor of .Mac and MobileMe, has been part of my online identity since the summer of 2001. I remember when the only way to access my iTools’ IMAP email was through Outlook Express. When sending files to iDisk’s 5MBs of storage required AppleShare. When one of the perks of owning a Mac was the ability to send tasteful electronic greeting cards with Apple’s branding all over them.
Apple may be adding 250+ new features to Mac OS X Lion, but just like Snow Leopard before it some features are scheduled to be taken away. Early Intel Macs Lion’s aggressive system requirements excludes early Intel Macs without a 64-bit compatible processor. This includes the first few versions of Intel powered iMacs, MacBook Pros, Mac minis, and MacBooks equipped with “Yonah” processors. (All versions of the Mac Pro contain 64-bit Xenon processors capable of running Lion.
With the absence of easily obtainable installation media Mac OS X Lion looks like it might make for a difficult clean install. Not so, Apple was hiding the official installation media disc image under our noses the entire time. Purchase and download Lion from the Mac App Store on any Lion compatible Mac running Snow Leopard. Right click on “Mac OS X Lion” installer and choose the option to “Show Package Contents.
With the unveiling of Lion just days away it is easy to look back at past releases of Mac OS and see how we arrived at Apple’s latest system software. Over the last 27 years Apple has introduced more than 17 major releases of its premier desktop operating system. Some releases such as System 7, and Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger brought revolutionary changes to the Mac while making the transition between hardware architectures.
Stacey is a framework for building simple websites. The project is based around two core ideals: Separating textual content & assets from your HTML Keeping ugly PHP-style logic out of your templates Stacey accomplishes this without a database, or installation files. Simply drag the application onto a web server with PHP installed and Stacey starts runing. “Content is managed by creating folders and editing text files.” Templates are generated by authoring HTML with a special set of tags.
Apple released four distinct Newton form factors containing eight different models between August 1993 and February 1998. Each form factor was an evolutionary step forward for the platform, and introduced design considerations and features that were different from past and subsequent models. Choosing a Newton requires understanding each models benefits and weaknesses and applying that knowledge towards selecting the Newton that best meets your needs. Original MessagePad & 100 The OMP was unveiled and released on August 3, 1993 at MacWorld Boston.
A Newton MessagePad, the grandfather of all PDAs, is a funny thing to carry around with you when most people are sliding super slim, constantly connected, application-rich smartphones into their pockets. Compared to the iPhone a Newton MessagePad looks like a green brick, and I have been accused more than once of stealing the rubberized signature pad from a UPS delivery man. Despite what my Newton lacks in portability, connectivity, and applications it makes up for with a unique set of features no other mobile computer can match.
iTunes can tell you a lot about a song. It can tell you the title, the artist, the album, and the genre. It can tell you the year a song was released and when it was added to your iTunes library. iTunes can even tell you the bit rate of a recording, and how many times you have played or skipped a particular track. What iTunes can’t tell you is what a particular song is worth to you.
My backup strategy is simple. I have two computers, in two different locations, synchronized in real time over the web using Dropbox. Each computer is backed up hourly using Time Machine on two separate external hard drives. Time Machine keeps hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for all previous months. If I mistakenly delete or overwrite a file on either computer I have thirty days worth of revisions on Dropbox, and twenty four hours worth of hourly revisions on both Time Machine backup.