Apple Newbie

Neisha Erin Stadelhofer has managed to run Mac OS System 7.5 on her Sony PSP. Not much of a use though, it’s just for the cool factor

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Apple has confirmed the Mac Mini upgrade that I previously posted about, but there’s a catch to it. Because there’s alot of existing Mac Mini stock in the stores, the new Mac Mini boxes are labelled with the old specifications, with no hints as to which are the new ones and which are the old ones.

The way it is right now, getting an upgraded model or the previous specifications is a matter of luck.

Source: Yahoo

Apple’s filing for an integrated horizontal axis swiveling webcam gives us an insight into what Apple might add to their desktop and notebook lines.

AppleInsider says sources have reported sightings of iMac prototypes that feature a webcam. A built in webcam would be useful in this day where VOIP is getting hotter and hotter. With video talk getting more popular with 3G handphones, it’s only logical that with broadband connections, video phone calls using PC would be in demand. An iMac with a built-in iSight camera is logical and would definitely sell, since iChat AV 3.0 is one of the main features of Tiger.

With a little Photoshop magic, the camera equipped iMac might look like this…

The lense kind of spoils the clean look of the iMac so I don’t now how Apple’s designers (with far far more creative capability than me) would decide to integrate it. Also, I doubt the iMac’s webcam would have swivel capability as on a desktop there would not be much use for such a feature. But if they did… I wonder how they would implement it?

Wouldn’t it be great if it was true?

Macworld has posted an in-depth review which compares 4 free web browser products and 1 commercial web browser or Mac OS X.

Leading the pack in the results is Mozilla Firefox 1.0.6 with 4.5 out of 5. Omni Group’s US$30 OmbiWeb 5.1.1 ties in 2nd place with Apple’s own bundled browser Safari 2.0 at 4 out of 5. Opera 8.0.2 which has recently been re-licensed from a commercial product to free software gets 3.5 out of 5 and Camino (also based on Mozilla) gets 3 out of 5.

Read the review.

Been looking around the net for more Mac Mini information regarding the Mac Mini update rumour and found some interesting tidbits on the Mac Mini.
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I use SSH tunnels frequently as part of my system administration job to ‘forward ports on demand’ without punching forwarding ports into a firewall and get into internal PCs at remote sites.

Source
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Think Secret says the updated Mac Mini systems are already on the way to the retailers. Not sure when Malaysia will get these new ones.

So what are in the new Mac Mini line? The low-end Mac Mini will get a 1.33GHz G4 instead of the previous 1.25GHz one. The high-end Mac Mini will get a bump up to 1.5GHz from 1.42Ghz. Hard drives will be upgraded to 5400rpm. This is what particularly interests me. Would speed up the swap trashing and application loading.

The SuperDrive high-end model will get it’s 4 speed SuperDrive bumped up to a 8 speed model capable of writing dual-layer discs.

Prices are expected to remain the same.

A project which I was working on previously called their system a ‘Customer Friendship Management’ system. After reading this, I truly understand what they meant by choosing such a name.

I am not sure whether there is any other company which has managed to form a bond with their customers the way Apple customers do.

One example of taking burden of customers is warranty. Their warranty is covered internationally, so if you buy an Ipod from the USA, you can make warranty claims in Malaysia.

This bond is so strong that some Apple users even love their product packaging almost as much as their hardware. I don’t blame us, they’re relaly well designed. Wired’s article mentions engineering student Ryan Harne who actually set up a tasteful display of arrangement of Apple boxes, backlit with lamps from Ikea.

Why? “It’s more than a record of a serial number; it’s a record of a good event that happened in my life.”

One of the problems that irritated me as a new Apple user after using Windows for so long is Apple’s different window switching system.

Here’s what’s different. When you open multiple windows belonging to the same program in Windows, for example a few Firefox windows, each window will appear in your ALT-TAB windows switcher list. This means you can switch between Firefox windows easily.

But in Mac OS X, if you have 10 Firefox windows open, only one Firefox window appears in the windows switcher list when I press ⌘+TAB. To switch between child windows of a same program, I have to use ⌘+~, and Shift+⌘+~ for the opposite direction. Didn’t really like this much.

My solution was to change the way I switch windows altogether.

I set the top left area of the screen as a hot corner for Exposé. Much better than ALT-TAB or using keyboard shortcuts to activate Exposé. Each time I want to switch windows, I move my mouse to the top left most, then click the window I want from Exposé.

It doesn’t make sense to move your hand to the keyboard to press the Exposé shortcut, then move your hand back to the mouse to click the window you want. It’s a much faster and smoother process if Exposé is activated with your mouse going to the top left area of the screen, then you move your mouse to click the window you want, in a swift movement.

Do you have any other ways to make switching between windows as fast and as efficient as possible for a heavy multi-tasker? Is there any other way that’s faster or better? I’m a beginner, there might be a much better way that has been totally oblivious to me so far.

Share your tips!

Google released Google Secure Access, which is basically a VPN service aimed at Wi-Fi users that allows the encryption of over-the-air data to protect it from sniffers. Your data is encrypted between your system and Google’s VPN server, where Google will route your data to the original destination.

However, Google has not released a client for Mac OS X yet. No worries. The Google Secure Access VPN is actually a 128bit PPTP connection. Instead of logging in with your Google userid and password (Gmail?), the username and password is randomly generated and returned to the client via an XML file.

Once you know how it works, you can easily write an Applescript to connect to it as Mac OS X already has all the necessary software to connect to Google Secure Access’s VPN. Basically you need to download the auto-generated XML file containing the username and password to use, parse the file, then tell Internet Connect to dial a PPTP VPN connection to vpn.google.com with that username and password.

Kevin Stock has already written such an Applescript.

Update: Kevin’s site seems to be down, so here’s the AppleScript.

Google caps your speed to about 512kbps when you are connected to their VPN server, but if you need the extra security, I’d recommend you connect to it! I’ve just tried HTTP browsing, POP3 and IMAP access and they all work. SMTP seems to be blocked. I suppose Google does not want spammers to take advantage of masking their own IP through the Google Secure Access VPN which translates the source IP to Google’s own block of IPs.

For more information on how to run your Applescripts, read on Apple’s Script Menu. All you have to do is put the script into your Scripts folder and run it from the Script Menu in Finder.