Tag Archive for 'Mac'

OS X isn’t some super epic OS, you know…

Published on 24 October, 2009. Closed Tags: Computer, Mac, MacBook, Operating System, OS, OS X, OSX, PC, Snow Leopard.

“You never have to reinstall OS X!!!11!1!1!!!!1111!1oneone!1″

Well, no. You don’t. But a fresh install of an OS is always a nice thing. For example – I reinstalled Snow Leopard on my MacBook last night, and have almost finished installing everything – I just have to install three things now, Photoshop CS4, Toast Titanium and World of Goo. With all my other apps installed so far, OS X is sitting at a pretty tiny 9.26GB. Once I install those three apps, it should bump up to about 15GB used space, tops.

Before I reinstalled Snow Leopard – and with the exact same apps, data, and so on, on the HDD, OS X was taking up just over 35GB. That’s with 11 months of constant use, and what was originally Leopard installed.

So yes, sure, Snow Leopard was running pretty smoothly before I reinstalled, but now it’s running even better. Actually, the one thing I have noticed is that now it only takes about 25 seconds to reboot, from the time I hit “Reboot” to the time it was at the desktop, with everything loaded – before, it used to take about 60 seconds.

Next up, reinstalling Windows 7 with the retail version this coming week.

MobileMe

Published on 29 September, 2009. Closed Tags: Apple, dotMac, iDisk, iPhone, Mac, MobileMe, Service, Sync.

MobileMe

I purchased a .Mac box set back in mid 2008, a few weeks before the service was announced as having it’s name changed to MobileMe. I managed to get it for a not too bad price (£45 instead of the usual £59), and it worked very well with my iPhone and Mac. Initially, MobileMe was quite unstable, going up and down quite a bit after it’s launch, but after a month or so it became stable, and Apple gave a free extension to all accounts (hence why my one year account has lasted a few months more).

I’m not posting this because I want to complain, I’m posting this because I want to express my love, yet at the same time, shall we say, dislike, of MobileMe. At £59 per year, it’s not cheap. Yes, technically, it’s less then £5 a month, but the only thing I managed to ever use it for was syncing and Find My iPhone, and that’s more then I feel is necessary for that, especially when you can get it for free or cheap elsewhere (eg, Google Sync is free, albeit with no Find My iPhone feature).

As the full package, if you make use of the full suite of features – sync, email, gallery, iDisk, Find My iPhone, Remote Wipe, Back to my Mac, etc, it is, in some ways, worth the money. However, for just sync, it is not. And here’s where my idea comes in. I think that Apple should offer two versions of MobileMe. First off, the full package, with everything, at £59 per year. Secondly, a smaller and cheaper package, called MobileMe Sync. Advertise it as “the basics” for the iPhone, or something like that, and price it low – £15-20 per year is ideal. MobileMe Sync would offer calendar, contacts, and bookmark syncing, along with Find My iPhone, and Remote Wipe, all for a low fee, with, say, 20-50MB of storage for calendars, contacts, and bookmarks. I think that this would appeal to a fair few people, myself included, as it offers just the commonly used basic options, as well as Find My iPhone, which is quite useful if you do happen to lose your phone. This would offer an incentive for Exchange users too – Exchange does allow remote wiping of mobile devices, but it can’t find them.

In addition to that, the current MobileMe service has a “family pack”, whereby you can add additional users onto your MobileMe subscription, and with MobileMe sync, you could do much the same – but for less. Maybe £5 per extra user?

I hope Apple do consider this in future, as I’m sure it would allow them to earn even more money ( ) – they already have the server infrastructure in place, and of course it would need a few tweaks to both OS X and the iPhone OS to work, but in the end I think it would be worth it.

So, that’s why I’ve not renewed my MobileMe subscription this year. I simply don’t need to spend £59 on something that I use a very small part of. In the meantime, I’ve switched to using a friend’s Exchange server, which does the same job (albeit without being able to locate my phone if I lose it), but for free.

Win a copy of Snow Leopard!

Published on 12 August, 2009. 7 Comments Tags: Apple, Free, Giveaway, Mac, OS X, osxgiveaway, Snow Leopard, Twitter, Upgrade.

Squarespace did it, Moonfruit did it, and now I’m doing it. For fun. And also as a bit of an experiment. I wouldn’t consider myself huge on Twitter (despite me owning this), so I’d like to see what kind of impact a giveaway from a person with just 325 followers would have on Twitter in general. It probably won’t be much of an impact like Squarespace or Moonfruit’s ones were, but I can try anyway. Oh, and lastly, because this is being funded out of my own pocket and because I’m not a rich corporation with lots of spare cash, I’m only giving away one copy, and I’m only giving away one copy of the upgrade version, not the full version. But of course, if you’re willing to offer a sponsorship deal, feel free to ask.

So, onto the details/rules:

You need an Intel Mac that 1) is running Leopard now, and 2) can run Snow Leopard (duh ).
To enter, simply add the hashtag #osxgiveaway to any tweet you make. There’s no limit, so feel free to enter as much as you like!
You can enter anywhere from now until 12pm (midday) GMT+0, on the day of Snow Leopard’s UK release – 28th August 2009.
You do not need to follow me on Twitter to be eligible to enter.
Entry is open to residents of these countries only: Apple – Choose your country or region.
Depending on whether or not I’m able to purchase Snow Leopard from your country’s store, I may have to purchase a copy from the UK Apple Store and ship the box via the postal service to you, so please bare this in mind.
Because Snow Leopard is stupidly overpriced in the UK (and if you win, and you’re in the UK), I’ll contribute £20 toward it, and you can contribute £5. Fair deal I’d say.
Once Snow Leopard is released, I will place the order and get it shipped to you within two weeks of Snow Leopard’s public release. I will, of course, keep you updated via email, @ replies, or Direct Messages on Twitter.
If you win and you already have a copy of Snow Leopard, and you don’t need another (c’mon, be nice!), let me know and I’ll pick another winner.