Well, for all us college and high school types out there, I have some exciting news. Apple has just released details about it upcoming Insomnia film festival. (College and high school students only)

You get 24 hours to make to make a 3 minute film. Once your film is made it gets reviewed by the public. The top 25 entries will then proceed to be screened by big time film industry players.  What do you get for all your time and effort? 1st place gets everyone on your team will get a MacBook Pro, Final Cut Studio 2, Logic Studio, Shake, and a year’s worth of One to One personal training to help you use them.

Good luck and look for more info here: Apple’s Insomnia Film Festival.

I’m still working on putting together the review but here are a few sneak peeks:

What makes you choose Apple? Is it the operating system? Is it their style of product? is it their devotion to excellence in every product? What makes you pick Apple when there are several other choices to choose from?

Why do I buy Apple?

I buy Apple because of the operating system. OS X is the perfect mix of flexibility, reliability, style, and power. Technologies like Grand Central will help optimize the operating system to new hardware by making every part of OS X Multi-Processor aware. From the UNIX core to the UI. Every part of 10.6 will be able to take advantage of multi-core processors and all that they have to offer. It’s scheduled to receive the 64 bit streamline in the near future. This streamlining will also accompany a complete re-write of Finder in the Cocoa language as well as general code optimization and other enhancements.

The second reason I have for buying Apple is because of product design. Laptops made out of aluminum and elegantly simply iMacs are why I buy Apple. The level of thought that goes into every aspect of every Mac makes for an exceptionally pleasing experience regardless of what Mac you are using. They look nice and they feel solid.

Those are my reasons, what are yours?

Of the myriad of new features included on newer Apple laptops, none has more unrealized potential than the multi-touch trackpads.

Some crafty developers over at Mozilla seem to be keen to this, and have included support for Apple’s new multi-touch keyboard in a new experimental version of Firefox dubbed Minefield. Minefield includes many enhancements that may (or may not) be part of the upcoming 3.1 release of Firefox. This new release takes advantage of the three-finger swipe, “the pinch”, and the two-finger rotate gestures built into OS X. The three-finger swipe act as a foward/back button, the two-finger rotate gesture switches between tabs, and the pinch move will make text on the screen larger or smaller (a la command and the +/- keys). In my few days using Minefield, the three-finger foward/back gesture has become second nature, and has completely replaced the mouse gestures I used to use. The two-fingered rotation to switch between tabs is somewhat less useful due to its high sensitivity which makes it harder than its worth to move quickly to the tab you want. Read the rest of this entry »

Running out of space is becoming a common problem in the day of high speed internet and HD downloads. 10 movies puts you back 40GBs if you’re into the High Def scene. That combined with all of your apps and music can fill up your hard drive fast. Have no worries though. I have compiled a list of the highest rated /and best performing external hard drives for your Mac.

1. Western Digital MyBook Studio Edition – Coming in at $105 for 500GBs. It’s not really your value hard drive. This drive is specifically designed and marketed for Apple computers. It features a quad-interface consisting of Firewire 800, Firewire 400, eSATA, and USB 2.0. The LED capacity gauge and the smart power auto off are two features which make this drive even more irresistible. More Details. Buy Here.
2. Lacie’s Neil Poulton External Hard Drive – If simplistic elegant style is your thing, this is the drive for you. eSATA, USB 2.0, and Firewire 400 make for a better then average port list. The price has recently fallen making this drive a feasible option for all users. You can pick up a 500GB one for $89.99. Buy Here. More Details Here.
3. Western Digital My Book World Edition – Networked Attached Storage devices such as this one from Western Digital bring you hard to the world. Included software allows you to remotely access your hard drive where ever you have an internet connection. You can also plug the drive directly into a home router to give all other computers on your network access to the the drive. $219 for 1TB. Get one here.

Portable Drives:

1. Toshiba Portable External – This drive offers up decent style at a decent price. $89.99 for 160GBs. Like most portable drives it gets all of its power from the USB port. No need for extra power adpaters. You are however going to be stuck with USB 2.0.
2. Apricorn Portable Firewire Drive – If you are looking for above average performance from a portable drive, Firewire is the way to go. This drive is powered by the Firewire port. Get one here.

Coming in at $349 the Drobo was a little bit more then I really wanted to deal with. However, I am going to say it is worth it. I have seen it in action and it is flawless. Check it out here: Data Robitocs

Apple Insider claims to have information regarding the future of Apples Mac Mini computer system.

Claims point out that the Mac Mini will certainly get an update sometime in the new future. This conflicts a report posted earlier by Mac Rumors, stating that the Mac Mini had already been discontinued.

The post stated that Mac Mini could have been announced dead as soon as Apples Quarter 4 financial results which were released on Tuesday the 21st. Apple made no mention of this in their conference call and the Mac Mini still remains one of Apple’s systems. Read the rest of this entry »

Here are some tips to follow when Installing OS X for the first time, or the 50th time.

• Tip #1: Manage your printer drivers. Plug and Play is beautiful but it comes at a price. That price is 2GBs of unnecessary system files. Deselect all the printer drives and simply make a note to install the printer manually when the installation is done. Canon, HP, Lexmark, Brother, and Epson all have printer drivers available online.

• Tip#2: How many languages do you speak? 2,3 maybe 4? Well I doubt you know 18. 18 happens to be the number of languages installled by defualt in OS X. Why not just install the ones you need?. This can save up to 500MBs

• Tip#3: Once you have installed OS X go play with the text to speech prefrences and then DELETE IT! Yeah its fun and all but unless you’re using it get rid of it. Delete this folder. /System/Library/Speech/Voices “Alex.SpeechVoice. Doing so gets you another 700MB!

If your looking for more tips try this post on optimizing OS X: A few tips to keep OS X on its feet.

For some of us last Oct.14th came and went without us hearing the news we were hoping for. What we were hoping to hear was that Apple would be adding Blu-ray functionality to Macs. What we got instead was a slap to the face from Mr. Jobs himself saying “It’s a bag of hurt”. While that may be very relevant and true. It’s not helping us get any closer to Blu-ray. There is however, a saving grace. Enter AMEX.

AMEX Digital is an Original Design and Equipment Manufacturer specialized in Blu-ray Recorders. AMEX opened up a huge door when it introduced its Portable Blu-ray Mulit Drive. The PBMD is a little portable drive capable of playing back and burning Blu-ray discs,DVDs, and CDs. Being a portable unit has slowed some of the burn times though. You will be looking at 1x for BD-RE (DL) 2x for BD-RE (SL). It can burn dual layer DVDs at 4x and single layer at 8x. It’s ability to be ran off of a USB bus makes it incredibly ideal for traveling. If you have the budget, this one is worth every penny. Thats 28,900 pennies to be exact. ($289.00)

If your looking for more info you can find the press release here:

Amex Digital Portable Blu-ray drive.

There comes a time when a computer no longer wants to run at the speed in which it was created. While cleaning up a computer than runs on Windows may be a difficult task for some, Mac OSX automatically runs maintenance scripts without the user needing to command it.

Unfortunately for the most part these scripts, which clean up groggy areas of the computers file system, are typically scheduled to run at night. This can come as a burden to those who don’t keep their machines on 24/7. Onyx, freeware from Titanium, is a great tool that commands these processes at the users discretion. This tool can be used anywhere from cleaning out the cache to changing parameters of applications like Safari, Exposé, or Dashboard.

Cleaning up with these tools I have found to drastically
increase my computers productivity. My boot up times have
significantly increased and I can moderate some of the
tasks that have been hogging up my Macs ram. Read the rest of this entry »

It may seem odd to you that I would be purchasing a 1GHz desktop in this day and age. Well it is odd and I’m not exactly sure why I did it either, But I do know that it is going to make me happy.

Ever since this computer was introduced 6 years ago in 2002 it was the computer of my dreams. To me it represents the most impressive and eye catching design ever bestowed upon a computer. The mirror finish that graces the dual front drive doors is of course my favorite part. The doors have a bright glossy finish that make them shine like crazy. The outside is only half of it though. The inside resembles that of a Porsche or Maserati. Very clean and streamlined.

Both the style and pure power of this 2002 computer are reasons I bought it. But it also reminds me of a time when I felt that Apple was more concerned with making a quality computer. I feel that now that they have introduced so many more products that the quality of their high end models is suffering. The Mac Pro sure is a beauty, but it fails to be different. Remember Apple, “Think Different”. It is full of power and lots of RAM, but I feel that it is lacking style. Well, it’s not like anyone would buy something based off of looks though, right?