Gadgets | Appleaddiction

3 must have Expresscard accessories for your mac.

By Luke On Dec 3, 2008 Apple | Gadgets | Hardware | Tips 1 1 Comment Tags: Accessories, Expresscard, MacBook Pro

Owning a Macbook Pro probably means you do a lot of work on the go, or at least you want to appear like you do alot of work on the go. Nevertheless, here are three Expresscards that will increase the productivity and usability of your MacBook Pro.

Lexar 16GB Expresscard:Not only is this a good way to increase your internal storage, it is also a great way to keep and transport secure files that you don’t want to leave on your laptop all the time. cost:$58
21IN1 Multimedia Reader/writer with SDHC support:Apple’s decision to exclude a built in card reader is an unpopular one, but easily remedied. For $27 you can pick up this card reader and forget the problem ever existed.
2 Port eSATA Expresscard:The lack of an eSATA port on your MBP is nothing to get down about. This $40 Expresscard adds 2, 3Gbp/s eSATA ports to your MacBook Pro in just seconds. A must for people dealing with frequent and large file transfers.

If I could convince you to get only one, I would recommend the SSD Expresscard. The ability to keep secure backups of all your data on a removable internal card is feature worth forking over some cash.

By the way, these all make great gifts for people who own a MacBook Pro. They will be more then impressed when they open your gift to find something incredibly thoughtful, and useful.

5 Gifts to get a Mac Geek

By Luke On Nov 17, 2008 Apple | Gadgets | Tips 0 No Comments

It’s that giving time of the year again, well, almost. You may as well get to it though. It has a tendency to sneak up on us. So, without further delay…

5 gifts to get a Mac Geek.

1 TB Time Capsule $419 -Back up a lifetime’s worth of memories with the all-new Time Capsule, a wireless hard drive that works seamlessly with Time Machine in Mac OS X Leopard. It’s also a full-featured 802.11n Wi-Fi base station.
OS X Icon Pillows $29 ea. $149 Set – Bring OS X to life with this creative collection of 6 fleece pillows derived from the Finder, iTunes, iChat, Photobooth, iPhoto, Dashboard, and iMovie
MacWorld/MacLife Magazine $19.95/$19.95 – We do live in age age of digital media and on demand content, but for me, getting a magazine in the mail every month is alot more fun and entertaiing then just reading the stuff online. $20 for 12 issues is a great price as well.
Airport Express W/Air Tunes $59.99 – The main reason this one made the list was becuase of the Air Tunes Support. Air Tunes allows you to wirelesly stream your music to your home sound system. It also triples it usage by being a wireless base station as well as a wireless print server. All in one little box for $59.99
Cables, lots of cables. $5-150 – If you use a Mac anything like I use a Mac, you need a lot of cables. I am constantly on the move with my Mac, and constantly needing to hook it up to stuff. I carry 6 cable with me. (DVI to HDMI, DVI to DVI, Optical Toslink, Cat5, FireWire 400/800, and USB 2.0) If you were to buy all of these cables at a store like BestBuy you would pay well over $200. If you shop at monoprice.com, you can get all of these for under $60

Season of the shows FireFly, Star Trek, and Entourage also make good gifts. have fun and enjoy the Holidays!

Mac Storage Solutions

By Luke On Oct 25, 2008 Apple | Gadgets | Hardware 5 5 Comments

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.

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.
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.
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:

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.
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

The Mac App Round-Up

By Luke On Aug 30, 2008 Gadgets | Uncategorized Comments Off

Every single week I use a smattering of different Apps. From Web Browsers to Games. I do quite a bit on my Mac. Ever since I started dabbling in Linux, I have had a great appreciation for free and open source programs. However, every once and a while, I stumble across an App worth paying for. So whether they are free or not, here are the 5 (4) most well developed apps that I use on a day to day basis.

Cyberduck is an open source FTP app. I use it every single day to manage and maintain Appleaddiction.net. The features and ease of use make it a breeze to use and the $0 price tag makes it even more impressive.

Now, this next App is actually counter productive, but all work and no play makes Luke a dull blogger. Quinn is an OS X adaptation of the popular puzzle/matching game Tetris. Impressive visuals and small footprint make it a must for anyone.

Transmission is an app that as long as my computer is on, its on. Whether I am downloading a new Linux distro or an episode of Diggnation, Transmission has constantly been improving. Weekly updates and another $0 price tag make Transmission another wonderful app.

Hopefully you have been around AppleAddiction.net long enough to of heard me talking about Xslimmer before. But if not, here it is. Xslimmer is a cleaning type app that will actually remove unnecessary code and foreign languages from applications that you have downloaded. It comes with a $12.95 price tag, but this app alone has saved me over 2GBs of disk space and speed up app launch times, which to me, is worth the $12.95

*Now, the last one on my list is kinda questionable. It is not nessecarly the best developed, but it is very useful. It’s called Serial Seeker. Serial Seeker is a database of serials for thousands upon thousands of registration numbers and key codes for countless versions of Mac apps. Now, I’m not promoting the pirating of software. But sometimes I just wanna try out the full version of an app to make sure its right for me without having to buy it.

So there you have it. If you have an app that you find extremely useful please let me know by clicking the “Show Meta” tab and post a comment about it.

If you are wondering why Firefox was not included, I was trying to stick to less popular and more discrete apps that not everyone already knows about.

*Not neccesarly well developed, but very useful.

Simply the best solution for free tv on your Mac.

By Luke On Aug 19, 2008 Apple | Gadgets | Hardware | Software/Freeware 0 No Comments

I often blog about applications and pieces of hardware that bring increased functionality to your Mac. Not only because it is practical, but also because a Mac can do so much more it gets credit for.

Quite a few months ago I was experimenting with a linux distro aimed at replacing DVRs called KnoppMyth. (If you are interested, Systm just released an episode detailing the setup of MythTV. Click here to watch)At the time it was a great alternative. It had all the great features you would expect from a spendy set top box with the benefit of being a free linux distro. However, as much as I do like linux, I do spend the majority of my time on a Mac. So I have been keeping my eyes open for a Mac alternative. Read More

Solar Power for MacBook Air

By Luke On Jul 11, 2008 Apple | Gadgets | Hacks/Mods 0 No Comments

QuickerTek, the leader in wireless Apple products, announces the Apple Juicz – a new way to power the Apple MacBook Air using solar power. Three models are priced from $500 to $1,000 USD, fold to a convenient 10.5 size and come with a cool Element messenger bag. These solar panels charge the MacBook Air while in use. And since the MacBook Air has a non-removable battery, alternative power options are welcomed by the Mac community.

The iPhone 3G. Yeah its cool and all

By Luke On Jul 9, 2008 Apple | Gadgets | Hardware 0 No Comments

But it is very far from being revolutionary. I mean a 2MP digital camera, 2007 called and it wants it crappy cellphone cameras back. No exchangeable battery, No movie mode. I mean…. Well here, let me tell you a story, this will help sum up my point, It’s 2007 and I’m working at BestBuy in the wireless department. A man from somewhere in Japan comes in and starts looking at products in my section and I go to see if he has any questions. As I walk up to him I see that he has his cell phone out. He is using the camera in his phone as a bar code reader and is getting real time price quotes from multiple sources on the internet. It just blew me away. The iPhone is ahead of most US tech but this article from Asiajin.com helps you compare the iPhone to Japanese phones to compare and contrast features and the like. I guess I’m used to Apple being a little bit more innovative. Features like the App store and mobileme do lend a helping hand in keeping me impressed though.

P.S. Don’ take this article the wrong way. I am definitely getting one. Cause it is still a 3G iPhone and it rocks.

More free flash drives!

By Luke On Jun 19, 2008 Apple | Gadgets 6 6 Comments

Well, actually only one. But anyways. Up for grabs is a Kingston DATA Max 4GB Drive. Simply subscribe to Appleaddiction.net via RSS (If you haven’t already) and then leave a post in the comments section below telling me what your favorite Mac App is. It’s that simple!

Benchmarking your Mac, or any computer for that matter

By Luke On May 31, 2008 Gadgets | Uncategorized 0 No Comments

Geekbench 2.0.17 is a simple and fast benchmarking program designed for the Mac, but also available for Linux and Windows. That being the case. Geekbench is a great benchmarking program because it allows for comparison of equal hardware on separate software. The test it runs is relatively fast(under a minute). The results come back in a neat and clean cascading bar graph. After the test is ran you can also submit the results online to be compared with other computers. Compatible with multi-threaded, multi-core and multi CPU systems, Geekbench is a great utility that will be more then welcome in my Applications folder.

You can grab the app over at Primate Labs

The DigiPro Drawing tablet!

By Luke On May 20, 2008 Gadgets 45 45 Comments

It’s here! So, not to long ago woot.com was having another spectacular woot off and I just so happened to be there when the DigiPro 5.5×4 Drawing tablet came up for the oh so sweet price of $24.99(+$5 SH). There was no way I could pass up an offer like this. Especially since I have been toying with the idea of buying a tablet for the past few years. So here is the summary:

First off, It’s surprisingly stylish. It has a sleek white exterior that will match any Mac flawlessly. The inner tablet is 5.5×4 with a one inch bezel around three sides and about 1.5 on top. The pen it comes with is very heavy and stable, great for doing precession work. The Plug and Play on the Mac was great. I plugged it in and Ink (OS X Handwriting analysis app) opened right up and helped me get started. It gave me the option of using it for handwriting but I’m not into that at the moment. It also came with drivers for OS X. I didn’t feel it was necessary but I installed them anyways. After installing and restarting, a program launched that allowed me to tweak settings and set corners as hot points for launching applications.

After everything was installed and configured a launched Photoshop and started fooling around a bit trying to get used to it. Now the box claims 512 levels of pressure sensitivity and that is very apparent in PS. I tried drawing something but all I got was a pathetic line. After much frustration I realized I actually needed to push down on the pen to get a thicker line. This was something I was not used to but immediately appreciated.

All in all, a great buy for $25. I strongly recommend the DigiPro if you can get yours hands on one.

The updated drive can be found here. http://www.uc-logic.com/en/index.php?ParentMenuID=4

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