Tag-Archive for » Apple «
It’s been a while since I threw a Mac tip into the mix, so here goes.
A pet-hate of mine is that annoying noise that plays when your machine starts up. Whether it’s a PC or a Mac, I have no idea why someone would think it was a good idea to by default play a sound at startup, or shutdown for that matter.
What is the benefit of that? No, I can’t think of it either.
Strange thing is, on the Mac it’s not something you can easily get rid of. So, other than remembering to mute the sound before shutdown, you’re was stuck with it. Grrrr.
However, after a little bit of digging about, I’ve found a method to stop the startup sound on the Mac without the rest of the sound being muted.
As you may have seen from other posts, I’m a big Apple fan.
I’ve admired them since the early days, but until relatively recently never owned any of their products. A bit too expensive and not mainstream enough to be in use where I worked.
That all changed with the iPod. Still expensive but luckily I received one as a gift. I liked the simplicity; the controls, the minimalism. Then, more recently and long overdue, I got myself an iPhone; even better. Finally I took the big step and plunged into OSX and a MacBook; rock ‘n roll!
It’s all about the little design things for me. The way it looks, feels. The buttons are just right, the precision machining (the sim drawer on the iPhone for example), nothing is superfluous; all form, fit and function.
You’ll be hard-pushed to persuade me against any of the Apple products I own, other than with newer, better versions of them.
And therein lies my gripe about Apple…
I like music. I’ve always liked music; all kinds of music. In days gone by, I would spend my spare cash on buying vinyl or things to play it on.
When CDs arrived on the scene, I switched to the new medium and the vinyl was assigned to the loft. I even re-bought some of my old vinyl on CD (you’re welcome guys – double-whammy for you).
When downloads came into play (jeez this makes me sound old) I still continued to buy CDs, because some strange part of me still liked having something solid and tangible in my hand after parting with my cash.
When I finally took the plunge and bought a few individual tracks from iTunes, to fill some gaps on my iPod, all seemed fine. Until I decided to move some of my music onto a little stick MP3 player and I happened upon the problem with Digital Rights Management.
The iTunes-purchased tracks wouldn’t play on my stick drive because it was in iTunes format, not standard MP3…
Had an attack of holiday-inspired tech-craziness.
Bought m’self a book on iPhone development, joined the Apple Developer Connection and downloaded the iPhone SDK. So, the big question is, “Will this be the start of something interesting, or another project that comes to nothing?” Only time will tell.
Well, the book arrived today and the whole iPhone development environment looks pretty cool. Trouble is it’s Objective C, which I’ve not done any of before but really, how hard can it be?
So, where do we go from here? What to develop…
Finally! It had all been going too well, so I suppose it had to come; something negative to post about regarding the Mac platform.
I’ve not had the Mac long in the big scheme of things, but up till now, pretty much everything ‘just worked’ which was a welcome relief from Microsoft-land that I know and love.
That was until today, and it was a kinda strange one.
The much hyped Snow Leopard OS came out recently and I decided in my nice shiny world of Mac-iness I’d give it a go to try and keep up with the trends. So I got my nice shrink wrapped package with the nice picture of a… Snow Leopard on it at the weekend.
You may have seen from previous posts that I’m becoming a bit of a Mac evangelist, but I reckon if something’s good, it’s worth talking about. And I’m talking.
So, as if you needed any more reasons to buy yourself a MacBook, or other Mac model for that matter, here’s another couple for free…
Back on the trail of helpful Mac tips. Just two quickies this time round:
First, I had a CD that wouldn’t eject from my MacBook drive.
It was really stuck; the drive was spinning up and down but nothing in Finder, not even an icon. I was getting an occasional colourful spinning CD mousepointer, but nothing else. Pressing the eject button showed the eject icon on the screen but didn’t actually have any effect.
Not only that, it pretty much ate up the resources preventing starting of other apps etc. or even get to display the dock.
I searched around, and while there were a number of suggestions, none of them worked for this particular disk, but the following did…
Hot on the heels of the similarly titled post, I have a few other gems I’ve come across or been pointed towards to make life on the good ship MacBook that little bit more simple. Not that it’s difficult in the first place, just different if you’re used to Windows.
Note: Feedback from the family, who are a mix of casual and regular PC users, would suggest the Mac is easy to use. So fear-ye not Mac virgins, this is not a platform (only) for the uber-geeks.
That said, if you *are* an uber-geek, there’s lots (and I mean lots) to float your boat here.
So, what do we have in the bag this time?
As you may heve read from previous posts, and at the risk of boring any regular (aye right!) readers, I got a MacBook a short while back. It’s a bit of a migration for me, having uset a PC for most of my career. I published a list of keyboard shortcuts previously and heres a list of other things I’ve hunted down as ‘essentials’ for day to day work/play.
I know there are alternatives to all of the below, but these are the ones I plumped for. One prevailing factor influenced the choices below; they’re all open source/freeware. My budget for toys is dry following the arrival of the MacBook, so it’s cheapies or freebies for me for a while.
So here goes:
Unusual for me I know, but I thought I’d try to bring a little culture to the blog.
So, without further ado, here’s a spot of Japanese poetry…
Fluttering around,
Pausing only for a while,
Then to something new.
OK, it’s a pretty poor haiku, but it gets my recent frame of mind across nicely. My focus has been suffering lately, lots of little things to occupy time; the blog, the iPhone, the MacBook, even reviewing stuff on DooYoo, but nothing substantial. I was working on the principle of working on lots of little things in the hope that something may stick and give me a sizeable target worth shooting for – the next big thing, I suppose.