Mac

Happy Birthday Mac!

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Can it really have been 30 years ago today that the world was introduced to the Macintosh?

Before the presentation the 27 year old Steve Jobs was shaking with fear and anticipation; “I’m scared shitless” he uttered and then stepped on stage and changed the world – a feat he would repeat several times.

Today, when all computers work like the Macintosh it is hard to imagine what was so special about windows, menus, scrolling text, graphics, speech synthesis etc. all chugging along on an 8 MHz Motorola 68000 processor and 128 Kb of RAM. The wonderful Cathode can take your modern Mac back to those wonderful pre-Mac days…

Jobs and Steve Wozniak had defined what a personal computer would be like and how it would work. IBM dominated the world of computing and were venturing into the fledgling personal micro computer market (micro computers as opposed to the mainframe and mini computers widely used at the time). The Apple II dominated the personal computer market of the day; introducing the world to the Spreadsheet and providing work for a small company called Microsoft..

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The Apple II would continue to sell well despite the appearance of the Mac. The personal computer belonged to the individual and would empower them in their daily lives; liberating them from the corporate controlled IBM computers operated in the basement by boffins. That was the Big Brother that the Mac was designed to destroy….

Jobs saw the personal computer as something you could pick up and carry – the Apple II was a wedge shape so you could tuck it under your arm and the Mac had a built in carrying handle. The IBM personal computer models fail this basic requirement…

Just one year later Jobs will be sacked not to return to the then nearly bankrupt Apple in 1997.

My One Star Review Addiction

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I confess I am addicted. Whenever I venture into the Mac’s or iOS App Stores I have to select the Most Critical reviews option and read the bizarre one star reviews.  I have mentioned some, such as for Pixelmator, Panogaea and a MIDI controller, in the past.  It is a fascinating world where people plainly do not know how to use their computer, complain that an app lacks a specific feature although no one ever suggested that such a feature was included or are just plain stupid and are willing to publicly voice their own shortcomings and/or put the blame on the developers.

Apple’s [wikipop search=”Mac_OS_X_Lion”]OS X 10.7 (known as Lion)[/wikipop] has been around for almost a year. Every new Mac sold in that time uses it as do the countless older Macs which have been updated.  It is used every day by millions of people without any problem.  Yet we are still being treated to delights such as…

What can one say? Perhaps if the reviewer had persevered for more than an hour they may have eventually found the View menu (to clarify: this contains options on how you want to View things) and the option to Show Status Bar on the bottom of the window…

 

And what about Quick Look with the Space Bar?  What about it?  It is much improved with Lion…

Thanks for sharing.  My addiction is satiated for today.

 

After posting this this morning… a few hours later Serendipity kicks in.

Windows 8 on a Mac – Virtually

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After downloading the developers version of Windows 8 I installed it as a virtual machine with Virtual Box.

After a false start trying the Other Windows option:

I tried the 64Bit Windows 7 option and off it went:

It was mostly a case of clicking through the standard settings apart from the Advanced installation option for a completely fresh install:

We went for a walk in the Autumn sunshine while it whirled away and returned ready to go:

Mac Pinball HD controls

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At least a copy of Pinball HD from the Mac App Store means that I no longer have to steal borrow the girl’s iPad to get my daily fix of The Deep table:

Alas there does not seem to be much in the way of instructions or a high score table (not that I ever get on it!). Thus far I have figured:

Down arrow: To pull back trigger/launcher (moves slowly – keep pressing to get any power)

Left & Right arrows or shift keys: left & right flippers

C: Toggle camera view Zooming, fixed perspective, fixed looking straight down

Esc: Exit full screen

⌘F: Enter full screen

Space: Nudge the table (use with caution)

Enter: Toggle pause

You have got the mission…

Update: The app was updated on January 26th, through the App Store, rectifying many of the problems with the early version – but still no high score table 🙁

Snow Leopard / Time Capsule Working!

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Having added a Time Capsule to the mix of Macs it was somewhat frustrating to find my Snow Leopardified Mac was not working while ye olde iBooks running Leopard were purring away backing up flawlessly. I was stuck in the never ending “Making Backup Disk Available” bit. A seemingly common problem.

But today it started working and I am now backing up with the rest of them. So what changed? It would be nice to think that the return of Steve Jobs had something to do with it. Maybe installing iTunes 9 triggered something. But it was probably dropping the wireless network down to the b/g setting from the b/g/n option that made it happier. The slower setting is strangely the stronger faster setting for me.