Saturday, March 26, 2011

Ten Years of Mac OSX




  

This past Thursday marked the tenth birthday or anniversary of Mac OSX, which officially

debuted on March 24th, 2001 as Mac OSX 10.0 with an internal codename of “Cheetah”. The
initial release was the first version of a stable, UNIX-based OS that succeeded Mac OS, which
was used by Apple between 1984 and 2001. Over time, the Mac OSX has changed quite a bit.
Apple has also moved the architecture from Power PC to an x86 and upgraded it from 32 to 64 bit.
It will run on both a 32 or 64.






Mac OSX is based on a range of technologies developed by NeXT, a company that was
founded by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and bought by Apple in 1996, which was also the mark
of Steve Jobs’ return to Apple. Since it’s original launch, Apple introduced seven major versions, all
of which were named after big cats (Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard).
Mac OSX 10.7, which is code named Lion, was first shown at an Apple event in October 2010 and
will be the first to include support for the Mac App Store. Lion is only currently available as a developer
preview.




March 24th when OSX was released the iMac was less than three years old, the iPod was still
more than six months away, and Macs ran at an astounding average speed of 733 MHz.
Once Apple 
 released the OSX, they changed the future of their platform forever. Though nobody
knew it at the time, 
 the release was the first step in transforming Apple from a company poised
on the verge of disaster into 
 the second most valuable company to the most valuable company
in the world.  





While the impact of Mac OSX on Apple’s products and the user experience they provide is
undeniable, the early days of the operating system were anything but perfect. From a shaky public beta
release in late 2000 of Cheetah it necessitated rapid fixes and improvements that led to the release of
Puma 10.1, just six months later. It was clearly still a work in progress. The transition from the
PowerPC-Intel, was announced in June 2005. It was the biggest change in the operating system’s
history, a critical move that could have alienated Apple users as Apple loved to discredit the
performance of Intel processors in PC’s prior to the announcement. All Mac OSX version up until
Leopard (10.6) support the PowerPC architecture. Snow Leopard was the first to run exclusively
run on x86 processors.






Over the last ten years since the release of OSX, Apple has become much more than just a
computer company. They have come to revolutionize music consumption with the iPod, recreating the
smartphone market with the iPhone, and most recently catapulting the tablet market into consumer’s
awareness with the iPad. In the process, Apple’s operating system for mobile devices, iOS, has itself
matured and yielded a number of new innovations and features.  The next step of the evolution of Mac
OSX is “Back to the Mac” with the anticipated release of Lion sometime this summer. I know that I
can’t wait to see the next release of OSX. It’s supposed to be the last OSX. What’s next? I would
love to hear your comments. As always get out there and enjoy your day!                                                    


Thursday, March 24, 2011

Firefox 4


                        Firefox 4 was released just a couple days ago. It was  much welcomed as anticipated. It came three years after the release of Firefox 3. Within 24 hours of it’s release it had already had 7.1 million downloads. As of this writing the number is up to 15 million after just 2 days. That’s what I call some incredible statistics. Upon Firefox’s initial first release in the early 2000’s, it was a much welcomed change for everyone. It had things that the Internet Explorer did not. For instance it had add ons. We had no clue at the time what that meant. Another refreshing welcome was tabbed browsing. You didn’t have to have several instances of the same browser opened at once. Firefox was always built upon Gecko, but know it is powered by WebKit. The same that power’s most other browser’s.


                        One of the most welcomed changes to Firefox 4 I think is the tabs are on top, but browser window is still easily draggable. Users won’t make the mistake of dragging a tab rather than the full window. By default Mozilla has changed the location of the home button. It has added a new bookmark bar as well. Fortunately we still have the option to simply right click and hit “customize”. Firefox 4 now includes an innovative new tab group feature known as Panorama. It started out as the Tab Candy extension. It is a great feature for us power users. If you don’t use the grouping or you don’t know how, just simply ignore it, you won’t know the difference.


                         Firefox was once the fastest browser on the block, but has become a little bloated over the last few years. Firefox 4 is faster than it’s predecessor, but still lacks loading pages as fast as Chrome. Mozilla has said that Firefox 4 doesn’t use as much memory even with all of the add ons and plugins. If a plug in crashes, you can just simply close the tab instead of the whole browser. There are a few things that I have noticed about this release of Firefox compared to the release of the IE 9.

                        Firefox 4 has a better design. One of the major improvements to both Firefox 4 and the IE9 is their design. Both now have a slimmed down interface that will likely attract more users, but Firefox’s is better. Firefox has better stability. Multi platform support. The IE 9 only works with Vista and Windows 7, whereas Firefox runs on Windows as well as Linux. One of the biggest obstacles that haunt Microsoft is, it’s trying to hard to overcome it’s past failures with the IE. Firefox 4 is a much faster browser. It’s more secure. What more can I say? Firefox 4 is a truly great browser. Don’t take my word for it though, try it for yourself, it can be found here:  
http://www.mozilla.com/  I started writing this early in the day. It was a busy day for me today, by the end of the day around 11:30 P.M. central time, Firefox 4 had surpassed over 22 million downloads! Incredible! Top that IE9!  As always, I would love to hear your thoughts, comments, feedback or concerns. By the way get out there and enjoy your day!        

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

HTC EVO 3D


                  Yesterday I talked a little about the HTC Flyer or as Sprint would like to call it the HTC EVO View. Either way it makes a really great tablet. One that I am sure going to purchase. At next week’s CITA ( International Association for the Wireless Telecommunications Industry) Sprint has a few new products to show off. They are all really impressive devices powered by none other the  Android OS. One was the tablet that I talked about yesterday. Another is the HTC EVO 3D.  


                 The HTC EVO 3D is of course the successor to the HTC EVO 4G, which of course was the successor to the HTC EVO. HTC, I think makes the world’s best phones. If you haven’t ever owned one of these phones, I would encourage you to make the HTC your next phone. The EVO 3D is one of the most anticipated phones to be released in 2011. This EVO 3D has a first for smartphones. It has a dual core Snapdragon processor. That is a first for mobile phones. This is a very impressive phone. Below are some of the detailed specs of this forthcoming phone.


Android 2.3 with Sense UI
1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU (MSM8660)
4.3-inch qHD 960 x 540-pixel autostereoscopic 3D display
Dual rear 5-megapixel cameras with dedicated camera button, 1.3-megapixel front-facing   camera
4GB internal storage, 1GB RAM
Support for 4G WiMAX
1080p output via HDMI-out (720p for 3D video)
1730 mAh battery

Now like I mentioned earlier in this article, a very impressive phone. I am also including a first peek video of this phone. I can’t wait until this one comes out. I may even upgrade for this one. My HTC Touch Pro 2 is good, but it really doesn’t compare to this. As always I would love to hear any of your comments or feedback. Please be sure to check out the video first though. As always, get out there and enjoy your day!








Finally…… The HTC Tablet Has Arrived

          


          Since Apple released the first iPad in April of 2010, we have become infatuated with the tablet PC’s. Although Apple wouldn’t want us to call the iPad a PC. They are several different Android tablet’s on the market. Most you can get at your local mobile phone provider’s retail store. You’ve actually been able to get the Android in a 7 inch tablet for about a couple years now. You can find the 7 inch Android model on ebay for around $100-$125. Of course it’s not equipped with a dual core processor and a gig of ram. Most only have a max of 256 mb of ram. Like I said there are several running the Android OS. For instance there is the Motorola Xoom. I knew that when this came out, it was way over priced. Motorola has confirmed that the Xoom doesn’t live up to the iPad 2, and prices will be dropped. I’m not sure of the price but just do a search on Google.



          Myself, I was anticipating the release of the HTC Flyer. I know, in my opinion anyway that HTC makes the worlds best smartphone.  I think that the HTC Flyer will give the rest of these tablet’s a run for their money, including the iPad. The HTC Flyer will also be available on Sprint. Of course though the mobile companies have always got to rename the device. Sprint is going to call it, the HTC Evo View. It has a 7 inch touch sensitive display with 1024 X 600, 1.5 GHz processor, 1 GB of memory, 32 GB of internal storage, 2 camera’s, a 5 megapixel, and a 1.3 megapixel, a micro SD expansion slot, a place for headphones, microphone, Bluetooth, wifi, and weighing 14.82 ounces. Of course powered by none other than the Android 3.0 Honeycomb OS. I can’t wait until this hit’s the stores. Of course I don’t want to get one from Sprint. It’s sure to be just loaded with all of their bloatware. I would really like to know what you think. Before you leave a comment, watch the video below. I always enjoy hearing from you. What are you waiting for? Get out there and enjoy your day!              









Monday, March 21, 2011

Movies on the Net




               Do you like movies? Who doesn’t? Do you rent movies? Do you buy movies? Well you really shouldn’t do either. What I suggest is that you search for them on the internet. There are thousands made freely available. I know you are worried about the quality. There is a guy out there who puts the best quality DVD rips out there. Some of you may not even know what a DVD rip is. I’ll tell you. Simply put it’s just an exact copy of a movie to the hard drive. So if you are looking for a great quality movie out there, do a Google search for aXXo. That guy put’s out the best quality movies on the internet. You won’t find any new movies, only ones that have already made it to DVD.


              Now that you have found the aXXo site download the movie. You have to use a torrent client. Some people may even not know what a torrent is. I say just let Google be your friend a do a search. Once you have it downloaded you will then have to put on a DVD. Now if you want to watch it in your home DVD player then you will have to use a DVD+R disc. The +’s will allow you to watch them in your home DVD player, the –‘s will not. They will only allow you to be able to view them on your computer.

               Next you will have to get a DVD burning software. For this I would suggest that you use ConvertXtoDVD. By far the best burning software on the market. There are several different burning apps out the, but for the best quality, nothing is better. You can create great DVDs from various video formats to watch them on TV with any DVD player. ConvertXtoDVD has been designed so you do not need to think about anything. Add 1 or more video files, insert a blank DVD and your video files will be converted and burnt automatically on to DVD with chapters and even an elegant DVD menu. It’s simply the best. Here is a video below to see this software for your self. Now get out there and enjoy your day!       




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