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Entries Tagged as 'Mac'

New iMac is a monster – and that’s good for laptops

November 17th, 2009 · View Comments · Mac

The newest iMacs are available with Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs and early benchmarks are in. Intel is phasing out the Core 2 Duo chips in favor of the i5 and i7 lines.
In general, the i5 is a single CPU with 4 cores inside it – compared to the Core 2 Duo with [...]

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Windows and OS/X steal from each other

October 12th, 2009 · View Comments · Mac

Well, that’s no big surprise. Here’s two Infoworld slide shows that attempts to show the top 10 items each stole from the other. They got some things wrong though.
http://www.infoworld.com/d/windows/top-10-features-apple-stole-windows-966?source=fssr
http://www.infoworld.com/d/mac/top-10-features-microsoft-stole-mac-os-x-971?source=fssr
What OS/X stole from Windows

Finder sidebar – stolen from the Explorer navigation pane. Yep.
Finder breadcrumb path display – stolen from the Explorer address [...]

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Compiling Ruby with MacRuby 0.5b1

October 8th, 2009 · View Comments · Mac, Ruby

MacRuby 0.5 beta 1 is out and can be downloaded from here.  The beta can only be used on Snow Leopard, which means its Intel-only.  They switched from using YARV as the internal engine to using LLVM.  The major side effect of this change is that Ruby code can now be compiled.
Compilation is still pretty [...]

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Using Java 1.5 and Java 1.4 on Snow Leopard

September 25th, 2009 · View Comments · Java, Mac

Since Apple removed Java 1.5 and Java 1.4 from Snow Leopard, it’s not possible to run software that requires older Java versions, or to develop against older Java versions.
In order to restore Java 1.4 and 1.5 to your Snow Leopard install, you’ll need to download the old Leopard versions and put them back where they [...]

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Easy Guide to 64-bit Eclipse on the Mac

September 22nd, 2009 · View Comments · Java, Mac

After upgrading to Snow Leopard I went looking for a 64-bit version of Eclipse.  One of the main reasons to switch to 64-bit is so that all of your Java apps are sharing the same loaded JVM.
But when I went looking for 64-bit Eclipse I quickly ran into a brick wall.  You can find 64-bit [...]

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OS/X Processes

September 20th, 2009 · View Comments · Mac

I’ve put together a page of OS/X processes for those curious about what they’re seeing in the Activity Monitor.
You can find it here.

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Grand Central Dispatch

September 11th, 2009 · View Comments · Mac

Here’s an overview of Apple’s new concurrent programming framework, complete with programming examples.
This is taken from the Ars Technica review of Snow Leopard. It’s that page of the review and the next page.
Long story short – they added blocks to C and Objective-C. A single line of code can wrap any section of [...]

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What do new PC’s cost?

July 23rd, 2009 · View Comments · Computing, Mac

According to new sales figures from NPD, the average selling price (ASP) of a new PC is $515.
When it comes to PCs, the cut-throat competition in the industry has resulted in a race to the bottom.  The netbook segment was the final nail.
The PC vendors very much want to sell the higher margin machines but [...]

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New Geek Tool Weather Script

July 8th, 2009 · View Comments · Mac

I’ve significantly altered the Geek Tool weather script from a previous posting. I switched from using the Weather Underground to using the same weather source as the Apple widget – Accuweather. I got annoyed when the weather widget and my desktop were in disagreement. In addition, the new script is significantly more reliable.
If you’re upgrading [...]

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Apple-Dell Price Comparison

June 12th, 2009 · View Comments · Computing, Mac

After Apple’s new laptop announcement I was curious about the price difference between Apple and Dell.  I mostly ignored the Windows vs. OS/X value proposition but equated OS/X Leopard with Vista Home Premium (not basic).
Many of the comparisons I’ve seen try to put dollar figures on intangibles like the value of the iLife suite against [...]

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