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Journalists Cover Microsoft, Using Macs

It’s not an easy time for Microsoft — with Steve Ballmer having to field questions about being “buffoons” and an “evil empire”  at the shareholder’s meeting (.doc) — so when they get together “the world’s most influential technology pundits and online writers” (nb: we weren’t invited) for Mobius to discuss super-secret mobile tech you’d think [...]

Guide To Black Friday Apple Bargains: Cheap MacBooks, iPods and Accessories Galore

Here’s a guide for finding the best bargains on Apple-related gear during the infamous Black Friday sales on November 27. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of gear from leaked photos of sales flyers and descriptions of sales.
The bargains include a 2.26 GHz MacBook + $150 gift card at Best Buy for $999.99 ; a 32GB [...]

Review: Voices Is Today’s Best Thing Ever, Grab It Now While It’s Cheap

New on the App Store is Voices from the clever folk at Tap Tap Tap. You can guess what it does.

Open it up, pick a silly voice. Helium is pretty silly. A microphone appears and the app even clears your throat for you (try it, you’ll see what I mean). Now speak your brains, and [...]

Review: Sony Walkman S540 Series Video MP3 Player

Press releases, you will hardly be surprised to hear, are rarely very interesting. But one arrived in my inbox a couple of weeks ago that made me double-take.
“Sony’s S Series Walkman,” it chattered, “is a serious challenger to the iPod Nano.” Gosh, really? Perhaps the Cult had better have a look at one, then, despite [...]

Sleep Deprive Your Macbook With InsomniaX

As a student, one of the main advantages of having a laptop is that you can study in quieter places with fewer distractions. As a photographer, you’re probably excited about using your laptop for tethered shooting on the go.

Here’s the paradox: if you try to shut the lid to focus on your term paper while you’re listening to music, or want to put your laptop in your backpack while you’re shooting, everything turns off.

Thanks to InsomniaX, you can get complete control over the system’s sleep cycle in a neat little menu item. To get this functionality on my old iBook I completely disassembled it and removed the bits that detect when the lid is closed. You don’t want to do that!

Download InsomniaX! Go ahead and listen to your music! Fill your hard drive with photos direct from your camera! The world is your oyster.

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10 comments

    I don’t think this works on leopard :( :( :(

    Check comments list – works for like no1 :/

    I was never able to get it working properly on an intel MBP running tiger

    For the record, this is something to be extremely careful with. Laptops can get hot, especially when crammed, closed into a bag with everything still running.

    This sounds cool and would solve one of my biggest annoyances w/ my mac since switching over from a thinkpad. however, since the MPB’s cooling system is not all that efficient and releases a fair amount of heat from the speakers in addition to the slot on the back under the screen, some MBP users who had found clever ways to force their computer to stay awake were reporting inadvertent discoloration of the screen due to the heat escaping through the speaker grills. This was a year or two ago, so it may not be an issue anymore, but sounds like you’d probably wanna use this one sparingly….

    I like the idea of this functionality, but reading the comments on their site it sounds like this thing can cause a lot of bugs and headaches.

    I’ve been using InsomniaX for quite some time now, and it’s great!

    I’ve got it set as a login item, so it’s always ready!

    I’ve only been using it since yesterday, and definitely sparingly. I’m running Leopard, so I can tell you that the function I talked about works correctly in Leopard.

    Try caffeine – http://caffeine.en.softonic.com/mac, it does the same and park itself at the menu bar for you to easily turn it on or off .

    This works even if you don’t use it to run in clamshell mode. It can sleep the screen on demand, including the backlight keyboard! It does wonders in 10.5 I’ve only used it with my 2008 MBP.

    You took apart your iBook!! You must be a geek! :P

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