Adam Rosen - page 2

Enjoy the Timeless Appeal of Apple’s Picasso Artwork [Gallery]

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The famous Macintosh Picasso logo was developed for the introduction of the original 128k Mac back in 1984. A minimalist line drawing in the style of Pablo Picasso, this whimsical graphic implied the whole of a computer in a few simple strokes. It was an icon of what was inside the box, and became as famous as the computer it represented.

The logo was designed by Tom Hughes and John Casado, art directors on the Mac development team. Originally the logo was to be a different concept called The Macintosh Spirit by artist Jean-Michel Folon, but before the release Steve Jobs changed his mind and had it replaced by the simple and colorful drawing by Hughes and Casado. It’s been beloved ever since, and the graphic style has endured across decades.

Project Genesis: A New Tale Of The Beginning. Did Mac Create Man?

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Project Genesis: A New Tale Of The Beginning

What if the history books have it wrong? What if the tool is the master of its maker? Did Mac create Man?

Project Genesis, a short film about a world populated only by old Apple computers, has arrived. The computers have issues. And they have spoken:

We have always looked at our world with a single point of view: with resignation, limiting ourselves to survive. We were wrong! From this moment on, everything changes: new unexpected ways open up in front of us, the world we knew now becomes more accessible, simple, within everyone’s range.

With “Project Genesis” we open the door to our dreams: now we only have to start living, as we truly mean it

Cue the spotlights. Cue the fanfare. Today on Cult of Mac, we present the International Premiere of this groundbreaking short film by Italian director Alessio Fava. It was worth the wait:

Remembering Our Digital Past With Computer Historian David Greelish [Interview]

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Vintage computers and books in David Greelish's collection

Apple is all about the latest and greatest, inventing (and selling) the future. The computer marketplace as a whole evolves with ever accelerating speed – that two year old iPhone or laptop, so passé. Sometimes its helpful to take a step back and appreciate the long view of computing.

David Greelish is a computer historian who has been studying vintage computing for many years, as a writer, collector, podcaster and now vintage computing festival sponsor. His journey has included playing Star Trek text adventures on teletype machines, rescuing orphaned Lisas and Commodore 64s from unloved futures, and lobbying Apple to create a visitor’s gallery of company history in their new corporate HQ. He’s still getting flak for that last one.

Cult of Mac contacted David to hear his story.

For Apple Service Providers, Now There’s An App For That

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GsxWarranty checks AppleCare status and service information

Most software released for Macs and iOS devices is designed for the general public – programs, utilities, games and Apple’s own website. But an important and growing industry exists behind the scenes to keep all that shiny Apple gear working.

GsxWarranty is a small utility for Macs, Windows PCs and iPhones which allows a technician to quickly check warranty status on Apple products. By entering the serial number GsxWarranty displays detailed information concerning AppleCare, service parts and configuration details.

Apple Drops iTunes, Old Software Updates for PowerPC Macs [Vintage News]

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iTunes icons through the years.

PowerPC-based Macs have long been considered dead and buried by Apple, but the company just put a few more nails in the coffin to prevent any corpse risings. With the release of iTunes 10.7 this week the ubiquitous media control center becomes Intel-only, requiring at least a Core Solo processor and Mac OS X 10.6.8.

In a related one-two punch, Apple has also stopped providing online Software Updates for Mac OS X versions 10.0 through 10.3, as well as Mac OS 9. These items are now available only by direct download from Apple’s support website.

Coming Soon: A World Populated Only By Old Apple Computers

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Project Genesis offers a new take on the silicon Story of Creation

Word is spreading of a new independent film, Project Genesis, involving a world populated only by old Apple computers. Italian director and filmmaker Alessio Fava has posted an enigmatic teaser of Macs shuffling around in a drab soulless environment, with hints of better existence:

We computers have always looked at our world from a single point of view: with resignation, limiting ourselves to survive. We were wrong! From this moment on, everything changes: new unexpected ways open up in front of us, the world we knew now becomes more accessible, simple, within everyone’s range.

How To Fix Mac Missing Plug-In Errors [MacRx]

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If you’re a Mac user on the Internet, chances are you’ve come across a few websites where embedded content isn’t displayed correctly. Instead you get an icon or an error message saying Missing Plug-In, often with few additional details about exactly what is missing.

While there’s no single installer which will solve all missing plug-in problems, there are a few common things to start with. If those don’t work you can delve deeper into non-common formats or the forgotten codecs of yesteryear.

Cats On The Prowl: The Evolution of Mac OS X From Cheetah To Mountain Lion [Gallery]

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The year is 2012, and the March of the Big Cats continues. Apple is about to release Mountain Lion, the latest iteration of (Mac) OS X, and citizens of the Appleverse are eager to explore what this new feline has to offer. How far we’ve come in just over a decade.

Back in 2001 Apple introduced their new, long awaited replacement to the Classic Macintosh System Software: Mac OS X. As Mountain Lion goes on the prowl, Cult of Mac reviews the Evolution of OS X and once again presents our look back at Apple’s Big Cats over the years – from Cheetah and Puma through to Apple’s current Felidae offerings.

PowerMac G5 Evolves Into Next Generation Macquarium

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The Macquarium has been around for decades, starting as a project to make use of old compact Mac cases. Subsequent iterations have seen many different variations – beige Performas, G3 iMacs, G4 Cubes, etc.. But this latest iteration is unique, and probably has the best structural integrity of them all.

Steve Shaw recently created his Macquarium from a PowerMac G5 case (mislabeled as a Mac Pro in the video), elbow grease and some powertools. He did a nice job, bright and airy. I love the Apple logo in the rear and overall industrial look. And the totem head.

Next up we need a Siamese fighting fish in a Mac Mini…

Source: Gizmodo

The Crazy Adventures Of A Vintage Mac Collector [Interview]

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Rare Apple items: Twiggy 128k Mac, green-screen Lisa, Apple buttons, and clear Mac SE.

What does it take to be a vintage Mac collector?

A love of all things Apple and an encyclopedic knowledge of the many successful, unsuccessful and downright notorious products Cupertino has released over the years are a given. But the job can be more perilous than you’d imagine.

Just ask Adam Goolevitch. Known as “wozniac” on eBay, Adam is one of the premier vintage Mac collectors around. In just he last couple of months, some of Googlevitch’s rarest finds — including a 128k Mac with a 5.25” Twiggy floppy disk drive and a Macintosh SE with a clear outer case — have hit the web and sparked a flurry of interest.

But collecting these Macs isn’t always easy. From almost losing a finger to a PowerMac G4 Cube to mistakenly being investigated by the police under the suspicion of dealing drugs instead of Macs, Googlevitch has some wild stories to tell that prove that being a vintage Mac collector isn’t necessarily for the faint of heart.

Cult of Mac sat down with Adam to hear some of his adventures and also get the scoop on the rarest machines in his collection.

Another Rare Vintage Mac Surfaces: Macintosh SE with Clear Plastic Case

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Macintosh SE with Clear Case, Code Name "Aladdin"

2012 has been a good year for vintage Macs surfacing from obscurity. Earlier this year we brought you news about an original 128k Mac with 5.25″ Twiggy floppy disk for sale on eBay. This same owner contacted Cult of Mac recently to share some photos of his latest rare find: a prototype Macintosh SE with a clear plastic outer case, used for engineering air flow studies.

Who says all old Macs were beige?

Vintage Computer Festivals March On: KansasFest and VCF East, 2012 Editions

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Old computers never really die, they just get passed on to grandkids and collectors. Likewise old computer users never die, they just don’t get out as much as they used to. The internet is an unfriendly place for 8 bit processors and dialup modems.

To help relive old memories and make new ones, several festivals dedicated to computers with no commercial value make the rounds each year. This year for our vintage geek pleasures: the perennial Apple II bash called KansasFest, and the Vintage Computer Festival East.

Apple WALT – Was This the First iPhone? [Vintage Tech]

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A rare and interesting Apple prototype surfaced on eBay recently, and although the auction has since ended we thought it notable enough to merit mention. A 1993 prototype called a WALT – Wizzy Active Lifestyle Telephone – combined a telephone, fax, personal address book and more with a HyperCard user interface. It never shipped, but this vaporware breakthrough netted the seller a cool $8000 on eBay.

Original Packaging Helps Increase Values of Vintage Macs

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As the Mac approaches its thirtieth birthday and its progeny, the iPhone and iPad, grow to eclipse their parent, the resale and collector values of vintage Macs is steadily increasing. One of the things attractive to collectors when looking for old systems is original packaging – outer boxes and inside accessory packs. Such items add to period completeness and can significantly increase the value of an item.

I Can’t Reinstall Snow Leopard After Installing Lion [Ask MacRx]

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Now here’s a bizarre headscratcher. A reader’s Mac Pro was upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion, then refused to subsequently boot off the Snow Leopard DVD to reinstall the older OS on another drive. Despite many different attempts, for this one Mac it appears perhaps you can’t go home again…

I use Bryce occasionally to produce art for friend’s projects. I just discovered it crashes under Lion. DAZ, the manufacturer acknowledges the problem but has no date when the fix will be made. Thinking I could install Snow Leopard and run Bryce under it, I set up a partition on an external drive and attempted to install SL. Lion was having none of it. I also attempted to boot from the SL install disk. It was also rejected out of hand.

Thanks for any help you can provide,
Mike

Why Doesn’t My Mac Wake From Sleep? [Ask MacRx]

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When your Mac doesn’t wake from sleep, the reason could relate to uncooperative hardware or unstable software. When people don’t wake from sleep, it could be the sign of a Monday morning or an upcoming exam…

Sometimes when my mac goes to sleep it doesn’t want to wake up and the screen stays black. I have to turn off computer then turn it back on. Why does it do that?

Andres

Diagnosing Mac Software Memory Leaks Can Be Difficult [Ask MacRx]

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Sometimes explaining the problem with your computer isn’t easy, particularly when you’re not sure of the correct technical term used to describe an issue. It took some back and forth to assess this reader’s problem about RAM usage and availability – but I got to enjoy the affectation of “Sir” during the discussion!

Hello Sir Adam,

Hope all is well. I am in desperate need of your help. Im currently living in the TURKS AND CAICOS ISLAND and unfortunately there are no apple shop here. my problem is that since yesterday the memory (which is by the way 8 GB) keeps on falling down. I have a MBP early 2011 i7 model and just acquired it last Aug 4. Ive spent hard earned money on this one. thats why im very disappointed that as early as 5 months i have this problem. would you kindly give advice on how i can do something about this?

TJ

How Do I Install Samba Into Mac OS X Lion? [Ask MacRx]

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Apple made a number of changes to internal components in OS X Lion, including not installing Java by default and changing it’s SMB (Samba) Windows networking code. These changes have broken some previously working setups but fortunately there are workarounds:

I recently upgraded to OSX Lion, little did I know that samba was removed. Now I cant get on to my DNS 323 and my laptop is piling up with junk. I’ve seen on the net that there are way to install samba but all of them are out of my expertise. Can you help me and put it plain english steps?

Alon

Can I Access My Home Mac While I’m At Work? [Ask MacRx]

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It’s happened to many of us: you’re at work or on vacation and you realize you need something from your Mac at home. There’s nobody at the house to help. By making use of one of the remote desktop solutions on the market, a simple one-time setup can help solve this dilemma:

If my mac is on at home and connected to the internet via a wireless router, and I am at work on either a PC running windows XP sp3 or my mac again connected to the internet via a wireless router is there anyway I can log into my mac at home via the internet and use files etc remotely at work without any input from somebody at home ?

How Can I Get That ‘New Mac’ Feeling On My MacBook? [Ask MacRx]

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Sometimes when our computers have been in use for many years it can help to clean house and start fresh. Restoring from a Time Machine backup via Migration Assistant doesn’t allow for picking and choosing which data you put back, but hard drive clones can help in a situation like this:

I have been putting off this for some time… but I am finally motivated to do a clean boot on my now getting older Macbook. Over the years I have collected many extraneous files, documents, apps etc. and am looking for a fresh start with that “new mac” feeling. I was wondering if you could provide a step by step procedure on how to best prepare for doing this. Obviously there are certain files, photos, music and applications that will need to be transferred or reinstalled, but beyond that everything can pretty much go.

Will iWeb Live? The Answer Is A Mixed Bag [Ask MacRx]

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As Apple pulls us all forward into the Next Great Thing, some widely-used Previously Cool Things get left behind. It’s happened with HyperCard, PageMill, and all PowerPC-only applications. Today one reader ponders the uncertain future of his favorite program, iWeb:

I bought my first Mac in ’85… Being an Old’nAging Geezer I saw that an encroaching Class of ’61’s 50-year Reunion deserved a website so I volunteered, commandeering iWeb for the very first time (successfully aided by FileZilla and my generous wonky Mac-pal Greg) to ultimately be rewarded by several of my classmates and a few fanboys’ sporadic kudos–AND proving once again that old, time-proven saw of Macintosh’s unassailable user friendly superiority.

All that to bring me to this QUESTION: Will iWeb live?

Paul

Can I Merge Mac User Accounts After a Time Machine Restore? [Ask MacRx]

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Ask MacRx took a hiatus for a few weeks in December but we’re back for 2012 and here to help try and answer more of your Mac and iDevice questions. Today we hear from a reader who has more user accounts than desired after restoring from a Time Machine backup:

I recently replaced the drive in my Macbook, upgrading to a larger capacity drive. For the first time I used Time Machine to restore my applications, settings and data files. I was surprised to find that I had to name the restoration differently than the account named on the destination drive. I followed the on-screen prompts and successfully transferred the data from my old drive to the new one.