A couple of weeks ago I canceled my MobileMe account. Why? Because it didn’t do the one thing I wanted it to do: share my calendar with my wife so we could coordinate our busy lives. That’s all.
I love MobileMe’s email, calendar, contact syncing (especially on the iPhone) and even iDisk. I gave Apple a year to improve it, but nothing happpened, so I switched.
Here’s how to recreate all of MobileMe’s features for FREE (except one) and how I use it to sync my iMac, MacBook and two iPhones.
The best ideas are always the simplest. This is a fantastic tip from one of the team at Massive Studios, who needed a stand to rest a MacBook on.
Why bother spending money on something made of metal or plastic, when everything you need came in the box, wrapped around the MacBook?
Some Instructables are complicated but this one’s dead simple. All you need provide is a couple of screws – yep, screw them right into the styrofoam, apparently it works just fine – and a blade to slice the foam in the first place, and that’s it.
And if you’re wondering whether someone’s thought of turning an iPhone box into an iPhone dock, the answer is most certainly yes.
Axiotron, makers of the thing that was closest to being an iPad before the iPad was announced – the Modbook – are not going to give in without a fight. No sir.
They’ve sent out a press release today, announcing a new promotion for buyers of all new Modbooks. Something they hope will make customers think twice before buying an iPad.
This is absolutely great. Film critic Roger Ebert is premiering his new computer voice on Oprah this afternoon. Below is a sneak peek. His new voice — spoken by his MacBook — actually sounds like him. He looks really delighted with it.
“In first grade they said I talked too much, and now I still can,” he says, grinning.
Ebert lost his voice box after years of cancer treatments. He used to speak with “Alex,” the robotic voice built into OS X. His new voice was created by CereProc, a company in Scotland that recreated it from hours of Ebert’s TV shows and DVD commentaries.
Via Videogum and Daring Fireball.
After January 27th’s unveiling of the iPad, it became abundantly clear that Apple has meaningful plans for iPhone OS outside of the smartphone arena. In fact, given the App Store’s runaway success, it’s just good business sense for Apple to try to get iPhone apps on as many devices as possible: not just phones, portable media players and tablets, but more traditional laptop and desktop machines as well.
The question is, then, when will OS X and iPhone OS begin to converge? When will OS X become compatible with iPhone OS?
In a recent New York Times blog post, Nick Bilton examines this very question, and talks to a former senior Apple Engineer to get to the bottom of whether or not iPhone apps could run natively on OS X one day.
The newly released Breathe Sleeve has been cleverly designed to let the heat produced by your laptop radiate through the ventilated walls of the sleeve. And heat, as we know, can be very detrimental to the life of our laptop battery.
The Tom Bihn Checkpoint Flyer bag is designed specifically to get your MacBook through an airport security screening.
No more pulling out your MacBook and putting it in a plastic bin. With the Checkpoint Flyer, you can leave your MacBook inside the bag and breeze through the X-ray machine.
How? The Tom Bihn Checkpoint Flyer is a fold-out, “Checkpoint-Friendly” design, approved by the Transportation Security Administration.
The bag has three compartments designed to be folded flat on an X-ray scanner bed. Laid flat, the bag gives the X-ray operator a clear view of the MacBook and anything else inside the bag. There are no pockets or metal components to block the screener’s view. Pretty cool!
Note: It’s Bag Week on CultofMac.com. We’re checking out some of the latest and greatest bags on the market. Read all the bag reviews here.
A few months ago we reviewed Osprey’s Flap Jack Courier laptop bag, and it scored a pristine five-turtleneck rating.
Well, turns out they actually come in two flavors, and we decided to put the Courier’s big brother — the Flap Jack Pack — through the Cult’s rigorous, uncompromising bag-testing procedures. The result was a demonstration of how applying the exact same design elements to a slightly different application can change things.
The Brenthaven MacBook Messenger bag allows you, the customer, to design your own messenger bag. You can choose from more than ten designs to personalize the front flap.
Wait, it gets better.
You get two different designs, one for each side of the flap. Allowing you to change sides depending on your outfit! It’s almost like getting two bags for the price of one ($129.95). The bags fit the 13-inch MacBook Pro and 15-inch MacBook Pro.
Note: It’s Bag Week on CultofMac.com. We’re checking out some of the latest and greatest bags on the market. Read all the bag reviews here.
Gelaskins has teamed up with National Geographic to produce a new line of stunning, nature-themed MacBook and iPhone covers.
Priced between $14.95 and $29.95 depending on device, the covers showcase photos of cute baby seals, weirdly-colored snails and trippy space nebula.
More info at the Gelaskins website.
More pictures after the jump.
Mea culpa. If you bought a MacBook between 2006 and 2007 and your hard drive sounds like an unoiled rock tumbler trying to work its way through a belly full of rusty bolts, you could be eligible for a free replacement, courtesy of Apple.
Admitting that a “very small percentage” of plastic MacBooks (namely, the original 2006 model and the mid-2007 model) “may fail under certain conditions,” Apple is inviting owners with a failed hard drive to hit up their local Genius Bar and see about a replacement.
If you’re one of the unluckily lucky eligible, Gizmodo has some helpful advice from a Mac Genius on how to make sure your computer gets the replacement: “If you really want to freak out a genius bar employee, just sidle up and mention you have a CS-matrix-eligible macbook hard drive replacement. or don’t because we’ll hate you for being douchey.”
Sounds like a good plan… although an Apple Genius calling a customer douchey? Why, hello, Mr. Pot… this is Kettle.
I’ve been a long-time user of messenger bags, ever since I was a bike courier here in San Francisco in the mid-1990s. I’ve been though a few of them, including an original Zo bag, but one of the best I’ve used is the Large Messenger Bag from Incase.
Note: It’s Bag Week on CultofMac.com. We’re checking out some of the latest and greatest bags on the market. Read all the bag reviews here.
I took the LA Besace bag with me to Macworld and boy am I glad I did!
This bag is an absolute pleasure to use. Its semicircular front opening is a superb design that makes everything highly visable and accessible. No more wasted time digging around for stuff in bags!
Note: It’s Bag Week on CultofMac.com. We’re checking out some of the latest and greatest bags on the market. Read all the bag reviews here.
I love the latest Horseman laptop bag from Crumpler.
The best thing about Crumpler’s Horseman Bag is its size, which I think is optimum for a messenger/laptop bag. I have owned messenger bags that are too big, really just a huge cavernous void for your stuff to rattle and roll around in.
The other end of the spectrum are bags that are too small, which I personally think look a little on the feminine side on a fully-grown man. Not The Horseman though.
Note: It’s Bag Week on CultofMac.com. We’re checking out some of the latest and greatest bags on the market. Read all the bag reviews here.
For the ultimate wow factor, bring the Knomo Bristol laptop bag to your next meeting or job interview. This well-made leather laptop bag is the ultimate accessory for white-collar workers.
The Bristol looks professional and so will you. Sold at Apple’s retail stores, this $150.00 bag is from Knomo, a posh new company from the West End of London.
Founded in 2004, Knomo’s mission is to make accesories that are as stylish as they are functional. With the Bristol bag they’ve outdone themselves.
Note: It’s Bag Week on CultofMac.com. We’re checking out some of the latest and greatest bags on the market. Read all the bag reviews here.
Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer is a curious man ape: loud, purple-faced, drenched in sweat, and hirsute but for his head. But at least the man’s got a good sense of humor: upon being handed a MacBook by a student at Trevecca Nazarene University, Ballmer happily autographed it with the message “Need a new one?”
Presumably, Ballmer was making a tongue-in-cheek jab at his rival, but he possibly also knew exactly how much an ironically autographed MacBook signed by Microsoft’s CEO would get on eBay.
We criticize Microsoft and Ballmer a lot here at CoM, but this was a cute and classy gesture, especially considering it’s almost impossible to imagine Steve Jobs doing the same thing without hurling the Windows laptop to the ground and apoplectically smashing it to atoms with his feet.
When is the last time you paid $80 for a book? When it held your MacBook, of course. Mac lovers have gone through countless attempts to disguise and protect your Apple laptop, from high-end leather briefcases we saw at CES to a faux newspaper. Now comes Mac developer Twelve South with the BookBook, a case that looks exactly like a vintage hardbound book.
The leather-bound “book”, along with two rigid book covers, also includes a padded leather spine to keep your 13-inch or 15-inch MacBook safe and secure. “When it comes to safeguarding your Mac, there is no comparison between BookBook and the typical, floppy neoprene zipper bag,” claims the company.
The techno-sweatshops of Beijing have never seen an Apple design they weren’t willing to ineptly rip off, but these MacBook Air knock-offs spotted by M.I.C. Gadget are the first I’ve actually liked.
Basically, what we have here is a white plastic simulacrum of the MacBook Air’s aluminum unibody chassis, crammed with the innards of your stock, last generation netbook: an Intel Atom N280 processor with up to 2GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive.
I love it, right down to the lid’s pulsing, multichromatic logo! If Apple ever introduces a plastic unibody Air, this is exactly what I would imagine it looking like. It’s unfortunately a Windows machine, but at around $249 I’m tempted to pick one up anyway, just to see if it’s as easily Hackintoshable as my Asus Eee PC 1000HE. What a coup one of these MacBook Air netbooks with Snow Leopard installed would be for my gadget cred next time I showed up at the blogger’s hall at CES.
An archeologically stratal cross-section of the port placement of Apple’s metal-skinned professional line of notebooks over the course of the last decade, courtesy of photographer and Mac enthusiast Robert Donovan. Fireflies dance in the background.
From top to bottom, the notebooks pictured are:
• The 13-inch Unibody MacBook Pro (2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo)
• The 15-inch Titanium PowerBook (400MHz G4)
• The 15-inch Aluminum PowerBook (1.25GHz G4)
• The 15-inch MacBook Pro (2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo)
For me, this is morbidly erotic. It’s like four ex-lovers stacked nakedly atop each other, two of whom were dumped for their younger, hotter sisters, one of whom ran off on me because of my drinking problems, and the last so emphysemic from passive smoking that she’s due to cough up a lung any day now… a medical emergency definitely not covered by Apple Care.
Intel’s decision to marry their new mobile Core i5 and i7 CPUs with integrated graphics has reportedly not gone over well with Apple, who are rumored to be demanding custom-designed chips from Intel for an update to their MacBook and MacBook Pro line of notebooks.
But perhaps there’s another solution. Gizmodo noticed that NVIDIA, maker of the MacBook line’s ubiquitous GeForce 9400M GPU, is now teasing a new notebook technology called Optimus that is supposedly capable of achieving the performance of discrete graphics in a notebook while still delivering great battery life.
It’s probably just scalable performance, but if the Optimus tech is as good as NVIDIA is bragging, it would allow Apple to ditch the substandard switchable GPU configuration of current unibody MacBook Pros, which requires a reboot, to a discrete-only solution, like the earliest MacBook Pros and PowerBooks.
In January of 2009, I spent almost $2,500 on a top of the line, 15-inch unibody MacBook Pro, glutted with as much RAM and hard drive space as its belly could handle. Less than four months later, it was stolen.
Oh, it was my own fault. The whole tale involves a midnight rendezvous with a bartender I had my eye on at the time. She had the face of Natalie Portman, the eyebrows of Roger Moore and the constitution of Oliver Reed; in her presence, one drink became two, and two became twelve, and when we stumbled back to my apartment, I somehow forgot my laptop bag back at the bar… but only for five minutes! Alas, five minutes was too late, and by the time I’d rushed back, it was gone.
Since then, I’ve spent a good amount of time upbraiding myself about the loss. What has always bugged me most about the theft was that I always knew that there were countless programs available (such as Undercover) that would help you track down your Mac if it was stolen. I knew about these programs. I wrote about them, even. But I never once installed one. I just couldn’t imagine the scenario where I would have my laptop stolen. Dumb.
The news feeds bring me further fodder for my self-incrimination this morning. Over at TUAW, they are reporting that one of their readers. Jim, managed to safely recover his stolen Macbook using the MobileMe’s service, Back to My Mac, to take pictures of the perps and gather information about them gleaned from watching them surf the web.
It took Jim many months to get his laptop back: it had changed hands at least five times since it was stolen, at least once as payment in a drug deal. But when he got it back, it was in surprisingly good nick… with most of his files still intact on the disk.
That’s great news for Jim, but as another object lesson in my own amazing stupidity, it’s like a punch to the gut. Guess who also didn’t have a MobileMe account when his MacBook Pro was stolen? Yup. What a maroon.
If you’re set to automatically grab new updates, you’re likely to notice Apple’s Software Update burbling insistently in your dock for your attention, after Apple released a couple of updates of both their Airport software and the MacBook / MacBook Pro’s EFI.
The Airport Client Update 2009-002 is a routine update, fixing a few routine issues. The update solves the inability to turn the AirPort on or off in some cases after upgrading from Leopard, as well as an occasional loss of network connectivity when using Wake on Demand and the inability to create computer-to-computer networks or share Internet connections on some MacBook, MacBook Pro and Mac Mini computers.
The MacBook and MacBook Pro EFI Update is more interesting, in that with the installation of SuperDrive Firmware Update 3.0, the optical drive of these machines should no longer sound like Cookie Monster trying to chew his way through a sheet of plate glass when waking from sleep or start-up.
As usual, you can either load up Software Update to automatically suck them down and install them (restart required), or you can grab the latest updates from Apple’s support page.
[via TUAW]
Apple likes Intel’s desktop line of Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs well enough to put them in their iMacs, so it makes sense that they would want to avail themselves of Intel’s three new Core i5 and i7 mobile CPUs (codenamed Arrandale) for any forthcoming refresh of the MacBook line. But things may not be that simple.
One way the Arrandale line of processors differs from previous Intel mobile CPUs is that the chips include mandatory integrated graphics. According to the Bright Side of News, Apple’s not interested in that: even the most inexpensive Macs now contain NVIDIA GeForce 9400M GPUs, which offer far superior performance to integrated graphics solutions.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynzIh8MjcmY
Squeezing some green-friendly juice out of the sweet orange of the sun to charge your MacBook isn’t a totally unpleasant thought. Picture an azure-skied spring day, taking your work to the park, without worrying about that incessantly draining battery icon. You’d probably be willing to drop some change on such a device, right?
But would you pay $1,200 for a solar MacBook charger? That’s the price Quickertek wants you to swallow if you want to pick up their new, fifty-five watt Apple Juicz (yeesh) charger, which can refill your Mac’s battery in only six hours.
Let’s put this in perspective. For $1,200, you are getting a solar charger that is over ten times the size of the MacBook it is charging, although it folds up to the thickness of a sheet of looseleaf. For that price, and at that scale, it can’t even keep pace with the drain of a running MacBook. For that price, you could buy twelve additional MacBook batteries, or even a second MacBook to open up when your MacBook quits.
We’re all for solar-power here at Cult of Mac, but this is the problem with photovoltaic solar sensors in consumer products: accessories like Apple Juicz cost so much, you have to be frothing green foam from your mouth to justify buying one. Far better to just invest in solar powering your solar powered home, cash in your tax credits, and save money in the long term with solar power, charging any device you want with your existing electrical sockets.
They don’t do it often, but when they do, Apple doesn’t like to mess around when it comes to suing other electronics companies for infringing upon their patents and intellectual properties. No, Apple lawsuits tend to end like a round of Mortal Kombat, at least figuratively. Close your eyes and you can mentally transpose Steve Jobs for Sub-Zero; as the judgment comes down, he holds aloft the fluid-spurting spinal column of a defeated opponent while screaming and staring into the sun. The internet then provides the commentary: FATALITY.
Bad news indeed, then, for Media Solutions Holdings, who must already be feeling the twinge of legal lumbar pain. Last week, Apple filed a patent infringement lawsuit against them, claiming that the company is using a host of different websites (such as laptopsforless.com, laptopacadapter.com and ereplacements.com) to sell knock-off MacBook and MacBook Pro MagSafe power adapters.
