But today, I wanted to take a moment to congratulate The Temple Owls. They had a rough start at the beginning of the season, losing to Villanova and Penn State, but since then, they’ve won six games in a row, keeping them undefeated in the MAC.

Vaughn Charlton #12, quarterback for the Temple University Owls, prepares to hand off during a game against Navy. Image: Newscom

That means that Temple is bowl-eligible for the first time since 1990. That’s a long time to suck. Their next four games are against Miami (OH), Akron, Kent State, and Ohio, so it’s possible that they’ll end the season 10 – 2, winning the conference and heading to a fairly decent bowl game. That’s awesome for a team who started the season ranked in the bottom 10 of all college football.

The players on this team may not be top contenders for the draft, but they’re doing a great job taking Temple to the next level this season. Congrats, Owls, for finally not sucking.

Post from: EveryJoe

Taking A Moment to Cheer On Temple

The CopyPaste Pro is said to be the Time Machine for the Clipboard. The default MAC copy paste only allows 1 clipboard (at least as what their product site says); again, I am not a MAC user.

The highlight features include:

1. Multiple Clips

2. Edit Clips

3. Archives

4. History

5. Multiple Views

6. Clip Tools

7. Quick Clips

Image from CopyPaste Pro.

Post from: EveryJoe

CopyPaste Pro for MAC

This brings me to the topic of my post today. I’m happy about the fact that Apple has shown a lot of responsibility towards the environment and going green. As evidenced by their current line of products plus how they build them. It’s explained in their environment section of their web site.

Apple is explaining their environmental footprint and the breakdown. According to their site, 38% of their footprint is on caused by manufacturing, 5% by transportation, 1% by recycling, 3% by facilities and the biggest is product use which comprises of 53%.

Over the past few years Apple has tried to lessen the amount of materials they use for their products. Achieving this through better design and engineering. The current generation of iMacs uses 55% less materials than the 1st 15 inch iMac launched years ago. They’ve also tried to keep their packaging as compact as possible in order to use less materials and ship more products per container, thus saving on transportation costs.

The materials used on the products have been taken into consideration as well. Apple is leading the way in reducing or in some cases eliminating toxic substances in their products. Limiting the use of plastics and other materials that are not recyclable.

And because the biggest part of the environmental foot print comes from the usage of the products, Apple has tried as much as possible to make their products energy efficient. Quoting from their web site.

Take Mac mini, for example. It uses as little as a quarter of the power consumed by a typical lightbulb,⁴ making it the most energy-efficient desktop computer in the world.⁵

As we’re now feeling the effects of our actions, we should be more responsible in conversing energy and our natural resources. I’m just glad that the company that manufacturers the computer I’m using is doing it’s part. Learn more about Apple’s environmental program here.

Post from: EveryJoe

Hooray For Green Apples!

With Macintosh’s popularity with music and video production the Cakewalk release of new driver’s for the Snow Leopard operating system brings the functionality and features of Cakewalk’s mobile studio production equipment.

Boston, MA (September 11, 2009) — Cakewalk, the world’s leading developer of powerful and easy to use products for music creation and recording, announces immediate availability of new Snow Leopard Mac Operating System (version 10.6) device drivers for the V-Studio 100 portable music production system.

Also now available are Snow Leopard hardware drivers for the UA-1G audio interface and UM-1G, UM-2G and UM-3G MIDI Interfaces. More Snow Leopard hardware drivers will be announced soon.

The introduction of the SONAR V-Studio 100 and other hardware drivers for Snow Leopard furthers Cakewalk’s commitment to making its products compatible with the Macintosh.

I’ve not heard much amazing new reasons to upgrade to the new Macintosh operating system, but I’m sure keeping your Cakewalk drivers updated are always good. Visit their website to download these new drivers and keep your Cakewalk software running at it’s top performance.

• SONAR V-Studio 100
• UA-1G Audio Interface
• UM-1G MIDI Interface
• UM-2G MIDI Interface
• UM-3G MIDI Interface

Post from: EveryJoe

Snow Leopard Drivers Available for Cakewalk’s V-Studio 100

CUPERTINO, California—August 24, 2009—Apple® today announced that Mac OS® X v10.6 Snow Leopard™ will go on sale Friday, August 28 at Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers, and that Apple’s online store is now accepting pre-orders. Snow Leopard builds on a decade of OS X innovation and success with hundreds of refinements, new core technologies and out of the box support for Microsoft Exchange. Snow Leopard will be available as an upgrade for Mac OS X Leopard® users for $29.

With pre-orders being accepted it’s just a matter of days before the world has its hands on the latest iteration of Apple’s much acclaimed operating system.

Snow Leopard

Instead of bringing a boatload of new features, Apple chose to instead rewrite most of the operating system to improve user experience and performance. On the surface to the untrained user there will be little noticeable differences from Leopard to Snow Leopard but under the hood performance is vastly improved. This improves performance of applications significantly.

Snow Leopard also comes with support for Microsoft’s Exchange Server 2007, a first for a consumer oriented desktop operating system.

There are a lot of things to like about Snow Leopard, from faster performance, a totally new Quicktime application all the way to Expose being integrated to the dock. However, the thing I like most is the price. With a $29 price tag for current Leopard users, upgrading is dirt cheap. You won’t even have to think about it. Apple said they want all Mac users to upgrade to the new operating system hence the low price. Power PC users though won’t be able to experience Snow Leopard as it is only available to Intel Mac computers.

With all the good things that comes with Snow Leopard the only thing I probably don’t like about it is the box cover design. Oh well, nothing is perfect.

Read the complete press release here.

Post from: EveryJoe

Snow Leopard Roars On The 28th

For almost five years, it’s been believed that Apple is working on a touchscreen tablet PC, thanks to patents filed by the company for just such a device dating back to 2004 and 2005. Rumors had swirled since long before those dates, though, that Steve Jobs was planning to unleash the first Mac Tablet in the near future.

Fast forward to 2009, and in the wake of the iPhone and iPod Touch, which could be considered small scale versions of that same patented device, and we’re still waiting for the iTablet to appear. We now know they have the technology to create a device such as this, and actually make it work. And the recent surge in popularity of netbooks can only be nipping at Apple’s heels. So a combination Tablet/Netbook seems inevitable.

The only question remaining remaining is when.

Over the last few weeks, new rumors have begun to circulate that this coveted device is closer than ever, thanks to an article in the Chinese Times. The article claims that three Taiwanese corporations are already at work manufacturing the components for Apple’s Tablet PC, and that the finished product will ship in October for about $800. This is just hearsay, and should be considered another brick in the rumorwall for now.

But hey… anybody know when the next Apple keynote is?

Image: Robin Parrish.

Post from: EveryJoe

Apple Netbook/Tablet on the way?

Quoting from his article

The 15-inch MacBook Pro is the best of the tier-one commercial notebooks, full stop. My two complaints — that the SD card sticks out of its slot and the USB ports remain too close together — are overshadowed by the new display, seven-hour battery, faster CPU, and the fact that there is an SD card slot. There are cheaper notebooks, but I’d challenge you to find one that’s faster, quieter, and better built than MacBook Pro.

MacBook Family, Image Courtesy of Apple Inc.

I have personally been using the first gen of the 15″ Unibody MacBook Pros and apart from the battery life I’m quite happy with it. It’s truly one of the best built laptops I’ve owned. With the new models, my battery complaints have most likely been answered.

I honestly think that the MacBook Pro is quite possibly the best notebook around, be it PC or Mac. Sure there are faster, more powerful notebooks. Alienware comes to mind but non as refined and well rounded as the MacBook Pro. It simply looks and performs well.

Check out Tom’s InfoWorld article here.

Post from: EveryJoe

The Best NoteBook

MacBook Pro Family, Image courtesy of Apple Inc.

According to Walt Mossberg who had the chance to test both the 13 and 15 inch MacBook Pro and put it through the paces of his own battery test, both laptops performed well. The 13 inch lasted a slighty below the 5 hour mark while the 15 inch was 21 minutes above the 5 hour marker. This says well considering no power saving feature was turned on and the screen brightness was cranked up. In normal usage, expect battery life to be even slightly higher.

I for one was at first skeptical of the notion that I can’t replace the battery of my laptop. However looking back, ever since I’ve owned a laptop, I’ve never bought a spare battery. Hmmm… I guess I just like the thought that I could replace it if I wanted to. Mossberg cites in his article that only less than 5% of consumers actually buy spare batteries. This figure was from NPD, a research firm. I would believe that this figure is close to the truth.

I guess we just need to let go of our need to control things and trust that technology works. Apple was able to increase battery size and life in its MacBook Pro line of computers without adding weight or heft. I guess its a decent trade-off to the fact that you can’t replace it yourself. Apple also claims that their batteries will last up to 5 years. So by the time it’s time to change batteries it’s also time to change computers.

So we’ll see in the days to come if indeed sealed batteries are the way to go.

Post from: EveryJoe

MacBook Pros Sealed Batteries Perform Well

WWDC 2009 - Image courtesy of Apple

New MacBook Pro Lineup

I don’t think anyone saw this coming. At least not for this event. Apple just revamped it’s MacBook Pro line. Releasing an all new 15 inch MacBook Pro which now sports a similar battery to the 17 inch. Promising battery life of up to 7 hours. Another notable thing is the swapping out of the express slot with a SD card reader.

Another thing is that the MacBook Aluminum is now rebranded as the 13 inch MacBook Pro. It shares similar specs to it’s 15″ brother. The 13 inch model also now comes with a FW800 port.

What’s also outrageous (in a good way) is that the MacBook Pros prices have been reduced significantly. The 13″ starts at $1199 while the 15″ starts at $1699.

The white polycarbonate MacBook now remains as the only MacBook model available.

MacBook Air updated

Apple also updated MacBook Air models. The new entry level MacBook Air sports a 1.86 Ghz Core 2 Duo processor with a 120GB Hard drive while the higher end model has a 2.13 Ghz Core 2 Duo processor and a 128GB Solid State Drive. The 1.86 Ghz’s price starts at $1,499 while the 2.13 Ghz is priced at $1,799. Making both of them easily the most bang-for-buck MacBook Airs yet.

Snow Leopard

A preview of Snow Leopard was demoed during the keynote. What can I say except that I’m really excited to upgrade to Snow Leopard. Apple is also making it available to exisitng Leopard users for a low low $29 for a single user license and $49 for a Family Pack. Beat that Windows!

There are a lot of great features that come with Snow Leopard, such as a rewritten Finder, Expose controls via the dock and the new Quicktime X.

However with all of these refinements I think the most important of which is Exchange support. Sure, not all will agree but I think it’s the most important feature because it now allows Macs to really compete and penetrate the corporate market. Companies rely on Microsoft Exchange for their corporate communication needs and now the Mac can play with them. That means IT companies can now adopt Macs for some if not all of their users. That will significantly help improve market share for Apple.

iPhone 3G S and iPhone 3.0 OS

The iPhone and the iPhone 3.0 OS were the most anticipated announcements of the keynote. Apple previewed the new OS which I must say is getting better all the time. I can’t believe people are actually clapping and shouting with the announcement of the copy and past feature and MMS. It’s something that people have been really clamoring for. However true to Apple form, they won’t do something unless they can do it right. I think their version of copy and paste is good and will work really well with the iPhone interface.

The 3.0 software boasts of a 100 new features. I mentioned copy and paste, other notable features are spotlight search, new Safari, landscape version of the keyboard, better parental controls, the ability to record and send audio, voice control app, etc.

What I really liked was the “Find My iPhone” feature. This is available to iPhone users who are Mobile Me subscribers as well. In the event that you lose your iPhone, you can login to Mobile Me and send your iPhone a message. It will also tell you where your iPhone is. If in fact it has been stolen and not just misplaced, you can send it a command to erase all of your data. Some people are saying that there might be a privacy issue and that people can use it to track you without your knowledge, but this technology has already been embedded in most phones sold in the US which have built-in GPS chips to help authorities track people in case of emergencies. So this is not something that’s exclusive to the iPhone.

Some very cool demos were shown during the keynote albeit there were some malfunctions or mishaps that occured. I love medical app from AirStrip CC which allows doctors to monitor patients with a remote sensor. It feeds the iPhone the relevant data of the patient and can alert doctors when certain parameters are reached. I’ve always been a proponent of better technologies for health and medical services. This looks to really be a promising one.

All in all the WWDC keynore was great. Steve didn’t make an appearance though but it’s ok. It shows that Apple can exist and put on a good show even if he’s not there. It would have been better though but the other guys at Apple still did a good job.

Post from: EveryJoe

WWDC 2009 Roundup

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple was also quoted to have said that Jobs seemed to be healthy and energetic during their last phone conversation. Ben Charny’s post on Digits, (blog for WSJ) had this to say about Wozniak’s comment regarding Jobs.

On the sidelines of the All Things D conference, Mr. Wozniak said Mr. Jobs “doesn’t sound like he’s sick,” nor did he seem to be in a health crisis. Mr. Wozniak said, however, he has never directly asked Mr. Jobs how he is.

So things seem to be pointing to the return of Steve Jobs, which is well and good. This might be part of the reason why Apple’s shares have shot past the $140 level the past week. That and the imminent launch of the 3rd generation of the iPhone.

June, which is the start of the 2nd half of the year looks to be promising. If Steve Jobs returns to Apple, then we’re off to a good start.

Post from: EveryJoe

Jobs Set To Return To Apple