Attention Firefox 2 user: your browser is out of date. Please visit http://getfirefox.com to get the newest version!

webbunny tumblelog

 
Anyone who knows how to run Activity Monitor can observe that even the most trivial use of Flash within in a webpage eats up extraordinary resources. If Greenpeace were a legitimate environmental watchdog, it would target Flash as a bigger threat than PVC and BFRs combined, just by the composite amount of energy it consumes to do absolutely nothing of value.
 
Apple actually invented the modern laptop computer with [the] Powerbook. It was the first laptop that had a TFT screen - the first modern LCD screens. It was the first laptop that pushed the keyboard up, creating palm rests, and had an integrated pointing device.
Steve Jobs
 
When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it’s the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you’ll rule the world.

ReBlogged from marco

 
The rise in student uptake of Macs is gradually leading to more and more interest in Macs as scientific workstations. A Mac can be used to answer email, surf the web, and write scientific articles, but it can equally run high-performance calculations. This is due to the UNIX underpinnings of Mac OS X, and more recently to Apple’s emphasis on performance in Snow Leopard. Technologies like OpenCL and Grand Central are very attractive to scientists who need to crunch numbers.
 

Reminder: Backup your data!

Last week something terrible happened; my computer refused to start up. Rescue disks reported that the hard drive had failed.

This can happen to any computer at any time; it is the one thing Macs are not safer from than PCs. Luckily it is also something that Mac OS X has a built-in mechanism to avoid, as long as you do a few easy steps to turn it on.

I’m talking about Time Machine, the automatic backup system that you can just set and then forget.

Of course, you have to set it up first, and this is where people make the big mistake of not bothering. They think it will never happen to them - wrong!

All it involves is buying an external hard drive (I went for the Time Capsule as it was wireless, and is also a full-featured WiFi base station), connecting it and then when the Mac asks if you want to use this as your Time Machine backup, just say yes.

So luckily for me, I had everything backed up. I also use this machine for my business, and we have extra backups for that, too (If the hard drive you are backing up to is located in the same room as your computer, then it is not a good backup in case of fire, theft etc. We use both Dropbox and iDrive at work to back up important data).

All it took for me to restore my Mac to complete working order was to get a new hard drive, then take the computer home and start it up. The Mac OS startup process said “Would you like to migrate everything from your Time Machine backups?” and I said yes. After a couple of hours (there was a lot of stuff!) the computer restarted and it was exactly as I had left it before the hard drive failed!

I was amazed at this; not only every file in its place, but all the preferences set correctly, the software was all activated and up-to-date, all my work was ready to go as I had left it.

Considering my last experience of a hard drive crash was when I was on Windows, and there was no built-in automatic backup system, and backups basically meant sitting there for hours making DVDs of my stuff, Time Machine has been an absolute marvel.

As Joel Spolsky recently said:

“The minimum bar for a reliable service is not that you have done a backup, but that you have done a restore.”

So now, having done a restore from my Time Machine backup, I can heartily recommend using it. If you do not have a backup strategy, do it now before it is too late!

 
The idea that Windows 7’s quality will spur upgrades from XP is predicated on the fact that the people holding out on XP make their computing choices based on quality. But if that’s the case, why exactly are they still running Windows XP? Why are they still using Internet Explorer? I think it’s hard to overstate the fact that, with the explosion of the Internet as a universal communication medium, hundreds of millions of PCs have been purchased around the world by people who don’t care about computers or software at all.
 
Because so much of the PC industry is engaged in a race for the bottom, “market share” is no longer much of a bragging point. The computer maker that has weathered this recession the best is Apple — the company which last year many analysts predicted would weather it the worst. They predicted Apple would be in trouble because it focuses on the high end of the market, but it’s exactly that focus that has enabled Apple to not just tread water but continue to grow.
 
Mac OS X 10.5.8 available through Software Update

The latest update to Mac OS X (which is sent to every Mac owner) automatically upgrades your Safari 3 install to Safari 4.

This is excellent and exactly what should happen on all operating systems. There is no reason not to upgrade your browser, but every reason that you should. Some people cannot be bothered to go find the download though, so bringing it automatically to people like this is perfect. Well done Apple!

about shaun…

Name: Shaun Robinson

Age: 24

Occupation: Web Designer / Developer

Location: Ipswich, United Kingdom

Living with: My partner Andrew, and two kids Elliot and Oliver.

contact me