Mac OS X in the early days.
We’ve already lived 10 years past the end of the world and gosh, how quaint 2000 sounds already! Remember Y2K? What I also remember from 2000 is the Windows flavor of the same name. It was the marriage of professional NT robustness with the friendlier interface of Windows 98… Ten years later, that line ended with XP and is finally tweaked to the point of usability with 7. In Jost Zetzsche’s February Tool Kit for Tranlorial you can read about how so many Mac-like features finally made it to the PC with Windows 7 but still on a patched, tired architecture. Continue reading »
Written by Yves
The gorgeous new iMac
There’s never been a better time to get a new Mac. Since last June, the whole line-up of consumer machines has been completely revamped. Choices include the cost-efficient MacBook or a super-duper quad-core iMac. I am particularly impressed with the pixel real estate made available on the new 27-inch iMac. With a finer resolution than previous pricey monitors, this new all-in-one desktop counts as many pixels in width as the 30-inch Cinema Display and only 160 less pixels in height than that flagship monitor that is still listed at $1,800 by itself. Continue reading »
Written by Yves
When you press the Option key, persistent keys appear in orange.
The keyboard is one of the translators’ most valued tools and one that can also be problematic. While past trends on the PC side have moved in the direction of hypertrophied ergonomic command centers, Apple has chosen a different philosophy in keeping with its primary goal of simplification. Aligned with the chicle key design introduced with the black and white Intel MacBooks, the compact keyboard is now the de facto standard on all models, whether integrated to the laptops or distinct for the desktops. Less is more on that keyboard: gone is the numeric pad and many absent keys are easily accessed via a combination with the “fn” key. Continue reading »
Written by Yves
A friend, recent switcher and member of our user group recently emailed me to ask if he should install some kind of security software on his new MacBook. For his virtual PC installation, this goes without saying, but on the Mac side, what am I to tell him? I kept that idea in the back of my mind until I read about the Pwn2Own contest, part of the CanSecWest digital security conference held in March in Vancouver. Constestants were to choose a platform, Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and most smartphones, and demonstrate a winning attack. Charlie Miller won $5,000 and a MacBook.
The big headline out of that affair was that a Mac using Safari had been “cracked in seconds”… Still, how did that relate to installing security software on a Mac? Thankfully, AppleInsider found an interview of Miller and beautifully summarized the facts. Continue reading »
Written by Yves
Pages and Numbers, the core applications of iWork, are now at version 4 and deserve a new review. Is the Apple Office suite ready to compete with the top tier of the market? When Pages (Word replacement) and Numbers (for Excel) were added to Keynote (for PowerPoint) to form iWork, the comparisons were not favorable, although Keynote was superior to PowerPoint in many respects from the start. Pages and Numbers were more like a modernized version of AppleWorks split in two, minus the drawing tools. The combo didn’t feel like a real Office contender. Continue reading »
Written by Yves
