shem.tech

How to: Choose the right PC…

It’s finally happened, old Betsy the family desktop system has played the Windows XP start chime for the final time. No more will her meagre CRT cast its romantic glow over your living room at night as you watch po- I mean finish your assignments. Her state of the art Pentium dual core had been a tad slow and her hard disk drive had been creaky recently. The signs were there… So yeah, time to get a new one!
So should it be a Dell, HP, Apple or Toshiba. Will you get another desktop, or join the cool kids on the mobile side? It’s a tough decision and can be confusing with the plethora of options available. Maybe I can offer some help, yes me. Stop laughing and read on.

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Fact sheet: Mac OS

Proudly brought to you by the wizards of Cupertino, Mac OS (Macintosh Operating System) has been powering Apple Inc’s hardware since 1984. The software has been though many iterations, the latest being Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

Today Mac OS is no longer exclusive to the Mac line of computers. It can be found on Apple’s more portable offerings, specifically the iOS devices (iPod, iPhone, iPad). Now onto the facts:

1. Early versions of Mac OS were simply called “System.” It predates the 1985 release of Microsoft Windows by one year. System gained the ‘Mac OS’ moniker in 1997.
2. Mac OS X is part of the Unix line of operating systems. The ‘X’ is the roman numeral for 10.
3. Mac OS 10.xx versions are given wild cat names. 10.0 was codenamed ’Cheetah’. 10.7 will be released later this year and is called ‘Lion.’
4. The Finder is the file manager for Mac OS. Just like Explorer (not Internet Explorer) in Windows, the Finder is the graphical shell over the operating system which provides easy access to files, folders, drives and applications. The image at the start of this post is the icon for the Finder.
5. Mac OS cannot be legally run on non-Apple branded hardware. It is against the SLA (software license agreement) for the product. Non-Apple PCs running Mac OS are nicknamed ‘hackintoshes.’
6. The default browser in Mac OS is currently Safari. Prior to 2003, the default browser for Mac OS was actually Internet Explorer as part of an Apple-Microsoft agreement.
7. iDevices such as the Apple iPod or iPhone, run a slimmed down variation of Mac OS, simply known as iOS. The current version is iOS 4.3 and it’s successor, iOS 5, will arrive later this year.
8. The setup assistant for Mac OS 10.3 ‘Panther’ featured the song ‘Eple’, by the Norwegian duo Röyksopp, as its welcome music. ‘Eple’ is Norwegian for apple.
9. Despite popular belief, it is possible to use a dual button mouse with Mac OS.
10. The visual theme for the Mac OS X line is appropriately called ‘Aqua.’

Well there you have it, 10 facts you probably didn’t know about Mac OS. If you knew them already, congratulations, now go away. If you didn’t and use Mac OS, then you are now more knowledgeable about the software you are using, even if these facts do nothing more than give you bragging rights. If you didn’t know them and don’t use Mac OS, then you can now seem more knowleadgeable in spats against your Macbook-toting comrades, though you might still lose if things get violent. Macbooks are made of aluminium now afterall. Thank you for reading and enjoy the remainder of your week.

S. iBest

Search by image from Google

Those visiting Google’s Image search page may have noticed a new button has appeared in the search bar. Image search allows for ‘reverse searching’. Instead of searching for an image using a term, you search for terms using images. Simply upload an image or provide a link and have Google lookup the topic of that image for you. Similar images will also be presented to further refine your searches. This is ideal for scenarios such as identifying actors in your images. Google continues to improve on the search experience, let’s hope Bing can follow up. I’m still waiting on the HTLM5 goodness promised earlier this year.

S. Best

Managing Windows

In today’s post we’ll look at simple steps you can take to keep your installation of Windows chugging along efficiently and cleanly. As you do your daily computing you install programs, move and manipulate files, browse the web and download files. Windows is generally quite resilient to what you hurl at it, but after a while it’ll show wear and tear in the form of slowdown.

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Fact sheet: Android

I’ve decided to introduce another blog segment. Fact sheet is intended to provide interesting tidbits [brit: titbits] of currently trending technologies, i.e. neat things about other neat things you probably did/didn’t know. For our very first fact sheet we’ll take a look at Google’s entry into the mobile operating system market, the Android operating system.

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Internet safety and you.

Yes the Internet. That magical world beyond your screen where manual labour is watering crops on Farmville and you don’t get slapped for nudging/poking someone (still working on a way to do it, will keep you posted). The network of networks has changed since the times when every webpage was a smouldering mess of animated images, none of which had anything to do with the content of the page you were on.

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