Mac GUI City Newsstand

Reviews :: iPod Classic Review

Author: heavymetal4god
10 Jul 2008 7:20 pm (GMT 0)
iPod Classic Review
By: heavymetal4god

The iPod Classic is the mother of all iPod's. Sizes range from 80GB to 160GB. I got the 80GB with my birthday money. It is the best iPod if you want to carry every episode of Hee Haw and Doctor Who with you.

For starters, having no FireWire support with such a massive amount of GB is very bad because FireWire has a more consistent bit rate transfer then USB so FireWire is more faster then USB2.0.

The iPod Classic has almost the same design as the 4th generation iPod but it still looks modern. However it does need to be changed soon.

People have stated that the Classic's audio sounds more in your head then other iPod's and I have comfirmed that this is true. However, when other instraments are in stereo like for example, you have your favorite Devo track playing and the audio is flying from left to right, it has a very cool sound to it because it spreads out the stereoness alot.

Video quality is exceptional but points are knocked because this is the only iPod that is still in the 4:3 aspect ratio. It's rather strange that Apple has kept the full size iPod in 4:3 when everyone else has gone widescreen.

Photo playback is great for the iPod Classic because you can scroll through your photo's full screen by rolling your thumb around the click wheel or hitting the forward and back buttons. However I would love to know why the ken burns effect is not availble for your photo's but it is used for your album art only. So you are able to do it but it is a hardware limitation.

The new interface looks very nice however, since the classic has a hard drive, it makes performance slow. The UI looks amazing because it does seamless transitions between your album art and your photo's and movies as well as options and extra's too. And now that you have so much space, Apple has added the abilty to search for your songs and movies.

Overall the iPod Classic is a great device for the folks with massive amounts of media. I give the Classic a 7 out of 10 because it's interface could be improved greatly. However it is still one amazing device.

City News :: New Graphics Coming to Mac GUI City

Author: Dog Cow
07 Jul 2008 8:32 pm (GMT 0)
Welcome to the beginnings of Phase II of the Mac GUI City Urban Renewal Project: to put new life into and make the city buildings more exciting.

I've teamed up with Mac GUI Citizen tehrin. She's drawing new graphics for the city such as the one you see now in the header and in exchange I am doing programming work for her web site.

In the future, all of the buildings will cease to be boring lists of links and descriptions. Instead, they will be fully dynamic and graphical, making Mac GUI City a much more exciting place to be.

Reviews :: iPod Touch Review

Author: heavymetal4god
26 Jun 2008 5:33 am (GMT 0)
iPod Touch Review

By: heavymetal4god

� � � The iPod Touch is the newest edition to the iPod family. Models come in 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB of flash storage. I got the 8GB for reviewal. So far it does everything it states and then some. As I write this on the touch I have say it is actually usable for typing. You don't get the tactial feedback you get on physical keyboards but turning on the "sound effects" gives me the allusion of tactile feedback.

Overview
� � � � Now the touch does more then what your your average iPod does. You can surf the Internet, check your email, watch movies in widescreen, check stocks, check your local weather,get directions to your favorite burger joint, and watch youtube video's given you are connected to a wifi network.

YouTube
So you want to watch your favorte lonelygirl117 video or the latest lawnmower races. Well it's now possible with the iPod Touch (or iPhone if you have that). Now the iPod Touch nor the iPhone supports Adobe Flash but YouTube stores the video's in h.264 codec so there really us no need for the Flash player. Video quality is very good ( even for YouTube video's. Video load time depend on your internet connection speed. But overall it's fine for on the go stuff. I rate this feature a 7 out of a 10. I rated it a seven because the interface is a bit clunky.

Email
This is a really nice to addition to the iPod line. However when it receieves the messages it doesn't� just get the most recent messages but instead it seems to get the past weeks mail for some reason this is one feature that still needs work. I rate this an 8 out of a 10.

Maps
This is a is another great feature. It combines the regular Google and Google earth maps as well as traffic like what you see with the news casters. There really is not much to else to say about this feature. I rate this a 9 out of 10.

Web-Surfing
Web surfing on the iPod Touch isn't exactally what I would call enjoyable. It's usable but I don't this would replace your G3 iBook Sunday web browser. It's nice being able to have the Internet in your pocket but I would not reccomend using this for long periods of time since it is probably not the smartest thing to do. It's bad enough people are testing 24/7. The web browsing is enjoyable since everything loads correctly withload major flash slowdowns. I give web surfing a 6 out of 10.

� � � � Overall the iPod Touch is a great buy if you have deep pockets(i got this used so I did not pay full price.) But it is a very good PDA and play's music with artwork so you cannot go wrong there.

Every single last line of this was written on the iPod Touch.

City News :: ATN: Pruning of Mac GUI email and web hosting

Author: Dog Cow
02 Jun 2008 7:41 pm (GMT 0)
ALERT! Mac GUI is performing a routine pruning of all our free email accounts and web hosting.

This is the first reminder of 4 which will be sent out each week until the end of June-- just incase someone misses it. We are going to remove all email and web hosting accounts which are not currently in use. If you have already claimed your account, you may ignore this message. If not, or if you are unsure, read on anyway.

If you wish to continue using your free email and/or web hosting account here at Mac GUI, YOU MUST REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE. Just send this email back to us, and you'll be on the list!

We do not require your password or any other personal details.

On July 1st, all unclaimed email and web hosting accounts will be deleted.

However, if you have your email or web hosting removed, you may still use it at a later date, though all your previous data will not be recovered.

Articles :: MailBag 6-2-08

Author: heavymetal4god
02 Jun 2008 5:10 pm (GMT 0)
Yes the MailBag has come to Mac GUI city to help with your mac questions.

This time around have Cactus and Dog Cow with a few basic questions.

Hi, I just got a Mac mini yesterday as an upgrade from
my G3 and I have a question

I am using the Apple USB keyboard that came with
my G3. As such, it has a power button on it which will
turn on the G3 but not the Mac mini. Is there any
option I can set to allow it to turn on the mini as
well?

Sincerely,

Dog Cow

Well the problem with that is the newer mac's do not have powered USB ports when the mac is turned off, you still use it when the mac is on, but otherwise its not useable.

Any thoughts on cleaning an Apple keyboard and restoring the function of "dead' keys ?
I have one of those white USB keyboards on a clear plastic base. Looks very nice, and
quite nice to type on, but accumulates fluff etc. under the keys and is almost impossible
to clean.

Several keys have failed. I have been living with a dead "Alt" key for some time, but yesterday
the spacebar failed. Now I see that the square brackets have stopped working, a disaster for
BBS code.

So now I'm using the smeggy keyboard that came with my Quicksilver 500MHz, which has a
cramped layout, much less aesthetically pleasing and I find creates a lot of mis-typing..

Regards,

The Cactus

It's very possible that there is dirt covering the membrane that lets the key do its business. If your feeling ambitious you could pry the keys off (bottom center) with a flat head screw driver and clean the keyboard that way. Just be mindful of the metal rods on the return, shift, and space bar keys. You can use a damp cloth or one of those clorox wet cloths. Avoid spraying cleaners around the keyboard as that might further damage it.

Best Regards,

heavymetal4god

Thats it for this week, hope to have more coming.

Reviews :: Shure E110 Review

Author: heavymetal4god
02 Jun 2008 5:02 pm (GMT 0)
Shure E110 Review
By heavymetal4god

Shure is more known for making their microphones most notably the the SM 58 and SM 57. But they also make personal ear monitor systems if the venue doesn't want floor wedges. But Shure also has a consumer line which is mostly earbuds and some cheaper microphones that usually are only good for podcasting.

I bought these from Best Buy for 106.99 instead of the retail pricing of 119.99. If you upgrading from the iPod earbuds to these, its like night and day. The quality is amazing and you will have to take them out if you need to talk to someone. I got these because I am going on a vacation in a few days and driving 20+ hours with little ones is not enjoyable, especially if your setting right next to them trying to enjoy your music or movie. Bass reproduction is about as good as an earbud gets I tried the E5 and E4 earbuds and the bass reproduction is about the same. The range of these earbuds are 22Hz-17.5KHz. So the higher toned stuff is cut off a bit but its not too bad. turning on the Treble Booster EQ setting fixes that. I like these earbuds because the plug your ears so well that if you had music playing you can't hear a truck pass you. And let me tell you it is really weird to watch the truck pass you and only feel the wind from it. The other interesting thing that these earbuds have is when music is playing in one ear, you get this like suction feeling in the other ear. These earbuds come with different sized foam and rubber pads as well as a ear wax cleaner so when the little hole that the sound comes out of gets plugged with you nasty wax you can clean it out. These earbuds come with a carrying case and a plastic carabiner that you can clip to your a belt loop on your jeans. It's kinda fruity looking but it works. These earbuds also come with a 3' "extension" cable but the real reason they have the buds setup like this is so that you can use a longer cable if needed. These earbuds also come with a few warnings about volume because since these things are basically touching your brain you need to keep it at a volume that is not over bearing. These earbuds also have a higher impedance so it will take a little bit more volume to get them to the volume you want. I have been using AKG K101's for a couple of years and the sound from those is almost identical to these. But those are regular can headphones so it is easier to get good sound in them. To summarize, I have to say these are great earbuds for their price. These are great for those people who love their music but want to keep their ears from being blown out from high volumes.

City News :: Changes to Suburban Forums

Author: Dog Cow
29 May 2008 5:42 pm (GMT 0)
Hello,

The Suburban forums are being transferred from the main forums tables into their own separate environment. This is in preparation for the upcoming forums re-write. As such, the Suburban forums may be inaccessible for a bit. The main forums will not be affected.

If there are any further issues, please contact me.

City News :: The New Design is here!

Author: Dog Cow
23 May 2008 4:08 pm (GMT 0)
Welcome to the Mac GUI City Urban Renewal/Renovations!

The new site design is just the first step in my plans to modernize and re-energize Mac GUI City is order to attract many new citizens.

If you take a look at the HTML source code, you will see that this new design relies almost completely on CSS (and one table) for the layout, meaning that Mac GUI City finally has a modern design. However, this new design is really just a modernization of the previous one; you should find everything where it used to be.

This layout is optimized for 1024x768 and larger screen resolutions, but also looks fine on the smallest 800x600 PC-size setting.

Please note that the Preferences option "Site layout: narrow/wide" will be changed to "Display Trackers: on/off" since the new design is flexible to whatever size your browser window is.

If you have comments or suggestions, please post them in this topic: Suggestions and Ideas for Renovations

Reviews :: Mac mini Intel - A Brief Review

Author: Dog Cow
22 May 2008 4:27 pm (GMT 0)
The following is a brief review of the newest 1.83 GHz Core 2 Duo Mac mini.

Realizing that it was about time to upgrade my approximately 10-year-old G3 to something more modern, I purchased the newest Mac mini model last week, the base configuration.

Whereas the G3 has Mac OS 10.4.x installed, the mini came with 10.5 pre-installed. I found that the boot time was only slightly faster. Whereas upgrading my Power Mac G3 from 10.2 to 10.4 had resulted in a significant decrease in boot time, it appears that difference of a 450 MHz processor booting 10.4 and a 1.83 GHz processor booting 10.5 is not very big.

However, I can definitely tell that the Mac mini is much faster on starting applications, especially the ones I use the most for my line of work-- Safari, TextEdit, and Preview. The reason for this, I believe, is that the G3 has only 256 MB of RAM versus the mini's 1 GB of RAM-- meaning that the slower, disk-based virtual memory is not used so often.

Now, I haven't a clue what normal people use their Macs for, but I suspect it has to do with photos and music and things like that. What I do is server-side programming and testing with Apache, PHP, and MySQL. As such, these are the aspects of the Mac mini that I'm going to cover more heavily here.

One of the things I was excited to learn about was that the Mac mini's Intel processor is not only dual-core, but it is of 64-bit architecture, meaning I can run multi-threaded, 64-bit Apache 2.0 and MySQL 5! All of this processing is not only much speedier than my previous G3, but it is also much more silent. Whereas the G3 had a huge fan blowing air around the case that was pretty noisy, the Mac mini's fan can only be detected in a silent room, and then only softly. It only speeds up when the CPU is doing more intensive calculating; this is something that the G3 did not do.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that OS 10.5 comes pre-installed with the 64-bit, multi-threaded Apache 2.2 web server. Having the new version of Apache means that I can take full advantage of the Mac mini's processor. Also, PHP 5.2.4 was installed, but it is not enabled automatically. One must edit the httpd.conf file to activate it. However, I was disappointed to discover that Apple did not compile PHP with GD extensions, meaning that this build of PHP cannot be used in Gallery programs for making thumbnails; or in forums or blogs for generating captchas.

MySQL, a database server, is one of the programs I need, but it only comes pre-installed on OS X Server. Fortunately, I was able to download the latest 64-bit MySQL 5.x version for Intel.

Both Apache and MySQL really scream on the mini compared to the G3, and together they are able to serve my web pages about 18 times faster-- what would take about .9 seconds on the G3 (and that was fast!) can now be completed in 0.05 seconds on the mini. In fact, I connected the mini to my G3 to work on a LAN and was able to call up web pages from the mini across the Ethernet cable to my G3 faster than the G3 could serve itself web pages!

I opened the Activity Monitor so I could view the status of both CPU cores. Whereas most typical applications do not make efficient use of multi-core systems, with Apache and MySQL, they are optimized for this use and I could see instances where both cores were used equally, or in some cases one core was utilized more than the other. While I cannot run any in-depth tests, it at least appears that the having a dual-core processor is more efficient when run ones the appropriate software on it.

My conclusion is that the Mac mini is a very excellent machine for your "average Joe"-- the one who does not wish to play the latest 3D games or try and solve complex scientific calculations. It especially nice for one upgrading from a 3 years or older Macintosh.

City News :: Classified Listings now available

Author: Dog Cow
30 Apr 2008 7:54 pm (GMT 0)
Mac GUI City Classifieds is now open and ready for everyone to use! Listing is free, and you can post any for sale, wanted, or for trade listing for your Apple gear, software, or any other appropriate item. You may also advertise an existing eBay auction.

Potential customers can also post comments on your listing, and then you can negotiate a deal in private.

Take note that the Classifieds listings are only for real, tangible items of value, NOT virtual shop items!

http://macgui.com/market/classifieds.php