Archive for the 'Apple' Category

MacBook Pro

Published
by
Laurence Anderson
on September 19, 2007
in Apple, Articles, Family, Miscellaneous, Noteworthy, Personal, Photos and School
. 7 Comments

First off as most bloggers do when it’s been a while since they’ve written an entry, let me apologize for just that, not writing an entry.

Now that that’s outta the way, you may have seen (or maybe are even subscribed to) my flickr photostream recently, and if so you’ll have seen the image at the beginning of this post before. Yes, that’s right, that’s a macro shot of the words “MacBook Pro“. Now you may be thinking “Larry has a Black MacBook, why would he take a picture of this?” well also if you’ve been looking at my photostream you’ll notice I put exactly why I had those pictures.

Basically all you need to know is milk got spilt into my BlackBook and fried it, so I got this as a replacement/upgrade, which is nice because it’ll handle Leopard a lot better.

Let me sum up the story, I was eating breakfast before school on Monday, like I do every day I have school, which was a bowl of cereal, and at the same time I happened to be working in CS3. Well I went to go reach for my keyboard to go type something, and my bowl of cereal was in between my arms, and I bumped it and some milk splashed out and hit my MacBook’s keyboard, immediately shutting the machine off. So I did what I heard you’re supposed to, take out all cords, battery, and flip the machine upside down and let it dry, which in the long run (2 days) worked fine.

The MacBook turns on and runs, but a majority of the left side of the keyboard is stuck down once you press a key, and the power adapter is being wonky when it’s plugged into the laptop, and obviously I can’t run off battery forever. So, with Leopard coming in November, my MacBook being almost paid off, I figured I should just upgrade and salvage what I could off the old laptop. While I was at work my mom ran out for me and got me the stock 15″ 2.2GHz MacBook Pro.

I came home, set it up, transferred all the data I could, now I’m up and running (minus installing my printer). So expect a review maybe this weekend or in the near future.

Initial iPhone Impressions

Published
by
Laurence Anderson
on July 1, 2007
in Apple, Articles, Links, Miscellaneous, Noteworthy, Personal and Photos
. 7 Comments

Apple’s new iPhone

Well, if you didn’t know Doug (Co-Host of PreviewCast) went to his Apple Store for the iPhone launch and recorded two episodes, but sadly he didn’t get to use an iPhone as of this writing.

I on the other hand, didn’t attend the launch but I did get to use the device yesterday after dropping my girlfriend off at her house, and well all I can say is that I’m in love. I sat in the store for damn near a half hour playing with all the features of the iPhone, taking my time with each one, and I even made a call with it (at least in our store, all the phones are active), so I’ve pretty much given the phone a top to bottom inspection (or side to side if you’re holding it landscape haha).

I’m not gonna go over every feature, I’m just going to talk about my favorite feature, which may surprise most of you - SMS Messaging.

I love the SMS on the iPhone, I text every single day wether it’s my girlfriend, to make plans with friends or to (once and a while) track a flight for somebody that I’m waiting to leave or come in. I love how the iPhone turns it into an iChat conversation, it’s so much easier for me to follow what I’ve said and who I’m texting. The keyboard has been covered on a number of other tech sites and blogs, but I think it’s the best thing in a while, that’s not to say that I haven’t made errors (curse you fat fingers), but otherwise it’s quite easy to type on.

Something that really impressed me and surprised me at the same time, is while I was searching through the settings on the iPhone I sent it a text from my phone, thinking it would take me out of the settings application and back to my conversation, which I wouldn’t like, but instead it dims the screen and prompts you if you want to go straight to SMS or if you want to ignore it for now and continue what you’re doing.

Am I Gonna Get It?

Well, will I get one? The answer isn’t confirmed yet, I WANT one, but it’s gonna be hard for me to drop my Verizon contract which I’ve been with for at least 4 years now, for a network with worse coverage in my area, and for me to drop that amount of money on a phone and contract.

DeskDock

Published
by
Laurence Anderson
on March 31, 2007
in Apple, Miscellaneous, Personal and Photos
. 8 Comments

I can honestly do a writeup if anybody really cares about this, I think it’s pretty neat.

5 Reasons I Dislike the Apple TV

Published
by
Laurence Anderson
on March 22, 2007
in Apple, Articles, Links, Miscellaneous and Personal
. 6 Comments

Apple TV

First off, let me say I’m sorry for the lack of updates (even my art teacher at school was heckling me) and for that I apologize, I’ve been in a bad mood for damn near a month (judging by my last post) and well it kept me from blogging I suppose.

But to start off the actual post here, most people are starting to receive their Apple TV, and well, I can’t help but leave this alone.

Here are some reasons why I strongly dislike the Apple TV:

1.) HD. One word, two letters, granted I know the world is heading in the HD direction, I would love for the Apple TV to have the capability to be used with standard def TVs, now I have a 20″ Flat Screen standard def TV, and a 14″ standard def TV, either one I would use the Apple TV with.

2.) Wireless transmitting. Granted these have the new draft-N wireless cards in them, which is always good that Apple is going for higher standards with their wireless, unless you have an N network, the transfer speeds must be painstakingly slow. Especially if you’re still on a B network, G I can see as being feasible.

3.) BYOC (Bring Your Own Cables). This is Apple we’re talking about, even iPods come with chargers (as of now anyways), so to just include the AC Adapter with these set top type boxes is ridiculous, but I suppose if you can afford the price tag ($299 USD) and an HDTV you can spare some for some HDMI cables or something.

4.) Interface. Granted I buy all my music, movies, music videos from iTunes so their supplied with album art (where applicable), what about the pirates (arr!) who buy an Apple TV, I don’t support piracy, but what good is the interface when you’d either A.) have to get your own album artwork and manually apply it, or B.) go without. The whole focus of the interface is album art, it’s the center of focus with the Apple TV.

5.) Pricing. Apple products have always been priced at premiums, or higher than you’d expect prices but it’s because of the quality and polish that goes into every unit they make, wether it Mac, iPod, iPhone (TBA), or Apple TV.

Most people are saying the 40GB HD in their Apple TVs is insufficient, but I disagree, you figure most of the content you’re watching is streamed, so it doesn’t matter how big of a hardrive you have. I’d still love to see if this part is user serviceable and if it can be upgraded, but only a matter of time.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Email read on Diggnation Episode 86!

Published
by
Laurence Anderson
on February 25, 2007
in Apple, Articles, Digg, Links, Miscellaneous, Noteworthy, Personal and Site
. 13 Comments

Digg

[UPDATE]: I now have the video clip.

This morning I woke up to an IM that read “your email was read on Diggnation!”. At first I was like, “couldn’t have been, I’ve sent a ton of emails to Kevin and Alex” - well I went straight to Revision3’s website and low and behold there was the new episode (audio only) of Diggnation, so I sat down, loaded it (I prefer the video version), and skipped to the ads (GoDaddy and Cachefly), and wham there was Alex Albrecht saying my name and reading the email I had sent regarding a friend of mine and the Virgin America Airlines episode.

They also talked about my blog - sort of a free plug (which Alex, I wholeheartedly appreciate, thanks).

So, once the video version comes out I’ll be downloading that right away just to see them talk about my email, but until then, here’s the clip from the audio version!

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,