Nerd Life

I have recently put together a new Core 2 duo PC for doing my web development. And I have been asked why I didn't get a Core 2 duo Mac instead...

The question definitely makes sense. You can now get essentially the same components into a PC or a Mac. So the choice would boil down to:

• Design
• OS
• Software

Design

Well, the Macs look better, definitely.

However...

If you choose your hardware carefully, you can get a pretty decent looking PC. Check out these Antec enclosures (they have a nice quality feeling by the way) or these Sony displays.

And also, if you actually want to connect 3 screens to a Mac, you'll definitely need one of those bigger Mac Pros where you can put in a PC video card. And those sort of lose their coolness factor over the iMacs. But to be fair, I guess you could get away with a 24" iMac ;)

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If you crash your mac: AppleJack!

And even if you don't crash your Mac bad, you want AppleJack. Everytime you hard reset/reboot your mac you add a few errors on your hard drive structure. And as time goes by, you get more and more of those turning pizzas/beach balls and you just don"t know why...

Run Apple Jack and your Mac will feel all clean and new again! ;)

[Video Gone]

At Apple's last special event, after introducing the new iPods, Steve Jobs added this:

"We've got some new packagings for the new nano as well. And it's 52% less volume. This turns out to be an environmentally great thing. Because it dramatically reduces the amount of fossile fuels we have to spend to move these things around the planet."

Isn't that odd?

I mean, I have been religiously watching Uncle Steve's speeches for at least two years now, and I believe this is the first time he's been mentioning the environment in one of his one man shows. More than that, he actually seemed pretty proud about Apple's contribution to the environment.

Well... yeah... I could be almost happy about it... If only Apple was really concerned about the environment! But so far, all I heard is "look we're saving a lot of money on shipping costs and that will help us be cheaper than the Zune".

But there's another reason for Jobs showing his environment friendly side. (Check out their updated environment page on Apple's site).

The real reason is Greenpeace! They came out with a report on how environment friendly consumer electronics manufacturers actually are. And guess what? Apple is close to the last! :(

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Wireless Mighty Mouse

Until now, Apple had a cool mouse called the Mighty Mouse with all the advanced features you'd expect from a mouse (right click, scroll weel... even better: multidirectional scrolling ball)... it just wasn't wireless.

Apple also had a Wireless mouse... but it had only one button! :(

Today, you can finally get the best of both worlds! The mighty mouse with all it's buttons becomes wireless! Apple has even improved the pointing technology which is now a laser instead of an LED. This should allow for smoother movement on more surfaces...

...except this one little detail: the problem with the Apple wireless mice is not the pointing technology... it is the bluetooth technology! Apple bluetooth is just not reliable any more if you get more than 2 meters away from your Mac. (Home entertainement use... Of course you have less issues on a desktop... but do you really need a wireless mouse on a desktop?)

It seems that the mouse can operate on either one or two batteries. So you might expect it to have more power and greater operating range when you insert a second battery. Unfortunately, I seriously doubt that will be the case. The "old" wireless mouse had 2 batteries already... :-/

Ironically... I think I'll buy it anyway... yeah, even at 69 €... I just want that thing in my living room! :P

One of my biggest frustrations with the Mac Mini has been using the mouse... the Bluetooth Wireless Mouse actually...

The pointer movement just wasn't smooth enough... just not as responsive as it is on Windows...

I first blamed it on using PowerPC applications with Rosetta being so processor intensive that the mouse driver had problems actually tracking the mouse movement. But no, that's an explanation I have to keep for poor video playback on exotic formats. Mouse movement also skips when the Mac is idle.

I also blamed it on some background task like a file indexing daemon. But again, that's a poor explanation. (I still have to figure out how to ps -aux on the Mac though ;))

I finally blamed it on the Bluetooth... and I wonder why it took me so long to fgure that out. When the mouse starts skipping, all I have to do is get closer to the Mac and the mouse will instantly work smoothly again.

The sad thing here is that I'm not so far away with my mouse! I'm only using it from accross my living room... which means 2-3 meters away from the Mac. With a straight line of sight!

I thought Bluetooth was supposed to have a 10 meter operating range! Well it seems the Apple Mouse only has a 2 meters operating range. Such a shame!

I occasionally get Bluetooth disconnects of the wireless keyboard also, but those have never bothered me that much. Maybe I just don't realize each keypress has to be retransmitted 4 or 5 times! ?

Now I have 2 options: either I move the couch closer to the TV (should have bought a smaller one! :-/) or I find a way to improve the Bluetooth... I wonder if you can boost it someway! Sure you can't connect an external Bluetooth antenna to the Mac Mini... but I wonder if putting some metallic object at a very specific spot on the Mini could actually act as an amplifying antenna... :roll: