Category: Review

Daniel’s New Toy

Daniel has a new “toy”. Daniel likes his new toy. Daniel will take his new toy to many places. Daniel needs to stop talking in the third-person now.

After tweeting and recording a Qik video about this, it is time to announce my new toy. My school isn’t the richest school in the world, but we do have great sports, music, and of course, academics. One thing that our school does lack is a laptop for every student.

If you remember, from a very long time ago, on the Apple Universe Podcast LIVE event at my high school, the computer lab aide, Mrs. Bandong, joined me to talk tech. I came to the computer lab, like I regularly do at school, and noticed a tablet-like computer on her desk. My curious self brought me this machine.

The little handheld computer is called the Nova5000, and is made by Fourier Systems. The Nova5000 runs the Windows CE operating system, and includes an absolutely amazing plethora of ports! Here’s a list of the Nova’s external connections:

  • Ethernet port 10/100-Built-in WiFi 802.11g
  • 3 female USB 1.1 ports, for connecting a keyboard, mouse, flash drive, etc.
  • 1 male USB port for Microsoft ActiveSync (to synchronize the handheld with a desktop Windows computer)
  • CompactFlash memory card slot
  • Headphone and microphone jacks
  • Built-in audio speaker (Mono)
  • 12-bit / 8 input scientific probe sensor interface
  • VGA monitor port

Now you are thinking about what this has to do with me, Daniel. Well, Mrs. Bandong was incredibly generous and actually gave me the Nova5000! I would like to thank Mrs. Bandong very much for donating this handheld to me.

Since the Nova500 has both a mic and headphone jack, I might use it in taking podcasting on the road with me, but we’ll see what happens. I managed to get a number of good pictures of the Nova handheld, which are posted here for your perusal:

Nova5000

Nova5000

Nova5000

You can find the rest of the photos over at my Flickr account.

Macworld 2007 vs. Macworld 2008

Macworld expos come and go, but the products released at these events stay. In this entry, I really want to stress the importance of these events.

While we were recording Apple Universe episode #100, Shooby pointed out that Macworld 2007 was revolutionary, which made me think. Apple really pushed it to the limit in 2007 when they announced something that will change technology, eventually winning Product of the Year in 2007. That product, of course, is the iPhone, but what people don’t realize is that 2007 was an unforgettable year.

Okay, the MacBook Air is cool (blog post coming soon), and it sure changes people, but the iPhone was revolutionary in its field. Steve Jobs, at the beginning of his 2008 keynote, pointed out that Apple sold five million iPhones, having hoped to ship just one million units by the time of the keynote.

Like many other people, I think that there is no comparison between Macworld 2008 and Macworld 2007. The iPhone got so much attention which even Apple can’t beat anymore. Still, there’s a lot that I’d Apple to release in the next 51 weeks, as Steve Jobs joked about in his keynote.

Keep reading for more news about Apple’s announcements from the Macworld 2008 Keynote.

~Daniel Brusilovsky

Macworld 2008: Day 1

Macworld 2008 has started, and it couldn’t start better off for me! This following blog post will be no ordinary blog post, I will by time, tell the readers my journey to Macworld 2008: Day 1.

5:00 AM- Wake up. At around 5:15 I eat breakfast, and get all my stuff ready for the days journey to Macworld 2008.
5:30 AM- Leave house to BART Station.
6:00 AM- Arrive at BART Station and board train to San Francisco!
6:50 AM- I arrive in San Francisco, and walk to Moscone Center West.
7:10 AM- Get my Super Pass, and go inside of Moscone West.
7:20-8:45 AM- Wait in line until they let us in the keynote room. At this time, I meet new friends, and talk about the Apple Universe podcast recording that night, and stream some live video on Qik.
9:00-10:30 AM- Steve Jobs Keynote! I get my seat, and take LOTS of pictures, and videos. A blog post coming up about the announcements from the keynote.
10:45 AM- THE HIGHLIGHT OF MY DAY!!

At this time I want to talk about what happened after the keynote was over. I had no where to go, since I was waiting for a friend, and I decide to walk to the stage. What I didn’t know, was that the press were taking a lot of pictures. I didn’t know what they were taking pictures, and knowing that I was small enough, I went through some people to find Steve Jobs in front of me! YES! STEVE JOBS WAS IN FRONT ON ME!! Steve needed to go, so he turned around and turned in my direction. I talk to Steve and SHAKE HIS HAND! I SHOKE STVEVE JOBS HAND!!!!

Steve is a really idol to me, it was a great experience to shake Steve Jobs hand. After that, I meet with some Apple Executives like Jonathan Ive, and some iPhone person, that I don’t remember his name 🙂

Going back to the actual story:

11:00 AM- Meet with iPhoneAlley Founder, and Editor-in-Chief, Michael Johnston. We talk about the keynote, and talk, like us all 🙂
12:00-1:00 PM- I go out to lunch with a really good friend of mine, Eric Willis. Eric is now in San Francisco, and I have him a pass to Macworld 2008. We went out to lunch, and had a good time talking nothing other then Apple!
1:00-1:30 PM- Go to Eric’s office, and relax for a little bit before going back to Macworld 2008.
1:50 PM- Meet with Robert and Patrick Scoble in Moscone Center.
2:00- 4:00 PM- Walk around the expo floor with the Scoble’s and Mike Cohen of MacMegasite.
4:15- 5:45 PM- Set-up for my Apple Universe Episode #100 event at Zeum!
6:00- 8:00 PM- Apple Universe #100 with Robert Scoble, Dave Sifry, Shooby, iJustine and Cali Lewis! There will be a blog post about this event coming up.
8:30 PM- Leave the Zeum, and go home after a very long day.

This was basically my day at Macworld 2008. I am still in disbelief that I shook Steve Jobs hand! Apple Universe #100 was great, and I hope my parents let me go back to Macworld later this week, and if not, I had a great time at Macworld 2008!

Apple Universe #100 should be out soon.

Must-Have Mac Apps for the new Mac Switcher!

A good online friend of mine, Chris24 as he is known, writes great entries for his blog, which is located at www.chris24.ca (or subscribe to Chris’s blog’s RSS feed).

Here’s a quote from a recent article written by Chris, titled “Must-Have Mac Apps for the new Mac Switcher“:

Once you convince your friends to get a Mac, they’ll want to know which applications to use or try out first! Here is a list for all those new Mac users who want a list of the most useful, must-have Mac applications that aren’t included with your Mac. Keep in mind that some of these applications require Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, but most require Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.

Web Development

Transmit for FTP. Transmit provides the best FTP client for the Mac. Transmit is available from Panic, and costs only $29.95.

Cyberduck is a free FTP solution. I’ve had troubles with Cyberduck when connecting to my (mt) grid server, but if you don’t feel the need to pay for Transmit, then Cyberduck is for you.

CSSEdit for CSS editing. CSSEdit provides a sleek interface for editing CSS files. You can even extract any CSS file from any website and preview what the website would look like with your custom CSS! CSSEdit is available from MacRabbit, and costs $29.95.

TextMate for code editing, and specializing in Ruby on Rails development. TextMate provides a lot of features the average code editor doesn’t. TextMate is available from Macromates, and costs $59.

Coda for all-of-the-above. Coda provides a very nice integrated web development environment, with a code editor powered by the SubEtha engine which includes collaborative code editing. Coda is available from Panic, and costs $79.

MAMP for MySQL, PHP, and Apache on your local machine. This is perfect for testing out your next website locally! MAMP is free, and available at mamp.info.

SubEthaEdit for collaborative code editing. SubEthaEdit allows you to share your coding documents with others anywhere around the world! SubEthaEdit is available from the Coding Monkeys, and costs 29 Euros.

MarsEdit for posting to your weblog. MarsEdit is a stand-alone application that allows you to post to your weblog from its great interface. MarsEdit is available from Red Sweater Software and costs $29.95. (full review)

EDIT: Continue reading the post – this is a partial list.

Apple Event Wrap-Up

After each major event, MacRumors provides a wrapup of rumors to reveal the sources of the most accurate (or inaccurate) information.

On September 5th, Apple held a media event which introduced a number of new products and services. These included the iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano, iPod Classic, iPod Touch, WiFi iTunes, iTunes with Ringtone Support, Apple/Starbucks Partnership, 8GB iPhone Price Drop.

While watching the keynote, what was striking was how many of the rumors surrouding the event were true. Our Rumor Roundup touched on many of the announcements with reasonable accuracy.

Continue reading “Apple Event Wrap-Up” →

Review: New iMac’s and keyboards

Since I went to the Apple Store today, and spent over an hour using the new iMac’s and keyboards, I think it is time for a review! Lets start with the new iMac’s.

The latest iteration of the Apple iMac ($1,499 direct, $1,649 with 1GB of RAM) comfortably straddles the worlds of consumer and business. It’s the fourth generation of the popular system, if you count the first as the CRT G3 iMacs, the second as the “Luxo-style” iMac G4, and the third as the white plastic iMac G5 and Intel systems. Though the last white iMac was marketed as the “consumer Mac” (the Mac Pro was the “professional Mac”), the latest iMac doesn’t fall into the pigeonholes of “business” or “consumer.” Its aluminum and black appearance can work in the home, next to your iPhone, or in the office next to your Aeron chair. With its Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows compatibility, it is certainly the “computer for the rest of us,” making good on the promises put forth in the original “1984” Macintosh ads.

Continue reading “Review: New iMac’s and keyboards” →