techiehenry

I’ve first learned about this from the Philippine Mac Users Group (PhilMUG). It’s a multimedia design conference to be held on August of this year. See the official banner below for details:

Now I have something even more fun to brag about with my MacBook.

Apparently MacBooks (and Pros as well) have motion-sensing capabilities built-in. Some wise fellow by the name of isnoop did a really cool hack that uses this to make the MacBook sound like a Jedi light saber!

Curiosity did me in as I downloaded this program. Lo and behold, when I swing my MacBook around, a familiar buzzing, slashing sound can be heard. You can also ‘retract’ the light saber by pushing a button.

Now, to find another Jedi and challenge him to a duel…

(WARNING: Make sure you get a good grip while swinging your MacBook around, or it might end up flying across the room. :))

It doesn’t have 3G. It has a farily ordinary 2 Megapixel camera. It doesn’t have Java support. It doesn’t have removable memory card support.

But it has a very attractive touch screen interface. It’s got a pretty display. It has a hard drive built-in. The overall package looks elegant. It supports external applications through Safari. It supports iTunes.

Oh, so much love and hate has been generated by this product ever since it was introduced early this year at MacWorld. Yet the final verdict as to whether this product is a success or a bust will be known a few days from now — June 29, 6pm.

This is the seventh part in a mini-series here in this blog.

Now that everything has been checked with regards to how each unit would work with each other, it would be time to test the application as the client would see it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yep, that’s the name. Corny it may seem to name a machine like a child, but my family likes it.

Now, how does a Linux geek turn to a Mac when buying n new machine? Actually, the decision (a family decision at that) was quite easy:

• We want a system that we know would last for about 5 years
• We want a laptop — not a desktop, so we can carry it around
• We want something that not only looks catchy, but also performs well
• We want something not everyone around is using
• We want something that can run several platforms
• We want something that has a good price to performance ratio

We got it for Php79,990 from Accent Micro. That includes a free 2nd Generation iPod Shuffle, which went to my wife. I can’t seem to justify the Php10,000 difference between the black MacBook and the white model, so we went for the white 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo model with 1Gb RAM and 120Gb hard drive.

What I did after buying the MacBook was to buy a laptop bag from CD-R King (Php680), Speedballs (Php950) from Digital Walker, Spark clear case (Php2700), an Apple sleeve (Php1200), and a keyboard skin (Php1200) from Power Mac Center. We have to protect our investment.

So far, things have been pretty well since we brought MacMac home. Now I have to learn how to use BootCamp to load Linux on a separate partition of the hard drive.