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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Humor, OS, Software, Odds and ends, Apple

Snow Leopard out in September, wallpaper available now

Snow Leopard is going to be uber cheap, so there's not really any reason to not pick it up -- if you make good, regular use of your Mac, odds are that you'll also make enough use of a copy to justify the value. But even if you're not taking the $30 plunge, Macenstein has the most important part of the OS upgrade covered: the wallpaper. Just like the OS itself, Snow Leopard's wallpaper is only an incremental update from the current version (Macenstein says it looks "faster," and we can see what he means), but just in case you want to at least make your old G5's look like they're all upgraded, just "Set as Desktop Background" and there you go.

Rumors that the wallpaper will actually make your computer faster (or give you back that 6GB of hard drive space that the actual upgrade will give you) are unfounded, and probably shouldn't be trusted. But then again, you never know.

Filed under: Hardware, Apple, Macbook Pro

But wait, there's more: MacBook Pro gets a small speed boost

In all of this morning's hubbub about the new Mac mini, Mac Pro, and iMac, Apple seems to have sneaked in a speed bump to the 15" MacBook Pro.

The top standard configuration of the 15" MacBook Pro now has a 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, slightly faster than the previous model which came standard with a 2.53 GHz processor. If you really want to max out your MacBook Pro, you can add a $300 configure-to-order option that plunks a 2.93 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo under the hood. That's 4.6% faster for those of you who are into the minutiae of processor speeds.

The price tag for the standard top-of-the-line configuration 15" MacBook Pro remains at US$2,499.

[via Macworld]

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Hardware, iPod Family, iTunes, Software Update

iPod Classic and Nano get updated to 1.0.2

iTunes has an update for the new iPod Classic and the new Nanos, and while the update doesn't have a description at all, MacRumors sez:
  • Improved CoverFlow
  • Quicker menus
  • And the much awaited video out fix, among a few other interface tweaks
Apparently there's a new option that will "Ask" users to output video when a compatible cable is connected. And some people say that the calendar and contacts will synch better as well, although I have the same reservations I have whenever I hear about unlisted feature updates -- if Apple did make it better, why didn't they want to tell us? Wouldn't they want us to know the iPod works better than ever?

At any rate, if you think it works better, then more power to you-- enjoy your updated iPod. As always, the update can be grabbed by connecting up your Classic or Nano to iTunes and hitting "Check for Updates."

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Filed under: OS, Rumors, Software Update

Is your Mac zippier since the 10.4.5 update?

Some noise around the blogosphere hints at the fact that even legacy Mac machines are faster since the 10.4.5 update this week. Users report a variety of speed boost including program loading, dock bouncing, and boot times. I haven't installed 10.4.5 (because I'm running some funky homebrew software that wouldn't be too happy with an upgrade at this point).

So is your machine faster since you've installed the update to 10.4.5?

[via Appleology]

Filed under: Multimedia, Software, Internet Tools

Flash Player 8 Faster on Mac

flash player betaFinally, Flash on Mac has sped up. Mike over at our sibling blog, FlashInsider, notes that the new version of Flash player "uses OpenGL in OSX (10.2 and above) to display content. Of course older Macs that dont support OpenGL rendering mode will not see a jump in performance, but Macromedia would love if you still tried out the new Flash Player on your Mac and told them if and how it kills it."

I need to check this out. Perhaps the days of Flash being slower on the Mac are gone and we're in a new age of Apple / Flash Internet wonderfulness.

Tip of the Day

Holding the Command key (aka the Apple key) and pressing Tab will cycle through your open applications. It's easier to Cmd-Tab if you are Copy (Cmd-C) and Pasting (Cmd-V) to and from various applications.


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