AA Design

Erling of the Medallia Blog has invented an ingenious use for the motion sensor built into recent notebooks. He’s using it to control a virtual desktop program! Be sure to check the (short) video. Very slick.

Watch video

This is a few weeks old, but since I just came across it it’s good enough to be news *wink*. The Macromates blog has a screencast that shows various ways to customize TextMate. It gives a good basic understanding for what TextMate is capable of, and should put a light bulb over anyone’s head at least a few times.

Ok this is sad, clever, but sad. Someone has a built an application for OS X that uses the Sudden Motion Sensor in Apples Laptops to simulate the sounds of a Light Saber. Download it here: MacSaber.

The funniest part is that someone has now created a video demonstrating it:

MacSaber in Action

Enjoy the facial expressions.

My local apple reseller has the new MacBook in stock, and I managed to spend a couple of minutes with a white one (they didn’t have the black model on display).

The first thing I noticed is just how big the 13.3″ screen really is. While it’s the same height as my 12″ G4 iBook, the extra width makes a huge difference, and it feels like at least an extra 2 or 3 inches. The glossy screen is gorgeous, especially with dark colors (much nicer than any of the glossy PC notebooks I’ve seen), and it’s really really fast (Safari opens in a quarter of a second!!). I expected to be disappointed by the video performance, but checking the framerate of the iTunes visualizer, I have to say it’s more than adequate for most people, even a light gamer such as myself. In fact in some ways I even like the slower video performance for the reduced price, reduced heat, and increased battery life.

My only gripe is that, like the latest iPods, the MacBook has some sharp edges and is a little uncomfortable on your arms while typing, but it’s not too bad and I’m being really picky to even mention it.

And last of all, the keyboard is by far the best thing my fingers have ever touched, and on it’s own is good enough to completely remove any other mac from my wish list. To sum it all up, it’s not a new iBook, it’s a new PowerBook with less features and a lower price tag.

I give the MacBook 5 out of 5 stars, and I put it up there with the Intel iMac as one of the best two computers of all time.

A great company for cheap .com.au domain names that I thought I’d share:

Swish Connect

Currently $39 for 2 yrs.

Ok this would have to be my first post in a blog…I’m not a bloggy kinda guy…but still I’ll give it a go. Who knows I might actually start to like it and actually write something useful.

Seeing as I’m an Apple Mac fan and do tech support & training, maybe you (the readers) could ask me questions. Plain old boring stuff like…

How do I write an email?

…will be ignored. But maybe something that requires a few extra brain cells like…

I wanna setup a Mac that is a webserver, music server and can backup all my important files on my other Mac automatically. How do I do it?

…would be good and then I could write a new blog entry with an in-depth answer that might actually be useful to more than one person.

What da ya think?