macBlogger - Apple Mac Blog

Stuart from Modern Life is Rubbish has released a MacOS 6 inspired Wordpress Theme.

Now that’s old-old-school!

A live preview of the theme can be seen here.

Just a quick note to let our avid readers know that we have changed our anti-spam protection from Dr. Dave’s Spam Karma to Akismet.

A few readers contacted us with commenting issues which related directly to the installation of Dr. Dave.

Hopefully all should be a-okay now. If any notices any issues, such as their comments not being handled correctly, please let us know via our Contact Form.

Hey there MacHeads!

Before I launch into my post on the Leopard preview I guess I should say who I am and what I’m doing here. My name is Katie and I am officially Mac obsessed. I’ve been a Mac user for as long as I can remember and Cormac recently asked me to contribute here with a post or two. The whole blogging thing is relatively new to me so be patient please!

I thought that as a first post I would tell you all a little bit about the developer Leopard preview which I have been working on lately. Leopard, which is due for release in October, at a cost of approximately €150 has had a lot of coverage on various Mac sites so I thought it would be nice to cover some of the new features here. Unfortunately, due to the NDA (non-disclosure agreement) I can only give you my own thoughts on the features you have heard about and cannot really get into the finer details.

Probably the most talked about changes are the look and feel updates given to the Dock, Finder and a number of other native applications. Finder now uses Cover Flow which makes your Finder window look and feel like you are browsing your iTunes music library. In the same way you can browse your iTunes collection while viewing your artwork, Cover Flow displays a large preview of each file in your directory, while Quick Look will even playing previews of QuickTime movies. The 3D look and feel applied to the dock is carried over to the Finder preview window as well. From a user’s perspective browsing through files could not be any easier now. Finding that photo or movie is simply an arrow click (or two) away!

Another change to document browsing in Leopard is Stacks. You can create Stacks from anything you want to access quickly from one place: a handful of documents, a group of applications, or an entire folder, simply by dropping the folder onto the Dock. When you want to see the files in a Stack, all you have to do is click — Stacks spring open from the Dock in an elegant arc for a few items, or in an at-a-glance grid for more. I find this feature very convenient for folders I access on a regular basis, allowing for fast and efficient access to files in the directory.

One of the most useful features of Leopard for me so far would be Spaces. With Spaces you can create a virtual work area for each application/window and organise each Space the way you want it just by dragging in windows. The Spaces interface is very convenient and user friendly allowing rearranging of Spaces simply by drag-and-drop, toggling between Spaces using the arrow keys and activating an application with a simple Dock click will automagically bring you to the relevant Space for that application. You can create as many Spaces as you need and configure your Spaces by using the Exposé & Spaces pane in System Preferences. Arrange your Spaces according to your needs, then choose the function keys you want to control them. You can also assign applications to specific Spaces, so you will always know which Space your favourite application lives in! Linux users can breathe a sigh of relief at this progression!

My workflow in Leopard is much more efficient and certainly requires less Mighty Mouse clicks. Overall I find the environmental changes to the OS to be very welcome and beneficial from a user’s perspective. New functionality such as Time Machine makes backing up your system an incredibly quick and easy job. It keeps an up-to-date copy of everything on your Mac syncing it with an external drive, and even offering a wireless sync option for Airport Extreme Base station users.

The look and feel of many native applications have also changed in Leopard. Welcome updates to iChat, Mail, Preview, iCal and Safari all add to your daily Mac experience. Bootcamp will be automatically included as part of Leopard, making it even easier to configure a Windows partition on your Mac. With the announcements made at yesterday’s keynote about iWork and iLife ‘08 users can expect even more of their favourite applications to step up with new features ensuring the ultimate work and play environment. Roll on October for a faster, sleeker and more keyboard friendly operating system!!

I don’t think there is anyone left on this planet who is not involved in a social networks of sorts. They’re poping up everywhere, some you signup for, some you ignore.

Facebook is one of those social networks which has been flying under the radar for quite some time. MySpace and Bebo get a lot of media attention but for the most part they’re on the receiving end of bad press (spam, abuse and what have you..).

Facebook on the other hand is thriving in a postive manner. They’re receiving up to 50,000 new signups on a daily basis and last week I joined the Facebook heard. (profile link)

Facebook is a far more mature alternative to MySpace and Bebo.

I signuped with the intention of just chating with friends and exchanging photographs…the usual social networking items. But there a few additional features which grabbed my attention. One such feature is simply called ‘Groups’

macBlogger Facebook Group
The idea behind Facebook’s Groups feature is quite simple. Facebook users can join a group of like minded souls and chat within their discussion threads about topics relating to their group. The exchange of information, photographs, videos and general discussion is the order of the day.

We have setup a macBlogger group on Facebook which we hope will provide valuable information on all things Apple.

Facebook Widget
A tidy little widget called Facebook Watch has been released upon us which acts as a portal between your dashboard and your facebook account. The feature rich widget allows you to view the latest postings on your wall, check who has ‘poked’ you, take a look inside your inbox and it also allows you to check the latest activity of your friends.

Here are a few other Facebook widgets available to download on the Apple website.

Robbert and myself are currently providing the content on macBlogger but we are eager to get a community of bloggers involved with us. This is a great opportunity for you to get involved in what we hope will be a very successful site. If you would like to help out then please get in touch via this contact form.

Hi guys. It’s always awkward writing the first few posts but I have decided to open up and give a brief introduction about this blog and my own background.

I am a recent Windows to Apple immigrant. Up to approx two months ago I had never purchased any product named after a fruit. My previous PC was custom built and featured a dual boot between Windows XP and Ubuntu. I pieced that PC together approx four years ago, as a result I was in need of an upgrade.

Vista was just about to hit the market in a blaze of glory……the blaze was caused by it crash landing. It was receiving a frosty reception from all corners. It’s clear that if you want to run Vista, your PC needs to be very high end.

From looking at video casts of Vista in action, and from using it first hand at the Microsoft launch of Vista in Crooke Park, it became clear that MS obtained a lot of inspiration from Apple’s OS X operating system. I estimated that to setup a PC capable of running Vista efficiently would cost approx £1,200. Why spend that much on the imitator when you buy the originally amazing OS X?

Ultimately, it was MS’s inability to make a suitable Operating System, which drove me to Mac.

I have being using Windows most of my life. During college, at work and at home, I have endured them for too long. My college days are behind me but I’m going to be using Windows based systems in work, I can’t get past that. Using PCs became so boring to me. I wanted to try something new. I didn’t want to be stuck in front of XP both at work and at home. I wanted to differentiate between working in my office and working at home on my personal stuff.

I purchased a 20″ iMac from the Apple Store back in Feburay. Since then I also picked up a 5th generation 30gb iPod Video player and a MacBook. A wireless Mighty Mouse accompanies my MacBook and I also have an Incase laptop bag.

macBlogger is where I’m going to post about my experiences with running Apple products. I’m fairly new to Apple software and hardware so you can expect a lot of noivce-y posts but I wouldn’t rule out some techy posts in the near future as I become more familiar and adventurous with Apple systems.

If you would like to post about your own experiences with Apple, then please contact me. I would love for more people to become involved with macBlogger and for them to be able to share their pleasures. I spoke to Robbet Hamburg (MAC OSX)a few months ago about contributing to this blog and he was interested at the time. Hopefully he is still willing to provide some assistance.

As you have probably already noticed, I have a main blog available at Cormac Moylan dot com. There is a small Apple-Mac section on that blog, however this blog is now fully dedicated to my experiences with Apple Macs.

This site is hosted on Worpdress, it uses iTheme as its template and is hosted in Ireland by Blacknight Solutions.

I hope you enjoy macBlogger.
Cormac