Mac versus PC: the blog

Superb!

2009-04-16T14:01:00.000-07:00

...So hilarious!

How to reach 8 hours of battery life on the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros

2009-02-09T02:24:00.000-08:00

Let's admit it: when people realize that the new 17-inch MacBook Pro is able to reach 8 hours of battery life, even the very last 13-inch and 15-inch MacBooks seem a little bit inferior.

But I'm here today to prove that, indeed, 8 hours of battery life can also be reached on the "smaller" MacBooks.

Sure, there are some limitations but, if you're away from a power plug, this article wants to help you optimizing battery life.

You might already know that wireless connectivity and screen brightness are some of the major factors that limit battery life, but what else can you do to reach 8 hours of battery life?
Here is the list of small steps I've performed to reach the goal:

Turn Airport and Bluetooth off
Keep display brightness and keyboard backlight at a minimum (...but don't strain your eyes!)
Turn off your display whenever you're not going to use it for a few minutes: how to do that quickly? Go to Apple menu > System Preferences > Exposè & Spaces > Exposè and enable a "Sleep display" active screen corner
Keep your Mac updated: the newest version of the software might help!
Keep processes under control: if necessary search for "Activity Monitor" and find out who is using your CPU
- avoid typical CPU-intensive tasks like iMovie, GarageBand, Final Cut, Photoshop, etc...
- avoid virtualization software like VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop; in case you need to use Windows application consider one of the following:
  - use Crossover, which is certainly lighter (not every application works though)
  - [thanks Leto_Parallels!] under Parallels you can reduce power consumption:
    - go to the "Optimization" under "Virtual Machine Configuration" and choose to prefer battery life over performance
    - enable the "Adaptive Hypervisor", which will help keep either OS you're running at a minimal resource consumption when not being focused on by the user.
- if you need to keep an application open but you won't use it in the following minutes, think about suspending it.
  - "App Stop" lets you temporarily freeze any application and reset to zero usage of the CPU by that program with very few clicks.
  - For those of you, Terminal geeks: killall -STOP Mail to freeze the application and killall -CONT Mail to resume it
- Quit Finder easily after enabling the "Quit Finder" menu option:
  - use TinkerTool if you want to do that through the GUI
  - for those of you, Terminal geeks: defaults write com.apple.finder QuitMenuItem -bool YES; killall Finder
- If you need to browse... disable Flash. In Firefox it's really easy: go to Tools > Add-ons > Plugins > Shockwave Flash > Disable
- Kill the process or, if unsure about what that might cause, logout or restart to reset runaway programs
- If you use Quicksilver, set "Catalog rescan" to "Manual". If Quicksilver seems to be eating up all of your CPU, try this; if that doesn't help temporarily quit Quicksilver.
- Don't perform hard disk-intensive tasks:
  - don't put your MacBook to sleep if you're going to use it again soon, this sucks a lot of energy! Every time you do that your Mac is also hibernated: this means that the content of the temporary memory (RAM) is dumped to the hard disk... if you have 4GB of memory this might cause up to 4GB of data to be written on the hard disk!
  - avoid, once again, applications like iMovie and Final Cut
- Avoid the Dashboard
  - If you don't use it, disable it:
    - Use a graphical tool such as TinkerTool
    - Or use the command line: defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES; killall Dock
  - If you want to quit it temporarily
    - Use this very handy widget
    - Quit the Dock from the command line: killall Dock
Minimize usage of the CD/DVD drive
Mute your speakers

Naturally these advices apply to any portable Mac out there.
Hope this article has dramatically improved the battery life of your Mac!
Cheers.

[Update: added some information about Parallels power consumption]

Mount ISO images under Mac OS X (Snow Leopard, Leopard, Tiger, etc...)

2009-01-21T04:56:00.000-08:00

After reading this article I've discovered that mounting ISO images under the brand new Windows 7 can seriously be a pain in the @$$!
As reported on the small how-to, mounting a ISO image under Windows 7 it's a travel from bad written third-party applications to Windows crashes.

Let's compare this to what happens under Mac OS X: how can you mount ISO images on a Mac?
Well... you double-click it. Done. That's it.
No third-party applications nor crashes: I guess we now have another proof of what the Mac user experience is like!

Cheers,
Mac.

Mac fans are actually loving Windows 7

2009-01-18T09:27:00.001-08:00

When my friend tcid posted his Windows 7 review I had the evidence something was changing. He is no more bashing Windows just because is a Microsoft product. I think that the little improvement in Apple market share is making him more reasonable. After all he was not doing ethical fud. He was doing reality distortion fud and the increase of the Macs in the world should have lowered the power of controlling minds that Cupertino seems to had in the past over him.

Reading news on the web seems that not only Tcid changed his mind about Windows. And the change was not a turn form hate to indifference, but form hate to love. Sounds strange, doesn’t it?

I don’t know what happened, maybe the new Windows taskbar is recalling OSX dock showing also huge improvements, for example the ability to have a look at browser tabs and not only at windows, that is going to be the real killer feature of Windows 7.

I don’t know if Windows XP users would appreciate there features. They share (Although for different reasons) the idea of operating system with the European Union and I can’t say if it more insulting for XP users to be compared with Europeans Union members (The politics, not the people) or the opposite.

To sum up the situation below I will share some statistics collected among my friends.

Who, like me, has Windows Vista installed skipped the beta of Windows 7, they are going on with Vista (It should work well, after all). We are not actually thinking that Windows Vista is better than Windows 7 but we are lazy and we are not thinking that the super-bar and the performance improvement are good reason to dismantle a perfectly working system to make room for a beta that has an expire date. I am sorry, but I am not used to reinstall the operating system often. Just to be clear I will surely adopt Windows 7 form day one, till the release of Windows 8.

Who has a Mac not only downloaded the beta to reduce the bandwidth of Microsoft’s server in the first day of the release, but actually were the first person who fired up their Windows XP bootcamp. And they were all positively impressed. They are still using OSX as their primary operating system, but I think that is due more to the lack of support that Apple is giving to software not made in Cupertino than to other reasons.

Who owns a netbook skipped Windows Vista but gave a chance to the Windows 7 beta and is using it in everyday. They tested a lot of operating systems, to find what is fitting best with their hardware and the response is a clear victory of Windows 7. Netbooks that originally shipped with Linux have no more evidence of their past with Xandros or Ubuntu. Who owns a netbook is also a Windows 7 tester.

I’m sorry I can’t tell you more details about what Windows XP and Linux users are thinking, but they can’t be friend of mine. (The last sentence was ironic, if you know what it means).

Here comes another MacBook Air clone

2009-01-15T09:00:00.000-08:00

Do people like the MacBook Air?
Looking at the clones coming out every day, it seems so!

Look at these pictures and be amazed!

The real MacBook Air:

MSI clone (already described here):

Olidata clone:
Enjoy the clones!

Cheers,
Mac

Microsoft wins both at CES and at MacWorld

2009-01-12T15:20:00.001-08:00

We all know that the Windows 7 beta build leaked just some day before the new year’s eve and some weeks before both the MacWorld and the CES, the two most important technology conference in the first months of each year.

That leakage broke the plans at Cupertino, that decided to keep their new kitten, Snow Leopard, away form the brand new Microsoft operating system that is going to be the real sold out in technology for 2009, as proven by the very high request to the servers since day one.

Add to this the health status of Steve Jobs that is leaving Apple without a full-time leader, and a fist-order keynote-man and you will have as result one of the worst MacWorld ever for Apple users. This edition was so bad that one of the coolest product was an HP Windows Home Server. Not actually a good sign for a company that is still selling the Mac Mini, a piece of hardware that is more suitable to a museum than on the shelf of a modern store.

On the other side, as usual Microsoft kicked off the CES with its CEO speech and a bunch of technical demos. Also this keynote was not as good as the one of the past, maybe for the absence of Bill Gates. Ballmer is great when has to speak to developers, a little less when has to speak to consumers. However he should have been convincing when he announced the public release of the beta of Windows 7. Maybe he is not the best speaker, but surely he is good in creating hype.

In conclusion we have a Microsoft product listed as cool in one of the Mac-conferences and the new Redmond operating system is definitely the most desired technological product of 2009.

Apple needs to find something better than an high capacity battery, pretty useless in a 17’’ laptop that is going to be moved only from a desk (with power supply available) to another desk (with power supply available).

And not forget the trial of Palm to take back the position he had in the past in mobile devices. The iPhone should be advised: in the 2009 it won’t be the Jesus-Phone anymore.

First Windows 7 crashes

2009-01-10T07:20:00.000-08:00

As you've probably learned from my last article, I've just installed the latest Windows 7 beta; it sometimes freezes and neither CTRL+ALT+CANC works.
Here is the video of what happens.

Cheers,
Mac

A Mac user's review of Windows 7

2009-01-10T07:04:00.001-08:00

I've recently bought a MacBook Unibody and, after years of Mac-Mac-Mac, I'm seriously experimenting the "Windows experience" (courtesy of the Intel processor!).

I've installed Windows Vista under BootCamp (as I will explain in one of the next articles) and I couldn't resist testing the new beta of Windows 7 that got out last night; so I downloaded it legally from Microsoft's website and I installed it under VMware Fusion.

The installation steps are identical to Windows Vista and in (more or less) half an hour everything was ready.
So... what's my first opinion about this new version of Windows?

Thumb up
There are many things that I appreciate in Windows 7.
The boot process and the overall reactivity of the operating system have improved a lot on Windows Vista; it still isn't as fast as XP (and, probably, it will never be!) but speed seems acceptable now.
Finally, Microsoft is spending some energy on improving the user interface: while many say that Vista almost caught up with Mac OS X, I sincerely found it a mass of random transparency here and there.
Windows 7 improves usability at least on Gadgets (finally they are disabled by default!) and the new task bar: one of the problem I have with Vista is that it's nearly impossible to work with more than four windows open at once; Windows 7 introduces a new way to handle open windows that is nearly identical to Mac OS X's.
The task bar has now icons of preferred applications (the old Quick Launch with bigger icons) and more icons appear when non-preferred applications run: all the windows from a certain application get grouped under the same icon... yes, just like Mac OS X's Dock!
Microsoft has also slightly changed one of the most hated feature of Vista: UAC, User Access Control. While this feature is absolutely necessary to keep Windows secure, most users (like me!) found it tremendously annoying: Windows 7 reduces the amount of pop-up that ask "Bla bla bla ...Cancel or Allow?"... thank you!

Thumb down
Even if over the past few years Windows has improved its user experience and its security features, I still can't get used to it: Mac OS X still offers a much more complete environment for any kind of user.
Let's take a small thing in Internet Explorer: when a user opens it for the first time the main window is covered by overlapping useless pop-ups... clearly no one at Microsoft ever tested this!
Let's now consider Mac OS X's Dock:

it's intuitive: everything is drag-and-droppable and it's rarely needed to use right clicks
it offers much more features: the task bar doesn't let you drop folders as well as applications (even though folders can be added to the contextual menu show when right clicking on the Windows Explorer icon)
it's clearer in showing which applications are running (see picture below)
it instantly shows the name associated to the icon over which the mouse is

One more thing about the user interface: where is Exposè? Microsoft can be shameless in copying other companies' products; then why isn't it copying Exposè? It's THE way to move between open windows!
Moreover I still don't like Microsoft's approach to security: from the very first screen I had to deal with the no-antivirus warning and Windows Defender scans; Microsoft is moving on the user all the "security burden": on one hand this means that Windows is much more secure but, on the other, Windows can become a pain to use everyday.

Conclusions
Microsoft is feeeling that something is changing in the market: Windows is still the leader but Macs are countinously gaining new customers; the only way to make customers buy PCs is to improve Windows (and this is definitely the case).
But in my opinion Apple still provides the best user experience out there thanks to simple yet powerful software.
Keep in mind that this is only a beta and it seems a bit immature since it has already crashed once (as you can see in this screencast I've just taken).

PS: something a little bit more technical... defragmentation is still scheduled once a week! Amazing!
PPS: there's no PDF viewer (another thing I love in the Mac... bundled apps) but there's an XPS viewer.
PPPS: I've added the link to the video that shows the freezes

Mac says: Welcome!

2009-01-10T03:50:00.000-08:00

Welcome to this new fantastic blog.

It doesn't matter whether you're a Mac or you're a PC: we want you and your opinion on this blog!
And hopefully I will convince more and more people to switch to the Mac :-)

Enjoy our articles and, in case you didn't notice... I'm a Mac.

Welcome

2009-01-10T03:34:00.001-08:00

Welcome to all the PC users in the web. I hope you managed to get a copy of Windows 7 even if Mac user like tcid decided to do a DDOS attack to Microsoft servers asking for the beta ISO while Windows users should have requested their keys.

Welcome to the Mac users i know that thinking differently is and hard thing and that you are also hating the reality distortion field that is keeping your mind. I am here to help you to get rid of that.

Welcome also to who is not a Mac nor a Pc. I don’t know how did you get there, however I hope you enjoy our blog and come back soon. We always need a referee for the battle!

One more thing for this first post on this blog. As you may have noticed I am a PC.