The iPad I recently acquired through my employer is fantastic! So far I’ve been able to eliminate most of my need to lug arround my laptop, which is nice because I can’t stand carrying a bag with me to and from work, just so I can have my laptop with me.
I know very well that currently a tablet can’t replace a laptop, but it does thetrick for most of my daily computer needs and more.
As I was out today, I ran into my first issue of not having an internet connection, no wi-fi, and I don’t have 4G. So, I turned on my iPhone and rummaged through the Settings menu to find the Personal Hotspot option, and I enabled it for the first time. I flipped on my iPad, enable Wi-Fi and there was my iPhone signal loud and clear!
I was skeptical at first, I imagined a snails pace at best, but to my surprise the connection seemed just as fast as that on my mobile! Impressive! So, shortly after I downloaded Speed Test mobile app, and the results were fair. just under 3.24 Mbps down and 1.19 Mbps up.
All in all, this simple workaround saves me $30 a month, so I just can’t complain.
To access your Personal Hotspot;
1. Open Settings>Personal Hotspot on select “On“
2. Take note of the Password provided
3. Enable Wi-Fi on the device in need of a connection
4. Search for your iPhones network and select it
5. Enter password, and your good to go!
Note: Using Personal Hotspot uses data from the device supplying a connection, so if you have a small data plan (500mb/mo) keep an eye on your usage!
I have well over 100 apps on my iOS devices, but I only use a few of them on a daily basis. Of those few, only a fraction are used out of want rather than need, and one of those apps I use because I want to is Zite.
I first stumbled upon Zite when I was introduced to RSS feeds, and a thing called FlipBoard which Zite is listed as a competitor of. I thought I’d give them both a try, and they both work well for there respective duties, but I find Zite to much more user friendly than FlipBoard (on my iPhone that is).
Zite coins itself a “Personalized Magazine” and thats essentially what it is. If you’re like me, and you set aside a portion of your day to catch up on news and articles, then you shouldn’t be without this app for another second! Zite allows users to select a number of general topics of which you’d like to read about. It then generates news feeds for each one based on your “likes and dislikes”, which you select after viewing or reading each article, so the more you use Zite the more personalized it becomes. Each topic has its own section which you can swipe through easily, and the titles and headings for each article are big and bold and easy to read to decide if you’d like to dive deeper in and read more. Once inside the article, you can read it inside the ZiteUI, or launch it in Safari for a different experience when in reality it makes no difference. When you’re done reading just “swipe” back and you’re back to the list of recent articles for that category.
But Zite doesn’t stop there. If you’re a big fan of whatever categories you’ve set the app up with, theres a good chance you’re not going to be able to read every article you’d like to, and this is where my favorite part of Zite comes in — the sharing feature! Not only can you share your find on Facebook or Tweet it, but if you blog like I do, you can link your Evernote account and send the article to EN for review and further research, or send it to your Pocket account and list it as a “Read Later” article so you don’t lose it in the mix. Zite also connects with Google Reader, Google Plus, Instapaper and more so it can cater to just about anyone.
In the short time I’ve been using Zite it has become my go to app when I’m bored and want to read or just kill some time. The more I use it and weigh in on articles the more articles I like keep popping up, so I’m never sifting through articles trying to find something I like. Its UI is so simple even the least tech saavy users can easily find their way around it and find hours of enjoyment whenever they like. So, if you’re tired of frantically trying to catch up on the latest Hollywood gossip, tech news, photography tips or health and exercise advice then look no further than Zite: The Personalized Magazine, and oh ya, it’s FREE!
If you have a website, and are using a free FTP client like Filezilla, this might be a perfect time to upgrade to Binary Nights’ FTP software Forklift.
The app is available in the App Store for a limited time for just .99 cents–that’s $29 off that’s right, you save almost $30!!
The UI is very Finer-esque and the app itself is easy to use and has some incredibly useful and time saving features.
The more I blog, the more screenshots I need to take, and I remember the days when I didn’t even know how to capture the contents of my screen to share with you.
One of the beautiful things about Mac’s is how simple it is to capture the contents of what’s on your screen, and to capture them how you want to do so!
Here are the instructions for how to take a screenshot;
⌘-Shift-3 Takes a shot of the entire screen, and saves it on your desktop ⌘-Shift-4 Allows you to select a rectangular area of the screen to capture, and saves it to your desktop
Now, here’s something I just discovered and it’s and even better option, if you intend on using your screenshot immediately. Hold the Command key down with the rest of them, and instead of saving the shot to your desktop, it will immediately copy it to your clipboard for instant use!
Command-⌘-Shift-3 Copies the contents of the entire screen to your clipboard Command-⌘-Shift-4 Copies the contents of your selection to your clipboard
If for some reason you aren’t happy with these key combinations, feel free to view and adjust them here System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts.
There are also some great free services such as Skitch with more advanced features such as adding captions, or blurring out certain areas of your capture, but for me Apples alternative works just fine.
When exactly will Apple take over the world? It’s no longer a question of “will they” it’s more “when will they”?
Android is soon to lose its grip on the small market share they have, due to lack of a proper plan to compete with the bohemeth that is Apple, and when that happens the world is theirs for the taking–literally.
Author Matt Burns at Tech Crunch explains the unique situation Apple is currently in with comparisons to Microsoft in the 90’s and a look at how and when they will complete their infiltration into China.
Starting today, for a limited time the App Store is offering Slow Shutter Cam for FREE!
This is a great camera app that allows users to control the shutter speed allowing them to create some great looking, unique and professional photos.
Hurry! This is a limited time offer!
So you’re like me, and you just love your unibody Macbook Pro. The design still turns heads, the size is just right and you can’t get enough of the great apps and software available for it. The only problem is, over time your baby has become sluggish and unresponsive, and your iTunes library has your stock hard drive bursting at the seams.
Not to worry, all hope isn’t lost, it just took me $300 and a couple hours of scouring the web, to take my 13″ MacBook Pro through time into 2012.
Current Setup
2009 13″ MacBook Pro 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB 1066MHz DDR3RAM
160GB5400RPMSATAHDD
The Good: Since it’s release in ’09, besides releasing the MacBook Air which is a slimmer “SSD standard” laptop, Apple hasn’t changed the design of the MacBook lineup, so the design is still current. My 13″ is the perfect size for me, it’s light, portable and the battery life is impressive still after 3 years!
The Bad: Speed. I’m a bit of a self proclaimed app hoarder, and with over 100 applications including Adobe CS5, Lightroom 3, Aperture (all RAM hogs) I see the colour wheel so much i feel like I’m trippin on acid! 4 gigs of ram is nothing to sneeze at, but with the price of memory so low, and with the capability to upgrade to 8GB it’s a no brainer. Finally, 160GB stock hard drive!? It probably had cobwebs coming out of the factory!
Upgrades
128GBSATAIISSD ($120) — To replace the currrent 160GB hard drive
Dual Drive Enclosure ($20) — To house the second hard drive in the optical bay location
2x4GB 1066 DDR3RAM ($45) — Upgrade from 2x2GB sticks
I had a hard time deciding how I wanted to go about the upgrade. Every Joe and his brother has “the best” method of swapping hard drives and upgrading to an SSD. Spend an hour searching the web, and you’ll be on the verge of throwing in the towel because you can’t decide which route to go. But there are a couple of simple two or 3 step methods that I liked, and I’ll share the one I chose with you here.
This was a good read, it gave me an overview of what I wanted to do.
Here is a good video to help you swap the RAM, if you decided to do this upgrade at the same time.
Swapping Hard Drives and Optical Bay Components
The ultimate goal here is to utilize the SSD’s impressive speed but limited size by having it run the OS, system files and applications–that’s it. My user directory and all my media and other files will be stored on the new, upgraded SATA drive which will sit where the optical drive currently resides.
The overall procedure goes like this; Format the drives and install a clean version of Lion onto the SSD. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to copy my /user directory to the 750GBSATA drive, and install it where the optical drive currently resides. Back up the current Lion setup using Time machine and omit the /user directory (it’s already on the second drive). Install the SSD where the current hard drive resides, and restore the version of Lion that was just backed up using the Migration Assistant in the Utilities folder. Finally, point Lion to the second drive, so it knows where the user directory now lives, and how to access it. That’s it! All done!
1. Format both hard drives. I bought a USB hard drive enclosure for $20 so I could complete this step. Simply connect the hard drive, open Disk Utility, and partition the drive with 1 partition, and select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the format. This shouldn’t take long, and repeat this process with both hard drives.
2. Install OS X Lion onto SSD. This step is simple, with the SSD connected via USB I just inserted my Lion disc, and chose to install Lion onto my new SSD. Make sure to choose the proper drive!
3. Time to back up your current OS using Time Machine. Open preferences, and deselect your user directory. The total backup size shouldn’t be more than 50GB or so. Once the backup is done, turn Time Machine off.
4. Now with the new SATA drive connected in the USB enclosure, run Carbon Copy Cloner and copy the user directory to the new drive. Depending on the size this shouldn’t take longer then an hour or so. I only had 100GB and it took an hour.
Recap: Now, the MBP is still in the same condition as when I started yet my 2 new hard drives have both been formatted, and my SSD has a clean install of Lion on it, and my SATA drive (750GB) now has my user directory on it and is ready to become home to all my files from here on out. Time to get to swapping hard drives!
5. First I took the backing off my MBP and swapped out the RAM. Next, I did a simple swap of hard drives, putting the SSD where the current drive was. Finally, using the video found here I exchanged the optical drive for my dual disk housing and storage drive. I then put the back on, flipped her over and powered her on.
6. Upon powering up, the SSD is now running a brand new version of Lion, so I went through the setup procedure, and created myself a new user (which I will redirect the system to the /user folder located on my second drive in the optical bay).
7. Now it’s time to run the Time Machine restore using Migration Assistant found in the /Applications/Utilities folder. This will restore Lion to the way it was before the drive swap. Only one more step!
8. Finally, I went into System Preferences and in the Users tab, it was time to redirect Lion to my user directory ‚which is now stored on my second drive. By default now, when I log into Lion using the new user I created, all the preferences from the previous hard drive will load, along with all of the files.
Voila! I now have a super fast MacBook Pro which will give the newest of MacBook Airs a run for its money! And all for just $300 and a couple of hours time!
Just to recap. I replaced the original hard drive with 2 new drives; a 128GBSSD to run OS X and house all my applications, so everything runs super fast, and a second SATA drive (which replaced my optical drive) cming in at 750GB and 7200RPM to keep all of my music, photos, movies and documents with room to spare. I also doubled the RAM from 4GB to 8GB, so I can run as many applications as I want with no lag.
I’ve been running the new setup for 2 weeks now, and is it ever fast! Boot time went from about a minute from login, to under 20 seconds. Apps open without any bouncing icon. But the biggest improvement is found when I run apps like Aperture, which used to slow my system to a crawl, and crash it all the time, but now I can import, organize and edit photos all in real time with no color wheel, or lag at all! I even have iTunes and other apps running in the background while using Aperture of Photoshop with no worries.
If you own an older MBP, and are debating an upgrade, save your money and go the dual drive route. And if you’re worried about not having an optical drive, for $20 you can get a USB enclosure for the one you remove, and problem soved!
Weblog Mac OS X Hints reminds us that when your computer’s running slower than it should, sometimes complicated maintenance isn’t the answer—a clean desktop could do just as much as anything.
This supposedly isn’t a problem on Windows computers, just Macs. Because of the way OS X’s graphical system works, the icons on your desktop take up a lot more of your resources than you may realize:
A family member owns a Mac, and he was complaining it was getting slow — especially the Desktop. He had a lot of files on the Desktop, but none of them were visible on the Desktop itself, but only in a Finder window displaying the contents of the Desktop. The Desktop only showed two icons: the main hard disk, and a Time Machine hard disk. The Desktop itself was very slow, and often displayed a beachball.
However, when I looked in the Desktop folder, there were more than 2,700 image files. When I removed the image files from the Desktop folder, everything went back to normal.
Obviously, this isn’t a problem for most of you, since you’ve created a clean, organized desktop for yourselves (right? right?), but your less tech-savvy friends and relatives might be guilty of this (I’m talking to you, Mom). Next time you’re going through the inevitable family troubleshooting, make sure their desktop doesn’t look like the picture above, and maybe even set them up with Hazel to prevent it in the future. You might be surprised at how much it can improve things.
Towards the latter half we took at the incredible Apple iCam from designer Antonio DeRosa, and it looks like the talented designer has come with another incredible concept in the iWatch 2.
A successor to the original iWatch Concept, the details of this watch are simply stunning all the way down to the packaging which includes the classic “slide to open” feature that is synonymous with Apple products. Don’t think because this thing is aesthetically stunning that Antonio Derosa slacked on the technology features. The watch is equipped with WiFi, Bluetooth, face camera, and even and LCD projector. Check out the snapshots below.
