Archive for April, 2010

The Mac – This Stereo Jack that is so much more!

Friday, April 30th, 2010

For the longest time, I have wondered about why such a good ‘poota’ only has a phones jack.

One day, I decided that I needed to connect my Da’s Mac Mini to his flashy new television. Having converted the DVI out to HDMI (using an inexpensive connecter… you can get an expensive one that has gold and diamonds encrusted on it but I couldn’t afford one), I realised that the DVI/HDMI would have no audio on it… So, I had to use an analogue stereo sound cable, which I really didn’t want to do. After all… what I really wanted was to play DVDs with 5.1 Dolby or DTS 7.1 or 9.1 or 11.1 or 67.513.1 or whatever it has… (some of those I made up). A stereo cable would not do justice…

Also, the TV had one of those ports that have an optical in for sound. After a lot of research, I found out that even the humble Mac Mini has an audio port that is not only analogue, is also an optical out, and can also pour hot steaming expresso from it as well (make sure you put the cup under the port before you start piping out hot coffee).

So, in theory, you can connect your mac (mac mini in my case) to an amplifier, while connecting the video to your tele, and create a mini multimedia hub for yourself!

PRETTY NEAT-O!

Additional: Apparently, all Macs (new Macbook Pros for sure) now output sound if you connect an hdmi to mini display port cable to it. But not all cables adhere to the correct standards, so choose your cable carefully.

Neat-o-roony!

Posted in Apple - Can you feel the love?, Smoothing the road from PC to Mac | No Comments »

Why exactly would I want to get an iPad? Oh… that’s why…

Friday, April 30th, 2010

So Apple have launched the iPad and well…

I was thinking Whoop-Dee-Doo! (I am not sure that sarcasm is translated well through this medium, so if you were not aware… I was being sarcastic. Thank you for your attention.)

It seemed to me that this “iPad” was just a really big iPod Touch. Why would I EVER get one? To read the paper? To read a boring old book? To use iPhone/iTouch  applications… well sure… but why would I get excited about this… thing? Granted, it is a very nice looking piece of hardware that uses an equally well designed piece of software… Granted, I can connect to the free Internet wherever there is a McDonalds… AND again, granted, it has a Mobile broadband version.

I also heard from somewhere that it will be the saviour of book publishing… PFFFT! How exactly could boring old printed text save book publishing?  I mean how boring would a bunch of PDFs available on some crusty old iTunes Store shelf help the poor graphic designer (such as myself), SERIOUSLY!

WHY would I get one?

Here is why…

And yes Vincent, if you are reading this… I now desperately want one…

Posted in Design, Entertainment | No Comments »

How do I Print Screen on my shiny new Mac?

Friday, April 30th, 2010

When you want to do a print screen on a PC, it is just a matter of hitting the ‘print screen’ key and then pasting that image into something as simple as Paint… then cropping it down and converting it to a jpg…

Oh, but with a Mac… Since that is too boring, Apple decided to create some incredible print screen features. The first time you try these, you will notice the special “claw” you have to make with your left hand… and although I cannot memorise them, I do love these tools…

When you check out this page on the Apple website, please read the title. Okay, okay… I will just repeat it here… “The SECRET screen capture shortcut“.

Command-Shift-3: Captures the whole screen and dumps the file on your desktop

Command-Shift-4: Gives you a cross-hair for you to drag a window to capture and dumps the file on your desktop (pretty neat-o)

Control-Command-Shift-3: Captures the whole screen and puts it on your clipboard

Control-Command-Shift-4: Gives you a cross-hair for you to drag a window to capture and puts it on your clipboard

Posted in Smoothing the road from PC to Mac | No Comments »

Killing the BONG start up sound on a Mac

Friday, April 30th, 2010

I used to be a PC die hard… I only bought a mac for testing in the early ‘naughties’ and I got hooked. While converting from a PC to a Mac sounds easy (and in general terms, it is), there are a whole bunch of things that can annoy a PC user that has just converted. This post is the first in what will be a series of posts that will attempt to list out things for a ‘switcher’ to help ease their passing through to the ‘other side’.

The start up sound is a standard irritation among the Mac user population. This preference pane will add a preference pane (…) to your system preferences and help you get rid of the “BONG” no matter what volume your Mac has. Ahhh… the silent start up is much better! All my Intel based Macs are using it with no problems, but the maker does warn you to back up your data… so if you don’t have TIME MACHINE configured, I suggest you do (if you are worried). I have noticed, however that if you are restarting, the BONG! returns… but just for the restart…

While I have installed this on 4 Macs without any problems, if you do have problems, please post replies so others can be aware of them.

Posted in Smoothing the road from PC to Mac | No Comments »