After a bunch of speculation the release date for Apple’s OS X Snow Leopard is confirmed – August 28th, this Friday. That had been the rumor going around and yet again it proved to be true.
There really isn’t much else to be said. If you have Leopard on your machine and you’re looking to upgrade, you can get your copy of Snow Leopard for $29. Even better, if you’ve bought a Mac anytime between now and last June, you can get your upgrade copy for just $9.95.
Because I bought my Macbook Pro in June I preordered my copy way back then, so I should have it on Friday. Expect a post about how the update goes.
I’ve got another application screencast for you this weekend. This time I talk about a handy little video-streaming program called Livestation. It lets you get news (and other TV channels from around the world) delivered right to your desktop. Thanks for watching, as always. =)
Here’s my video for the week, a review of an extremely useful application called Wallet. Sure, it might not be the flashiest app you’ve ever seen, but it provides some pretty handy functionality!
It’s Saturday so that means it’s video time. For this one I demoed CamTwist, an application that lets you do some on-screen effects for streaming/video capturing. Pretty cool stuff. If you have any recommendations of applications I should take a look at, let me know! Whether you’re paid or free it doesn’t matter – I just like getting my hands on cool Mac software. =)
So I finally did it. It’s finally done. That is to say it was done a few weeks ago when I ordered my new iMac. That’s right, I’ve made the switch to the Mac platform. I suppose that’s only half-true, I still use Windows on a daily basis, but it’s true that both my primary desktop and laptop computers are Macs. Of course both run Windows, but the hardware at least is all Apple. I kind of feel like a shill typing this to be honest.
With the massive swell of people getting in line to bash Microsoft lately I’ve always tried to be the one person showing off their strengths and attempting to quell some of the misnomers going around. I still think Vista is a solid upgrade to XP, and when I’m stuck in XP there are features from Vista that I miss. If you asked me to sit behind one of two modern computers, one running Windows XP and the other running Windows Vista, I’d gladly use the Vista machine. I also love the Live services, I use Office as my primary desktop application suite, and my primary gaming platform is my Xbox 360. So then, why the change?
I’m not going to beat around the bush and try to come up with some deep-rooted philosophical reason for why macs are superior to PCs. The truth, and I’m not afraid to say it, is that macs are prettier. The hardware is prettier, the software (including third party apps in general) is prettier. I’m a sucker for a slick interface I suppose, and for that reason coupled with a refreshingly simple computer purchasing experience, I went mac. As I’ve said before, when I get a new machine it generally means I’m ordering a ton of different parts and then spending a day putting them all together and troubleshooting. I have to be up on specs, component speeds, what the best CPU for the price is and so on. With my iMac the hardest decision I had was deciding between a wired or wireless keyboard (I went wireless).
Enough of that though, I’m sounding like a switcher commercial! I guess the point is that I’m still interested in all platforms despite the fact that an Apple product is sitting in front of me right now. I still use the Microsoft software I mentioned above including Windows, I’m just doing it from a mac. So far everything has gone pretty smoothly, the 24″ screen is beautiful and I couldn’t be happier. I also picked up an iPod Touch along with my mac so I’ve spent some time playing with that as well. If you’d like to see more about that you can watch my first video from the iMac’s iSight camera, a video that I took last night only a couple hours after it was delivered:
Like I said in the video please leave some comments with software recommendation for both the mac and the touch! I might start doing these videos a little more frequently too, so look out for that in the future. I’ll also do my best to refrain from posting about my mac too frequently.
