Top-level category for all Apple, Mac, and OS X related topics.
After struggling for many months to solve an odd color fading issue with videos I encoded using H.264, I decided to get serious about solving the problem.
After much Googling, I found an answer and wrote it up for macworld.com, in case others are being afflicted by the same problem.
Much like my work with the Intel Core Duo mini, you can now read about the new Mac Pro (parts one, two, three) on macworld.com.
I spent the better part of a week poking around inside the machine, running benchmarks, playing with Rosetta and native apps, and testing games (both Rosetta and native). While not quite as in-depth as the piece on the mini, there's still a lot of content to be read.
While out on a recent business trip (OK, so it was the MacMania V Geek Cruise, but I was working!), I learned that Macworld had purchased a Mac Pro for my use. When it arrived, I was surprised to find how quickly I filled all four drive bays.
While flying to Tampa for the MacMania cruise, I had a chance to really put my new 80GB iPod to the test--I had purchased a couple of movies from the Music Store, and was anxious to see how well the iPod worked as an in-flight entertainment device.
So how'd it work? Well, I had a very non-standard experience, which I wrote up in this editorial at macworld.com, along with my general observations on using the iPod as a movie viewer.
Fellow Macworld Senior Editor Dan Frakes and I have just returned from a week on a Geek Cruise in the western Caribbean. We both wrote quite a lot, and took a bunch of pictures. So instead of linking to a huge collection of articles, I'll just link to the two relevant sections on Macworld's site, where you can find everything: the MacMania archives for October 2006 and November 2006.
Macworld's site has changed over the years, and there's no longer a section for each cruise. So here's everything from this trip that I was involved with:
Separately, I posted some of my scuba diving pictures from the trip here on robservatory.com.
I recently attended and spoke out MacCamp, the Portland Macintosh Users Group's semi-annual Mac fanatic getaway.
It's a unique experience in a unique atmosphere, as I wrote in this piece.
In this piece for Mac911, I explain and demonstrate on video the Safe Sleep feature in newer Apple portables.
I don't normally post links to interesting things on other sites as stories here, just because I figure there are about 210 other places out there that already do just that. But someone sent me a link today to an absolutely amazing video from Macworld New York in July of 1999.
Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller were demoing AirPort, and the way they did it simply must be seen to be believed. I would have lost a lot of money had someone bet me that someone did what they did in this clip--"no way, he's not going to do that!" But, as you'll see, he did.
I had no idea they were that wild and crazy "back in the day..."
Back in February, I wrote about the incredibly lengthy time estimate that Stuffit gave me for an expansion. Well, it happened again today, but with QuickTime:
I was thinking about including a 1920x1200 movie capture of Redline Racing in my Pick of the Week writeup, so I had captured a couple minutes of the high-res stuff--the raw movie file was 8.6GB in size, in fact! After it opened, I had trimmed it down and then wanted to convert the format. When the export dialog appeared, the above was the initial estimate. It should be noted that at "only" 1,491,308 days, this is about 84 times faster than the Stuffit expansion!
What I also found humorous was the "7 minutes" bit -- it's not enough that I wait over 1.4 million days, but don't forget about those extra seven minutes! And yes, the dialog cleared itself up (unlike the Stuffit dialog, which never changed), and the actual export took only five minutes or so. In the end, I chose not to use the movie, but the funny dialog was worth seeing.
While clearing out the applications that seemingly pile up on my drive on a continuous basis, I noticed something about their icons.