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Widgets: iStat Pro - Information at Your Fingertips

Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 | Free Stuff, Mac OS X, Software | No Comments

If you’ve used a Mac for any length of time, you definitely know about widgets. Mac OS X comes with Dashboard, an application that runs a variety of small applications that accomplish all kinds of things. These widgets can be downloaded from Apple.com or from the web sites of their develops. Apple pre-installs several of these widgets on all of the new Macs. However, you can expand your widget collection to an unimaginable extent.

I’d like to share with you one such widget that I find very useful. Granted, I’m a techie and I enjoy knowing what goes on under the hood of my computer. I like to know the temperature of my machine, fan speed, network speed, up time and so on. An easy way to access this information with one key stroke is to use iStat Pro widget. It displays the information I listed and more. With it you can know the charge of your battery, available capacity of the hard drive, most active processes, CPU usage and memory usage.

If you find yourself curious about what’s under the hood, iStat Pro is the widget for you.

What widgets do you find useful or most enjoyable? Let me know in the comments.

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Apple’s consumer popularity spilling over to corporate buyers

Wednesday, August 15th, 2007 | Mac OS X, Mac Resources, Mac vs Windows, Opinion | No Comments

Yesterday, I expressed that Apple is not intending to penetrate the corporate market. It is not found in their publicly stated business strategy and the corporate market share does not lead us to believe that it is so. However, I indicated that this does not mean that Macs are not fantastic business machines, in fact many businesses choose Mac over PC for their main computer platform.

Well, today I came across an article that explores what seems to be a side-effect of Apple popularity in the consumer market. Donna Fuscaldo, the author, notes that “the popularity of Apple’s Macintosh computers is morphing into increased interest from corporations - and not only from the graphic arts departments, where Apple products traditionally have been popular.” If this trend continues, this could mean that the corporate market may become part of Apple’s business strategy.

The CNNMoney.com article points out further that even though “Apple has less than 3% of the U.S. corporate market, according to some estimates, and isn’t clear if being a player there is a priority for the company. However, corporations appear to be interested.” Personally, I think corporations should consider the Mac seriously. And some are, such as the Auto Warehousing Co. (AWC), who is moving their entire company to the Mac platform. And this is not a small mom and pop shop. AWC is the largest full-service auto processing company in North America. The original article on this story can be found at Computerworld.com.

I think this example and the many satisfied Mac consumers are an indication that Apple is delivering a solid operating system tightly integrated with high quality hardware. A formula that has come to be associated with stability, superb performance and class.

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SuperDrive firmware update

Thursday, June 28th, 2007 | Apple News, Mac OS X, Tech News, Tips | No Comments

My new MacBook Pro has been having issues with the SuperDrive.  It refused to play certain media and didn’t always burn discs on the first try.  Today my software update prompted me for a new update.  It happened to be the SuperDrive Update 2.1.  I haven’t been able to test my optical drive extensively after loading the update, but have see some improvement.  I have a disc with me that didn’t play prior to the update but plays after the update.  That sounds like good news to me.  I suppose that these firmware updates to make a difference.  I’ll do some further testing at a later time when I have access to more variety of media.

If you’ve been having issues with your optical drive on a MacBook Pro, fire up the Software Update on your machine and load the SuperDrive Update 2.1.  It should improve your drive’s performance.

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