I spent some time today with my newly upgraded Mac Mini.  I installed Snow Leopard and as I was setting up file sharing with my Windows PCs, I saw something that I found quite amusing.  Showing that people at Apple have a wicked sense of humor, the Icon representing a “PC Server” (in this case it was my Laptop running the Windows 7 RC) showed a distinctive and quite familiar sight for a a PC user.  You can see for yourself below.

Now apparently this has been around for quite some time, but since I’m a relatively new Mac user (having left Apple for Windows 95 and being an exclusive PC user until a little less than a year ago. And using Windows 95 I certainly encountered my fair share of blue screens.) this was the first time I had noticed it and I’m surprised how many times I pulled up this screen and never noticed it.  It made me smile and shake my head a little.

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Apple announced today that the newest version of it’s Operating system, 10.6 Snow Leopard will be released Friday August 28th 2009. It will come out almost a month before Microsoft’s October 22nd Windows 7 launch. Snow Leopard does not add many new features,  Native support for Microsoft Exchange is one, but most of the changes are under the hood designed to optimize and improve the overall performance.  The upgrade price for those who have the previous version of OS X (Leopard) is only $29 which is dramatically cheaper than the previous Apple OS upgrades. The upgrade for 10.4 Tiger to 10.5 Leopard was $129.  Although for those who are still running 10.4 Tiger the upgrade will be higher ($169 and includes Snow Leopard, iWork 09 and iLife 09) and those with PowerPC processors will not be able to upgrade at all.   Still Snow Leopard seems to be a great addition for your Mac at a very good price.

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I was reading through a recent blog post from Harry McCraken (www.technologizer.com) with a comparison of the iPhone 3GS and the Commodore 64.  It reminded me just how amazing it is that there is more power in the iPhone which fits in the palm of your hand than a an entire desktop computer 10-15 years ago.  Just for fun I’m going to present another comparison. This showdown is between an 1996 vintage Apple Power Macintosh 6300 (the sort of thing I would find in the computer lab back when I was in Middle School) and the recently released Apple iPhone 3GS.

	Power Macintosh 6300	iPhone 3GS
Year Released	1996	2009
Processor	PowerPC 603e 100-120 MHz	600 MHz Arm
Memory	16 MB	256 MB
Storage	1.2 GB	16 GB or 32 GB
Cost	$2500	$199 -$299 *with 2 year commitment with AT&T

Power Macintosh 6300 Specs http://support.apple.com/kb/SP323
iPhone 3GS Specs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_iPhone_and_iPod_Touch_models
Images from Wikipedia

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To see the difference in philosophy between Windows and Macintosh computers you only need to look at the toolbars on their applications.  Microsoft will try and fit many of the most commonly used commands onto the toolbar in order to reduce the number of mouse clicks it takes to perform the task.  While functional, This tends to make Windows applications look cluttered.  Apple takes a different approach and removes all buttons from the toolbar except the most important.  This gives a cleaner and simpler look and feel to Mac Applications.

By default the only buttons that Safari, the Mac’s web browser, has on its toolare is a forward/back button, refresh button, A button that will clip part of the page and pin it to the Mac dashboard (not present on the Windows version of Safari), and the Add bookmark button.  Safari does not have a “home” button that takes you back to your homepage like other browsers.  I find the home button to be very useful and it’s something I want to be able to use in Safari.  Adding the home button to the toolbar is very easy, and there are a couple other buttons you can customize the toolbar with.  Thre are a print button and a button to increase and decrease the text’s font size.  There are versions of Safari for both Macs and Windows computers.  The following instructions will work on both versions.

Customize the Safari Toolbar

1. Click on the “View” menu and select “Customize Toolbar”
2. Drag and drop the icon from the popup onto the toolbar.  You will see the other icons move to the side and make space for the new icon.

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By Jin Nan Goto

During today’s NFL games Apples responded to Microsoft’s recent advertising blitz (which featured Jerry Seinfeld ).

I have to say that recently the Get a Mac Ads have been getting more and more childish. I thought that the first Get a Mac ads were very clever and effective in pointing out the advantages of the Apple platform. Now it seems that all they do is snipe at Windows Vista.  They point out that Vista has a lot of problems, which is a claim that people should but don’t challenge.  Lets not forget the launch of apples last few platforms Leopard and the iPhone and they had problems too. Why don’t we hear about those more? For the most part, that is because they have been fixed. Contrary to what Apple is trying to imply in this commercial, Microsoft is actively working to improve Windows Vista (just like Apple did for Leopard).  That is what Vista Service Pack 1 was all about, and it appears there is a Service Pack 2 on the way. 2 years later all the problems with Vista have mostly passed. Microsoft isn’t only investing in advertising, and is also working to improve their products. There is really a fine line between pointing out your competitor flaws and making up stuff that isn’t true. Apple is clearly flaunting this line and their claims are unfair. Really these ads should try to convince people why the Mac is better, and not just about tearing down Vista.

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