Category: apple

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Tech Stuff goes mobile

Having upgraded the blog back end you can now view the blog on your iPhone with a built-in mobile theme.

It’s a great theme which works for individual entries too.

Simply go to tech.jamesclay.net on your iPhone or any other mobile device.

So how was this done?

Well with the WPtouch plugin that if you host your own WordPress server can be easily installed.

WPtouch is an entire theme package for your WordPress website. Modeled after Apple’s app store design specs, WPtouch makes your WordPress website load lightning fast on touch mobile devices, show your content beautifully, all while not interfering with your regular theme.

If you have a WordPress.com site this is now built in.

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Ordered new iMac

Well after much waiting I have ordered my new iMac.

In the end after much thinking I went for the 27″ model with the…

2.8GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with 8MB shared L3 cache; Turbo Boost dynamic performance up to 3.46GHz; Hyper-Threading for up to eight virtual cores

imac27inch

I also upped the RAM to 8GB.

I did consider getting the 2TB drive as I do use a lot of storage, however the upgrade was £187 and I know I can get two external drives for that. I current have 4 1TB drives so not too worried (and two of those are empty).

All of which means it should be a lot faster than my current iMac which is a Core 2 Duo and only has 2GB of RAM.

I had considered ordering a Mac mini to use with the iMac, but not sure how the display thingy is going to work, so going to test it with a MacBook Pro first. There is no hurry as Apple won’t deliver it until November… that I am guessing will be the end of November and not the beginning.

I did consider getting a slower one which I could get in three days, but in the end decided that going for the top model means I will feel it will last longer!

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At last, new iMacs

Apple today announced a revision to their iMac range.

Coming with 21.5″ and 27″ widescreen LED screens in a 16:9 aspect ration, which is great for HD films, though it’s a pity that there is no Blu Ray drive. If you want HD you are going to need to download HD.

The new iMacs come with a new improved wireless keyboard and the new Wireless Magic Mouse which yay has no scroll ball!

I think my old iMac is about to be replaced…

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Orange gets the iPhone

iPhone

So O2’s exclusive contract with Apple and the iPhone has come to an end…

BBC News reports:

Orange has reached an agreement to sell Apple’s popular iPhone in the UK.

The deal ends an exclusive arrangement between UK network operator O2 and the Californian phone maker, which has been in place since 2007.

I am not sure that there was much consumer benefit to the exclusive arrangement that O2 had (well has at the moment) however I am equally sure that bringing Orange into the market won’t actually make too much difference to consumers; more likely it will benefit those who can’t get an O2 signal but can get Orange.

Part of the issue has to be the fact that iPhone is in a league of its own when it comes to smartphones, not many other devices match the iPhone in terms of usability, applications and features.

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Apple Event 090909

Apple will (as is usual at this time of year now) be making an announcement on the 9th September 2009, which is 090909 not that I think that is significant, but it is the date in question!

Anyhow the event is called It’s only rock and roll, but we like it.

Apple Event 090909

Generally at this time of year Apple announce new iPods, for example back in 2007 they announced the iPod touch.

So what can we expect to see? Well the rumours indicate that we will see new iPods with cameras including not just the touch, but all the nano and the classic.

Will we see a Tablet, hmm, I hope so, but I am not expecting too.

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Installed Snow Leopard

I have now installed my copy of Snow Leopard. I have installed it onto an external LaCie Poulton 1TB Firewire drive for my iMac.

My current OS is Leopard 10.5 and that is also installed on a (different) LaCie Poulton 1TB Firewire drive. I am using external drives as the internal drive on the iMac was a little too small for me at 250GB – when did 250GB become too small?

So far everything seems okay and Snow Leopard appears a little snappier than 10.5.

My main concern is that EyeTV 2 is not compatible and so I will need to go out and buy EyeTV 3 which means that is not such a cheap upgrade as I would hope.

Adobe CS4 should work fine, and I already have iLife 09 and iWork 09, so no worries there.

Over the next week or so I will be installing various apps to check they work before moving over my data.

The advantage of not upgrading is that I can always fall back on my previous installation if it really doesn’t work out.

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Currently installing…

Well having set up one of my new LaCie Poulton 1TB Firewire drives I am installing OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 onto it.

The external drive needed to be formatted for the OS X operating system and the partition map set up to allow me to install the OS onto it. All relatively simple with Disk Utility.

Then I set it to install, said it would take 47 minutes, wonder if those are real minutes or Apple minutes?

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Snow Leopard has arrived…

I ordered my copy of Snow Leopard earlier this week and was pleased to receive it on day of release at about 7.3oam this morning!

I am intending to install it on a different external drive to the one I currently run Leopard 10.5 on as a fresh install and then install my applications as and when required.

I prefer to do it this way as I don’t have to worry about crowding the drive with unused applications or filling the memory with “helper” applications for apps I don’t run.

Of course the main downside is that none of my preferences are there, so I have to “add” them all back in again.