Me and my Mac

Posts Tagged ‘mac’

Seriously… Mac users can be weirdos too!

Look at the blue shapes. Almost every day for the past month people have been coming in with that exact search phrase. I’m pretty sure they are not looking for my website but why would people look for “me and my mac”. ha!

Also, the red area’s. What are they expecting to find? Mac’s are awesome yes! And also macs need to be taken care off. But you also need to take care of your PC. I’m thinking cleaning it, keeping the software healthy (trying to anyway) and so on. And the awesomeness? Well, PC’s not so much. Macs by default. No need to search for that.

Insanely Great!

Well not really insanely… But still they’re nice shirts

Aquired from here.

CrossOver for Mac

CodeWeavers is at it bigtime with their CrossOver software. While it’s nothing new and has been around for years. Their recently released version 7.0.0 is supposed to be some milestone and huge… Let’s hope so.

I’m installing GuildWars now… And hope it works nicely. It’s supposed to have native support from CrossOver. It’s marked as officially supported anyway. We’ll see…

So far i have created a winxp “bottle” which means that any software i install will think it’s running in windows xp. Should be nice… And i have X11 running in the background which is kinda weird. It’s default setting for graphics is like 256 colors which makes grey look like blue

Took some time before i figured that one out… But ok… It’s set to millions now, just like OSX.

[update]
It’s not so great after all. Sure Guild Wars installs fine, it loads fine it even downloads fine. But damn are the Directx9 shaders poor. Even dx8 doesn’t work like it should so that makes the game near un-playable. Guild Wars being the primary game i play lately it renders Crossover near useless. If i cannot eliminate windows because of one game i might as well reap the full benefits of windows and stick with all my games on the doomed os… So its bye bye CrossOver.

Syncing 2 Macs, what a pain!

So today for the second time i dove in the internet to find a proper way to keep certain things synchronized on my Macbook Pro and iMac. This seems an impossible dream as the software is either very (in my eyes) expensive/incomplete/stupid or otherwise not what i want.

So to start with iCal (calendars):
So i’ve tried Spanning Sync, it’s ok… But requires google calendar to get things done. And a proper license is $65… Too much. Other than that i had no trouble using it.

I’ve also looked into BusySync, which requires a $25 license… Per computer, wtf? yea! what’s the point if you have to buy it twice for 1 user. Thats just stupid. However, their Bonjour sync works nice! So it’s too expensive but not really out of the question. They should really rethink their sales strategy… And introduce a “home user” thing that allows 2 computers. Their Google sync brought me frustration and anger. I won’t be using that if i get BusySync.

There is some lame bunch of scripts called GCALDeamon, which, again, requires Google calender. Just the sheer amount of time and terminal madness to get it working scared me away. It’s too linux, in fact. There is no Mac software. Just some *edited* Linux distribution. I thought it was awkward and silly. Then i saw the manual and i quickly closed the browser…

Then there is of course Apples solution, dotmac… But damn! $99 for a bit of LAN Only synchronizing per year is nuts. Also i don’t see why i would need internet to sync 2 macs which are maybe 1 feet apart. Seems illogical. For that reason BusySync might be my savior… But 2 licenses. Bah…

Syncing 2 iTunes libraries…
Don’t kid yourself! There is no proper tool for it. And backup/sync apps that can keep 2 folders in sync are weird too because of the new files not being added to iTunes. Just moving files around isn’t gonna cut it… They need to be added to the iTunes library as well. The only app i could find last week (i forgot the name) was some 4 year old thing for OS 10.3. Bah, i say!
I know, i know. It’s all the fault of the record companies. But i bought most of the music or just downloaded it and i want to listen to it. Even if i bought it it’s mine! And i’m (everyone else too!) getting my way anyway, so don’t make it hard and just allow me to sync my library to computers i authorize via iTunes.

Synchronizing your contacts:
This is a lot easier. But still lacks in many ways. Most solutions require Google contacts. What the fuck is up with everyone using Google… Geez, piss off! Macs have this super great and awesome thing called Bonjour, why not use that a bit more to keep things in sync. Or use P2P synchronizing for all i care. Why does Google have to be in between of everything!
Anyway, Also here. no real solution other than SpanningSync (comes in version 2) or Apples AddressBook, google syncing option.

Conclusion:
You would have thought that in the wondrous world of macs there would be a more proper solution for people having multiple macs. Now i’m either stuck with Google or with half assed software that’s either outdated or not working at all (Except for BusySync).

The iMac as a gaming computer?

I recently bought an iMac and kind of feared it would not outperform my previous PC in gaming. I had read on various large mac sites that the iMac “still was not capable of running games” and more of such stories.

Soon i discovered that that was not true at all. To properly play games you still need Windows installed so i installed Windows XP Pro SP2 with all updates and all that rubbish. And some recent games. Like ‘Rainbow 6 Vegas 2′ and ‘Supreme Commander’ for example. Both games are quite heavy on the graphics and memory part of the game and i can play both on 1680×1050 resolution all settings high without a hitch.

Also battlefield 2142 which is a bit older but still a heavy game specs wise runs fine with 64 bots enabled on Singleplayer. No problems there.

All fullscreen and high resolution and settings. I don’t see why the iMac would be a bad computer for games. It outperforms my guestpc which is a AMD Dual Core 4200 with a 512MB Vga. While the iMac is a Intel C2D 2.4Ghz with 256MB Vga.