Ladies and gentlemen, I’m getting a Mac!

Well, not exactly, but hey, the title sparked your interest, didn’t it? Thought so. Anywho’s:

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself hating Apple products as I usually do. Hating on Macs, hating on iPods, and hating on two of my friends who have iPhone 3Gs. Every now and then I find myself thinking, wow, I’m probably just jealous that Apple users got money . However, these thoughts vanquish the moment I hear some pompous Apple fanboy saying “You’re just hatin’ because you can’t afford a Mac! Just go away to your sad little PC, ya’ looser!” It’s people like that that get under my skin, almost causing me to slap ‘em in the face. Luckily, I’m a civil person, and I just state the fact that you can get a computer just as decent as a Mac for half the price. But who am I to say this? And what does this say about the operating system itself? In all reality, the only Mac I’ve ever owned was a screwy PowerPC-based refurb.

So I thought, hey, if I install OS X onto my PC somehow, I’d be able to see how it is to own a Mac, without the fancy $600 aluminum case. If performance is good, I’d prove that PCs are much more cost-efficient, and after using it for a month or so, I’d also be able to determine how good OS X really is. I’ll be killing two birds with one stone… sorta.

After a few days [when Apple announced their new MacBooks], I got the initiative to sought for a way to get Leopard on my fairly low-end AMD machine. I found hacked-up operating systems aplenty, and I had no idea what to do. So then I thought there’s only one easy solution; just search where you’re going to download it from anyway!, so I ventured to everybody’s favorite downloading site, the infamous Pie-rating Bay and searched “OS X Leopard” and found iATKOS, and I was happy. Then I did some research, and found that there’s an infinite number of OSx86 systems to download. Here’s a short list of what I’ve found:

iATKOS
iDeneb
iPC
Kalyway
Leo4Allv5
JaS
pc_EFI

…the list will go on and on. So I settled on iDeneb. Not sure of the reason, but I did. So far, I’m two days into the download and I’ve only been able to get through 40% of the full ISO. Slowly but surely, the 4.4 gig file will finish after going through a constant of 15kb/s download.

In the meantime, I’ve been able to split my hard drive into two partitions, with the Leopard partition [drive X:/] having 20GB of playing room.

Updates on my future Hackintosh coming soon!

Ciao!

Poll! What’s the best touchscreen device on the market?

There’s a number of touchscreen devices that are too good to resist. The iPhone 3G, the iPod Touch, the Nokia N800 and N810, the HTC Touch Diamond, among others. Now, if someone walks up to you and says “I’ll give you one of these for 90% off MSRP,” which one would you choose?

I myself am having trouble deciding…

Ciao!

Curse you, Apple! The iPhone will soon be worth buying…

Yeah, you heard me– Apple’s prized possesion, actually getting a compliment from me? I’m just as amazed as you.

It takes a lot for a company in my “I want to stab you to death” list to get me to change my mind about them, but Apple’s iPhone is quickly becoming so good that I can’t resist but appreciate it!

I’ve always had the nicest things to say about Nokia’s N800. For God’s sake, man! It’s got WiFi, a Linux-based OS, Firefox-based web browser, touch screen, stereo speakers, two SD slots, a webcam, a special edition of Skype, and tons of apps to chose from. Oh, and did I mention you can get one of these babies for only about $230?

With all these great features, why am I complimenting the iPhone, that glossy, welded-shut brick? Well I got a list for you:

• The iPhone is now available with 16GB of flash memory

• Apple released the SDK for the iPhone, allowing the common geek to hack away (though the experience is limited unless you give Apple some moola…)

• AT&T and Apple are now selling refurbished iPhones at a tremendous discount– $200 friggin’ dollars off!

• One of the newest Apps for the iPhone include an IM/VoIP client. Yeah, Skype calls can now me made from the iPhone.

• And here’s the big one: Apple intends on releasing a new version of the iPhone that will load GPS and 3G

And expect more price cuts as the release of the iPhone2 approaches.

But not to fear! There’s still one thing Nokia will have that the iPhone2 won’t: A WiMAX chip! Yeah, Nokia made it official that the N810 will soon come loaded with WiMAX [essentially "4G", will have a 30 mile radius hotspot and a download speed of 5mbps].

So alas, the competition for cell phone domination continues, and I don’t intend on turning my back on it.

Ciao!

~uH

End of the mp3 player age

Where should I begin? What I think an mp3 player should have? Problems I’ve had with music players in the past? What I think get’s the best BPB [Bang Per Buck] rating? Eh, I don’t know, so I’ll just start typing whatever comes to mind.

Over the last few months, I’ve been researching music players quite a bit. My main conclusion is this: The mp3 player age is nearly over! Terminated! Discontinued! Ceased! No more! Finito!

“But… mp3 players are bigger than ever,”you say. Frankly, I don’t see much truth in that. Not because music is going to loose popularity [it's growing faster than ever], but because what we know as mp3 players don’t just play music anymore. They hold pictures, video, games, internet, and, you guessed it, personal style. Think about it. The most commonly heard mp3 player, the iPod, has gone far past music. At this point, the only version that doesn’t play video is the shuffle! The Creative Zen plays videos. The SanDisk Sansa is rarely seen without a 16-bit video/picture displaying LCD. The Zune is made for visual delight. Cell phones are becoming portable media players that become phones. With that said, I shall restate my early-stated conclusion: the mp3 player age is almost over!

From this point on, you shan’t hear me use the term mp3 player, but I’ll be referring to them as “media players”.

Let’s start with the brand I like to rant about the most- Apple. I dislike the way their media player became so popular that iPod became a regular word. I’ve seen people actually witnessed people call a SanDisk a “black iPod”. Foey! Electronic devices shouldn’t be improper nouns! It’s blasphemy, I tell ya’!
Let’s talk about the actual media player, shall we? To begin, I’d like to say that the iPod is way overrated, and just like most of the things Apple makes, overpriced. I’m not paying $150+ for a 4GB media player no matter how small! As long as it fits in my jeans’ pockets (which is most media players), I’m good. Now there is one reasonably priced iPod that I wouldn’t mind buying, however. The 160GB iPod Classic, $300 if you search in the right place. Holds more junk than you’ll ever need (unless you put all your HD movies in there). Other than that, overpriced and overrated. The iPod touch is way too small space-wise. That would be alright with me if it had an SD expansion slot, but no such luck. 30GB is my usual standard for space, and 16GB for $350 just doesn’t cut it for me, though [as painful as it is for me to say,] it is undeniable that the iPod touch’s UI is pretty well thought-out. Maybe I’ll get a touch when the new 32GB gets down to $300 and there are at least 30 decent widgets [with the help of the iPhone/touch SDK]. Maybe.

So what do I like? The Zune. The Zune 30GB to be specific. How would you like a media player that stores 30GB for under $200? Microsoft has that. Wanna know who else does that? Nobody. Yeah, the company that often gets blamed for overpriced electronics fires back! As for the Zune 4GB and 8GB, I’m not too excited. I know it’s small, has the same screen resolution, and costs a tad less, but still, you can get much more BPB with a little searching. And as for the 80GB Zune: heh, neat. I like the touch interface (the 4/8GB has the same, BTW) and the fact that it packs 80 gigs into a small, sexy package, but for $250 [and no SD slot], I’m not buying just yet. I think it’ll be down to $200 by the holidays.

I’d like to make a final “notable mensions” paragraph, but unfortunately, I can’t find more than two worth mensioning. There’s the $130 SanDisk Sansa 8GB that has an SD slot, and the all holy (but non-relevant to the subject) Nokia N800 with a touch screen, stereo speakers, handwriting recognition, wifi, SD, Skype, Mozilla, Widgets, remote computing to a PC, a very nice interface, and a Linux-Based OS, but it’s made to be a cell phone, and deserves to be in a blog post by itself. Yes, that was a run-on sentence, but it’s hard to refrain from doing so when trying to describe the N800

So for all of you screaming “I know better media players than that!,” then let me know in the comments box. I’ll read it, don’t worry. I read all my comments for the most part.

[BTW, a blog post side-image is comming up soon!]

Clarification of opinions: Mac vs PC (follow-up of MacBook Air post)

I’m very pleased at the comments given from my last blog post, from both the ones that agree with me and the ones that don’t agree. To tell you the truth, it was fun reading them. Today, I’m going to clarify my position on Macs and PCs, because I never had the opportunity or reason to do so in the past. So here we go, into the mind of uH:

Though I show a lot of hate for Apple, there is in fact lots of good behind it. They have a nice GUI, they’re generally reliable, and have great tech support people to rely on when the going gets rough. Windows computers’ UI isn’t quite as easy to navigate through, but it’s more hackable and open to customization (good for power users like myself). In reality, the majority of the problems with PCs are from all the useless crapware installed by the companies and malfunctioning hardware installed by the companies (hard drives in particular >_<). There isn’t a Microsoft Store where you can get the computer fixed, but there are literally hundreds upon hundreds of tech support forums and companies dedicated to it (techsupportforum.com for the win!).

Here’s a little insight from a past Mac user (erm, me). Having a Mac was always something to boast about. You walk into a Panera Bread, sit in the table by one of the big windows, in the open and take your MacBook out:

“Yeah, that’s my Mac. Like the wallpaper? Yeah, so do I. It represents how cool I am. Hey, check this cool minimizing effect. Yeah, I know you want it, but it’s all mine!”

Believe me, it feels cool to use a Mac. That is, until you’ve used it for a few hours, and it starts lagging, gasping for RAM. At that point you’re yelling like you were in a Linkin Park concert. But if it were lagging in public, you’d keep your cool. “I’m just restarting it because I forgot what the boot screen looks like… what?,” and you continue eating that delicious bagel. Yes, OS X played nice for the most part, but the hardware kept it down. 70% of the time, when I put a CD into the drive, it wouldn’t come out. I had to restart it, do a funky keyboard shortcut as soon as I saw the boot screen, and type something into the command prompt that appears to force eject it. Oh, and one of my USB ports went ca-put and my mouse liked to turn left more than right. And because all the hardware was from Apple (I bought it before the Intels came in) all the blame was put on them.

Now, here’s Windows. It isn’t as bad as everyone says it is. I’ve had 3 XP computers over the years, and all but one have died. Not because of the software, though. On one, the hard drive stopped working. The other, the motherboard fried during a power surge. Nevertheless, I put both of the computers together, and is now running Ubuntu, but that’s besides the point. What I’m getting at is that companies like MSI, AMD, and ATI are to blame for this stuff, yet people still blame Microsoft. I gotta love XP because you can change almost everything in it! And with the right tools, you can create skins for it yourself! You can use a program like the XN Resource Editor to replace icons and replace codes. Get LiteStep, and you have an entirely new shell to work with (that’s right, a replacement for Explorer). I’ve never seen anything like this on OS X, and I probably never will. Oh, and people also complain about Vista and how you need so much RAM to run it. 2GB is not that much! You can get a Kingston 1GB DDR2 chip for $20 at Best Buy for cryin’ out loud! And as it is said, if you have 4GB of RAM, Vista is amazingly faster, prefetching everything (thanks to a new process management system that XP doesn’t have). And PCs are getting cheaper by the day. I found one with 3GB RAM, an Intel Quad Core, some high-end nVIDIA graphics card, 320GB hard drive, Vista Premium, TV tuner, All-In-One printer, CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray reader, a 7-in-one media reader, and a 20-inch widescreen monitor for only $1200 (HP I believe). If that doesn’t show progress, I don’t know what does. Oh, and if you search in the right places [*cough*google products*cough*], you can get Vista Ultimate OEM 32-bit for about $160 (64-bit, $175).

As for one company stealing from another, sheesh! Just shut up! That’s how companies roll! IBM invented the mouse, but Apple copied and patented the idea before IBM got a chance. Apple uses transparency in their newest version of OS X. Microsoft based their Zune off Apple’s iPod. Who cares?!? As long as the things I buy are getting better, I’m okay with it. Dat’s how we roll in da hood.

But all this comes down to is politics. I bet I can convince everybody here that OS X is better than Vista if I wanted to, but I don’t because I don’t believe it’s true. Just like how some politicians can prove that either side is better (like Shawn Hannity convincing someone to vote for Obama). It all comes down to knowing stuff, and supporting that knowhow with examples (i.e. personal experiences with Macs and PCs). And with that, I shall publish this blog post.

Sour Apple Chronicles II: The MacBook Air really sucks

Chances are, you’ve read my last blog post, and you’ve found out how little Apple has to offer this year. Well apparently, it’s less than I thought.

Here’s what we agreed on from my last post about the Air:

• The processor is so-so
• 2GB of RAM is good
• 80GB hard drive is too small
• 1 USB port is NOT enough
• 13.3 inch screen is a bit too small
• $1,800 is way overpriced, but hey, so is every computer Apple makes
• Lack of Firewire sucks
• Batteries that can’t be replaced by the user is just plain dumb of Apple
• NOT HAVING AN OPTICAL DRIVE IS IDIOTIC

Now that we got that straight, I’ll update you on why the Air sucks:

The Air’s USB port is so inconveniently placed, many USB items can’t even be placed into it. You can’t even stick this flash drive into it! I can tell you right now that my 6-port USB hub won’t fit in there, even though that’s exactly what an Air would need, knowing that it only has one USB port.

In a recent discovery by the Engadget guys, the MacBook Air is slow. The slowest Mac ever, to be exact. But hey,that’s what happens when you cram a processor less than 1/3 the size of a normal processor into a computer. So basically, this 2000 dollar laptop with 2GB RAM and no optical drive to have to read is slower than a $700 laptop with Vista Premium, 2GB RAM, reads CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray with a mid-range graphics card (the Mac’s graphics card isn’t even as good as mine, and my computer cost $300). Whoever gets this notebook must be pretty dumb, knowing that most Mac owners are already somewhat mental.