flop ya mac out

Boom. One after the other. Don’t show the Windoze fanboys!!

Perhaps the beginning of a spin-off site ala UnexpectedlyQuit.com?

As someone who is gearing up to head overseas, I’ve put my laptop into somewhat of a lock-down mode, password protecting everything to make sure that it can’t be molested if it falls into the wrong hands abroad.

However, the drawback of such tight security is that (with the omission of physical labelling), if my laptop falls into the right hands, there’s no way the finder can figure out who the laptop actually belongs to.

Enter this handy hint, sourced from Apple’s own Leopard Security Configuration Guide. The hack allows you to place a custom phrase in the OS X Leopard Login Screen, just above the user name and password.

Crank up the terminal, and enter the following:

su [your admin username]
sudo -s
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow LoginwindowText “This laptop belongs to Jason Deacon, and you don’t.”

Of course, you may want to garnish your welcome message with maybe a contact phone number, email address or more impressive message than the example here.

The beauty of this hack is that as your contact details change when you travel, updating them is a simple as re-entering this into terminal. No more re-printing labels on the road, and you’re able to enter much more information here, too.

The Apple Security Guide is a good read, which I thoroughly recommend if you’ve got an eye for that sort of thing. We’ll explore more security tips in time!

Ha! A phone with a touch screen interface reported to contain a “2 megapixel camera, GPS, FM radio, EVDO Rev. A, 3-inch touchscreen (pressure-based), and microSD card slot… …measuring a 2.17 x 4.57 x 0.49 inches.”

Sounds like the new 3G iPhone. Perhaps. Sorta. Hopefully!

Well… It’s not. It’s Sumsung’s new “iPhone killer”. Stated in the video below, this thing is set to come out ib June. But will June be too late?

If this new version of the iPhone can deliver on most of the features above (as it really should have in it’s original incarnation – I mean no video recording – really!) then I think it’s pretty much still gonna shit all over the Instinct.

There’s no going past the iPhones sexy interface, and soon to be hundreds of applications and games to make the Apple touch platform the yummiest thing since a really yummy sandwich. That was surprisingly yummy in a rather non-sandwich way.

Sandwich goodness plus “seem-less” interoperability with the iTunes world of content is just part of what makes the iPhone a force to be reckoned with.

Fingers crossed for the WWDC keynote! Check out the promotional ad for the Instinct below. 

Within a number of hours, this ad could become extinct, irrelevant and just downright incorrect. And good laugh.

(via TUAW)

UPDATE: Well well well… Post-WWDC, it looks like Samsung, for now, will have the last laugh! That is unless Apple just wants to surprise us all with video recording capabilities closer to the release date of the new iPhone 3G!… 

“Tut tut tut, Apple” is all I can say…

With every Jean, Claude, Van and Damn on the internet giving their first impressions on Leopard, I thought I’d add my voice to the crowd, with a focus on some of the finer tweaks that I certainly get a kick out of in updates like this.

Dan and I journeyed to our local Australian Apple Store this evening and were nearly met with a rousing applause.

The install went smoothly, thought the damn thing seemed to take longer ‘verifying the disc’ than actually installing the thing. If you’re in a rush, I certainly see no harm in skipping the verify step. If you are installing a family pack on multiple computers and are cool like me, then I would definitely recommend skipping this lengthy time-waster.

My first impressions are thus:

• The whole install process is so breezy, it really has been perfected.
• Spotlight flies like an absolute bitch! Amazing! On my MacBook Pro it took about half an hour to build the library and was off and racing. It automatically highlights the top entry now, a nice change.
• Sleep/wake times on the MacBooks are the same
• There’s no ‘Loading OS’ screen per-say, it just gets it straight on! Sexy.
• The Airport menu loads instantly, at last!
• Time Machine most certainly backs up over the Airport Extreme Base Station, providing you perform your initial backup with your external HDD connected to your mac, and then when connected to your Airport, manually logon to it once through Finder and set it to remember the password.
• The new side-panel of Finder is brilliant. .Mac is enabled by default, but that can be pissed off through the settings pretty easily.
• Safari feels snappier. Really. It’s out of BETA finally, too. I’m going to try and make the switch over from Firefox one last time. Firefox runs like an absolute dog for some reason, too. All the more reason to go Safari.
• I’m not entirely sure what to think of the new translucent menus, or gratuitous use of drop-shadow. I’ll sleep on that one.
• All the Help menus have been rehashed, to better serve the kind of people who click on them.
• Screen capture gives feedback for the exact pixel that you are hovering over. Awww.
• Time Machine is a handsome bitch.

I’ll certainly add more as it comes up. But on the whole, this is one of those upgrades that doesn’t smack you in the face with joy straight away, but instead gently flicks marbles at you until you realise that all-in-all, it is actually freaking awesome. I think I might sleep in my free Leopard tshirt.

So what do two Mac geeks do with themselves on a Friday at 6pm? Any other day it might be repairing permissions or polishing their iPhone screens, but today the flop ya mac out-ers took a drive to get some of Apple’s latest OS X offerings, otherwise known as Leopard.

Geared up for the long waiting line at the Apple store, along with the patented Apple buzz and anticipation, Daniel and Jason were in for something rather different…

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