Mac OS X: Mountain Lion

Today Apple made a subtle announcement via their website about the newest addition to their famous 'Big Cat' Operating Systems, Mountain Lion. It hasn't been long since the announcement of Lion but with this newest update we can see deeper iOS integration on a desktop OS. 

From what we can see on the Mountain Lion site, applications such as Messages, Notification Center, Reminders, Notes and Game Center will make an awesome appearance on the Mac platform!

Messages is basically iMessage that is an iOS 5 based application. It allows people with Apple ID's to message each other for free, kind of like RIM's BBM. Now that this is available on the Mac, it will obviously take away the iChat application and allow you to message people with both Macs and iOS 5 devices.

The Notification Center is almost identicle to the iOS Notification Center, which will create a brand new way to view your notifications on your computer. 

Reminders is self explanatory. It's exactly the same as it is on iOS, but tweaked to run on a Mac, and obviously it will run seamlessly with the iOS application and iCloud.

Notes will more than likely replace the Text Edit application currently on Mac OS X. With a better design and overall functionality, this will be perfect for people needing to take notes on the go.

Deep Twitter integration is also a new feature! Just like in iOS 5. For all Twitter addicts out there, this will be great.

Last but not least, Game Center leaps its way onto Mac creating an amazing experience for people who do a lot of gaming on their Mac. I'm guessing that this will only work with games bought within the Mac App Store, but it will be perfect for those challenging their friends with the latest games.

All these features and so much more can be found over at Apple! 

You can download the Messages Beta today and developers can get their hands on Mountain Lion today. Launch date is aimed for Summer 2012 for Mountain Lion.

So, what's your thoughts on Mountain Lion? Leave your comments below!

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How to Run iBooks Author in Snow Leopard

iBooks Author only works on Mac OS X Lion, which I don't have access to. After some Googling and playing around in the files, I have found a solution to this.

I have a step-by-step guide on how to do this: 

1. Download iBooks Author from the Mac App Store.
2. Go to your Macs hard drive and go to /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist. Then, in SystemVersion.plist, change the string from 10.6.8 to 10.7.2 and save it. 
3. When it has downloaded, do not run it. 
4. Go back into SystemVersion.plist and change the 10.7.2 back to 10.6.8 again.
5. Now, right click on iBooks Author and click on 'Show Package Content'.
6. Go to Content/Contents/info.plist. Open it with your favourite text editor and find LSMinimumSystemVersion with the find tool on that text editor. 
7. Change the string on 'LSMinimumSystemVersion' to 10.6.8.

If you had any problems with this, comment below or email me at christianjupson@gmail.com.

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What's on My iPhone 4S (Vol. 2)

In this video I show some of my favorite iOS games currently running on my iPhone. Each of these apps are available for $0.99 in the iTunes Apple App Store.

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Review: Logitech Z110 Speakers

I decided to not jump right into a review when I got these speakers, as I didn't have a complete opinion on them. After having them for about a month or so no, I have a pretty good personal opinion. 

I love these speakers. One of the main reasons for that is that they are so small and portable, and yet they give out a great sound. At first, I thought I might as well put these little things at full blast to hear them. Well, I regret doing that. It shook my whole desk and monitor, and the sound went all throughout the house. But when I put them at full blast I realised that the bass on these speakers is absolutely phenomenal. As I listen through them now (with calm music), I can feel the bass through my wrists as I type. 

 The portability of the speakers are great. If I need to work away from home, I can pack them up in my laptop bag or suitcase, and I take them wherever I want. The speakers only come in white and are powered by USB and the sound comes through a 3.5mm audio jack. The white makes your desk look very modern and at the back of the speakers is a mini cable management system.

I could only find a couple of cons with these speakers. The first one is cable length. At the moment, I am having hide the speakers under my desk. Now this is good in some ways, but the fact that they won't fit on each of my 24 inch primary display is a bit annoying. and one small con is that the rubber feet on the bottom of the speakers don't have much grip, so they slide around a lot.

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Vintage Tech: iBook G4

The iBook G4 was Apple's entry-level laptop from late 2003 through mid 2006. The iBook G4 was a pretty affordable Mac at the time with the baseline 12" model coming in at $1099 until late 04' when they were dropped to $999. The iBook G4 was also a very portable computer compared to others at the time. The 12" model weighed only 4.9 pounds while to 14" model came in only one pound heavier. Both iBook models were only 1.35" thick. During the time that the G4 iBooks sold, they ranged in speeds from 800MHz to 1.42GHz. The last generation iBook G4 had 512MB RAM on the logic board while all of the earlier models had 256MB on the logic board. All of the G4 iBooks had one slot for RAM that could hold up to a 1GB stick of memory to add to the built-in RAM. 

My specific model is the late 2004 14" model with a 1.33GHz G4 processor, 768MB RAM, and a 60GB HDD.

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