Copyright: http://www.flickr.com/photos/deep-resonance

Just before the release of Windows 7 Apple announced a couple updates to some of their products. They released what are basically widescreen versions of the iMac, which have to be said look extremely nice, they also gave them a bit of a speed bump. They released a slender new aluminium Apple remote, a server version of the Mac Mini and a new MacBook with better longer battery life and a plastic unibody shell.

But most importantly they released the Magic Mouse, that is unbelievably cool. One of most talked about announcements is a flipping mouse. It is so hard to find a good bluetooth mouse these days. Logitech are the only company that sell a good basic bluetooth mouse ever other mouse wants you to plugin some form of dongle. Is it so unreasonable to use a technology that could be built into every Laptop and is in nearly every phone. Anyway back to the Magic mouse, it has the most sleek and stream line design of any mouse I have ever seen. I don’t know if I would really uses all those fancy finger gestures, but as long as I don’t have to lift my right finger to click with my left I might actually have to buy it.

What I did buy was a copy of Windows 7, there are so many version it can get really confusing but after looking around people were suggesting to get the 64-bit version on a Mac as Apple have drivers for 64-bit Windows 7 unlike Vista where there are only drivers for the 32-bit versions. In the end I bought the 64-bit Home premium version. I decided to get Windows 7 after playing with the beta which has to be said was rock solid and great to use. I need it for some of my A level subjects such as Physics where we are given a CD which, surprise surprise is Windows only and for DT where we use a lot of Windows design software packages such as “Pro Desktop”. I think I might wait till I have the official word from Apple that it is supported under Bootcamp, which is said to be coming by the end of this year.

For my birthday I got a EyeTV DTT so I can watch TV when I am at school. I also purchased the iPhone app to see if they have used all the potential that there is in an app of its kind.

EyeTV DTT

The DTT is the basic stick that Elgato offer, it allows you to watch digital TV and radio on your Mac as well as record it. Hardware wise the stick is just like having a memory stick plugged in. The software “EyeTV 3″ does not win any awards for looks but it is still not bad looking. The software consist of 3 basic windows the remote, the planner and the viewing window. In the planner if you double click on a show you can record it as a one off or the entire series, the one problem that I find is in the viewing windows you can also access a TV guide but it is slightly different from the one in the planner and you can’t set things to record in it, which confuses me a bit. Otherwise the experience is great as it is really easy to navigate from channel to channel and set up a record.

EyeTV for iPhone

The idea of an iPhone app that streams live TV from your laptop is an extremely appealing idea to me; and I am glad to report that the EyeTV app succeeds in reaching my expectation. When you choose a recorded video to watch you can read the synopsis or get straight into watching it, there is a slight pause before playback starts but part from that it was very smooth.

The EyeTV is a great alternative to buying a TV and is a hell of a lot cheaper than buying one at only £50. I would highly recommend it especially to some one who is going to university, as that is probable the perfect scenario to uses this in.

I started my A level courses just over 2 weeks ago, and so far I am not finding them to hard. That is not to say I am getting a lot of free time but in fact the complete opposite, partly due to the fact I have joined the school Uganda appeal. We have a link school in uganda with which we do huge amounts of fundraising for, in over a year we can raise about £15,000; which last year bought them a girls dormitory.

For my A-levels I am taking Maths, Physics, Economics and DT, they all sort of point to engineering but that is not really something I want to do, but we will see. People often think that I would have a lot of work with those subject, but I find I don’t as I am never really set essays which makes the work easier to deal with.

My birthday is in just a few days and I thought I would share with you what I want for my Birthday.

• Eye TV DTT
• Flickr Pro Account
• XMI X-mini II Mini Speaker
• Nikon D90
• Windows 7 (when released)

But the most exciting thing to happen this week is the announcements that in the UK the iPhone will be available on Orange and Vodafone as well as O2. So hopefully, depending on pricing I will be able to get an iPhone on Vodafone. I think that with 3 vendors selling it we might see some aggressive pricing and that is better for us.

In my opinion when installing a new OS the only way to go is to clean install. This requires a wipe of the entire hard drive which is effort, but can save you countless GB’s of wasted space full of temporary system files that have built up. With this in mind you add the 7GB’s that Snow Leopard promises to save you, I managed to save 20GB’s of space!

Snow Leopard contains no headline new features, but instead offers refinements to existing features and some of these refinements are as small as animation in the spaces navigator; it now slides along with you as you move from space to space (shown right) an other example is the dark menus in the dock, this are just small Ui changes but make Snow Leopard just that bit nicer to use.

Other updates have been more widely publicised such as the new Exposé which not only works from the dock but puts the windows into a grid pattern to help organisation. The addition of a signal strength indicator for all the wifi hotspots around you has also been popularly discussed. One of my favourite new features is the upgraded services menu which is now contextual. I feel services has always been undervalued but with its new design it really makes it much easier for the user.

On the matter of compatibility the only things that I seem to have had any difficultly with are Dropbox and 1Password, everything els seems to be working fine. Everything I use on a day to day basis works fine, even CS3. http://snowleopard.wikidot.com offers a list of all the compatible software they have tested in Snow Leopard, so you can check anything you want. One other incompatibility thing I have come across is when I try to install the FLIQLO screensaver I get a popup saying it can’t be installed. Other software that seems to work fine but has a few quirks are things like Growl and other 32bit preferences which requires Preferences to restart in a 32bit mode before you can access it.

In my opinion Snow Leopard is stable enough and well worth the upgrade. Even from an end user point of view the speed, space and general fresh feel you get from the new OS is worth the £25.

For the past two weeks I have been on holiday. We spent the first week in Sri Lanka and the second on an island in the Maldives called Ohuveli. During the first week we toured Sri Lanka visiting tea factories, botanical gardens and did even some white water rafting. Then we flew on to Male the capital of the Maldives, from there we took a 45 minute boat ride, but due to the fact we smashed into a corral reef at 1 in the morning and destroyed the engines of the boat it took us an extra hour. Finally we reached the island where we received special treatment for the mishap.

During my time away I had the perfect opportunity to test the ruggedness of the Canon PowerShot D10 we purchased for the trip, but most importantly I was able to really test its underwater feature set because of the wide variety of water based activities there are in the Maldives. In the Maldives it is hard to do anything that does not included getting wet due to the simple fact you are on an island surrounded by water.

On Holiday we took 6 Cameras but 3 of the cameras acted as our primary cameras. My Nikon D50 was one of the most used, then there was the Canon PowerShot D10 which we used mostly in the Maldives for all sorts of water based activities and finally there was my step mums which was used as the basic point and shoot. We could have used the Canon D10 as a point and shoot but it is a bit bulky to go in a pocket. After importing all the cameras in to Aperture I have nearly 600 photos. I created a set of smart albums to divide the photos by day and by which camera they were taken with, this helps me work when and by who they were taken making organization much easier.

I arrived back at 11 o’clock in the evening of the 26th to discover that Snow Leopard has been given a release date of the 28th. Being a giant Apple fan boy I instantly went to Apple.com and bought Snow Leopard without even hesitating (which is odd as I am not very impulsive). I am preparing for Snow Leopard by clearing my spear hard drive so I can do a back up with SuperDuper. I am planning on doing an erase and install to help clear out my machine, but it will require a lot of work and time in order to get back to a fully function computer.