Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Perian. Swiss Army Knife For Quicktime.★
No, I still haven't got Leopard, and no, I still haven't managed to get this blog back in order - this is just a quickie.Whilst hunting for a solution for my quicktime movie file that played only video and not sound, even though VLC played both, I stumbled across a shiny gem inscribed: "Perian".
Codecs galore, in one simple, easy to find place. It's open source and donation driven. Check it out if you're having quicktime blues, it supports pretty much everything.
Till next time!
★ 0 Comments. | By Skippy, Tuesday, December 18, 2007 1:02 PM
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Leopard.★
Yeah. It's out. You know you want it, you know you've been secretly longing for it even if you've vehemently protested that you haven't. No argument will work with me here, you know I'm right.I know you believe me.
The only sharp pointy thing aimed at my bubble of leopard security is that I don't actually own it yet. It seems my finances have decided that leopard isn't going to be released for another month or so, ignorant of the very real fact that its already shipping.
From what I can see it looks good, but I can't honestly deliver any sort of verdict until I've tried the new OS myself, on my iMac C2D (Previous generation). Then I'll be able to write the low-down. Till then however, I'm directing readers to the MacNN article on Leopard. MacNN have a good reputation for responsible journalism, and even the best and most expereinced bloggers will secretly visit it from time to time.
Happy Leopard'ing.
Labels: news, OS X Leopard
★ 2 Comments. | By Skippy, Saturday, October 27, 2007 7:26 PM
Saturday, September 22, 2007
iPhone Carried Across Pond.★
Because things are so crazy hectic, all we've done on the MacTake are drafts for posts. That means we haven't actually posted anything, so I'm just going to post this overly pessimistic draft to try and pretend we've actually accomplished something here. Bear with us, university application stuff will be over soon.
The post below this one outlined the basics of the UK iPhone release, and we view them with mixed feelings here at the MacTake. We'll admit that the cost of the iPhone itself (£269) is on target, but we can't happily accept the cost of the contract for the phone (£35 per month entry level). To be fair, we always complain about the cost, it's just what we do.
An 18 month contract is far too long, especially since the features offered are definitely sub-standard. You get free access to all the 7500 Cloud wifi hotspots, but other than that you're limited to EDGE access instead of 3G. I don't want to pay £35 a month and only get EDGE access when I'm not near a cloud access point, as well as only getting 200 minutes a month.
When you go to pick up an iPhone in the UK (Assuming you even want to buy one), you'll have to fork up £269 for the phone, and then £630 for the contract. Altogether that's £899. The advanced technology is in the phone, the most advanced thing available in the contract is visual voicemail.
I have a feeling that phone unlocking shops will soon be handling iPhones on a daily basis.
The whining over, I'm happy to see that the iPhone made it across the pond at all. If the contract price drops, or even just includes more features, I'll pick an iPhone up. Till then, my RAZR is a lot smaller, a lot cheaper, and a lot easier to stick in my pocket. Plus all the assassins carried the exact model I have in the Bourne Ultimatum movie.
★ 0 Comments. | By Skippy, Saturday, September 22, 2007 8:57 AM
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
UK iPhone details★
To nobody's great surprise, Apple's press conference today was indeed about the UK iPhone release. First, just the plain facts:- The iPhone is to be released Nov. 9 in the UK
- It will cost £269 for the 8GB model
- It will be available on the O2 network, using EDGE (not 3G) for internet access
- 18-month contracts will be available, ranging for £35 - 55 per month
- It will be sold by Apple themselves, O2 and Carphone Warehouse
- Similar announcements are expected to occur shortly for the rest of Europe
We'll have a more in depth analysis of these facts tomorrow, along with our individual opinions. In the meantime, you can find more here.
Labels: alasdair, iPhone, news
★ 0 Comments. | By Alasdair Corbett, Tuesday, September 18, 2007 10:14 PM
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Apple press conference announced for September 18★
Apple has invited members of the British media to a press conference in the London Apple Store on the 18th of September (next Tuesday). All anyone knows about it is that the invites bore the words "mum is no longer the word".The rather cryptic phrase is generally being taken as an indication that Apple is ending its long silence on UK (and European) iPhone launch details. Nothing else seems to fit the bill of being very important, very secretive and justifying the hype.
We'll update more when the news appears.
With any luck, it'll get delayed to the day after, thus increasing the chances of Steve Jobs saying "arrr, mehearties!". We here at the MacTake deem this "unlikely, but awesome".
More details can be found here.
★ 0 Comments. | By Alasdair Corbett, Thursday, September 13, 2007 4:58 PM
