A music made out of Apple Sounds

Windows is not the only one who has the right to create a music out of its own sounds. Check out this nice tune made only with sounds from Mac OS X.



Source: The Unofficial Apple Weblog

The new Microsoft ad: I'm a PC...as a bunch of other people

So, Microsoft has decided to ditch Seinfeld and the all idea of "Microsoft and the future" and went on to adopt a new approach in their marketing campaign, where they focus on the idea that there are a lot of PCs out there and that, in spite of the stereotype created by the "I'm a PC" guy from the Mac ads, they can achieve great things. See the ad for yourself:



Even though the ad itself was made on a Mac, I still think it is better than the previous approach of placing Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld on a "higher level of the society" that is trying to "connect with the simple people".

However, it is still not there... because they show all these people but they still don't say why do they use Windows and not other operating systems. Maybe they use it because they have to, maybe it's because they don't know the alternatives, or maybe they are in fact not happy with using Windows but are too afraid to switch to Linux or Mac. And most of all, they don't show how all those people react when they get a BSOD and loose their work :-)

Photo Booth gives origin to new species: the i-men

When reading a post by the Cult of Mac, I came across this new phenomenon where Mac users from all around the world have unleashed the real power of Photo Booth and gave origin to a new species: the i-men.

Using the Photo Booth's mirror effect and a bunch of simple everyday-use gadgets, these users create the most weird characters. And I decided to give a try too:


Well, it's not very impressive...compared to some of the photos that I've seen on Flickr. But it's also not bad for a first try, right?

How to fix iTunes video playback that crashes your Mac

Every now and then, while playing some video podcasts and movies on iTunes, when the mouse hovers the movie (to trigger the appearance of the controls), my Mac completely freezes and I have to do a hard-reset. I couldn't figure out what caused this...until now.

If you remember, a few months back I posted a nice tip on how to enhance FrontRow in order to watch all kinds of video files, instead of just Quicktime files. This included installing Perian, a component plugin for QuickTime that adds native support for many popular video formats.

What I failed to notice is that this component somehow conflicts with video playback on iTunes and was the cause of these crashes. But since it only happened ocasionaly with certain video files I wasn't able to find the relation between the two applications.

But today, as I was doing some maintenance on my System Preferences, I notice the Perian section and decided to have a look and suddenly everything made sense: Perian makes some changes so as to allow playback of different video formats, right? So it must deal with video codecs, right? So, it may be related to the video crashes on iTunes... I decided to remove Perian and "voilá"...everything seems to be working just fine in iTunes now. At least, the videos that frequently crashed my Mac, now work like a charm.

Funny stuff: the new version of the Microsoft/Gates/Seinfeld ad

The first version was no fun, this one is better:



Source: bit.ate (in Portuguese)

Spore Origins for iPod: my review

As soon as I knew that a version of Spore was released for 5G iPods, I "ran to the nearest" iTunes store and purchased the game (here). This is what I've been playing for the last 2 days (that is, whenever I have my iPod around and have some free time to kill).


Spore Origins is more of a teaser than an actual game, but it is still great fun. It allows you to play the first stage of the newly-released game Spore, a simulation-based game (kind of like The Sims) that allows you to control a living being from its micro-cellular stage up to a level where space exploration takes place.

For now, I won't be playing Spore as it was only released for Mac OS X Leopard and since I only have Tiger installed, this will have to wait until I upgrade. By the way, if you're one of the lucky guys that is already playing Spore, check out the cheat codes for the game.

But we're here to talk about Spore Origins and I have to say that I didn't have this much fun with my iPod ever since I purchased iQuiz. You start the game as a small organism which has to survive by eating smaller organisms and staying away from larger ones. But as you keep going and collect DNA points, you're able to "evolve" your organism and add some features to it, such as enhancing its movement, defence or attack capabilities.

This is where the game gets really interesting, because the level of flexibility allows gamers to create the strangest organisms that you can imagine. Check out a demo video:


But these changes in your living being should not be made lightly as they will determine its success throughout the following levels. For example, I had to restart the game because I didn't "invest" in defence capabilities and got "stuck" in a level where these were crucial for my organism's survivability.

I know what you're thinking: being an iPod game, it can't be that interesting because the controls are very limited. Well, it doesn't feel that way, I assure you. The click-wheel, as with everything with the iPod, is very intuitive and it feels like a normal joystick in a typical 2D game.

Even though this game is just a way of opening up your appetite for the real deal, you can still have some real fun while in the train/bus on your way to work.

Fully recommended!

No Google Chrome for Mac? Don't worry, Firefox will do just fine

At first I was somewhat sad that Google didn't release a Mac OS X version of their new open ultra-mega-super-sweet browser, Chrome. Well, why shouldn't I? They even published a nice comic book that explains how they came up with it.

But then everything went back to normal when this Lifehacker's post reminded me why it's so great to have extensions in Firefox. :-)


Anyway, this won't stop me from trying the Mac OS X version of Google Chrome as soon as it's released. I'm actually looking forward to it. Well, let's wait and see...

The Seinfeld/Gates/Microsoft ad

As I posted before, Seinfeld was being recruited by Microsoft to be a part of the new marketing campaign to try and take down the negativity brought by years of those "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads. And even though Jerry Seinfeld was once part of one of Apple's "Think Different" ads, he accepted the offer from Microsoft (after all it was $10M, who wouldn't?) and crossed to the "dark side".

The following video seems to be the first ad of the new Microsoft's marketing wave. However, this feels more like a teaser, since nothing much is divulged. Basically, Seinfeld assists Bill Gates in buying some nice shoes at affordable prices (like if any of them needs it) and in exchange gets a glimpse of the future at Microsoft...See for yourself!



I sure hope there's more to it than this, because I don't quite see how this is going to change people's perception of Windows. It is basically trying to create a hype for the upcoming Microsoft technology (Windows 7?) in a attempt to divert people's attention from the failure that was Vista.

Let's wait... for now! :-)

How to efficiently manage your clipboard

Working with multiple text documents can be a very tough task, specially when you have a lot of copy-pasting to do. And the usual shortcut keys (Cmd+C, Cmd+V), while very handy, are not enough to deal with multiple pieces of text.

That's why Jumpcut is so great:

"Jumpcut is an application that provides "clipboard buffering" — that is, access to text that you've cut or copied, even if you've subsequently cut or copied something else. The goal of Jumpcut's interface is to provide quick, natural, intuitive access to your clipboard's history."

It allows you to set a hot key dedicated to this special "Paste" feature and then, with an interface similar to Quicksilver, you can choose which of the previous "Copys" you want to use.

Give it a try. It's quite handy!

Speed up your Mac

Mac Tips and Tricks has posted a great list of tips for speeding up your Mac. Check it out here.

We use Macs because we want to...not because we have to

CNET's "The Open Road" blog has come up with a diagram that shows an interesting behaviour in web search regarding operating systems (Blue = Microsoft; Red = Linux; Orange = Apple) for the last 90 days:

In case you're wondering, the A mark corresponds to the day when iPhone 3G went on sale and the B mark corresponds to the day when iPhone 3G was announced. But the interesting behaviour is not related to iPhone 3G. It's that noticeable valley-shaped lines for Microsoft and Linux (Blue and Red lines, respectively). And before you ask, those valleys correspond to weekends.

So, what does this means? Well, this is somehow speculative, but it seems that Microsoft and Linux users only "deal" with their operating systems during the week, when they are working, i.e., when they "have to". On the other hand, if you look at the orange line (corresponding to Apple-related searches), you'll see that this is stronger during weekends, exactly when people tend to do things they "want to", instead of the things they "have to" do.

Bottom line... it looks like Apple has figured out how to make us "want to" use our computers, by making it simple, fun and intuitive.