2012 June

Swipetie Review: Is This Not the Classiest iPhone Accessory?

June 30, 2012 By Michael Leave a Comment

Ties are often percieved as either nerdy or formal, but my new tie takes it to a whole ‘nother level. Swipe Tie sent me their insanely awesome tie to review, and you’ve gotta read what this thing does.

Swipe Tie is a fine, handmade tie with a BUILT IN Hidden microfiber cloth to clean your glasses, iphone, ipad, etc. I hate screen smudges, and the Swipe tie performed briliantly against dirt, finger prints, and a little bit of water. My colors were classic, came in a really snazzy packaging (I love the art of packaging- one of Apple’s finest achievements, and SwipeSwipe’s too) and the colors I got were called Wolverine. How sick is that as a name for a tie?

Wolverine Colored Swipe Tie- The Tie with a hidden secret

The tie itself was comfortable, classy, and it’s just so cool to have a tie with a function. I will definately be showing this off to all my nerdy friends (and my dad-Papa Geek recieved one from me for father’s day). The workmanship and functionality of my snazzy new tie definately makes it a great gift for any male iphone owner (and a creative one too).

Filed Under: product, Reviews Tagged With: Accesories, ipad, iphone, mobile device, Product, review, Reviews

Apple About to Redesign Itunes? About time

June 29, 2012 By Michael Leave a Comment

There have been several reports that Apple is about to overhaul itunes, and to that I say I hope so. Why? It’s long overdue. Other services have been catching up, and the current itunes is bloated, slow, and outdated.

Over the past few years, several useful features such as CD burning have been removed from itunes while Apple only added Ping. Ping, Apple’s social network for music, has flopped miserably after a major release.

Itunes sales have still grown, but the software needs a serious facelift, and the service needs a complete overhaul.

So what will we see in the new itunes?

Itunes 2012 will be much more cloud focussed. Itunes will probably move mostly to the web, and movies will probably be streamable like netflix. A monthly streaming service is possible, but unlikely. Apple might even try to add itunes into their icloud.com service. I’m in the dark on much of this one, and I’m curious to see how Apple responds to the growing threat of the fantastic Spotify, and the enjoyable Google Music. We’ll see. What do you think we’ll see?

Filed Under: apple, itunes, Rumor Tagged With: app, App Store, Apple, Application, ipad, iphone, ipod, ipod touch, itunes, iTunes 11, iTunes Store, Mac, movies, music, Store

Chrome Hits 310 Million + users #Calledit #Google

June 28, 2012 By Michael Leave a Comment

Well, I told you so. I said Chrome was the browser of the future and I was right. To be honest, I stopped using Chrome much on my Mac due to RAM limitations, but that will soon no longer be a problem.

Chrome’s biggest advantage may just be what made me stop using it. My mac only has 2 GB of RAM and each tab, app, and extension in Chrome takes up a massive amount of RAM. This is all thanks to a process called Sandboxing which fragments your browser and walls each tab off from the rest of your computer to keep it safe. It’s a great feature, but the usage was just too high for a 2GB RAM mac while using other applications. With newer, faster RAM, and with most high quality laptops coming preloaded with 4 GB of RAM right now, Chrome will perform much better, and I plan to use it on my next computer. I already use it on my Windows machine. We’ll also see RAM use decreases as the bloated and unstable flash fades away in favor of more well built plugins and HTML 5.

Are you still not using Chrome? Your loss.

Other advantages include browser syncing which means that you can access all of your tabs, bookmarks, passwords, apps, and more from any computer with chrome by simply logging into your Google account. It has a massive app store with plenty of helpful apps and extensions, and its’ ease of use is second to none. Despite my RAM troubles, I’d reccomend that anyone starts using Chrome, and anyone can thanks to the widespread support, from Mac, to Windows, to Linux, and even Android (possibly IOS soon).

Filed Under: browser, Google, news, web browser

New Macbook Pro Test Results

June 27, 2012 By Michael Leave a Comment

Hi all. Today I ran some more advanced functionality tests on the new macbook pro and it performed fantastically. Here are the sick results.

The Specs

2.3 GHz Intel Quad core i7 with 8 GB of 1600 DDR3 RAM with 251 GB SSD and Retina display.

Test 1- Multitasking

I was able to open and use 17 programs continually before seeing a slowdown. The SSD and RAM meant every program opened in under 4 seconds, and even with the 17 programs running I was sort of still able to operate the machine. This machine is definitely perfect or even overkill for even advanced video editors. If you’re doing 3D animation or building advanced special effects it might slow down a bit but it wouldn’t be worse than most current mac pro models. The best part about it though was that due to the SSD and lack of a fan, the machine was silent other than a video playing.

multitasking with 17 programs on the new lightening fast macbook pro

Test 2- Retina Display

The display shows text beautifully and I was able to play several full HD videos on the same screen. You could watch multiple full resolution videos with ease. Both of the videos below were streaming at full HD with NO slowdown. Beyond that, the machine was still lightening fast while they were streaming. The sound was noticeably better, but not as incredible as claimed. The screen has noticeably truer colors due to the new screen. I’ll talk more about these tests in later posts, but so far I’m highly impressed. The only thing that disappointed me, although it isn’t entirely their fault is the doubled pixels in non-Apple programs. As you hopefully can see in the word example below, the new Macbook Pro doubles pixels on old programs to bring text and photos to the proper size. Unfortunately it looks awful next to all other text on this beautiful beast of a screen. So that’s my one major dislike in an all-in-all fantastic machine. All other screens simply pail in comparison.

Streaming test

In unupdated programs, Pixels are doubled (ich)

the fantastic new macbook pro screen streaming HD video

Filed Under: apple, lion, mac, macbook pro, OSX

Swipetie Review: Is This Not the Classiest iPhone Accessory?

Apple About to Redesign Itunes? About time

So what will we see in the new itunes?

Chrome Hits 310 Million + users #Calledit #Google

Are you still not using Chrome? Your loss.