Quick Look: DOES Windows 7 copy Mac?

Yesterday, I went to Best Buy to test out Windows 7. Before, I had seen a release candidate of it, and it looked pretty cool. But when I saw it again, it looked so much more fresh.

Just by the look of it, I can’t really judge whether they made Windows 7 less power-hungry. It still looks like it consumes just as much processor power as Vista.

My take on Apple’s “Magic” mouse

Apple's Magic Mouse, side view

When I first looked at that, I thought the thing was a base for one of the new MacBooks. It turns out that it’s a mouse or an iPhone casing. Here’s how Apple puts it:

It began with iPhone. Then came iPod touch. Then MacBook Pro. Intuitive, smart, dynamic. Multi-Touch technology introduced a remarkably better way to interact with your portable devices — all using gestures. Now we’ve reached another milestone by bringing gestures to the desktop with a mouse that’s unlike anything ever before. It’s called Magic Mouse. It’s the world’s first Multi-Touch mouse. And while it comes standard with every new iMac, you can also add it to any Bluetooth-enabled Mac for a Multi-Touch makeover. (source: http://www.apple.com/magicmouse/)

Obviously, the Magic Mouse’s main goal was to transfer touch technology first developed for the iPhone and iPod Touch to a computer mouse.

It is basically a touch-screen mouse, replacing having to click a button with just tapping the mouse.

Honestly, the only thing I like about this mouse is its futuristic seamless design. However, it looks nothing like a mouse but more like something you would see from Star Trek or a sci-fi movie.

The disadvantages to such a mouse is that people who are fidgety tend to tap their fingers on their mouses while working. On a touch mouse like this, that can cause inadvertent clicks.

I can imagine that the mouse would also look extremely confusing. One possible scenario that derives from it’s perfect symmetricality is that a user could be holding the mouse upside down and not even know it.

I see the fact that buttons are absent as a disadvantage. It’s not all that bad, considering that you aren’t confined to a scroll wheel, but the mouse no longer simulates the clicking that users are used to. Many of us use audio clues to tell if we’ve done something or not. With the Magic Mouse these audio clues are gone.

The Magic mouse also has a lesser curved surface than most mouses. This makes your hand flatter and thus slower at moving the mouse. Piano players, we all know that a curved hand contributes to faster movement of fingers than a flattened hand. But then again, if your hand is too curved, that can cause muscle strain. My opinion: too flat, but it just had to be that way.

Last but not least, the price is 69 dollars. That’s a bit on the pricey side, and you’re paying about 30 dollars more just to get touch features. Apple likes to call all this “life-changing,” but haven’t we lived just fine with regular mouses?

Here’s what Apple needs to do: raise up the curvature, put the buttons back, and make it more clear which side is up or down.

I give the Magic Mouse a 6/10, and I do not recommend it. Stick with the Mighty Mouse. It follows the standards more closely.

Oh, and before you go, I must mention this: I’m basing this knowledge from what I’ve seen, not what I’ve tried. I hope to go out this weekend to test the Magic Mouse to see how Magic it is.

Now Posting from myBlogEdit

This is the third application for blogging that I’ve tried. It’s called myBlogEdit by MOApp. You can find the application at here (Mac OS only).
So far, the application is great. It’s like ScribeFire, but as an application, not an addon. The blog editor has a simple interface quite similar to ScribeFire. It allows for multiple accounts, but only supports WordPress, Movable Type, TypePad, and ExpressionEngine. Blogspot, as far as I know, is not supported.
One of the most striking differences I’ve seen in this app is that it’s mostly HTML-based. This may scare you at first, but you really don’t need to know any HTML. You can type in the application as you would write a regular blog post or email. But if you want to format your blog post to have small letters, emphasized text,

or preformatted text,

then it might take a while to get used to. There is actually a menu containing HTML tags with descriptions of what the tags do, like emphasized text, blockquote, etc. The editor also comes with HTML syntax highlighting.
Another difference from ScribeFire is the ability to add tags, not Technorati tags, but actual WordPress tags that will be included in your post. You also get a handy sidebar with a list of previous blog entries which can be edited.
The worst part about this application is that it is not free. You must purchase the editor to get the full advantage. If not purchased, myBlogEdit will only let you post or edit up to fifteen times. Pretty lame.
This is the most advanced blog editor I have used so far. Luckily I know a bit of HTML, so the application seems much simpler. I wish for this blog editor to have a visual text editor and support more blogging platforms, as well as categories in WordPress (which I never use). Other than that, this application deserves an 8/10 and I recommend it to anyone who blogs prolifically, and will only publish 15 more blog entries. If you are going to blog more than 15 times, this application is great to try, but the limit is really annoying and just for that, I give the application a 5/10 and will leave it up to you to decide if you want to download the application or not.
NEW DEVELOPMENT: For the trial version, the Publish button does not work. Sure, the editor is all fancy, but if the publish button doesn’t work, then it’s a piece of crap. Rating downgraded to 1/10. I avoid giving it a 0 since it works for the most part.

The last Mac Curse

I’ve hated macs since 8 months ago, when my computer started acting up. I immediately realized that PCs were still better, with the persuasion of some people on Wikipedia.

It didn’t always be this way. I used to like Windows because I had no idea what a Mac was. When my dad bought a Mac mini and when my friends persuaded me to switch to mac, that’s when the magic happened. I immediately loved it’s sleek interface and cool design, and it was faster than my six-year old PC.

Today, what happened two years ago may happen again. My faith in Macs will probably be restored when I test out my friend’s Mac.

UPDATE (16:25 PST): I am writing a report on the evaluation and will release it, hopefully, by next week. There will be a link posted here

Technorati Tags: mac, pc, windows, test

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Scribbles: A Great Bitmap editor for Mac

About a week ago, my friend Darren (a.k.a. onekopaka) got an application for twitter called Tweetie. He started using it, so when I hovered over the “From Tweetie” part of the tweet, it went to a URL called atebits.com

Intrigued, I followed aling and discovered that atebits.com also authored this “revolutionary” new app called Scribbles. I had been searching for a new bitmap editor other than sucky old Paintbrush, and I finally came across Scribbles. Without hesitation, I downloaded the program and to my delight, it was not an annoying .pkg file that required admin permission to install. I could try it for myself without hacking my Mac!

The moment I opened the application, I wondered “where did everything go?” The user iinterface was very simple: a color picker, four “function” buttons and a brush selector. I quickly discovered that each button did way more than I expected. My favorite feature was the 3-in-1 move feature, which comprised of move, rotate, and resize. Scribbles also ran much faster tan sluggish Paintbrush, and I knew that I would stick with this for a while.

A few days later, I designed the header image for this blog using Scribbles. I also discovered that I could publish my drawings to the atebits website, and I did that with “Dots in a Matrix”, a drawing I made, literally, in two seconds. I also discovered the tracing paper function which allowed the Scribbles canvas to be semitransparent so that I could trace an image from a website. I started doing one today, but gave up. However, there are some great artworks that have been done using the tracing paper feature.

Although this program was awesome, it did lack a few features. It had a brush, but only a brush; no fill color, no rectangle, circle, square… but there were a plurality of brushes from rainbow to calligraphy. The color picker was also lacking in some features such as the ability to select preset colors and define colors by a hexadecimal code. It was, indeed, just a color wheel. Unfortunately, Scribbles wasn’t really a “free” application, meaning to get the “full” version, you had to pay $19.95, which is an overrated price to pay just to get rid of an inconspicuous watermark and disable the registration reminder screen.

Scribbles’ functionality and simplicity both deserve big stars, but it does lack in some features. I would recommend the software to all you Mac Users, and I give it a rating of 8/10.