Putting your Mac display to sleep

When I was on Tiger, I used a Dashboard Widget called Sleep Display.  It worked great because there was not a quicker way to do this.  Well, when I upgraded to Snow Leopard, I found out that the widget no longer worked!  Luckily, it was easy to track down a keyboard shortcut.  I guess starting with Leopard (10.5) you’ve been able to press Control-Shift-Eject and presto!  Instant display sleep!

Dismissing Tiger

No, not Tiger Woods, I mean OS X 10.4.  I’ve actually moved into 2009 by finally installing Snow Leopard.  I must say, I quite like it!

One thing I notice about it right away though: it takes up about 200MB more RAM than Tiger did.  Don’t know if that’s something about my system or not, but now I’m thinking I need to install more memory.  If Snow Leopard isn’t supposed to take up so much memory, please let me know how to get it back down to where it’s supposed to be!

I’ll also be playing with both iLife and iWork, although I think iLife will be more useful to me.  iWord seems to be great, but I (as most of us) live in a Windows world and being more compatible with MS Office is just a wee bit more important than being really cool.

Taking the plunge

Okay, I went out and bought myself Snow Leopard.  I need to backup my system (probably using SuperDuper), then I’ll go ahead and do the update.  It’ll be interesting to go straight from Tiger to Snow Leopard, but I’m definitely looking forward to it.

I’m really interested in the iLife suite, but not so much in iWork.  I already have the Microsoft Office suite and just about everyone I deal with at work uses it, so I guess I better stick with it.

Updates coming soon!

Microsoft security no longer an oxymoron?

Windows:

According to this article from Lifehacker, you can have a reasonably secure system by following some common sense advice and by using Microsoft’s free antivirus software, Security Essentials.  You know me and good, free software.  I’m all over it!  Especially since it’s not my main system at home, it’s a lot easier to use when I don’t have to pay for it.

Upgraded to Snow Leopard yet?

I haven’t yet.  Yes, I am behind the times just a little bit…

Well, if you haven’t and want to (I still have Tiger…), but also have to make sure all your must-run apps work, better run your system by Snow Leopard Compatibility Checker.

Up, Up, and… away?

Yes, I have an iPhone. Yes, I have RC airplanes. But put the two together? Never!

However, these guys did and I think they just created a new ad for Apple.

Mac emulator on iPhone

Now this is cool.  You know I’m a big fan of emulators, and this is one of the more interesting ones.  Who wouldn’t want a retro-Mac on their iPhone.

The catch?  You need to jailbreak it.  I’m tempted…

From AppleThoughts

Web-based Photo editors

I was starting to write up a post comparing web-based photo editors, but it appears that CNET has beaten me to it!  (Thanks to the awesome Lifehacker site for this link)

I do like using GIMP, but it’s still not a ‘real’ Mac app.  And I know there are some good native apps, but nothing that’s really appealed to me yet (a combo of features and ease that some, dare I say it, Windows apps have — I often use PhotoFiltre in Windows under Parallels.).   By the way, I am talking free apps here (most of the web-based editors are free, but a couple of them charge for their services…).

Anyhoo, you should be able to find an editor you like in here somewhere.

Hellfire on sale!

One of the more talked about games for the iPhone these days is Hellfire by Handmark.  Well right now, you can get it on sale for $2.99 (regularly $4.99).  Head on over to the iTunes AppStore and pick yourself up a copy if you haven’t yet.  You’ll be glad you did (if you’re into those kind of games — you know, flying a combat helicopter, blasting bad guys — that kind of stuff…). I would provide a direct link, but I’m not sure how to do that.  I’ll figure that out as soon as I post this and maybe update the post in a little while.

Updating my iPhone…

At this very minute, I’m downloading the new 2.2.1 firmware for my iPhone 3G.  I’ll let you know if anything goes amiss!

Wish me luck.