MacLearner

In the last few weeks we have seen an ad campaign by Microsoft, that implies that Macs are too expensive. Few people understand that this is a myth.
Clearly, many people when confronted with the opportunity of buying a computer consider price to be one of the most important variables. Certainly one cannot buy a laptop at any price, since few people can shell out more than a few thousand dollars to buy a computer.
However, if you do a clear analysis, it becomes clear that the exact cost of a computer is not the most important factor to consider when you are buying a new machine.

Factors in Buying a Laptop

First, remember that a laptop is one of your more personal working items. A laptop is even more personal than a paper notebook. You use it everyday, for many hours per day.
Consider the price of a laptop, divided by the days it is used, and you will see that it is one of the cheapest items you use.
For example, suppose you use a laptop for 3 years, which is standard for a Mac. This is more than 1000 days. This is less than two dollars per day, even if you buy a $2K laptop.
Two dollars per day, on the other hand, is less than the cost of a sandwich.
What do you think is more useful, a $2 sandwich that will keep you for a few hours, or a working tool that you will use during the whole day?
Also, notice that the laptop is useful everyday, even on weekends…
Looking from this side here are a few features that I consider more important:

• quality of screen
• easy of use
• quick service on case of damage

While the advertisement by MS makes sense on the surface, when you stop to think about the factors, it really doesn’t add up… What do you think?

As workers in the knowledge information era, there are specific software that anyone must be familiar with in our companies. For example, word processing is an early example of software that virtually everyone needs to use.

In most companies, however, presentation packages are coming close to word processing in the competition for the most used piece of software. What is more common in American businesses than scheduling and delivering meetings? If you want to grow in your company you must be able to communicate well in meetings, and this involves using a presentation package such as Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Keynote.

The MacOS X is the operating system used in all modern Macs. It was developed by Apple to respond to the growing gap between the capabilities of modern operating systems and the existing Mac OS 9. Previous versions of Mac OS were all based on the code developed in the 80s, when the Macintosh platform was still based on early microchips.

Mac OS X came as an evolution of a previous operating system, the NextStep. NextStep was created by a company founded by Steve Jobs, and its goal was to bring the power of UNIX systems to the desktop. Although the company succeeded in creating a new operating system, it failed commercially and was later sold to Apple.

Merging UNIX and Mac OS

After the return of Steve Jobs to the board of Apple, the Operating System used on the Next machines was modified to run the Macintosh software. It was really a difficult process where two separate traditions of software making, namely UNIX and Mac OS, had to converge in order to create something bigger.

The result of the merge between NextStep and MacOS was an operating system that had a proven design and a user friendly user interface. The Mac OS X was initially released as an optional operating system, while Mac OS 9 was still the official version.

Later on, Mac OS X was sold as the sole operating system, although Mac OS 9 was maintained for compatibility reasons. Even as late as 2005 I had the chance to run quite a few programs using the Mac OS 9 emulator in a PowerPC box.

The versions of Mac OS X are named after felines. The names of big cats used up to now are: Cheetah, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, and Leopard. All thes versions introduced new features and enhancements, but the basic operating system, based on UNIX, has remained the same with only improvements and additions.

Conclusion

Mac OS X is the result of several iterations of software development. It follows the traditions of UNIX (through the NextStep operating system) and Mac OS, the original system used by the Macs. Mac OS X is rapidly evolving and new releases are frequently released by Apple. Nowadays, Mac OS X is used not only in desktops, but is also the operating system used in portable devices such as the iPhone and iPod touch.

Related Posts

• Mac OS X versus Windows: is Vista enough?
• Using the overheat macbook as a toaster

An outliner is a software used to create and maintain structured content. You can use an outliner to create the structure of a blog post, an essay for school, or for a project at your job. No matter what the task at hand, it is always useful to structure your ideas, and nothing better to do this than an outliner.

Thankfully, there is also no better platform to use outliners than the Macintosh. Since its inception, creative people of all professions have used Macs. This being the reason why there are so many great outliners for the Mac, as compared to other operating systems such as Windows.

In this article, I will talk mainly about the most well known outliner of all, OmniOutliner (from the Omni Group). Many of the options on OmniOutliner, however, are available in other products, which Iwill cover with more datail in the future.

Using an Outliner

The basics of an outliner such as OmniOutliner is to create an structure, that can later on be filled with real information. Think for example on the relationship between a book and its table of contents. While a book has lots of information, it also has a clear structure that is present on its table of contents. An outliner can be used to create the table of contents and transform it into a full book, with details filled for each section.

The main interface of the OmniOutliner allows users to create main topics, subtopics, sub-subtopics, up to the contents of each division.

OmniOutliner allows one to use a graphical interface with buttons for these common operations. It also provides several keyboard shortcuts, that allow very fast data entry and formatting. OmniOutliner is not only useful to create outlines, but it also helps in visualizing data. Sometimes we have data that is structure in a hierarchical format, such as for example an XML document. With an outliner, we can visualize the elements of such a hierarchy, by looking just at the elements that are of immediate interest.

A good outliner also provides many export options, so that users have the freedom to transform the data they created into one of several output formats. OmniOutliner provides a large number of export options, so that users can translate their data into the required output format, such as a MS Word document, for example.

Conclusion

Outliners have many applications, and can be used as personal organizers, digital notebooks, or just as a place to joint down random ideas. However, a good outliner is essential to hold data and organize information. It is really great that Macs have a good number of outliners, from which OmniOutliner is just a good example.

Related Posts

• Mac versus PC, a comparison
• Making your old Mac run a little faster

We are changing for the better. MacLearner is incorporating the content from the previous blog AppleInTheNews, and extending it for new audiences. We have lots of information starting from 2006 that will be updated and made ready for MacLearner users.

We will start also with a shorter update cycle, which will benefit all our readers. More information will be made available than ever, so you can learn as much as possible about Macs.

If you have question, let us know.  And refer this to your friends if you like it.

If you are a Mac fan you already know how better the Macs are compared to similar PCs. What many people think, however, is that this is just an exaggeration by Apple users.

In the past it was difficult to do any direct comparisons between Macs and PC, mainly because the processors used were so different. People always complained about comparisons that would show processors with the same speed, and not accounting for the differences in architecture between PCs and Macs.

Now that Apple has moved to use Intel processors on its whole line, it has become much easier to draw more meaningful comparisons. And they are starting to appear. For example, see this one from popular mechanics:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/reviews/4258725.html?page=1

After matching two pairs of Macs and PCs, they reached the not-so-difficul-to-draw conclusion that Macs are much faster to start up and shut down, and perform much better in a set of stardard tasks.

Moreover, their tests show that Apple machines run Windows faster then similar PCs.

Still, this is not the ultimate test that is going to convince the hard-core PC followers. However, it shows that is becomming easier to make this kind of comparison, and the reality will eventually become clearer for everyone.

Macs are fantastic machines, but sometimes they also have their performance problems. I have my Mac running well for years, day and night, and it has been pretty capable to handle the load.

There are times, however, when you want to improve the performance of you system. If that is the case, it is interesting to check possible areas where you could get extra performance of your old Mac box.

I have a handy list of things to look for in my Mac from time to time. I run through this list to make sure that I get the best performance of my machine, and that Mac OS X keeps running fine. Here are some of my tips:

• Take notice of the programs you are installing in the background. Mac OS X is highly reliable, but there are some programs that keep running in the background, and therefore take resources that should be made available to other programs. For example, I used to have small Java-based utilities installed. They can be very nice, but also take their toll from you processor. Nowadays, I prefer to remove any background program that is not doing anything used in my system.
• Install latest updates. This is hard not to do, but am lazy enough to dismiss the Mac OS X update screen when it pops up. Of course, it will be there the next day, so it is better to do updates the first time they come.
• Avoid multiple programs to do the same thing: I used to have multiple IM programs (now I mostly use Adium. Also, I used to have multiple browsers opened at the same time (Firefox, Safari, and Opera are my preferred). Now, I decided to use only Safari as my main browser. This both simplifies my life and uses less resources of my machine.

In summary, I am pretty happy with the speed and great performance of my Mac. However, I learned with time to make better use of the system resources, so I don’t have to wait more than I really want to. This way, I can also spend more time with the programs that I like, such as iTunes, iDVD…

Having a Mac is a dream for a lot of people, but at the same time it can be expensive. New Macs are always loaded with the best technology, and great technologies, such as automator, time machine, the new aqua interface. However, at the same time, the price tag for new macs can be prohibitive, especially if you are used to PCs from HP or Dell, selling nowadays by close to $300.

A solution for you may be at hand: look for used Macs on sell at eBay. EBay is by far the most famous place to sell used technical equipment. It allows users to contact sellers directly, and this makes life easier for everyone.

Here are some advantages of using eBay to locate your new Mac, fully loaded with Mac OS X:

• It is much easier to get information from sellers. With direct connection to the current owners, you can get the information you need about each equipment on sale.
• Large selection: In a traditional store, you have only a limited number of options. Even at the Apple store you will have only access to the latest models, although some of the older models could work just as well for your application.
• Better prices: since there is a large variety of Mac computers on sell at eBay, you can also find bargain prices, from people that want to sell fast. It is much easier to get bargains from owner than from stores, anyway.

So, if you desperately want that Mac but don’t feel you have enough money to afford, you should always take a look at eBay. It can very possibly make your shopping experience much better and cheaper.

Do you have any experience buying Macs on eBay? If yes, leave a comment describing it…

Apple and Google plan to collaborate even more – that is the message from Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, to the crowed that came to preview some of the Google’s innovations during a French event.
According to Google’s CEO, the cooperation just started with the integration of Youtube into Apple’s products, such as AppleTV and the iPhone. Scchmidt, who was demoing a very exclusive Apple iPhone, told the crowd that other collaborations where on the way, and that the Google-Apple combination would deliver notable technologies in the near future.
It will be very interesting to watch what these collaborative features would be. In fact, joining the network power of Google with the hardware and software excellence of Apple would result in pretty impressive products. Let us hope that this collaboration really works in the long run and that users can benefit from it.

Amid the large excitement about the launch of the iPhone next week, Apple is delievering a few more pieces of information on its web site.
The new information shows additional images of the cell phone, along with improved videos showing its functionality.
As was publicized yesterday, the iPhone will have direct access to iTube videos, which will make it even more attractive for web surfers that are used to view the newest videos on their computers.
There are still very few confirmed facts about the launch of the iPhone, except the release date. The media is busy trying to get additional information from Apple, and it will be interesting to watch what is gonna happen in the next few days.