Tag Archive for 'mac'

TaskPaper Review

To be honest, I’ve never written out to-do lists until the beginning of this semester. I’m pretty sure I didn’t because I felt my memory was good enough to remember what I needed to get done on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. Last semester’s results seem to have proven otherwise.

I am aware that Mac OS X comes pre-equipped with some to-do list capable software, namely, iCal, Stickies and Dashboard Stickies; but when it came to the point at the beginning of this semester when I actually decided to write to-do lists, none of these cut it for me.

And so I began perusing the net for an alternative. I wanted something super simple, without a bunch of features I had no use for. It didn’t take long for me to find TaskPaper by Hog Bay Software.

TaskPaper

With TaskPaper, I simply use the Project button to label my different classes, the Task button to create, well, tasks for each class, and the Note button to include more detailed information about individual tasks. As I complete tasks, I simply click next to them and they’re crossed out and tagged as done. Ah, the great feeling of accomplishment.

Time to go back to checking off more tasks.

Macs do Windows even better with VMware Fusion

I currently use a Mac. Yes I do. But I’ve used Windows my whole life. I have my gripes about Windows, but I’m not arrogant, nor am I a fanboy. I know that most games are made exclusively for Windows and it doesn’t take a genius (or a fanboy for that matter) to figure out why. Windows XP has actually become quite a stable OS after all the service packs and the 7 years it’s been out. And even though the primary partition on my MacBook is OS X, I have Boot Camp and Windows XP installed for some programs that I just can’t run in OS X.

Like what? Like TVU Player. You see I don’t have cable TV and I’m a guy who likes to watch international live soccer (football) matches. When I was still only using Windows (about a year ago) I set out to find a way to watch these matches online. I knew about live TV channel streaming websites/applications but most of them had limited channels and usually not the ones I wanted (NASA TV isn’t really all that exciting after all). Somehow, I came to know of TVU Networks’ TVU Player, a sort of revolutionary global online streaming TV channel software. What a mouthful. And TVU had the channels and live games that I wanted to watch so badly, albeit having to stay up in the wee hours watching them (time zone differences) was still rather… um… tiring.

So I was happy and everything was cool. And then, after 1 or 2 years of wanting one, I bought a Mac. I instantly fell in love with Mac OS X for its simplicity, stability and power as an operating system. The applications that I most often used (except games) were all available on OS X in one way or another so that wasn’t really an issue for me. In fact, a couple of programs that I often used on Windows had no equivalents on the Mac. That is, anti-virus programs… OK sorry, that was a bit mean to all you Windows users. We all know why us Mac users don’t have to deal with viruses, so I’ll stop. And then, there were a number of Mac-only programs that I quite liked and which didn’t have equally powerful Windows counterparts. The iLife suite for example (although I barely have a use for it now), Adium, Delicious Library and Leopard’s Time Machine.

But the Mac had nothing like TVU Player. I perused Google for hours looking for a Mac alternative but to no avail. And this was all happening while the English Premier League was in full swing. Fortunately for me, there was Boot Camp. Not only would Boot Camp allow me to watch my live football games but I would also be able to play FIFA 07 (and later 08) on my laptop instead of on the home desktop PC. So I installed Windows XP on my MacBook and literally had “the best of both worlds”.

Recently, I discovered VMware Fusion. This small application allows you to “seamlessly run Windows, Linux and other PC operating systems on your Intel-based Mac.” And the program does what it claims very well. I won’t bore you with the features and instead “show off” a bit here in a more graphical manner (more pictures after the break).

TVU Player owns, now on Mac too thanks to VMware Fusion
TVU Player owns, now on Mac too thanks to VMware Fusion

Continue reading ‘Macs do Windows even better with VMware Fusion’

Say what, Apple?!

So I just installed Leopard today and was looking around for new features and noticed something in the Network Utilities app (in the Applications/Utilities folder) that struck my eye:

Say what, Apple?!

Who do you want to “finger”?