Monday, March 15 2010
Written by Michael Swengel on March 4, 2010
Ubuntu, a free operating system based on Linux, has finally been given a facelift after six years. Some of the new artwork for Ubuntu's 10.04 release has been unveiled. (Keep in mind these are images of a pre-release version of Ubuntu and are subject to change before the release of Ubuntu 10.04 in April). Since its creation in 2004, the tagline behind Ubuntu has been "Linux for Human Beings." T...
Written by Michael Swengel on February 9, 2010
The next installment in the Ubuntu Linux saga is due out in April. It is code named Lucid Lynx. Ubuntu 10.04 is an LTS (long term support) release - meaning it will be officially supported for three years on desktops and five years on servers. My tests with the current alpha version show a greatly improved boot time over that of 9.10 Karmic. For this coming release, the Ubuntu team wants to cut...
Written by Michael Swengel on February 2, 2010
As of today, Apple has released iPhone OS 3.1.3. This update is for all models of the iPhone and all models of the iPod Touch. NOTE: If your device is jailbroken and/or unlocked, DO NOT UPDATE to firmware 3.1.3. This update WILL break your baseband. To update your device to iPhone OS 3.1.3: Connect your iPhone / iPod Touch to iTunes. Select your device in the iTunes sidebar. Click 'U...
Written by Michael Swengel on February 1, 2010
During an internal meeting in the wake of Apple's release of the iPad, Steve Jobs explained to Apple employees why the iPhone and iPad have yet to support Flash - and likely never will. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it's because of Flash. No one will be using Flash. The world is moving to HTML5. Really? Flash is buggy? An archit...
Written by Michael Swengel on January 31, 2010
With the release of Apple's iPad running iPhone OS version 3.2, we see the operating system still lacks support for the Adobe Flash platform. The iPhone OS shows the infamous blue lego where Flash content should be. Adobe's Flash platform is actually a collection of Web 2.0 technologies that allow content publishers to deliver a rich, interactive media experience to the end user. Flash brings to...
Written by Michael Swengel on January 30, 2010
Traditionally, Apple's products have been innovative and interesting - appealing to a large portion of the tech community. The Apple II kicked off the age of personal computing. The iPod changed the way people listen to music and audio content. The iPhone has revolutionized the smartphone and mobile computing industries. Can Apple's newest creation, the iPad, compete with the successes of its pas...
Written by Michael Swengel on November 12, 2009
When the iPhone was first introduced to the market, it was readily adopted. It's touch-screen interface and multimedia capabilities were revolutionary in the smartphone market. But it left a lot to be desired. Immediately, developers were eager to get their hands on the guts of the operating system and start fabricating their own apps for the platform. At the time Apple was understandably relu...
Written by Michael Swengel on October 23, 2009
The iPhone OS and the App Store have been an excellent platform for programmers of all sizes to design and code applications for delivery to customers. Unfortunately, writing applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch requires a working knowledge of Apple's developer tools and the Objective-C programming language. The Objective-C programming language is the foundation of Apple's Mac OS X and the ...
Written by Michael Swengel on October 17, 2009
After taking my MacBook Pro in for a hard drive and optical drive replacement on the 10th, I was rather curious how the repair was going. Tuesday, October 13th, I called the Apple Store for a status update. I very nicely asked about the repair. The tech said they had not had a chance to get to it yet. Since it was only the second business day of the week, that's understandable. There were other...
Written by Michael Swengel on October 14, 2009
I have finally given in. My MacBook Pro is sick. It's hard drive had been clicking quite a bit. To some degree it's normal for a hard drive to click, but when it's constant and loud, you know something is up. Ironically, I confirmed the hard drive was bad when I attempted to create a small partition for Fedora Linux. I wanted to try out Fefora 11 since I have not used the distro since version 9...
