Daily Archives: December 6, 2007

Wii + Mac = Wii Transfer Fun

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I should be in bed now. I should be sleeping and dreaming about nice things. Instead, I’m up slapping together this last minute post about a nice piece of software I just downloaded called Wii Transfer because I just HAD to share this with you all!.

It seems the good folks at Riverfold Software have come up with a way for me to share movies, music, and pictures to my Wii from my Mac. Wii Transfer costs only $19, and it was well worth it. I have to add that there was also an additional cost of €10 (since I live in Europe) for purchasing 1000 Wii points (the lowest increment I could buy), 500 of which I needed to buy the Internet Channel, which the Wii uses.

Install and configuration took me a whopping 7 minutes (including connecting to my new Airport Extreme, which I forgot to connect to my Wii since purchasing the Extreme last Saturday), and then I was looking at some lovely pictures that were on my MacBook Pro.

This Christmas will definitely be a little merrier because of this.

Time for me to hit the sack.

Laterz.

Free Upgrade to 802.11n With OS X 10.5 Leopard

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So I’m listening to my usual group of podcasts this morning, and I hear something mentioned about Apple including an upgrade to 802.11n in OS X 10.5 Leopard for machines that have the hardware in them. “Naaah!” I think. I couldn’t be that fortunate. I mean after all, I just bought an Airport Extreme last Saturday and, while I admit my connection was pretty much flying from the time I installed my Airport Extreme, that would just be too cool. Then I head to work.

As you can imagine, I’m thinking about it all day long.

I get home, greet Da Minx, and head to my MacBook Pro. I take the necessary steps:

  1. Select the Finder’s Go menu, select Utilities (or you can go to Applications, then Utilities in Finder)
  2. Open up Network Utility
  3. Select the Info tab
  4. Select the Network Interface (en1) from the scroll down arrow
  5. Where you see Model: Wireless Network Adapter is where you find your answer. If it reads 802.11 a/b/g/n, then you’re in there. If you only see 802.11 a/b/g then you’re not 802.11n enabled

Here’s what I found:

802.11n Surprise

As you can imagine, I was pretty pleased.

Thanks Apple. ;)

Target: Apple Computers

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It shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone that Macs are increasingly becoming popular hacking targets for some. After all, attracting attention inevitably includes bad attention as well. While I’m sure there are some who love being part of the niche crowd of Mac users that stay relatively safe, I believe those days are coming to an end.

The word is out. Macs are more than just good looking machines, they’re powerful computers that are much more fun, easier to use, and more intuitive than a Windows PC. That makes them pretty desirable in our age of technology. It will be very interesting to see how well they sell this Christmas season. There’s little doubt they’re more secure overall than Windows machines as well, but I’m not one to deny part of ther security is in their obscurity.

A new challenge seems to be on the horizon for Apple; the challenge of going from a hacker target to possibly the hacker target. I have faith in the Curpertino crowd for now. As coders go, and let me clear in stating that I am not one, they appear to be some of the best in the world.

Despite what some like to think, there are advantages to producing a proprietary product. Apple should, in theory, be able to lock things up tighter than Microsoft. They definitely proved this when some iPhone owners, to their chagrin, discovered their phones were nothing more than bricks after they had unlocked them, added 3rd party goodies, and updated them with a software update from Apple. As crazy as it sounds, I never have, and probably never will blame Apple for that incident. If anything, they made a point they’ll be able to easily refer to in the future. If, or more likely when a virus starts taking down Macs through a third party piece of software they will be able to rightly point out it wasn’t their fault. Will they scream it from the rooftops? I don’t think so. That doesn’t seem to be the Apple way, thankfully. They didn’t do that regarding some of the claims against Unsanity’s APE (application enhancer) . They will likely quietly push out an update press on.

All that said, the challenges are there. Nevertheless, I remain confident in the Cupertino crowd. ;)

Laterz.