To all my Mac OS X loving friends out there, here are two sites to keep you busy for a while.
Things Mac OS X – Here’s a one-stop shop with a list of all kinds of OS X goodies
Mac Freeware – It’s just like is says as well: FREE! 
Enjoy!
It looks like the Aussies are on to something, and it’s Mac-o-licious. Apparently Mac sales grew 52 percent in the 2nd quarter. Kreiky! That’s six times the overall rate of PCs AND better than the U.S. Way to go my Vegemite loving friend!
One can only wonder what would happen if Apple lowered their prices even more.
For those of you who are FireFox fans like me, who also Twitter you’ll really appreciate TwitterFox. TwitterFox is a very cool extension for FireFox that keeps you posted on your latest Tweets while allowing you to post and respond to those Tweets as well. It’s worth checking out.
It looks like the folks at Riverfold have updated their super cool Wii Transfer software.
Here’s a list of the new features:
- Copy Miis to your Mac and save them as JPEG images.
- Works with most common movie formats, including MOV, AVI, MPEG4, H.264, DivX, and more.
- Restrict browsing to specific iTunes playlists or iPhoto albums.
- Find iTunes and iPhoto movies directly within Wii Transfer for easy conversion.
If you’re interested in sharing movies, music, and photos via your Nintendo Wii, then I definitely recommend Wii Transfer. There’s plenty else this software can do, but I don’t want to steal any more of their thunder. Go and have a look for yourself. 
Impressive. I mean really impressive. I could go on and exaggerate my point, but those of you unfamiliar with owning an Apple product wouldn’t really get it. If you have never owned one then you won’t understand the amount of detail that goes into the packaging; you won’t understand that the removing of the packaging brings about the Christmas-like feeling of receiving a gift from that aunt who was the queen of gift wrapping (every family has one); you won’t understand that the folks in Cupertino must’ve thought through the entire experience from time of purchase to the registering of the product online. For those who haven’t experienced it, and I know it sounds like a load of bunk, — I sure thought it did before I owned an Apple product — it’s anything but that. Simply put, the Apple folks are very good at what they do.
We got our iMac yesterday. As you know by now, I was pleased. Despite having opened more than a few boxes from the folks in Cupertino before, the thrill remained. Pulling out that 24″ feat of engineering marvel was all I expected it to be and a little more. But enough about unpackaging.
The machine itself is awesome. In true Apple form, it wasn’t just pretty, the iMac is truly impressive. I’m one of those types who finds it silly to call an inanimate object “sexy”, so I’m not about to do that if that’s what you’re expecting; nevertheless, the lines and shape were like nothing I’ve seen in the computer world before. The design awards Apple receives are truly earned. It’s one thing to see an iMac on display in a store, it’s another thing altogether having it set up in the room you want in your home and listening to it power up for the first time.
“But Harlem, can the thing run?!?”
Oh yes it can. It’s pretty much what the doctor ordered, but with less noise. Our iMac more than handled the small paces I’ve put it through thus far, but there will be more to come, especially from my wife and her voice work. One of the “Ooooo WOW!” moments I had yesterday was checking out some movie trailers in HD. That was nice! I was also pleased to hear my lovely voice professional wife approve of the speaker quality. Now this doesn’t mean she’s quite ready to give up the Bose Companion II speakers yet (they would go rather nicely with my MBP, but I digress), but impressing her isn’t easy. All that said, there will be more to come on exactly what it can do.
If any of you have been considering buying an iMac I’m definitely one who would tell you it’s worth it. I’m sure you’ll be impressed. If you’ve never owned anything Apple before, you’ll be more than impressed.
BTW, even the cloth for cleaning the monitor was wrapped as if it were an invitation to a formal dinner. I kid you not. Laterz.
Regulars readers of this blog will recall my complaint about the iPhone 3G being overpriced through the only provider in Sweden, Telia. Well, if this story in the L.A. Times is any indication of the future of the iPhone 3G worldwide, I may have to break down and buy one. Of course, the price will have to be somewhat reasonable, but if I can buy one without being tied to Telia, odds of me doing so increase dramatically. Then, the circle will be pretty much complete and I could in no way deny being a Mac-o-holic. “MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!” …er, sorry about that.
Yep. I’m about to write something that won’t surprise anyone. We, my beautiful wife and I, ordered a nice little iMac 24″-er, 2.86GHz (okay, I know it’s not really “little”). It was inevitable and actually necessary.
Besides working for one of the best PR companies in Stockholm, my wife also does voice work (pardon the pride here, but I’m talking about the most beautiful woman on the planet, thank you very much). It turned out that her voice work was a little more intensive than I suspected it would be for a MacBook. Yeah, a MacBook Pro would’ve been a better option, but she didn’t want to fork out that much money at the time (for my American readers out there, slap on another thousand dollars to what you would pay for one in the U.S. and you start to understand what she means). Her little-MacBook-that-could held out well and survived it all. Nevertheless, she now agrees that some hardware with a little more power is called for to help professionalize the way she does her voice work. She agreed to purchasing an iMac 24″, something I had in my long term plans [and yes, my love, I believe this was actually something I did mention when we sat down in the kitchen and wrote out our short-, medium-, and long-term purchases list], and as my friends on FaceBook can attest to from my “My Apple Life, Stuff iWant” section. It appears that today is the lucky day move the one item left in my “Stuff iWant” section to the “Stuff iHave” section. We received notification of delivery yesterday. You can expect to hear more about our iMac experiences in the future.
Before I start with the that though, I’ll have to write about the wonderful experience I had upgrading the hard drives for my wife’s MacBook, and my MacBook Pro using Time Machine to restore out data. Long story short: it was a piece of cake. Details to come.
