Noel Harrison

As a part of reviving my blog, I will be writing a application review for a while every month. The one that I am doing today is Remote. Remote runs on my Apple iPod Touch (most likely would run on the iPhone too).

This application links into iTunes and basically allows you to control your music on your computer from anywhere in a wifi area. It connects through a wireless network - so for that reason, direct line of sight is not required. Why is this so wonderful? Well lets say that you are having a function, in which you have 100 people all around your house, and you have your computer running the music.

If you want to change the kind of music, you could do it from any location in your home by simply logging onto Remote and changing the music selection. Say you want to soften the music to make an announcement, you can do this by simply sliding your finger over the sound slider which will either make the music softer or louder depending on the way you move it.

This application works both on a PC and a Mac, but PC does give some problems as far as remaining connected to the device - you have to open certain ports in your firewall to let it through. Anyway, this application is avaliable for free in the iPod app store.

Regards,

Noel Harrison

I did not want to write anything until I felt that I that I could cover enough about Mac. Mac is a wonderful operating system, so if you are a massive Windows supporter, now is the time that you should stop reading this blog post, or alternativly you could continue reading and tell me why you think Windows / PC is so great.

For a designer, it is the ultimate thing to have a Mac. I have now had my Mac for close to a month and have loved it. There have been a few hiccups though - it was not all a smooth ride.

Before I continue, I would like to let all you readers know that I have used a PC and Windows before - and I have used a number of versions 98, 2000, XP Home and Pro, Vista Home-Basic, Business and Ultimate over the span of approximately 8 years.

I had been contemplating this purchase for sometime, and finally I got the business that I own and manage to purchase it. It is the MacBook 13” 1GB with a processor of 2.1GHZ. Subsequently I have added another Gig of RAM and am thinking of upping it to 4 Gigs before the end of the year.

Mac OSX (Leopard - 10.5.5) is very light on system resources. I can easily run all my applications together without any problems. I absolutely love the iCal and Mail applications. Tim Keller (www.timkeller.net) kindly gave me a list of brilliant open source or freeware programs, so of which I had used the Windows versions of.

Being a web-application developer I was so happy to discover that Komodo Edit (Active State) ran on Mac. This is a freeware programming tool that I have used for the last year or so. It was good that I stopped using Macromedia’s Studio 8 - Dreamweaver.

The nice thing about Studio 8 is that the same installation disk runs on PC and Mac. The chat programme that I have been using is called Adium. It is amazing as it allows users to connect all of their accounts - eg. Gmail, MSN Live and Facebook - and you are able to talk to all these groups with a single application.

I also bough iWork which was amazingly cheap - R850.00 for a family pack which includes 5 licenses - Microsoft should consider pricing like such for their Office application.

Finally, the design of the Mac is really good looking. It is clean - I have the white one. The screen has  a crisp image and the apple light makes the design. The weight of the MacBook however is a slight let down.

I have never had sound problems with my microphone which is great. Speaking on Skype without having to come really close to the computers microphone is wonderful - but thats more a hardware issue.

So, do you work on a Mac, would like to work on a Mac? Or absolutly hate Mac? Share your opinion in a comment

Kind Regards,
Noel Harrison