Updated iMacs featuring new Intel Core i3, i5 & i7 processors

The iMacs received an update, with overall cosmetics remaining unchanged, but under the hood are a new range of Intel processors from the entry-level Core i3 right up to a newer Core i7 with Hyper Threading. New graphics processors are also present in the form of the ATI Radeon HD 4670 (21.5″ only) and 5670 (21.5″ & 27″) with 256MB GDDR3 and 512MB GDDR5 memory respectively. The top-end quad-core specification 27″ iMac is configured with an ATI Radeon HD 5750 with 1GB GDDR5. Like the Mac Pro, SSD drives are now also available as a CTO option.

12-core Mac Pro with 2TB SSD drives CTO option

Apple’s Mac Pro powerhouse computers had been starved of an update, but finally got a healthy refresh with new processor configurations including the new “Westmere” Intel Xeon processors, running at up to 2.93GHz in a dual processor configuration with 6 cores each, deliver up to 12 cores.

Hard drive options now include, for the first in an Apple desktop, SSD drives, with configuration options allowing up to four 512GB SSD drives. Apple has posted test results showing SSD’s outperforming 7200RPM HDD’s by up to twice the speed, although it hasn’t posted any comparable results against 15,400RPM SAS HDD’s.

27″ LED-backlit Cinema Display

Based on the same IPS panel as used in the current generation iMac, a new 27″ Cinema Display has been announced for a September shipping date, and features the same style housing as the existing 24″ LED Cinema Display. With a 2560×1600 resolution which almost matches the 30″ Cinema Display, the new 27″ Cinema Display is Apple’s first standalone monitor to feature a 16:9 aspect ratio, compared to the previous 16:10 offerings.

Like the 24″ Cinema Display, the new 27″ monitor also features built-in iSight camera, microphone, speakers including subwoofer, and utilises the industry-standard Mini DisplayPort. The connections also include a MagSafe adaptor for charging Macbook models via the monitor’s power source.

Magic Trackpad

Another entirely new product, the Magic Trackpad is Apple’s offering to desktop users of a trackpad, just like the ones found on Macbook models, so that desktop warriors can take advantage of multi-touch gestures too, like their mobile-using counterparts.

The new Magic Trackpad is 80% larger than standard trackpads found on Macbooks, and the whole pad area acts as a mouse button click too. The design is based on the same structure as the Apple Bluetooth keyboard.
Combined with useful 3rd party tools such as BetterTouchTool (based on the MultiClutch project), the Magic Trackpad could add a nice new ‘touch’ to desktop Macs… pun intended. Sorry.

Written By Nick Miller of http://www.nickmiller.co.cc

Called James Bond 007: Blood Stone, this new bond game looks amazing with the teaser trailer I viewed about three minutes before writing this blog post. It features Daniel Craig’s voice (and looks of course) as Bond unlike Adam Croasdell that was previously rumoured, the game also features Judi Dench and Joss Stone (whom also performs the title song) in this totally original story made especially for Blood Stone.

The trailer also implies there will be loads of diving modes/missions within this game which could backfire bad like on the Agent under fire game but I’m hoping its more like Nightfire game where the driving mission were a pleasure. Blood Stone will also include 16 player multiplayer which hopefully would be a lot better than quantum of solace’s passable attempt and fingers crossed Activision would have listened to players and will include a split screen mode.

More lush looking images below…

P.S. expect a review from me of this Video game shortly after release.

Windows only: Bootloader tweaking utility EasyBCD makes dual booting between Windows, Linux, and even OS X an easy task, and the latest version updates with support for Windows 7 and newer Ubuntu versions with grub2.

Once you’ve installed the application, you can easily edit, rename, reorder, add entries, and customize just about anything in the bootloader sequence for any number of installed operating systems. You can access a set of tools that will let you backup, restore, and repair your bootloader, and even change your boot drive.

The new 2.0 release of the application comes with a slew of changes, the most notable including Windows 7 support, bootable ISO images, and adding bootable USB drives to the bootloader. It’s well worth a look if you’re setting up a dual-boot configuration.

Article Written by Nick Miller of www.nickmiller.co.cc

Quote From Google:

With Google search over SSL, you can have an end-to-end encrypted search solution between your computer and Google. This secured channel helps protect your search terms and your search results pages from being intercepted by a third party. This provides you with a more secure and private search experience. What is SSL?
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a protocol that helps provide secure Internet communications for services like web browsing, e-mail, instant messaging, and other data transfers. When you search over SSL, your search queries and search traffic are encrypted so they can’t be read by any intermediary party such as employers and internet service providers (ISPs).
What can I expect from search over SSL?
Here’s how searching over SSL is different from regular Google search:

* SSL encrypts the communication channel between Google and a searcher’s computer. When search traffic is encrypted, it can’t be read by third parties trying to access the connection between a searcher’s computer and Google’s servers. Note that the SSL protocol does have some limitations — more details are below.
* As another layer of privacy, SSL search turns off a browser’s referrers New window icon. Web browsers typically turn off referrers when going from HTTPS to HTTP mode to provide extra privacy. By clicking on a search result that takes you to an HTTP site, you could disable any customizations that the website provides based on the referrer information.
* At this time, search over SSL is supported only on Google web search. We will continue to work to support other products like Images and Maps. All features that are not supported have been removed from the left panel and the row of links at the top. You’ll continue to see integrated results like images and maps, and clicking those results will take you out of encrypted search mode.
* Your Google experience using SSL search might be slightly slower than you’re used to because your computer needs to first establish a secure connection with Google.

Note that SSL search does not reduce the data that Google receives and logs when you search, or change the listing of these terms in your Web History New window icon.

Article Written By Nick Miller of http://www.nickmiller.co.cc/

The video game I am about to review today is called Ski Air Mix, (sounds thrilling doesn’t it) for the PlayStation one. I don’t really know how I got this game but I think it was in a bundle of some sort with many of my other cheap PS1 games which will most likely gain there own spots on this blog, you can tell the type of games that will cost less than the CD that they are printed on when you see the words Pocket Price on the label (I’m guessing this is a company because all my bad PS1 games have this little label on but I am too lazy to check)

So as I vaguely remembered this game I know what I was going to be in for, and started up the game once again. Man I love the that old sound of the PS1 boot. Oh and If your wondering why It looks like I am trying to fill up space in this review, its because I am the game is really that dull. There is not much too it all you do in the game is slide down a snow covered hill and that’s it.

Graphics:

I have now found the lead for my camera so you no longer have to take my word on it. The graphics are terrible sure they may look okay on viddler but that little video player is not exactly a decent 32” TV. Zooming past badly texturized rocks and trees at around three frames a second makes you want to accidentally leave the disc in a microwave if you get what I mean.

You can’t even see where the track sides are half of the time, you can however choose the course track and costume before playing but its utterly pointless, the tracks seem almost identical only with different corners to throw you off course and a different colored house now and then. And the costumes are just to change the colour of the block that sort of resembles a man figure. For this abomination the graphics are only going to get a 2/10.

Sound:

If you haven’t watched the gameplay clip I suggest you do so now before reading the rest of this review. Saw it? Good. The sound is even worse than the graphics with a “boo” every time you jump on a high point and a “cuhuh” every time you hit the side of the track (unfortunately not heard in the youtube video). I will give the sound guy some credit though because he made it possible to play your disc in a normal CD player and listen to the same repetitive tracks over and over again no mater how far away you are from the PlayStation. And because repetition makes everything more fun I am going to give the sound a 4/10 just because I can. PS that’s not my camera making that horrid white noise its the game.

Gameplay:

You may have thought this game couldn’t be any worse and you would be wrong the controls are very simple you have your left and right buttons on the D-pad, the X button to jump and the up button to crouch (although this is never needed). Seems simple enough but only the game decides when you actually press the buttons not you so you spend most of your time shouting “turn, turn!, %?@*$&! TURN!” at the screen hoping that the game would hear you and actually make use of the buttons you press (or at this point smashing). Because of the game never paying attention to you you can actually play levels without ever touching the controller, as you are always on a hill your character will eventually make its way down to the bottom and to the end of the level. Its even worse with split-screen because its the exact same single player experience but only doubled, which means its guaranteed your eyes and ears will hate you for the rest of the day. Only 1/10 for the gameplay because I am not going to give any game minus points.

One thing I found amusing:

I don’t know if you noticed but the circle button is actually to select (which confused me twice trying to play this game) but unlike nearly every other game made in the world the controls say the circle button is to decide not to confirm of select, just decide.

Final score:

I would recommend buying this game just to destroy it so no one else has to suffer but other than that Ski Air Mix gets a final score of 2.5/10.

So thanks for reading this review and don’t forget to post a comment below or in the forums, the more you comment the more I will review and you may even get me on my old dance mat again in the future.

From the man that brought you the OS Xbox Pro and the Cinematograph HD comes… a cockpit canopy filled with hard drives? Not quite. Meet the Black Dwarf, a custom network-attached-storage device from the mind of video editor Will Urbina, packing 16TB of RAID 5 magnetic media and a 1.66GHz Atom N270 CPU into a completely hand-built Lexan, aluminum and steel enclosure. Urbina says the Dwarf writes at 88MB per second and reads at a fantastic 266MB per second, making the shuttlecraft-shaped 12.7TB array nearly as speedy as an SSD but with massive capacity and some redundancy to boot. As usual, the DIY guru shot a professional time-lapse video of his entire build process, and this one’s not to be missed — it showcases some pretty spiffy camerawork as well as the man’s welding skills. See sparks fly after the break.

http://www.nickmiller.co.cc/?p=358

See the Article:

Hardmac reports that it has heard that Apple is considering rebranding Mac OS X under the new “iOS” name recently rolled out as a replacement for “iPhone OS”. The change would serve as a means for uniting Apple’s operating systems under a single naming scheme with multiple flavors.

They are currently thinking of using iOS as the default naming/branding of Apple OS. We would then have iOS desktop, iOS server and iOS mobile. The final decision is not taken yet, however, the proposal seems to be well supported by the high management, it would give a better exposure and unity to Apple OS platforms while making communication easier.
Such a change could facilitate branding and marketing if Apple were to release touchscreen-enabled Macs running an “iOS mobile” layer on top of the traditional Mac OS X.

While the “i” naming scheme has become synonymous with Apple’s mobile devices, it obviously has its origins in the iMac, introduced in 1998 and carried along through multiple iterations to today’s desktop computer still bearing the same name. A tighter marketing integration of Apple’s traditional Mac operating system and mobile operating system could help Apple position itself for a future where lines between computing environments continue to blur.

http://www.nickmiller.co.cc/?p=402

You can help prevent one 16-bit or MS-DOS-based application from causing others to hang or crash by running it in a separate memory space. To do this, follow these steps:
1. Right-click the program’s shortcut icon and then click Properties. (If the program doesn’t have a shortcut, create one, and then open the shortcut’s Properties dialog box.)
2. On the Shortcut tab, click the Advanced button. This displays the Advanced Properties dialog box.
3. Select the Run In Separate Memory Space check box.
4. Click OK twice to close all open dialog boxes and save the changes.

NOTE: Running a program in a separate memory space uses additional memory. However, you’ll usually find that the program is more responsive. Another added benefit is that you are able to run multiple instances of the program—as long as all the instances are running in separate memory spaces.

http://www.nickmiller.co.cc/?p=391

If you register your PSP Go before November using the Playstation website you can get ten games at no extra cost, let me say (write?) that again… You get 10 games for free!

The games aren’t bad either quite a few of them are some of the best you can own for the PSP system, they are as follows:

• LittleBigPlanet
• MotorStorm Arctic Edge
• Need for Speed Shift
• Assassins Creed: Bloodlines
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories
• Gran Turismo
• James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game
• Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice
• 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa
• Wipeout Pure

Not too shabby, some great games there im sure you will agree. but why just now, why didn’t Sony do this offer earlier to shift some more PSP Go’s at launch? I have a theory and that is that I think Sony Computer Entertainment are going to announce something big at E3. Not necessarily a “PSP2″ system but I do think it will have something to do with the Playstation Portable.

my advice would be if your thinking about getting a PSP and you don’t already own one, get a PSP Go but if you have a PSP already don’t bother, you probably own half (if not more) of the games stated above. Also this offer is for the AE, AU, GB, IE, NZ only, USA on the other hand only get three games so…

[source: http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2010/06/01/buy-a-new-pspgo-and-get-10-free-games/]

what’s your thoughts? leave a comment below or post in the Forums.