Sign Documents Digitally With Your Mac

Came across this handy little feature today that would make life much easier for a number of people. You can now sign documents on your Mac using preview. I know I’m going to use this feature quite a lot.

The Apple Store Challenge

They are waaaaaaay too nice.

Windows 8 vs iOS 5: War of The Betas

Technically Windows 8 is not even in beta yet but who cares as long as it looks this good.

The video shows some basic UI elements and some OS settings in both platforms.

I am loving what was shown of Windows 8 so far and just can’t wait to see more of it.

Upgrading The Mac Mini

I have been a mac user for almost 5 years now, and the Mac Mini that I got a couple of weeks ago was my first Mac desktop experience. And because I downloaded OS X Lion a few weeks earlier on my MBP and experienced some slow-downs. I knew I had to get extra RAM for the Mac Mini if I intended to use it as a proper desktop with somewhat intensive tasks.

A good thing that the Mac Mini RAM upgrade is fool-proof. All you need to do is unscrew the bottom, both RAM sticks, put in the new RAM (2x4GB sticks in my case) and the just screw the bottom back on. its that simple.

The RAM kit I got from Amazon was for $44/KD12 and works beautifully. [Link]

The Mac Mini 2011

I have been playing around with the new Mac Mini for a couple of weeks now, and I find it a very capable machine. I initially got it to replace my Windows based media center but after being

handed a second generation Apple TV I decided to use it as a desktop PC instead of my MBP. There have been a lot of talk about the Mac Mini not having a DVD drive. I personally rarely ever use the DVD drive in a PC, and if I do, I am ripping a dvd. But I use my trusty old Windows PC for that heavy-lifting.

I find that OS X Lion is a bit slow, or slower then Snow Leopard. but it comes with a number of new features and tweaks. The device itself is quiet unless you are encoding something and the fans start spinning in full speed then you will definitely hear it. It has all the necessary ports that most of the users will need and comes in a small but capable package. a 2.5 i5 Intel CPU, 4GB RAM a dedicated 256MB Radeon graphic card.

While most people are moving towards laptops and tablets. I am a desktop guy, I only use a tablet or a laptops when I need to. I love sitting on a desk using a 27″ screen and a full size keyboard and a mouse. And thats why I might recommend the Mac Mini to whoever is curious and what to dip his toes into the Mac world.

The image above is a size comparison of the Mac Mini to the Time Capsule.

The 3TB Time Capsule

I recently bought the newly upgraded Time Capsule from Apple. I wanted a dual band router ever since I got my original Airport Extreme, but I thought that having a built in hard drive is a plus I’m having a little trouble with my WHS.

As you can see from the picture above, the Time capsule is a bit bigger than the Airport Extreme. Thats due to the built-in hard drive. I am planing to put my iTunes library on it so that it can be shared by all the household PCs.

Adobe’s First Mac Store App is Here

Adobe’s Photoshop Elements 9 Editor is the first Adobe application to hit the Mac App Store. I wonder how long will it be before we see Photoshop CS5 there as well.

How To get iOS 5 on Your iOS Device

If you are a developer you already know how to get the latest beta version of iOS and register your device to enable the installation if that beta software. If you are not a developer, you can still test out the latest Apple mobile OS by firstly downloading the latest beta builds of iTunes and iOS 5 from here. And then you must register you iPhone/iPad or iPod Touch as a developer’s device. There are a few websites that do that ranging from $7-$10 per device. Check them out here,here or here.

After getting all the necessary requirements. The first thing you should do is install the beta version of iTunes. Then launch it and select your idevice’s icon in iTunes and then click on “Restore” while holding “Control” if you are using windows on the “Option” key of you are using a Mac. Select the iOS 5 beta file that you downloaded and the rest should go smoothly.

Apple’s New iOS 5 And Other Announcements + Video

If you follow me on twitter I would have bombarded you with tweets yesterday about both the WWDC and the E3 conferences that were taking place at almost the same time yesterday. Both had some exciting news coming out of them.

Notification:
This one was the most anticipated. Apple revamped the notification system on the iOS. making actually getting a notification more tolerable. Again a “borrowing” the idea from Google’s Android. you can slide down the screen a see all you notification and both the weather and stock widgets (and only widget sadly). Also, notifications will show up on your lockscreen. Making if more than just a glorified clock.

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Announcements Week

There are 2 major expos taking place this week. WWDC, Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference will kick-off later today with Steve Jobs taking the stage and will announce a few things:

• iOS 5
• OS X Lion
• iCloud

What I hope he will announce:

• A revamped notification and widget system for the iOS 5. Something similar to what the Android has.
• A new Airport/Time Capsule. A lot of theories are built upon a new Time Capsule and it getting either an A4 or A5 chip. I was in the process of getting on till I heard those rumors and decided to hold off for a few days.
• Macbook Air i3/i5 upgrade.
• Mac Mini i3/i5 upgrade.
• Apple TV A5 chip upgrade and the ability to run apps.

The other event that is taking place this week is the Electronic Entertainment Exposition (E3 for short). There are a lot of games that I’m looking forward to playing, so I hope I get more info about them:

• Nintendo’s new console
• Uncharted 3
• Gears of War 3
• Bioshock: Infinite
• Infamous 2
• Need for Speed: The Run
• Forza 4
• Skyrim
• Tomb Raider
• Darksiders ii
• Batman: Arkham City
• Silent Hill: Downpour

And a lot more.