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Watch Unboxing videos of the MacBook Air on YouTube now by following the Link

Source : YouTube

I know its a bit too late but I wanted to share with you some pictures. Here are a set of pictures of Leopard installation screen!

Here are also pictures of the unboxing of Leopard.

And finally, here are pictures of my Macbook Pro undergoing a Hard Drive transplant.

Enjoy and as always, comments and suggestions are always welcome!

Power Boz: Well Well well, so far, Leopard fairs well.  I did have issues with installation but I got over it with a quick hard drive swap.  First the installation was hell.  Halfway through the installation and the system stops.  Restart and redo the installation and the same thing happens again, crash.  So I figured let me delete the resident bootcamp partition and use the whole hard drive space.  Finally the installation went without the a hitch.  I got Leopard up and running in about and hour.  Everything was flawless until I got the black screen of death.  The dreaded kernel panic.  Restart again and the computer went to hell.  It was slow and very weird.  Mail crashes constantly but that is another story.   So I went to Hawalli and after about an of searching I found the hard drive I was looking for.  Went back home and popped open my Macbook Pro and swapped the drive out.  Reinstalled everything and it went smoothly from there on.  Networking is simply amazing.  It finds all the computers on the network and was able to see and receive and send files.  I didn’t try printers yet but that is next on the list.  The networking preference panel has changed dramatically.  It takes a bit of getting used to but is a lot more informative and more powerful then before.  Wireless networking is bad on a Macbook Pro because of the Aluminum casing.  Spaces is perfect.  The transition from one space to another is fast and smooth.  The application assignment works perfectly so even if you start an application in space one that is designated to run in space two, it automatically goes to that space.  Everything is snappier and faster.  Stacks is good but a bit over rated.  Finder is faster and more productive with cover view. Preview, iCal and other iApps are just better and faster.  So far Leopard is perfect.  It has a lot of features that are under the hood but nothing really significant on top.  As we said before, Leopard is an evolutionary release and not a revolutionary one.  It is feature filled and geared for developers with lots of development only features.  So far it is solid.

G-Funk : I’ve had no issues during installation. the process went smooth with no issues what so ever. Installed it on 3 macs that I own in my household (Family Pac) and they are running fine. The only problems I’ve faced are bugs with the initial version of leopard (10.5) like wireless access points not responding . screen share. back to my mac.. time machine etc… After the upgrade to 10.5.1 most of those issue disappeared and all is fine and swell . No problems to mention to date except for some enhancements I’d like to enable for better performance and stability.

Finally my iPod touch is free! Yes, I hacked it, and I made do many things. A while back I reviewed the iPod touch and I said that it is an excellent device but is way too limited and needs to be hack in order for people to use it effectively. About a month later, hackers realized and utilized a flaw in Safari, the TIFF exploit, which allows a person to insert code in from the buffer. A couple of days after that hackers where all up inside the iPod touch and soon after, yesterday, we got a hack guide. I used the guide to hack my iPod touch and what can I say, it works!!! I can go on and on but I’ll let the images do the talking. I will also give it a week and see what happens with it and report back.

Guide to Hacking you iPod Touch

http://www.touchdev.net/wiki/Jailbreak_Guide

Unfortunately I was not able to make it in time for the press event but as, I hope, you all know by now, it was quite disappointing. O2 got it and as much as I was hopping I would find some iPhones there but instead, I found the stage with “iPhone Coming November 9.”


I was again very disappointed. Then there was touch! Yes it was there.

Everybody was gathered around the display table to see it, and apparently touch it. So I queued at the checkout counter and got me self a 16 GB iPod Touch. I spent the next two hours walking around, smsed G-funk, and did my own un-boxing photos of the iPod Touch.

As you can see here is my new iPod Touch still in its box.

Here it is with the box cover opened.


Some manuals and also a couple of Apple logo stickers.

Also included in the box is a piece of cloth to wipe the screen and the back of the iPod touch.

Also included is the USB cable, headphones, and a dock adapter.


Here you can see the back of my iPod, notice the 16GB.


Notice here how thin the iPod Touch is, its at the bottom of the box.

Here is the first boot screen.

Sync in Progress screen. Notice the arrow button that you can slide to the right to cancel the sync process.

The main screen with Safari, YouTube, Calendar, Contacts, etc… Notice the Settings icon which looks like Leopard’s Preference icon. At the bottom is where you access you music, videos and photos as well as the iTunes music store.

This screen is the World Clock screen and you can add cities to your hearts content. At the bottom you can see buttons for Alarm, Stopwatch and Timer.

This is the Calendar screen.

This is the settings screen. Here you can set the Wi-Fi, Brightness and other settings.


The iPod and the Macbook Pro in sync.

This is the about screen.

Language selection screen. Unfortunately no Arabic.

iPod playing a song. Notice the volume control slider on the bottom. On the top right under the battery icon there is an icon that switches between the album artwork view and the list view. The 5 dots under the title is where you set the rating by dragging your finger across.


Here you can see how much of a finger print magnet the iPod touch. This much prints after less then 10 minutes of use.
So far, the iPod Touch is an excellent device but has a lot of potential. Imagine Skype running on it. a hotspot, and an extension to allow a microphone in, and you got your self a phone. Also with people hacking it to run iPhone software like Mail it is also and excellent PDA. The keyboard is sweet, the interface is sweet everything about is just perfect. Even Safari is responsive and pages look good on it. The touch makes listening to music fun and watching YouTube videos cool. I didn’t try playing a video on it since I have nothing on my computer that can be put on it. I am not sure if it is able to run other video codecs or if its possible to install Perian tools on it. I will try that soon when I get the chance. Over all the device is perfect for my needs. It is simple to use, looks good, and does what I wanted to do. What was a big seller for me was the fact it had Wi-Fi. What is disappointing is the lack of Bluetooth though. The 16GB os storage is good enough for me, but if you are a person with lots of music or video then it might be a little tight. I do think that 16GB should be entry level, even 20GB, but for now that is the maximum you can get.
Pros:
Excellent all over device.
Excellent User Interface.
Cons:
No bluetooth
No Mic in

I ended the day appropriately with a good fotoor and sheesha before I headed back to where I was staying. I did manage to miss the train and had to find another way back. Finally I got home at 2:00 AM in the morning.

After being sick for a couple of day and in pain, I decided to try and install Mac OS X Leopard on my trusty Macbook Pro and see how it fairs.  Since I had a lot of programs and data on my computer I did a backup and then proceeded to upgrade the system instead of a fresh install.  Havoc was awaiting me in the distance.  Mail failed miserably because I was using the httpmail plug in to get my hotmail account content on the computer.  Firefox was acting weird also.  Other applications refused to run or were simply acting weird.  Nothing changed in terms of looks except the menu bar on top.  It became more transparent and the Apple logo was a varying shade of gray.  The preferences change a bit but nothing noticeable.  After a couple of day of suffering and realizing that I wasn’t getting any work done because of applications freaking out on me, I decided to erase everything and start from scratch.  Of course, I backed up my user directory and proceeded to erase and install, fresh install.  That did wonders.  the wall paper changed to the green Leopard drop and things were looking better.  I setup Mail and things went flawlessly but the httpmail plug in did not work.  Firefox was a bit better but still gave me a headache.  What was surprising was all the apps were a lot faster when you start them up.  Skype was displaying its startup screen with the image all distorted and AdiumX worked like a champ.  safari is blazing fast from star to finish.  network drives were visible and brows-able a lot better then before, especially windows shared drives.   Wireless networking is better and a lot more stable when connecting to random access points or when moving from one place to another.  What can i say, i love leopard!  The preference pain for the networking and the sharing has seen some changes.  it is organized in a better way and simplifies configuration.  It also helps you and shows you what you need to do to see windows machines in the network panel in finder.  It also automatically connects as guest to windows shared folders without the hassle of having to mount each one you want.  Spaces is nice, but compared to VirtueDesktop it is lacking in features.  It is not graphically pleasing when it does its transitions but it is better suited then VirtueDesktop.  For some reason the help system is not working, or it works but there is nothing to be displayed.  Terminal finally got tabs and you can open many many terminal sessions with tabs.  It also has preset configurations to simulate sessions that is a lot easier to use and understand.  Sorry no tabs in finder yet and there seems to be no way to simply change the looks of OS X.  The Menu bad suggest and easy skinning option but I didn’t find anything that would change its looks. 
Preview has been revamped.  It is better, faster, and handles files accordingly.  PDF files look better in Preview then before.  The drawer shows the indexes and navigation is better too.  The overall look of Preview is different and better.
The cover view feature in Finder is, to me, eye candy.  I don’t get it, honestly, and it is quite useless.  It would, however, really shine if my future Mac came with a touch screen and understood gestures.
Overall, leopard seems quite responsive and fast.  It feels like its taking advantage of the new Core 2 Duo processors especially.  The interface is a lot more shiny and feels more bright and polished not dull and off which makes it look very different when you first start Leopard. 

Take a look at ThinkSecret’s Image Gallery of Leopard

Apple claims the $129 accessory can provide up to 72 hours of standby time and up to 5.5 hours of talk time on a single charge. While the Online Apple Store shows a 2-4 week lag time, it would appear that there is at least limited retail store availability.

For more coverage of Apple’s Bluetooth Headset in the wild, see this article from Macrumors.com

For more pictures of the headset , Check them out below :

Xee is a simple, lightweight, and fast program that displays images. It is a replacement for the Preview application provided by Apple with OS X and best of all, it is free.

Features:
-Universal Binary
-Support a large number of image formats
-Rotation and Cropping for all image types
-Slideshow ability
-Steps through images in a folder

What I like about Xee is when you open a single image from a folder filled with other images you have the ability to step through the entire folder and view all the images within. This feature is much like Windows image preview and is a serious lacking on Apple’s part. It is also very lightweight and springs up to life quite fast. The interface is very basic with buttons to help you navigate and others to do simple flipping and rotating of images. At the bottom, you are presented with a bar the displays relevant information about the image you are currently viewing. It includes the number of the image, the zoom percentage, the resolution, the color profile, the size of the file, and the name and date of the file.

Overall, Xee is an excellent replacement to the Preview application and is quite fast. It is very simple and provides a lot of important information about the image. Best of all is its ability to brows an entire folder of images and its simple editing features.

Download Xee 2.0 at http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19978

Recently I reviewed Parallels Virtual Machine software but with the introduction of Parallels 3.0 the review has to be done again. As stated before Parallels comes with support for 3D gaming and better support for USB 2.0 devices. It also has a feature called “SmartSelect” which allows you to open any file from either OS X or Windows by binding that file to a specific program in either operating systems. Another feature allows you to browse the virtual machine files without even starting the virtual machine it self with an application called Parallels Explorer. Other features include better Linux support as well as shared printers for cross platform printing. Parallels is offering this upgrade at a price of $49.99. If you have purchased Parallels sometime after May 1st then you are eligible for a free upgrade.

Features:
• Easy Installation
• Allows you to run Windows in OS X
• Easy Drag and Drop between OS X and Windows
• Coherence Mode
• Full USB 2.0 support
• Full Networking support
• Boot Camp support

With Windows XP, Parallels runs flawlessly. It is very responsive and fast. So far I have tried to connect my N95 Nokia phone to it but with no luck. I will try other USB devices to see if there is actually a difference. What I liked so far is the fact the Parallels mounts the virtual drive in Finder which makes it quite easy to transfer large files to and from OSX.
The most notable new feature is 3D gaming and directX. Parallels 3.0 has support for 3D games and yours truly tried some of them. I was not able to get the latest Command & Conquer to run but I was able to run all the previous Command & Conquer games up to Generals. The game play was simply amazing. You choose the resolution you want and play in the Parallels window just as if it is a native Mac game. Overall the graphics and the game response was that of a typical Windows PC. I didn’t try an intensive 3D game like quake to gauge performance but for simple games like C&C and WOW it is perfect.
Parallels 3.0 is an excellent choice if you are into simple 3D games. If you are buying Parallels for the first time then 3.0 is what you want. If you have Parallels 2.0 and you are happy with it then I don’t see the need to upgrade to the newer version just yet. Performance is the same for both versions but the USB support is a lot better in 3.0.
One thing that I was looking for in Parallels was the ability to run Windows Vista from a Boot Camp partition and 3.0 delivers. The option is not grayed out anymore but I was not able to install the Parallels drivers and Windows Vista would crash. This in it self is a good reason to upgrade. If you are still using XP on Boot Camp then the reasons are not sufficient.
You can download a 15 day license to try Parallels but it requires that you do an upgrade to your virtual machines and so you would have backup them up just in case you decide not to go with 3.0 later on. This is because Parallels 3.0 does something to the virtual machine that won’t let it run on the older Parallels so just make sure your backup your current virtual machine before going ahead with the trial.
Parallels.com

PC world mag tested the iPhone for scratches and crashes.. here’s that they came out with :