Month: October 2014

Over recent months the news has understandably been dominated by the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. It has killed thousands in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia and with no known cure or vaccine for the virus fatality rates are between 50 and 75%.

In an attempt to provide assistance to the research community and help bring technology, governments together Microsoft is making its cloud platform available to tackle the challenge of Ebola.

Researchers must be affiliated to an academic institution and your aim must be focused on developing a better understanding of the spread of Ebola, with the aim of creating a cure for the virus. Researchers are required to submit a proposal of no more than 3 pages and this must details the intent of the project and how they intend to use Microsoft’s resources to achieve that.

It is always easy to be cynical about big business doing charitable events but we think Microsoft should be applauded for opening up their technological expertise to help researchers fight a virus that has been described as the biggest threat to humans since AIDS.

We have all seen Apple’s HomeKit app that allows you to use your IOS device to control everything in your home from turning on the lights to shutting the curtains. Well know it appears as if Apple has its sights firmly set on your car.

A new patent that has been registered for a vehicle accessory and this will allow the user to control a number of in car functions, including opening the doors, starting seat warmers, selecting music and alike. What could be really cool is that you won’t have to do this manually. The software, in conjunction with a GPS signal, will detect when you are near and the commands will be sent automatically. Ideal if you have your hands full of shopping bags.

Also, if you are the type of person who struggles to remember where you parked your car in a crowded car park then the App will be able to help you locate your car. The patent highlights just how serious Apple are about competing in the Internet of Things. Soon we might be able to control our whole lives through our Phones!

As you would expect with any new release Apple’s new OS X Yosemite has been well received but also criticised in equal measure. One of the best articles we have seen appeared in MacWorld and was written by Kirk McElhearn who not only highlighted the most common complaints but provided a solution to solve them.

Missing your iTunes Sidebar?

If like us you are missing your iTunes sidebar then there is an easy fix. You won’t get you sidebar of old back but you will get pretty close. Just click on the “Playlists” link at the top of iTunes 12 when in Music, Movies, or TV Shows, and a sidebar showing your playlists appears.

Safari and the Missing Full Web Address

One of the biggest gripes that we have seen across various blogs is that the new Safari only shows you the top level domain in the address name. So if we sent you a link to the amazing 27” iMac with 5K retina display http://localhost/geex-wp/products/apple/imac-27-with-retina-5k-display-3-5-ghz/ Safari simply shows “www.staging.mygeex.flywheelsites.com”.

That’s fine if you’re just looking at one page on a site, but if you need to see the full address, it’s nowhere to be seen. So if you would like to see the full address, go to Safari > Preferences > Advanced, look for the Smart Search Field section of the pane and then check “Show full website address”.

Translucent Menubars

If the translucent menubars aren’t for you they are a simple fix. Simply go to System Preferences > Accessibility, click on the Display button, and then check the Reduce Transparency box.

Spotlight

We are big fans of Apple’s Spotlight function. Now you get search results from your Mac, Wikipedia, websites and alike. However, some are commenting that the search results can be overwhelming. Again dive into System preferences and you can refine what Spotlight searches on. Go to System Preferences > Spotlight and uncheck those items you don’t want to see. Further improvements can be made by highlighting the items you want to see first near the top of the response list. Simply drag the categories up or down into your preferred order.

Overall Yosemite has been well received and clearly it has been designed to emphasis the brilliance of the retina display models. However, perhaps its biggest contribution is that it brings OS X and iOS closer together. A move that will mean we are all even more locked into the world of Apple.

Last week Apple introduced the amazing 27” iMac with 5K Retina Display. Immediately, we couldn’t help but think what does this mean for the relatively new Mac Pro and if you were in the market for one of these machines which one would you choose? Here we try and look at the various aspects and see which machine is suited to which user.

On our lease the new Retina iMac starts at just £17.99 + Vat per week whilst the Quad Core Mac Pro starts at £22.70 + VAT per week. The strength of the iMac has always been that when compared to the Mac Pro it has its screen already built in. With such a significant price difference the iMac starts with a real advantage over its big brother.

When looking at performance between the two machines the first’s tests have centred on the iMac’s 4.0GHz i7 Haswell processor and the six core Mac Pro that is based on Ivy Bridge technology. In these tests the iMac is 25% faster that the 6 core Mac Pro in single threaded tasks and only 15% slower in multi threaded tasks. That really does make the iMac look impressive.

Performance figures haven’t been produced for the iMacs new Graphics card but the workstation GPU’s in the Mac Pro will undoubtedly give it the edge in OpenCL and professional 3D applications. The Mac Pro is also more expandable than the iMac and can support up to 64GB RAM compared to 32GB.

Perhaps the iMacs biggest selling point however is its amazing 5K display. That equates to 14.1million pixels. 4K by comparison is 8.3 million pixels and operates at its optimum on a 24” display. The 5K is at its peak on a monitor of 27 – 30 inches.

The arrival of the 5K iMac immediately leads most of us to think that Apple will launch a 5K Thunderbolt display. However, to drive a 5K display you will need Thunderbolt 3 technology as Thunderbolt 2 uses Display Port 1.2 and that doesn’t have the bandwidth to support 5K. This means that we are at least a year away from seeing a 5K Apple display.

A big consideration of high end users is noise and heat. Here the Mac Pro will win. Even under extreme workloads it is incredibly quiet and its workstation quality processors, graphics cards and error correcting RAM all mean that it is less likely to trip up than the more consumer led iMac.

So which machine suits who best? It’s probably easier to look at who is best suited to the Mac Pro. If you are heavily using OpenCL apps, need multithreading CPU power and have a lot of Thunderbolt devices then the Mac Pro is the machine for you.

If however, you are a photographer, graphic designer or an agency then the 5K Retina Display iMac is the model for you. Its cost saving coupled to its performance and amazing display mean that it is hard to justify the extra cost associated with buying the Mac Pro and a 4k display.

If you are interested in either model please feel free to contact us on 0121 285 0098 or email info@localhost

Earlier on this year, we blogged about the disappointing news that Sony was pulling out of the laptop market. Its Vaio laptops provided an alternative to Apple’s MacBook range and gave the Windows user a chance to work from a stylish machine.

Last week Microsoft introduced its next Windows Operating System, Windows 9. No hang on that is wrong. We are not going to get Windows 9, instead we are skipping one and going straight to Windows 10.

On the day many commented that the skip was down to Microsoft wanting to show that this was not just an incremental improvement, but a whole new operating system. However, as time goes by it might be that the reason for skipping 9 is no more than a logistical issue.

The trouble that Microsoft had with using Windows 9 was that so many 3rd party applications referred to Windows 9, simply as a legacy of Windows 95 and Windows 98. Apparently, there is a longstanding code short cut that is designed to differentiate between 95 and 98 and that wouldn’t grasp that there was now a Windows 9.

So if we need to jump to 10 for pragmatic reasons, has Microsoft developed an OS that will prompt people to upgrade? Earlier this year we blogged that 49% of Windows users were on Windows 7, while 28% continued to use the 12 old and unsupported XP. Take up of Windows 8 and 8.1 was just 11% earlier this year.

Well Microsoft does seem to be listening. Windows 10 sees a combination of Windows 7 familiarity with its Start button coupled to the live tiles from Windows 8. This is a deliberate attempt by Microsoft to make the OS familiar and productive for users. Some of the main highlights are:

Expanded Start menu. The familiar Start menu is back, providing a new space to personalise with favourite apps, programs, people and websites.

Apps that run in a window. Apps from the Windows Store now open in the same format that desktop programs do. They can be resized and moved around, and have title bars at the top allowing users to maximise, minimise and close with a click.

Snap enhancements. New quadrant layout allows up to four apps to be snapped on the same screen. Windows will also show other apps and programs running for additional snapping, and it will even make smart suggestions on filling available screen space with other open apps.

New Task view button. The new Task view button on the task bar enables one view for all open apps and files, allowing for quick switching and one-touch access to any desktop created.

Multiple desktops. Instead of too many apps and files overlapping on a single desktop, it’s easy to create and switch between distinct desktops for different purposes and projects.

What we also really liked about Microsoft is there Windows Insider Programme that will provide beta testers with Windows 10 previews. Microsoft is open to engage with its users and take their input to develop a Windows 10 OS that is welcomed rather than being dismissed like previous efforts.

For the past couple of years October has been a key month for Apple. It has been using October as the month to release its latest version of the iPad. After the buzz surrounding Septembers event and the launch on the new iPhone and the Apple Watch things haven’t been plane sailing for the tech giant.

We have long been fans of Apple’s fantastic Retina Displays. The 15” MacBook Pro Retina Display model is one of our best sellers due to its impressive display. However, like many Apple fans, we have been continually wondering when Apple will provide a Retina Screen for the iMac.

Well, it seems as if the wait could be over if the latest rumours are to be believed. Speculation is that Apple is working on a 27” 5k Retina iMac with a resolution of 5120 x 2880. More significantly is that the rumours are that Apple is preparing to launch the new model at this month’s media event which will see the latest iPads released.

The new 5k display will have double the resolution of the existing 27” model which is 2560 x 1440 and will be limited to the 27” model. The 21.5” will continue to use its current 1920 x 1080 display.

If the new 27” iMac is to be released this October it will still have to use Intel’s haswell processors as the Broadwell processors will not be ready until the middle of next year. We would also anticipate that the design will remain untouched although reports do suggest a move away from NVIDIA graphics to AMD.

If you would like to be kept up to date with the latest 27” iMac with Retina Display developments then please sign up here and we will keep you up to speed. Alternatively, if you are interested in the current range, then please click here to view the current models.