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Average Joe's Tips

Best Mac Setups: MacBook Pro and iMac

This week I am going to do something new, and instead of giving you my usual tip or trick I am going to show you some cool MacBook Pro and Mac setups.

Let’s get started talking about this first photo of the MacBook Pro setup. In this photo you see a 13-inch MacBook Pro being held up by a stand, an apple wireless keyboard, a 17-inch Samsung monitor mounted on the wall, speakers on the side, and a mouse. Some things that I like about this is how the screen is mounted on the wall and how much extra desk space that gives you. Something that would make this set up better would be if you mounted the speakers on the wall too, get a larger desk, and add a printer on an extra table.

This one might seem a lot better then the previous setup and I do agree. In this photo there are three Apple Cinema Displays, a Mac Pro, an iSight, speaker system, and a 13-inch MacBook. I don’t kno

w where to start so I will start with the triple action Cinema Display that gives you tons of room to multitask with, and on top of the third Cinema Display to the left i

s an iSight. Then there is an extra MacBook that comes in handy for travel. Also if you haven’t notice they have a very cool and comfortable looking chair to sit in. There isn’t very much that you need to change with this setup, but one thing that I would change would be to add a Powermat so that you can charge your phone and iPod with no messy wires.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and let us know.

[Image Source] [Image Source 2]

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Average Joe's Tips

Want to type faster on your iPhone?

Have you ever had a hard time typing on you iPhone, iPod Touch or even iPad, or just wanted to type faster. Here is a quick tip that can save you time and will allow you to type a little less. If you ever have to type .com, .org, .net, .edu, or .us on the iphone, then try holding down the “.” for a second and you should be present with a few different choice to choose from. However, if you are on the iPad, hold down the “.com” key and it will show you the .org, .edu, and .net buttons. This works in both Safari and Mail. Holding the key down for about a second works on a few different keys. Go ahead and check it out, and save yourself a little bit of time.

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Average Joe's Tips

How to Organize Cables. Simplicity

Aren’t we always tripping over wires? Can never find that one wire we need? Well here’s a solution to finding those lost wires. At osxdaily.com, they have found a solution by using normal binder clips. You take how ever many binder clips you need, clip them onto your desk, and slide the cables onto the ends of the binder clip. Easy, fast, affordable, and you can find them anywhere. Just make sure you find the right width of binder clips. When we unplug or plug our cable, we let them go and away they fall. Trying to lean over or dive into the tiny cracks of our desks are time consuming and a hassle. I think the binder clip idea is rather smart and I can’t believe nobody has thought of this before.

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News

Apple killing Xserve, Lion server dying?

Apple has done very strange things these days. Apple has just killed on of their most successful machines. The Xserve will be no more as of January 31st. The Xserve was a huge supercomputer that never really took off. The machine looked great and was very reliable, but the price for their performance was extremely high. The Xserve will be sadly missed by companies who use the Xserve. Apple’s clients will need to see a better version of the Xserve or will have to move to a different company. Apple is trying to push the MobileMe enterprise edition out to the public. Apple’s clients will have to switch to the Mac Pros or the Minis, unless Apple decides to license its servers. I doubt that Apple will license because Apple is unsure whether there will be a new version of the OSX Server. The 10.7 Lion Server is also in danger of being crushed. Apple is trying to focus on the Mac Pros and Minis which means that the Lion servers in a huge risk of being cut out. The 1U Rack mountable servers were always interesting to open up and figure out how Apple even pushed he motherboard, hard drives, and equipment into two dimensions.

I feel sad for Apple, by cutting the Xserves out that leaves a big gap in the computer industry. Many computers are mounted on the Xserve, it serves as an application, file server, web service, or even high performance computing applications using clustering. The Xserve initially featured one or two Power PC G4 processors nut was later switched over to the new PowerPC G5. Now it runs on two quad- core Intel Nehalem microprocessors. With the new Mac Pro with Snow Leopard coming out to replace the Xserve, it shows a huge difference between the two. The Mac Pro outdoes the Xserve with so much more storage; it compiles 1 TB when the Xserve only holds 160 GB. It holds 12U on shelf compared to 1U from the Xserve. The performance is almost exactly the same from file sharing and on. Apple is trying to say that the Mac Mini and Pro are smaller but brings great capability in an efficient form. The Mac Pro is the exact same price as the X serve with the snow Leopard. It may not be that hard of a transition after all.

[http://www.apple.com/xserve/]

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Uncategorized

When Will Everyone Have Apple TVs?

The strong competitors are finally joining the Internet set top box market and for such a new niche they’ve created some pretty impressive stuff with products like Boxee and Google TV. Their thorough (and sexy) aggregation of all that Internet content is their selling point, completely one-upping Apple TV’s feature set. This is one product where Apple has been surprisingly un-revolutionary. From its 2007 inception beside the iPhone there have been many, more reasonable alternatives with more features. Both the iPhone and Apple TV were App-less at that time, and three years later look at how much the App Store addition has affected the iPhone (while Apple TV turned iTV and got Netflix). Now that we’re all trained in the iOS ways it will take much less time to reach this point on the iTV – if it ever gets an App Store.

The iTV App Store would bring the amount of endless capability that has come to the iPhone and iPad to your TV, without the limitations of the small screen. Current App Store developers would develop for this interface and provide their Video, Music, Entertainment, Productivity, Game, and (maybe) even Cable content to the Apple TV because it gives them a huge audience and the power to be in control of the delivery of their content.

Adding a wireless keyboard and trackpad (or an iPad — basically the size of my macbook’s keyboard/trackpad) would give it the ability to replace the desktop — an OSX Lion App could simply handle all the tasks that the iOS Apps couldn’t. If Apple can stuff a bunch of memory and a fast processor into that tiny black box all you’d need is an external hard drive and you’re computer would not only fit in your pocket, but become one with your TV.

Sound good – or am I just fanaticizing about never having to see the Comcast On-Demand menu ever again?