Akalabeth – Ready Player One Videogame Replay

Akalabeth: World of Doom came out in 1980 for the Apple II. Written by Richard Garriott aka Lord British aka the guy who created the Ultima series, it features a lone adventure exploring a dungeon-filled wilderness. Quote I downloaded every game mentioned or referenced in the Almanac, from Akalabeth to Zaxxon. — Ready Player One p. 64 Game Play Akalabeth … Read more

The 5-year Itch: Upgrading to a new MacBook Pro

It’s time for a new Mac. My old MacBook Pro, purchased in 2008 was a great machine, and worked great for four years. I put off upgrading for a year by adding more RAM and a bigger hard drive, but eventually I reached the point where the hardware wasn’t meeting my needs any more.

The Very Nifty Mac Mini

Last weekend my wife and I were out computer shopping. Her for a new Dell laptop, me to dream of the laptop I might be able to buy around about 2007. We traveled to the King of Prussia Mall in southeast Pennsylvania, where Dell allegedly had a store, and to keep me quiet during Sue’s … Read more

Thoughts on the New iMac

It’s no great secret around here that I’m a Mac fan, but I’ve got to say that Apple’s design for the new iMac has left me cold. As with the previous iMacs, it’s an all in one design. This time around though, that design takes the form of a flat-screen monitor that’s been bulked up … Read more

The Mighty Mac Mouse Myth

As a Mac user, I get a fair amount of flack from PC folks. Some of it was about the toilet-seat design of the original colorful iBooks (hey, I agree – those things looked awful). Some of it was aimed at processor speed (I admit it – PCs have faster processors, although gap isn’t nearly … Read more

A Comfortable Computer Store?

I finally got to visit one of Apple’s new stores, specifically the Apple Store in the Short Hills Mall in New Jersey. It was like walking into a little slice of heaven. Dual-processor G4s with beautiful (and ungodly expensive) 22-inch flat screen monitors lined one mall. The new lamp-like iMacs lined another wall and proved … Read more

The iBook Road Trip

The following review provides an overview of my recent vacation in the western American states of Idaho, Wyoming and Utah with my trusty Apple iBook. December 19, 2001 While running around the house in a frenzy of last minute packing, I trip over the iBook’s power cord, sending it crashing to the floor from the … Read more

Mac OS X Revisited

I’ve been using Mac OS X for about three months straight now, long enough to have experienced the extremes of Apple’s next generation operating system. I’m running the 10.1 release on my dual USB iBook (the second generation, white-colored low-end Apple Macs) — it has a 500 mhtz G3 processor and 384 meg of RAM. … Read more