Apple provides a great programming environment for OS X and the iPhone. However, if you are new to Mac programming, it can be intimidating even for professionals. Read on to learn a few basics about Cocoa, Objective-C and Xcode.

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Apple has been releasing development versions of Snow Leopard. Apple will showcase various features of Snow Leopard at its Worldwide Development Conference in June (WWDC), but Apple does not intend to release Snow Leopard to the public at that time.

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iMac reviews, both good and bad, have basically missed the biggest selling point about the new iMac 24″: the LCD screen. No, its not the new LED-backlit style screen, but it is vastly superior to every other 24″ LCD monitor on the market, except for professional displays costing $1500.00 or more.

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Apple’s new talking iPod Shuffle can read aloud the names of your songs and your playlists. Although speech synthesis is nothing new, how can Apple bring such advanced features to such a tiny device? The answer is they didn’t - not really. Once again, Apple has innovated through integration of existing technology.

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Apple is working on a touch device similar in size to a netbook or tablet. Here is a short guide to its likely components.

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Apple LED Cinema Display 24″

Apple’s new 24″ LED Cinema Display is a great piece of equipment. It’s silver-clad, svelte, and you can’t deny its good looks. But it has a couple of shortcomings, namely price and a little something called DisplayPort. After looking at a lot of other LCD displays, I was surprised to find that the relatively inexpensive HP w2408h is actually a great alternative to the Apple LED Display. It even looks a a lot like it.
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Webdesigner Depot asked me to provide photos of my home-office work area as part of an article they are running about designers’ workstations. Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft announced that it has plans to open its very own retail stores in direct competition with Apple, Best Buy, Home Depot, and The Gap. Here are some tips for Microsoft, free of charge, to help them succeed in this bold and innovative endeavor.

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Do you want to remotely control a PC with a Mac? There are many commercial software packages and online services available. However, most of them are simply re-brandings of the open source VNC remote control system. Plus, you may find their performance to be lacking. I’ve been using VNC between Windows, Mac and Linux systems for a long time. With the resurgence in Mac interest, a lot of people ask me how they can access their existing Windows PC from their new Mac. Here is a quick and easy guide to getting a remote control system up and running using VNC. And by the way, its free. Read the rest of this entry »