The IvanExpert Mac Blog

How has Apple evolved? Has using computers become more or less creative? What tradeoffs have we made between accessibility and empowerment?

In the June 2010 issue of Juiced.GS, I argue that Apple’s mobile products could not be any more different in spirit than their original consumer computer, the Apple II, with regard to application development. The manual of every Apple II product, including the last Apple IIe sold in 1993, encouraged every user to write their [...]

If there’s one thing you can count on with Apple, it’s that the next Mac you buy probably has a different display connector than the one you have now. Apple has utilized an utterly ridiculous number of different kinds of ports for attaching displays. Let’s take a look. These are the normal ones: DVI– common [...]

For those of you with an iPhone 3G, early iPhone 3GS, or early iPod Touch 2nd generation, you can now update to iOS 4 and still jailbreak your mobile. Why jailbreak? For one, it will enable wallpaper and multitasking on these devices, which normally is disabled. It also gives you the possibility of unlocking your [...]

Is here. It’s long, but you could skip to the Conclusions section at the bottom. Summary: it’s an excellent phone with a beautiful screen, with a few flaws. Also, the reception problems when gripped a certain way are real, though solveable by not holding it in such a way that you’re touching the bottom and [...]

Apple recently updated the design of their Mac Mini desktop computer for the first time, well, ever. It is now all aluminum, and much shorter, with a somewhat larger footprint. It is finally easy to get to the RAM — no more paint spreader — though still difficult to get to the hard drive. It’s [...]

Early reviews say the Retina display, as Apple calls it, is a wonder to behold, displaying text with print-like quality. Apple claims it is the highest resolution display on a phone. Is it true? Let’s get our terms straight — while “display resolution” sounds like it should describe how sharp an image is, it doesn’t. [...]

One of the things that never ceases to amaze me about my work is that just when I think I’ve seen everything that can go wrong with a Mac, something new and crazy comes along. Well, that was sure the case today: an Entourage Web Services Edition user could suddenly no longer connect to her [...]

Unix is usually thought of as an operating system that is used by servers and very technically-oriented people. What many Apple product users don’t realize is that they are using Unix every day. Unix was, according to Wikipedia, first developed in 1969, which, in computing terms, is several lifetimes. There are countless variations of Unix-like [...]

Baseball fans who don’t live near their childhood homes have several options for watching their favorite teams’ games, but there’s a great new way. The Roku, a small $99 box which easily attaches to your TV, lets you watch any game by any team in near-HD quality, provided you’re not geographically close to either team [...]