I have been very happy with my MacBook over the past year but recently I have started to realise it’s limitations. The portability of the 13 inch display is great but the resolution is low by modern standards and I regularly find myself wanting more.

Hard drive space is also an issue, even with 160GB. With my new Drobo I have 2TB+ but it’s a hassle plugging it in all the time. Ideally a 500GB internal drive would store all my music and vital documents.

So I’m looking at buying an iMac. The increased specs and larger screen would give my more space to work and it’s compact design would look great on my desk.

After purchasing a 160Gb hard drive for my MacBook, I was slightly puzzled to find that it was only registering a total capacity of 150GB. Where has 10Gb gone? I wondered.

A call to Apple support (my first) and an answer… Apple can’t won’t count like the rest of us.

To be more technical, Apple uses binary mathematics to count the hard drive capacity and the manufactures use base 10 mathematics. Which means you appear to lose 10Gb but its still a 160Gb drive and you can still put 160Gb of data on it.

The phrase Think Different comes to mind. Or should it be Count Different!

Mac OS X Hard Drive Math [Apple.com]

The conspicuous lack of buttons on every Apple product shipped under Mr Jobs is far from a coincidence. Take for example the lack of a dedicated power button on the iPod or the not quite so absent but completely hidden power button on the iMac.

The iPhone also is distinctly lacking in (real not virtual) buttons, just one! It would seam that Steve Jobs doesn’t like them much and the one button mouse, just about the worst mouse design in history, sums up Apples design in a nutshell. Beautiful but annoying.

I will leave the rest to the Wall Street Journal who’s summation of this weird obsession is also beautiful and happily for me, annoying to Jobs (now he knows what its like).

Hide the Button: Steve Jobs Has His Finger on It [Wall Street Journal]

Is it 1 O’clock? Nope, its just my Mac starting up!

There is no doubt that the Mac start up bong is very annoying, especially to a Windows user who disables all start up sounds. I can also get some very strange looks from people who are not familiar with it.

Thankfully third party software comes to the rescue once again. StartupSound.prefPane from Arcana Research inserts a preference pane into the System Preferences to control how loud the bong is, or to mute it completely.

If you have an Intel Mac I would recommend you download version 1.1b1 from Mac Update.

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Once you have booted your shinny Mac for the first time you will want to know some basic information about it. In the Apple menu select the very first option, “About This Mac”. This window (above) will tell you what version of OS X you are running (10.4 is Tiger), what processor you have and how much RAM is installed. All nice to know!

MacBreak Weekly hosted by Leo Laporte with guests including Merlin Mann, Scott Bourne, and Alex Lindsay – is the one and only Mac podcast in my opinion. I have been listening since show one (when I didn’t have a Mac) and I love it.

All the presenters are avid Mac fans and have a lot of experience and knowledge about OS X and Apple, which is very evident. If you are interested to find out more about Macs, or want to keep up with the news from Cupertino then make your way to TWiT.tv

Leo also has many other excellent podcasts which I would also highly recommend.

MacBreak Weekly podcast [twit.tv]

The magnetic power cord, called the MagSafe, is one of the more igneous aspects of the MacBook’s design. It solved a problem I never knew existed, that your notebook could suddenly go flying across the room because someone trips over the power cord.

The idea of MagSafe is that if this happens the cord just pops out and leaves your MacBook still on the desk. And it seams to work. A tug on the cord and it releases itself from the socket.

Overall, I would say this is a nice extra feature and something Apple does well. It might not be enough to convince you to switch from PC to Mac but it might just save your notebooks life one day.

Video of the MagSafe on a MacBook [YouTube]

Apple’s MagSafe Mac vs PC advert [Apple.com]

Apple is notorious for keeping the launch of new products a closely kept secret. This is great for publicity but it’s not so good for Apple’s customers who have to decide when to buy their new Mac.

Thankfully, help is at hand from buying guide sites like mactactic and MacRumors. They aim to predict when a new product is likely to arrive based on Apple’s product life cycles.

In essence if a product has been out for sometime then it might be better to wait as a new product is likely to come along soon.

So before you buy check out these sites…

http://www.mactactic.com
http://buyersguide.macrumors.com

My first Macintosh is a black MacBook, total cost £1,204. I wanted the portablity of the 13 inch screen but with the power of the MacBook Pro, so I customised the spec via the UK Apple store. Full specification:

• 13.3-inch glossy TFT widescreen
• 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 2GB memory (+ £120.00)
• 160GB hard drive (+ £70.00)
• Double-layer SuperDrive
• Intel GMA 950 graphics (64MB of shared memory)
• AirPort Extreme Card & Bluetooth
• Apple Mini-DVI to VGA Adapter (+ £15.00)

Full MacBook technical specification available at Apple.com

MacBook product page at Apple.com