Paint programs for Mac

I have been wondering for a while: Why doesn't iLife '08 come with a paint program? Well, unfortunately it doesn't, although I hope it does come out in iLife '09, but for now, there are no guarantees, and probably not even a whisper of it.

I have found two FREE programs: Pixen and Paintbrush. Is Pixen for the people who want to just draw and mess around? No. Pixen is for pixel painters who paint pixel by pixel. It is hard, trust me. It took a while for me to highlight my profile picture in Blogger. People who are looking for Microsoft Paint alternatives are recommended to use Paintbrush. Otherwise you'd have a headache if you are not experienced and use Pixen.

-FyreVortex
-Byzone Founder and Contributing Author

(Why have I done this post? First, I couldn't resist doing a post, second, I am not sure that I will be converting my blog to a fully hosted Wordpress host... Right now. While I am sure that I will get a Wordpress blog in the near future, I don't know if I will also move Byzone to it. Wordpress seems an awesome alternative to Blogger, but unfortunately that will mean that I will have to convert the Byzone posts to Wordpress, or leave all the posts behind and start a new blog. I will first experiment Wordpress with my personal blog, THEN if it I like it, I will be moving to the Wordpress host. Sorry guys.)

Moving to Wordpress

Byzone will be moving to a hosted Wordpress soon. The whole page will be redesigned, but content won't be moved... Well, if there is an option for it, I'll do it.

I hope everything will be all right during the move. We may not move, but moving to Wordpress is being considered right now.

http://byzone.blogspot.com will still be live though, for people wanting to see the old version of Byzone.

-FyreVortex
-Byzone Founder and Contributing Author

New MacBook Pro

My friend confirmed that these set of pictures looked extremely real of the new and upcoming MacBook Pro:

My opinion: It looks incredibly horrible. Yes, we were told by AppleInsider that the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros would consist of the new MacBook Air and the iMacs design-MacBook Air's thinness and aluminium plus the iMac's black borderings around the screen.

Yes, I felt very uneasy about that when it was first talked about but I didn't think much about it. Well, it was obvious that a redesign was coming but I hoped for something much better.

I think that the new design doesn't really match but my friend, the same person that said that it looked very authentic, said that it looked awesome.

The reason why I think it doesn't really match is that half of it is black, half of it is silver. The trackpad is black, but the button on the trackpad is silver. The speakers and the laptop bottom area is silver. The area around the screen and the back of the laptop is black.

I hope it is fake, but if it's real, I'm sure Steve Jobs will find some way to convince us to buy it. But for now, I hate it.

-FyreVortex
-Byzone Founder and Contributing Author

Apple prank call?

I didn't do much today but watch a few videos. This is a tech related one that I watched:



It's nothing much though. Hopefully I'll do something later.

-FyreVortex
-Byzone Founder and Contributing Author

Macs 3D

I originally wanted to put the first video into the same blogpost as the "Choose a Vista' blogpost but then found another vid that is also cool and goes with it, so the two combined becomes one seperate blogpost now.


MacBook Pro spinning 3D.


Another MacBook Pro spinning 3D.


ANOTHER MacBook Pro animation spinning 3D.


...


Oh! A MacBook stopmotion animation now!

Bonus Videos:

"Mac Attack"


MacTable 3D Model.


MacBook+MacBook Pro moving from one side of the table to another...


"The Living Laptops"


... Another video about how Macs are horrible. :|


MacBook Pro hard drive upgrade in 60 seconds... Wow?


MacBook VS MacBook Pro video.


MacBook Air commercial parody.


-FyreVortex
-Byzone Founder and Contributing Author

Get a Mac Web Ads

These are some "Get a Mac" web ads that are very funny... :)

The best "Get a Mac" web ad so far. Bad Vista reviews ad.



I think Apple has done really well on these ads. :) Hope to see more soon.

Bonus video:


-FyreVortex
-Byzone Founder and Contributing Author

Mac Mini-A Quick Glance

I'm going to do a Quick Glance again, and since I don't have a Mac Mini, I can't do a full review. Although I have seen some videos though, and I might embed it here tommroow.

The Mac Mini is currently the cheapest, LEGAL, Mac right now. The dimensions of it is really small... It's 6.5 times 6.5 times 2. The specs are quite good for a cheap Mac, and affordable for people who don't want to buy an iMac.

The Mac Mini design is really good, because it is small but powerful enough for daily tasks such as sending email, doign spreadsheets, typing up homework, but is also capable of watching DVDs and making movies using iMovie.

This is a video from VvCompHelpvV for his unboxing of the Mac Mini.

The Mac Mini comes standard with iLife '08, the suite of software that Apple has decided to give out for free when you buy a new Mac. iLife '08 contains iWeb, a easy beginner website maker, iPhoto, a photo editor, iMovie, a video editor (Good for the novice user, and people who want to continue using iMovie '06 can download the upgrade from the Apple website), iDVD where you can watch videos and burn videos that you made with iMovie '08/'06 to a CD/DVD and then watch it on a TV or something like that, Garage Band, a music mixer/editor that comes with preset soundtracks, but it is also good for recording your own music.

It comes with an ethernet area, one FireWire port, one DVI/VGA port, FOUR USB ports, one security slot (Capable of using Kensington's security wire thing), headphone and speaker jack, and a line-in thingy, whatever it is.

It uses the standard Intel Core 2 Duo processor and comes in 1GB RAM for the lowest configuration and can be bumped up to 2 GB.

The good thing is that you can use your own mouse, keyboard, and screen that you are used to unless you don't want to, and has a really good design and can be stowed away if you want to.

I suggest you buy it if you want to test drive a mac at home, but if you really want to just have a quick glance and use of it, just go to your nearest Apple Store.

-FyreVortex
-Byzone Founder and Contributin Author

Choose a Vista!

Ok, I'm going to embed the Choose a Vista commercial (Official) and a spoof of it (Fan made, thumbs up to the person who made it). I might also include a short mini thought review on the current Mac Mini.



Choose a Vista! ... What about Choose a Leopard? :D



Fan made Choose a Vista. :D

I also found a "Most Annoyving Windows Vista sound". Laptop in the video is either a Power Book or a MacBook Pro.





A virus song?



Cool XP song.



Vista remix.



And the iBand.

Sorry, I didn't have enough time to put a Mac Mini mini-thought review right now, so I'd probably do it tomorrow or something as a separate post.

-FyreVortex
-Byzone Author and Contributing Editor

Sony Notebooks-A Quick Glance

I'm going to do a quick Sony Notebooks-A Quick Glance. No photos here, unfortunately, because this, of course, is a quick glance at what people might like.

Ok. I have picked out the 4 laptops people might buy if they have around a $1500-2000 budget. (Budget is not accurate, it's just a estimate from me.)

The Sony Z series. The business+basic home using laptop.
The Sony TZ series. The ultra portable business laptop.
The Sony AR series. The entertainment laptop.
The Sony ASR series. The All in One laptop.

Unfortunately, the AR has been kicked from the quick glance, due to the fact that it's purpose is not mainly for business/school users. AR is usually for video editors, web designers, entertainment (Watching videos, ...) users.

Ok, lets start off with the look and the price. The Z series combines an attractive power button from TZ and the use of AR. The prices are a combination of TZ and SR, starting at meagre $1799.99 for a good designed laptop.

We're going to put TZ out too, because of the price and the fact that not much stuff comes with the price.

The SR series laptop is kind of like the Z series but instead of having a HDMI port, it replaces it with a USB port. Both designs are kind of the same, and they both have the 6 hours standard battery life, but I prefer the Z series keyboard because the SR series keyboard is really dull: black on black, while Z series has black on silver.

SR series has more processor power and this so called unique switch mode, whatever it is, but Z series has more options such as blu-ray, solid state disk (SSD), and is lighter than SR.

I would prefer Z series because of the things I said above, although you can choose one of the laptops that I have chosen for this quick glance.

-FyreVortex
-Byzone Founder and Contributing Author

Microsoft Phase 2 Ad Campaigns

After pushing Seinfeld off, Microsoft released three new ads:







Lol... ESET's ads are so much better though. :P Microsoft, make something futuristic and cool next time. Lol.

And seriously... That does NOT make me want to buy Vista. Make something better... or do you want me to attempt?

Lol. And this is the opposite of the shoe circus:



-FyreVortex
-Byzone Founder and Contributing Author

Windows Advertising Campaign+30 posts Announcement

Microsoft launched two ads featuring comedian Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. (On September 17th, 2008, Microsoft canceled the plan and went to phase 2 without Seinfeld.

The first two ads are below: They drew confusion from many people and some people said that they didn't connect it with Vista.



Shoe Circus



New Family

Link

We have reached 30 posts and over a thousand views! Thanks everyone!

-FyreVortex

Antivirus Company ads

Original Symantec ad with fan adding their own music to it.



Symantec "redefining security". (However they're doing it...)



Nod32 Ad (Cantonese speaking. Translation: NOD32 antivirus program-Once there is a virus, it will automatically attack (... Defend?) *Ghuur ghuur+random sound effects* (Lol) Wow! The viruses are all gone! NOD32 antivirus program. Available in computer stores.)



Nod32 Promotional video.

Why do I have so much Nod32 videos? It's not that I use it right now (I'm using Kaspersky Internet Security 2009) but they have the coolest type of ads... Representing an antivirus as a robot. That is innovation, people!

-FyreVortex
-Byzone Founder and Contributing Author

New Byzone Contributing Author

Hello,
Byzone has a new Byzone Contributing Author-Latios from LatiosBlue. He will be now posting as a BCA on Byzone. Also, Byzone hit 1000 views.

-FyreVortex
-Byzone Founder and Contributing Author

iPod Commercials

iPod 4G Commercial.



iPod Nano 3G Commercial.



iPod Nano 3G Commercial Spoof, by MadTV.

-FyreVortex
-Byzone Founder and Contributing Author

Windows Vista System Requirements

After looking at my friend's quad core 4 GB RAM Nvidia 8800 GT desktop equipped with Windows Vista Ultimate, I decided to take a look at the minimum Windows Vista system requirements.

Here is what I found on Microsoft.Com on Windows Vista Home Premium+:
-At least 1 Ghz processor for 32 bit Vista.
-At least 1 GB RAM.
-40 GB hard drive space, minimum, with 15 GB space available.
-128 graphics card capable of DX9.

ZNET believes that is inaccurate. These are the requirements it state that is needed to run Vista "properly":
-2.0 Ghz dual core processor
-2GB RAM.
-256 video RAM graphics card, need to be able to support DirectX 9.
-100GB Hard drive, 50 GB free.

-FyreVortex
-Byzone Founder and Contributing Author

Sources:
Microsoft
Windows Vista Team Blog
VistaUltimate.Com
ZDNET

Product Review-Bandwidth Monitor

Product Review-Bandwidth Monitor
Vendor:
Type: Networking Tool
Platform: Windows XP/Vista (Tested on XP)
Download Link:
Rating: 4.5/5

I originally scoured the web looking for a bandwidth monitor to see how much MB I use while using the internet every day and found different ones, and I looked at reviews and other things.

I finally picked Bandwidth Monitor and downloaded it. The interface is acceptable although it can be made better (I have no idea how it can be improved, but I just think it can be.) It also logs down how much you download and upload in MB (I am not torrenting. I am downloading LEGAL wallpapers, fonts, ...) and using the internet to browse, game, ...

I think it is ok and you should be using it. And if you're wondering what is my internet usage for today, here is the statistics: Downloaded: 622.51 MB. Uploaded: 973.03 MB. I have no idea how uploaded is higher than downloaded. Probably my backup software. (Review may be coming soon.)

-FyreVortex
-Byzone Founder and Contributing Author

I am also going to ad new tags for product reviews. Coming soon.

(Note from editor: Hello guys, this is going to be my last positive review for now until it is noted in my blog, FyreWhirl. There is something really bad going on... Sorry again. I spared enough "light energy" (or other known as normalness to you) for this post. )

Test Drive: Google Chrome

Test Drive: Google Chrome
Vendor: Google Inc
Type: Internet Browser
Platform: Windows XP/Vista (More coming soon, according to Google)
Download Link: Google
Rating: 5/5

(Test drives are the reviews that I'm doing while I'm installing and testing the product."

I just downloaded Google Chrome off Google, and scanned it with KIS 2009 (Review on KIS coming soon.) No viruses.The application itself is a surprising 474 KB. I'm going through a fairly simple setup right now, it's actually downloading Google Chrome through the installer, so actually the installer isn't 474. It's just the downloader.

It's done now. What I like about Google Chrome is the Vista-like interface but it's speedily... Actions.

It has a clean user interface (Which I really like) and by clean, I mean, it is really "clean". There's mostly light colors like white and blue and is really easy on users. (Especially newer users. They would like it. It's very user friendly.)

It loads the websites that you have been to really fast. I think I'm going to use Google Chrome over Firefox now.

And Google's Chrome browser is up and beyond today's limits. It is faster, each tab is in a sandbox so that if one crashes the whole browser does not crash, has a private browsing option (Google Chrome calls it Incognito window)

It also includes a "most visted website" feature which appears when you open a new tab. I think that it's quite cool how it does that, because it's quite good for statistics and also for recording the websites that you usually go to for fun.

The controls are mostly like Firefox: Ctrl D opens up the bookmark option, etc.


One big difference is that when you click on a text box a yellow border appears. Probably it's because it's very user friendly and sometimes people forget which text box they type in when they are logging in and might accidentally type their password in the username area and thus, exposing their passwords to bystanders.

One bad thing about Google Chrome is that it will take your information (IP address, things you type into the browser URL bar) and send it back to Google so they can analyze it. If you don't mind this privacy issue, then go ahead and use Chrome.

-FyreVortex

-Byzone Founder and Contributing Author

Product Review-Speed Download Lite

Product Review-Speed Download Lite
Vendor: Yazsoft
Type: Downloader/Shareware
Platform: Mac OS X Tiger+
Download Link: Free-AV.Com
Rating: 5/5

Speed Download Lite for Mac Review

I particularly like this downloader since it had a clean, and as some people would call it, a "mac-like" interface.

I was downloading a trial of iWork using Safari (3)'s integrated download manager an first of all, it went from 55kbps down to 3kbps (Yes, my Internet is horrible, I'm planning of switching it.)

I then closed the lid of my MacBook, and then I re-opened it, thinking that it would resumed normally, and when I resumed, it went back to 0%.

So then I searched around for a good downloader for Mac an found Speed Download Lite.

I downloaded it and tried to use it to download the iWork trial. So far I'm very satisfied, with it buzzing at 11.3kbps. (Probably it has to do with the weather/summer?)

It has enough options and can be bought for $25 at the time of writing.

If you wanted to buy a good downloaded for Mac, and could spare $25, then this is what you should buy.

(The support is great! I once contacted customer service through email and they replied very fast, almost instantaneously.)

-FyreVortex
-Byzone Founder and Contributing Author

MobileMe... The Next Generation Of Online Services.

Wow... From .Mac (Dot Mac), a beginning online service that basic things (Well basic, compared to MobileMe), now upgraded to MobileMe!

This is a revolutionary new service (The best offer I have ever seen before for this type of service... Well, this is the only service of this kind I have seen so far...) created by... *Drum Rolls* Apple!!!

Email, contacts, calendar, applications, files, all located on your technology-Windows, Mac, iPod Touch, iPhone.


You got all your mail from the two different operating system synced together:
Microsoft Outlook, on Windows, and Mail, on Mac. The mail function, the calendar, and the address book, both in Mac OS X and your iPod Touch/iPhone.

And the applications from .Mac (Excluding the bookmark function) are also included in the MobileMe service. Mail, with a redesigned interface online, calendar, address book, photo sharing, and iDisk.

"It's your desktop on the Web."-Apple.Com
"Safe. Secure. And no spam."-Apple.Com says, commenting on the Mail feature.
"Your personal hard drive online."-Apple.Com

I think this will be an excellent service, and I look forward to using it.

(This doesn't count as a review because I haven't used it yet... Hopefully, I will though. :D)

All pictures are from Apple.Com.

-Fyre Vortex
-Byzone Founder and Contributing Editor

The Intel Chip... For Macintosh.

Wow, that's a really awesome video/advertisement created by Apple... :)