We’ve been so busy in the South Burlington Service department this week that I didn’t have the time to ponder about a good topic for this week’s Tech Tails article. Instead, I’m bringing you a few random thoughts.
On a recent Saturday I was on one of those long tech support calls where there’s a lot of time for general conversation because the customer’s computer is doing something that takes a while. This customer asked how to properly pronounce the name of Apple’s current operating system. Thinking OS X is pronounced OS “Ex” is a common misconception.
The “X” in the name is just a roman numeral representing the version number of the system, the number 10. Think of it as a cool marketing tool. Every poster for a new operating system can have a big X on it done up in various designs. Much hipper than a number 10. Apple lays it out in this support document. You can even ask your computer—open up the Terminal application and type in the following:
say “OS X”
The second item on the agenda is a nifty little app I recently discovered called Caffeine (available in the new Mac App Store). The first cool thing is that it’s free; free is always good. Second, it’s called Caffeine, I’m a hard core coffee junkie so… Third, it keeps my Mac awake when I want it to be and sleeping when I don’t. Basically, it puts a little coffee cup (yum) in my menu bar. If I click it it turns black and the Mac will ignore its current energy saver settings and stay on no matter what. If I click it again, it turns grey and the Mac follows my energy saver instructions. I like to keep my energy saver to sleep the monitor after a minute, so it goes off quickly when I’m away from the computer.
Finally, check out the iPad app Project. There’s not much I can really say about this magazine app from Virgin founder Richard Branson—I believe it needs to be experienced rather than read about! I believe it’s free (at least for a limited time) so there is zero risk to try it. I hope that magazines on the iPad move in this direction. Some come close like the interactive editions of National Geographic and Popular Mechanics, but most are just literal digital versions of an analog device. Boring. Check out Project—you will not be disappointed!