Ethan Rose – Apple fanatic, Blogger, Guru, Technologist.

03-08-11

My New [old] Apple Cube

“Never has so much supercomputing firepower been engineered into such a small space. The remarkable Power Mac G4 Cube, measuring less than eight inches per side, delivers more computing power than PCs four times its size. Yet while it’s packed with advanced technology, there’s still room for more inside.”

I am writing this post to celebrate my acquisition of an Apple Power Mac G4 Cube.I have always loved these computers and have longed at listings on eBay.

I’ve always been drawn to the Apple Cube because of it’s simplicity. One small box houses your whole computer. It makes no noise, has no fan to remind you this is a computer you are sitting in front of. It’s nice to have on your desk – quite a departure from the old beige boxes Apple used to make before Steve came back and a nice change of scenery from almost every PC of the day. And, despite being spec’d at year 2000 speediness it still handles general use very well, certainly browsing, email and music.

This is now a cult collectors item and rarely found in a full set as it is here. I am most proud to own this amazing computer.

[For extra fun value, check out the original PowerMac Cube product page]

09-13-10

High Res ✔

Pixel for pixel, this is a screen shot of my iP4.

07-15-10

How to get Pandora, Hulu in New Zealand

A lot of you reading this will probably have seen the ads around the web for completely anonymous, secure, proxy, VPN and whatever else they like to call it..

I wager your first reaction would have been, who would need that? Only kiddie-porn rings and undercover agents right?

There is a less publicised and far more legitimate reason that you might want to use one of these services – to obscure your location. Services like Pandora, Hulu, Spotify, Netflix, Veoh, ABC and many others employ IP checks on their users, to protect themselves from getting in trouble over their lisences, but where does that leave people like me, in New Zealand, who want to use these awesome services, who are willing to pay for them?

Out to dry.

There is an answer! Pay for (safer) or otherwise procure a free VPN service which will send all your traffic to the US or wherever it is you need to comply with the IP checks. Be aware – all your personal traffic is going trough someone else’s server. This means, should they have malicious intent, they are in a very good position to hijack your info.

As long as you are careful, choose and trustworthy provider and be sure to employ SSL on your email and web logins you should be more than safe.

There is an added bonus to this setup – should your ISP be trying to throttle your torrent downloads of all that open-source software, this will obscure the type of traffic and you’ll be home free!

Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone and Android all support VPN so get to it!

Thanks to SuperVPN for giving me a free VPN account, you guys are awesome.

07-06-10

SuperVPN

So this morning I woke up and checked my Twitter.

There was an update from RazorianFly talking about how to get free VPN.

I followed the link and it lead me through to SuperVPN’s free VPN offer page.

All I had to do was Digg their page and a few other social niceties and they hooked me up with Free VPN. How kind!

So far set-up has been easy and I am able to browse quickly. I will post up a review soon after I have used it a while but so far it seems to be great!

07-02-10

Why I’m getting an iPhone 4

I have to admit there is a degree of Fanboy to my upcoming purchase of the iPhone 4. But that’s not the only reason.

The iPhone 4 is what we have been waiting for in a phone all these years. The hardware is beautiful, stunning even.

iOS4 has matured and become what everyone always hoped it would be. With multitasking added it’s reached a whole new level of awesome and it’s Apple awesome not generic battery wasting all at once awesome.

Can’t wait for them to be released in New Zealand!

Are you getting one? Let me know in the comments below.

06-16-10

2Degrees, carry on

After today’s announcement of awesome calling rates, 2Degrees you seem to have it all covered.

Calls, texts AND data (This is quite important for smartphone and iPhone users like me).

Carry on like this and you might just become the new favourite underdog network like Vodafone made themselves out to be. (Good move targeting the Indian and Chinese demographic in New Zealand, just by the way)

Looking forward to 3G!

06-10-10

Customer, Service?

So here I am on XT, enjoying my awesome 3G service when I decide to check my data cap.

I know I am near the 120mb cut off mark but I expect to get some sort of notification if I go over. Dail *333, press 2 for data.

“You are on the 120mb data plan. You have used 135mb, that’s 15mb over your cap and you will be charged 50c per mb.”

Why did I not get any notification? Oh well, better buy some more data.

I look for a text facility and end up using a form on the website, clicking on 120mb in the hopes to get more data.

Nope, text plan gets canceled and no more data. I call up for some help and get told I can’t get the text plan back without paying again and I can’t get any more data till next month. Period.

No sir, you cannot have an account credit, sorry there is nothing else I can do for you.

Confused? Frustrated?

Yes.Yes.

05-26-10

How much data does Google have on you?

People are becoming ever-more aware what data companies have on them and where.

Did you ever wonder how much data you have stored on Google’s servers?
There is a way to find out.

Direct your browser to https://www.google.com/dashboard

Once you log in, you will get a list of almost every single service you have tied to your google account, it will also tell you if this information public or not.

Check it out.

05-25-10

New 2Degrees deals

2Degrees has just become a real player in the New Zealand mobile market.

500 any network texts – $10
50mb of EDGE data – $6
(you can buy as many of these data packs as you like)

No special conditions, that’s it.

Steven Morey noted:

So I topup $50 and get 1000 texts 50MB data and 77 minutes of calling to anyone. Not bad.

I’ve just done a quick speedtest and I won’t be taking my iPhone over just yet, but I am very excited about these new deals and once 2 Degrees has 3G i’m there:

05-24-10

MobileMe needs to be Free

I believe MobileMe should be free, this would be an important move for Apple to compete with the Android operating system by Google.

The Android operating system has Google products integrated in every app, this is especially important when it comes to the Personal Information Management features ie. Contacts, Tasks, Calenders etc.

In the iPhone OS the equivalent is MobileMe, while you can set up Google Sync via Exchange the experience is less than optimal. The answer is MobileMe, I have used MobileMe and the sync is flawless, set and forget.

I believe MobileMe should be free for anyone who owns a Mac, iPhone or iPad, this would complement the ‘Apple experience’ really well and make the iPhone (and your new iPad) an even better device to own.