The trouble with being a Mac user is it lulls you into a false sense of security. It’s like what happens with snow. In most northern countries people aren’t surprised by it, and just trudge around looking resigned until it goes away again. Windows users have the same kind of relationship with stuff that fails to work, does the opposite of what they meant, or tells them to wait while the system restarts to complete installation of another essential update. continue
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So I went to see Avatar, a satire on mankind’s acquisitiveness and obsession with technological progress. I wanted to catch it at the IMAX, but the Christmas traffic was too heavy. (If you’re hearing a funny noise in the background, it’s just the alarm on my irony meter.) continue
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I never fully believed the Apple Tablet was real until I heard these words on my iPhone: ‘It’s [name withheld], I work for Apple and I can confirm that, yes… I’ve read the rumour websites too. We’re all really excited and just waiting for Steve to tell us to start making it.’ continue
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Nobody was shocked when the Secretary of State for Business announced three strikes. There could be a lot more than that by the end of the winter. As it turned out, though, he wasn’t talking about industrial action: Lord Mandelson was resurrecting the proposal to cut off your access to the Internet if you’re accused of infringing copyright. Like privatising the Royal Mail, he probably doesn’t see why this is controversial. continue
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If you spend your day using PCs, dealing with infuriating glitches becomes second nature. But Apple has made things so straightforward that you get used to stuff just working. When it doesn’t, it comes as a nasty shock. Fortunately, the brick walls you may occasionally run up against will generally turn out, on closer inspection, to be mere ha-has in the garden of Mac. So next time you find yourself staring at the screen with a mounting sense of horror, take a deep breath and read this article. In MacFormat issue 215, on sale now.
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Harriet Harman, reports the Observer, is to be questioned by police about failing to stop after a traffic accident. Or, as both the Sun and the Mirror had it, a ‘prang’. continue reading at www.macuser.co.uk
Why a graphics book about graphics books? Noted art director Steven Heller, who wrote the introduction, thinks he owns all the ones mentioned here, but isn’t sure because his personal library – ‘a separate apartment where I store most of my books’ – is too disorganised. You and I, on the other hand, with less shelf space and a more limited budget, may need a bit of help in sifting through the thousands of titles in the field. continue
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As I write, artificial intelligence (AI) teams are gathering in Brighton for the 2009 Loebner Prize Contest. This is where chatbots – programs that simulate conversation – compete to pass the Turing Test, convincing a panel of human beings that they’re talking to a real person. Despite the incentive of $100,000, no system has actually won so far, though presumably they all have tearful acceptance speech modules just in case. continue
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From the Finder to the Firewall, key shortcuts to sync tricks, we round up all the clever little wrinkles that can make life sweeter in Mac OS X. If you’ve ever thought ‘there ought to be a smarter way to do that’, there probably is, and it’s probably here. Read the full article in MacFormat issue 213, on sale now.
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