Category: Computers

The History of Microsoft’s MS-DOS

MS-DOS is 30 years old today. Well, kind of. On 27 July 1981, Microsoft gave the name MS-DOS to the disk operating system it acquired on that day from Seattle Computer Products (SCP), a hardware company owned and run by a fellow called Rod Brock. SCP developed what it at various times called QDOS and […]

Ripping Out iCal’s Torn Page

One complaint about Leopard is the faux leather appearance of the interface… If that is annoying you, then take a look at: Big Bucket – Archive – Ripping Out iCal’s Torn Page – How to remove the “Turn page” elements from iCal OS X Daily details how to return iCal to the non-leather appearance. Please keep […]

Mac malware ‘explosion’ missing in action

The appearance of the MacDefender trojan back in May provoked a lot of back-and-forth between various tech writers (including your humble correspondent). Was this a sign that the good times were ending? That the Mac platform would come under ever-fiercer attack from malware authors? That soon we’d all be running resource-sucking virus scanners and a-fearing […]

Invisible Library Folders getting you frustrated?

Rumor has it, that Lion makes the User’s library folder hidden. Which could make it annoying to power users that need access to the library folder. One option, is to use the Go To Folder command, and type “~/Library”. That will open the library folder in a standard finder window. Another option, is to “unhide” […]

100,000 choices now available on Apple’s iPad App Store

There are now more than 100,000 applications available on the iPad App Store written specifically for the 9.7-inch display found on Apple’s touchscreen tablet. Apple crossed the six-figure milestone this week, a fact that was first noted by MacStories. The total applies to software written for the iPad, and does not include iPhone applications, which […]

Mac OS 10.6.8 shows slight speed increase for graphics

The newer graphics drivers in 10.6.8 not only eliminated any decline in speed from 10.6.5 through 10.6.7 but showed significantly improved OpenGL performance in Xbench and the game Halo for the ATI Radeon HD 5870 card. The Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics also showed higher OpenGL performance although the difference is less dramatic. While Xbench’s User […]

Backup, backup and backup

We just heard of a sad story about an Australian web hosting company (Distribute.IT) that was hacked and all of the sites they hosted were deleted (almost 5 thousand of them). What’s even worse is that the attackers deleted and corrupted their backup archives, so they were not able to… via Backup, backup and backup.