A few years ago, I was walking through downtown Boston with my Burger King bag and Coke. I ran into a friend in Kenmore Square who was on his way into a pizza joint. He asked me to join him and we both sat down.

As I unwrapped my Whopper, anticipating the greasy goodness that would undoubtedly shorten my life, the owner began shouting from behind the counter.

"Hey!" he said with a heavy Boston accent. "You cahhn't eat that in here. Go pahhk it someplace else!" You see, I was eating the competitor's food in his shop. Or, in geeker terms, running their software on his hardware. That's a no-no in some circles.

Someone tell Open Tech.

Unfettered by Psystar's recent run-in with Apple Legal, Open Tech has announced their new hardware lineup, including a desktop able to run XP, Vista, OSX Leopard and Ubuntu, featuring

• Intel Pentium D 945 3.40GHz Dual-Core Processor
• 500 Gb Hard Drive
• 3 GB of DDR2 Ram (667 MHz PC 5400)
• CD burner
• 802.11g Wi-Fi.

Pricing and availability has not been announced. The main difference between Open Tech's model and Psystar's is that Open Tech is not selling computers with Leopard pre-loaded. Instead, they provide an OS-free machine and instructions for installing the OS of your choice.

Still, we are talking about Apple's Whopper in Open Tech's pizza joint.

Personally, I don't see why I shouldn't be able to run whatever OS I please on my own machine. Sadly, that's not the way things are.

[Via MacNN]

Fellow propeller-head and all-around nice guy Joel Evans over at Geek.com let me know that they had published a short post about a couple of iPhone 3G extended battery options. Since the 3G has a tendency to suck battery power like a vacuum powered by a Pratt & Whitney PW-4000 jet engine, several vendors have come out with plug-in battery extenders to make sure your App Store browsing isn't cut short by a lack of juice.

I've got one more to add to the list -- the RichardSolo Backup Battery for iPhone / iPod (pictured at right). If you are using your iPhone 3G as much as I am, you either need one of these extended batteries or have a really long extension cord.

We noted yesterday that the Mac clone maker, Psystar, was sued by Apple for copyright infringement, among other things. According to a recent ZDNet post, Apple wants Psystar to recall all of the Mac clones sold since April. "Psystar's actions have been committed with intent to damage Apple and to confuse and deceive the public," Apple claims.

"As a direct and proximate result of Psystar's infringing conduct, Apple has suffered and will continue to suffer lost sales and profits in an amount not yet fully ascertained in an amount to be proven at trial," Apple notes.

I really don't see how Psystar will be able to recover all of the Mac clones sold since April. But, if you bought one, would you send it back? I certainly wouldn't. Engadget, our sister blog, is also looking deeply into this high-profile lawsuit. They take a look at what each allegation means for both Apple and Psystar.

Like we didn't see this one coming: Apple is suing Psystar for copyright infringement. Psystar is the interesting little startup Mac-clone maker who allowed Mac OS X to run on their systems without the consent of Apple. In its license agreement, you are not allowed to run Mac OS X on any non-Apple hardware.

Apple filed the complaint in a federal district court in California saying that Psystar violated its shrink-wrap license and trademarks. Apple is also alleging copyright infringement. In recent months, Psystar had begun cloning Mac OS X servers, which definitely made us feel a little uneasy about this small company.

[via Engadget]

Mac owners often look on with envy at the Ultra-Mobile PCs (UMPCs) in the Windows world. These are truly tiny laptops, often with 10" or smaller displays and weights that make a MacBook Air seem downright obese by comparison.

MoDaCo network founder and Microsoft MVP Paul O'Brien decided to get his OS of choice, Mac OS X 10.5.4, up and running on one of these little wonders. The machine is a variant of a recently released UMPC called the MSI Wind, which weighs in at 2.3 lbs and sports the new Intel Atom N270 CPU running at 1.6 GHz.

While Paul admits to a few small issues, he was not only able to load and run Leopard on the Wind, but he also documented the entire procedure in text and video (see above) if you want to make your own Ultra-Mobile Mac. After watching how easy the process is and finding out how inexpensive the Wind is, I'm tempted to try this myself! Be sure to let us know if you're successful at following Paul's footsteps.

Direct link to the video and step-by-step instructions.

Many Mac users have wanted a tablet for years, but Apple has definitely failed to deliver such a device. But if you think that the ModBook is too expensive, or if you're the DIY type, then why not build your own Mac tablet? Hack-A-Day has posted a gallery of images showing some of the various types of DIY (Do-It-Yourself) Mac tablets.

If you are too scared to start ripping apart a Mac notebook and blindly build your own tablet Mac, then why not take a peek at this Instructables project. If you have built your own Mac tablet before, be sure to tell us about it in the comments.


Thanks, Victor!

In an interesting test by the folks over at Tom's Hardware, solid-state drives (SSDs) suck more power than their platter-based counterparts. Why should you care? Because the MacBook Air features an SSD in its higher-end configurations.

Tom's looked at four different SSD models, and compared them with a 7,200 RPM disk of the same size. One disk, from Crucial, touted its "low power consumption" in marketing materials. However, the disk reduced its test laptop's battery runtime from seven hours to six hours. Ouch.

SSDs are significantly faster, of course, but the idea that they consume less power appears to be false. As manufacturers develop thinner and thinner sub-notebooks, power consumption can only become more and more important.

Update: Many commenters are pointing out problems with how Tom's Hardware conducted the test. Peter cites a comment from our sister blog Engadget that says "The TH article was, as usual, significantly flawed. The benchmark they used to test battery life restarts itself after each completion, doing so until the battery is dead. However, the article did not report how many times the benchmark was able to run on the SSD vs. the mechanical HD." Commenter Greg recommended this Anandtech article as a counterpoint to this one.

The Mac OS X 10.5.4 update might have made you restart your Mac, but it also added "RAW image support for several cameras." While Apple didn't tell us what these cameras were in Software Update, they did later update the RAW support page for Mac OS X Leopard.

According to the page, Apple's update added the ability to use the RAW format on these cameras:

• Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi / Kiss Digital x2 / EOS 450D
• Epson R-D1 / R-D1s
• Leaf AFi 7
• Leaf AFi 6
• Leaf AFi 5
• Pentax K200D
• Pentax K20D

Those of you waiting for your SLR camera to be supported under Leopard might have received a surprise in your Mac OS X update.


[via ArsTechnica]

Is it time to finally put your HD mountain biking documentary on Blu-ray? Apple upgrade vendor MCE Technologies announced availability of a totally Mac-compatible Blu-ray recordable drive for Mac Pro and Power Mac.

The $499 (internal) drive is compatible with Mac OS X 10.5.2 and later, requiring no special drivers for burning -- just install it in your Mac Pro or Power Mac bay, pop in blank Blu-ray media, and you're ready to roll. The drive does both single-layer (6X BD-R or 2X BD-RE) and dual-layer (4X BD-R, 2X BD-RE) burning for capacities of 25GB or 50GB respectively. That's up to 50,000 photos, 12,500 music tracks, or 4 hours of HD video.

There's a $599 version bundled with Roxio Toast 9 and the Toast BD//HD Plugin, as well as an external drive with FireWire and USB 2.0 ports for $749.

To write professional Blu-ray discs that can play on set-top Blu-ray players or Sony PS3, you'll need Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 Encore along with Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 or Final Cut Pro. Basic Blu-ray movies can be burned with Roxio Toast 9 and the BD/HD Plugin.

[via The Mac Observer]

Conclusion

Reviewer Rating: 3 out of 5 possible

Should you buy one? If you need to do a lot of CD/DVD labeling and money isn't an object, yes. However, if you need a new printer anyway, the HP Photosmart C5280 all-in-one gives you a disc and paper printer, copier, scanner, and more, all in one box that costs less than half the price of the DiscPainter. You can also buy HP LightScribe external drives for much less, but the media is quite expensive.

If you DO buy one, remember to include the cost of BeLight Disc Cover to replace the Discus for Dymo software.

Pros

• Fast high-resolution printing
• Very quiet
• Does the job it is designed for, despite software shortcomings
• Does excellent job of printing directly on CD/DVD media

Cons

• Software isn't very Mac-like
  
• Printer footprint larger than it needs to be
• No power switch, can't turn it fully off without unplugging
• Very Expensive ($279.95 MSRP, about $250 online)

Be sure to check out the Gallery below for more pictures of the Dymo DiscPainter.

Software (continued)

Likewise, trying to pick the "TUAW Green" for the text on the label, I thoroughly expected to see the standard Apple color picker so I could use the little magnifier tool to go for the green. No such luck. I finally figured out that I could option-click one of the custom colors to make the color picker appear (see below).

Size, Installation, and Setup (continued)

The DiscPainter comes with a Mac OS X / Windows installation CD that installs drivers and Discus for Dymo, an application that helps you to the design the disc image. After plugging in the USB cable and restarting your Mac, the instructions take you through making your first disc.

Software

I was underwhelmed by the Discus for Dymo software, which despite a 2007 copyright date appears to have been written while Mac OS X 10.2 was still all the rage. It has a cheesy, Aqua-like interface (see below) that looks very unprofessional and is obviously a port done by Windows programmers. My first thought was that I needed to update the software. No, version 1.1.1 IS the latest version.


Discus for Dymo does its job, but is uses many Mac OS X features incorrectly. For example, I wanted to use a picture from my iPhoto Library as a backdrop on a CD so I clicked on the Photo button expecting the standard Apple media browser to appear immediately. Instead, I had to navigate to my Photos folder before the media browser appeared.

I have a mountain of CDs and DVDs in my office. Some of them are in sleeves, others are stacked on spindles. For the most part, my disc labeling consists of grabbing a Sharpie ultra-fine-point marker and scrawling something right on the top of the disc. I've tried sticky labels before, but stopped after I had a few CDs that wouldn't come out of my iMac's SuperDrive slot.

Dymo, the labeling company, is now shipping the DiscPainter. It's a single-duty printer designed for one thing; printing directly onto inkjet-printable CD and DVD media.

Size, Installation, and Setup

The first thing that hit me when I opened the DiscPainter box was how big it is. Given that it is a single-tasker, it takes up a lot of room on a desktop (roughly 5.75" x 10"). For those with limited space available, this may be a reason not to buy the DiscPainter.

Following the included Quick Start Guide (yes, I RTFM), I removed the usual tape and plastic cruft encasing the DiscPainter, popped in the single ink cartridge, and connected the power cable. The initial user experience is excellent.

Read on for the full review

As an entertaining Friday afternoon aside to our discussion earlier this week about how to recover data from a dying hard disk, it turns out there's plenty of uses left for the ones that have finally stopped pining for the fjords.

• With this tutorial from HacknMod, you can turn your hard disk into a grinder or sander.

• You can make a windchime and a keychain out of the parts inside the hard disk. Classy!

• You can turn it into a speaker.

• Years ago, my dad used to make clocks out of the huge 14-inch disk platters he used in old HP 3000 minicomputers. Turns out you can do this with the smaller drives of today, too.

• Finally, if you acquire enough expired hard disks, you can make a huge domino set out of them.

Practical? Probably not. But hey, it beats throwing them away.

Last year, we wrote about Life Fitness' plan to build exercise equipment with built-in iPod integration, allowing users do dock their iPod and control it from the machine itself.

This week, 24 Hour Fitness (the largest fitness club chain in the United States) announced their intention to install similar equipment at locations in New York, San Francisco, Miami, Denver, Portland and Salt Lake City. Unlike the Life Fitness machines, equipment at the 24 Hour Fitness clubs will record workout data in the same way that the Nike+ kit for the iPod does, and prepare it for upload at NikePlus.com. Expect the new machines to begin to arrive in July.