boot camp
Steam Coming To Mac OS X (Digital Games Distribution)
March 9, 2010
I know, I know, Christmas happened way back in December, but presents are better late than never! In case any of you Apple fanboys out there missed the news, Steam announced yesterday morning that they’re bringing their service to the Mac along with a great library of games which will be available to purchase like PC users running Steam.
In case you’ve not used used it before, Steam is probably the best digital games distribution platform out there, which most of the big and small games publishers are now using to cut out the need for physical media distribution for games. Not only are publishers using it to release new games, but also to find a market for their older games, for example Lucasarts re-released some of their older classic titles. It’s fair to say that we’re big fans of it here at Zath.
Continue reading »Intego VirusBarrier X6 Review (Mac Anti-Virus Software)
February 26, 2010
Shortly before the new year, Intego’s popular anti-virus offering for OS X received an update in the form of VirusBarrier X6, which builds on X5 with new features and a lower price point of £39.95 (ex. VAT) with a standard license that covers two Macs, not just one, so for instance you could protect your MacBook Pro and Mac Mini on one subscription.
If you’ve never heard of Intego’s anti-virus (after all, if Apple had their way, everyone would think that getting a virus on a Mac is impossible, although some people think Windows is Virus Proof too!) then you’ll also be interested to know that it can also detect Windows malware in addition to OS X, so if you have a boot camp partition setup, you needn’t worry about any viruses on Windows either!
I personally have never had an anti-virus on any Mac I’ve owned, so I was definitely curious to see if I had anything nasty hiding out on my hard drive that had escaped my attention – coming from years of Windows use before using OS X, it’s certainly a strange feeling not worrying about an anti-virus, but I definitely feel more secure knowing that I’m protected even though it didn’t find any malware when I left it scanning. The scan took around two hours to complete and was very thorough, which was re-assuring.
Continue reading »Parallels Desktop 5 Review (Mac OS X)
January 19, 2010
Apple’s Mac OS X’s a great operating system, but however much you love it, few of us can get by without running Windows for some reason or another. When it comes to running Windows on your Mac, you have two choices: use Apple’s boot camp or run Windows virtually using either Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion.
When Snow Leopard was released, new versions of both these applications were released, each offering their own strengths and weaknesses. Parallels Desktop 5 comes with some great new features, some more polished than others, and offers a great incentive when using Windows applications in an OS X environment.
Setting up Parallels is an extremely simple process which allows you to install an OS of your choice (Windows or Linux) virtually, by using either a physical install disk or installing from a disk image (this comes in handy when installing Linux distributions especially, as many are downloaded as an .iso image). The install process is the same as you’d see when installing Windows on a physical drive, so there’s nothing unfamiliar to worry about – in fact, it’s significantly simpler, as you Parallels requests your Windows license key before installing, to make the process as automated as possible.
Continue reading »How To Install Windows 7 On Apple Mac’s Boot Camp
October 28, 2009
When I woke this morning, I went through my usual schedule of reading various technology blogs around the web to see what’s new, and came across the most ridiculous article about installing Windows 7 on an Apple Mac via Boot Camp.
The article in question (I won’t name the blog…) basically warned Mac users that if they were excited about installing Windows 7 on their Mac’s anytime soon, they should hold off because Apple don’t officially support Windows 7 in Boot Camp yet. In fact, at the end of the article the writer himself said “I wouldn’t try it”. If it isn’t already clear, I completely disagree with the article and wish to set the record straight for anyone thinking of installing Windows 7 on their Mac.
Continue reading »
