MacFest

Sat, 23 Jun 2008
EpiCentre, Pavilion KL, Bukit Bintang
8:00 - 10:00pm

Report : Azul Adnan
Photos : Azul Adnan

The evening started rolling with Hari, a new staff at EpiCentre, demonstrating the iPevo Free.2 Skype handset. He used the room's iMac to call Jeyadev on his MacBook. It worked pretty smoothly.

The handset connects to the Mac's camera seamlessly. It can also record conversations. Free.2 retails at RM189.

Next Hari showed two new products by a company called Blue Lounge (BL). The first was the CableBox, a plastic container the size of a shoe box in which you can store your power adapters and messy cables. You can keep your work area tidy in black or white but you'd be poorer by RM109!

The other product was the SpaceStation, an extended desk organiser for laptops. It has four USB ports and an AC adapter to power these ports. There's space underneath to neatly secure and hide your cables. On the top there's a rubber pad which makes it easy and safe to rest your laptop and other peripherals on. Also available in black or white, the SpaceStation retails at RM319.

Jeyadev spoke next. He had brought along his brand new iPhone 3G and passed it around for all to see and feel as he answered a list of questions written by the attendees. He bought his iPhone via a friend from New Zealand. It was through Vodaphone and it came unlocked. It cost him around RM2,500.

The battery life (with 3G turned off but wi-fi on) is around 24 hours. Jeyadev felt that some things were a little sluggish like launching SMS. However when compared with Jimin's first gen iPhone, the iPhone 3G was much faster!

It was then Shah's turn and he talked through a list of Essential Mac Apps, freeware that all Mac users should have on their Macs. The apps were:

• NeoOffice (free Microsoft Office)
• Adium (chat app which records searchable transcripts)
• Skype
• Darwine
• VirtualBox (free Parallels)
• Perian (Quicktime component for playing other formats)
• Flip4Mac (for playing Windows media files in Quicktime)
• VLC (cross-platform media player)
• iSquint (iPod video conversion)
• WhatSize (displays all file/folder sizes on your Mac)
• Quicksilver (application launcher)
• Google Earth (now supports street names)

As there was still a little time left, Fa'iq talked about DD-WRT, applications which can overwrite a router's firmware to provide a bridge between internet connections to increase wireless coverage. Fa'iq explained how he flashed the firmware of his Linksys router. He also showed a picture of his room where the router provides Internet connection to his XBox, PS3 and desktop PC.

As usual there were some Mac-related books which were given away as lucky draws, as well as three Apple pen/pencil sets. After the event some of us had our laptop screens calibrated by Jimin's Spyder2. We then hung out at Starbucks.