Great Software: QuickSilver

I have heard the guys from the Macbreak Weekly podcast talking about Quicksilver. OMFG how cool is it. Very thats how.

In a nutshell Quicksilver allows you do launch apps, launch songs, photos. Fark it. I'll stop there. It does just about anything you can think of with the touch of a few keys.

Either watch the Macbreak Video podcasts about quicksilver or Just get it I have only just touched the surface on what it can do. I have the feeling that it's the sort of app you could use for years and STILL not know all the features.

Oh yeah it's best feature. It's free.

Get it today. That's an order.

Great Software : Adium

From time to time, when I come across or when someone tells me about some great software, I will post about it here.

As a recent switcher, I don't have a clue about great software for the Mac, so rely on Mac blogs and the general community. I was alerted to Adium by fellow .NET developer and switcher, Nic

For those of you who don't know, Adium is a multi network instant messaging client for Mac OSX. Best of all, it is free and open source. I like iChat, but you need to do a major hack and workaround to get it to work with other accounts such as MSN and Yahoo, and most of my mates unfortunately don't have Macs, so I can't chat to them without using MSN etc.

Adium works out of the box nicely and supports all the features you would expect in an IM client, and shows all accounts in one view. More importantly it has an icon in the menu bar and hides away the main screen of the application when you aren't using, ala MSN and Yahoo etc in the Windows world. The other nice feature is that it uses Growl for notifications which pops up cool looking balloon messages, instead of bouncing the program icon.

I give Adium a full two thumbs up on the thwo thumbs up scale.

Parallels 3D performance

OK, so I was buzzed when I heard that Parallels did 3D in version 3, so I got it the day it was released.

Using Quake 4 as the benchmark and just using in game FPS, I did some performance testing.

I guess because Parallels is so good running Windows XP - my MBP DuoCore 2 2.16Ghz with 2Gb ram it runs as fast as native (except disk access performance is slightly lower) I expected it to run almost as fast as native. Unfortunately that is not the case.

Test Spec
Both tests were run with the same video settings. 1080x786 on Medium quality settings. Test machine is Intel Duo Core 2 Mac Book Pro running @ 2.16Ghz, with 2Gb Ram. Video cars is a ATI Radeon X1600 with 128Mb Ram.
Parallels runs with 1500Mb Ram and 64Mb VRAM.


Parallels
In game fps goes from a peak of 33fps to a low of 11fps, with an average of around 18fps. This to say the least is disappointing. Still it's a version 1 product really. The fact that they even got it working is a brilliant achievement. Like I said before, I guess I was expecting more.

Native Mac OS X 10.4.9
Quake 4 runs pretty well natively, as you would expect. Peak fps is 70fps to a low of around 20fps, with an in game average around 35. Hardly stellar but acceptable none the less. Basically what I would expect running this card on this machine.

Conclusion
Obviously native is still the best. On my MBP, gaming really isn't an option in Parallels. Nobody should buy it on the basis of playing games. It is a great new feature, and Parallels should be congratulated for the effort, but still a way to go yet. Having said that version 3 is worth the upgrade and is recommended to any Mac user that must use Windows apps. Just not games - not yet anyway.

About Me

G'day.

My name is James and I am a switcher. I was stuck in the mire that is Windows for the last 15 years, but saw the light in January.

I love my Macbook Pro, and it of course the best machine I have every used and owned. I am a programmer by day, using .NET so unfortunately haven't been able to completely rid myself of Windows, but it does mean I am in contact with Windowsphiles every day and can convert them from the inside!

Basically, this blog will have any news, thoughts or rants I have, and describe my thoughts about the Mac and Mac community from a noob.