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mac.nz is owned by Mark Webster, an experienced writer and IT commentator with articles published over the years in Monitor, Stamp, Loose, Macguide, Tone, Maximum Rock ’n’ Roll, D-photo, NZ Classic Car, The Dominion Post, NetGuide, NZ Herald online and for PC World. He is also a director of the CreativeTech conference.

He was the editor of NZ Macguide magazine for five years and has worked exclusively with Macs for 20.

Mark is the author of the NZ history book Assembly: NZ Car Production 1921-1998 (Reed Books, 2002).

He is a speaker on Information Technology and automotive, historical and Apple subjects, and works as a Mac trainer with wide experience. Mark has dispensed Apple knowledge at Natcoll, to MAINZ, for ImageText, to 3Media, MacMillan Publishing and for Microsoft, and to dozens of individuals.

New May MacBook

Wednesday, 19 May 2010

New MacBook: Yes, it got bumped – it still sells for $1749 but now has a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, better NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics and the 10-hour battery. This is just on time for US and European 'back to school'. Note that students and educators can buy this a little cheaper just produce ID or deal direct with Student IT.

Aperture 3 – Ars' review: I reviewed this myself but it struggled a little on a three-year-old MacBook Pro. Ars Tehnica's very full review was done on a great big Mac Pro ... surprisingly, Ars' reviewer also noticed some glitchy display issues but concluded "For pros who just want to get work done, Aperture 3's improved interface, flawless curve adjustment, multiple maskable edits, and 64-bit update are more than enough reason to upgrade."

Apple and political lobbying: When it comes to throwing their muscle around Congress, Apple is not a big player – especially when compared to Microsoft and Google.
Business Insider looked at the numbers (but I read it on Cult of Mac). Compared to Google, which spends half what it spends on advertising on lobbying, Apple’s barely rubbing elbows with politicians at all.

Thirteen games for US$50! PopCap Games’ entire library of 13 Mac games is now available for the lump sum of just $50 (cNZ$71).
The games are Amazing Adventures 3: The Caribbean Secret; Bejeweled ; Bookworm; Chuzzl; Escape Rosecliff Island; Feeding Frenzy; Iggle Pop; Peggle; Peggle Nights; Plants Vs. Zombies; Mystery P.I.: Lost in LA; Zuma and Zuma’s Revenge.

MacBook Pro i7 bug: A review of the recent Core i7 MacBook Pro has revealed a new performance glitch related to the computer's FireWire 800 port.
The bug relaties to SATA performance and FireWire 800 devices. diglloyd comments that without a FireWire 800 device plugged in during testing, the computer's internal SSD RAID read and write speeds fell. The effect was repeatable, showing a 33 per cent decrease in read performance, and a write performance drop of 17 per cent.