Ask Alex: Episode 1

I was thinking about how I could be more interactive with my YouTube audience. Then I jumped to a conclusion. If someone would like to send in a survey, I could answer the questions on camera. It's a win-win situation. The viewers get to know me and the people who sent in the questions get full credit for them with a shout out. I'm also creating a post about this particular video on TekSocial so the community could get to know about a new tech YouTuber. And if you'd like some technology content, there are two clickable videos about tech at the end of this video.

YouTube

The Glif for iPhone 4 Review

For those of you who might not know, The Glif is an all-in-one stand/ tripod mount for the iPhone 4. It was developed by Tom Gerhardt and Dan Provost of Studio Neat, and was featured on a variety of technology blogs including CNET, Gizmodo, and Daring Fireball. The Glif raised $137,417 on the popular crowd-funding website Kickstarter, with an overall backing of 5,273 people. The Glif is available now for $20, and can be purchased at the official website here. 

YouTube

Which browser is really the best for Mac?

Today, we spend hours and hours on the Internet, so it is important for us to have a good browsing experience. There is a good selection of browsers for all platforms now. So what one is best for the Mac? Which one is fastest and the easiest to use?

Now, you are all probably thinking “its Safari, duh.” Well let’s find out. Now, I have come to this conclusion from my personal preferences, so everyone’s browser of choice here will be different. My personal preferences are, speed of loading pages and simplicity.

So, how did I test all these browsers equally and fair? I used Peacekeeper, a browser benchmark. It tested you browsers JavaScript functionality. I tested Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari. So here are the results...

As you can see, Chrome is the fastest browser when it comes to JavaScript fuctionality. I was amazed on how much it out performed them by. But, is that my preference? Not really, I like chrome but I have found it crashes far too much for my liking. It just would not respond, I downloaded it twice and both times I had the same problems.  Sure, its simple and easy too use. But, I am not going to use something that I can’t rely on.

I had the same problems with Opera as well, actually it was worse. I found it was just not responding. So maybe I got a bad batch of Chrome and Opera? So, if you use either of those two, does it happen to you?

Safari is pre-installed on every Mac and I would say is one of the most popular browsers for Windows users. When I saw the results for Safari I was a little shocked. I thought it being the ‘official’ Mac browser it would out perform the competition by a large margin. One problem I have had with it is my flash player never seems to work; maybe it is because of Apple’s support for HTML5? Nevertheless, I really like Safari; it’s simple, elegant and easy to use. It’s like any Apple product, really.

Firefox came dead last in my benchmark run, by a lot. But, I found it didn’t crash once and it was very simple to use. So does that mean, slow and steady wins the race?

No, I would recommend all us Mac users stick with Safari, its made for our machines. Its like Internet Explorer for windows, except it works and it’s not painfully slow.  

If I have missed anything or you want to know more, please leave a comment and I will happily answer you question.

Why I Like Mail.app, Included on All Macs

Today, I am going to explain why I like the Mail application that comes with all macs versus any other mail client.

Firstly, Mail.app is just simple.  It's not hard to use at all and I like it for that reason. Most mail clients are a pain to configure and Mail.app is easy to configure and usually works right.  I love that functionality of it.

Secondly, it is great for multiple email accounts. It does a simply wonderful job managing multiple accounts. It pulls them all into one inbox and makes it easy to find. Mail.app also makes separate sections for each email box for everything; the spam, drafts, inbox and sent. I will show you what I mean below.

Mail.app also has somewhat good spam filtering. I do have to admit, there are some false-positives, but it mostly gets all the spam.  he good thing about it is it learns as you tell it what is spam and what isn't. That is a good thing that can slowly but almost surely get rid of most of the false-positives.

That is why I like Mail.app for Mac. Do you?  ost your thoughts in the comments!

My site

iTunes Won't Back Up iPhone/iPod Touch

I recently noticed that my iPhone 4 was not being backed up. After a little while, I realized I wasn't the only one with this problem. To see if your device is being backed up and to fix the problem:

1. Open iTunes with your device connected.

2. Right click on your device- If you see Back Up on the list of options, you're fine. If you don't, then continue following these steps.

3. Quit iTunes.

4. Open Terminal and paste this: defaults write com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool false

5. Restart your computer

As of right now, I don't have a fix for PCs. If you do have this problem and you're on a PC, first try reinstalling iTunes. If that doesn't work, try emailing or calling Apple support.