Phil Schiller was hurling specifications of the machine and I couldn’t even understand half the things that he was talking about. Words like unified thermal core and teraflops were thrown around and judging from everyone’s excitement at the announcement, it must be a beast of a machine.

I’ve never owned a Mac Pro before because I don’t perform power consuming tasks like video editing. That’s what I tell myself but the harsh reality is I couldn’t afford one. Tech journalists are speculating the pricing would in the $5,000 ball park. Too much dough for me to throw down just to surf Google+ or Reddit.

What amazes me is how small the Mac Pro is. It’s one eighth the volume of the previous generation Mac Pro. It stands at 9.8 inches tall and 6.6 inches wide. In comparison, the Samsung Galaxy Mega that was just announced has a 6.3 inch screen.

One huge difference between Mac Pro and the last generation one is there are no options for upgradability. What you see is what you get. There is no option for adding or remove hard disk drives or ram so the closed nature of the machine might actually put some developers off. In fact, the Mac Pro feels more like a Mac Mini Pro than anything. The Mac Pro also reminds me of the Power Mac G4 Cube and everyone knew that was a flop so hopefully the Mac Pro will fare better.

What I really like is the chrome black metallic finish of the machine and the fact that you can rotate the machine around to get to the ports at the back and they light up along with an Apple logo! Attention to details and radical design proves that Apple is not out of the pro desktop game is still trying to do the best for its pro Mac customers with its laser like focus. Things like this are worth the long wait.

Apple has also launched a cool Mac Pro site that let’s you preview the machine in more details. I don’t think I’ve seen any other computer manufacturer with anything similar out in the market (can’t say the same thing in a couple of months when the photocopying machines come out) so to Apple naysayers, can’t innovate anymore my ass.

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Mac OS X Mavericks

Personally, I was a huge fan of the big cats naming convention for Mac OS X and the new name, Mavericks, was really a head scratcher for me. It doesn’t sound right, doesn’t roll off the tongue for me and just doesn’t sound as intimidating or cool like Snow Leopard or Mountain Lion. But I guess the reason they gave for dropping the big cats were because they’re running out of names and decided to use Californian locations as a homage to where the company is based.

iBooks and Maps are the new additions in Mavericks.

I can search for locations in Maps on my Mac and send the directions to my iPhone which I guess was nifty but I am betting a fair majority of users will still stick to Google Maps. It’s probably more accurate and populated with more business information compared to Apple’s Maps app.

iBooks would be handy for people who regularly buys e-books on the iBook store and wants to do some reading on a Mac away from their iOS devices. Another useful implementation for iBooks on the Mac would surely be education. Students would find the highlight and note taking features in iBooks handy for studies.

What I’m really looking forward to in Mavericks is tabbed Finder windows and documents tagging. More often than not, I find myself opening a new Finder window to find a file, forgetting to close the window and end up with more windows on my desktop than I need. Having tabbed windows would make things a lot neater and keep things streamlined. No more hunting for which window I’m after when in mission control.

Document tagging could be useful if I was saving a lot of files on my local drive but I’m finding myself using Google docs more. But when used, it could be a powerful feature combined with Spotlight to quickly and accurately find the files you need with tags.

Apple also fixed the wonky multiple screens issues so many users had in Mountain Lion. No issues for me though because I’m always on my Macbook Pro and I don’t dock it with a screen so Mountain Lion has been serving me well.

Something that I thought would come to Mavericks was Siri on OS X but surprisingly there was nothing about that announced. It just seemed like a natural transition from iOS devices to a Mac. Seeing how voice search on Chrome is working so well, I would have thought Apple would bring it to the Mac as well.

Another complain I have about the announcements today is with iOS 7 getting a new lick of paint and OS X looking pretty much how it was with Mountain Lion, the two OSes seem to be slightly disjointed. iOS now has this colourful and almost playful feel while OS X still maintains the skeuomorphism feel to it. Whether OS X will have the same design language similar to iOS 7 down the road is uncertain but I’m not sure about staring at neon colours on my Macbook Pro for long periods of time.

But remember, Mavericks is still in beta and will only be ready for consumers in fall in the US so Apple still has a couple of months to get feedback, fix things up before shipping. And at $19.99, I see no reason why I wouldn’t be upgrading once it’s ready for download on the App Store.

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The black collar compliments the red very well. The simplicity of design oozes elegance and doesn’t look as busy as last season’s.

I’m sure I wouldn’t look out of place wearing this top walking down the streets of Melbourne. Can’t say the same thing about Liverpool’s away kit or Sevilla’s home kit.

Someone at Warrior needs to be fired.

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I finally got my Fitbit Flex delivered 2 months after ordering it! The Flex was announced at CES in January and I’ve always wanted to get a Fitbit One but prefer something wearable like the Nike Fuel Band instead of a clip on one tracker which was easy to lose.

The Flex syncs wirelessly to my iPhone 5 via Bluetooth 4.0. The cool thing about it is when I’m walking and have the Fitbit iOS app on my iPhone, it actually shows the steps I’m taking in real time on the phone. Fitbit’s website dashboard and iOS app are extremely polished and I’m excited to test out the various functions like how well it will track my sleep and waking up with the silent alarm.

The only con so far I’ve found is the clips to secure the bands are a little tough to push through the holes but once it’s in, it holds extremely well. The LED lights are not really the most intuitive when it comes to showing information time like the Nike Fuel Band but I like the simplicity of the design.

At the end of the day, I’m impress by the build quality of the device, and Fitbit even provides a smaller band (You have to choose sizes before purchasing the Jawbone Up) so I’m not complaining. I shall put it to good use and see if the Flex helps motivate me to be more active.

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There was a flurry of reports last week that Harry Kewell was poised to make his return to A-League football to join either Newcastle Jets or Melbourne Heart.

Both teams have been linked with Kewell for a while now and with serious offers on the table, it was up to him to choose which team to grace his exile from football for the past year. And no, I don’t consider his stint with Al-Gharafa a comeback seeing he only played 3 games.

As time went by, Newcastle Jets seemed to drop out of the race to sign Kewell and with Melbourne Heart the only interested team left, rumour mills were running overtime that Kewell was sure to make a come back to the city he last left the UK for.

But this time round, he is donning the red and white of Heart.

There was a myraid of reactions from both sets of fans in Melbourne. Melbourne Victory fans will remember when Victory signed Kewell, Heart’s CEO Scott Munn famously once said,

We are not too worried. We are in this for the long haul. The circus comes to town and then leaves. We want to make sure we are still here in 50 years which is why we are signing young players who will be the future of the game. He is not the panacea for the game. It is about more than one player.

Young players? Kewell is going to turn 35 in September and hasn’t played much professional football since mid 2012.

The reaction from Victory fans was fairly typical though. Shouts of blasphemy playing for a local town rival fuelling the buildup to the Melbourne derby in the first round of upcoming season if Kewell were to sign. The hatred evident on social media with fans screaming about not respecting the blue side of Melbourne by signing for the red.

Then there’s the group of Victory fans who are just glad to see Kewell playing again, after having departed Victory so suddenly last year. It will be good to see Australia’s golden boy in football back in the heart of things. No pun intended.

Heart fans, on the other hand, cracks me up with their reactions. Before he was linked to Heart in the news, there were lots of hatred – some of it was because of his history with Victory, some didn’t like the way he looked. In fact most felt he was over the hill for the money they are going to spend on him and he would not have an impact on Heart’s season.

But things took a weird change when Heart were in with a real chance. When Fox Football reported that Kewell was going to be on a minimum wage, the tone among Heart fans started to change.

Suddenly, they were begrudgingly fine with Kewell signing for Heart if he was on minimum wage. They started looking for the positives the deal will bring acknowledging that the signing could help bolster the club’s dwindling crowd numbers. Female fans even started openly drooling at the  prospect of him playing for Heart and can’t stop tweeting about how attractive he is.

It’s funny how Heart fans turned their opinions so quickly based on what was reported in the papers. Turns out the minimum wage thing was untrue.

But Kewell would earn more than the minimum wage, as has been reported, the football operations manager said.

And as if this whole Kewell saga hasn’t been hard on the fans enough, when Scott Munn flew to England to discuss details with Kewell, it was reported he received offers from a Portugese team, gone missing and has Scott Munn wondering if he has made a wasted trip to London.

Scott Munn returned to Melbourne last Thursday and with reports of Harry Kewell sightings at Rockpool in Crown Casino, Melbourne Heart fans were again wondering if that elusive announcement that the winger was finally signed would come soon.

There were even cocky tweets going around like this one claiming they were in the know that Kewell will be a Heart player by Friday last week.

@NatalieTosh @MelbourneHeart Didn't I tell you Friday deal will be done. Kewell tomorrow will be Heart player

— Soccer Stoppage Time (@SocStoppageTime) May 30, 2013

And the same Twitter account tweeted today that Victory player Mark Milligan rejected Emirati side Bani Yas to join QPR. I couldn’t find any news source about this and they were the only one tweeting about this on Twitter (at time of my writing) so I wouldn’t trust them with any football rumours at all. Almost felt like they are the Gene Munster of the footballing world.

Turns out they were wrong. No announcement was made last Friday but Scott Munn has come out and said that if Kewell signs, it’ll be within the next 10 days.

Munn said Kewell’s personal interests were stalling his professional ones

I am waiting with bated breath.

Kewell has always publicly stated that going to the World Cup in Brazil with Australia was his top priority in what is left of his footballing career. I wonder if joining Heart is really the best choice in displaying to Holger Oiseck that he has enough left in his tank to contribute to Australia’s World Cup cause?

Everyone knows Holger Oiseck has a huge preference for selecting players playing in Europe instead of the A-League. So does Kewell signing for Heart really do him and good for his World Cup chances? Or is he trying to make a final windfall before retiring on a glittering career?

Personally, I feel Kewell signing for Heart would be a success and a boost for the club and league in many ways like it did for Victory 2 years ago if he indeed signs on the dotted line.

If not, it’s just a big circus show for now.

The post Kewell – The Saga So Far appeared first on Alvin Ng.

I’m loving how Apple is showing the iPhone’s features are so relevant in everyday lives, whether with wet nails or not.

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Wasn’t ideal was an understatement. It was horrible. If you started a chat with someone in gmail chat, there’s no way to continue the same chat on my mobile.

So it was no surprise that Google had to rethink their messaging strategy from a scratch and the resulting product is Google Hangouts. It fixes most but not all of the issues. Instead of different versions of chat, video chat and calling across Google products, Hangouts gives me one consistent way to message people that has a…… you guessed it, a Google account.

Google is definitely moving towards the right direction with messaging but when Vic Gundotra was lamenting that messaging should be cross platform, ubiquitous and easy, everything goes out of the window if I didn’t have a Google account.

It’s not easy to try and convince my mother who has been using Yahoo mail for ages to switch to Gmail so I can message her with Hangouts. My family and friends are mostly iPhone users and Messages (iMessages is a protocol, not the app) is seamless, works with your phone number, integrates with SMS and if you have a Mac, you can message someone on their iPhones. But of course, the huge downside to Apple’s Messages is it’s locked down to Apple’s ecosystem.

In a sense, even Facebook Chat is a lot better than Hangouts when it comes to ubiquity. People that I (almost) care about are on Facebook and it’s easier to get them to respond to messages. I tried getting a few friends to respond to my Hangouts invites or groups chats and I get no responses. Friends that have used Android mobiles for years still prefer texting, Whatsapp and Facebook Chat.

Google has already committed to adding SMS integration and voice calling to Hangouts so things will certainly get better. Don’t get me wrong, the group video chat feature is very cool. I can see myself using that in many ways, just not with many friends.

PS: It’s just really with Jason Teen and no one else.

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I’m not really sure how they’re going to divvy up the space for users with grandfathered plans though. I logged into my Gmail and it’s showing I have 30GB of space available. Is that with the 20GB I have paid for yearly? (I’m on the grandfathered 20GB $5/year plan) Or would I get a total of 35GB once the new free storage kicks in?

On top of that, Google announced that app users will be getting a bump in storage above the free users to 30GB. I checked my Google App account and am still seeing the 10GB space I had before. It’s all very confusing! I’m sure Google is sorting the logistics of everything out behind the scenes and with Google I/O coming up in the next 2 days, hopefully things will be a little clearer.

I wonder if these upgrades will be enticing enough for me to give up my 100gb $99/yr Dropbox subscription?

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Can’t believe I just got the news that Sir Alex has announced his retirement at the end of this season. It’s a shocking blow. I knew it was going to come sooner or later but didn’t think that this season would be his last.

There was news this morning that he might announce something about his retirement but nothing was confirmed. But half an hour ago, news started breaking out and a statement was released by Sir Alex himself saying that he will retire at the end of this season. Sources are saying David Moyes will be the new manager and I’m happy with that. He’s got good experience with English football, done well with Everton with limited resources. Everton has finished above Liverpool in the previous season and is poised to do the same this year.

With David Gill and Sir Alex leaving end of this season, United’s leadership will have a very different look soon. Hopefully whoever takes over the realms will continue Sir Alex’s work keeping United a world class team. Still can’t believe this happened. So surreal and it’s like getting punched in the chest. The last time I felt this way was when Steve Jobs passed away.

#ThankYouSirAlex

The post Goodbye Sir Alex appeared first on Alvin Ng.

And these are the chat services I use on my browser for other IM needs. Facebook chat and Google Talk.

These are the apps I have on my iPhone 5 that I use for texting, messaging and IM. Messages (default app on iOS), Skype, Facebook Messenger Chat, Whatsapp, Google+ Messenger, Tweetbot, Netbot (for App.net) and Viber

I would seriously pay someone a fortune for an app to consolidate all these services into a single app across iOS and Mac OS X.

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