Well, so far, I’ve had decent success talking to FireFox. This is largely thanks to the LifeHacker article by Adam Pash. If Speakable Items is turned on, it will create a Speakable Items folder for you when you open an application that you want to give voice commands to. My observations show that it can take a minute for the system to notice. (It probably depends on how many apps you have running.)

So far, I have not had success with WOW. I know it’s possible because  Sean Forsgren over at Wowinsider.com has written a fantastic article on it. I don’t know for a fact, but I suspect that I have a problem becuase I am running WOW from an external drive. I will be investigating this.

That’s right. We’re Mac users, most of our Macs come with Mics built in. They come with Speakable Items. What could be better than to speak a command during those busy times when your fingers are glued to the keys.

Over the weeks to come, we will be posting more and more information about Apple’s Speakable Items. We will discus versions of the OS that support it, and we will post a growing library or speech commands for WOW. We will also try to disect them for you so you can make your own.

If you have any helpful Speakable Items that you want to share here, please send them to kurn at wowszer.com.

Check you or your PUG’s gear, overall spec, and basic stats on the fly using Warcraft Characters. Simply enter a character’s name and you’re seconds away from viewing robust information from Blizzard’s Armory! – their site

(more screens availalbe at the site)

Best of all it’s free from the iPod store.

Note from management: we do not get anything for this mention, we just think it’s super cool.

One poster, Nakos, claimed:

I suggest checking the Mac Tech Support forum for details, if you’re not a tester, you can’t post, but you can still read: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?sid=2000&forumId=7573591

Radoslawn is the Mac Q&A person and has been very helpful.

He’s said that he has not yet been given the technical specs for what the final release will require, but he will pass them on when he has them.

In particular, the most recent beta builds have included some corrupted models which cause the client to crash, those are still being tracked down.

Additionally, WotLK will have a new, vehicle interface, people using older Macs have been disconnected when using some aspects of this interface. This appears to affect PPC Macs, but not Intel Macs.

Radoslawn has said the graphics requirements of WotLK will probably be higher than the existing ones.

At this point, it seems that the beta client has not yet been optimized to run on the Mac, so some issues may be related to how the port is being done. It’s still early in the beta test, much will change prior to the expansion going live.

I looked into the issue of people having trouble installing patches on the Mac. Here is what Radoslawn suggests:

Seeing more of this issue as well, so let me list a few of the basics:
( but please post about the issue if these following steps won’t help, I’ll keep adding any procedures I missed )

I. Game has been moved

- if the game was moved from the initial place it was installed then the patch can’t find it

Possible solution:

1. go to Macintosh HD => Users => Shared => Blizzard
2. delete the file : com.blizzard.World of Warcraft.prefs
3. start WotLK

II. Permissions have gotten corrupted

Please use the steps below to repair file permission settings
on the hard drive you have installed World of Warcraft.

1.) click on the Finder icon in the Dock
2.) open the Applications folder
3.) open the Utilities folder
4.) double click on the Disk Utility application icon
5.) select the hard drive the game is installed on
6.) select the First Aid option
7.) click on the Repair Disk Permissions button

- or -

1. Select the Wrath of the Lich King Beta folder
2. press Command + i
3. in the Wrath of the Lich King Beta Info box, go to the Sharing & Permissions section
4. click on the lock and unlock it
5. make sure you have Read & Write permissions
6. click on the Burst icon ( cog wheel ) and select Apply to enclosed items

III. Patch is corrupted

- Please, please, please do not use wireless if you can use a wired connection. Too many issues with wireless to list.

- delete patch and start download again

IV. Hard Drive Directory is corrupted

Repair Directory Procedure:

1. (re)start the computer
2. right after the computer starts press Cmd(Apple)+s until you get a black screen with white type
3. let go of the keys when this screen comes up
4. at the cursor please type the following: fsck -f -y and press return
5. please be aware that some of the procedures will look like they are frozen,
but are actually taking a long time i.e checking hierarchy
6. if anything had to be repaired, repeat step 4
7. once things are repaired type exit and press return
8. computer will boot into Mac OS

IV. Game is corrupted and cannot be overwritten ( last resort fix )

In order to remove World of Warcraft safely from your system, you will need to:

1. go to Mac HD/Applications folder and move your Wrath of the Lich King Beta to the Trash
2. go to your Mac HD/Users/Shared folder and move the Blizzard folder to the Trash
3. empty Trash
4. Install Wrath of the Lich King Beta, then download and install the patches

The offical link to this issue is: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8557028338&sid=2000

Thank you Eillebill for the introduction and adding me as admin to this site!

Yes I discovered WOW earlier this year and was hooked withing the first 15 seconds of play time. Eillebill and I have been friends for many years, worked together, and spent a lot of time playing other online games such as Diablo & Diablo II. Now that I am on the east coast, WOW allows us to still socialize and keep in touch. My missus realizes the value of of my friendships and lets me play whenever I can. However the three hour time difference makes for some late nights/early mornings for me :0)

Although I have several characters I created to try the different classes, my paladin, Geoffreymala is my favorite and yes the race is on to Lvl 70 my friend!

I am partial to Paladins- Geoffreymala is actually named after an AD&D paladin, Geoffrey Malachite of AmberWyvwern™ I played for nigh twenty years. This persona is even my persona in the SCA. And AmberWyvern™ is the name of my company. Obsessive? Probably…. Another story? Yup…. Gonna elaborate? Nope, not on this blog….

I first started using Apple computers in the early 1980s. I have had many many Apples over the years and several Macs. By the time we moved to New England, I had amassed seventeen Mac Plus, two Imagewriter printers, an Apple SCSI Scanner, two Mac Classic, one Color Classic, an Apple IIe, a Power Mac 1600, an Apple IIsi, a B&W G3, a Powerbook G3 Pismo, and a couple of Newtons. I am a techno addict-

Needless to say that I parted with nearly all my Apple hardware when I moved. I kept the Pismo and the B&W. Oh parting is such sweet sorrow, all those toasters, alas they are gone.

Earlier this year, after many many years, miles, and hours of service my Pismo was showing its age so I bought a new 15.4″ MacBook Pro 2.33 Core 2 with 2GB RAM and the Draft N wireless. The perfect platform for WOW Burning Crusade. As I indicated earlier I am a bit of a technology junkie. I have an Internet connection that averages 8-12Mbps downloads, and 2Mbps uploads. It costs more but there is no lag in WOW. Coupled with a Belkin N1 Vision wireless router, and my adventures can take place from any place within 300 feet of our apartment. (But boy does the battery get sucked dry fast when I am WOWing an battery power- 50 minutes tops)

To allow my nephews to play, I opened a second WOW subscription and have my Home Theater PC set up with WOW so one nephew can play on the MacBook and the other can play onthe PC on the two wall mounted 19″ widescreen HD monitors and wireless KB.

Well this introduction was sure longer than I expected. And I am so close to 65 I can taste it!

Geoffrey

If you are planning to upgrade to iLife ’08, you will be getting a copy of iMovie ’08. There has been quite an uproar over the features that Apple removed since iMovie HD 6. iMovie ’08 was re-written from the ground up – and it shows. The most obvious change is the interface has been significantly changed. The new iMovie is more of a side-grade rather than an upgrade.

There is a helpful article at macworld.com: First Look: iMovie ’08

Important note: iMovie HD 6 does not get removed. Also, Apple made iMovie HD 6 free to the public.

This version is supposed to offer a host of new features. Notably, the ability to record part of your session in QuickTime.

Thanks Blizzard.

Here’s the story.