January 7, 2012 – I don’t know why the Newton came up in conversation the other day, but it did. And it still lives in the bottom of a drawer, and with some fresh batteries…It is ALIVE!

Everyone thought the iTouch was revolutionary, but most people never knew about this little wonder.

The Apple Newton.

Fabulous handwriting recognition that still outperforms anything on the iPad or iPhone today. Word processing, spreadsheets, email, fax capabilities, PCMCIA flash card expansion, useful apps, voice recording capabilities, a backlit screen, the ability to beam notes to another RF device, RF printing capabilities, an external complementary mini-keyboard…

My graduate supervisor and I each had one, and like a pair of geeks, on at least one occasion we were guilty of beaming notes to each other during a lab meeting.

And all that in the early-mid 1990′s. Almost 20 years ago! The first Apple Newton Message Pad came out in 1993. I started with the Message Pad 100 in 1995 when I finished my Master’s Degree, then upgraded to the Message Pad 2000 in 1998. Pre Palm-Pilot. Smaller than an iPad.

Apple has always been way ahead of its time.

“Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”

The infamous words of Johnny Rotten, spoken at the end of the last Sid Vicious-era Sex Pistols show, in 1978, came to mind recently. The context was my laptop, a year-old machine that had left me feeling more than a little swindled.

In February, 2010, I bought the laptop for $529.73. It was a great price and I was thrilled to have wireless capability at last. As a freelance writer, I’d be freed up to work anywhere, instead of being tethered to my ancient, slow desktop computer.

For several months my laptop worked as it should. Then, one day, my wireless capability turned off. Upon investigation, I realized it didn’t just turn off – my laptop would no longer recognize that I even had wireless capability. It was as if communication had broken down between the laptop and my wireless card. Not a good sign.

I called the manufacturer – I was under a one-year warranty – and after a bit of remote poking around, the IT technician told me to send my laptop back to the company for repair. He figured I probably had a bum wireless card.

I wasn’t thrilled to be without my laptop for a week, but I needed it fixed, so I packed it in the padded cardboard box they sent and waved goodbye.

Several days later, the laptop came back. The company had replaced the wireless card, and everything seemed to be functioning properly again. But a few months later, out of the blue, boom. Once again my laptop was telling me it was not equipped with wireless capability.

I made another call to the manufacturer, angrier this time. After more remote poking around, the service rep decided I should send my laptop in for a second time. He thought it was a malfunctioning wireless card again. I was dubious.

“Isn’t it strange that I ended up with a bad wireless card twice?” I asked. No, no, he assured me, these things do happen. So, once again, I packed my laptop in a cardboard box and off it went.

Back it came a few days later with another new wireless card. Just like last time, it seemed to be functioning properly. A few more months went by, then bam! The old problem reared its head once again. Meanwhile, I was getting very close to the end of my warranty.

This time, the rep decided it couldn’t be the wireless card again (I should think not), but decided it was likely corrupt files. To remedy the problem, he would send me recovery discs that would restore factory settings and should fix my problem. Fine.

The discs came in the mail, and I sat down one night to start the recovery process. I’d never done this before, and quickly realized that I would need to back up all the data on my laptop before using the recovery discs, which would erase everything.

At the time we were renovating our house, so we were in a condo temporarily while the work was being done, with most of our belongings packed away. We owned an external hard drive, but it was somewhere in a box. I also needed to have a conversation with the iTunes service rep, as I was deathly afraid of losing the 4,000 or so tracks I had ripped or purchased over the years.

By the time we had moved back home and unpacked our stuff, two months had gone by. Finally, I went through the recovery process. The outcome? My laptop was still telling me I had no wireless capability. Obviously it hadn’t worked.

I called the company, knowing full well my warranty had ended a month and a half earlier. As I feared, they told me they couldn’t help me, and I should contact one of their business partners.

“So you’re saying I need to pay to get it fixed myself,” I asked.

“Yes. I’m sorry, ma’am.”

Now, I know I could have spent a lot of time on the phone, complaining vociferously that this was an ongoing problem that they never really fixed while I was on warranty, and get them to go at it again. However, the thought of sending my laptop off so they could perform another temporary patch job didn’t work for me.

So I took the laptop to my local computer repair guys. They suspected it must be a problem inside the laptop in the connection with the wireless card. Their suggestion? An external wireless adaptor.

I paid $131.40 to see my problem go away, and I now have wireless capability again. I’m hoping it’s a permanent solution.

Is it unjust that I paid for wireless capability in my laptop and it didn’t work? Yes. But I did what I suspect many people do (and what computer companies probably count on): I chose the quickest and easiest option in order to get my work done. I settled for injustice to save myself from a serious hassle and waste of time.

Next time, maybe I’ll get a Mac.

Shelley White blogs for Home Cents at globeinvestor.com

iDentify 2 is an OS X application for tagging iTunes compatible MP4 video files. Normally, when you convert a video file to the format used by iOS devices such as the iPad, iPod, iPhone or AppleTV, all the information about the video is missing! The only thing you see is the name of the file where the title of the video should be. iDentify 2 looks at the name of files as they are added to it. Based on the name of the file, iDentify determines wether it is a TV Show or movie based on common naming conventions. From the file name, a lot of information can be gleaned, such as movie title, show name, season number, episode number, year of release, and imdb code. iDentify can then automatically look on The TVDB, The Movie DB, and tagChimp to gather more information about the title, such as description, rating, chapter names and more! iDentify also inspects the file and can automatically turn on the HD flag on the movie when the resolution of the file goes above a set minimum!

Want to change the tags of multiple files in one fell swoop? No problem! Add the files to iDentify, select all the ones you want to edit from the list, and click edit. All changes you make are now applied to all selected files! When you are done, just click “Process Files” to write the new information to your files, and when iDentify is done, you are ready to add your videos to iTunes!

And since all the movies are already in my iTunes library, iTunes automatically updated them all after things were finished.

And all that tagging, effortless, and for the low price of free (or $6.99US) if you buy from MacUpdate right now – ($9.99 regular price). It never ceases to amaze me how inexpensive, and good, Mac software is. I used to download hacked software (yes, it’s true), but since moving to the Mac platform I don’t bother with the searching, finding serial numbers, dealing with viruses….why bother when everything is so inexpensive and I can get the support for anything, or ask questions, directly from the developer.

Yup, looking for a program to tag videos? This is it!

I used to be a Windows whiner. You know the kind, we tell everyone how awesome our Windows machine is, can’t be beat, why would you want a Mac. Oh sure, I only have to reformat it once in awhile, you know, about every 3-6 months (things get cluttered and the brain inside ceases to function normally, that’s a given, but I know how to deal with it – swift lobotomy for the machine and start afresh). Windows is awesome, they have updates for me to download almost daily! How nice is that? And the hunt for updated drivers when those Microsoft updates come out, gosh, it feels like a good old Easter egg hunt! There are so many options for upgrading RAM, the hard drives, the power supplies, motherboards, monitors, video cards, sound cards …. it’s like Christmas every week when the Future Shop flyer arrives! (too bad the bill has to arrive afterwards) And they come out with so much new equipment that I am unsatisfied with my machine within a year, and shopping within two. I always have the newest stuff. I get to feel superior because I know how to change all those things, and reformat, and spend a few days after every reformat in getting everything back the way it should be. I only have to reboot it once or twice a day when it hangs, or when that blue screen shows up.

My life got so dull when I bought a Mac. It worked right out of the box, no updates and no drivers to look for. Well that’s pretty boring. And it came without a whole bunch of trial software that I could peruse and then try to delete. It was clean! But it did come with full featured photo editing software, full featured video editing software, and a sound editing program that recording studios use, an integrated dictionary that worked across all programs, a search function that worked like a hot-damn!, a really great email program that fully integrated with a functional calendar and a great address book that you could use to click on an address and take you right to Google Maps to show you how to get there, so that was kind of exciting. But there was no time limited trial of virus software! Because there aren’t really any viruses? Well that’s pretty dull.

I mean, what was I supposed to do with all that free time I suddenly found myself with? All that time I used to spend waiting for Windows to boot up? Waiting for updates to install? Hunting for drivers? Dealing with broken software? What was I going to do with all that money I wasn’t spending at Future Shop all the time, getting new things for my machine to make it run better, faster, to create space for those Windows programs that keep getting bigger and bigger and taking up hard drive space and bogging down my limited video RAM? I don’t need to do that anymore? but, but, but….

But my PC was cheaper than my Mac.

Right?

Well, depends on what you consider cheap.

What’s your time worth? And are you actually comparing apples to apples (no pun intended)?

This issue came up recently. I know PC’s as well as anyone, I used to build mine and have made more purchases than most home users since I used to buy for myself as well as the lab I worked in, and we went through a lot of machines…because they got stolen relatively frequently. I also learned how to change just about every part inside, including motherboards, when things went wrong. I was a stellar software troubleshooter, and considered it a personal challenge to have every machine running in tip top shape. I battled viruses and stayed up to date, scanning every machine at least once a day. Very few bugs ever slipped past my security net, very few because it’s impossible to keep a computer really clean, the hackers are always ahead of the software designers and the virus scanners. And then, after one over-the-phone, long distance-computer-support call, I snapped. It had become an almost weekly event, “The computer help questions” I finally snarked out “You should buy a Mac!”

But I didn’t have one! So why did I say that? I’d dabbled with them in the distant past, but was of the mindset that “In my world, Mac’s aren’t useable machines, they won’t run ‘my’ software programs, and “change is bad!” The funny thing is that my Mother used to call on a regular basis for help with everything from printer issues to viruses. In the year and a half that I’ve had her on a Mac, the computer questions have dropped to near zero and the problems have been simple things like, “I deleted my bookmarks!” No biggie, we’ll just get them back from yesterday’s Time Machine backup!

Humans are such intractable creatures. We are so self important and think that what we have chosen, what we think, is right, absolutely right, and any differing opinion is plainly and simply “WRONG!” Period! Put on the blinders, dismiss any differing opinion as foolish, and carry on in our personal vacuum of “rightness” Usually I’ll spar with people on issues if they disagree, but only to a point, because when it gets down to an argument and not a debate, then there isn’t any point in continuing. I like to discuss different opinions, critically, logically. The world is not black and white, it is shades of grey, and there are usually more options than right and wrong. You can be right, but I can also be right. But too many people can’t handle that, they have to feel that they are right because they think the alternative is wrong. But that’s not always the case. When it degenerates to “whatever, and laughs or snorts of derision that imply idiocy in having a separate opinion, then it’s just become insulting and those are childish tactics of someone who doesn’t know how to engage in an intellectual debate. I try to not rise to that and will shrug and end with an agreement to disagree, but sometimes it gets under my skin. I try not to let it, but sometimes, sometimes…..like when people start in on subjects like sea lice…but that’s another debate.

Anyway, one thing that I keep hearing is “Macs cost too much” Really!?!? I don’t think so, but I suppose it depends on what you want out of a computer.

I want a computer to last for at least five years without having to put anything major into it. I don’t want to have to add RAM, change a motherboard, change a power supply, replace any fried components out of warranty. And I want it to work. I don’t want to do daily or weekly updates, I don’t want to have to reformat it, or even reboot it for that matter. If I turn it off, I want it to turn on really fast, and I don’t want to wait for programs to open. I want all the software to work seamlessly together, to integrate with each other. I want to be able to access my address book from my word processor without having to open the address book. I want to be able to access my photos without having to open my photo program. For years I tried to find that in a PC. The longest I ever went without a reformat was about 6 months. The longest I ever went without having to reboot at some point was probably a week. Usually at least one program has to be restarted at least every day. The longest I went without replacing or adding some internal component was probably a few months. and the longest I ever went without replacing the entire machine was three years, and that was painful… I usually lasted two before I was starting to hunt for the next “perfect” machine.

Then I bought the Mac.

To be fair, when I bought the desktop I immediately added more RAM and a few extra hard drives. I ordered those along with it instead of having it built with the machine because I found a source of less expensive RAM and hard drives. So arguably that was still in the initial build though, since I installed all of it before ever plugging the new machine in. And I’ve never opened the box since. It’s been running pretty much nonstop, going to sleep at night (not turning off or requiring a restart) for three years. I’ve never reformatted it, and I think I’ve rebooted it maybe half a dozen times in three years. I have put a new operating system on it when Snow Leopard came out, $35 for the operating system…nice! And it installed in about 20 minutes, and I didn’t lose anything or have to upgrade any drivers other than the one for my scanner, and that was an issue with HP not being on the ball with new drivers ready for the new OS, nothing wrong with the OS though.

The MacBook has been with me for about two and a half years now. I did reformat it once, I thought something was wrong, turns out it wasn’t and it was to do with a setting I had messed with. Two and a half years and no hiccups, no hissy fits, again, it just works. Plain and simple. I had purchased a $3000 Toshiba laptop that converted into a tablet. Beautiful machine. Within 6 months I was frustrated with it. It now resides in a drawer and comes out only at tax time. My MacBook cost $1500 less and is still going strong with no need for any more power, RAM, space, anything. I imagine I will be happy with it for a few more years and will probably get 5+ years out of it before I fall in love with something new. It’s looking like the desktop will probably last a good 5-8 years before I need anything else, if not longer.

So lets look at costs realistically. Assuming I was still buying PC’s every PC I have ever purchased cost me in the range of $2000 for the tower. My last Dell cost $4000 though. If my Mac is going to last 8 years or more, that’s four PC’s or $8000 (assuming I went with the lower priced towers). I went all out on my Mac, I have found that buying at the higher end means computers last longer and need to have things replaced less often, so I did the same with my Mac. My MacPro desktop cost me $3000, it was equivalent to the previous Dell in specs, but $1000 less expensive. I sold my Dell after two years, I had to give away a printer and a few other goodies with it just to get rid of it. My MacPro is now on year three and I have no desire to add or change anything in it. It is doing everything I want without breaking a sweat, and I have always pushed machines pretty hard. You can actually sell a three year old MacPro for almost what you bought it for! MacBooks also hold their value! Strange! PC’s are always junk when they are disposed of.

So, both my laptop and my desktop were over $1000 less expensive than the equivalent Windows based machines. That alone is case closed for me. And over the lifespan of both machines, I won’t have to buy two or three computers, so that saves me something in the range of $5000-$8000. But when I factor in the sanity quotient, the expense of owning a PC is even more prohibitive to me. I saw somewhere that someone said “PCs get sold, Macs get bought” I like that.

People are easily fooled by prices. When something claims to be $799, it usually needs a whole lot of upgrades or other bits and bobs in the near future to get it where you want it. But for some reason we still crow out loud that we got it for $799. We seem to completely forget that we spent another $500 (or whatever) on it and countless hours making it all just how we want.That time and money counts and can’t be waved off! That’s deceptive and unrealistic. And then there is lasting power. How many will you buy over 5-6 years? Still a better price?

Mac people and PC people are never going to see eye-to-eye on the term “comparable,” and it’s tiresome and useless to try and play the convince me game. If you think your PC you found is comparable to a given Mac, then it probably is, for you. Trying to explain what’s missing with your “comparable” machine is like trying to explain colour to a blind man, anyway. Mac’s seem a little expensive at first to a PC person like I once was, but once you switch you notice the value right away. I would gladly pay more to get all of the OS X features like the dock, exposé, iMovie, iPhoto, even the calendar and address book all working together seamlessly. But in reality, I did not pay more, I paid less! Plus… VIRTUALLY NO VIRUSES OR SPYWARE. After having a Mac for about three years I have never seen a virus or any spyware, and I do run the odd check if I feel suspicious, but I’ve never found anything. I would gladly pay more to not have to deal with the headache of spyware. (And Windows crashing/running slow 24/7)

It’s funny, I had to call Telus awhile back for something to do with my internet connection. The woman started down her checklist of things, I was pretty sure I had a router problem (their equipment). Before we got going I clearly said I was on a Mac, she said, “Please click the Start button.” I said “I don’t have a Start button, because I’m on a Mac, what would you like me to get to, Network settings?” She said “Now navigate from Start to ….” I interjected, “Excuse me, as I said, I am on a Mac” To which she replied “On a Mac? Oh, how strange, we never get calls from Mac users, they always work, maybe the problem is with the router itself.” I rest my case, when the tech support doesn’t know how to support you because the calls from Macs are so rare, it tells me that something about my choice to go Mac was a good one.

With respect to both Macs and Win-PCs, the true cost isn’t what you pay in the store (or online) today, but what you pay tomorrow. “But there’s so much more software for Windows,” people say. True, but what matters isn’t how much is there, but what you use. If all you use is MS Office, available for both Mac and PC, software availability really doesn’t matter. In general, Mac programs are less expensive, have better support, and are updated more often with new features. There isn’t anything I used to use that I haven’t found a replacement for on a Mac. Everything from photo editing to GPS navigation software, from geotagging programs to blogware. What I have found for Mac far outstrips any PC software I used to use on almost every level. I don’t game so I don’t care about that, if I wanted to game it would be on an isolated computer, one that didn’t have my personal and financial information on it. Gaming computers are the biggest target for hackers and viruses and you are just asking for trouble if you game on your work machine.

On the flip side, if everyone went Mac, there would be a lot of PC service people out of business. From a posting online – “Our school board spent months fighting about whether to buy Mac or PC. I backed out of the fight and invited an IT person from a local High School to help us decide. He managed 300 PC’s and 250 Mac’s. He told us that the Mac side could be administered by the Librarian. The PC side took all of his time (and money) to keep going. He said that if the school had only Mac’s, that his $72,000 job would not exist.”

But those are just my opinions. I have owned many PCs and I now own Macs (and a PC) If you haven’t ever owned a Mac, you can’t really defend your position, you can’t say PCs are better, and you can’t say there are no differences, and you can’t say one is cheaper than the other. Same goes if you own a Mac but have never lived in the world of Windows. You have to explore both before you can make a judgement. If, after spending time in both environments, you still prefer PC, then that’s what works for you, but don’t judge without spending time in the other world, that’s narrow minded. How can you say you don’t like something when you’ve never tried it?

Here are the opinions of some others:

From Bloomberg Businessweek (April 2009) – Mac vs. PC, What you don’t get for $699 – I hate the “I can buy a PC for $600″ argument. Because that’s all it is, an argument. Not a debate, a debate has justifications and thoughtful discussion. An argument is just a series of contradictions where everyone digs in their heels and gets mad at each other, and usually doesn’t solve anything. This is a good piece on the difference between that $699 PC and a Mac. (And by the way, you can buy a Mac mini for $749…so there!)

Popular Mechanics (December 2009) – Mac vs. PC: The Ultimate Lab Test for New Desktops & Laptops An interesting comparison of computer speeds between comparable machines. Just look at the differences in startup times! When I pulled my PC out to do taxes I actually thought it was broken and started to panic when it didn’t turn on….just when I was about to get violent with it, it finally flickered to life.

From thestar.com (February 2010) - Mac vs. PC: the digital divide A humourous dialogue on the stereotypes.

From ComputerWorld (June 2007) - Mac vs. PC cost analysis: How does it all add up? A bit old, but a particularly interesting read on cost analysis and what most people “DON’T” factor in. It also deals with the issue that when comparing computers, stop getting stuck on the fact that you can buy a $600 box that really is a piece of crap. that’s NOT what most people are talking about when they say Macs are not more expensive than PCs. Get PAST that, OK!?!?

From MacWorld (same author as above) – Mac vs. PC cost analysis revisited Again, a nice objective piece on Macs and PCs and the value in both.

Why Mac vs PC price comparisons are never fair

And if you want a giggle after all that, this is rather cute…. Mac vs PC People

I love my Mac!

But that wasn’t what this was all about. This is a post about some software I picked up. There is a site called MacUpdates that I love. It’s a Mac and iPhone software download website, started in the late-1990s. MacUpdate is updated every day, listing the newest updates and releases of Macintosh software for the Mac OS X and iPhone operating systems. The website is free to use although they do have a membership service that offers expanded services such as email notifications, watch lists, daily email newsletters, and the ability to rate and review software, and discounts on software sales through their MacUpdate Promo website. There is also a MacUpdate Desktop application that enables members to automatically update all of the software on their Mac, leveraging the large MacUpdate software database.

It’s the promo website that is the real kicker! It provides a deal a day (usually only valid for 24 hours) on Mac software; often 40% off. And best of all, three or four times a year they offer promo bundles at insanely reduced pricing. There are usually 10 or so software programs and the bundle sells for about 90% off of the combined program values. OK, so that’s great if you want them all, but you never do. So you need to poke through and decide if there is enough in there to make it worthwhile. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. This month’s was a no-brainer for me.

The current software bundle includes:

Toast Titanium – List price $100.00

Toast is a useful program that I’ve ‘ahem’ downloaded and used a lot. It’s a powerful disk burning program for backing up, creating DVD’s, CD’s, etc. True, I don’t burn as many discs as I once did, but it’s still a very useful program for those times when I want to backup data (once a month) for archiving photos etc. It’s one of the best all around burning programs I’ve come across. It also allows you to rip music from LP’s and transfer them to mp3′s, music tagging isn’t too bad…etc..

So this alone was worth it to me….and now I’m ‘legal’.

My Living Desktop – List price – $35.00

This is cool! This is my favourite piece of software to come out of this bundle. Everyone likes a pretty background and an interesting screen saver, right? But other than using a slideshow function, it’s pretty static. How about a background that is a video? Flowing water, gentle waves on a beach with a sunset in the background, an ocean tidepool with fish swimming, an underwater reef ecosystem with colourful aquatic life zipping around. All real video footage, not animated.

Knwo what else is cool? It appears that you can actually use your own video as long as it is in .mov format and more than 15 seconds in length!

FABULOUS! I LOVE this!

Live Interior 3D Standard - List Price $50.00

OK, I don’t have a lot of use for this, but others might. We already did our kitchen last year, and the bathroom is on the horizon, so maybe. But I think this is probably for others. The description follows:

Do you periodically get an itch to change your surroundings? Or does that faded brown sofa from the seventies just not do it for you anymore? Maybe you just want to try your hand at the art of home design. The award-winning Live Interior 3D can save you a heap of time, money, and sweat by giving you all of the tools necessary for designing the interior of your home and viewing it in virtual reality before setting off for your local paint or furniture store.

Maybe, We’ll see.

ShareTool – List price – $27.00 for 2 licenses (required)

Ah, now this I am interested in. I use MobileMe and love it, but sometimes I need a file that’s on the other computer and I did not put onto MobilMe. It would be so nice to be able to “easily” connect with the home computer remotely and grab what I need on any drive (I have about 7 hard drives attached to the desktop). This program claims to make that possible with ease. The only problem is that it’s hard to test when at home since both computers connect to my home wireless network. Maybe if I turn it off and hardwire the Macbook in I can test it and see how it works. But I’m hopeful on this one.

MindNode Pro List Price – $25.00

I’d be more interested in this one if I didn’t already have MyThoughts, which does the same thing but is a bit more advanced with a huge database of images to add to your mind map. It’s also significantly less expensive than MyThoughts though. Curio is another fabulous program that I’m interested in, it takes mind mapping and adds a whole other dimension to it. Still, MindNode a nice and simple program for mental flow charts.

Espionage – List Price – $35.00

Hmm, not sure if this is really of interest to me, but I can certainly see it’s value if you are in a setting where your computer is accessible to others. It is a program that allows you to password protect files, folders, even emails and chat history without blocking program access. It says that “many programs can inadvertently store valuable private information without encrypting it” So I suppose if you want to block access to certain things from certain people you can use this for encryption or password protection. Not really of interest to me though. So that one is a bust.

Voila – List Price – $30.00

OK, this is a nifty little program.

Voila can capture any shape of your choice, such as Circular, Polygonal, Triangular, or Freehand objects. Alongside these unusual shapes, you’ve also got standard capture tool options such as Menu Capture, Fullscreen Capture, Object Capture, Rectangular Capture and a Timed Capture as well. A lot of effort has gone into integration with other image applications and sites and so you can send and open files from iPhoto and Flickr. In addition, Voila is integrated with Mail if you want to send-off your screen grabs immediately.

Voila features all the standard options you expect from a decent screen capture tool, including annotation tools that allow you to add text, arrows, lines, crop and even add watermarks. There are a few filters too to give screen shots a cooler look including blurred, torn and framed edges. Exporting can be done to PNG, JPEG, TIFF, PDF, GIF and BMP formats.

That’s definitely useful!

Concentrate – List Price – $30.00

Concentrate helps you work and study more productively by eliminating distractions. To start, create an activity (design, study, write, etc) and choose actions (shown below) to run every time you concentrate. When ready, just click “concentrate.” All your distractions will disappear and a timer will appear to help you stay focused.

That would have been useful when I was trying to write my thesis! Seriously though, I can see a use for this. When you are working on the computer and emails come in, chat requests, etc…it’s easy to divert your focus away from what you are trying to finish up. On the flip side, one could just close the offending distraction programs and work only in what needs to be worked in.

Nope, don’t think I’ll be using this one anytime soon.

Cashculator – List Price – $30.00

A little cash flow tracking program for personal finance. Interesting, but we use iBank. Doesn’t matter how good the program is, if you don’t stay on top of it it’s all useless. But I can say that the easier a program is to use, the more likely it is to be used. It doesn’t connect to financial institutions though, and I always download bank statements into iBank. So this is an interesting application, but not for us for home use. Might be useful for business expenses or something though.

Vitamin-R – List Price – 20 Euros (~$30.00)

Again, something that would be of value to a grad student, or anyone working on a major project. It breaks projects down into chunks and then forcing you to concentrate on one task while keeping distractions at bay. Interesting, not sure if I would have much use for it personally, but I’ll play with it. MacWorld does give it a 4.5 out of 5 rating though.

Compartments – List Price – $25.00

Ah, now I’m interested in this one! I’ve often started a home inventory for insurance purposes, but it always gets unwieldy and I can’t decide how to best organize the information. this little gem will hopefully make it happen. And, best of all, it syncs with MobileMe! It gets rave reviews for ease and intuitiveness.

A brand new, gorgeous, fast, easy-to-use home inventory application.Every household should keep a complete inventory with photos to prove loss after a catastrophic event. Compartments helps you remember where all of your stuff is. Quickly catalog everything you own: enter dozens of items in seconds, all in one dialog box, with Quick Add, and apply bulk changes with Quick Apply. One-click printable inventory reports that can be printed or saved as a PDF, to be used in the case of disaster. Organize your things with auto-updating smart collections. One-click customizable inventory reports to distribute to your insurance company in case of disaster or theft.Spend minutes, not hours, entering your information: Quick Add and Quick Apply allow you to enter and edit many items at once.

WarrantyGuard keeps track of warranty expiration dates and necessary warranty info, including receipts and serial numbers. Backup and sync via MobileMe or Dropbox keeps your data safe even if your computer is lost or stolen.

Organize your items by location and with tags into smart, auto-updating collections.

Yup, I think this one is a winner!

Get Backup Pro – List Price – $40.00

I’m sold on Time Machine, it has saved my music archives (20,000+ mp3′s) twice, and it’s rescued a few other important things for me. Since “going Mac” I’ve not had a catastrophic loss of any kind. So I’ll have to look at this one a bit closer to see why one would want this in lieu of Time Machine, which is built into the MacOS.

Time Machine creates a backup that is not bootable, so in the event of a catastrophic failure, you still have to install the operating system again before you do an install. Not exactly something that happens with any regularity on a Mac…on a PC…definitely! Time Machine does incremental backups hourly, although there are a few little applications out there that let you change that, but GetBackup Pro lets you schedule the backups. It also lets you split archives and create separate backup projects.

They provide a comparison of Time Machine and GetBackupPro for information.

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So, roughly $450 worth of software for $50.00. Of that, I will definitely use 5, and possibly another two. So even at using half of the programs in the bundle it was a fabulous deal. Mac software is always a good deal, but this was an amazing deal!

I love my Mac!

Reprinted from CNNMoney.com

Microsoft’s dominance as the tech industry’s most valuable player has ended.

On Wednesday, Apple’s market capitalization edged past its longtime rival’s as investors made official what consumers have long suggested: Microsoft is no longer the industry’s alpha dog.

Just last month, Microsoft’s market cap exceeded Apple’s by about $25 billion, but now Apple is in the lead by nearly $3 billion.

Microsoft’s consumer products business is struggling to compete as Apple’s hot new items like iPad and iPhone capture the attention of customers.

Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) fell 4% to close at $25.01 on Wednesday, while Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) lost 0.45%, closing at $244.11.

Shares of Microsoft have dipped more than 15% in the past couple weeks, while Apple’s stock is down just over 6%, despite recent market volatility.

“What this really means is that Wall Street has more confidence in Apple’s growth prospects than it does in Microsoft’s growth prospects,” said Matt Rosoff, lead analyst at Directions on Microsoft, an independent firm.

“Apple is showing high growth, with the launch of its iPad and its new iPhone coming out, and while Windows is a great competitor versus the Mac, Microsoft just hasn’t come up with new areas of growth.”

Microsoft’s reputation as a market leader took another hit Tuesday when the company announced that it plans to shake up its management structure.

Amid the shuffle, Robbie Bach, who was in charge of years-long effort to turn Microsoft into more of a threat to Apple by heading the entertainment and devices group and overseeing innovative consumer products like Xbox and Zune, will retire from Microsoft in the fall.

“This just means those efforts didn’t work out,” said Roger Kay, president of analyst firm Endpoint Technologies. “It’s sort of like Japanese samurai ethic, which says you need to fall on your sword to maintain your honor.”
Tow the line or keep up with the Joneses?

Part of Microsoft’s problem is that, instead of finding its own audience, it has fallen into a game of catch-up and is focusing too much energy on finding products to directly rival Apple’s, said Kay.

“I don’t know if they have to compete,” he said. “What seems to be working for Microsoft is its serious applications for businesses, education institutions and other enterprises, and if they stay focused on their commercial business that gives them a lot.”

While Microsoft’s first quarter earnings were boosted by the success of its new operating system, Windows 7, Apple’s record profit and revenue in the first quarter was driven by iPhone sales.

And many of Microsoft’s efforts to branch out have been met with little success. For example, the company’s Zune music player, meant to rival the iPod, has failed to create the same buzz as Apple’s device, with sales dropping significantly in 2009.

Microsoft even looked into creating a tablet computer that would have competed directly with the iPad, which Apple introduced at the beginning of April, selling more than 1 million in the first 28 days of release. But Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer ended up pulling the plug on the project before the tablet ever made it to market.

“Zune hasn’t gone anywhere, their tablet is dead, their phones are having trouble establishing a market position — but consumers still use Office and Windows,” said Kay.

Other experts say that Microsoft shouldn’t stop at its core business, and that it simply needs to innovate more — and faster — in order to stay competitive.

“They have to continue to try to find other businesses, otherwise growth is always going to be bound by the PC market,” said Rosoff.

Until Microsoft develops a clear direction and finds new ways to innovate, Apple will continue to push ahead, he said.

“Wall Street believes in Apple because Apple continues to put out new products that capture the imaginations of the press and tech pundits,” said Rosoff. “Microsoft just hasn’t been able to come up with a new multi billion dollar business like Apple.” To top of page

flickery lets you upload photos into your Flickr photostream, but it does so much more! From within flickery on my desktop, I can:

- view my contacts photos
- view photos taken near me geographically
- view my favourites
- rearrange photos in my photosets
- see what’s new on Explore
- browse the newest uploads to Flickr
- share something I find from within it
- get info on any individual photo
- view photos fullscreen on my monitor

And a whole lot more. Like search for a photo among all of Flickr!

It’s drag and drop, but I have way more control over tags and other upload options from within the program.

And, as with most Mac Applications. it’s inexpensive. $15. Not a bad deal if you are a heavy Flickr user.

Macs in the enterprise aren’t just cheaper to manage—they’re a lot cheaper, according to a new survey released today by the Enterprise Desktop Alliance.

Keep in mind that Enterprise Desktop Alliance is a group of software developers who’ve bandied together to deploy and manage Macs in the enterprise. The group surveyed 260 IT administrators in large U.S. companies with both Macs and PCs who are involved in some degree with IT cost calculations. Enterprise Desktop Alliance members include Centrify, Absolute Software, Group Logic, Web Help Desk, and most recently IBM.

[Another Enterprise Desktop Alliance survey shows two out of three companies buying Macs this year, which will bring integration challenges for IT admins, CIO.com reports.]

The survey found that Macs were cheaper in six of seven computer management categories: troubleshooting, help desk calls, system configuration, user training and supporting infrastructure (servers, networks and printer). Nearly half of the respondents cited software licensing fees as roughly the same for both platforms.

A whopping 65 percent of respondents said it costs less to troubleshoot Macs than PCs, 19 percent said they spent the same on both computers, and only 16 percent said they spent less to manage PCs than Macs.

Even more impressive, a majority of the respondents citing the low cost of Macs in nearly all categories said Macs were more than 20 percent cheaper to manage than PCs.

With Macs dominating in almost every cost category, why would 16 percent claim they spent less troubleshooting PCs? “It might be an [issue] of expertise of the IT staff,” says Tom Cromlin, spokesperson for the Enterprise Desktop Alliance. “They’re probably more comfortable troubleshooting PCs.”

Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Jon Oltsik has another reason. He says top execs often prefer Macs, and thus supporting those machines take on more importance. “It’s not about managing [Mac] systems, which may be easier than Windows” on a machine-by-machines basis, Oltsik explains. “It’s when the CEO wants IT to install software on his or her Mac, which will need immediate attention and take time away from other tasks.”

The cost of management appears to be a key driver for Macs in the enterprise. Nearly half of respondents said they brought in Macs mainly because of their low total cost of ownership and ease of technical support.

In fact, many small companies with limited IT resources told CIO.com that they moved to Macs after getting fed up with costly PC support issues. “Mac owners tend to do a lot of problem resolution themselves by communicating with other users,” Oltsik says.

One of the flaws of the survey is that it doesn’t factor in the cost of the PC or Mac itself, only the costs associated with managing the computers. Macs, of course, cost more than most PCs. However, many companies told CIO.com that the low cost of managing Macs more than makes up the cost difference between the computers.

Many, but not all. “You can buy a PC for $400, while the cheapest Mac is over a thousand,” Jon Graff, director of IT operations at A&E, told CIO.com last year. “In the real world, you’re spending a lot more on a Mac.”

While managing Macs may be cheaper than managing PCs, Macs pose their own special challenges as companies get up to speed supporting a Mac-PC environment.

According to another recent Enterprise Desktop Alliance survey, chief among those hurdles are: security and file sharing between operating systems, client management, backup and data recovery of Mac files, Active Directory integration, application compatibility, configuration consistency, cross-platform help desk and knowledge base support, and standard management utilities for both Macs and PCs.

Ben Hanes, senior systems administrator at Children’s Hospital of Oakland Research Institute, has been working through these issues for years. On the troubleshooting front, Hanes only recently adopted a help desk system that lets his team troubleshoot Macs remotely from a PC.

There also might be hidden costs when managing Macs, warns Oltsik. “In the past, you generally needed specialized tools to manage Macs,” he says. “If this is the case, then you will have redundant tasks and management systems. Another issue is skills, as you may need to hire or train a PC administrator on the Mac platform. A Mac administrator may cost more than a PC administrator.”

This has been driving me mental. Ever since upgrading to Snow Leopard I haven’t been able to figure out how to print a pdf so that it appears in greyscale. In other words, I want to strip colour out of the electronic document so it appears on the screen in pure greyscale with no colour. Why? Because I am posting some class lectures and the important bits are in red… but I refuse to teach to exams so when I give the notes out they aren’t highlighted. That way they have to actually read ALL the material, not just the examinable bits. AND they have to actually pay attention.

The problem is, that every time i thought I had done it…the colour was actually still there, embedded in the pdf. But, I finally figured out how to remove it permanently.

Here’s how to convert a color PDF file to grayscale in Acrobat 9 Pro.

1. Open a color PDF file in Acrobat 9 Pro. The file may contain a mix of CMYK, RGB or spot color objects.

2. Choose Advanced > Print Production > Preflight.

3. Select the Convert to Grayscale PDF Fixup, and then click the Analyze and Fix button.

4. Give the file a name and location, and click the Save button. The entire PDF file will be converted to grayscale.

Ta Da! Now I know where to find the information when I have to do it again…right here!

So how do I go from that to religion and computers. Who knows, there’s no rhyme or reason to my mental wanderings. Just ask my husband about the time we were quietly driving down the highway each lost in our own thoughts and I suddenly blurted out “I wonder why there is water inside a coconut.” Of course, I figured it out after thinking about it for awhile… but it didn’t lessen the absurdity of the moment as far as he was concerned. Even though it made perfect sense to me… he just hadn’t been in on the thought trail that led to that question.

But again, I digress.

Ann Coulter’s offensive arguments made me think of how people debate things, and how belief systems are often based on a complete absence of knowledge on the alternative point of view. And the most obvious example of that is religion. Pure and illogical belief in something intangible and untestable. And that kind of belief is dangerous and often vicious. Because people have no tangible method to prove their argument, it erupts into a case of “Because I believe so!” And when you attack someone’s belief structure, it becomes viewed as a personal attack rather than a philosophical one.

And thus I am led to computers… or rather computer systems. Mac vs PC specifically.

I’ve never slagged Macs, even though I never owned one until last year. I have on the other hand constantly slagged PC’s… even though I’ve owned them and worked (fought) with them for almost 30 years (from the first Tandy 1000). I did have a chance to play with one of the early Apple II computers back in the 80′s and it was the first time I’d ever seen a colour window or a mouse. And I never saw one again for a long, long time… until Microsoft finally figured out how to do both much later.

Maybe that’s where it all started. Maybe Microsoft was scared of the new computer and started a bit of a Holy War against it back then…and it just continued. I don’t know, but what I do know is that somehow we got snookered into using a system that has twists and turns that punish you when you press the wrong button or type the wrong command. And then you must repent all your sins and reformat…yet again. Seems a bit like a confusing faith based system…. “If I just do XYZ, I’ll be saved and can get on with my life again until I make the next mistake and must repent yet again…”

And yet, with all that pain and suffering built on one operating system, why don’t more people change? Is the Mac viewed as a pagan religion? One that offers happiness and freedom because theirs is a friendly God that offers solutions? Or is the Mac a Godless religion with a leader who nurtures friendship to all and acceptance? It must be since the Mac has altered its architecture to allow the PC to operate within its confines, while the reverse is not true.

I think people are afraid of what they don’t understand. Afraid that they made a wrong choice and that it’s too late to change operating systems. And that fear manifests itself as derision and contempt towards something they haven’t taken the time to investigate. We are led to believe that our software won’t work. We are led to believe that there are no alternatives to the software we are used to. We are led to believe that it’s too difficult to switch. Let me tell you, if my 70 year old mother can do it…anyone can do it! Many software titles are available in both Mac and PC language. Many alternative software applications exist for the Mac that run faster, smoother and will even import the information from the former PC programs. But fear is larger than life and it is human nature to give in to fear. Fear of the unknown. But fear of the familiar unknown is apparently more comfortable than fear of the new unknown.

People get comfortable in their frustrations. After-all, they would have to find something new to complain about if they switched to something that offered less difficulty. People just love to complain and this would mean that they would have to find a new outlet for their need to gripe.

As I said, I never slagged Macs even though I didn’t have one. I knew people with Macs, intelligent people. The Marine Station I spent time at had Macs… and the people there were intelligent. Artists and musicians used Macs… and they did some amazing things. So there had to be something to this. And yet, at a friends house, her daughter was trying to connect her computer to the television to play a slide show, and the grandfather snarked out “Well, what do you expect, it’s a Mac!” When I made the switch, all sorts of people said “Are you crazy!?!?”

Why? Because they’ve succumbed to the belief that only a PC will get them through the day to day world of business and science. And I’m here to say, that simply isn’t true. And I can also say that in a year and a half of living with two Macs, I’ve not had to reformat a computer once…..I’ve shed no tears over them, and that’s worth more than anything I can think of.

Apparently I’m not the only person to think this way (although I am an atheist). In the writing of this I found the following:

Umberto Eco, the Italian semiologist, compared Macs and PCs to the two main branches of the Christian faith: Catholics and Protestants. The Mac is Catholic, he wrote in September 1994. It is “cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach — if not the Kingdom of Heaven — the moment in which their document is printed.”

The Windows PC, on the other hand, is Protestant. It demands “difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can reach salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: A long way from the baroque community of revelers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment.”

My computer system is a benevolent computer system, one that doesn’t make me pay for my transgressions… and for that reason I believe that my Mac is atheistic, moving through time and evolving as its users find new ways to push its limits and test its abilities. I think if more people made the switch, the world would be a happier place and we would evolve at a pace that we decide, not one that The Gates dictates.

Of course, there is Steve Jobs at the helm.  Maybe it is a cult…I can live with that.

Have I mentioned that I love my Mac?

Shut up and pass the purple kool-aid!