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.

278/365 – (Oct 5, 2011) _ Today is a sad day. I was out seining salmon on a river in Chilliwack all day and arrived home to hear the news that the world of technology lost a creative mind. Sadly, Steve Jobs lost his battle with pancreatic cancer at age 56 today.

The Cult of Mac has lost its leader.

R.I.P. Steve. Your products changed my view of computers from problematic machines to elegant and functional designs that “just work”.

“Things don’t have to change the world to be important.” – Steve Jobs

(Strangely enough, today’s Daily Challenge was ‘technology’)

236/365 (Sept 20, 2011) – It’s been three months at my new job now. The Federal Government is not “Mac-Friendly” and when I first arrived with my MacBook in tow the admin for the program was adamant that the machine could not stay. Guess what…it’s still there…she’s not though She retired after my second week and I just quietly kept on using it there. When the curious questioned me I basically let them know that the past 5 years of my work life – most of it working for them on contract – exists on Mac programs and it would be a ridiculous inefficiency to make me transfer everything over to a less efficient system. Not only that, but some of the intellectual property that I created for them I retain ownership of and don’t really want to exist on their shared drives. Seems to have worked. I have plugged it into the system as much as I can manage, and although I can’t access any shared drives or use the Exchange server on it, I can do pretty much everything else I need to do, and in a much more efficient manner. The rest of it I just have to turn my chair and I have access to on the PC.

Although I am grudgingly regaining some of my fluency in Windows when I am forced to, my MacBook happily sits on my desk and at least half of what I do, I do on it. lots of people still ask me questions about it, mostly because they either have Macs at home or are planning on getting one soon, and it’s become a normal part of the office landscape so for the most part most people don’t really even “see” it anymore.

259/365 (Sept 16, 2011) – Isn’t technology amazing? When I was a kid, headphones used to look like construction ear-muffs and the only way to take your music with you (before the invention of the Walkman) was by carrying your ghetto-blaster. Now headphones wrap up to the size of a matchbook and you can carry 50,000 songs with you in something the size of a deck of cards, but a third as thick.

It’s really incredible when you stop and think about how fast we got here.

243/365 (August 31, 2011) – Did you know that if you hit the Fn+Command+left arrow keys all at the same time it takes you to the top of an open document in Word? I knew that, because I use a lot of key strokes rather than the mouse where possible, it’s faster. But I have been forced backwards in time and efficiency to use a Windows based machine at work. And when I automatically hit what would have been those three keys on my Macbook, I discovered that they do something quite different in Windows. Those three keys on a PC correspond to pressing Ctrl+Alt+left arrow keys all at the same time. But I didn’t actually realize what keys I had pressed since I did it without thinking. And it took me about five minutes to get back to where I’d been before I hit those keys, mainly because I wasn’t totally sure what keys I’d hit.

If you are on a PC, do it… c’mon go ahead, press Control+Alt+the left arrow key and see what happens, you won’t be disappointed unless you are on a really old machine where the chipset doesn’t support the function. I dare you!

I can see the value in it with some machines, but it caught me totally off guard!

I am slowly regaining my Windows literacy, slowly and grudgingly. But that really was entertainment for a few minutes.

225/365 (August 13, 2011) – OK, to qualify, this isn’t ALL mine. In fact, I’m the one who first adopted Mac, and now Kirk officially has more Apple products than I do. I have the early 2008 MacPro desktop, a first gen aluminum MacBook Pro, and an iPhone 3Gs. Kirk has an aluminum 2nd gen MacBook Pro, an iPad 2, iPhone 3Gs, iPod Classic (I sold mine), the first gen iTouch, first gen AppleTV (better than the 2nd gen) and Airport Extreme (OK, so we both have those, but he wanted them so they are essentially his toys). The MacPro tower, the Apple TV and the AirPort Extreme didn’t fit in the space, but they are in behind the scenes too.

Quite the little family we have acquired over the past few years.

I love the fact that the Apple technology seems to outlast other products for so long. Who would have thought I could take an iPod purchased for $250 in 2005 and sell it for $100 (easily) in 2010! I’ve never encountered electronics and computer equipment that holds its value before entering the world of Mac.

The next additions will either be an iPad for me (maybe) of a new 15″ MacBook Pro (more likely). But there is no hurry, all of this stuff, even at 3+ years old for my two machines, is still working without a hiccup.

Have I mentioned how much I love Mac?

“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

126/365 (May 6, 2011) – The weather was horrible today, and I had to go out and do a lot of running around…. on my scooter. Because I chose to not have a second car…. sometimes I wonder at my sanity. I felt like a drowned rat by the end of the day. We ended up at our favourite pub for a late dinner and a glass of wine when we got a call that actually made us happy.

We were supposed to go out on a friend’s boat in the morning for our Yacht Club’s SailPast. Not a fun prospect when the weather is for more downpours. He called and was in a crabby mood too, we said “It’s OK, we understand if you want to bail out” (secretly hoping he would say he didn’t want to go) He said “Great, let’s call it off”.

Can’t say I was sad. I feel like I need a few days to dry out.

Cheers!

(Last minute photo taken on the iPhone and processed with the Plastic Bullet App)

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