I get a kick out of reading this support thread at Apple…
Obviously I didn’t read the whole thing, but what I’ve read cracked me up.
Those darn cats… Something is up with them…
Category: Apple
PCs and Crap Ware
Not too long ago, I remember supporting Windows-based machines was really a pain in the butt for various reasons. But mostly I thought because Windows operating systems in general just sucked. But I’d forgotten how they also came with crappy software, especially with computers from companies like Dell and Sony. So I ended up having to wipe all the SPANKING NEW machines we’d just bought and reinstall Windows from scratch on every machine… What a good way to spend valueable IT support time, huh?
So in essence, when a company thought they paid for a cheap machine, they are actually getting ripped off because of the extra time spent reinstalling the OS and supporting its inferior hardware/software. This drives home a point — Windows (and by extension, Microsoft) still sucks three years after I’d abandoned it from my home.
Take, for example, many people I know blindly think Windows Live Messenger is like the SH*T. So they’d use all those weird features on me not knowing they are not supported on the Mac version (a blessing, I must say). So one day, I decided I’d take a look into it by installing it on my PC emulation software. Five minutes after playing with it, I was ready to get a ticket to Redmond and strangle Steve Ballmer for the worst instant messenger app ever written!
I continue to wonder, how can such crappy software, bundled with crappy hardware, keep such dominance in most homes and businesses? Do people NOT see they are just wasting time and money on such crap? Or am I just having a chip on my shoulder being such a Mac snob? Hah!
Nonetheless, simplicity rules — in design, computing or otherwise.
Upgrading PEAR on Mac OSX Tiger
It’s annoying sometimes having to upgrade or install opensource applications on Mac OSX. Yes, it’s BSD Unix, but it’s not quite Linux when it comes to raw package management from command prompts and how some applications assume you are installing it on Linux. On my fresh install of Tiger, I was having some issues upgrade PEAR. Because it’s not really documented anywhere, here’s how I did it:
1. Follow the upgrade instruction on PEAR’s official website.
2. Once PEAR is upgraded, issuing
from the command prompt should still give you an old version of PEAR as such:
3. To fix that, find out where the current version of PEAR is by issuing:
It should return:
4. Then find out where the upgraded PEAR went by issuing:
Look for:
In my case, it resides in where PHP5 is at:
5. Next I make a symbolic link to it from where
is:
2
$: sudo ln -s /usr/local/php5/bin/pear pear6. Do another
and it should now show the proper version:
Apple Aperture Rocks!
I went to a free Pro Workshop session at our local Apple Store at Valley Fair mall last night for Apple’s Aperture software. It’s one of those “pro” apps that allows photographers to manage, edit and output photos through an efficient workflow with high quality reasults. All I have to say about Aperture is… WOW! (Sorry, Microsoft… didn’t mean to steal your slogan.)
There are a few quirks in the software that I didn’t really like about though…
1. Edited results will not show up in iPhoto (where photo albums can be shared and do other things that Aperture can’t do).
2. No selective sharpening for now.
3. No RAW support for the DSRL I want (yet).
But I liked the fact that it’s a non-destructive editing process where the master image is never touched/altered in anyway. It took Adobe long enough to figure that one out in CS3 and the revival of Lightroom. Adobe is beginning to become the Microsoft of the creative industry it seems — moving slow with bloated products that don’t improve much over versions… But I digress…
Laptop Backup
In preparation to completely wipe my laptop hard drive clean and reinstall Mac OSX (it’s been a couple of years), I got a giant Western Digital My Book drive to back all my data to. Since it’s got two 500GB hard drives in it, I knew making it a mirrored RAID 1 drive would be the ideal solution for a peace of mind (that means making the two drives as if it’s only one, only files backed up to it will be mirrored, or synchronized, on both drives in case if one of the drives fails, all that data is still safe and sound on the 2nd drive).
Unfortunately Western Digital’s hardware doesn’t allow Apple’s Disk Utility to manage it. I ended up having to install Western Digital’s custom RAID utility. Sucks.
The initial backup took about 3 hours to backup about 35GB of data — not very fast. But then again, it’s software RAID. It’s not supposed to be fast anyway.
So now that I have all my stuff backed up. Next week I will be able to finally reinstall OSX and see if the damn machine runs any faster.
Next is to back up all those digital photos stored on Grace’s Mac, which was the real reason I bought this drive in the first place.
Woz
Jason and Alicia took us to Los Gatos for a nice day out. That’s when we bumped into Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, Inc…
I had a cup of gelato with me at the time, plus I had to stroll Bryan so I really didn’t have a hand to grab my camera. Plus Woz was on his Segway, so by the time I was able to do something about it, he was long gone. But you can see Woz in this shot I managed to snap (hint: look for the Segway).
Ah~ A case of brush with “Greatness”.
Multitouch Screen
I SO know people who could use something like that…
via [Gizmodo]
Growth of Apple’s Stock
I was reading The Codist blog when I saw an interesting stock chart. But instead of stealing his, I decided to make my own (bless Google Finance).
Michael Dell of Dell Computer once advised Steve Jobs to close the company and give the money back to the shareholders back in 1996…
Squint hard, you might be able to see Dell on the chart somewhere. See whose investors are laughing all the way to the bank now?
This gives me the more reason to believe that Murdza is really a mega-gabillionaire. He still goes to work just to hide his true wealth as an Apple stock shareholder like before the original iMac was even born.
Roomba the Vacuum Robot
I didn’t think I’d ever get one of these things — robotic vacuums. But Woot had them on sale for really cheap, so I looked into it and decided it’d be a great present for Grace (ahem, wedding anniversary coming up).
Our unit came today and we gave it a test drive for 2 minutes (the manual says to give it an initial charge for 16 hours before use), and wow… that thing works great! Grace had this huge smile on her face when she saw the package arrive. Admittedly, it’s pretty hard for surprises when:
a. the package is so freaking huge…
b. both of us are home all day long, and…
c. the name of the damn company is printed visibly on the outside of the packaging…
One of the more interesting things about iRobot “robots” is that they are totally hackable. The unit comes with a serial port that I can hook up to a computer and program it (or even load Linux on it if I wanted to). Some of the more well-known hacks include: bluetooth sensor, wifi-connection, customized routines… etc.
Also worth mentioning is its packaging is very Apple-ish… or as Apple-esque as anybody has come anywhere close to packing a merchandize. Me like it very much.
Rebel Forces Have Landed
At long last, the much anticipated Java class I’ve been wanting to take all year in 2006 finally started on Tuesday. After having played with PHP for 4 years, I’ve finally felt the need to pick up something else for a change. Partly, my cousin Alex is to “blame” for pushing me into Java for its enterprise-readiness.
A couple of interesting statistics about this class:
1. A typically uber-geek class has almost 1/2 of the students being women.
2. Everyone else in the class has either an IBM ThinkPad or some sort of loser Dell laptop. I am the lone Mac user in the class with the only Mac laptop (yoohoo!).
3. Everyone else planned on coding Java using Windows; I am the only person using Mac OSX (yoohoo!) while one other guy is using Solaris.
Hopefully this class will worth its weight in tofu. I had the same instructor in a previous database design class, and that class turned out to be very “profitable” for me. So hopefully I’ll be able to make what I learn here equally successful economically. 🙂
Finally, An Apple Phone
It’s been rumored for years. But I am just about sick of hearing about it without seeing the real thing. But I guess all the patents Apple’s been making in the past year on touch-screen technologies have finally come to fruition. Today the Apple iPhone arrived. And as a direct result of it, my Apple stock jumped 7+ points, passing $92 per share… Sweet!
After having seen most of the fake iPhones and rumored features, I didn’t think Apple could surprise me. But what was announced today greatly surpassed my expectations on the GUI and usability. But someone’s got to play the devil’s advocate about the “misses” on this particular phone:
1. Not 3G.
2. I am guessing the battery is NOT removable. Is Apple banking on consumers replacing their phones every 2 years? Though people generally do it anyway, it’s annoying.
3. Storage is not upgradable (not by the user anyway).
4. The phone feature must work in order for the whole dvice to work; the caveat is, you MUST sign up with a network or else the entire device is just another paper weight. So I can’t just buy it for the PDA-ish features! Bastards.
5. What, no iChatAV?
6. No clearly stated standby time.
7. I am assuming no 3rd party developers can install their apps on the phone’s OS without Apple’s blessing.
8. Can’t transfer music/files wirelessly. Not that I care for Zune’s features, but it’d be nice to be able to sync with iTunes wirelessly. Isn’t it about time?
9. The phone surface is going to be all scratched up in the pocket. But then I guess Apple will probably ship it with some kind of sleeve when it’s available in June.
All in all, this is a pretty kick-ass first stab at making something they’ve never made before. Hopefully this will make the other phone makers piss in their pants so badly that it will improve the overall usability of cell phones in time. But Steve Jobs is right when he said today’s phones SUCK!
ReadyBoost Envy
I am rarely envious of anything from the Windows side of the world. And when I say “rarely”, it’s more like NEVER. But in Vista, there’s actually this ONE tiny feature that I hope the next version of Mac OSX would have — ReadyBoost. It’s basically a feature that allows a user to instantly increase the performance of a Vista-driven computer by simply adding flash memory! Sweet!
More features of Leopard (OSX.5) is to be unveiled on Jan. 9th, 2007 with Steve Jobs’ keynote speech at MacWorld Expo. I look forward to seeing what Apple’s been hiding for the past five months…