I’ve been in a little bit of a writing funk. After a couple good weeks I find myself having a hard time composing even the most mundane of posts. Sad state of affairs.
BTW- No more writing with the computer perched on my belly at night. Worst typo’s ever.
In my ADD affected world I find myself think about a million things, all the time. Rarely to do simply turn off and, as they say, veg. 99% of the content on this site comes from those mental storms, when a line of thinking takes form and starts to turn into a discussion.
A discussion in my head mind you.
One thing on my mind of late, I’ve kind of grown out of my little macbook. The screen is too small for photo editing, my hard drive is just about full and the thing is running a little off.
iTunes 10 is a beach ball exercise.
Too many media files methinks.
So what do I replace it with? I’m thinking a minimum 15inch screen. At least a 500G hard drive, minimum 4 gig ram. So, looking a MacBook Pro that meets these requirements, I’m going to have to spend around $2200. That feels like a lot of money. Well it is a lot of money. In the PC world that same machine can be had from a couple different reputable manufacturers for around $950-$1000. Significant difference.
This little tidbit of knowledge has started the mental gymnastics again. The stupid Apple/PC debate.
Some observations- in the two years I’ve been almost exclusively Apple I’m not hooked. I get the joke that the machines work great, mine rarely crashes, and only really with Aperture and Adoble Elements. Adobe Bridge BTW.. can’t even start.
I’ve found that the price for having he machines which work well and are easy to upgrade and operate is you have to give up significant functionality. In the Apple World, users are much more forgiving of their software, they overlook a lot if the software just runs. On the PC Side users are far more vocal and far more critical when things don’t work right.
Functionality that I’ve had to give up on Apple:
- Blogging. Blogging in the Appleverse is a pain in the ass. You have to either type up your post in Word and select all, copy, open Wordress, start a new post, drop the text and hit OK, or your other option is to just open wordpress and type directly in into their little text box. If you want to add pictures or media.. well, open the media application, find the URL, go back to wordpress, open the media manager, copy the URL to the manager and hit OK. Other option is to find the image on your PC, select it, and upload it to WordPress. Once its in WordPress you have to open the image to edit it for word wrapping, borders, text space etc.
On a PC, if you type your entry into Word you open Word, type, press “Publish”. A window comes up asking you for titles and tags, enter your metadata and press OK and boom. You’re done. Wanna add pictures? Open Windows Live Writer. Enter your post into the template for your blog. Live Writer will find the template when you link it to your site. Add pictures, shrink and grow them as you like, put them where you want on the page. Note that pages you create is exactly how they will appear on your blog. When you’re done, hit enter. Finis.
This is the single biggest miss for me in the Appleverse vs. PCWorld.
- Finding Files. I’m two years in and still have no freaking idea how Apples file structures work, specifically for pictures and music. I use Aperture for managing my photo library. I also have iPhoto on my Mac. Each of these takes copies of my media, and adds them to their own libraries and triples the space on my hard drive with dupes. And when I have to find a picture that’s imbedded in a proprietary Apple product library, good luck,. Better to open the app, export the picture to the desktop and then upload it. In the process creating 4 copies of my data.
Windows file manager is far better organized and easier to use that Finder. Finder really isn’t the problem, it works great it’s actually finding where the Mac has put actual files that is the problem. Windows stores pictures in a file called “Photos”. Music goes in “music”. iTunes puts your music into a music file than a iTunes library file. Same with iPhoto etc.
- Big Fruit- Apple is a closed universe, songs bought on iTunes only work on iTunes and are not shareable with family. You can stream them via homesharing.. but putting them on an iPod, not so much. iTunes movies are only playable on iPads and Macs and Apple TV. Forget your Nook or your Kindle. Apple apps downloadable from the App Store are a joke. They’re mostly enhanced iPhone apps. There’s a few gems but by and large and they’re small and limited in functionality, or they’re like RapidWeaver the web creation tool that I can’t figure out how to use.
It feels like Apple has become what they used to stand against, big corporate technology company. They control everything; media, computers, players, phones.. they’ve dwarfed Microsoft, the former bad guy.
On the other hand;
- I everything on the Mac works. Networking the computers, no problem, sync with devices, not an issue, viruses- not a one..
- Speed has been consistent; as opposed to every PC I’ve had where after a year or two they slow down to a crawl.
- Upgrades are cake on a Mac.. I haven’t been as lucky on the PC.
