Tag Archives: Mac

March 19, 2012 · 8:21 pm

Why I left the Mac

Today is my last day on a Macintosh computer. After almost 4 years on an Apple computer first the iMac in our den, the main family computer, the last 2 on my MacBook, I believe I have used Apple products, and specifically computers long enough to understand the trajectory of their culture, their people and their identity. And I can honestly say that the Apple environment is not exactly what I expected.

I’m the first to say that there was a time when in my mind when Microsoft represented something insidious and dark, Bill Gates, vilified for the company’s success, was at the helm of a company we “left brain” thinking Liberal types viewed as just another example of corporate greed gone bad. The guys in Cupertino, at a company that 10 years ago was struggling to make it, well they were the good guys, they represented creativity and freedom in the computing world. At Apple was king and their stuff worked, and honestly it did work, worked well!

I was an early adaptor to home computers. I’m old enough to remember my first home computer, a spiffy DOS 286 machine that was the size of my Scion. She had an amber monitor and took about 8 minutes to boot. It made all kind of weird spinning sounds and when up and running presented the following interface

C:\>

I spent the next 20+ years in the PC world. I was there for Windows 3.0, 3.1, NT, Vista, and now Windows 7. And the experience with these old machines was the same. I watched every computer I’d ever purchased get slower and slower over the course of time as spyware and software bloat took them down. I’d installed more drivers than I cared to think about. I had printers, one in particular that never worked because I couldn’t get the driver to talk the printer or the network to see the driver. I’d dealt with viruses and blue screens of death. Memory dumps and memory leaks, bios issues and defragged hard drives. Hell I’d even dealt with Double Spaced hard drives.

Over the years I’ve owned licenses to Norton, Norton Utilities, McAfee, Trend Micro and Kaspersky virus programs. All worked, kinda, and one thing they shared, they all contributed to the decreasing usefulness of my PC to the point where I believed that purchasing a new computer about every two years was just part of the experience.

And somehow, it was all Bill Gate’s fault. Now let’s be honest, Microsoft was a victim of their own success. With 96% of the world’s PC’s using their software why would any hacker waste their time with a Mac?

I purchased my first Mac in 2008, an iMac to replace the windows based desktop the family was using. Gawd was she sexy, a nice flat screen with no giant box to stuff discs and drives into. And it was simple to use. My wife was up and running in minutes checking email, surfing and writing letters in Text Editor. The kids had been pre-conditioned to like macs based on years and years of Apple giving the things away to schools. A marketing plant BTW that’s paying off in spades as all those kids weaned on Mac’s are now coming of age as consumers and are interested in recreating their experiences, in hindsight a brilliant marketing strategy.

I didn’t use the Mac much, I don’t like to share stuff, especially computers and since I sit on one 12 hours a day I kept my windows laptop. After a particularly ugly software upgrade and install on my PC I decided in a fit of rage that offended even my gentle neighbor, who happens to work for Microsoft, I bought my MacBook, from Amazon in 2010 and prepared myself for computer ecstasy.

Pete Townsend wrote “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, perhaps one of the greatest rock songs of all time. It was in that song he warned us; “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” When I exchanged my PC for a Mac little did I know just how prophetic that line would be?

Anyone remember that 1980′s Super bowl ad where the lady with the hammer comes running down the aisle where minions of dark hooded beings are watching the big giant evil 1984 face? Remember how we all knew exactly who the guy on screen was.

Or did we?

That evil monopoly that controlled all of our computers, from whose clutches no one could escape. That corporate giant who not only sold software, but sold the hardware to go with it, keeping prices sky high. That giant company that changed how we bought media content, charging us for music and at the same time controlling what we did the things we bought. The company that created a host of slick sexy gadgets that had people flocking to their slick sexy stores, eager to fork over whatever the company dictated they pay, in the process creating the most valuable company in the world. Oh wait, I thought Microsoft was the big bad company not.. wait..

When I bought my MacBook the thing worked. Flat out. I opened it up, booted it and in 3 minutes was connected to my home network and could see every other computer in the house, as long as it had an Apple logo on it. I printed wirelessly, my laptop library was visible on Apple TV it was cool. Email set up was snap, loved Garage Band, played with iPhoto seemed good. For surfing and Facebook it was great. Loved it. Why did I wait so long?

And then, I wrote my first blog entry. I’m going to suggest that after 1850 posts I know a wee bit about blogging and posting. I was absolutely flabbergasted to learn there are no decent clients for blogging in the Mac world. I was stunned; blogging feels like one of those things where Apple would excel. Nope, the world’s very best blogging client is Windows Live Writer. I can place text, images, movies whatever I want by simply dragging and dropping, it paginates according to my blogs template and when I’m done I just press “Publish”. It has a place for tags and categories.. The difference between Live Writer and the very best Mac Blogging tool, Mars Editor, is the difference between the New York Yankees and the single A Stockton Ports from my hometown. I kid you not, the gap in functionality is that big.

This experience foreshadowed of life in the Mac world, matter of fact life in the Apple World. Play by rules, stay within the pay to play boundaries and everything will work fine. If you want to try something new or different, well we’re going to have to talk.

I took my software problem to the Genius Bar I was asking the black t-shirted dude with the scruffy beard “do you have any software for blogging?” The answer back, “just do it on the WordPress site. But I want a desk top app, I don’t want to use the WordPress site. His answer; “hmm, no one’s ever asked that before”. “Have a database that I can use for managing a large nonprofit? Contact management sorts of things?” Filemaker. “I don’t want to pay $300, anything else?” “Bento by Filemaker.” Anything else.. “Hmm, no one’s ever asked for that before..”

What about gaming.. “app store” Photo management? “app store”, everything is in the app store now, where choices were limited. Want Angry Birds, no problem, want an in-depth strategy game? Keep looking.

iPhoto, I have 3000 photos on my computer. Thanks to iPhoto and it’s big brother Aperture I have no idea where on my computer they are. Want to copy a photo to use in a blog post, export a copy of the photo to the desk top and go after it here. Want to copy and paste it into WordPress or Flickr, nope import only, then hope it lands where you want it.

And when I run Aperture, or the recent version of iTunes- Boom K-Rash. Apple may not have the blue screen of death but they programs do crash and the do clock, in some cases, Garage Band, for’evah.

And finally, for play, movies, music, Facebook, playtime, my mac is fantastic. But for work; building databases, technical diagrams, spreadsheets, I have to have a PC. And now that I’ve played around with the Windows Live Products, well looks like Microsoft is giving away for free products that work as well or in some cases, much better than the same sort of products on the Mac.

And so far in Windows 7, everything has worked.

I purchased my new laptop at the Microsoft Store at the Mall of America on Sunday. The Store is directly across from the big silver store with the giant white apple on it. You couldn’t get into the Apple Store with a shoehorn thanks to the iPad launch. The place was packed. The Microsoft store.. not as much. As a result I had a chance to spend some time with a person who could really answer my questions as opposed to the guys I’ve encountered at Apple. With the exception of the Genius Bar, most of the guys I’ve asked questions of at Apple couldn’t answer me. The Microsoft guys, much better.

I’m digging the new PC, 4lbs, 14 inch screen, 500 gig hard drive, 8 gig ram, i5 Intel chip, thing really screams. And, was less than half the price of the Apple product with similar specs. We’ll have to see how it goes over time. I still can’t print as my printer is “owned” by the 4 Macs in the house and believe me, they don’t like my PC.

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February 16, 2012 · 10:34 pm

Thinking again- Mac vs PC… PC or Mac… hate this.

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.

 

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September 6, 2010 · 8:57 pm

Web Based Email- and the winner is… Yahoo

After years and years of working on Gmail… Old Mr Sank is cutting the cord. Ending the relationship. Sort of. I’ve never been a big fan of Gmail’s interface, I’ve been very concerned about all the data mining that they do on gmail, and finally, the last straw, friends have asked why I would send them a note directing to them to a porn site.

I didn’t.

That I know of. Turns out the old gmail account got hacked a bit.

Anyone who’s read this site for a while knows I’ve been looking for the “best” site to manage all my complicated calendars, my email, my chats, my video chats with college kid.. all that sort of stuff. Years and years and years ago, matter of fact, according to my account records, my first “non ISP” based email was a Yahoo account back in 1997, the first year they started.

Of course, one day along came Google.. promise of unlimited storage, at the time Yahoo had pretty tight limits on the amount of storage available. Google went even farther, free POP forwarding, free video chat, free phone calls, free online storage of documents, free, free, free, free….

Then, along came Hotmail. MSN’s offering in the space. More storage, seamless integration with Word and Excel, Family Safety.. I like Hotmail and I LOVE Windows LIVE stuff. Microsoft however, doesn’t really like POP. They’ve allowed it, it works, but they seem to require my login on my phone and my MAC Email client about every 3 or 4 hours. Not going to work for me. Plus, the best Windows LIVE stuff doesn’t work on MAC.

The final straw… Google and Hotmail, or as it’s been rebranded, Windows Live- Calendars.. Yahoo’s calendar was clunky at best.

That’s changed now. Yahoo has come up with a new version of the calendar that works like outlook. You can drag and drop, move appointments, the sort of thing that we’ve come to take for granted elsewhere.

So, after getting ads on Google for Michigan Tech apparel, Masonic Supplies and Fishing gear on the same day, it occurred to me this was a great example of Google’s data mining the content of my emails. Yikes. If it wasn’t that Google has become the omnibus massive company that they are, gathering data about me at ever turn and sending selling their findings to others and dishing it all back to me in ways that they predict I’ll respond too.

I have no pretense that any other service isn’t doing the same thing.

That being said, after trying them all, and I have. And I’ve avoided the sweet temptation that Google has put out.. every day a new cool toy.

In the end, I’ve picked the old favorite, Yahoo. I like their webmail interface. For $20.00 a year no ads, so even if they are profiling me, I don’t know about it. It has IM features, it’s got vid chat, everything I need with much lower profile.

So, if you’ve been getting weird messaged from me on Yahoo and you can’t explain, now you know.

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May 24, 2010 · 6:30 pm

MAC Daddy

Had some new experiences today, I always cherish days where I get to learn something new. Today I got to learn all about MAC cosmetics, courtesy of the nice man at the MAC counter at Macy’s.  I use the term loosely by the way. “nice” I mean.

The MAC counter is about as new a frontier as this bumbling idiot has entered into in a long old time. I’ve spent some time in parts of stores that sell cosmetics. For some reason Walgreens sells my brand of aftershave, Hi-Karate, in the cosmetic department. So I get the joke on outrageously packaged tiny little packages, you might say I have some experience in this since I was the guy who used to purchase a gift from the cosmetic counter ever Mothers day for dear old ma. The 55 gallon drum of Jean Nate’. She loved that stuff. I think women of her generation used it like my friend Loren uses “scent lock” before he goes out deer hunting. Pour the stuff all over themselves. In Mom’s case she wasn’t going out hunting, at least that I knew about. Mom was using Jean Nate’ to cover up her other favorite smell, cigarette. Well that’s how I remember it anyway.

The MAC Counter is a far cry from the Walgreens cosmetic counter, for one thing where the Walgreens features a spot where a person could help you if they were interested in providing help at Walgreens, but which in reality never has anyone standing there, MAC has about three dozen people there to help regardless of the fact that there wasn’t one person in or near the department. This crowd of people by the way? Ever see that Mike Myers skit on Saturday Night Live where he’s the guy on German TV with the monkey? Dressed in black, screwed up hair and metro-euro sort of affect? Yeah, I wonder which came first Mike Myers skit or MAC, because once, clearly inspired the other. Think old Mr Sank is making stuff up, again? They’re both Canadian… goes to show how little we really know about what goes on up North.

Anyway I confidently strolled up to the counter to attempt to replace my wives eye shadow that I’d crushed under my immenseness the day before. Getting help at the counter is a little more difficult than you’d expect given that there were 4 of them only one of me, me being a customer, a paying customer mind you. I waited for a minute or two, avoiding with every fiber of my being the temptation to yell “Yo SERGE”, ‘cause I was pretty sure everyone there would turn and look at me thinking I was talking to them. With all that blackness and makeup, spiky hair was the only indication I had of gender. Drivers license would probably be required to confirm.

I caught the eye of one dude and while I expected that he would really have no time for a bloke like me, old fat and ugly, he was actually pretty decent. “How can I help you sir?” “I’m a-gonna need some face pint for the old lady.”

What the hell, you have to have some fun in life. He stared at me.. “you might consider a little pressed powder yourself sir, would take a bit of the shine from your forehead.”

This sort of caught be off guard because 1) I’m not exactly sure what he just said, I don’t know what pressed powder is  and 2) I wasn’t aware that my forehead was so reflective. Next question.

“Um I don’t need makeup today thank you, but I do need something for my wife”.

“Ahh I see.. you know a bit of concealer right here..”  he pointed to the rather deep dark bags under my eyes “ would make you look a bit healthier and take a few years off”.

Again.. stare.

Now I’m flustered. I’m sort of sure that Serge is telling my I look like 20 miles of bad road.. I know this already, I joke about it, but to hear it from a guy who..

who..

 Now I notice that this fellows entire face, from his hairline to his chin is the most uniform color of human flesh I’ve ever seen, except for a little dash of shadow between his impeccably groomed eyebrows and eyes. Stop this.

“I need some eyeshadow for my wife, I destroyed it and as punishment I have to come here and by more.”

“from you”.

J

“What color is she?” he asked. “Pasty white”.. that’s not the answer he was looking for. I’m shaking my head as I say this like he’s just asked the stupidest question ever. Turns out we’re not both stupid, just me.

“What color does she wear”. Of all damned things to forget to ask about.. what damn color does she wear. “If I tell you a little about her can you pick one?” Ok there is now no way in hell that this is going to go well. I’m now on the march to folly where we men, for reasons unknown, but strongly suggested by intelligence, will head down a bad road for no other reason than.. it’s the easiest one.

At that time.

Key, at that time.

She’s very fair, was a blonde at one time. Eyes are a bright blue. Now when she smiles she gets happy lines in corners, I don’t know if she uses primer on those or not. He suggested a few colors. Informed me that she doesn’t use primer and she probably doesn’t like talking about that. I get it. She doesn’t like talking about that new crevice in her lip that sucks up all the lipstick either. Learned THAT the hard way.

I actually bought a couple different colors when I learned they were only $15.00. I was expecting more. “If these aren’t right don’t open them, you can bring them back.” “Yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow I’m pretty sure.” “Sir, do you remove the hair from you ears?”

OMG. I hate the hair growing out my damn ears. HATE.  Why.. it’s my own crows feet.. lip crease what ever. “yea” Fact is I remove it every day as soon as I feel it. Not the best thing to do in meetings, but what’cha’gonna do. Can’t go around looking like Grandpa from the Rugrats. Shezz. “Well, you do think about your grooming Sir.. so if you ever want help with those bags, come see me. I’m discrete”. I took his card but I had a very skeptical look and I was very methodical about it. Not gonna happen. I don’t think.

Mrs S, BTW..  color was fine, write that up to blind squirrel and nuts theory.

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May 23, 2010 · 10:47 am

Sank Helps

Always helpful, I decided to clean the bathroom this morning. I’m often helpful that way. I feel moved to clean stuff spontaneously, like when step in dog crap.. I’ll often decide that I should pick up the lawn. Sometimes… I even do it.

Sometimes.

I ran in for a shower, and in a moment of motivated clarity I decided to clean the bathroom. It was a little rough in there and Mrs S always says “if you’re just going to bitch about something you can do yourself, do it”. So I did.

Grabbed the supplies, which in our house are carefully kept in a nice caddy for easy transport. Step one, from my “Clean Anything In No Time” book I’m supposed to put the toilet cleaning stuff in the stool first. Next step is to clean of the counter. I have two things on the counter, a shaver and tube of sunscreen. Oh and an old guy daily dose box of pills.. embarrassing I know but it helps me remember what day it is every morning. Sign of age is the pill part of the box is getting harder and harder to close as more tablets are put into it. Good news is, only one is prescription. The other are my daily dose of assorted fish oils, aspirins and a double dose of Enzyme Male Enhancement .. which isn’t working so well, but the lawn is well watered.

Cleaning of her side of the counter.. that could take the rest of day. Looking at it there’s a lot of small stuff over there, and lots of things that I’m not authorized to touch. Being smart I took a picture for future reference. I numbered each of her items with a sharpie and put them on the floor. She notices stuff like that.

By now I was regretting ever having this idea and my mind was starting to drift. We also have an electric tooth brush thing that has different colored little bands on the brushes.. I have a hard time remembering which color is mine. I’m also color blind, which doesn’t help. Just to be sure I marked mine, or the one I always use with the sharpie, and put it aside. Now the counter was  ready to be cleaned.

Wiped’r down with the bleach spay and the sponge.. I’m helping now. A lot!

Next up the mirrors. Lots of little spots on the mirror, disgusting reminders of the untold danger of flossing. I suppose cleaning a mirror now is better than Gabby Sank later.. I am quite religious about it.

I sprayed the mirror with the blue stuff marked “Glass Cleaner” I couldn’t find mirror cleaner, I assume it’s the same stuff. Now, what do you wipe glass with? There’s nothing in the caddy that looked like it would be useful for cleaning glass. It’s all sponges and towels. Sigh.. Papertowel I guess, which means I gotta go down stairs and grab some. On the way out I stepped on something that cracked under my weight. Small, black plastic thing with some different colored powders in it.. must be an Apple Product because it says “mac” on it. Crap, if it’s an Apple Product it’s expensive. Turns out I had no idea..

Now I’ve got another problem, gotta hide some evidence and hope she doesn’t notice that she’s missing a bit of makeup. Hope it’s not something she uses everyday.  On the way out of the bath, into the bedroom I noticed her drawers drawer was open. Mrs S has a lot of drawers.. ok panties if you must. She doesn’t have a lot of lingerie. I know the difference having spent 20 years studying Victoria’s Secret Catalogs every week. In some detail mind you. Mrs S laments that one purchase 20 years ago, at VS and now we get softcore porn in the mail every Thursday, and somehow every time she requests that they stop sending her these adverts, she gets signed up again. I love this country.

Her drawers drawer looks like a discount store dump bin of bargain panties, if you ask me. At that moment a thought, a thought that only a man could have, entered my ADD affected head, panties are all cotton, cotton doesn’t leave streaks… and well” Funny too because I knew at the time, I’d be saying to myself later, seemed like a good idea at the time.

And you can see how men reason.. She’s certainly not going to miss one pair. Sheez I gotta hide the mac thing anyway, what’s one more piece of evidence left in a Wal-Mart trash can in the next county I reasoned. I grabbed a non-descript pair of blue cotton libido killers and wiped down the mirror. Worked great.

As I was finishing up I made a horrifying discovery, the panties were marked. Right there, sewn into them.. the word “Wednesday”. Holy cow she has’um marked by day. That woman has everything damn thing planned. The only thing written on my underwear is my name, and that’s with a sharpie and it’s backward so I can read it in a mirror should I get confused. She is gonna miss these.. but how could she? She’s got a lot of cotton in there, surly one pair…

I finished up, printed the picture so I could put everything back where it went, put a soap dish where the mac thing was and hoped for the best. Frankly looked great if you ask me.

Mrs S got home that evening and after greeting me went up to shower after her campout. I sat in the kitchen, rocking and praying that this would go well. My prayers were, ignored. Again.

“SANK”..

She called me in a way which initiates the flight/fight response. What to do? Fight I guess, I went upstairs. “you uh cleaned up up here huh?” no response.. this could be a trap. “Where’s my eyeshadow?” silence.. but I looked confused.. “It was in a black case said ‘mac’ on it.” “oh that.. um I stepped on it as I was cleaning” wince now and hope she goes for the gut and not the face. “Oh well.. you can pick me up a new one downtown on Monday, you’re going to like it there.. oh and bring about $45.00 in cash”. BTW, note to self, why do I get uptight about spending $25.00 on fishing stuff? Hold that for another damn day.

“Sank”.. now what.. “Why is there black mark on my toothbrush? Shit. “To mark yours dear.”

She showered and came out.. “you did a nice job in there.” Smile “looks really good, how’d you get the mirror so clean”.

“spit”

She walked over to the undie drawer opened it.. and stared.. for too long. “Sank there were 103 pairs of undies in here when I left. There are 102 now. Where’s is.. um.. … … Wednesday is missing, where’s Wednesday?”

Silence.

More Silence. I was about to say “I love you” my fallback when she broke the impasse.

“OK if you tell me your wearing them or doing something weird with them I swear to..”

“NO NO NO Dear..” I came clean. Told her what happened and if she wanted them back I’d drive over to Bloomington and sift through the trash at Wal-Mart and bring them back. “NO need Sank, not that big a deal, besides I’m sure they’ve already been picked outta there by a regular anyway.” “OK, I’m sorry I used your panties to clean the window”.

“that makes us even for me using your toothbrush to clean behind the faucet. See how open communication solves everything?”

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April 17, 2010 · 7:30 pm

Mac v. PC- A Dumbasses Assessment

I’m not expert on computers, I’m not even all that smart, but I have used both now and I have some thoughts. Enjoy

OK, the advantage that Windows Live Writer, and the Publish button on MS Word for Windows are a serious advantage for the blogger over the Mac. Ironic because you’d think that Apple would be all over this as blogging sort off  feels like a big Apple thing. You know, all that free expression and all. I’m also going to call Windows LIve Writer, which is free BTW, the best piece of software a blogger could own. It’s that good.

Fact is, now that I’m using both, Windows at work and some at home, like when I need to actually do work, and a Mac for personal stuff, writing, photo management etc. I feel like I can offer an opinion. Remember, I’m just a dumb user.

For the total package; mail, calendar, etc, Mac wins hands down. All the creature comfort sort of stuff seems to just work. On the windows machine Outlook is a graet program, and you can get a version, Entorage, works for the Mac.. but it does have a nasty habit of corrupting your mail files over time. At least it’s done it us twice.

For an office suite- if you like to write letters to Grandma, make slick brochures and share pics of the kids, Mac wins. iWork is a decent enough application. Word for Mac is excellent too and a natural for Office users. If you want to create spreadsheets, look at data, report results, make a presentation to a group, Windows. Excel, Visio and yes, even Access are killer aps that have no equal on the Mac. Even Excel for the Mac, is more about making pretty pictures than actually crunching data. To make it worse for Mac..

I’m hearing rumors about a re-launch of the Office Suite this year that’s going to be a game changer.  Something about Excel being able to handle massive tables, and pivot table functionality that will make Access unnecessary, all heard under breath. Now this all rumor from trade rags and whispers. 

Still for today, Windows Office suite still wins and Visio and Access, not being available for the Mac limit the business productivity for the platform.

Making media.. between Movie Maker and Garage Band the Mac platform dominates this space. This is, after all the Apple Sweet Spot. I’ve messed with Windows Live Movie Maker and not found it very easy to use. Matter of fact, it’s sort of temperamental about file format and this alone makes it clugey.

Windows Live Photo- excellent. Apples iPhoto from the iLife pack is pretty slick, and can directly update Facebook and Flickr, nice feature, but lacks the ability to do wholesale album updates. Unless, of course you want to pay $100.00 a year for MobileMe. MobileMe is another posting probably, bottom line, don’t. Even the Apple biased bloggers pan it for it’s cost and lack of function. At least lack of good function that can get elsewhere.

Lastly, networking and peripherals. Here I have to hand to Apple. Now I hand it to them as long as you play in the sand box that Steve Jobs has created. If you do, the rewards my children and considerable. Turn on the machine and it prints from the printer attached to the other Mac. Hook up the iPod, instant success. On the Windows iTunes has had issues and syncing.. works most of the time, but every once in while I’d get what I would term a “bad sync” and we’d be rebuild libraries for the next three days. This may come on the Mac too, but I don’t think so. The “handshake” between the devices is much slicker than it’s been in the past.

So what would I recommend if you were to ask me? Frankly, it’s a harder question today than I think it’s ever been. The lines between Mac and PC aren’t nearly as hard as they were at one time. PC’s are much better at doing the creative stuff these days, picture editing.. heck there’s even better free programs to do it. Picassa for example.

And while the work thing is still a Windows win.. it feels like, with the Office for Mac that the gap here is closing. So what’s a dude to do? For a PC to use at home, and if you have family members sharing the computer and enjoy movies and music, editing etc.. Mac. No question. easy to use and stable.

If you blog, look at data, do number crunching or write a lot.. PC. No question. Windows 7 is everything that they promised us Vista would be.. and more. Slick interface, stable as can be, works. One thing to keep in mind, the you can get a PC that does a ton of stuff much cheaper, but when you look at the specs of the machine, you can’t compare a $500.00 laptop and a $1,000 MacBook, the MacBook is a better machine, better processor, and better hardware. That being said, the day when you only spent more for the Mac of ease of use, not so much. Now it’s much more of a personal preference decision. 

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July 21, 2008 · 8:05 pm

MacWoe

More Mac Fun-

Got home from the lake full of great ideas on things to do with pictures and words.. some blogging, some creative stuff to have fun with..all good stuff right in the sweet spot for the IMAC. A few months ago I posted a review of the thing that was a bit less than fantastic. As a result I got the most comments I’ve ever received on a single posting. The MAC crowd are a loyal bunch and they don’t like to be told their baby is ugly.

I don’t like babies to begin with.

Someone is going to have to explain to me how this works.

Coming home I fired up the machine and went to check email on Safari. To my astonishment, there was a question mark over the Safari icon. Curious to say the least. If you’re keeping score, we not have, on the system that to quote the ads “just works” the following dead applications.

Mail- Probably user error but I’m not sure.

Adobe Photoshop Elements- Never worked. Ever. Actually, works on my sons account but not mine.

Safari More curious is that Safari worked on my wifes account but not the boys or mine. F”N Mac.

I downloaded Safari from the Apple site, thinking that might be the issue. Upon installing I learned that had to upgrade the operating system to 10.x.xx.xx. what ever. Went out to the Apple site and did the appropriate upgrade, restarted the computer, and attempted to install Safari again.. Came back with the same error message.

So the nirvana that is supposed to be Mac World is still a bit elusive for dear old Mr. Sank. Shame too as I was really want to pull the trigger on a macbook.. now I’m thinking that a Toshiba or HP would be better. At least I would know what’s going on.

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