Where Apple coolness meets the road

I use a lot of technologies developed and first mass marketed by Apple.  I use them because I am familiar with them, and in my opinion they are still some of the best out there. I have recently gotten my NC real estate broker's license. As I move into that career in the new year, I fully expect to use tools such as iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD to help people find the right piece of property here on North Carolina's Crystal Coast.

I will also end up reworking one of my current websites to help potential customers find me.  I have spent considerable effort bringing up my own Coastal NC website with information and photos of the Southern Outer Banks or SOBX as it is sometimes known.  My Macs have been key in making that happen.

For years both Photoshop and Dreamweaver have been tools in my bag.  I probably know only enough to dangerous, but I have continued with the tools, and manage most of the time to get them to do what I want.

When I purchased a new MacBook this past summer, I was not overly concerned with either product not being Intel native.  I would say that neither product has been a problem on the MacBook, but due to restrictive licensing I have not tried Dreamweaver on an Intel based Mac.  Photoshop works fine for my needs as does Excel.

Instead of another copy of Dreamweaver, I decided to purchase RapidWeaver.  I started out with some simple pages and have recently moved to some more complex pages on a new blog, "Coastal NC Daily Record." I set  it up to give people a feel for living here on the Carolina coast.  RapidWeaver went Intel native recently and the product is making lots of progress.  It has a lot of potential and is the kind of product that when it reaches maturity could weigh heavily in my decision to stay with the Mac.  It is certainly reasonably priced for its functionality.

For what seems like years I was dependent on .Mac for publishing my photo albums.  However, .Mac did not seem to evolve so this summer after experimenting with Flickr, I started using Shutterbug to create photo albums on my own websites.  Why I ended up using two products which probably could have replaced each other has more to do with trying to figure out which one will survive the test of time than anything. That is a worry in the Mac world.  I will admit that Shutterbug really made doing web slide shows very easy.  The integration with iPhoto is very good, and I am very pleased with the results.

It is software that helps us get our jobs done that keeps us on a particular platform. These two third party products have made a big difference in my continuing commitment to the Mac.

There are some storm clouds as always in our Mac world. It was with a little concern that I read about the delay in getting converters for the new Office programs.  The real estate world is pretty Windows centric, so I might get myself a new Vista machine sometime in the spring.  It would be nice to communicate with my own Mac.   In the grand scheme of things waiting three months is not going to kill anyone, and it the type of annoyance that we Mac users have grown to expect.

There are more annoyances. Recently I stumbled upon another technology at the NY Times that hasn't made it to the Mac.  I am a huge newspaper fan and spend more time than I should reading online articles.  Times Reader Beta is a nice piece of technology that really does enhance the experience of reading an online newspaper.  It uses the new Windows Presentation Foundation technology.  A version will be coming for the Mac, but it will be a while.

The software community around the Mac, enhanced by Apple's own offerings, has done a good job of keeping me on the Mac.  There have been disappointments such as .Mac which though improved just does not really get to the point of being a product that is hitting on all cylinders.  One of the major disappointments direct from Apple has been iWeb.  That a company which could have owned the web can't come up with anything better than iWeb, mystifies me.

The good news is that there are lots of Web 2.0 type products which along with Firefox fill in a lot of gaps for Apple.  If Firefox did not work so well with TypePad, my blogging service, I would already be gone from Apple.  I made it pretty clear in my post, "Writing for free," how important TypePad is to me. Whatever the reason, Safari does not work with TypePad. For two years, I have been raising the issue with people that I know without any results.  At this point I am just glad that TypePad works well with Firefox.  I have given up on Safari as a serious blogging tool.

I have made the argument myself that applications tied to operating systems might not matter much longer given the richness of some of the web offerings, but I am not sure that Apple can get away with that and remain the Apple that we know.

Fortunately again for Apple, Google apps for your domain does a great job of providing the support for Mac that you do not see in Microsoft's similar product Office Live with requires the latest version of Internet Explorer.

I would also have to give Google the thumbs up for having more robust software solutions.  Still in using Windows Live which will work on the Mac and Office Live which doesn't, I have seen some things that I like.

I would like to see Apple step up to the plate and contribute to that party.  As I see innovative products like Backpack, Picassa Web albums, and even some of the software included with cameras today, I wonder if Apple will give us the really innovative applications that we need to feel good about staying on the Mac.   I was surprised to see that the software included with my Nikon CoolPix S9 included Panorama maker from Arcsoft, and it worked on my  Macs.  It would not launch directly from Nikon PictureProject like it would in Windows, but it did work.  Unfortunately the Mac generated Quicktime VR results did not turn out as nice as the Windows generated Flash panorama.  I spent a lot more time on the Quicktime VR.  Eventually I had to import it into my Quicktime Player and then export it before it would work on the web.  It was actually much simpler on the Windows world, but I am actually thankful to have it working on a Mac.  I could not tell any difference in the panoramic jpeg generated from the two platforms. 

One question that will be answered in the next year is whether or not Apple is too focused on the iPod to drive innovation like it did in the days when it introduced iLife. Even the HP 6180 AIO that I bought recently came with a huge and sometimes impressive (when it isn't annoying) software suite.  I even found that HP had created a product that would work well with my old but updated favorite VueScan.

Software continues to drive use of the Mac. The products, the technology, the service, and the company delivering it are the other part of the equation.  While things look great for the Mac right now, I have to hope we see those native Adobe products soon along with the MS  translators not far behind. I guess then we can start worrying about Office for the Mac.

The reality is that we will never be able to depend on Apple for all our software needs.  Yet innovation is the soul of Apple.  This next year we need to see that innovation spilling forth from the cubicles in Cupertino.  If we don't, it might be a long year for Apple because there is plenty of innovation happening on the web.

I might have some comments about that Apple Service in another post in a few days.  On Tuesday my MacBook quit seeing its battery.  Since it was already a discolored white one, I made the call to have it sent back to Apple.  I was surprised that in order to have the telephone conversation with an Apple support person without charge, since it was more than ninety days since I purchased the product, I had to convince them that there was no Apple Store or reseller reasonably close. 

I guess I somehow missed the point that if you do not buy the extended warranty, after the first ninety days, you are expected to take your product to the Apple Store or to an Apple reseller.  Those resellers are a little scarce in our area.  I think the Dell plan works a little better.  Before anyone starts moaning about Dell reliability, I have two Apple laptops non-functional right now and have had significant problems with my dual G5 system.  I have a Dell laptop and desktop that have both hummed along nicely without any problems for the last one to two years, depending on the product.

Apple told me that my box to ship my laptop back would show up either yesterday or today.  It's after six so I do not think it is going to happen today.

So far this is not starting out with favorable signs.  My MacBook has been somewhat of a disappointment.  It has been something of a quick crash and burn since I wrote, "The genius of Apple," just after I received it this summer.   I will remain hopeful that I will be a happy MacBook user by sometime next week.  One way or the other, the story will likely end up here.

Comments

[scott]

To get more out of RapidWeaver, check out the plug-ins at this site:

http://yourhead.com/

[Tom]

"Fortunately again for Apple, Google apps for your domain does a great job of providing the support for Mac that you do not see in Microsoft's similar product Office Live with requires the latest version of Internet Explorer."

So let me get this straight. Microsoft is a "bad boy" for insisting that you use IE, which means Windows, to access Office Live, but Apple is OK to exclude Windows users from their Web services? Google does not count, they don't have an OS turf to defend.

Why do Apple fans keep throwing darts at Microsoft competitive practices when Apple is, in many ways, even more protective of their OS?

Also, you have 3 Macs with major issues, 2 Dells that are running fine, and you still think the Mac hung the moon? I don't get that either, mainly because it also reflects my personal experience with Macs and Dells. Love the Mac OS, but the hardware can be a very painful, expensive, experience.

[ocracokewaves]

Actually you may have taken what I said wrong. I did not mean to give Microsoft a hard time for requiring IE, I was just lamenting the fact that I can't use the MS Office Live stuff on my Mac.

Plenty of times I've said that my choice would really be to run OSX on some other hardware than Apple's.

I have also said that if Microsoft tried to keep Windows from running on Apple hardware, the Apple world would be up in arms. However, it is perfectly acceptable for Apple to prevent OSX from running on other Intel hardware. In another time and place, that might not be viewed as a fair way to do business.

Apple being a golden boy, gets away with it, and it has nothing to do with protecting their survival as a company. It's all about keeping their customers captive.

[Pecos Bill]

It's quite well known that Apple is protecting their gross revenue as a most of it comes from hardware sales. Hence, you cannot put OS X on any intel box. As for your Windoze comment, Apple sells to no one. Micro$oft sells to everyone. If you exclude a single company from the set of all, you're at risk for anti-trust violations (in a normal government). M$ requirements for OEM used to be bad enough to prevent Apple from reselling Windoze (M$ got a fee for every CPU sold regardless of their lousy OS being installed or not)