Applepeels

Do Apple Employees Need A Witness Protection Program?

I am rarely surprised about what comes out of Apple, but this caught even me a little off guard.   Some of you know that I have a long history with Apple .  I have seen things that I still have a hard time believing.  However, my recent experience with Apple's unreal world is a reminder of just how weird things can get for you if your paycheck comes from the folks in Cupertino.

In October of 2001, I was named manager of the year for my team's outstanding performance in the federal market.  A friend took a picture of my team at the awards banquet.  I have always treasured the picture and been very proud of our accomplishment since we were covering the worlds largest IT market with a handful of people. 

I wanted to include the picture in my book and took the time to ask each person in the picture for their permission to be in the book.  It wasn't a controversial photo.  No one was nude or holding a Windows PC.  Much to my surprise three of the five current Apple employees declined to be in the photo.  I edited the image so they are unrecognizable.

One person admitted to being afraid of the consequences of being in the photo, and I respect that.  Two came up with excuses that were plain laughable.  

You can try to appreciate the situation by working through this.  For a moment imagine worrying about being in a photo taken eleven years ago when your team was the tops at Apple.  Then think about worrying about the photo being in a book that you didn't write and which you haven't even seen but which is basically a historical account of someone else's career in the fictional Pomme Company.  Then remember that none of these employees are even named in the book.

If you have that scenario in your mind, you now know just how much control Apple exercises over its people.  The whole episode reminds me a little of the "Minority Report."

When a former manager of mine who is in the picture heard about the incident he asked, "What is the story with these people? Are they in a witness protection program?"

He has been gone from Apple for almost ten years, and I exited a little over eight years ago.  We have both returned to a normal world where you aren't afraid to open a box of literature before a keynote speech.  I don't miss folks worrying about someone from the press tricking them into answering a question.

The culture of fear runs deep in Apple sale's division.  If you want to know about life at Apple in sales, you can now read my newly published book, "The Pomme Company."

Some friends have said my book should be required reading for people wanting to join Apple's sales force.

The book has taken a little over a year and was interrupted by a note from Apple's legal folks warning me to adhere to my non-disclosures.    That is actually easy to do since most of us at Apple heard no secrets.  The joke used to be that when we wanted to find out what Apple was about to announce we would check out MacSurfer.

My book is about my somewhat amazing journey.   I went from running a cattle operation in eastern Canada to being the director of federal sales for Apple.  The journey actually started just after we dispersed our cattle and I started selling Apple II+s for a small company in Fredericton, New Brunswick.  It ended with me as director of federal sales sitting on Capitol Hill with Avie Tevanian in a cyber security hearing.

My career at Apple transformed my life and that of my family.  I'll be interested to hear what people think of the book which is priced at $5.99.  It has lots of pictures of historical interest to people interested in Apple.

Most of all if you want a peak at the Apple culture that I saw, my book will be a cure for your curiousity.

Has Apple lost its soul?

My up and down relationship with Apple still hasn't reached a turning point. I remain hopeful that Cupertino will announce a product that will catch my fancy. I have a long history with the company.

I have enjoyed watching the launch of the new iPhone 5, but I am still happy with my Android powered LG Spectrum and the Kindle Fire my children gave me last fall.  I am waiting for some Apple products to excite all of us who built our digital lives around Apple solutions.

With all the media coverage around the iPhone 5 announcement, I especially enjoyed the Jimmy Kimmel segment where some supposed iPhone users couldn't tell the difference between the iPhone 4S they were being shown and the new iPhone 5.  However, perhaps that is a cheap shot.  I'm not sure I could tell you the difference between my latest LG Smartphone and whatever new product LG has announced.

Beyond being the butt of  a few jokes on late night comedy shows, there are some serious problems with Apple.

It is easy to ignore the issues if you just measure the company by their unbelievable stock price.  Before I go further let me say that I still believe that Apple makes great hardware products, and perhaps the latest iPhone and iPad are among the best they have ever made.

The question for me comes down to this, can the Apple of today follow through with its direction without paying better attention to its computer and software roots?

If you are new to Applepeels and want some perspective on me before reading more, try this link to my Apple history.

Perhaps the most worrisome issue for me, is the health of Mac OSX.  Having only recently taken the step to go to Lion, I still haven't upgraded to Mountain Lion.  I normally don't jump on an Apple first release, and I was actually hoping that Apple would announce a new Mac Mini by this time.  If that had happened I could take the step to Mountain Lion with new hardware.

Lion has been a mixed experience for me.  Perhaps you need an iOS device to really see its benefits, but I get the distinct feeling that there are now far too many ways to do the same thing on OS X.  I believe that some of the simplistic beauty of OSX has been lost as a layer of complexity has been added. 

While I am worried about OSX, I am downright depressed about iPhoto. I was at Apple when Steve was focused on the release of iPhoto. It was a revolutionary program at the time, and it had the full attention of Steve.

I'm pretty sure that Steve would not be happy with the current user interface on iPhoto.  One of the great things about the original version of iPhoto was the ease with which you could create a web album for your friends to see.  In the latest version of iPhoto on the Mac we are stuck with photostream which seems to be an all or nothing solution unless you want to use Flickr or Facebook.

As a photographer who sometimes takes a thousand pictures in a day.  I want to be able to quickly sort through the pictures, select the good ones, make some adjustments, put copies of the ones I like in cloud storage, and then create web albums of ones that I plan to show to more than a few people.  That process used to be very simple with a Mac.  That is no longer the case.

I now do my initial photo sorting and tune-ups on a Windows 7 laptop because it is easier with Picasa than it is with iPhoto. In a number of areas where iPhoto was ahead of Picasa, Apple has managed to dumb down recent versions of iPhoto.  While this was happening Google actually made Picasa better and more efficient.  While I have Picasa on the Mac, I have hung with iPhoto hoping it would get better.

While Picasa might not look as glitzy as iPhoto, you will get more work done with Picasa.  On top of that Picasa easily puts one or dozens of photos on the web with easily controllable access.  I haven't tried to find the extra cost plug-in that I purchased for my previous versions of iPhoto so I could directly load photos into Picasa web albums from iPhoto.  Likely the reason is that I resent paying for something that should be there.

It really is a final straw for me that in iPhoto Apple has built-in Flickr and Facebook support but has ignored Picasa web albums. I know they are doing this to spite Google, but users are the ones who suffer and Apple offers no solution of its own comparable to Picasa web albums.

If you want to delve into this deeper, read a post or two of mine which compares iPhoto and Picasa.

An even bigger problem is that Apple seems to have fallen into the old trap of if it wasn't invented at Apple, it can't be good.  The recent ditching of Google maps is just not something that will work out well for Apple over the long term.

I have no question that Apple has the money to create a great map solution, but I seriously doubt Apple has the management culture and the persistence to stick with their own mapping solution until it is a great product.  It is not in Apple's DNA to incrementally upgrade software or a backend solution until it is a really solid product.

If you don't believe me, just think back to the original .Mac product and all its many iterations including iCloud which was going to change everything.

Actually it has changed everything, just not for the better.

Compare Apple's cloud solution with GoogleDrive, SkyDrive, or DropBox, and it looks like making a home grown solution isn't necessarily the best path for Apple.

Apple has a history of alienating partners and having to go it on their own. Maps is just a symptom of that problem. As an Apple employee once told me, you can't say the word "partner" and Apple in the same sentence.  Let's hope that Apple makes nice with Microsoft so they don't pull the plug on Office for the Mac.

Even if Maps is a good idea, many good Apple ideas have withered on the vine for lack of attention.  Does anyone remember eWorld, Apple's online world that was going to be better than AOL?

And if that comparison doesn't ring true, just look at the history of Apple branded or backed word processors for the Mac and compare that to Microsoft which does have a history of banging its head against the wall and showering money on a project until they either succeed (Word & XBox) or fail (Zune).

Remember back to the introduction of the original Mac. It came with MacWrite.  It wasn't long after the introduction of the Mac that Microsoft came out with Word.  MacWrite after the Claris spinoff eventually became MacWrite Pro.

Then came ClarisWorks which eventually became AppleWorks before disappearing completely.  Now we have Pages which will eventually languish like the rest of Apple's word processors. Word is still around.

The lack of a culture built around incrementally improving products as opposed to ditching them is a huge challenge in the technology world.  While Apple might have mastered it with the iPhone, they have a number of other products begging for updates.

Beyond  this I believe the biggest problem that Apple has is the wall that the company throws up between the company and its customers.

While Microsoft and other companies are working hard to listen to customers, Apple is busy listening to itself.  If you are going to incrementally improve something like a map solution, you need a close working relationship with your users.  I have sent Google a few notes over the years about problems that I have found on their maps.  While I have never heard back from them, every problem that I found has been resolved.

I'm not sure Apple knows how to act similarly. Perhaps if Apple could develop a strategy to start reaching out to customers in a company supported blog, it might be a first step, but unfortunately the company's DNA would have to change before they started blogging.

As long as Apple can keep iPhones and iPads flying out the door, perhaps all these issues are irrelevant. But I do believe that Apple's OSX software is a strategic product and deserves serious attention that it is not getting.

If Apple does hit a blip, and it likely will, I suspect many of the customers who came to Apple's rescue in the past will be gone.  It remains to be seen whether current iPhone and iPad customers will be as loyal or just jump ship for the next shiny trinket.

Just a few updates and I'm off to bed.

We spent a good part of the summer doing our final move from our house in Roanoke, Virginia.  We have bid Roanoke adieu, and we will no longer be making our once a month trip from the coast to the mountain. 

We are very happy to be living here by our inlet.  The peace that I find in the wildness along the Southern Outer Banks has pretty well mended the nerve ends that were seared by Apple's winner take all culture.

If the fishing doesn't require my full attention this fall and if I don't fall under the spell of the area's blue skies, I hope to finally get the book about my Apple career published.  It has been a bigger challenge than I thought it would be.

 

 

 

With MobileMe Gone, Solutions for Photos?

Whatever you thought of MobileMe, it did offer one solution for sharing photos on the web.  With iCloud Apple has effectively gotten out of the photo sharing business.

The one good thing about iCloud is that you won't have to worry about losing your albums because there are none. I guess it is also a little harder to think of Apple as "the hub of your digital life."

Fortunately there are many other solutions besides Apple. I don't pretend to know them all.  However, I do come at this from the perspective of someone who started using the original .Mac service from the beginning so I feel the pain of those who have lost MobileMe albums or web sites.

I had my own interesting experiences in migrating to iCloud.

That said, years ago after the first change of architecture in Apple's online storage which resulted in many of my albums being forcibly retired, I became worried.  I started actively investigating alternatives.  Early on my good friend Stephen @batess turned me on to Picasa Web Albums while I was experimenting with Flickr.

Picasa Web Albums has over time become my default option for storing my photos on the web. I have never regretted the trust that I put in the platform.

There are plenty of "Cloud" storage options out there, and I use several of them.  Many are free and most have storage upgrades that are much cheaper than Apple was after the heyday of free .Mac accounts ended.

I hope to discuss a few of these alternatives and make it clear that even if Apple decides to have a way to store photos in their "Cloud,"  I would likely not bite on the offer a third time.

Just to be completely clear, Photostream is only a solution for sharing a small number of photos between compatible devices.  A compatible devices rules out an older Mac but does include a Windows 7 device.

For several years, in addition to hanging onto to my MobileMe Galleries, I have extensively used slide shows on my various websites.  Flickr, and Picasa Web Albums have also been in the mix. There is no perfect solution, and the simple thing is to try a few things and see what works best for you.  Of course that depends somewhat on your computing environment.

My computing world includes an I5 iMac, an I7 Lenovo laptop running Windows 7, an old Dell Pentium 3 running Ubuntu, and a couple of older Macs including my trusted Dual G5 system which I purchased almost eight years ago.  I am running the I5 Mac in a dual boot situation.  I have Lion running on an external hard drive and Snow Leopard running on the internal drive.  For my reasons behind that, you can see my post, The Mysteries of Apple, MobileMe, & iCloud.

I have both iPhoto and Picasa running on my I5 iMac.  For more information on my reasons for that check my post, The saga of Apple's iPhoto and Google's Picasa with some tests. 

However, in my workflow, usually the first place that a photo meets a computer is my Windows laptop since I no longer have a functioning Mac laptop.  The windows laptop stays on our kitchen table, and when I come in from my early morning walk and finish my coffee, I often upload my photos to Picasa on the Lenovo.  By the same token when I come in after a five mile beach walk, the photos usually go first into Picasa.

Picasa, while it is not as pretty as iPhoto, does a lot of things and does them quickly.  While the iPhoto user interface has become slower to use, Picasa's has become faster and more versatile.

It is not unusual for me to run through three or four hundred photos and pick out the best ones in Picasa and do some basic adjustments for light and post them in an album on the web like this Hammock's Beach Album on Picasa Web Albums.

I sometimes will export individual photos or several photos to either DropBox or GoogleDrive.  It is easy then for me to find the best photos when I go up to my office and sit down at my Mac.  I also usually upload all my photos to iPhoto and run Picasa on the I5 iMac often enough to let it include all the photos that I have uploaded to iPhoto.

The other day when I was talking to another photographer who had lost his MobileMe albums, I created similar examples of the same Hammocks Beach photos on Microsoft's SkyDrive and on flickr.  Clicking on the links will take you to the albums.

When I export individual photos, I usually want to use them somewhere besides an album.  An example would be the photo in the post, Life without Walls, on my Crystal Coast Life website.  The photo came from that same set taken at Hammocks Beach.  I currently use Pixelmator for anything that I can't do in Picasa or iPhoto.  Of course I also post photos to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest.

Sometimes, I want to make a self contained photo album and post it on my own website.  I have traditionally used ShutterBug, a Mac based piece of software to do that.  An example of a Shutterbug site would be this one that I created to sell stuff from our Roanoke, VA house which has just gone under contract. 

I attempted to create a Shutterbug site for the Hammocks Beach photos, but I ran into an incompatibility between my old dual G5, iPhoto, and Shutterbug.  Shutterbug could not see the iPhoto albums so it had nothing to work with in creating a slide show.  Shutterbug is a good product and certainly should not be judged on how it works on an eight year old Mac. I'm certain that I would have had no troubles on my iMac with more recent software.

With my inability to create the Shutterbug beach site, I decided to look for a free solution that would work on Windows and Macs.  I found VisualLightBox.  I downloaded the Windows version, and in two or three minutes created and uploaded this online album of the Hammocks Beach photos.  It was extremely straight forward, but to use VisualLightBox you have to manage your own website and understand a little about folders on websites.

As I get ready to make recommendations, two other factors are important in my digital life.  I have an Android phone, the LG Spectrum, and I have one of the original Kindle Fires.  I am no expert in iPhones or iPads, so make sure you run some tests of your own if those products are important to you.

First off the best and most complete solution is the one from Google. Picasa Web Albums has been a reliable photo partner for years.  It has never let me down like .Mac and MobileMe.  The photos that I put there years ago are still there.  It is easy to share individual photos or whole albums.  Picasa web albums are well integrated into Picasa and with a third party plug-in it is also easy to upload from iPhoto.

Google has over the last year made some changes in their effort to promote Google+.  If you have a Google+ profile attached to your Picasa Web Albums identity, Google pushes you to create the Google+ album first, and then an automatic duplicate one is created in Picasa web albums.

I actually find that a little inconvenient so I have two Google identities, one with a Google+ profile and the other without one.  When I upload photos using my identity without the Google+ profile, they go directly to my Picasa web albums account tied to that identity.  I like it better that way though I am warming to the way things are shared in Google+.

With an Android phone, both of my Picasa web albums accounts sync to my phone.  Of course I can log into either of the accounts using the browser on my Kindle Fire.

However that seems a little inelegant to me so I have recently discovered a new piece of software called Portfolio for Windows Skydrive.  The company, Snapwood Apps, makes a number of photo apps for different sharing services.

What Portfolio for Skydrive does is turn a folder of photos in a slide show when I run the app on my Android device.  It works great and I love it.  I wish they would do one for Google Drive.  The limitation is that the slide show is driven by the app on your device so you can't share it.

However, having said that I think Windows Sky Drive has some of the best sharing controls that I have seen.

So if you don't have a home for your photos on the web, there are plenty of options and several more that I haven't discussed.  The one option not there is a solution from Apple. 

In this world of everything being online, Apple's absence is a major mistake in my opinion, but I suspect it all goes back to Apple not understanding what a "Cloud" really does.

I actually think Apple would have a far better understanding of what is needed if the company got a little more involved in social media, but that is a post for another day.

If you get a chance, stop by my View from the Mountain blog, and check on my latest post, The Three Kinds of People in the World.  There is not much doubt where Steve would have fit in my categories.

Will Apple Ever Figure Out the Cloud?

Five years ago I wrote an article in which I said the following.

"Certainly if I considered the .Mac experience to be the best measure of Apple's web understanding, I would have to give Apple a failing grade.  There is no way around it, .Mac is not worth what many of us pay for it."

It is hard to believe that five years later Apple could decide to make its new iCloud service free, and iCloud might even be less useful than .Mac or MobileMe.

When I read the Register's article, "Sacrifice Another Goat, iCloud is Apple's biggest failure...," I could only nod my head in aggreement.

"Apple's cloud services continue to be more than a blemish on the company's reputation. They are a serious black hole."

I am not really surprised that Apple hasn't figured out the cloud because Apple has never understood that to really be a web player you have to free the data from the device.

All you have to is look at the way iWeb was built.  It tried its best to tie the website to a particular Mac.  Using iWeb to build a website on multiple Macs required jumping through hoops and moving huge files around by thumbdrives.

The shame of Apple's failures in the cloud is that when it came to many things about the web, Apple was a leader.  There was no easier way to put photos on the web than the original iPhoto.

Unfortunately that is no longer the case.  Adding photos to your Picasa web albums, Google drive, Dropbox or your Microsoft Skydrive is much easier than fooling around with your photostream.    If you take a hundred photos and want to put some of the best of them on the web, it is easy to do with any of the products besides Apple's iCloud.

Interestingly ever since I bought my original Droid in 2010, all the photos that I have chosen to be on the web have been automatically been synced to my phone, the web, and any computer that I choose.  In fact even with a couple of Gmail accounts to my name, things have worked perfectly with my contacts and mail.  I haven't had a glitch in over two years.  I can use Gmail as a web client or with Apple mail, Postbox, or Thunderbird.  It doesn't matter.

With Google's services I have access to my contacts, email, and photos from Windows, Linux, Lion, and all my older Macs.

With iCloud, my older Macs are completely shut out from iCloud unless I use Safari.  Interestingly my former MobileMe accounts work fine in Postbox and Thunderbird on Windows 7.  More importantly all the photos that I put on Picasa web albums and Flickr are still there instead of mysteriously appearing unannounced in my most recent iPhoto library and disappearing from the web.

I believe that unless Apple can figure out the cloud, the great products may not matter.  With the frustrations that I have had with Apple's software, I am less inclined to try the company's new hardware.

Recent tests that show the Nexus 7 tablet besting the iPad just confirm my recent unfortunate experience with Apple hardware which has a long tradition of being the best.  Since 2004, I have purchased five Windows laptops and two Mac laptops.  All of my Windows laptops except one which someone sat on are still running.  Neither of my Mac laptops are functional.  It is a small sample, but it has to influence my personal decision on hardware purchases especially since the two Mac laptops cost almost as much as the five Windows laptops.

The iMac that I purchased in October 2010 has also been problematic.  I am now running it off an external drive with Lion after having serious problems with slow Snow Leopard.  We have three Windows 7 laptops that have been models of software stability and reliability.  I don't say that to slam Apple but to convey my personal experience which has shaken my faith in Apple hardware and software.

When you add Apple lack's of understanding of the web, poor implementation of iCloud, and software problems, it makes you wonder if Apple is on the right track.

I remain hopeful, but seriously how many years is it going to take Apple to figure out the web?

Fortunately Apple's issues tend to fade in importance when I get out on the water in my kayak or have a blue water morning in our skiff, but those are advantages of life by the river in the summer.  It works better for me than living in a metropolitan area where an Apple Store is always tempting you.

One of my regular walks on the Point beyond the yellow houses on Emerald Isle is a whole lot better than trying to make iCloud do what I want it to.

By the way this is the 400th post that I have written for Applepeels.  Only a handful of them are still online, but the book is coming this summer.  If you have ever wondered what it was like to spend nearly twenty years at Apple, you will be able to read my story soon.

 

 

A Quick Take on Apple's part in Kodak's history

It was the spring of 1994, just before things really started to get interesting at Apple.  I called my higher education team together for a spring meeting at Mountain Lake Resort not too far from Blacksburg, Virginia.

We were planning for back to school at universities and colleges from Maryland all the way through North Carolina. It was still in the days when college students could get a real deal by buying their computers on campus.

As an Apple manager, I never bought into the idea that Apple reps should focus on marketing by brochure.  I believed that my people needed to know what they were selling so I always managed to set aside some dollars for demo equipment.

That spring, I ordered Quicktake 100 cameras for my team.  They had revolted when I had suggested an overnight camping trip and a hike on part of the Appalachian Trail as a prelude to our meeting.  We settled on a digital scanvenger hunt around the trail at Mountain Lake.  It gave them a chance to get familiar with their Quicktake cameras.

The first Quicktake was actually manufactured by Kodak.  It was a revolution in its day.  I can remember using both the Quicktake and Kodak's earlier Photo CD product.  My oldest daughter did a Hypercard project for a high school science project, and we had a Photo CD created.

In a little over three years, Steve Jobs would be back at Apple.  Apple would focus on just computers.  Cameras, scanners, printers, and even the Newton would disappear from the product lineup

For a time I thought Apple had made a mistake in abandoning cameras, but within a few years, it was clear that to win in the digital camera business took a focus that Apple didn't have if you will pardon the pun.

Apple's next great contribution to the world of photography would be iPhoto which was released in January 2002.

Like most folks I have a history with Kodak cameras and film.  We even used Kodak disc film and some of their multi-format cameras.  When I was in college in the sixties, I actually had a Kodak SLR camera that I carried with me on a trip to Alaska.  It didn't have interchangeable lenses so in 1969/70 I switched to Nikon which is the camera line that I still use the most.

As someone who sometimes takes a thousand pictures a day and still sells a few prints, I am a dedicated camera user and not particularly interested in the cameras in devices like the iPhone.  I am certain you can take great pictures with them, but they don't meet my needs.

Apple has been a company that has been able to re-invent its business a number of times.  There are myriads of reasons why Apple and Kodak are different companies on completely different trajectories.

I am also not sure if the world of digital photography would be much better if Apple had gotten serious about the camera market.  However, I do think Apple deserves some credit for helping create the bridge between the world of photography and computers.

I know that I have a very rich history of digital images which I probably wouldn't have except for the Quicktake, iPhoto, and actually the Apple OneScanner and its Ofoto scanning program.  All of these gave me an early start in the digital world and likely a path away from Kodak.

While I can live with Apple not being my digital camera supplier or the source of my scanner and its VueScan software, I certainly do miss Apple in my world of printers.  Actually I can live without Apple in the world of laser printers, but I certainly do miss Apple's genius in the world of color printers.

I keep floating between Epson, Cannon, and HP color printers, but none have the magic of Apple or even work much better with Apple's OSX than they do with Windows 7, but that is fodder for a post another day.

Aside from complaining about the death of common courtesy, that is it from the Crystal Coast where winter never stays very long, but we are enjoying some brief winter beach time.  If you are using Safari for your browser, you can check out my belted Kingfisher movie.

Perhaps he had a comment on being photographed about three quarters of the way through the move.  The movie was done with a Nikon Coolpix 500.  I might have some comments soon on the pain of movies and browsers in 2012.

 

My wishes for Apple in 2012

To start I want to get off the plate my perennial wishes for Apple that I know will never happen. 

The first is for a nice $1,000 mini-tower that has room for a couple of hard drives and an optical drive.  All it needs is an I5 processor but an I7 would be a nice option.  It doesn't have to be designed to survive a nuclear holocaust like the current Mac Pro. Just a simple elegant case will do.  I don't need to elaborate on the specs since this does not appear to be anywhere on Apple's radar.

The second wish that I know will never come about is a reasonably priced 15" laptop.  I don't expect Apple to compete with low cost laptops but it sure would be nice to be able to get a 15" laptop from Apple for only 50% more than the competition instead of more than double the cost.

My third never-going-to-happen perennial wish is that Apple would establish real communication with customers. While I know that customers can be a pain in the rear when you are the most successful company in the world, I really think both customers and Apple would gain from having a dialogue instead of mostly one way communication.

I have no idea whether or not my last wish from previous years has been fixed since I still haven't figured out how to access iCloud without spending money for an upgrade that I don't want or becoming best buddies with someone using Mac OS X Lion.  The holidays did not help in this respect since my adult children gave me a Kindle Fire for Christmas.

Now that my old wishes are out of the way, what do I really hope for Apple in 2012.

Well the first thing that I would like to see Apple do is to focus on making things work really well instead of adding things that might be of questionable value. Changes to iPhoto are what I have complained about the most but there might be significant issues in OS X Lion.

While I wish I had hands on experience with OS X Lion, I don't.  What I have heard from my valued testers has not been very positive and has kept me from installing it on my I5 iMac.  This recent article in Slate confirmed what my tester-friends have been telling me, that Apple perhaps has stretched a little far with Lion.  I'm not saying the direction they're headed is completely wrong, but it would be really nice if things just worked really well.  That is usually the case on a Mac, and that is why most of use Macs.

My next wish is that Apple would quit playing the game of forcing people to buy more expensive products just to get what they want. Now I will give credit where credit is due.  You no longer have to buy the iMac with the largest screen to get an I5 processor like when I bought mine in October 2010.  My desk really didn't have room for the large screen, but I had no choice at the time if I wanted an I5 processor.

That being said there are still some nagging issues like having to buy a 13" MacBook Air to get a SD slot and having to buy an external CD drive for the MacMini.  Just about the time the Mac Mini got updated enough for me to consider buying one, Apple takes out the CD-ROM drive

Now I understand Apple wants everyone to go to their online app store which most people seem to think has reduced prices but having an external CD-ROM sort of defeats the elegance of the Mac Mini.

Beyond that I don't have a lot of complaints about Apple, but that might be because I don't have both feet in the world of Apple.  If I want to transfer photos from my Android phone, I just plug it into my computer and drag them over. I don't have to go through iTunes which I hardly use.

If I want to share files across multiple computers, I use DropBox which is a drop dead elegant solution that works on everything.  My pictures are in Picasa Web Albums, and I am even giving Microsoft Skydrive a try since it also works on everything and seems very fast.

I know that the life blood of Apple is innovation, but I am hoping that the reign of Tim Cook becomes know as much for refinement as it does for the latest technology. 

There is already an overwhelming amount of technology out there. Apple's core strength has always been making technology easy even when not everything was built by Apple.  I hope to see that direction revitalized this year. It is something desperately needed in our world.

Finally I would love to see Apple take some of their cash horde and figure out how to help jump start the American economy.  Certainly Apple can't do it alone, but by the same token Apple could become a leader in helping America retool for the future.  Other Silicon Valley companies are used to following Apple's leadership, and this would be a great place for Apple to use it's influence.

If you are wondering about the donation button that is now on the Applepeels blog, you can read details in this post. It is just an effort to generate some cash to be able to review more products which will then be auctioned off to readers. Any donation from a buyer will be credited towards a purchase.

 

 

 

Apple's "free iCloud" services? Not really.

I guess that I am guilty of not paying enough attention to the world of Apple.  However, I have been a loyal and long suffering paying member of Apple's .Mac and MobileMe services.  I lived through all the changes such as my web pages coming down and my photo albums disappearing into incomprehensible folders.

My account was also one of those whose renewal coincided with the announcement of the new free iCloud services.  That meant that my account got extended until summer of 2012 which is probably why I have paid so little attention to iCloud.  The other reason is that the cloud that has my attention is Google's.

However, when I got the notice below last week, I thought perhaps I should spend some time investigating iCloud's free services.

Actually it turns out to not be so easy to move to iCloud unless you have already jumped onto Apple's newest bandwagon with both feet.

Apple's "free" services are actually free only if you already own an IOS device or have already upgraded to Lion.  Apple doesn't hide this fact, but I have missed any discussions that you have to be running Apple's Lion operating system to enable iCloud from a Mac.

Since I saw Windows 7 mentioned, I thought that I might be able to sneak by with that, but I had forgotten that this was Apple that was offering a "free" service.

I though surely this must not be the case so I contacted one of my favorite Apple system engineers, and he confirmed that you do indeed need to be running Mac OS X Lion.

Now I am not exactly out of date on my Macs.  I did buy an I5 iMac about fourteen months ago.  However, I have seen no reason to upgrade to Apple Lion's operating system, and a couple of good reasons to not upgrade.

First I don't like the on-line upgrade process, and second, I am afraid it might break the older version of iPhoto which I am using.  I quite like the older iPhoto, and as you can see from my posts, I detest the newer version of iPhoto. 

So I have happily stayed on Snow Leopard. While it is not perfect, I no longer have to enjoy the latest and greatest to get my work done.  I am even a version behind on Microsoft's Office on my Windows laptop though I do have the latest Office on my iMac.

It is interesting that Apple's new "free" services are only available to Apple customers with the latest and greatest operating systems.  I might sound like a technology party-pooper, but I have a very usable dual G5 tower that I bought in December 2004.  It has a couple of one terabyte drives in it, and I still use it almost daily.  I can't upgrade it to Lion.

Until late last month, I was still using my 2006 MacBook. While it isn't completely dead, it doesn't run for more than a few minutes before dying on me.  I even tried a new hard drive, but beyond backing up all my data, I had no luck in fixing the MacBook which happens to be our only other Intel based Mac.  I should mention that we still have a very usable white half moon iMac at our other home.  Our youngest daughter is also using one of those.  I bought three of those one summer.

So I guess I am stuck trying to figure out the best, or more properly, the cheapest way that I can enable Apple's new "free" iCloud services. 

When my MacBook died, I was actually thinking about perhaps buying a new laptop of some sort from Apple.  I have been carrying an Apple laptop since Apple started shipping them.  It feels a little funny to not take one into a hotel room when we are traveling.

However, I got a quick reminder of why I am sometimes hesitant to buy Apple products.

Those of you who are regular readers will know that I am writing a book about about my career at Apple.  In the fall just before my MacBook died, I sent Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, an email congratulating him on re-instating Apple's charitable match.  I saw it as a very positive change at Apple.  I mentioned in the note in passing that I was writing a book about Apple and would send him a copy when it got to market.

The next week, the day my MacBook died, we got an envelope from Apple's legal department reminding me of all the non-disclosures that I had signed with Apple.  They also included copies going back to the first one that I had signed in 1984.  I took the letter as a not very subtle attempt at frightening me into dropping the book.

However, I sent Tim back a note thanking him for the reminder, but also telling him that I have been writing about Apple for over seven years and until I pulled down much of the content in preparation for my book, I had over 1,000 pages of articles about Apple on-line.  Not once in the seven years did I receive a note from Apple complaining about the accuracy of my posts or about my disclosing any proprietary information.

I did tell Tim that the letter from his legal folks had convinced me that there might be more friendly alternatives to an Apple product such as a Kindle Fire.

So here I am stuck between some family members who would like to keep their old email addresses that go back to the .Mac days and Apple which is requiring me to buy something before I can use their "free" services.

It is hard to believe that even Microsoft is better at free than Apple.  Microsoft's Skydrive which is truly free now even works on Firefox.  Of course Google has a host of free services which seem to work from just about any platform.  Actually Google pays me more in my Adsense account each year than I pay them for the extra storage that I need on Picasa.  They also host one of my domains for free, and their email has become a favorite of mine.

The truth is that Apple is one of the most proprietary companies in the computer business. They are also among the best at mining their customers and accumulating a huge pile of cash.  Much of what Apple does is dedicated to getting you to buy their latest gear and only their latest gear.  I don't have a problem with Apple making money, but I find it wasteful to throw away perfectly good hardware that is still doing the job.  Perhaps that is one reason I love what Ubuntu is doing.

So I am wondering how Ubuntu can create a very simple distribution disk that I can download from their servers and use to install the latest and greatest flavor of Linux on my old Dell Pentium III while Apple wants me to go to their store?  The obvious reason is that Apple wants to lock me into their store and only their store.

Well I might have to figure out if I can buy an iPod touch and use that to migrate my Mobile me services.  That might be the cheapest and least painful of the solutions that are out there.

Any suggestions from others facing this dilemma would be appreciated.  I am not giving up my Android phone because I love the integration of the mapping apps with Google Maps. Besides I like the choice that the Android world gives me.  Also my Droid won't be two years old until March, and it is still doing a good job of keeping me connected.

My Apple book is now being edited by my trusted family staff, my wife and my oldest daughter.  At this stage, it is 295 pages and covers the time from September 1982 when I started selling Apple IIs in an Atlantic Canadian dealership to July 2004 when I left my position as director of Apple's federal sales in July 2004 just after sitting in a Senate hearing with Avie Tevanian.

I feel like I have done a commendable job describing life at Apple, but it has taken me seven years to get far enough from the situation to write a book, so I will await the judgment of others. I am glad that it is all down on paper.  Some of it is still hard for me to believe even though I lived it.

I am grateful that I wrote down about twenty-five pages of thoughts the fall after I left Apple.  That and a habit of using a daily planner have helped me nail down many of the important dates.  Not so surprisingly, the more I wrote about the old events, the more that I remembered.   Somehow I still haven't remembered any secrets, but that might be because I didn't know any even when I worked at Apple.

I have talked to a number of ex-Apple employees to get refreshed on a few things, but the story is mine.  Next week I am talking to agent recommended to me by someone well known in the Apple world.

Beyond that fishing has been good here this fall on the Southern Outer Banks of North Carolina.  We were still in shorts weather through December 16 when I had a spectacular afternoon over on the beach.

While there have been signs of the seasons changing, somehow, the warm weather has managed to help us forget last winter.

With all the great weather, I am glad that I still have the ability to focus, or I would never have gotten my Apple book written in this fall to remember.  Hopefully my next post will have some details on how the book is going to published.  However, after the letter from Apple legal, Tim Cook will have to buy a copy if he wants one.

 

 

One last batch of iPhoto and Picasa tests

I was traveling when I did the recent tests that I published regarding iPhoto 9.1.5 and Picasa.

Returning to North Carolina's Crystal Coast gave me a good chance to run some more tests and include my I5 iMac.

Again I formatted a SDHC device using my Sony camera.  I took 48 pictures.  I tested to see how long it took a computer to recognize the card, automatically launch the photo software and import all the photos.  I configured it so I only had to click once on each system for the import to start. Timing was done with the stopwatch App on my Motorola Droid phone. (Perhaps iPhoto 9.1.5 was protesting the Droid being the timer.)

Here are the results with the fastest system listed first

1. I5 iMac w/Picasa on Snow Leopard, time, < 30 sec.
2. HP I7 laptop w/Picasa on Windows 7, 31 sec.
3. MacBook, w/Picasa on Snow Leopard, 35 sec.
4. I5 iMac w/Photo 8.1.2 on Snow Leopard, 42 sec
5. Dell P3 w/f-Spot 0.8.2 on Ubuntu 11.04 47 sec.
6. I5 iMac w/Aperture 2.1.4 on Snow Leopard  52 sec.
7. MacBook w/iPhoto 9.1.5 on Snow Leopard  84 sec.
8. Dual G5 w/iPhoto 7.1.5 on Mac OSX 10.5.8 118 sec.

It is not unusual for me to import 500 photos in one day so speed in importing photos is important to me.

I have made my decisions on what to use. I will be using Picasa on my MacBook where I cannot go back to the previous version of iPhoto.  I'll continue to use iPhoto on my iMac where I still have iPhoto version 8 libraries.  I hope these tests might be helpful to others.

While it would be interesting to run tests with Lion, I keep getting reports from my more adventurous friends that are keeping me on Snow Leopard.

Here are two sample quotes from friends whose technical opinions I really respect.

"Not having a good Lion experience, it is a dog on my 2006 iMac and my 2009 MBP."

"Lion is not what it is touted to be. As have some others I have found it slower...."

However, this is not a discussion about Lion on which I have zero experience.

Also I realize that there is a newer version of Aperture, but I don't use Aperture nowadays so I'm am not interested in the spending the money for the upgrade.

The interesting question is why Apple would release a product like iPhoto 9.1.5 which is so much slower than the previous version?

I could speculate all day on that, and it would still just be pure speculation.  However, here a few thoughts on the issue.

From 10,000 feet, I still believe this has more to do with Apple trying to get their software more IOS like.

People who read the first post in this series might remember my statement that it took twenty years for Apple to come up with a piece of internally crafted software that I really loved.

Apple has also introduced some other really poorly performing software over the years with iWeb being the best example.  Additionally while I have finally grown to like Pages for certain uses, it has never been fast.

While this might seem out of left field, I believe the explanation can be found in some of my old experiences at Apple.

One of the interesting things about life at Apple is doing executive briefings and trying to get Steve to show up to talk to customers.  I can remember a time when we hauled some enterprise clients out, and Steve showed up and would only talk about iMovie.

Within Apple having Steve's focus is a good news, bad news scenario.  You will get the resources to do something, but it will be done Steve's way or heads will roll. A great breakthrough product like iMovie can result from Steve's focus.

One of the real challenges of a company driven by one person's genius is that even an extraordinary one like Steve has only so much bandwidth.  With very little real decision making power passed down to the troops, products or strategies can languish until Steve happens to turn his laser glance towards them.

I call it the "Keynote Phenomenon."  I believe Keynote has gotten regular upgrades and remained a solid piece of software because Steve uses it regularly.  I would be willing to bet that Steve never used iWeb and I suspect MobileMe services fall into the same category.

I can almost guarantee that if Steve tried to import 500 photos into iPhoto 9.1.5, we would have a fix and perhaps a much more usable piece of software.

If Apple still took the time to have customer advisory boards or to let heavy users test software changes, I suspect iPhoto 9.1.5 would have never gotten out the door.  Maybe Steve doesn't do movies and photos anymore?

Apple has a history of coming up with some really great ideas, but the company sometimes forgets the importance of staying laser focused on what is really important to users because it has so little interaction with users.  I think it is a company weakness, but I doubt it will change because it has been that way for so long.

I am not a huge fan of either Adobe or Microsoft software, but I still reach for Word and Excel at times, and I have been doing that for more than 27 years in the case of Word and almost that long for Excel.  I also still pull Photoshop out once in a while.

Unless Apple can figure out how to give products like iPhoto a life of their own, and Filemaker might be a good example and even role model, iPhoto, introduced in 2002, might not make it much beyond the ten year mark as a tool for those of us who are more than just casual users.

We can always hope that small developers continue creating more great tools like Rapidweaver, Coda, Pixelmator, Nisus Writer, and Shutterbug which I recently used to create a very nice non-flash based slide show that will play on my smartphone.

 

 

A Mac user reports after one year on Windows 7

It was on Februay 15, 2010 that I ordered both my wife and myself HP laptops running Windows 7.  About a week later I reported my first experiences with Windows 7. 

I actually was pretty surprised with the hostility that showed up in some of the comments to that post. I did not intend to offend the Apple world by once again purchasing some Wintel gear.

I wanted a fast processor in a laptop and had gotten tired of waiting for Apple to deliver one. 

It has been a year since I placed the order, so do I regret not waiting for that MacBook with an I7 processor?  Actually I do not have any regrets about my decision to spend money on non-Apple products.

My wife really needed a new laptop.  Her old Mac laptop had gotten so slow that even she had noticed. Initially I was going to buy just her a new Mac laptop, but in February 2010 I just could not see laying down good money for outdated processors from Apple.

When I found out that with rebates we both could get new laptops with the latest processors for less than the price of one Mac with an outdated processor, it did not take me long to place the order.

I was surprised that I got accused of being a shill for Microsoft especially considering that I had called Vista a Quagmire in a not very old post.  And just because I bought HP laptops for us, did not stop me from using Macs.  In fact this fall I ended up buying an I5 iMac because much of my work is still done on Macs.

I continue to use my old dual G5 tower and an even older Dell Pentium 3 desktop that runs Ubuntu Linux. I am pretty pleased with my technology set-up, but I think some of my observations on Windows 7 might be of interest to Mac people who would never consider dabbling in the world of Windows.

First off Windows 7 is an exceptionally reliable operating system. It is just a few days shy of a year since my wife and I both started using Windows 7. There have been no problems either hardware or software related with the systems.  That is no as in none. That is a pretty heady accomplishment for a brand new operating system running on new processors.

The systems have not crashed, locked up, or misbehaved in way that I have been able to determine.

In the year's time I have migrated my dedicated Mac using wife to the Windows world.  Would she still like to be using a Mac?

The answer is probably yes, but she also realizes a bargain when she sees one, so she is very happy with her HP laptop and saving some money.  She does claim to still miss her Apple address book, but her real problem is that she doesn't use an address book enough to really remember it in the Windows world.  She had years of hardly using her Mac address book for it to become second nature.

Our systems are set up very similarly.  My primary browser is Firefox, but I also use Chrome, and once in a while I have to use IE to print some GIS maps that our county has posted.  We both use Microsoft Security Essentials which is free, less intrusive than Norton, and also less of a resource hog.

Neither my wife or I have been bothered with viruses or any malware in the last year.

We use Thunderbird for email, Picasa for photos, Snagit for image captures, Word 2007, PowerPoint 2007 and Excel 2007.  I also use RealFast for my real estate forms.

Since I have dual Gmail personalities, Firefox is logged in under one ID and Chrome under the other.  The reasoning behind this is separate photo storage that I maintain in Picasa Web Albums.

I share files with Dropbox as does my wife.  Dropbox is actually part of my workflow since I will often first download my photos from SD cards to my HP I7 laptop. 

Any that I want to use in a post that need only minor editing I will fix in Picasa and save in my Dropbox which also puts it on my three Macs, the dual G5, my 2006 MacBook, and my new I5 iMac.

If there is a file that needs more work than I like to do in Picasa, I will save it in another Dropbox folder and work on it with Pixelmator then save it back to Dropbox.

Much of my work is writing or web pages. I do a lot of my writing in the mornings at the kitchen table.  The HP I7 laptop is my favorite machine for that since it has a 15" screen and a full sized keyboard.

I often do my web site work in the afternoon or evening.  Then I usually retire to my upstairs office and also download any photos to my I5 iMac where I might take another look at several of the best ones.  My new iMac has iPhoto 09 on it.  I made a mistake and put iPhoto 10 on my MacBook so I am not fond of doing iPhoto work on it.  I also have Aperture on the iMac but I rarely use it.  I have pretty well quit using Photoshop.

All of the blogs that I work on are done through a browser interface.  With a browser as an interface, it really doesn't matter to me which system does the writing.

However, I am working on a book which I write on the iMac using Nisus Writer Express.  When I finish a section I do take the time to open it in Word 2010 on the Mac and save it also as a Word document.  I have enough effort into the book that I don't want to take any chances of losing it.

Our Windows laptops seem to perform just as well on our networks as my Macs.  I certainly haven't seen the problems that I had with Vista.  The HP laptop also gives me the ability to print double-sided brochures on our color laser printer at the real estate office.  Unfortunately when they installed accounting software, it locked out Macs and since I was the only Mac user, no one was interested in fixing the problem.  I finally removed the old Mac desktop that I had in the office last fall.

One measure of the success of moving my wife to Windows is that it has been months since she started her old lamp shade iMac. It was the system she used in our second home. I have started it a couple of times just to make sure it works but that is it.  She now prefers to carry her HP laptop.  Her old Mac laptop had not been travel worthy for a long time due to its battery.

I still prefer using a Mac over a Windows machine for most things.  And there is some software on the Mac that I think is better than what is available for Windows computers.

However, there is no doubt in my mind that Windows 7 is a very good operating system and that you can find a very decent computer for much less than what you can in the world of Apple.

If you just want email, browsing, and sharing basic pictures, I would have a hard time recommending a Mac purchase unless you just want a Mac or have been using one for a long time.

We have no trouble printing to our wireless network of HP and Brother printers. In fact I think I have more trouble with my MacBook printing than I do the Windows laptops. Sharing files with DropBox is a piece of cake.

While I haven't timed it, I believe that my I7 HP laptop will boot more quickly than my I5 iMac but the difference is hardly worth arguing.

Those who said that my I7 HP Windows 7 laptop would slow like a typical Windows machine were wrong.  It has turned out be a very good experience.  I have actually helped a couple of people buy HP laptops identical to my wife's I5 machine.

I would never suggest that anyone who is happy with their Mac go out and get rid of it and buy a Windows 7 machine, but if you are faced with aging Macs and a limited budget, you might be surprised at how far your dollar will go in the Windows world.

Switching one machine to Windows does not mean that you have to start hating Macs or stop using them, it just means that you have a few options that you didn't have when you were only using a Mac.

I do find wireless networking still something more of a pain on Windows computers, but it has improved greatly even with the not so new networking gear that I run.  Even my aging MacBook has a habit of deciding that it does not have an Airport card once in a while when changing network locations.  I have to pull the battery and generally reconfigure the Airport card.

I long ago got to the point that computers are tools to get my job done and not part of a religious experience.  Apple makes very good but sometimes very expensive computers.  If you can afford to live in an all Apple world, I am happy for you.

For the rest of us, you can find happiness in a mixed platform world. Sometimes success is measured by keeping old gear going long after the manufacturers would have us retire it.

We are finally into some great weather on the east coast. After some cold damp weather along the ocean shores, the sun feels great.  It is really nice to have afternoon temperatures into the sixties and see some signs of spring even if we might face a little more winter.

Unfortunately there areas in North Carolina and Virginia where the lack of winter snows and rain have made for very dry conditions.

As the weather gets warmer and the boat rides longer, I might just have to forget about computers for a few days.  I hope everyone get their needed rains, but I sure hope there is some sunshine for a few winter busting days on the water.

 

Balanced technology with Apple at the core

Over the years I have worked myself into a technology solution that might be described as revolving around Apple but by no means dependent on the whims of Cupertino.  It works well for me, and lets me have the best of both worlds without being tied to any particular technology vendor.  How I got to this point, and how my solution works is something of a twisted story.

When I started using Apple computers back in 1982, it was not very hard to use an all Apple solution.  The only non Apple hardware I had was an Epson MX-80 dot matrix printer. Times changed, the Mac was introduced, and I went to work for Apple in 1984, but lots of business software came out for IBM compatible computers.  While I was working for Apple, the experience I had using and selling MS/DOS computers gradually faded into the past. Macs and Apple peripherals from printers to scanners and even cameras dominated my life.

Even during the years at  Apple when there was a concerted effort by the company to provide DOS compatibility, Apple was vehemently anti-Windows internally.  If you wanted to demonstrate Windows compatibility on a network, you had to be pretty creative with your local budget dollars.  We managed to get a few PCs in our Reston office.  They were invaluable in helping us learn what our customers' faced in getting Macs to work in their enterprise.

I sometimes felt like our work with Windows computers was a skunk works project. We actually ended up driving a lot of Apple's ActiveDirectory solution with a system engineer on my staff doing much of the development, but the reality even then was that Apple was a consumer company at its heart. Our enterprise efforts were just a holding action until Apple could find hits that would free it from the need to pay any serious attention to the enterprise.

Most people would agree that I bled rainbow colors in those days, so it would be no surprise that my family's personal technology and my own remained 100% Apple. I was even pretty happy with a Nokia cell phone that I synced with my Mac. When I was happiest, the Nokia was on Cingular which eventually got bought by AT&T. Then there was my departure from Apple just shy of my 20th anniversary and just after I reached the magic age of 55 at Apple.

Within a month after leaving Apple I bought a 15" Aluminum Powerbook.  It got a lot of use, but that same fall I also bought a Dell Dimension Pentium desktop.  Probably some of the reason I bought the Dell was Apple deciding they no longer needed my services, but I also really wanted to see how the majority of the people using technology got along in their daily tasks.  For about six months I didn't have a job, so learning about Windows XP and Linux was a way to make myself more marketable. It was an interesting experience and was my start in blogging.  I did purchase my trusty dual G5 PowerMac in December of 2004.  I am still using it and the Dell. I sampled a lot Linux over the years before deciding to stay with Ubuntu.

Both my next two jobs were in the government space.  I eventually got tired of being the only person in the room with a Mac so I bought a Dell laptop in the fall of 2005.  Eventually I gave up the world of a consultant for a job with benefits.  I became the VP of sales and marketing at an email services company.  The Dell laptop turned out to be a necessity with that job.  There were a couple of apps that we used which just would not work on the Mac so through some of 2006, I came to work carrying both a Mac laptop and a Dell laptop.  By that time I was pretty proficient with Windows XP. Eventually I managed to get most things working well in my new workplace, but I had sort gotten to like having two machines on my desktop.

In the summer of 2006, I bought a new MacBook.  My aluminum PB had sucumbed to a number of problems, including a bad lower memory slot and flaky ribbon cable, neither of which were covered by extended warranties.  In the fall of 2006 we moved to coast, and I started looking for a new job.  I wanted something where I did not have to live and breathe technology.

Somehow I thought that was real estate, and just as the the market was tanking, I ended up becoming a REALTOR®.  I did not understand at the time that I sticking my foot into a field which had the potential to require an even greater use of technology than selling computers, networking or cloud services.

By then I had loaned my Dell laptop to my youngest daughter for final years of college, but I was able to get by the first nine months as a REALTOR® using my MacBook and my old Dell desktop at home.  Our office provided us with an ancient Window XP desktop to use while on duty so that helped.

Eventually when I got to the point of writing contracts, I decided that I needed a new Windows laptop so I bought a new Vista laptop just when Apple was introducing Leopard.  It was a lesson in Windows humility. There were some challenges with XP, Vista was a nightmare. and I eventually concluded that it as quagmire.

I bought the Vista laptop because it was a cheaper solution for generating forms than anything else.  Supporting myself on Vista was a time whirlpool.  If anything Vista made me appreciate Macs more.

During all this time I continued to do my website and creative work on Macs.  My Windows computer let me access one of our MLS systems which required IE and let me create approved real estate forms.  It also let me print on our office printer which I could never make work on my Macs after some security software was installed on the printer.

In the winter of 2009 I was hoping that Apple would ship some new I5 and I7 laptops at a reasonable price.  Considering the tough state of the real estate market, spending money on a premium laptop like a Mac seemed like a gamble especially when it stil had an old processor.  Of course I was also to the point that I could no longer take Vista even though it had improved somewhat.

After listening to a lot of technology people whom I respect, I ended up buying both myself and my wife new Windows 7 laptops.  In about a month, we will have used those two laptops for a year without any problems. Windows 7 has proved to be a great operating system that might even be more reliable than OS X.

I have ended up helping a couple of folks get I5 laptops similar to my wife's HP.  Neither has expressed any regrets. I also convinced my daughter to stay with Macs because I thought it was right for her.  If money had been no object I would have bought both my wife and myself Macs.  But as it ended up, we both got very good systems, mine an I7 and my wife's an I5 for less than the price of one I5 Mac which didn't ship until months later.  Of course all my real estate software worked out of the box with Windows 7.  My son's company is all Windows so he long ago stopped using a Mac.  He also loves gaming so he has a souped up Dell I7 desktop with a solid state drive at home.  My youngest daughter is still using a desk lamp iMac. 

A week or so after I bought the HP laptops, I ended up choosing a Droid as my smartphone.  I was completely frustrated with AT&T's service in our area. Three years of it had been a lesson in dropped and missed calls. I only managed to get 50% or less of the phone calls when I was in my home, and the idea that I would pay AT&T more to fix their problem by installing something in my home just drove me up the wall.

Through all of this Apple peripherals including monitors have mostly disappeared. I have added HP, Epson, and Brother printers to my technology solutions.  I have an HP AIO printing/scanning/fax solution and an Epson scanner.  I live with a mixed wireless/wired network. It has a fair amount of old network equipment in it, but with some help from my son, I manage to keep the network running.

This winter I finally gave in and bought a new I5 iMac.  The old Dual G5 was getting very slow in spite of a number of hard drive upgrades. While I am pleased with the speed I have gotten with the new iMac, I stll believe it could be a better product.  Both my Windows I7 laptop and my old Ubuntu Dell boot faster.

The one thing that I have on every piece of hardware is Dropbox.  It is a great utility.  I spend a lot of time in Firebox, an increasing amount of time in Chrome, and a little time using Safari.  I useTweetDeck on my Windows box and my Macs.  I have the latest version of Office on the Mac, but I am stuck on Office 2007 on Windows.  I use Thunderbird for most of my mail on Windows, but I do access my Gmail with Chrome.  My Linux box runs little more than Firefox with an extra tab for Gmail.

On the Macs I run Apple's Mail client, but I find it getting a little creaky.  I have used Powermail in the past so I might go back to that eventually.  Right now I am using Dreamweaver and Rapidweaver, but I am evaluating other solutions.  I do use Pages for some brochures.  For word processing I use Word on Windows, OpenOffice on Linux, and Nisus Writer Express on the Mac.  I have given up Photoshop on the Mac for Pixelmator.  I manage my photos on Windows with Picasa and on the Mac with iPhoto 09. I find the most recent release of iPhoto an abomination so I am looking for alternatives.

I really like SnagIt on Windows, and while I have it for the Mac, I rarely use it there for some weird reason. It is a great tool on Windows for creating directions on a map.  Building my Housevision.us services site pushed me back firmly in the Mac world because I could not find an inexpensive Windows CAD solution that fit my work style so I now use MacDraft PE.

I have made lots of movies on the Mac, but I have also done some recently on Windows because of some trouble getting iMovie to work with YouTube.

MobileMe is not a service that I find worthwhile even though I am still paying for it because I have a couple of family members who just don't want to change their email addresses.  I am still bent out of shape over Apple taking down some photo sites that I had there for years.  I now store all my photos on Picasa web albums though I still maintain a presence on Flickr.  I will sometimes do photo editing on Pixelmator on the iMac, save the photos to my Dropbox, and them import them to Picasa on my I7 Windows laptop and then upload them from there. The uploads seem to go faster than on the iMac, but I have not sat down with a stopwatch and timed it.

Living in a world of IMAP email, Microsoft Office, and Dropbox makes it relatively easy for me to be platform agnostic. Even the brochures that I do with Pages, I save as Word files and modify them in Word on Windows and eventually print them on our doubled sided color laser printer at the office which I cannot get to work with a Mac.

The fact that I don't use Macs for everything is not a slam against Apple, it is just a response to Apple's expensive pricing, and the fact that not everything that I need can be found on a Mac unless I run Windows on a Mac which I don't want to do.  It is also just the way things happened.

For a variety of reasons I have chosen to have Windows hardware for Windows and use my Macs as dedicated Macs.  While I could easily run Windows on the new I5 iMac, I have no need to do so.  I would rather have the redundancy from the extra hardware.  I also like the feel of competence that I get from being able to use multiple platforms.  When I was still doing duty at the real estate office, I was often pressed into service to solve Windows problems.

Fortunately after my recent home network repair, all my technology tools are working well and doing what I need them to do.  I like having three screens on my desktop. The integration between My Tracks on my Droid and my Google maps is just icing on the cake of my technology world. I am happy that I no longer have to use the somewhat flaky i-gotU software on Windows to do my GPS tracks.

I don't ever expect to give one vendor all of my business. I would far sooner have them compete for my business.  I expect over the short term, Apple, Google, and Microsoft will all continue to find me both someone who users their products and a critic when something needs improving.

Over the long term, I am not placing any bets, but I sure would like to see Apple focus a little more energy and competitiveness on their laptops and desktops.  I think there is still a big place for them in the world.  I hate to see Apple give up that space completely to Windows vendors.

The recent news on developers and smartphone app intentions is a pretty good sign that no one has the market sewn up.  That market will be interesting to watch.

I am happy to report that we finally got a normal storm this winter and that Wednesday morning we woke up to 54 degrees Fahrenheit.  That is a nice change from the snowstorm we saw last weekend.  Even this winter's weather has not shaken my belief that the Southern Outer Banks is a great place to live.  It was nice to make it to 59.7 Fahrenheit on Wednesday.  I even ordered the seeds for my tomato plants.  It's almost time for the great tomato race to start.