Applepeels

Apple Between the Lines

It has been nearly two months since I scanned the headlines on Apple websites. It has been even longer since I wrote my last article on Apple at ReadWrite.  I have been busy getting two books out the door.

I am not surprised that there is little to draw me beyond the typical Apple headlines. I got the feeling that Apple and I were heading in different directions as I was finishing up my books.  I am one of those people who still work with desktop computers, build websites, manipulate photos and graphics.  I suspect in Apple's world that I am something of a dinosaur.  I judge platforms by the applications that they bring to me and the productivity that I find from using those tools.  I do not own an iPhone or an iPad.

Still I am not here to argue that Apple is going to disappear, is poorly managed, or has crummy products.  By most financial measurements Apple of 2013 is a great success. Unfortunately, all that success has not made it to my desktop. I am here to report that I see little reason to keep Apple on my immediate radar.  I am actually down to two applications that only run on a Mac.  I still cling to Pixelmator as a favorite graphics tool and I have a couple of websites where I use Rapidweaver, but that is it.  The rest of my Mac experience is gone.  I got tired of waiting for new versions of the iWork suite.  iPhoto managled one too many photo libraries and why anyone would put up with iCloud and its services is beyond me.  I use Postbox on Windows for my mail.

I did give Apple a fair chance at keeping my loyalty.  I bought a new MacMini in January and with the OX 10.8.3 update it has become a stable and reliable partner.  It is not nearly as fast as my similarly powered Lenovo desktop running Windows 8 but speed is not really the issue.  The real issue is that there is no software that draws me over to the Mac platform and I am not that happy with the Mountain Lion interface which should scare folks since Windows 8 is my main other platform.

I thought iAuthor might be something that would be important to me, but when I found out that it would only work with an iPad attached, I gave up on the Mac as my publishing platform.  Amazon has a very capable piece of software that emulates a Kindle which I can use to view my work before I publish.  There are some subtantial advantages to being on the Kindle platform so it did not take much to kill the idea of moving my books over to the iPad.   While I am not a huge fan of Word, it seems to be the best tool with the most specific instructions for creating books to be published on the Kindle platform.  I actually tried my older version of Word running on the Mac but it just made for some additional work.

Then there is the whole cloud issue. DropBox, Google Drive, and SkyDrive all work very well and do what I need.  I have still not met anyone who loves iCloud.  I know Apple keeps making some incremental changes to Photostreaming to make it palatable, but I have been burned too many times by Apple's ever changing online photo storage strategies.  I do not care about iCloud anymore.

This August will mark thirty-one years since I first came to the Apple platform.  I got excited about it because I could do things with that first Apple II+ and subsequent Macs that I could not easily do with other computers. That has changed and I did fight the change.   Over the years I campaigned for a better and more reliable iPhoto and even a small tower that would more closely meet the needs of those of us who still believe that creating quality content requires more than an iPad or iPhone.  I even sort of grew to like Pages before I decided it had become just another abandoned Apple software product.

Even if Apple does come up with a tower, I likely will not be looking at it because I do not see a new version of Microsoft Office coming to the Mac in the near future.  I have more hope that I will figure out how to use Google Docs to publish my books than I do that Microsoft is going to bring an upgraded version of Office to the Mac. It is not that I love Google more than Apple but they do update their core products regularly.  Beyond the Office issue, Apple has become an expensive platform.  If you want to argue with me on that consider first that I have purchased three I5 computers in the last six months, one Lenovo Ultra Book, one Lenovo tower, and one MacMini so I know what comes with each system. I am not really intrigued by ever thinner iMacs.  I would rather have  a more reliable one instead of the one in my equipment closet that died an early death.

As I watch Apple executing its huge bond deal in order to buy stock back to keep its stockholders happy, I have to wonder what it would have cost to get some upgraded iWork apps out the door and make OS X better not just glitzier.  Some professional Mac users would have paid for those new Apple products. That the MacMini on my desktop is more a curiosity than my workhorse is a little sad.  After all, over thirty years is a long time to live on a particular platform, but when all the signals to move on are there, it is hard to ignore them.

Years ago Apple gave me the tools to do some really neat things.  Today the deep integration of Google's mapping software and its seamless integration with Google's cloud services for maps and photos let me create a rather unique travel guide.  The mapping done on my Android phone would not have been as easy on the iPhone.  Certainly the mapping tools in Lightroom sealed the deal for me.  My decision to run Lighroom on my Lenovo tower came down to pure economics.  The $599 MacMini came with a 500 GB hard drive and the $479 Lenovo came with a 1 TB hard drive and had more room for photos. Its storage is also more easily upgradeable than the MacMini's.

I will continue to keep an eye on Apple, but it will be more to fulfill my curiosity than to plan any further purchases. I have no doubts that there are plenty of folks out there sitting on the edge of their chairs just waiting for the next Apple product.  I hope whatever it is goes well for Apple and for them.

If you are curious about my new travel guide, A Week at the Beach-The 2013 Emerald Isle Travel Guide, I have created a Kindle promotion with two free days, May 1 & 2, to download the book  Amazon has free reader software that lets you read a Kindle book on anything including the iPad, iPhone, and Mac. In fact with the Amazon sofware you can easily have the book on all your devices.  You will find the details about the free promo and software at this page.

If you are curious about me, try my about me page on my main Crystal Coast Life site.

Part 2: A Mac Instead Of Windows 8 -Software

This is the second part of a two part series about how Windows users contemplating the shift to Windows 8 might find the world of Apple if they choose to buy a Macintosh instead of upgrade to Windows 8.  The first part was on hardware.  This piece covers software, the “Cloud,” and a few other considerations.

While there are more cross platform applications out there than there were a few years ago, the ones you need, might not work the way you expect on a Mac.  I am a big fan of SnagIt from Techsmith. It works well on both Macs and Windows. Yet there is one issue.  While Snagit on Windows works with my favorite cross-platform mail application, PostBox, it will only work with Apple’s Mail app on Mac OS X.  I am not a fan of Apple's Mail program. This kind of thing is one of those gotchas that can make moving to a new platform irritating so you need to check apps that are important to you.

If you come over to Apple and end up using Apple’s iPhoto to manage your photos, you might find some options gone for political reasons.  Sharing is built in iPhoto for Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter but not for Picasa web albums. Apple does not like Google so you have to buy a third party plug-in or use a browser to get you photos uploaded.  iPhoto also creates a proprietary library of your photos instead of just pointers to JPEGs.  You could just switch to Picasa on the Mac, but then there is no way to get your photos into Apple's iCloud without doing some scripting or owning an iOS device. 

One of the things you need to accept when moving to Apple is that Apple wants you to do things a certain way and deviating from the chosen path usually causes some sort of pain. That is even the case in software.

If Microsoft Office is your standard office suite, you likely know there is a new version out for Windows Computers. I just subscribed to Office 365 for $99 per year.  The last version for the Macintosh was released in 2011. While the files are supposed to move back and forth without problems, my experience is that there are always a few little things that do not work or there is an extra space here or there. 

However, there is some good news on the Office front for the Mac.  The latest update from Microsoft resulted in a dramatic speed increase in loading the Office apps on my new Mac Mini.  That is good since no one is really sure when there will be a new Office for the Mac.  The rumor that Microsoft might bring Office to Linux seems more promising than the statement that no new Office is planned for the Mac.

The one other thing that I have noticed is that after using Office 365 a lot and moving back to Office on the Mac, I am having trouble finding things. I am a casual Office user so it might just reflect that, but it is enough of a problem that I now use Teamviewer to control my PC from the Mac so I can use Office 365 instead of Office 2011 on the Mac.

Beyond Office, even some Mac users are questioning how much attention Apple is paying to their own software. Pages, Numbers, and Keynote (Apple's iWork suite of productivity apps)  have not seen a major update in their desktop versions since 2009. Jason Grady writing for ZDNet had the following comment.

“Instead Apple proceeds with its release and abandon strategy. Release iWork into the market with great fanfare and starve it until it eventually dies. What makes matters worse is that Apple will not comment on its iWork roadmap. Not even a 'we're working on it.' Nothing.”

Apple has even dropped iDVD which makes sense inside the Apple world since Apple is moving away from DVDs. However, many of us still use DVDs.  Tidbits which has been publishing information about the Mac on the web and using Macs in their workflow for 22 years recently said of Apple, “Apple software — from iOS 6 to Pages 4.3 — has been falling down. Great hardware, increasingly sloppy software.”

If the “Cloud" is important to you, you should be aware that Apple has struggled with its vision for the Cloud. Apple has changed its Cloud strategy multiple times with the result that many no longer trust Apple's with their data.  Also Apple’s current iCloud implementation is very different than other vendors' Clouds. It takes some getting used to and it is hard to escape since it is built into the OS.

I still find there are some very good apps on the Mac. I use RapidWeaver for web development and Pixelmator for graphics. Sometimes I will write with Nisus Writer Express. It depends on my mood.  As for utilities, Fetch is still my favorite FTP client.

Apple’s apps and a few other applications like PIxelmator have the ability to save to iCloud if the software vendor has chosen to market their software through Apple's app store.  However, even those other non-Apple apps which can save to Apple's iCloud save to someplace invisible in Apple's iCloud.  You can find a hidden folder on your Mac which shows you what is there but it takes some digging. You cannot see those files when you log into iCloud with a browser like you can the iWork files.  It is a weird concept. Of course the apps know that the files are there but if you want to open the file with another app, you are out of luck.  Apple just figures that there are things you don't need to know or do. It is one of the things you need to accept if you plan to go to a Mac.

The good news for Cloud lovers is that you can easily use DropBox, Google Drive, or even Microsoft's SkyDrive on a Mac without any problems. There are also other choices which work well.

Beyond software, you need to consider setup. In spite of the Mac's reputation for ease of use. Setup on a new Mac can sometimes be not so easy as I found out. I have brought up a lot of Macs over the years and my most recent one was not any fun.
 
There is no doubt that Apple has an App store with far more software than Microsoft, but there is a downside to the app store.  Apple's OS strategy also revolves around that same App Store and my experience is that it is a work in progress.  In setting up two new Windows 8 machines and my new Mac Mini, I found the Windows 8 machines required much less of my attention.  If you opt for a Mac and have even a decent Internet connection prepare for some long downloads. I have TimeWarner cable and a 4.8 GB OS backup download took eight hours.  Most updates you can have automatically applied but I still have to manually apply all the ones from Microsoft for Office on the Mac. 
 
You will find support and repair are not as accessible to Mac owners.
 
Using a Macintosh is great until something goes wrong and you will quickly find that people who really know Macs are harder to find than knowledgeable Windows people.  If you live outside a major metro area, be prepared to drive to the nearest Apple store for repair or face to face support. There are far fewer Apple repair centers around than Windows ones.  It used to be the answer to most Mac problems was reinstall the operating system. That is not as easy to do now that install DVDs are gone.  You can make one of your USB thumb drives a backup OS X installer, but my experience has shown that can have some challenges. I had to buy third party software to create one for my Mac Mini.
 
Little things like navigating your computer will be different on the Mac.
 
When you are using a computer, the file system becomes very important. Do not let someone convince you the Mac OS X Mountain Lion is more like Windows 7 than Windows 8.  I have used Macs for 28 years and I find the latest version of OS X Mountain Lion the most confusing yet. It is powerful and has a lot to like, but there is also a lot to learn. It has taken me just as long to get up to speed on it as it did for me to figure out Windows 8.

Apple decided with their previous Lion release that the command "Save As" is not a good thing. Some apps no longer have that command but now in Mountain Lion you can get it back if you hold down the “option” key when you go to the file menu.  Still the new “Duplicate” and “Move” commands can be confusing.  Macs also do not remember the last place you saved something like Windows. You can buy third party software like Default Folder X to fix that, but it is still not quite as easy to find something on a Mac. Navigating around a Mac can be confusing especially when Apple decides to hides important things like the user library.

There are some  very neat things on the Mac like AirDrop and AirPlay which require other Macs or more Apple hardware like AppleTV before you enjoy them.  Windows Media Center works pretty well with existing Windows 7 machines so that is not too different since both platforms want you to stick with one platform.

The last worry is security. I've used both platforms for over 8 years. Since MS introduced their security program, that is the only security program I have used. I have had no virus or worm problems on either platform, you just have to practice safe computing.  At one time this was a huge advantage for the Mac. Now it is not so much.

All this boils down to a move to the Mac will mean lots of changes especially in the way you view your computer vendor.  If you are coming to the Mac, you need to believe Apple knows best or you will never be comfortable. Just like you cannot fight city hall, you likely will not be able to fight Apple.  Is it any different in the Windows world.  I would argue that Apple would not put up with an app like Start8 which brings back the old Windows Start Menu, but maybe I am wrong.  They did relent a little on "Save As."

The Mac platform has some great capabilities, but you will have to work to master them.  The way you do things on a Mac is a little different.  My conclusion is that moving to Windows 8 is the best course for most Windows users. The learning curve on the Mac is substantial for a Windows user. However, I encourage you to weigh what I have presented, talk to Mac users and make your own decision. Everyone's needs are different.  What works for me, might not even fit your desk. :-)

However, for many Windows users it might just be easier to stay the course with Windows and buy a new Windows 8 machine.

The simple addition of the $4.99 Start8 utility can make the Windows 8 experience a lot like the old Windows.  Once you have done that, you can choose to ignore the parts of Windows 8 that don’t fit the way you work. 

I would not let anyone scare me away from Windows 8. I am not having any trouble using it. I have it on two machines.  One has a touch screen and the other has only a mouse.  I am betting Microsoft will listen to customers and make it better like they did with Vista.

Windows 8 is powerful and very fast.  When I boot both my Mac Mini and Lenovo tower, even I if start the Mac Mini first, I usually have several Windows applications launched before the Mac Mini even makes it to the desktop.

On my most recent startup, I turned my Mac Mini on first. By the time the Mac Mini had gotten to the desktop and launched Chrome, I had turned on the Windows 8 machine and launched the following programs on Windows 8.

Chrome

Firefox

SnagIt

Postbox (all my mail was also retrieved)

Picasa

Excel

Word

Lightroom

Trillian

Opera

The Lenovo tower has 8 GBs of RAM. The Mac Mini has 16 GBs of RAM.  Both systems have standard SATA hard drives and I5 processors.

See the first article in the series which talks about hardware for more details and price information.

A Sign That Apple Cares About The Desktop?

We all have different expectations from the companies that have helped define our lives.  My hopes for Apple revolve around the tools that the company created or helped popularize over the years. Many of those innovations let me do things that I could hardly imagine.

With me it started with an Apple II+, AppleWriter II, and an Epson MX-80 dot matrix printer.  Then there was the Mac, Pagemaker, and Illutrator, iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD. While not all of these came from Apple, their initial releases were tied closely to the Macintosh.  Since the announcement of the Mac, the Mac desktop has been an important part of my life. Today I still use the Mac, just not as much. Linux has won a significant piece of my desktop.

Even when I gave my desktop over completely to Apple, it was not always been a smooth ride. Products like Claris Emailer and iDVD were dropped.  Some things like iPhoto's integration with the Cloud and web pages have changed for the worse.  Perhaps iWeb was the best indication that Apple never could quite understand that to be successful on the web you need to divorce the device from the data. Google certainly understands that.  I would even argue that Microsoft is better at it than Apple. Then there is an application like Pages which took me a long time to embrace for a few things only to watch Apple decide to ignore it.  I might not agree with Microsoft's direction on Excel, but I doubt they will ever ignore it.

Apple's misunderstanding of the cloud imight someday be looked upon as a major mistake. Still there is no question that Apple remains a money machine.  What I am wondering is can Apple still innovate in a way that really matters.  It is not a new question.  I found this August 18, 2011 article by Brandt Dainow, Why the iAd was a failure, an interesting read.  I especially like this quotation which refers to an earlier article of his.

The thrust of my criticism was that if Apple creates aspirational and innovative new products, but then restricts access to them, it forces others to create competing systems. By refusing hardware manufacturers such as Samsung and Nokia access to the iOS system, Apple forced them into the arms of Google and Microsoft. I argued that, just as the Mac had gone from 30 percent market share at its peak to less than 3 percent today, so would the iPhone go in the mobile market.

While the Mac has gotten up to 10% or so of market share, there are those who are now arguing that it has peaked. 

It turns out that a lot of what Apple has done throughout its history is to create innovations and then to try to wall them off.  There was a time before Windows 7 when many computer users would have loved to have the more secure and capable OS X running on their Dell or HP.  Apple was sure that letting OS X into the wild would destroy the company.  It turned out that Apple's success was not destined to come from OS X anyway.  It was going to come from the iPod, iPhone, and iPad and related services which now make up close to 86% of Apple's revenue.  I always thought that it was funny that I had to buy a third-party add-on for iPhoto just to do something as simple as put my photos in Google's Picasa web albums without resorting to a browser.

In a sense Apple is now trying to use OS X to drag along those of us still creating content with Macs.  It likely will not work.  The web is changing everything and Apple's walled worlds are showing some huge cracks.  Android may be as unstoppable in the mobile market as Windows was in the desktop market.

Android runs on a lot of hardware from different companies.  I like to compare the sharing options that I get when viewing an image on the Mac with what I get when viewing an image in the gallery on my Android phone.  There are twenty choices on my LG Spectrum phone instead of the seven choices in Apple's Preview.  Of course Apple is not the only guilty party in limiting our choices.  When I want to share a photo from my Amazon Cloud Drive using my Kindle Fire, I only get four choices.  That lack of choice has a lot to do with my decision to make a Nexus 7 my main tablet.  I get more choice on a lot of things.

By trying to control everything, Apple limits our choice and opens the door to innovation from others. But if the limitations that Apple forces on us are severe enough, then the market is guaranteed to respond with other choices.  Some of the choices might not be goods ones, but then again some of those choices might be really good ones like the Nexus 7 that I'm using.

While some argue that the only way for a good user experience is to let Apple control everything, my experience has shown that Apple cares little about the user experience except to want to use it to prod me towards their vision of a pure world with only Apple products and services.

It will be interesting to see how well Microsoft's experiment in using their operating system to prod us toward tablets and the Surface Pro will work.  Actually the operating systems of both Microsoft and Apple are not very high on my list these days.  I am moving towards a roll your environment using virtualization. Look for my upcoming article on it at readwrite.

For now I would like just one sign that Apple cares about my user experience.  I will nominate bringing back the "Escape" key in iPhoto as a way to return to the library instead of clicking on the annoying "Photos" button.  I doubt we will see that since the march of Mac OS X towards iOS likely will accelerate instead of slow down. 

In truth, it does not matter.  I have found a new solution, Adobe's Lightroom.  Guess what?  The "Escape key" works like it should there.  A better sign for me to pay attention to is Frank, our great egret from Canada.

Apple Finally Loses Its Mantra

For years when we were selling Macs at Apple, our mantra was that "Macintoshes just work."  It was an easy thing to say for much of Apple's history.  There were a few times that Apple shipped products that weren't deserving of the Apple label, but by the late nineties Apple definitely had its mojo back.

I have slowly been working towards this conclusion and it is painful one.  There is a lot of stuff on the Mac that no longer just works.  I have tried really hard to like Apple's Mountain Lion operating system.  The weekend before Thanksgiving 2012, I came to the conclusion that Apple is trying to do way too much stuff with the result that Macintosh software is not getting proper attention.

I'll be expanding further on this in later articles, but I will offer up a few examples.  I would love to hear what others think. 

My first issue is Photostream.  I have complained a lot about Photostream being designed by an engineer who only shares a few photos from his phone and who cannot imagine someone taking one thousand pictures a day.  The problem is worse now.

I had Photostream going when I first installed Mountain Lion but I quickly turned it off. I didn't want hundreds of photos daily pushed to my Windows laptop.  This weekend I read that I could chose to share just certain photos with others so I decided to give Photostream another try.

I have to admit making Photostream work was like beating my head against the wall.  Eventually I did a Google search for "photostream keeps turning off" and saw that I was not alone in having Photostream problems.  I finally found this comprehensive set of steps to fix the problem.  I tried them without any luck. Actually I tried the steps multiple times.

I keep getting a message to sign into my iCloud account. I have already done that and I have checked that the email addresses all match.  I'm sure there is a solution, I can't figure it out, and I am to the point of not being sure whether or not I care if Photostream ever works.

The one thing that I know is that I spent more time trying to get Photostream to work that evening than I have spent on uploading thousands of photos to my Picasa web albums accounts which have never given me a single problem.

By the same token, my Drop Box account works perfectly as does my Microsoft Skydrive.  Neither have ever been a problem.

I find it amusing that I can see my Google Drive, Dropbox, and SkyDrive when I click on the finder in Mac OS X Mountain Lion. However, I don't see my iCloud there.  I guess it is supposed to be so seamless that it is invisible.

For years I have complained that Apple's problem is that it tries to tie data to a specific piece of hardware. If you ever used iWeb, you know the difficulties involved in working on a single website from multiple machines.  I still am trying to figure out how to get my music off my original iPod which seems to be married to a Mac that has long ago expired.  I suspect my Photostream problem might be related to having to switch my iMac to an external boot drive since my internal drive died, but I don't know how to fix it.

Photostream is not the only problem.  I got a comment on my recent post, Is Apple a Prisoner of its Design Decisions? regarding my complaint on the disappearance of the email option on the file menu of Preview.  The comment brought to my attention the system wide addition of a "share button."  There is now a little share button on Preview. Unfortunately, it is no longer on the file menu where it has been for a while.

However, the system wide share seems to have been implemented in enough different ways to make one wonder what they were drinking out in Cupertino.

If you go to any of the current iWorks 09 Apps including Pages, you won't find a working share button.  The apps have been rumored to be in line for an update, but I guess getting the small iPad out is more important or at least more profitable.

I was beginning think the intention to be consistent could be there until I looked at "share" in Safari.  Instead of being a little button, "share" is in the file menu where it used to be in Preview.  Then I had the thought that maybe iPhoto would have "share" implemented in the file menu like Safari. It was there years ago.  Of course I was wrong.  The iPhoto share buttom with menu is on the bottom on the far right corner.  I'm pretty sure including "Order Prints" in the share menu is just another way to make money.

I would never expect Apple to have a share to Picasa web albums since Google is their competition and they would rather cut their nose off than make it easier to use another company's products.  That in itself is amazing since that used to be one of the main things that Apple did.  Our system and software engineers were famous for making Apple stuff fit with other products.   I gave up paying for the little extension that made it easy to share photos from iPhoto to Picasa web albums.  It seemed to get turned off with every iPhoto update.

Of course indecision on how to handle "share" and "export" is nothing new, I first wrote about Apple's indecision on the commands in 2005.

Apple is certainly not the only company to play around with the share command.  Google's decision to force the  sharing of photo albums through Google+ if you have a Google+ account is not one of my favorite decisions. However, it was easy to create a work around by have a second "free" Picasa web albums account which isn't tied to a Google+ account.

I know Apple's focus is on iPhones and iPads, but they have enough money to make Macs work right. We certainly pay enough for our Macs to work nearly perfectly.  Mac software apparently is just not a priority.  Why do we still have Pages, Numbers, and Keynote with non-functional share buttons?  When it comes to user interface, Apple used to be the standard that others hoped to emulate. I think Mountain Lion might have changed that forever.

Folks love to complain about Microsoft apps, but it you use their apps on Windows, you get a pretty consistent interface for sending things to others.  It is hard for me to admit this, but right now things just work on my Lenovo laptop running Windows 7.  Things don't just work on my iMac running Mountain Lion.   The loss of productivity from the bone-headed move to remove "Save As" along with Apple's refusal to be even in the same ball park as other hardware companies on prices just might be enough to get me off the Mac platform.

I'll be interested to see if Microsoft has gone forward or backward on Windows 8.  When I give it a try, it will be on a new machine because I really like having one machine where things just work and I don't plan to mess with my Lenovo.

I'm looking forward to some peace and quiet and perhaps some good weather during the holidays here on the Southern Outer Banks. I definitely won't be wasting any more time trying to use Photostream. Still Apple technology is still very important to me even if some folks have a hard time understanding that.

Is Apple A Prisoner of Its Design Decisions?

My history with the Macintosh goes back to the introduction of the Macintosh.  The Macintosh held such an important place in my life that I have managed to keep some first edition magazines announcing the Mac.

Yet here I am in November 2012 sitting at my October 2010 I5 iMac contemplating buying a new Windows 8 computer to completely shake up my computing paradigm.

I am thinking of jumping ship frankly because I think Apple worships far too much at the altar of design instead of functionality.  I also believe there is no one with any sense left at the rudder when it comes to user interface decisions at Apple.   And for icing on the cake, I don't believe the price Apple charges is justified based on my recent experience with Apple products.

For years I have operated on the theory that the safest computing involves doing my work on mulitple computers.  While I worked at Apple, I often used my company supplied laptop with a desktop that I purchased.  After leaving Apple in 2004, I bought my own Mac laptop and late that year a dual G5 desktop.

During the eight years since leaving Apple, for one reason or the other I have added Windows and Linux to my operating system world.  Early this summer the MacBook I purchased in the summer of 2006 died in spite of a hard drive transplant.  I moved to relying on my Lenovo I7 Windows 7 laptop and my iMac as my main two systems.

Unfortunately I quickly started having troubles with my iMac this summer.  I ran it off an external hard drive for a while and eventually reformatted the internal hard drive and installed Mountain Lion.  While I am not a big Mountain Lion fan, I thought that I was going to be okay until I started having hard drive problems once again the last week of October 2012.

It was only then that I started contemplating changing the internal hard drive in my iMac.  I have replaced lots of drives in Macs over the years including a number in PowerBooks and some in other versions of iMacs. When I bought my Intel iMac, I paid no attention to serviceability since it had a drive with a terrabyte of storage.  Other than the drive on my recent MacBook, I have only replaced drives for additional storage.

With all the cloud storage that I'm using I figured the terrabyte of storage on the iMac would be plenty so I didn't worry about replacing it.  On top of that the iMac was not my first choice machine. I didn't really have another Mac choice.  I would have preferred a tower, but there were no Apple towers in the same price range of the dual G5 that I bought in 2004 so I bought an iMac and hoped for the best.

As I started having problems with my iMac, an Apple system engineer that I know told me that replacing the drive in one of the new iMacs is very difficult.  When I started investigating and found this video of pulling the front bezel and LCD to change the hard drive, I was amazed.  It is a little like learning that you've bought a car and finding out that you have to pull the windshield in order to change the battery.

While Apple pioneered the All-One-Computer, most manufacturers make one now.  However when I investigated recent systems by HP and Sony, I found that you access their hard drives from the back.  The HP system seems to have a particularly easy way of replacing the hard drive.  I have not been able to determine if the new SpectreONE AIO by HP suffers from the same design problem on hard drive servicing as the iMac which it appears to have cloned.

I'm sure that Steve Jobs did not want any panels opening on the back of the iMac, but to be honest, it is pretty stupid to build a computer which requires you to pull the most fragile component in order to service something like a hard drive.  Just because other manufacturers might follow Apple doesn't mean it is the right thing for consumers.

Since I got my iMac, I have been very concerned that it produces a lot of heat. Given that, I was not surprised to find out that there is a sensor on the iMac drive which will shut it down if it gets too hot.  I've never seen that on anything but 1U servers.  It makes me wonder if the design of the iMac is a poor one and that hard drives in the machine will be prone to failure.

I didn't buy my iMac because it was stylish.  I bought it because it was the least expensive way that I could continue to use a Mac with a DVD and a SD slot.  In retrospect, I was too trusting of Apple's engineers and too willing to accept what Apple wanted me to buy.  In fact I ended up buying the huge 27" screen because that was the only way at the time that I could get an I5 processor.

I would have preferred to have purchased an inexpensive Apple tower with a couple of drive bays.  Apple has ignored the market for a product like that and forced us to choose between the MacMini, the iMac, and the very expensive Mac towers.

While the inaccessibility of the hard drive is a major flaw on the iMac, the proximity of the SD slot to the DVD drive is also a major design flaw.  Of course Apple just fixed that by eliminating the DVD drive and moving the SD slot to the back of the computer.  Does anyone seriously believe that having a SD slot behind a 27" monitor is convenient?

Beyond these hardware design issues, I am convinced that Apple has forgotten what made the Mac great.  I have used Macs because they made my computing life easier.  Increasingly I find that not to be the case.  I think Apple's decision to mess with the "Save As" command might go down as one of the dummer decisions in the history of computing.  As a writer, I cannot imagine what they were thinking.  I am still smarting from the more recent versions of iPhoto abandoning the elegant return to the library command of the "Escape" key.  Now I have to hit a button with my mouse.

Perhaps the final proof for me in Apple's quest to make their user interface less useful is the change that they have made to their Preview app when opening a PDF.  If you remember from Mac OS X Lion, you could easily mail a PDF from the menu.  If you have migrated to Mac OS X Mountain Lion, you will find that the option to mail a PDF from the menu has disappeared.  Unfortunately mailing a PDF directly was one of my favorite Apple shortcuts.

Adding to the insult is that one of my favorite apps, Pixelmator, has obviously "downgraded" their app by replacing the "Save As" command. If has gotten to the point that I am afraid to upgrade apps because "Save As" will disappear.

While some including my Canadian friends at McLean's are worried about "skeuomorphism" and Apple, I'm more worried about having the best user interface to get my work done.

I'm not sure if Windows 8 or Linux will be the answer, but I am increasingly convinced that Apple will not be part of the solution.  Certainly my very positive experience with Windows 7 has given me the confidence to give Microsoft a shot at my desktop.

For more on my perspective on Apple, check out my book, The Pomme Company.

If you are looking for perspective on my recent comments on Tim Cook, try my post, Sometimes words get twisted or the post that I did on April 27, 2012, Tim Cook, the right person for Apple's evolution?. The last six months don't give me a lot of confidence in Apple's direction.

 

What would it be like to work at Apple?

If you have ever wondered what it would be like to work at Apple in sales, my book, the Pomme Company, is a good place to start. Actually some current and former Apple employees think my book should be required reading for people hoping to work at Apple. My long history with Apple gives me a rather unique perspective.

There is no question that Apple is now a computer electronics powerhouse. Questions have been asked about the labor practices of Chinese companies used by Apple and other electronics companies. However, few people have thought to look stateside at the business culture within Apple.  It is actually not a very pretty picture.

That Apple has risen to the top is unquestionable.  Whether Apple will stay in its current position is more of an open question especially to those of us who have lived inside the world of Cupertino.

Creating great products is one thing.  Building a sustainable business culture that can continue to turn out great products is another thing.  Just ask Sony how difficult that is.

I would argue there are plenty of signs that the Apple of today is not the Apple of a few years ago.  I continue to be frustrated by Apple's user interface changes.  I thoroughly dislike the "Save as" changes implemented in Mountain Lion.  The dumbing down of iPhoto is a depressing subject for me.  While I am not an iPhone user, I can understand the frustration of paying a premium price for something, and then finding out that you don't have a wonderful experience with an app like maps on the iPhone.

In October of 2012, I purchased an I5 iMac.  I watched as it suffered through "Slow Snow Leopard" problem and then as I finally had to move all the data from the drive and format it.  It was the first time in 28 years of using Macs that I have had to move my data and reformat a drive.  I've had to reinstall system software plenty of times, but I have never had an Apple operating system destroy my drive.

There is no question in my mind that Windows 7 is more consistent and reliable than Apple's current operating system.  I use Mountain Lion on my iMac and Windows 7 on my Lenovo laptop on a daily basis.  Windows 7 just runs better.  If I could get Fetch, Coda, and RapidWeaver on Windows, I would likely abandon the Mac platform in spite of my long history with Apple products dating backing thirty years to 1982.

As I state in my book, Apple likely no longer has sophisticated users on their radar.  They are now more interested in casual consumer users.  Demanding users who expect a consistent user interface which enhances their productivity are on the back burner at Apple.  I challenge anyone to use an old version of iPhoto and tell me that the current version works as well.

Just the fact that you can no longer hit the escape key to move back to the full library is a huge disadvantage. As ugly as the Picasa user interface is, it works far better than iPhoto.

Then there is Apple's multiple attempts to figure out the cloud.  Certainly if you want to selectively share photos from your computer, Apple's cloud solution is not even on the radar when it comes to the best ways to do it.  Picasa web albums, Dropbox, and even Microsoft's Skydrive with Portfolio work far better than iCloud.

That Apple's popularity is at its peak when the quality of some of its products is suspect is a function of our society.  People want to be cool and Apple's products have the image of cool.  Certainly the Apple iPhone redefined the world of the smart-phone.

Clearly though if maps are important to you as they are to me, an Apple iPhone is no longer the best choice.

However, the question that remains unanswered is whether or not the unsustainable Apple business culture is at the root of these Apple products which have lost their luster.

At the end of my book I mention that my next computer product might be Microsoft's new Surface product.  An interesting side note to this is that one of the Surface engineers used to work as a student rep for us at Va. Tech.  I think my team paid for his airfare to California while he was an intern at Apple.

He got offered a job at Apple and another one at Microsoft.  He took the job at Microsoft because he was unimpressed with the culture inside of Apple.  I know from talking to him that he still believes that he made the right decision.

I'm going to watch with interest to see if the Surface product might be the one that brings Microsoft back into the game. 

At the same time, I have pretty well given up hope for a new MacMini from Apple.

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.

Tim Cook, the right person for Apple's evolution?

New products have been the heart and soul of Apple for most of its history.  The recent comments by Forrester Research chief executive George Colony have received a lot of discussion. 

It is easy to jump on the bandwagon that Apple will decline without that next great thing and the vision of Steve Jobs.

I would disagree with Colony's analysis for a number of reasons.  My first thought is that it is impossible for any company, even an Apple, to turn out hit after hit. Setting the expectation that this is the only way Apple can be a great company is to consign Apple to a future which won't be very bright.

The Apple of today is really the result of three straight home-runs by Steve Jobs, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad.  The Apple of tomorrow does not have to be defined by products that break the mold every time.

There is no guarantee that even if Steve left Apple with that next great thing that it will be another product hit.  Despite what has come to be popular wisdom, even Steve had some less than successful products.  You might want to remember back to Steve's wonderfully designed PowerMac G4 Cube for just one example.

Tim Cook might be the person who finally turns Apple into an adult company.  It doesn't have to be a company that declines like Sony has.

I have already heard some thoughts from Tim which indicate that he might be right for this moment in Apple's history.  His comments on the convergence of tablets and laptops are on the money.  I just hope he is strong enough to keep Apple from making its OS X operating system look too much like iOS for the wrong reasons.

Apple has a tremendous amount of momentum, and there is plenty that can be done to grow Apple's business.  Despite what the technology press and analysts would have us believe, computers besides tablets are not dead.  There are plenty of people who will be using laptops and desktops for years to come.

Just as Microsoft is envious of Apple's share of the smart phone and tablet markets, Apple should be eyeing the huge numbers of computers that still ship with Windows around the world.  As the world of technology matures, finding new markets with that next great product might be beyond any company's ability.

However, getting beyond a 10% market share in the world of computers could be within the grasp of a Tim Cook led Apple.  One of the weaknesses that I saw in the leadership of Steve when I was at Apple was the ease with which a market or a product could be sentenced to a slow death as resources were drawn to that next great thing.

My experience with Tim Cook showed me someone who is willing to tinker with things until he gets them right.  It happens to be one of the things that I have admired about Microsoft.  That patient ability to keep working on product until it meets customer needs is what has kept Microsoft alive and still making money.

So what would I like to see Apple do to begin its journey to sustainable growth?

Obviously Apple has to keep churning out new iPhones and iPads, but Apple needs to resist the temptation to load them up with features that distract from their core functionality.  You can make something better without feature creep.  That is part of Steve that Apple needs to keep in the minds of its product designers.

At the same time, Apple needs to focus substantial resources towards making OS X the absolute best operating system for computers on the planet.  At one time it was.  It no longer is the best.  There are things that Windows 7 does better, and I find Windows 7 is more reliable.  Apple should not make OS X look like iOS just for the sake of doing it.  If there are good reasons fine, but don't mess more things up like we have already seen in recent updates to iPhoto.

Apple should not depend on Microsoft screwing up with Windows 8.

Next Apple absolutely must focus on style with reliability.  I should not be sitting here saying that my last three Mac laptops are dead while my last three Windows laptops are still running.  There is no reason why Apple cannot deliver its absolute drop dead gorgeous products and have them be ones that have spectacular reliability.  You can build a company on reliability and customer satisfaction.  You can lose a company if your products don't stand the test of time.

I really don't care if there is another laptop a little thinner than mine if my laptop lasts five years instead of two.

Next, the world of desktop computers is a wasteland.  The iMac and the Mac Mini have not revolutionized it.  They also haven't taken Apple very far into the world of two digit market share. 

There is a product somewhere between the iMac and the Mac Mini with a feature or two from the Mac Pro that could own the desktop world.  While it might not break completely new ground, it could be a home run for Apple.

Things will have to gradually change at Apple under Tim Cook's leadership for all this to happen, but I think it is very possible that Apple has not yet seen its peak.  Maybe the stock won't be as high, but the company could find a spot in the list of companies who have survived the loss of their visionary leader.

It would be good for all of us consumers of technology if Apple could not only survive but thrive.  I really couldn't care less if Apple comes out with a television, but I would be really ecstatic if Apple re-invented the desktop computer and delivered it with the world's greatest operating system.

There are lot of challengs out there for Apple. Android and Amazon will be fierce competitors, but Apple already has a lot going for it and should not face the decline that so many expect.

With that I am back to enjoying spring as it continues to unfold here along the stunning waters of North Carolina's coast.  With warming weather I plan to be back out in my kayak and anchored on the oyster rocks once again.

 

 

 

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.