Applepeels

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.

 

 

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.

 

A Mac user & Windows 7 on an Intel i7 laptop

Sometimes when you use a product that nearly drives you crazy, you wonder if the vendor can ever get back your business.  I would have to say that Vista was the product that almost caused me to give up on Microsoft.  I had battles with my Vista laptop from the day I brought it home until the days before I replaced it with a shiny new HP Pavilion laptop powered by Intel's new i7 processor.

During this whole time my white Intel based MacBook with OS X stood tall.  For the first year of my life with Vista, my MacBook was always in my backpack. When the Vista laptop would have trouble booting, I would reach over and grab my MacBook and often find out what I needed before Vista recovered.

Still I have to give Microsoft credit, they slugged away at Vista and made some huge improvements to it. However, even with the changes, Vista is nowhere close to OS X.  When Snow Leopard shipped, I installed it on MacBook, and really saw little improvement other than some disk space that I recovered.  Eventually Vista got to the point that I did not have to carry my MacBook as a backup.

To be fair, some of the problems that I had with Vista might have been caused by having a laptop that was limited to two gigs of ram.  However, I did not think that was a problem when I bought it since my MacBook only had two gigs of ram.

I am a hardware junkie who pays attention to processor families, and when Intel announced their new i-series processors, I decided that my wife and I would get some new laptops.  Her 12" aluminum PowerBook was ancient and starting to make some strange noises.  In addition to a next generation processor, I wanted some more hard drive space, a quieter laptop, and again I was after a 15" screen that would be friendly to my old eyes.

My wife's system was the priority, and I was willing to buy her one of the new unibody MacBooks but only if Apple would come out with the new processors.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I remember one of Apple's best reasons for switching to Intel was so that Apple customers would not have to wait for the latest and greatest processors. So I wonder what the excuse is now that IBM cannot be blamed for not shipping processors on time?

When I started seeing Windows machines with i-series processors in Staples stores, I questioned my Apple friends who seemed surprised that these systems were actually shipping.   As is always the case, the Apple folks had no idea when there would be new Apple laptop systems.

When Staples announced a sale where I could end up with a 14" i5 laptop for my wife and a 15" i7 laptop for me for a total cost of a couple of hundred dollars under the price of one 15" MacBook Pro with an outdated processor, I decided to go for it.  For those interested the total price for the two laptops before taxes will be $1549 after getting a $100 cash back rebate.  I will also get a rebate back from my credit card and some coupons from Staples.  My cost for the two machines will be under $1,500 before taxes.

We picked the two machines up on Tuesday night, and I have been working when I have time at getting them both up and going.  It took just a few minutes to get both machines out of the box and hooked to our Airport wireless network.  Windows 7 is a huge improvement in this regard.

Applying updates and loading software has taken a little time but it has not been onerous.  Of course, it is not as easy as with a Mac, but to be fair I did not even try the Windows migration assistant. I did not want all of the software on my old machine (particularly Outlook), and I was curious if I would run into any hurdles that might be a problem for others.  My wife's system is a different story since she is going from a Mac to Windows.

Before I did anything, I went to Microsoft's web site and installed their free security suite which lets me ignore Norton.  That is also a new benefit in the Windows world.

Then I used Internet Explorer to download and install Firefox.  Then with Firefox, I downloaded and installed Thunderbird 3.  I used one of my USB memory sticks to bring my addresses over from Thunderbird. Then it just took a few minutes to set up my six email accounts. Five of them are IMAP so getting my mail going was no big problem.  At the same time I brought over the certificate that I use for signing and encrypting mail on one of my accounts.

Bookmarks were not a big deal, I sent myself an email with the dozen that I need. I could have used another method, but I just wanted to bring over a few bookmarks.   I then installed MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007.  Then I downloaded Picasa for my pictures and Google Chrome which I use sometimes.  During all of this I installed Flash and approved an automatic Java update. Before I went to bed that evening I started both systems on their MS updates.

By the next morning, all I had to do on my system was to install TweetDeck and get some printers going. My Brother 5250DN required downloading a driver, but the installation went flawlessly and even duplex printing worked without a problem.  The drivers for my HP6100 series printer came with Windows 7. It also worked fine the first time.  I finally installed the finicky NC real estate software that I use.

Then I brought over all of my data and the library of pictures that I wanted with an external USB drive.  The final pieces of software were SnagIt and CutePDF writer which is a free piece of software that lets me print PDFs from any application just like a Mac does out of a box.

All of this probably took me about three hours, and all I have left to do is put Thunderbird on my wife's system and install her printers.  I am not looking forward to getting her Mac address book into Thunderbird but fortunately she just has a relatively small number of email buddies.  Her two email accounts are both IMAP, so I might just go through her emails and use Thunderbird's add address feature.

I actually took my new laptop to work the afternoon after I picked it up.  The only problem that I uncovered was the lack of a Windows 7 driver for the old Konica-Minolta printer in our office.  It might just take a little more looking, but it is not a huge issue for me, since my Macs did not work on it anyway.

To be very honest, I have found Windows 7 to be an immensely pleasing surprise.  It is stable, fast, and enough Mac-like that I doubt that my wife will have any problems using it.

I am truly amazed at the progress which has been made.  My new laptop wakes from sleep very quickly.  In two days of using the two machines, there has been no crash or system hang.  Windows 7 has worked flawlessly.

My new laptop is so quiet that I can once again hear the tapping of my keys.  It is very fast, and so far I am exceptionally pleased with it.  Even creating the two Windows 7 recovery disks was a piece of cake.

I love the Mac-like Windows 7 task bar at the bottom of the screen.  The little rectangle on the right side of the task bar that toggles to the desktop is easier than a keyboard combination.

As much as I love Macs, I would have a very hard time recommending that someone currently shopping for a laptop buy a Mac.  If you use your laptop for a long time like my wife, it would be a crime to spend your money on a last generation processor when you can get the newest processors for much less.

Windows 7 has really closed the gap with OSX.  It is an impressive operating system.  I think Windows 7 will certainly help Microsoft reputation in the world of operating systems.

On another note I recently signed up for Microsoft's free Office Live workspace. I installed a piece of software that lets me easily save a document that I have created using one of Microsoft's desktop applications to the free online storage.  It is a nice bonus, and the price is right.

Microsoft still does some interesting things, and I suspect Windows 7 and aggressively priced hardware are going to go a long way towards protecting Microsoft's base of users.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes Apple to come out with their own i-series laptops.  Even then I seriously doubt that you will see an i7 processor from Apple with a 15" LED screen for under $900.  My bet is that the only i-7 laptop from Apple will be a top of the line PowerBook with a 17" screen. 

I can remember the days when Mac laptops were great values.

In the world of today's laptops, I think that day is long gone, and I am sad to say that.

While lots of folks might be excited about placing an order for their iPad,  I am pretty excited at the great technology that I got in my new HP i7 laptop.  I suspect it will be able to handle my computing needs for a long time, and it came at a very reasonable price.

I will be providing more updates as I get more familiar with the machines. I am sure there will be glitches, but right now I am a very happy customer, and I am enjoying my new computer which is functioning perfectly.

The warm glow is enough to give me some spring beach dreams.

Is a Windows Machine Less Expensive than an iMac?

When everyone gathered for Thanksgiving, I shared the victory of my college friend buying a Mac Mini instead of a new Windows 7 box.  As is normal for our family of technology users, my story brought a yawn.

However, later my son shared with his mom that my eldest daughter was thinking about replacing her aging white half moon iMac with a Windows box.  She has been using Windows stuff at work for nine years, but she has always had a Mac at home.

It is always interesting how the information comes back to you, but that is another story.  My son also said his sister was considering Windows mainly to save some dollars. 

My initial thought was that she might save four or five hundred dollars if she bought a Windows box.  It ended up that I was wrong.

Being the shy dad that I am, the next time I got some time with my daughter I asked her what she wanted to do with her new computer when she got it.  The response was that she mostly wanted it for email, browsing, and to work with photos.

That was the opening that I had hoped to find.  I told her that I used both my HP laptop with Vista and my Macs for photos.  My conclusion after comparing them for two years was that Picassa on Windows was the only good low end product, but that it did not match the feature set or ease of use of iPhoto.

On another level, I argued that the integration between iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, and iDVD is just not there on the Windows machines.  I even told her that she could expect to spend a couple of hundred dollars adding program functionality to the PC that was included on the Mac.  Based on my experience much of it is not as good as the included Mac software.

I also pointed out that iPhoto can have the same integration with Picassa Web Albums that Picasa does on Windows.  I did not want to confuse the issue by mentioning  Picassa on the Mac.

I did mention that some good web tools are built into iPhoto and that additional excellent web tools like RapidWeaver are available for the Mac while I have been unable to find something as good or inexpensive in the Windows world.

On top of that I pointed out that at least once a week something hangs up on my Windows Vista machines which I told her I suspected was not that much different than a Windows 7 machine.

Finally I mentioned that she should factor in the yearly costs of Virus protection on Windows.

Still I told her I would look into Mac pricing and compare it to Windows pricing.

I went to the Dell website and put together a system configuration (PDF file) that was based on one of their Studio Slim Desktops.  The only challenge that I had was figuring out the monitors, and I eventually just gave up and went with a 22" one.

I never could determine which monitors had LED back-lighting like the iMac.

Anyway the base level iMac with MS Office Student came out to $1328.95.

The Dell box came out to $1156, but according to my son, I probably did not have an equivalent monitor on the Dell.

With the difference at retail being $172.95 and the Dell monitor likely not as good as the Mac's, my daughter has pretty well decided to stick with a Mac.

I closed my investigation email to her with a reminder of how easy it is to migrate from one Mac to another.  She said she would check at the Apple Store to see if they had the right kind of Firewire cable.

Once again I am sure you could get a PC that costs under $500, but I seriously doubt that my daughter would be happy with it.  She wants something that will last as long as her white half moon iMac did.

That is about it from North Carolina's Southern Outer Banks on this rainy day which will not change my mind about how great a place this is.

Ten months into my life with Vista & Apple's OS X

It was October 23, 2007 when I bought my Vista laptop. I was faced with a business requirement of Internet Explorer on Windows and some forms that required PC based programs.  Mainly due to the small screen on my MacBook, a need for more storage and a tight budget, I decided to purchase a Windows laptop instead of a Mac laptop with a 15" screen or use one of the Windows solutions on a Mac.

I have done a couple of posts along the way detailing my journey, The continuing saga of a Mac guy in Vista land and A Mac user's conclusion that Vista is a quagmire.

Now ten months and many Windows updates later, I have a better perspective on the Windows world.  My Vista laptop works well most of the time.  It is hobbled by being limited to 2 gigs of ram.  I am convinced that Vista probably needs four gigs of ram to function well.

The updates have finally fixed most of the serious problems that I had with Vista.  Some of the real estate specific software that I use with the system still has problems with Vista.  The problems are minor, and there are workarounds, but they are still irritating problems.

My Vista machine still has a problem switching from our work wireless network to my home wireless network without flipping out the screen resolution and requiring a reboot.

In the meantime, I have upgraded to Leopard on my G5 and on my MacBook.  The installations went well, but I wouldn't call them flawless.  Dreamweaver will eventually require an upgrade if I want to continue using it.

However, I have no complaints about Leopard at this point.  It seems to work and even work well in the 1.5 gigs of ram that I have in my MacBook.

During any given day, I spend some time with XP, OSX, Vista, and also Linux.  My LInux is running on a Zonbu system which is the most trouble free of all my systems.  If my computing needs were simpler, that would be my main machine.

I should also mention that the Zonbu shares a monitor with my aging Dell Dimension which still runs Windows XP.  Some update along the way killed the KVM switch that I have, but I now function with just one of those machines running at a time.  With the workaround on the real estate software, I rarely need to slip back to XP now.  When I do, I find it snappier than my Vista system.

Whenever I pull duty shifts at our real estate office, I am in front of one the company's XP desktop machines.  I usually also bring in my Vista laptop and my MacBook which results in having three computers on the desk at one time.

I should also mention that I use Apple's Mail program on my Macs along with a healthy dose of browser driven Gmail on a domain of mine supported by Google.

On my Vista machine I use Outlook after trying both Windows Mail and Thunderbird.

The XP machine uses Thunderbird for mail, and the Xonbu machine is exclusively browser email.

I use iPhoto 08 on my Macs to manage the hundreds of photos that I take weekly.  I have been subscribing to .Mac for years so I am now a MobileMe user and have posted a number of albums. I am hoping to try Aperture this fall.

On the Windows machines, I use Picasa for photos.

I use Google's calendar app.  It is synced to Outlook on my PC but it also beeps me before an appointment by calling my cell phone which is not an iPhone.  The Google calendar also goes to iCal but i use iCal more for keeping track of the tides than anything else.

I am no longer a big spreadsheet user, but I use the PowerPC version of MS Office on my Macs and the latest version of Office on the Vista machine and Office 97 on the XP box.  Open Office is on the Zonbu machine and occasionally get used.  I periodically slip into a NeoOffice mode where it becomes my office suite of choice.

I am a Firefox 3.x user except on the Zonbu machine which is at version 2.0,0.12 or something like that.

I do not like the latest versions of Internet Explorer and while I keep trying to like Safari, it just doesn't work as well for blogging as Firefox does.

Most of my writing is done in a browser window.

I also use Pages, Adobe InDesign, and Photoshop on the Macs.

One of my favorite applications on the Windows' machines is Snaggit.

I tried doing my website work on Windows and never found a product as compelling or inexpensive as RapidWeaver.  The latest version of RapidWeaver has added the functionality to have Google Analytics code added on the page so I mostly can ignore Dreamweaver at this point.

So what are my conclusions ten months into my Vista journey.

1. The hardware requirements for Vista are severely understated
2. Given the hardware that I have, Vista is much slower than OS X, the version doesn't matter.
3. Outlook is a clunky piece of software, it takes far too long to open an email.
4. Contact management might be a little better integrated in Outlook, but it is not worth the pain.
5. The time to wake from sleep is unacceptable on my Vista laptop when compared to the MacBook's almost instant on mode.
6. I find that I am forced into conforming to ways that make my Vista laptop work better, they are not necessarily how I want to work.
7. I have not been impacted by a single virus or malicious piece of software.  My system seems to devote a lot of resources to making sure that remains the case.
8. While the Mac sometimes doesn't tell me enough about what is happening, the Vista machine almost always tells me more than I want to know and requires more input than I want to give.
9. In spite of buying a HP AIO Printer/Scanner/Fax machine, I find that it works better using VueScan with the Mac than it does using the HP software either with the Mac or the HP laptop.  I haven't taken the time to try VueScan on the Windows or Linux boxes.
10. There are still people out there who write to IE on Windows.  I am surprised but I recently started writing a blog for our company and was told that I was the first administrative user who used something other than IE.  They had to rewrite some stuff so I could use Firefox.

Would I buy another Windows PC?  I am tempted to say not until hell freezes over, but I have to face the reality that Apple has made a conscious decision to keep their hardware prices high.

Before I get the inevitable Apple makes better hardware comments, I worked for Apple for twenty years so I know Apple is capable of making great hardware and not so great hardware.

Since I left Apple in the summer of 2004, I have bought seven computers.  Three of them are Macs, two are from Dell, one from HP, and one from Zonbu.  As to hardware, the Macs have been the systems with the hardware problems.  I have a very nice 15" Aluminum Powerbook with a bad lower memory slot and a bad ribbon video cable.  My G5 had some early memory problems which required multiple tries before the memory worked.  It also had to have its hard drive replaced.  The MacBook had to be sent back to the factory because of discoloring and the inability to take a charge.

None of the Windows machines or the Zonbu have had any hardware problems. The Dell laptop which I have and which is a dual boot Ubuntu Linux system was dragged around college for a couple of years by my daughter and still managed to survive.

Logically this would drive me to wanting to run OSX on generic hardware, but I am not interested in the pain of staying ahead of the Apple software police.

The combination of iPhoto and Rapidweaver along with continuing support from Firefox for the Mac platform will probably make certain that my next machine is a Mac even if I do have to pay through the nose.

I am actually still a desktop guy who likes to work with relatively large screens so I might bite the bullet and buy a new iMac the next time around.

My experience with Windows has taught me that there is certainly a good reason to have a Windows centric IT Department.  I know the IT support guy in our company stays busy.  However, based on the problems that the few of us with Vista have experienced, I am not surprised that companies including Intel are holding off on pushing Vista through their enterprises.

As I see some of my colleagues fighting such basic things as resizing pictures, scanning documents, or creating PDFs, I am amazed at how much aggravation people will take before they have had enough and are willing to make a fundamental change to another operating system.

I have recently used Apple's new iMovie 08 and while I initially questioned the changes, after lots of work I have concluded it works better for what I need to do than the previous version.  However, I have to wonder how many user interface guidelines you can violate in one package?

The bottom line is that if you are an individual working with lots of photos, maintaining a number of websites, and publishing some brochures, you are probably better off with a Mac.  My guess is that factoring in software costs, the Mac is pretty close in price at least at the iMac level.

I credit part of the success of my Coastal North Carolina website to the Mac and of course Rapidweaver.

Right now it is a toss-up on whether MobileMe Gallery is a better solution than slideshows which I do with Rapidweaver.  My son who sits on a lot of bandwidth in Northern Virginia complains that the MobileMe albums are often very slow while the ones on my outsourced server are zippy.

You can make a judgment call yourself.  This MobileMe slide show, Recent Favorites, has very similar pictures to my Rapidweaver slide show, Coastal Carolina Collection, which sits on a Hostway server in a site that I maintain.

MobileMe is definitely easier to create, but it might not be the best long term solution.

In fact that about sums up the whole article.  The Mac is definitely easier and actually allows for more flexibility in the way I work, but I am not sure it will always be the answer.

Right now it is my platform of choice, but I will continue to monitor the battlefield.  As online platforms mature, the innovation might get to the point where I can use some of the blogging platforms to cover my main web needs.

I already use Typepad where my View from the Mountain is hosted, Blogger for my Ocracoke Waves, Squaresapce for another Ocracokewaves site, and Wordpress for a final Ocracokewaves.  They give me a pretty good taste of where the technology is headed.  Of course I also use iWeb for another coastal presence, but it certainly isn't in the same class as the others when it comes to flexibility and features.  It is an exception to the value equation in ny Mac universe.

Overall the Mac adds value to what I do whether it is creating a website , working with a high definition movie, creating a flyer, or printing pictures of our grand daughter on our new portable Canon Pixma 320 printer.

As long as that value is a reasonable tariff, I will stay on the Mac platform.  I will complain about the high prices, but I do not see where else I could go.

Finally I would consider getting an Apple iPhone but the battery and dropped connections worry me somewhat.  I would not necessarily lay all of the dropped calls in Apple's lap.  My wife has a 3G Nokia phone from AT&T.  We rarely have a phone call when her phone doesn't drop me.  That leads me to question the AT&T network.  I think that I will wait and see if the iPhone get another revision and perhaps another network.  My contract isn't up until January anyway.

A Mac user's conclusion that Vista is a quagmire

I am six months into my Vista experience.  Today I reached the tipping point.  While I have to continue using it, I am going to say flat out that Vista is not worth the effort.

My efforts at liking Vista go far beyond what I would normally do for any piece of software.  I have used Vista ever day for over the last six months.   I have let Microsoft do whatever it wanted to do to my system through automatic updates.

I have intervened once and that was only when the wireless networking on the my Vista HP laptop was so bad that I was ready to throw it into the water behind the house.  I searched out some new drivers for my wireless card.  That improved wireless performance to the point where the system became usable.

Still I struggled through the stupid situation where every time I put the system to sleep I had to deal with a distorted screen once the system wakes from sleep.  The only solution seemed to be rebooting the laptop. Any Vista user can tell you that takes far more time than any computer in recent memory.

My guess and the guess of others is that I have graphics driver issue.  So I went to the nVidia website.  After I finally got it to figure out what system I was using, I was told that I could only get driver updates from HP.com.

When I got to HP.com, I found that there were over 40 systems with the name of HP Pavilion dv6000.  So I looked on the back and found another model number HP dv6451.us.   I made a mistake typing and put "Pavillion dv6451" instead of Pavilion dv6451.  At that point I was told that over 400 products claimed the name.  I finally got the name right only to find out that HP has no recommended driver update.

While I was on HP's site, I decided to see why my system has not been updated to Vista Service Pack 1.  First I found HP Notebook PCs  - Update to Vista SP1 Frequently Asked Questions and then the even more scary HP Notebook PCs  - Precautions to Take Before Updating to Vista Service Pack 1.  After reading that I decided that I did not even want Vista Service Pack 1, but I still wanted to fix my problems with the video.

I have been a little suspicious of HP Update program anyway since it has failed to install updates recently so when I saw this paragraph I decided to roll the dice and see if I could shake things up on my system.

The HP Update utility will check for updated drivers and software, however the older versions of HP Update (v4.000.005.007 or earlier) will not work properly after upgrading to Vista SP1. To install the latest version of HP Update, open the Control Panel and uninstall the older version of HP Update. Then go to the hp.com web site and search for the softpaq SP38202 HP Update and HP Software Update - Critical Security Update (English only).

I uninstalled my HP Update software and managed to get the new version working after a number of tries. When I finally ran the new HP Update, I got a message that no updates were available for my system.

So at this point I was beginning to think there was no hope for the driver update that nVidia hinted that HP might have available for me.

I decided to run Windows Update just for the heck of it.  Windows told me that there were no critical updates available for my system.  However, when I looked in optional updates there was a new graphics driver update for my system.  I installed it, and just gave my system the sleep-wake from sleep test.  Much to my amazement, I no longer have a distorted screen on waking from sleep.  Tomorrow we will see if that was chance or it is really fixed.

One would think that I might be making some type of convoluted progress, but it was just the appearance of progress.  If you have perhaps read my On the eve of Apple's Leopard, I buy a Windows Vista Laptop post, you might remember that the overriding reason for me, a user of Apple products for 26 years, to buy a Vista system was so that I could do real estate forms.

This afternoon I once again needed to send a PDF form to a remote customer so they could renew their listing with me.  Last week I had a problem doing PDFs with the forms package that I had installed to get around the one which had become very flaky on Vista.  An older program seemed to work once I retyped the client's information.  When I tried to do that tonight, I got an error and could not create a PDF. I tried the first program, and it wouldn't work either.

I resorted to the help menu only to get this message. It is amazing to me that Microsoft would not build some sort of mechanism to read old help files.  After all Apple figured out how to run non native software on Intel processors.  I decided that it was time to punt on the two forms packages on my Vista machine.

This was a two page document so I decide to save the file to my Sony USB thumb drive which I have never used in my Windows Vista machine.  I inserted the thumb drive and Vista started searching for a driver.  It actually hung the machine, and I had to reboot.  At that point I decided to print the document to my upstairs office where my old XP machine is.  I did that successfully and entered the information on the real estate forms package on the XP machine.  The PDF file was created successfully, and I emailed it to the client.

I had carried my USB thumb drive up to perform a test.  I stuck it into my Zonbu Linux computer.  I was not surprised when it automatically was able to use the USB drive.  I took this screen snapshot and actually sent it to my Windows Vista box.  First it went as a PNG file.  I tried to upload the image to Typepad.  Typepad didn't recognize it.  So after checking to make sure it had an extension, I went to my Mac and imported it to iPhoto and emailed it again as a JPG file to the Windows Vista machine.  Once again I tried uploading from the Vista machine and Typepad refused to recognize it.

At that point I saved my post as a draft, turned around, and climbed on the stool by my Mac.  I took the same file that had been sent by the Linux box and uploaded it to Typepad without any problems.

While all this might seem like enough to chuck the Windows Vista box, it really isn't the straw that broke the camel's back.  That actually came earlier in the day.

I have multiple email accounts from a variety of providers since I live by email.

This morning I noticed that two of my email accounts were unresponsive.  Since I used to work for the company hosting those accounts, I chatted with their Director of Infrastructure using my Adium instant messenger client.  He admitted they were having "bandwidth" problems.  I did not think much of it as my Mail app on OSX just put those two accounts offline.

Unfortunately I had something to do on my Vista laptop and happened to click my Outlook email client which was running and trying to download messages. Those two unresponsive IMAP accounts hung Outlook completely.

All of this taken together shows me that Microsoft has done a terrible job with Vista.  The Linux from Zonbu works better.  The forms packages that I bought the Vista system to use barely work and certainly do not have the promised functionality. And if two unresponsive email accounts are going to lock up my email package, I need another email package.

The amount of lost productivity due to Vista is amazing.  Now there are likely people out there whose Vista systems work perfectly for them.  Mine doesn't.  It was a brand new machine, and is only six months old.  While I am getting a few problems fixed, worse ones are cropping up.  The machine is scanned regularly, and the worst thing that has ever shown up is one tracking cookie.

It all boils down to this. Windows is a time sink. This morning we were having a debriefing on a promotion that our company recently did.  Someone happened to mention that it would have been a better promotion if he had been able to get to his files off his crashed Windows machine.  Apparently our support person has been trying to recover them for a couple of weeks.

I just smiled to myself since the head of our company had told me that the flyer I produced recently was one of the best he had seen.  It had taken less than an hour on Pages.

It is clear to me that if you are an independent contractor like I am, you might have to use Windows for some Windows specific things, but if you are trying to produce high quality work with a minimum effort,  a Mac is the only way to go.

Otherwise consider yourself in the never ending quagmire of Vista.

It might be easy to say that the problems with Vista are to be expected since the OS comes from one company and the hardware is thrown together from a variety of companies who have lived in a world where no one has taken responsibility for the user's problems for years.

However, it is not easy to be that Vista user in an environment where you have to support yourself.

It is much easier being a Mac user.  Apple certainly isn't perfect, but using OS X is an order of magnitude better than fighting with Vista.

There lots of things to do here on the Carolina coast that are more fun than trying to use a Vista computer.  Tomorrow, I plan to not torture myself with Vista.  I might even go fishing again.

My mostly Apple workflow

It seems that it might come as a surprise to some readers that I actually spend more time on a Macintosh than I do on a Windows machine. 

When I am not working with clients, I am usually writing or taking pictures.  Both the writing and the pictures help me get clients.

I use the pictures and my words to describe the extraordinary scenery and relaxed life along North Carolina's Southern Outer Banks. 

While I wander from Cape Lookout to Swansboro, I am mostly concerned with the area from Beaufort to Swansboro which happens to be the area most newcomers like.

I have several tools that help me get my work done.  If you have been reading my blog for a while, you probably know that I use my HP Vista laptop to do my real estate forms and access the few real estate sites that require Internet Explorer.

Beyond that I use my Vista laptop for storage of photos which I take every day. The cheap portable storage is one of the reasons that I bought it.  Other than that and SnagIt to make some custom maps with captions for clients, Windows is not my OS of choice.  There are some things that SnagIt does very well and sometimes I wish I had a Mac version.  I cannot say that of Vista.

As a Realtor® I do not take many interior home pictures.  That is typically done by listing agents. I do list properties, but with the whole world already listed, I have found bringing buyers to the area is far more likely to make me successful.

The unique challenge for our area is that it is mostly a secret that has been passed from visitor to visitor by word of mouth.  There are tourism sites that bring lots of people in each year and some of those people decide to stay.

However, there has been little concerted effort to use the web to attract people to the area.  About eighteen months ago, I used Dreamweaver to develop my first Southern Outer Banks site.

Probably six months after that I settled on RapidWeaver as my main web development tool.  My Southern Outer Banks site went through a major renovation and ended up much as it is today.  I might have stayed with Dreamweaver, but it only comes with two licenses, and I use three or four systems.  I also like the the modern templates and reasonable price on RapidWeaver.  I haven't upgraded my Dreamweaver since December 2004 so it may be a totally different beast at this point.

In addition to the main Southern Outer Banks site, there is also a clone of part of the site with somewhat out of sync content and no advertising in order to stay with the rules of City Data forum where I often participate in discussions concerning our area.

There are also a number of feeder sites done with RapidWeaver.   My Carteret County Blog would be one example. 

Processing and choosing the right photos to match my content is key to my efforts.  I use three digital cameras and many days take over 200 photos.  The cameras are a Nikon D50 SLR, a pocket Nikon S9, and Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX2.

As soon as I come in from chasing sunsets and capturing the area scenery, I often download the pictures using Picasa and my HP laptop.  Once that is done I take the same SD memory cards and suck the photos into iPhoto 08 on my Dual G5 which has a couple of large internal hard drives.

If I have some photos that I want to place on the web for individual reference, I usually do that in Photoshop.  This a sample of a sunset on Bogue Sound which I took this past Sunday and put on the web with Photoshop. 

The only adjustments which I do are typically sizing and getting the image back to what my eye remembers that I actually saw.  That's always a challenge but I am pretty good at it, and mostly know just enough Photoshop to get in trouble so I try not to waste a lot of time on that part of the process.

These days I have been very successful at getting images shown during the weather broadcast on one of our local television stations.  I have usually identified those by a quick look in Picasa and will often send them directly from iPhoto with just some basic cropping and sizing.

I will also size a few images to use with my numerous blogs, Ocracokewaves at Blogger, Squarespace, and Wordpress.  I also have to feed my main blog, View from the Mountain and a couple that have sprouted off from it, Once a Reston Resident, and Roanoke with some sea salt.  I also have a real estate blog at Active Rain.

With the exception of the TypePad blogs, all of the other blogs have little photographic quirks which sometimes require some special sizing.

Once I have a few photos that I am happy with, I'll usually pick something to write.  As you can tell I rarely add a photo to Applepeels, but I seem to require it before I can write for the others.

I do almost all my writing for the blogs in Firefox using whatever tools the blog software offers.  Of course my main Southern Outer Banks site and Carteret County Blog are written directly in RapidWeaver.

Usually after finishing the writing in RapidWeaver, I export the site changes to a folder and upload using Fetch.  There are a few pages that I watch with Google Analytics so once I have uploaded with Fetch, I open the files from the server with Dreamweaver and insert the correct analytics code in it.  Sometimes I also correct any minor errors with Dreamweaver instead of republishing the whole site.  So far that has worked well.

Sometimes like last night I am working on a slide show.  I use ShutterBug exclusively for doing web slide shows.  Last night I did one of the beach village of Emerald Isle during the winter.  I also took a slide show that I had done in January of a new subdivision, Cannonsgate, and added a link to active MLS listings.

The slide shows like those and the ones I did of Swansboro in December or boating last summer help people figure out if this area is right for them.

Sometime I also write for one of the local magazines or create other articles.  Normally I will use the writing tool in GoogleApps so I can access the files from anywhere.  I am working on a book in my "spare time." I typically slip into Nisus Writer for that.  I have been trying to use NeoOffice more and more since I find it very comfortable.

In addition to using the pictures for the blogs, I also use them for postcards which I use both as something to mail and as a business card.  About once every six months, I have 1,000 postcards printed professionally using five or six different local images.  I place those in local restaurants and hand them out at shows.  I use InDesign CS to create the postcards.  I do print some small batches on my HP Photosmart 6180.

I have a couple of mailing lists that I manage using Filemaker.  I use a Dymo LabelWriter Turbo 400 for most of my client letters.  When I do the small batches of postcards, I hand address and write the message with a fountain pen.

Once in a while I will do a mail merge letter for some potential clients.  Then I am stuck using MS Word.

About once a quarter for a week or two I will spent twenty minutes each morning collecting statistics from all my spots where I have an online presence.  I total up how many people touch my websites.  I use Excel and often post a graph on the web that I share with our sales management.  It produces a hard number which validates that my web traffic continues to grow.

In addition to the blogs that I mentioned, I play with a Mac one done with iWeb.  It suffers the most from inattention because I have to lug around over 50 megs of files from one system to another. Mostly I just work on it from one spot. Unfortunately that just doesn't work for me.

I also use Flickr uploader to get my photos to my Flickr site.  In spite of the ease of sending the photos directly from Picasa to my Picasa Web Albums, I will often use a web tool and send them from my Mac.

While I have toyed with Microsoft's new web authoring tool which I like, I mostly stick with Dreamweaver for maintenance on my homepage and my main photography page. 

I have created a few special pages like this one on the White Oak River and this area photo archive.  I have done all those in RapidWeaver which I find to be a very capable tool.

While I do write some of my posts on my Windows machine, it has more to do with disliking the trackpad, screen, and keyboard on my MacBook than it does with any love of Vista on my HP.  The HP just has a better keyboard, trackpad, and a very readable 15" inch screen.

When I have a choice, I will write from my Mac desktop.  This post has been done on my Mac desktop.  Part of that is because it is in my office where it is quieter.  I have a XP desktop and my Zonbu system both in the same office so I could and do use them once in a while, but mostly I use my Mac desktop.

I also use VueScan to scan some documents and photos from my Mac.  It works very well hooked up by USB to my HP6180.

Once in a while I will do an iMovie, a podcast, or use iDVD.  I haven't used them nearly as much as I though I would, but I wouldn't even attempt the same thing on my Windows or Linux boxes.  I have one flyer that I have done in Pages, and I probably would use Pages again for the same type of thing.

I have given up loading photos onto my Linux machine since I have to use a cable plugged from the camera into the computer to get things to work.  I do like to write on my Zonbu since it is so quiet with no moving parts and the fancy keyboard that I bought for it.

I use Google calendar so it get updated from whatever computer I use. It does sync with Outlook.  I do use iCal to grab tide tables which are pretty important for a guy who loves to fish and always has his boat ready to go.

As far as email, I use Apple's Mail app, Outlook, and Gmail.  I like a few things in Outlook, but I don't ever see myself becoming addicted to it.  It's too flaky for my taste. Email is just email, and I will use whatever I need in order to access it.  I have a couple of my IMAP accounts with Webmail.us which has become Mailtrust.  They have a very good webmail interface and when I worked there I got used to it so dropping into that is not a problem.

So while I might enjoy the technical challenge of having to live in a Windows world, using a Mac is like coming home.  I get the same feeling when I work on my Mac as I do when I spend some time in my kayak.  Appropriately I did my most recent kayak photo album using .Mac.

So the next time you read one of my post about my struggles on Windows, remember I am a Mac user and have been using Apple products for almost 26 years continuously.

I also would recommend a Mac to anyone who does what I do.  Though I have had my share of Mac laptop problems, my Mac desktops have mostly been models of reliability.

Also know that if the real estate market turns around, maybe I will get far enough ahead that I can hire someone to do my real estate forms on their Windows machine.

That way someone else can worry about Vista.  Did I tell you about my forms package crashing three times on Saturday night?  Surely people can build better software than that.

A Vista perspective from a Mac user

Actually I like to think that I am more than just a Mac user.  I have been using Windows XP for over four years, and Linux for nearly the same amount of time.  I have also seen operating systems come and go since 1982 when I got my first Apple II+.

First off I suspect that Microsoft will work hard and eventually get Vista to be the operating of choice for most of the planet.  The reason that it will have that honor has more to do with inertia than engineering prowess.

The inertia comes from two sources, Apple and end users.  People do not like to get out of their computing comfort zone, and switching operating systems is a sure way to get a few headaches no matter how good the new system is.

After a few months of using Vista, I have some opinions on the product. 

It is almost deadly slow when it comes to booting, shutting down, and waking from sleep.  A Powerbook running OS X is an instant on machine compared to a Vista machine.

Second wireless networking on Vista is a work in progress.  While I will admit that my Airport Express network needs replacing, a number of laptops visiting us including multiple XP ones have had no trouble using it.

in the mornings I often get to the point of having to reboot my Vista laptop before it will connect to the wireless network.  In its defense, I do not have that problem at our office or at our other home which has a standard Airport network.

I have found Outlook to be a fairly capable email client, but it also is slow and somewhat prone to stopping if I click once too many times.

I have seen far fewer 'Firefox has stopped working" problems on Vista than I do on the Mac.  I still do not like Internet Explorer though the 64 bit version seems fast.

I also find Google Desktop search integrated into Outlook by far the most productive search engine that I have used.  I like Google Desktop search better than Apple's Spotlight, but I am only speaking from OS 10.4 Tiger experience.  I have not used Leopard (OS X 10.5).

Google Desktop as a side panel hangs regularly on Vista usually after the machine awakes from sleep.

I have had far fewer problems than I anticipated using Vista to hook up the wide variety of printers that I have access to at home and work.

I am not particularly fond of Windows Live Messenger, and I try to use Pidgin when chatting.  I find that I keep wishing for Adium on Windows.

I have the latest version of Microsoft's Office Suite.  I have had little trouble with it, and it seems to do whatever job that I throw at it.  Here I have to admit that I am no longer someone who is a power office suite user.  I have used Excel more than the other applications.  The new user interface took some getting used to, but now I find it more productive.

I also miss Fetch, the FTP Client that I use on the Mac.  I use FileZilla but it is not as nice as Fetch.

One of the best applications that I have found on Vista is SnagIt which does screen capture and a lot more.  I certainly do not mind paying for it.

On Vista I miss the ability to turn something into a PDF from any application at the operating system level.  I think it is a huge feature advantage for OS X.

In general most of the applications done for Vista do not look as good as Mac applications.  However, there is so much flexibility in Windows, that you can build a very productive work if sometimes painful work flow.

The combination of a built-in photo memory card reader, Picasa and SnagIt do almost everything that I need in the world of graphics.  I find it faster than iPhoto and  Photoshop.

I  have yet to do much web work on my Vista machine.  To be fair, I think I will wait until I have some more time with the Vista products.

So would I recommend Vista as a main operating system to anyone who had other choices?  The answer is probably not.  It just doesn't have the high quality feel that I thought it would after all those years of development.

Vista is not unusable, it is just disappointing.

But I am also disappointed in Apple.  It continues to amaze me that a company with Apple's financial resources and popularity cannot seem to fight its way out of the paper bag of Windows.

Bill and team have done everything possible to hand over the market to Apple, yet Apple does not seem to want the opportunity.  Back when XP was having unbelievable security problems, Apple was so insecure about their own security that they would not market it.

Apple has changed chips, and Macs can run Windows natively and in virtual machines.  Still Apple's market share even in the US is barely half way to double digits.  As we have heard  from some international visitors to Applepeels, Apple is not exactly rolling over the competition selling and supporting computers in other countries.

Apple might have a few bumps with Leopard, but I seriously doubt it is the anything like the pain in the rear that Vista is.  With Vista languishing while waiting for a service pack, the best Apple can do is a few funny commercials.  Even with the best retail chain in the nation and  a stock price that is headed over $200, it looks like the majority of the computing world will remain Windows centric for the foreseeable future.

I guess there is not enough pain in the Windows environment or enough innovation in the Apple world to get consumers moving on their own.  Steve Jobs apparently was serious years ago in his concession to Bill over desktop operating systems.  He certainly does not appear to be interested in winning that war even with his superior weapons.

I would love to see the innovation of the Zonbu computing  model married to the better than anything else user interface of Apple and the nearly unlimited choice of the Intel hardware world.  If you could integrate it into better bandwidth and a choice of server providers that would store and protect our data, we might get people to try something else.

Right now I guess I am stuck with Vista for my real estate world,  and Macs for my website work with whatever computer I am using being the repository for my photos.

I managed to get a batch photos into my Zonbu machine, but I do not see me using it for the 100 photos or more a day that I do until we take another leap in bandwidth.

So maybe Apple will surprise me and take the next leap forward at MacWorld this year.  If it is iPhone II, pardon me if I yawn.

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A Real World Update

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I had to work this afternoon so I lugged my Vista laptop into one of our offices.  The wireless network was down so someone rebooted it.  The Windows XP machine on my desk connects immediately.  The Vista laptop which had successfully connected to this network several times before, cannot see it either before or after the wireless reboot.

So I decide to reboot the Vista machine.  I joke to one of the administrative assistants that the best thing Microsoft can do is to buy OS X from Apple and replace Vista with it.

While my Vista machine is still in the process of rebooting, I pull out my spare computer, a MacBook, and bet that I can be surfing the net before the Vista machine is done booting.

I count out loud and in eight seconds from the time of opening my MacBook, I am surfing the web.

While I am logging into Typepad, the Vista machine finally gets to the point of needing a password for login.  Even with the reboot, I still cannot see the network which the MacBook sees and the Windows XP desktop beside it also sees.

I would be embarrassed in the year 2007 to ship an operating system that cannot reliably and without failure hook to wireless networks.

As I said long ago, Windows, This is nuts.

 

On the eve of Apple's Leopard, I buy a Windows Vista Laptop

It might seem a little strange that someone who has used a Macintosh for over 23 years would buy a Windows laptop just days before another Apple upgrade to OS X.

However, when you consider what I need to get my job done and how much it would cost to do with a Mac, my choice makes a lot of sense.

First it is important to understand that I have not quit using my Macs.  I still have my MacBook and my dual G5 desktop.  My wife is still using her white iMac.

I have been trying hard to survive with my Macs in my real estate career.  Mostly it was working with help from my old Dell at home. The problem came at our office.  We only have two public Windows PCs.  I now have a small office at work, and neither of those PCs are in my office.  On top of that they are usually busy when I need them.

Probably the biggest challenge is that I have actually started selling and listing some properties which means that I really need access to the forms which only are available for Windows machines.  I actually need the electronic forms with me when I call on potential clients.

Having reached that point, I had a couple of options.  I could finally cough up the money for a copy of Windows to run on the Parallels Desktop software I bought last year for my MacBook and move many of my files to an external drive in order to accommodate it. 

Or I could buy a new Mac laptop with Windows and keep my MacBook.

It just didn't make financial sense to buy a Mac laptop with a non OEM copy of Windows.  It was just too expensive.  Besides I have gotten used to working with a Windows machine and a Mac side by side.  I think it makes me more productive.  I could not do that with one machine.

After a $50 rebate my HP system with 160 gig drive and two gigs of ram with Vista Ultimate cost me $849.

It came with a hardware slot for reading SD memory cards which means I now don't have to carry one of my USB devices with me.  It has the lightScribe DVD labeling technology, a webcam, integrated microphone, wireless, Ethernet, firewire, a docking port, and a couple of USB ports.  It has also Microsoft Works pre-installed.

I can also add the latest Home and Student version of Office for $149.  A trial version comes with the system.

Since I have used Windows since the fall of 2004, I already have some favorite software, and some that I know will be required like Norton.  I have added Snagit for screen capture, Firefox for my browser, Picasa2 to handle my pictures, and Google Desktop.

I have already installed Open Office which might negate the need for MS Office, but I'll wait and see on that.

Since I used Adium on the Mac for my chat software, I went with pidgin for Windows.

The biggest challenge has been finding an inexpensive web editor since I didn't want to buy another Dreamweaver license.  I am now looking at Adobe Contribute which it turns out runs on the Mac also. It is in the $149 range. I did my first page with it tonight.

Right now I am using the new Windows Mail, and I haven't decided if I will move to Thunderbird which I use on my Dell.

One of the first benefits was that I got a free license for the real estate forms package.  It installed without any problems.  So far, I have the Windows laptop working on the network at our office and at both our homes so that hasn't turned out to be a challenge.

I have yet to install any printers which is a little more trouble in Windows, but since we already have people using Vista at the office, I doubt I will have any problems.

So far I am pleased with my purchase.  I like the larger screen on the HP and the bigger keyboard.

I don't think Vista is as fast booting as OS X.  I know it certainly does not shut down as quickly.  The dialogs to allow something to happen are a little annoying but not that big a deal.

The only thing that has irritated me so far is that you have to make your own backup system disks.  When I have done that I will report on it.

I also plan to install Linux on this laptop.  I did that on the Dell laptop that my youngest daughter swiped from me a couple of years ago for business classes in college but the wireless was a continuing challenge.  I'll be interested to see if the Linux folks have made any progress in that area.

I'll be interested to see how Leopard does, but I won't be buying it.

As someone in a business that depends on computers I am finally coming to grips with the reality that Apple has yet to figure out how to get those thousands of strange little business applications out there that would make a lot of people make the switch.

I will grant that consumers in increasing numbers are purchasing Macs.  I just don't see the dynamics changing in the business world.  Macs cost more and don't have all the software they need to succeed.

Apple isn't interested in the hard work that it would take both in supporting developers and listening to companies so we'll see how far the consumer boom will carry them.

I'll continue to be one of those Mac consumers whenever I can afford it, but right now I'm happy with my HP laptop.  I also have authorized HP service just a few miles from me.  When I go to buy a new desktop in a year or so, I'll probably be looking at something other than Apple since Cupertino wants well over $2000 for their cheapest real desktop machines.

My favorite feature so far is the slot for reading my SD memory cards from my camera.  I do that a couple of times a day, and it is really nice not to have to keep up with one of the USB readers.

I'm going to try to objectively report on what I find in Vista.  I can tell you right up front the Vista Photo application is no iPhoto, but then again Picasa2 is free and comes close enough.  The Microsoft mail application has a long way to go to match Apple's Mail App, but it does work.

This will be an interesting adventure.  I hope in doing this I can continue the tradition of providing real information about products that I use instead of buying into the hype from either the Mac, Linux, or Windows world.

This was written on the new HP laptop using Firefox and Typepad.  I didn't burst into flames.