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A Response to Sheer Stupidity

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

This blog post by a third grader shouldn’t even warrant a response, but I was so blown away by it (like the Angry Mac Bastards were) that I decided to write up a full point by point response to it as a way to burn off steam and caffeine. I’ve been sick this week and VERY cranky. How I kept myself from vomiting during this exercise I’ll never know. I know that my grammar and punctuation are terrible, but his made my bowels curdle a bit. Here’s my response:

Preliminary Stuff
Kiddo obviously doesn’t realize that Apple and Sony probably use the same contract OEMs to build their hardware: Quanta, Foxconn, Compal, etc. He mocks Apple’s marketing for catering to hipster douches who show off at Starbucks, but says that Sony’s machines are superior to Apple’s in terms of technology and style. I, personally, think that Sony’s computer design language is geared toward the Japanese market in the same way that shit & tentacle porn is geared toward the Japanese market: not many people outside of Japan get it, and those who do are usually a little bit weird.

Maximize Windows
I prefer the resize-to-fit of the Mac OS because it doesn’t waste space on the screen like maximize does on Windows. Personal preference. I also believe that the typical “run maximized” philosophy of Windows negates some of the usefulness of a multi-tasking operating system. Harkens back to the good old DOS days. Overshooting window edges is possible on the Mac and Windows, and the reason you can’t tell if the window is in “big or small mode” is because such modes don’t actually exist.

Window Resizing
I agree that this feature would be useful in some situations on the Mac OS. I don’t use it often in the rare cases I’m using Windows, but it’s kinda handy. I don’t know how Apple could properly integrate it into the user interface paradigm they currently have, but it’s certainly possible.

Switching Programs / Seeing What’s Running
Like on Windows, one can hit Cmd-Tab to see the list of running applications and switch between them, and then if you want to switch between different windows in the app, most developers integrate the Cmd-tilde function to switch between windows in the frontmost app. Much faster than going to the Start bar, and the triangle uses far fewer display resources to indicate that an application is running. I think it is a much more efficient use of pixels than the giant gray wasteland of the taskbar. Also, Expose may remove the frontmost task from view, but it does not “disrupt” anything in terms of running threads or processes.

Thumbnails
I can’t stand the OS processing images to show in a folder listing. QuickLook serves a useful purpose, and CoverFlow in the Finder is great for people who need giant pictures in a directory listing to navigate their porn collection.

Delete and Backspace Key
Checking my good ol’ Apple Extended Keyboard II from 1995, I’ve got a delete AND a backspace key. I do believe that the original Extended Keyboard had them too, back before the Brit douchenozzle was conceived. On Apple portables, you can hit the “Fn” key in the bottom left corner in combination with the “Delete” key to get a true delete rather than a backspace key (the one that’s labeled “Delete”). That functionality has existed since at least as far back as the PowerBook G3 Pismo, which I owned and loved.

Uninstall Programs
I agree that the package management in OS X should include much better uninstallation capabilities. However, a good lot of Adobe software still uses Installer Vise or other non-OEM installers, which aren’t governed by OS package conventions. To be honest, though, I don’t have to uninstall software on a Mac nearly as often as I’ve had to do so on Windows. Could be my usage patterns, though.

Home & End Keys
See my previous mention of the delete and backspace keys. On portables, Fn-Left and Fn-Right are the Home and End keys, respectively, and since you probably haven’t figured it out yet, Fn-Up and Fn-Down are Page Up and Page Down, respectively.

Drag & Drop Text Editing
Really? Have you used a Mac?

Battery Life
I envy you, having used every Apple laptop ever made. On my Early 2008 MacBook Pro, I’m currently running a 7200 RPM drive in the primary HD bay and a 5400 RPM drive where the optical drive used to live, and I still get between 2 and 3 hours of actual work out of it. On an OEM battery. I’m sure that I could get 8-14 hours of battery life out of my MacBook Pro if it was 3 inches thick (2 inches thicker than it is now), and had a tumor sticking out of it like this thing right here (original image):

Portability & Netbooks
I agree with your point that Apple doesn’t compete in the subnotebook market anymore. As a former owner of a PowerBook Duo 270c, I do occasionally miss the portability and dockability of that machine, but the throughput of wired networking, USB, FireWire, and Bluetooth quell my concerns for connectivity at home. Size-wise, I miss having a little Apple laptop. Moving to netbooks, I’ve run OS X on netbook hardware, and the performance, though good considering the machine it was running on, really does suck in comparison to even a MacBook Air. While the Air may not be satisfactory to those looking for netbook size, Apple isn’t willing to make the performance compromises needed to get OS X running on a “sanctioned” netbook-sized device.

Updates
Windows XP was released in the fall of 2001. Windows 7 was released in the fall of 2009, with a paid beta in the form of Windows Vista in between. Observe the progress Microsoft has made in 8 years, especially compared with the features they claimed would be added to future OS versions by 2010. Similarly, when OS X 10.1 was released in the fall of 2001, it was an improvement over what preceded it, but Apple has made significant progress on its operating systems in terms of functionality & features on 6 major OS releases in the time that Microsoft has made 3 major releases. Apple provided the 10.1 release as a complimentary upgrade to those running 10.0, and provided the 10.6 release as a $29 upgrade to those running 10.5 on Intel hardware. Both Apple and Microsoft provide free incremental updates to their release versions on a periodic basis.

Games
It used to be that the productivity software was what distinguished Microsoft’s platform from the Mac. In a complete 180, gaming is now the basis for initial comparison between platforms. Yes, there are fewer games on the Mac. I’m not a gamer, so I’m not the best person to respond to this. However, many game studios have found it profitable to port their products to OS X (see Aspyr, MacSoft, and others), and Valve has seen fit to release Steam for OS X along with many of their own game titles.

Apple is Technologically Backward
It seems that Apple doesn’t adopt technologies unless it suits their purposes of building the best products they feel they can sell in the open market. Carbon fiber is a great material, but I don’t miss it in my portables. LED-backlit LCDs were first adopted in the 15″ MacBook Pro in 2007, not in the MacBook Air, but were later added to other models as the panels rolled into full production. I think the eschewing of the ExpressCard slot in favor of the SD reader on the 15″ MacBook Pro was a terrible move on Apple’s part, primarily because the ExpressCard slot could be used for an SD reader, in addition to many other useful options. The addition of the SD reader to the 13″ metal portable where there was none before was a surprise to me, but a welcome if not overdue feature. A 3G SIM slot (or, more specifically, a 3G GSM/UMTS/HSPA modem) is something that Apple wants to leave to carriers to provide and not have to bother with since Apple doesn’t like to tie itself to rapidly changing standards like in the telco industry. It is for this reason that I was surprised about the inclusion of an SDHC reader, since SDXC is now a progression of the standard. Battery issues have already been discussed, and I don’t think that Apple will adopt the Sony Vaio X as a new technology as our friend seems to want. Apple’s portable display resolution is also a bit low on the 13″ and 15″ models, but on par with many other 17″ models from what I can tell. How, though, is any of this “technologically backward”?

Hilarious Comparison
The MacBook Air may or may not be a copy of the X505, but the X505 sure looks a lot like my old PowerBook Duo, a lot moreso than it looks like a PowerBook 2400c. In fact, I believe that Apple was the first mainstream portable maker with a rear-positioned keyboard on their laptops. Previous portables had no wrist rests, which was a major selling point for the old 100/140/170 series. Apple’s adoption of chiclet keys starting in 2006 bothers me to no end, which is why I am typing this on a USB Pro Keyboard and prefer my non-unibody MacBook Pro.

Hibernation
I’ve rarely seen hibernation work properly on Windows machines, and I’m not a huge fan of the similar “safe sleep” feature on OS X & newer model portables. I guess experiences differ in this regard. My old Duo used normal sleep mode quite well, and I believe that the original Apple portables did it too. If I shut down the machine, I’d like to shut it down, not save the RAM state. I’ll leave that to VMWare VMs, thankyouverymuch. Besides, unless you’re running QNX, it’s probably a good idea to reboot your machine every once in a while.

Disk Formatting
OS X can read and write FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, and read NTFS. NTFS write support isn’t presently enabled without third party software (or free hacks to enable Apple’s write functionality in 10.6.) Windows cannot read HFS, HFS Plus, or any other Macintosh filesystems without third party software. That’s correct: Windows has zero compatibility with Mac filesystems out of the box. Windows also does not fully support Apple’s resource forks, even though Apple has used them since 1984 and NTFS can technically utilize them through Alternate Data Stream functionality. Apple has even deprecated the use of resource forks in OS X as an outdated technology before Microsoft has been willing or able to implement support for them in Windows almost 30 years later.

Selecting Text With Cursor Keys
Kinda like my comment on drag & drop text editing: have you ever used a Mac?

And moving on to this guy’s discussion of why Macs may be better than Windows machines, which is just as stupid and problematic:

Viruses
Apple machines have not always been as malware-free as they are today. I have fond memories of WDEF viruses, among others, circulating via infected floppies in 7th grade. There are fewer pieces of malware for OS X partially because it’s harder to exploit OS X in a similar fashion, and partially because it’s a smaller target than Windows is. But if you think for one second that all you need on a Windows machine is Microsoft Security Essentials and nothing else, you might as well gape your butthole now because it’s gonna happen pretty soon anyways.

Stability
If you’ve not had a bluescreen in 10 years, that’s pretty impressive. Excluding dumb shit I’ve brought on myself, I’ve had only a handful of kernel panics in OS X since I began using it, and most of the time it was faulty hardware causing it, not the software. And in most of those cases, it was third party hardware, not Apple hardware. And I must have missed Apple’s marketing department releasing the ads that say “Captain Dipshit’s Windows PC has had 3 BSODs a day for the past 10 years.”

Ease of Use
This is mostly opinion, but I think that my grandma starting on an iBook was much smoother and easier than if she started on a Windows XP laptop. I believe that Apple has the easier to use product for those starting with a clean slate in terms of computing experiences. I feel for any senior citizen who has to get help with their computer at an Apple Store. Could you imagine the same folks going to Best Buy or Fry’s for help with their PC?

Crapware
I love how kiddo thinks that MS should be MORE demanding of OEMs in reducing the amount of crapware installed on their machines. Especially his idea of charging extra to have LESS crap on the machine. Wouldn’t that extra money be better spent on a computer that doesn’t have the bullshit on there in the first place?

Marketing
Apple’s marketing must have been doing something other than what kiddo is saying since Microsoft has been on the defensive for the better part of a decade now with its Windows advertising. He mentions battery life and lack of 3G modem integration again, which is weird because it’s normally the PC users I see using a wall outlet, not the Mac users. He also mentions lack of efficiency in the OS, which is never actually detailed in an accurate fact-based way.

(His) Conclusion
Macs drive this kid crazy, which is fascinating, because they aren’t efficient. Again, no specific efficiency “facts” listed aside from his previous keyboard and app switching gripes which I have provided workable, quick solutions for. For all of OS X’s supposed faults, it would only cost him 15 minutes of lost productivity in a day. I’m sure he makes up that lost productivity by skipping the use of proper caps, apostrophes, and the remainder of the English language. And what, exactly, are “knock on effects”?

Anyways, I’m really done with this kid. Looking at his Twitter page made me realize he’s just another linkbait whoring social media douchebag who needs to suck a bag of dicks and drop off the internet. I wish that Cockpunch over IP wasn’t still in early development stages. I would also like to apologize for my terrible writing tonight, as I’m doing this with one of the worst flu bugs I’ve had in a while tearing me apart.

Posted in Apple, Douchebaggery, Jackassery, Mac Stuff, Microsoft, Rants, Technology, WTF | No Comments »

My Home Server – For Now

Saturday, December 26th, 2009

I’m really wondering how much longer my current home server will last. I’ve had it since June 2004, since the day after they announced that the G4 towers were being discontinued. As I’ve mentioned previously, the reason I bought this machine was because it was Apple’s only computer that could handle dual optical drives and 4 hard disks without goofy hardware modifications. I’ve upgraded the machine several times since I got it, and here’s where the hardware currently stands:

Dual 1.25 GHz PowerPC G4
2GB DDR2 PC2700 RAM
ATI Radeon 9000 AGP video card
(2) Sony NEC Optiarc AD-7170A DVD drives (one dead, will be pulled soon)
(1) 320GB Western Digital boot drive
(2) 500GB Western Digital RAID1 backup set
(1) 500GB Western Digital scratch/media drive
Generic USB 2.0 PCI card
Generic 1394b PCI card

Without adding a SATA PCI card to the mix, the machine is pretty much maxed out. Recently, about once a week, the unit has been locking up where it doesn’t ACTUALLY kernel panic, but after a reboot, the machine logs kernel panics going to the ATA controller. I’m hoping the boot drive just needs a repartition and a clean OS, but if anyone has a spare 4-port Seritek PCI card they don’t need anymore, I’ll be glad to take it off your hands.

Assuming this thing works properly, it will be back up and ready to go as a VPN server, file server, and occasional torrent machine again. If anyone has any tips about getting the most out of these old things, please don’t hesitate to post a comment or shoot an email.

Posted in Apple, Hardware, Mac Stuff, Ramblings, Technology | No Comments »

Apple’s Crappy Tech Support Didn’t Live Up To Its Reputation

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

I have had a really weird issue with a MacBook Pro battery of mine (one of two I always carry with me.) It will occasionally drop it’s full charge capacity to the point where the computer says “Service Battery” or “Check Battery.” I really didn’t want to go to my local Apple Store because, frankly, I don’t like listening to most of the fools who are in there wondering why their iPhone that got soaked in dog urine isn’t covered under warranty or their Bondi iMac can’t be repaired anymore. It bugs the hell out of me.

Anyways, I decided that I’d have to call AppleCare: that dreaded multi-hour pastime that everyone on the internets has a horror story about. Apple hates its customers and doesn’t actually want to fix things, right? Good thing I have my attorney on speed dial, and he’s in the office, or else I would have to call back another free afternoon.

I remembered, though, that at some point, Apple had a feature where they would call YOU back after submitting a support request on the website. Here’s the first thing I saw after logging into the Apple support site:

Holy shit! Those evil bastards are tracking everything I own! Oh, wait, I needed help, so I just clicked on my MacBook Pro and it took me to this next screen:

Why would they want to know what is going wrong with my computer? They are just looking for ways to void my warranty. Oh, wait, that might not be the best thing to say to the people who are helping me. I put the relevant battery information from the system profiler into the area to describe the problem and hit continue. I was then presented with this screen:

Those sons of bitches are trying to pawn the problem off until later or until I feel like calling them. How dare they do anything but give me oral pleasure to ease my stress about this horrible problem. Because I wanted my stuff fixed now, I clicked “Call me now” and waited.

It took them 20 FUCKING SECONDS to call me. You know what else? It took me 10 MINUTES on the phone talking to people to get my new battery shipped to me. DO YOU REALIZE HOW MUCH BUSINESS I LOST BECAUSE OF THIS PROBLEM? I want Apple to reimburse me for all of my lost work and downtime. I want a fucking unicorn that poops little Steve Jobs action figures. And I want a new computer because this one is a lemon.

Way to go Apple. Way to go…

In all seriousness, this took less time to complete than it would have taken me trying to FIND an appointment at whatever local Genius Bar had an opening. And I’m sure it got taken care of WAY faster, too.

UPDATE 1 (2009-10-01 @ 17:22): HOW DARE APPLE SEND ME MY BATTERY FEDEX PRIORITY OVERNIGHT FOR DELIVERY BY 10:30AM TOMORROW. THE SHIPMENT WAS PROCESSED WITHIN 30 MINUTES OF MY PHONE CALL! I SAID I DIDN’T NEED IT IMMEDIATELY AND THAT I WAS ON VACATION! DON’T YOU LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS, APPLE?!

Posted in Apple, Congratulations, Customer Service, Hardware, Mac Stuff, Technology | No Comments »

Upgrade my RAID (I’m looking for free shit)

Friday, July 17th, 2009

So, there comes a time in every man’s life when he realizes that the hard disks he has are no longer sufficient to store what he needs them to store. I just sold a bunch of AAPL stock to pay down my credit cards and hopefully get some new gear for my good old G4 tower. Here’s what I’m looking at getting:

(4) Western Digital WD1001FALS Caviar Black 1TB SATA drives from Amazon
(1) Rosewill RC-217 Silicon Image 3124-based PCI SATA RAID card from NewEgg
(2) NB-X-Swing 2 x 3.5″ into 1 x 5.25″ optical drive bay brackets from Performance PCs

I know that it’s a lot of hardware to install in a Power Mac G4, but if it’s primarily a storage machine, why get a Drobo when I can get a whole lot more out of this monster of a tower? If anyone has review units they would like to send out, I’ll whore for you with full disclosure. I don’t need Obama’s FTC getting all up on me. :)

Posted in Apple, Hardware, Mac Stuff, Ramblings, Technology | No Comments »

The Bootable SD Slot And You: Facts To Know

Saturday, June 27th, 2009

With the recent announcement of Apple’s Mid-2009 lineup of MacBook Pro models, and the introduction of the 15-inch and newly rebranded 13-inch models with SD (and SDHC) memory card slots, the world has been drooling over the notion of bootable SD cards serving as emergency disks for oh-shit recovery of a fallen Mac while on the road. I am completely in favor of this idea, but the SD/SDHC boot capability has been around since January 2006.

Beginning with Apple’s adoption of Intel processors and implementation of EFI, booting devices over Macs’ built-in USB buses has been a trivial task. Those Apple computers with FireWire ports can also boot from a properly configured 1394 device as well. The large majority of SD/SDHC memory card readers, including the Belkin-branded model living in my ExpressCard slot, are USB bridges that are usually bootable. Apple’s own built-in SD readers are also USB, which is half of an ExpressCard slot (but I’ll not rant about that now.) Almost any device on a bootable interface, including USB flash-based thumb drives, can hold an emergency bootable operating system.

For several months, I’ve been using the OCZ Diesel 16GB USB flash drive to test my OH SHIT image with pretty decent results. I’m a cheap bastard, and I’m not going to be spending $100+ to get the super duper high speed flash drives from OCZ or Corsair. When I bought my two, I paid around $26 or so from NewEgg, but the price has fluctuated to almost $40 before coming back to $33 as of today. Anyways, I create my boot image on an external FireWire drive because it is so much faster to create, update, and image. Once finalized and set up for restore, I use Carbon Copy Cloner to copy everything to the Diesel, and it’s amazing.

If you want to see a tutorial for dummies because I’m too lazy to do it myself, here’s a video on Macworld.com on how to set up a bootable SD card, which would work the same for any appropriately sized USB flash drive as well.

Just don’t let anyone tell you this is a “new” feature. Except that the SD slot is “built-in”, this functionality has existed for years.

Posted in Apple, Mac Stuff, Technology | No Comments »

Looks like my next MacBook Pro will have a 17-inch screen

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

Because Apple has neutered the 15-inch models with an SD card reader instead of something, oh I don’t know, professional like a FUCKING EXPRESSCARD SLOT.

And just because enough people bitched about FireWire being stripped from the 13-inch portables doesn’t mean you can add it back on, praise it like a gift from Jesus, and call it a “pro” portable when it has integrated video.

And maybe I’m just a bit cynical when I say that Apple is looking to have more retail shelf space available by not stocking spare batteries because STEVE JOBS SAYS YOU DON’T NEED A SPARE BATTERY ANYMORE. YOU’LL LIKE THIS ONE JUST FINE.

But people will buy them, and a few of us will be sitting in the corner bitching about lack of options. Bleh.

Posted in Apple, Douchebaggery, Jackassery, Mac Stuff, Rants, Technology, WTF | No Comments »

Notes From The “My MacBook is too fragile” Bullshit Pile

Saturday, April 18th, 2009

So, another dumbass, this one named Jeannine, decided to post on MyBiggestComplaint.com about how their MacBook was only dropped a few times:

My macbook screen cracked, too. It has been dropped a couple of times, but nothing major. I also have a PC laptop that has been through much more and it has no damage. I have read many, many complaints about the MacBook screens being very delicate. As much as I love my MacBook, I am really disappointed witht the quality of the shell and screen. To fix this, I have found it will be approximately $800 or more. If these MacBooks are going to have these problems, they really should be able to fix these for much less. I am having to decide between fixing it and paying that ridiculous amount, trying to fix it myself with on line tutorials and a screen purchased from e-bay or just buying a new Mac. If so many people are having these problems, why aren’t they being addressed by Mac?

Aside from the simple fact that Mac makes MAKEUP and Apple makes COMPUTERS you dumb bitch, I decided to reply on the page with this amazingly relevant piece:

After dropping my baby daughter a couple of times, nothing major, she has a bunch of medical problems and learning disabilities. I also have a son who was dropped WAY more often and he has no problems at all. As much as I love my daughter, I’m really disappointed with the quality of the female gender’s infant state. To fix this, I’ve found it will be thousands of dollars per month for medical care and supervision. If these babies are going to have these problems, they really should be able to be disposed of more easily. I am having to decide between putting up with her issues, spending that ridiculous amount of money on medical care, trying to fix her myself with tutorials from WebMD and Wikipedia, and putting her in a trash can and trying for another boy. If so many people are having these problems, why aren’t they being addressed by God?

Seriously people. The way you treat your computers, when viewed in the context of the way you treat your infant children, is completely unacceptable. Treat your computer as you would a newborn child and you will rarely have a problem with it. Shit is unavoidable sometimes. You could have a colicky baby and you could have a MacBook with a weird, intermittent fan problem. But when you drop your child and he ends up sounding like Barney Frank later in life, don’t blame it on someone else!

When you drop your damn computer, shit is going to go wrong with it! Back up your data, take it to a professional, and get it fixed as soon as possible. Most of the time, if you pay for a repair of the damage and everything else is certified as A-OK, anything that goes wrong down the road is covered under whatever warranty you have left on the machine (assuming you don’t fuck up and drop it again.) Try getting that guarantee out of your pediatrician!

Posted in Apple, Customer Service, Douchebaggery, Jackassery, Mac Stuff, Ramblings, Rants, Technology, WTF | No Comments »

Hey Assholes: Stop Abusing Your MacBook Airs!

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

Like most people who beat the shit out of their expensive electronics, when it breaks, these douchebags immediately cry about a line-wide defect necessitating a class action lawsuit.

Never mind the fact that I’ve, since the age of 14 (13 years ago, for those counting) lived out of PowerBooks from the Duo 270c on up and NEVER NOT ONCE had a broken hinge despite my not-always-nice treatment of my equipment. Never mind the fact that the MacBook Air was the first of Apple’s portable computers to use the block-of-aluminum manufacturing technique to increase structural stability. Never mind the fact that I saw a guy at a Starbucks walking around holding his MacBook Air BY THE SCREEN when his hinge did just what the whiny tools at Engadget are saying (at the submitter’s request, I suppose) is a defect. The other thing I’ve seen cause the MacBook Air hinge to do just that is just plain pushing the screen back real fast, real hard and ignoring the METAL ON METAL TENSION that would cause normal people to stop pushing the goddamned screen back. Push too hard, and *SNAP*.

Next thing you know is a class action lawsuit against Apple for not making the Unibody MacBook line strong enough to take impacts from a 5 foot drop because, you know, they’re built stronger and should be able to hold up to “normal use.” Kind of like the human knee not being able to extend 270 degrees. I smell a class action lawsuit against God…

Posted in Apple, Customer Service, Douchebaggery, Jackassery, Mac Stuff, Rants, Technology | No Comments »

My 25 Years With The Macintosh

Friday, January 23rd, 2009

My 25 years with the Macintosh is, maybe, a different experience than others you’ve read online. If you’ve seen Apple’s “1984″ commercial, you’ll know that the original Macintosh computer was introduced on January 24, 1984. When the commercial aired at that year’s Super Bowl, I was still over 3 months away from my second birthday, and almost a decade away from my first in-depth experience with the Macintosh.

It was late 1993, probably November or December, that I convinced my parents to buy me a two-pack of 3.5-inch floppy disks at Sav-On so I could move information between the Mac we had at home and the Macs I used at school. Early versions of System 7 were what I first got accustomed to, and the Apple hardware varied quite a bit.

Earlier in elementary school, my 4th grade class participated in a program sponsored by National Geographic, where students would dial into a service over a POTS modem and communicate with other students across the country, and if I remember correctly, across the world. That would have placed my first REAL computing experience in 1991 or 1992, dialing into an internet gateway at 2400bps using an Apple IIgs. I recall having a binder of information about the program, but it has long since been discarded. It would be another 2 years before I had another revolutionary computing experience.

When I got my two floppy disks (one of which I threw away because I wasn’t using it at the time) I realized that I could copy software from the school computer to my home computer. Now, the SE/30 I had at home wasn’t nearly as pretty and colorful as the LC520 I was using at school, but it got the job done. I spent most of my days of 6th grade in front of the computer, playing with the software and figuring out how to take games my friends brought to school back home with me. I wasn’t able to get my hands on any printed information about the Mac, so everything I learned was from trial and error.

In junior high, I was involved in the video production class, and the infant non-linear editing systems that were sprouting up. Most of what we did, though, was deck-to-deck on SVHS, but I remember the PowerPC LC series opening up the door to the Gryphon Morph program, which was used to consistently embarass students at school my turning them into animals on the video magazine program aired each week. By the end of 8th grade, I’d developed enough skills in troubleshooting the Macs that I was frequently called out of class to fix other teachers’ machines since the school district’s technical support was (and to this day is) terribly lacking.

At the beginning of my freshman year, I got the first Mac I called my own: a used PowerBook Duo 270c. 240MB internal hard disk, 12MB of RAM, and a 14.4 modem (which could be software-upgraded to 19.2!) For a month or two, I was diong well, moving files between machines through LocalTalk or modem-to-modem with Zterm, until one day I screwed the OS. I had to get disks and a Duo Dock, or I was done. I learned my lesson, and try to keep myself prepared at all times.

About a year and a half later, I upgraded to a PowerBook 3400c/180 with a CD-ROM built in (!) and a spiffy PowerPC processor. It allowed me to do much better web design with its 800×600 screen and it ran software so much better than the good, but tiring 33 MHz Duo. I ran that machine into the ground, until OS 9 and its 1.3GB hard disk and 144MB of RAM was no longer adequate.

My freshman year of college, my parents helped me buy a PowerBook G3 with FireWire which was quite possibly my favorite portable of all time. It was relatively easy to upgrade, and by the time I got rid of it, I had installed 1GB of RAM and an 80GB hard disk. Its specs were far beyond what I had envisioned when I bought the machine.

My current computer is a 2.6 GHz MacBook Pro with a 15-inch screen, 4GB of RAM, a 500GB hard disk and faster “legacy” ports than the fastest cutting edge technologies from only a few years ago. The amount of power WASTED on single processes on this computer is probably more than the maximum speed of my PowerBook G3. There is only one feature lacking on this MacBook Pro that would make it better than the old Pismo: swappable optical drive. Road warriors demand battery life, and I always had two batteries in my G3. I have a spare battery, of course, but not having to worry about a switchout was a marvelous experience.

In late 2002, I began employment in an industry close to the Macintosh, and have remained with the company until the present day. Everything that I’ve experienced and learned since then has made me realize how little I knew back in junior high and high school, and compared with the UNIX “real” sysadmins, and developers, how little I know now. Even in 6 years, I’ve seen the world of Apple and the Macintosh change more than I could have imagined.

The Macintosh has become more popular, in unit sales, than at any time in its history. The Macintosh operating system has morphed into a solid BSD UNIX based, but friendly for consumer use, platform for the most robust and capable end-user media experience on the market. The switch to Intel processors was always rumored from the earliest versions of OS X, but flatly denied until 2005. The “big switch” was executed as a brilliant marketing campaign by Steve Jobs and company. Apple has become a major, respected player in the mobile phone market in under 2 years. Apple has also become one of the fastest-growing consumer electronics retailers in the world.

What I see under my fingertips, and what I use this machine for, is an almost unimaginable progression from my own humble beginnings with the Macintosh 15 years ago. I consider the gift of computers a blessing and a curse. It has given me the opportunity for a career doing something I enjoy (most of the time) but it has proved to be an addictive experience, not unlike caffeine, nicotine, or opiates. When used properly, these tools are amazingly useful. When abused, they create havoc.

In another 15 (or 25) years, I don’t know if I’ll be working at the same company, or even in the same industry. I could never have predicted my current technological experiences with accuracy back in 1993, and I will not attempt to predict technology and its impact on our lives that far into the future. I’ve forgotten more about Apple and the Macintosh over the past 15 years than most people learn in their entire computing experience. I can only hope that I’ll be able to look back on this anniversary of computing technology and realize it’s only gotten better.

Posted in Apple, Congratulations, Mac Stuff, Ramblings, Technology | No Comments »

Adobe firing 600 people, sucking harder than ever

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

Adobe, one of my favorite and least favorite companies, is laying off 600 people and not exhibiting on the show floor of Macworld San Francisco 2009. It’s amazing how a company that had amazing products like the blessed Photoshop 3.0.5 can become the company with the Creative Suite 4 Whizbang Ultimate Orgazmo Edition (for $2499.) Someone point them to Wikipedia for an economics refresher.

I’d say the first sign of the shit hitting the fan at Adobe was when Apple owned their ass with Final Cut Pro back in the late 90s. Kinda amusing, since Apple bought the basis for Final Cut from Macromedia, the creator of the Flash software that Adobe recently absorbed. The second sign of doom was when Adobe decided it was better to ship crap for $1299 then roll bug fixes into the next release version of their dreck for only $399 to upgrade.

Quark used to be the butt of every customer support joke in the biz, but Adobe is determined to get to #1 in that area, too. By God, if Adobe can squander their lead with InDesign and give the market back to Quark, while at the same time, crapping on enough loyal supporters to build enough hatred not to upgrade to CS4 from CS3, they might just go under.

I can only hope that Apple has another trick up their sleeve; something in image editing, something that would tie together with Aperture beautifully and make Photoshop look like the bloated 20-year-old crapware it is. Cross your fingers folks. This could get interesting.