By coscooper
My morning pretty much starts with a set of common rituals I’ve done for years. During the week, I like to catch up on news, read about new technology and get ready for the day. Right now, that ritual includes my iPhone, but… the screen is too small.
In the old days —well about two years ago — after pouring my morning coffee, I’d plod out to the driveway, rain, snow, shine or cold and retrieve the paper. After grabbing the paper, I’d make some breakfast, update my coffee, sit at the table and read through my favorite sections. Of course, to be honest, I started with the comics, THEN went to the real news, or what ever the local paper had decided to pick up from AP and local happenings. After finishing the paper and breakfast, I’d track down my laptop and fire up my email, check through the evenings spam, then move to the important stuff.
That was then, this is now. First, I bought an iPhone last year. Second, we canceled the paper. I had to go looking for other ways to get my morning news. That was one thing about the paper, it didn’t cover all the things I like. Today, I read a lot more about subjects I’m interested, feeling that I’m more informed than before.
Today, I start my day with that cup of coffee, that wont ever change, then I pick up my iPhone, first thing. Starting with the AP application, I sift through their top reports reading what looks interesting. I also like USA Today. Same thing, I sift through their top reports, sports and then tech sections to hit the highlights. All the while, I’m making breakfast, but I’m not as compelled to sit at the table anymore. Now I sit at the bar or in the family room. Kind of anywhere I plop. My last stop on my iPhone is All Things Digital, which is extremely focused on the tech industry with such articles about who’s buying who, new gadgets, what Apple employee left a new iPhone at a bar, new startup interviews, plus they have videos at current conferences and more. I then pop open an aggregate news tool called Fluent News. It pulls in feeds from CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX and others, which I use to fill in any gaps missed by my favorites.
More… so, once the world news and technical news is up-to-date, I’ll check the weather, even though I can see what it looks like outside, it’s still good to know what’s going to happen. Next, I switch to email, usually quickly review due to the screen size. Final stop is Facebook and LinkedIn to see if anything interesting is going on there. Finally, I end my morning with OmniFocus. Since I try to adhere to the GTD strategies, OmniFocus is for planning my daily todo and projects.
That’s pretty much my morning most days. I rarely fire up my laptop until I’m ready to get going with projects and other activities. So, why did I title this blog “I want an iPad!” — well, I do a lot on the iPhone and since I use it more of a mini-computer than a cell phone, an iPad would do all of this better, I think. In fact, since I hardly fire up my laptop until later in the morning, I could probably do just about everything on the iPad. I primarily use Pages, Numbers and Keynote, so since those are available on the iPad, I’m nearly there. I also use OmniGraffle, OmniFocus, a web browser, a writing tool (Scrivener) and dictionary most days. So, looking at what I primarily do, an iPad would just about do it all for me.
My problem is: I just purchased a new laptop last fall, like most, I just can’t justify an iPad no matter how much I’d like to have and use one. While I’m not advocating ditching a laptop or desktop (yet), I’m advocating that 80% of what I do on a daily (morning) basis could be done on an iPad. I still use Fireworks, Photoshop on occasion and many other activities that crank on this laptop, but my morning would be easier if I had an iPad. I WANT AN IPAD!!
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By coscooper
Chrome Download
I’ve recently upgraded my MacBook Pro to a newer model. Previously, I had purchased the first generation MBP back just months after Apple released the new model back in 2006. It’s served me well, had the mother board replaced, twice, has been dropped several times, jostled around in a back-pack, travelled as much as I did, helped me make a lot of money and then, it finally kept over-heating. It still runs, but if you run YouTube or anything that pushes the graphics, it just shuts-down.
I digress… so, with the new shiny model having sat on my desk for 3 weeks now, I’ve been much more inclined to get back to having fun with my computer. With 8gb of RAM and a hugemongous hard-drive, I’m back to trying all kinds of applications.
Just a few days ago, I’m logging into my GMail account and get presented with the announcement that Chrome is now available on the Mac OSX platform, about time! So, instinctively, I hit the download button and fire it up. I’m met with the fastest launch of any browser installed on my system. Now, it could be the blazing fast new machine, but, I tested a browser launch war. Chrome won hands-down.
So, what makes it so special? Basically, it’s super light-weight, whicked fast, simple and has a few cool features.
- Google Search (Well, any search as you can specify your favorite) is integrated right into the URL field at the top.
- Did I mention it’s blistering fast?
- Rock solid. Supposedly it’s in “Beta” for MacOSX, but it seems more stable than FireFox, my other favorite browser.
- Download Manager – With security checks.
- Popup blockers that are smart. Meaning, if a site has a Java popup or something related to the site, it seems to be smart enough to differentiate. Haven’t tested this fully.
- Kind of goes without saying, all of the Google apps rock in Chrome. They’re fast, responsive and have no issues. IE… GMail, Picasa etc…
- Great looking theme system and the start page with cached history of recent sites is actually useful.
Downside:
- Certain plugins I use on other browsers aren’t supported. IE… XMarks my book-mark sync tool. I’m a little lost without it in Chrome.
- No cool add-ons just yet. I’ll be patient.
- Can’t come up with anything else negative to say.
There you go. If you’re into Macs and want to run the fastest browser out there, give Chrome a spin. I’ve used FireFox for years and it’s still pretty much my GOTO browser.
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By coscooper
It’s a computerized, digital, connected world… and yet, we still accept mediocrity in our computing systems. Yes, I’m talking about the one, the only, crappy Operating System that exists on a lot of systems, mostly about 91.7% of the worlds personal computers, in fact, according to current market share statistics. And… this is a sad commentary on how much the masses accept such mediocrity. I have to admit, I gave up on the us versus them operating systems wars along time ago. However, truth be told, I never really completely gave up my bigotry for, yes, dare I say, the Macintosh operating system.
My disgust and frustration with Windoze came rushing back to me in spades over the past few months. You see, with my old position, I was able to use what ever system I wanted, which meant that I decided to purchase my own MacBook Pro so I could control what I installed and did with my system. Then, I went on a 6 month sabbatical from any corporate environment and back again most recently. Well, not so much true corporate life per se, but I went back to work for a great company. And… you guessed it, their standard issue for Systems Engineers is, yep, a Windows Laptop. IBM errr… Lenovo T61 running Windows XP Professional to be more exact.
That’s when it all began to unravel. Sure, I’ve always copped to the adage, “they’re just tools, use what works for you”, but I think I’m beginning to go back to my elitist attitude of “what rubbish”. Over the course of the past 3 years, I’ve not had to deal with Windows other than manage a server infrastructure, install enterprise solutions and trouble-shoot issues in that environment. However, I always retreated back to my trusted, reliable, all-encompassing MacBook, where I just got shit done, sans any Windows dependencies.
Now, it’s all changed and I have to beg, conjole and wish with all my might to stay productive. In a nut-shell, here’s a few items that Windoze users just have to “deal” with and yes, I’m going to say it with my nose in the air, Mac users just don’t have to deal with such crap. We just get things done.
Fist, I’ve used a laptop as my primary work tool for so long, I don’t recall my last desktop model or even what I did on it. Just about everyone uses a laptop now because of their flexibility and modern speed.
It’s all in the details, dummies!!!
- Expectation: To be able to work up to the point of having to jump on a jet, go to a meeting, leave the office, or any other activity that requires “sleeping” er… putting your laptop in “stand-by”, so it’s right there where you left it and ready to go the next time you need it.
Reality: Not so much on the ole Winoze OS. “stand-by” is hit or miss and usually, 4 out of 10 tries, its a hit. I actually tracked this over a recent trip to St Louis and yes, 60% of the time, the freakin thing wouldn’t wake up, wouldn’t connect to a network, operate with any stability or other “normal” expectation. Usually, had to reboot and it would be ok. So, stand-by is something I just don’t bother with any more. Full shut-down and reboot. Each process stealing 5 minutes of my productive life and over the course of a week, that equates to several hours.
Mac: slam the lid, put in bag, leave. Open lid, start working. Every time. The end.
- Expectation: Plug in any USB device, say, a wireless mouse. That’s it, just plug it in and work.
Reality: again, hit-miss. Fortunatey, it’s mostly a hit, but not without some anxiety involved, knowing little yellow pop up bubbles would bug me and/or tell me it’s ready, but on occasion, it’d have trouble and a “replug” would ensue.
Mac: yep, plug it in and go. No boinks, beeps, yellow bubbles or otherwise. Done. No fuss, no muss.
- Expectation: get your software updates and have it all go smoothly.
Reality: well, you guessed it, not always with good results. Mostly, it’s okay, but they all mostly break-stuff. In 3 months, I’ve had several patches and hot-fixes popup, get installed and I’ve had to reload my printer drivers and other dependancies. Some, I don’t find out about until I need them, which usually means, lost productivity going to the web site, downloading the software, installing it, rebooting, getting al kinds of annoying windoids on the update blah, blah, blah…
Mac: in 3 years, I’ve had 1 serious incident, which royally pissed me off, but after redownloading the install/update an NOT going through the auto-update, it fixed itself. Besides that, I typically have little to no issue with their updates and they’re infrequent.
- Expectation: take a good screen grab/shot anywhere, anytime of anything.
Reality: well, you of can do this, but it just takes the entire screen, sends it to the paste buffer, then what? Well, you could also send it straight to a printer wasting paper and not very useful. Oh, once on the paste buffer, you have to open some paint program, paste it in the window, crop it, sorta, then save it… and remember to save it as a JPEG or GIF rather than the default BMP (huge unusable file) and then your ready to go. Whew… now to take another shot for that presentation. Oh, screw it, I’ll go buy Snaggit for $39 bucks.
Mac: Command shift 3 – JPEG of entire screen on desktop for use where ever. Command shift 4, gives you a cursor to specify an area of the screen and then a JPEG is sitting on your desktop ready to go. Free. Done. Going onto getting work done.
- Expectation: To be able to print or generate a PDF from any application, bar none.
Reality: Yeah, riiight. You have to go download a freebie that only works with office, buy Acrobat Pro, if you happen to have Snaggit or something, you can print to Snaggit, then save as a PDF. DOH.
Mac: Yep, you’re figuring it out, print anything anywhere and get a print-to-PDF option, which, you can actually send to a printer, or have it save to your desktop somehwere. Oh, and it’s free, built in, just works.
- Expectation: light weight and easy to use keyboard. After years and years of ergonomic studies, you’d think that Wintel boxes would figure out how to make powerful laptops lighter and more ergonomic.
Reality: guess again. The T61 still has clunky, chunky keys, is about 2 inches thick, has clunky lid buttons, on/off buttons, locks and all kinds of other minuturized desktop features that just looks like they put a desktop into a vise and squeezed. No ingenuity.
Mac: completely redesign years ago. Is less than 1 inch thick, light keyboard, illuminating keys and of course, the screen is probably one of the best around.
- Expectation: In this world of virtualization and heterogeneous environments, you’d think you could run a lot on an Intel box. Well, there are some hacks out there and of course VM Ware and other virtualization tools have helped the cause, but…
Reality: so, so on Windows and it’s very slow for the most part. I have a VMWare demo I run of a Win2003 server runnign MSSQL, SQL Reporting and IIS that takes nearly 5 minutes to load and restore to usefulness. Same for any
Mac: VMWare has a product called Fusion that’s workstation for the Mac. Same demo as above takes about 30 seconds to load and go. Even snap-shots only take about 1 minute compared to the Windows Workstation version that takes about 10 minutes some times.
- Expectation: drive fragmentation should be non-existant. You’d think.
Reality: Lots of fragmentation on a well used laptop. Slows down, memory gets slow, everything just slows down… oh, yeah, gotta go defrag. Soooooo 80′s.
Mac: One word. Journaling. Nuff said.
Done… i could go on, but this is enough to show that productivity on a Wintel system just isn’t that great. The time savings and other cost reducing affects of using a MacBook or any Apple product is just staggering and seems to only be recognized by a few. Oh well.
Everyone can pick on Apple and the Macintosh all they want, but the reality is, they put so much thought into the details that many things become so ubiquitous that you don’t even notice how productive and stable the system is until you’re forced to dink what 91.7% of the world deals with daily. And the cost of ownership doesn’t even start to compute. Most WIndoze users/purchasers are being penny-wise and pound-foolish. But, of course, if Win products weren’t around, we’d all be more productive, IT would be run by about 5 guys and they’d just sit around playing Texas Holdem or “hoping” for a breakage. So, I guess all-in-all, Windoze is a good thing, right?
This is why I drive a Mercedes, it’s all in the details, dummy.
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By coscooper
I should have taken my laptop in a long time ago??? What was I thinking???
My MacBookPro was purchased in May of 2006. About a month after making the purchase, the left cooling fan began to grind ever so slightly, nothing major, but it made enough noise to be annoying. That lasted about a year. Approximately, around May (1 full year after initial purchase) the fan began to hum and grind much louder. I actually downloaded some software to see what the RPM’s of the fan were and turns out, it would surge to over 5,000 RPMs when it’s suppose to run normally around 500 to 900 RPMs.
Around that same time, i experienced a serious melt-down after doing a simple update. Turns out, i had to completely rebuild my hard-drive with a new OS and fortunately, I had a sprinkling of backups on an external Firewire drive. It was still very painful, but I managed to get through it.
On or around mid-summer, it started acting weird again and yet again, it died, causing me to completely rebuild. This time, I wasn’t so lucky as I had just used the Firewire to rebuild Jodi’s laptop not less than a week before and had wiped all of my backups. The plan was to get the automated backups running again, but I was yet again lazy and didn’t get it started in a timely fashion.
After much pain and suffering, rebuilding from memory, it took well over 3 weeks to get it back to any semplance of normalcy. I still find things to this day missing from that install and shrug and hit the side of my head with a DOH!!!
Fast forward to November 9th, 2007. It literally died yet again. This time, it limped for a day or so, but by the Saturday the 10th, it was officially freakin dead and I decided to just let Apple have it back. So, I booked an appointment with the Genius Bar over at the Applestore in Boulder for Sunday the 11th at 10:45AM. The soonest they could see me when I went online Friday night.
Fortunately, I had everything backed up and on Friday, while it “limped” along, I was able to get it turned on in target mode and copy anything I was worried about over to the external Firewire drive using Dylans iBook. All was well and I was confident that I had everthing for when it would be back on my desk in a few weeks and I’d be ready to get back to work.
In the meantime, I confiscated Dylans iBook and moved a few critical items over, temporarily using his little faithful iBook. First things first, I found I couldn’t open anything of significance. I suppose that’s due to it only 256mb of RAM. Yuck!!! It’s a wonder Dylan could get anything done.
So, off to BestBuy I trot and purchased him a 1gb RAM chip… back to the house, installed in less than a minute and I was back off to the races. Ah…. RAM breathing room. His little laptop chugged along as I pounded away using FireWorks and Photoshop. Wasn’t as fast as my MacBook, but it was working, more than I could say for my laptop. I pretty much used it heavily most of Sunday, Monday and Tuesday working on several web sites, updating our Rental site and preparing some graphics for the gift certificates we’d been planning on marketing via email. I was getting pretty settled in and planned on using his iBook through Thanksgiving, figuring Apple would take a week or so, then blame the delay on the holidays.
Here’s where I got blown away. First thing Wednesday, TODAY, I got a call from the Genius Bar over at the Applestore. My laptop was back and I could come by and pick it up anytime. They informed me that they had to replace the entire mother-board and install a new hard-drive, plus they installed the latest OS, 10.4.10… all good as new. All that in 3 days, with two shiopments to and from California.
Okay, I was VERY pleased to say the least. While it’s been a pain in the backside, I usually CANNOT do without my laptop. I use it 7 days a week and being without it for a few days is just never a good time. I’d always figured I’d just wait until it physically blew up and quit working. Well, that’s what I did, suffered through for 3 whole days and voila’ it’s back and seems to be running like a champ.
Dylan gets a full gig of RAM out of the deal as “rental” on his iBook and I agreed to replace his keyboard, which he’d spilled some liquid substance on and has been using an external keyboard. All-in-all, he made out like a bandit. I was still able to get work done for 3 days and I rearranged a few things on my desk and added a one of the new cool flat keyboards offered by Apple. $49 bucks for a wired version. I remember when these use to run $79 and they weren’t this nice. This thing is quiet and has a very small foot print on the desk.
So, now I’m asking myself, why the H-LL didn’t I take it in sooner and just bit the bullet? I’ll never know.
Now, it’s back and I’m off to restore all of my important data and get back to work.
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