Speed Matters
So, I’m back from my brief hiatus. Interestingly, traffic spiked on Friday the 4th when I posted that note. Not entirely sure why, but maybe some of you saw the post title in your readers and thought something noteworthy had happened. Sorry to disappoint. Part of the reason I took time off was to perform [...]
What Does it Do?
So, the ongoing quest to modernize my parents took an interesting turn over the weekend. The Macbook Pro arrived at their house earlier than I expected, and I haven’t yet got them squared away with any intertubes. Thinking they might not want to wait, I suggested they unbox it and get acquainted. Then I got [...]
Why Don’t People Update Software?
This question applies to personal software more so than IT-supported software. I understand the complexities involved with taking updates to software that IT is on the hook to support. What I don’t get is why people aren’t more vigilant with their own software, specifically browsers and O/S. Over the years, updates have become more in-your-face, [...]
A Computer for Your Parents
This post in Forbes today, “Apple’s Secret Weapon: Your Mom” came across Techmeme a little while ago. While the post centers around Apple’s financials and quarterly earnings report due this week, it interested me because I’m currently planning to bring my parents into the now with a Macbook Pro. A few months ago, they finally [...]
It Just Works, My New Mantra
Last week, I had one of those, “I’m so glad I have a Mac moments”. Stick with me, this isn’t another my O/S can beat up your O/S posts (although those are fun). There’s a point at the end. I don’t consider myself a fanboi, but I do like my Mac and will never willingly [...]
It Just Works
I’ve had a smidge of blogger’s block lately, and from experience, I know nothing gets people talking like a discussion about operating systems. With Windows 7 RC on the horizon, Snow Leopard due later this year, and Jaunty already in RC and ready to drop any day, the next year or so will be full [...]
Miscellaneous Debris
It’s Friday. I’ve got a few items that might make a full post, but rather than squeeze blood out of a stone, I’ll resort to a miscellaneous debris post. It’s not a link post, and it’s not a full post. It’s in between somewhere. Since 1972 Josh Freese, drummer for DEVO, A Perfect Circle, Nine [...]
New iMac, Still New to Me
Update: Turns out Best Buy, where we bought the iMac, doesn’t have the new models in stock yet, but to make room in their inventory, they’ve lowered the prices on the remaining ones by $400. They were nice enough to honor the new price and refund the difference. Win-win, since I wasn’t all that excited [...]
Weekend Project: Macbook Surgery
Back in 2006, I bought my wife and me identical Macbooks, the white ones. When I buy computers, I always factor in the aftermarket enhancements I can make. This is one case where I’m not worried about maxing out memory or storage later down the road because I’m comfortable cracking open a laptop or desktop [...]
Who Does Your Support?
So, I had an eventful morning. Automatic updates on my Macbook kindly let me know that there was a security update available for Tiger (yes, I’m still on Tiger). As I’ve done many times in the past, I agreed to take the update, entered my credentials and went about my morning email checking. The update [...]
What Makes UI Good?
Thanks to a comment from Terry on my post about locking your smart phone, I’ve been digging around looking for ways to make my beloved iPhone more secure. Surprisingly or not, Apple has made it maddeningly difficult to even the simplest precautions. Terry’s comment, which I read a bit hastily, mentions changing the root password [...]
Macs in the Enterprise
I noticed that the Cult of Mac converted another member this weekend. Floyd bought an iMac. He’d been pondering the jump for a while, and now, his love for Mac has leeched over into his work. Full disclosure here, I’m a convert too. So is Dan. So are Paul, Rich and I assume Anthony, too. [...]
Why Stickers are My New Business Card
With the memory of OpenWorld fading, I wanted to riff on one thing I noticed and found interesting last week. Stickers, or rather the lack of them. Rich and and I whipped up a last-minute plan to produce some stickers right before OpenWorld, and many of you were the beneficiaries last week. I added the [...]
Air Sharing Gives You iPhone File Sharing Goodness
The theme for today is file sharing apps that just work. While browsing The Silicon Florist in my feeds today, I saw a post from Rick about Air Sharing, an iPhone app built by Avatron Software a company based in Vancouver (WA not BC). As of yesterday, Air Sharing had 700,000 odd downloads in about [...]
Dropbox is Sweet
Rich pointed me at this nugget yesterday. Dropbox is a small utility that solves a major pain point you’re familiar with if you have more than one computer or you’ve ever needed to transfer files between computers. At least once a week, I have to transfer files between my machines; this is an old problem [...]
Measuring the Cost of a Computer
I was all ready to crank out a heavy work post when this item in my Reader caught my eye. Should You Pay Twice as Much for a Mac? I love this type of title because it captures attention by being potentially controversial, and of course, it references Apple. Good tech news writing always drives [...]
OS X, Ubuntu and Other Fun Stuff
Comments have been awfully quiet lately. I’m guilty of talking too much about work-related stuff and not enough about iPhones and Twitter. My bad. Let’s remedy that. Rich asked me recently how my move to Ubuntu was going. It’s been almost a month, and he says he has a vested interest in keeping me happy [...]
Taking the Plunge
It’s ironic to me that D-Day for good old Windows XP is coming up on Monday, since for several months, I’ve been trying to motivate myself to dump it in favor of Ubuntu as the O/S on my work laptop. Tracking Dan’s recent jump into the Mac pond chronicled over Twitter and in his blog [...]
Virtual Adventures
As I teased yesterday, I’ve been mucking around with virtual machines to extend my ability to test Mix. Due to the varied nature of our users’ environments, I need to find ways to install more browsers, more versions on more operating systems. Everyone knows reproducing an issue is really the best way to begin fixing [...]
The Greatest Idea Moves Closer to Fruition
I haven’t done post on the most popular ideas on Mix since November. Back then, they were: 1. We need the Oracle clients (OCI, JDBC) for the Apple Intel OSX platform 2. Compile Oracle XE for Intel OS X Well, guess what? Since November, the same two ideas have stayed at 1 and 2. If [...]
