As much as I thought I was going to die from the stress I caused myself in fretting over what Mac to buy and when, it was all worth it. I'm sure that normal people who don't get caught in these deep decision tree funks that I do over things as common as picking what to wear today will have an even better experience.
The Mac basically gets rid of all the BS that you have to deal with when using Windows, Linux or anything else I've seen and lets you get on with using the computer rather than fighting it or fixing it just to begin work. As you do something, you find that along the path of your workflow, the Apple engineers have given thought to most everything, whereas in Windows, it feels like there's only things along the way that they were forced to place there, and even then it's a big ugly sign or fork in the road reluctantly placed there that you always have to deal with.
Now before you go and say "where have you been since 1984?", I will tell you that I have been paying attention as my early posts talk about. Although the early Mac OS was very user friendly, the problem was the underlying architecture, and by 1994, I was accustomed to a fully multi-threaded, preemptive, multi-tasking operating system, and the Mac OS didn't have this until OS X. OS/2 had this in 1992, Windows had this with NT in 1993 or 1994, and only partially with Win95/98/ME starting in 1995. OS X was a nice leap ahead for the Mac OS architecture because of its NextStep origins, but the polish on the Mac interface part took some time, and some parts are still maturing. That's part of what took me a while to jump on board.
Now, with OS X since 10.2, you have a system that really lets the user become a partner with the computer rather than an adversary. This allows you to really experience what can be achieved with computers rather than fighting with the computer most of the time and calling that productivity. Your sense of accomplishment comes from things like getting Mail to announce e-mail arrival from your friends rather than from managing to finally wrangling the network settings to get your e-mail in the first place.
The only things that are not as nice as I would like are typically things that will likely get sorted out soon enough and aren't major issues. As lovely as Safari is, it is still maturing, so it has rough places like having no print options for header and footer info. Althought there are many keyboard shortcuts, there are still many places that need them. This is somethings Apple could easily fix. Microsoft tends to have more keyboard access, but Apple tends to have more intuitive keyboard access where they do have it. I still have to re-learn some things like cursor movement and keyboard editing that are different.
Next entry
Saturday, July 31, 2004
Saturday, July 17, 2004
iSync
I talked a bit about iSync in the previous entry, and I thought I might want the Palm sync conduit to have the option to not sync the to-dos with iCal and leave them to sync with the Palm Desktop. However, since I tend to ony work with my to-dos on the Palm, this isn't a big issue. I'm not sure, but it seems that even though the calendar, to-dos and addresses sync with iSync, it appears that the Palm Hotsync still backs up those databases itself. This is good in the sense that they can be restored more easily and that there's an extra backup, but it also makes for a longer sync. Normally, the Palm Hotsync doesn't backup databases that are handled with their own conduits. Certainly, the data is in iCal as a backup, but maybe since there is not a perfect mapping from iCal to the Palm data, they chose to let it also backup in the native Palm format as well.
My biggest gripe is still that there is no good mail sync (see earlier entry). The freeware mail conduit works well enough with the standard Palm mail program, but unfortunately, it does not play well with the iSync conduit enabled at the same time. As Starbuck would say, "Felgercarb!"
Next entry
My biggest gripe is still that there is no good mail sync (see earlier entry). The freeware mail conduit works well enough with the standard Palm mail program, but unfortunately, it does not play well with the iSync conduit enabled at the same time. As Starbuck would say, "Felgercarb!"
Next entry
iCal (with some WebDAV fu)
Feeling a little more adveturous, I found some discussion over at Mac OS X Hints about how to enable the WebDAV module in the Apache Web server on your own machine. The goal here is to have something local that iCal can publish and subscribe to. I managed to get it working to a basic level. It's still not totally secure. I would be happy with it as-is on my LAN, but since I take the iBook out and connect to public wireless networks, I want to have things more locked down. Anyhow, I can publish my iCal calendar that has been synchronized with my PDA to a local folder managed by the WebDAV service, and can subscribe to it from another account so that my calendar can be composited with my wife's calendar in her iCal, and I can also pusblish hers to do the same in my account. The beauty of iCal is the separate calendars that can be switched on and off to put them together without having to actually merge them.
The parts of iCal that I don't like so far are the printing and syncing of to-dos. Printing the to-dos on the calendar has some poor alignment, but I'm wondering if that is a printer issue as Safari has something sort of similar. Curently, I've chosen to use iSync to sync with my Palm. The to-dos go into iCal, but since iCal's equivalent of Palm categories is the separate calendars, and Palm doesn't have categories for its calendar items, iSync puts all the to-dos into the same single calendar it syncs the Palm calendar events into. This makes working with the to-dos more difficult on the computer than on the Palm, but I usually work with them on the Palm anyway. It's just nice to have them show up in iCal, but since it lists all my to-dos, you can't really print a calendar with them included. I really would like an option to just include dated to-dos on the calendar. Another small annoyance is the iCal alarm pop-ups. It doesn't seem I can dismiss them with a keystroke that I've found yet.
Next entry
The parts of iCal that I don't like so far are the printing and syncing of to-dos. Printing the to-dos on the calendar has some poor alignment, but I'm wondering if that is a printer issue as Safari has something sort of similar. Curently, I've chosen to use iSync to sync with my Palm. The to-dos go into iCal, but since iCal's equivalent of Palm categories is the separate calendars, and Palm doesn't have categories for its calendar items, iSync puts all the to-dos into the same single calendar it syncs the Palm calendar events into. This makes working with the to-dos more difficult on the computer than on the Palm, but I usually work with them on the Palm anyway. It's just nice to have them show up in iCal, but since it lists all my to-dos, you can't really print a calendar with them included. I really would like an option to just include dated to-dos on the calendar. Another small annoyance is the iCal alarm pop-ups. It doesn't seem I can dismiss them with a keystroke that I've found yet.
Next entry
Garage Band
One of the things I want to use my laptop for is helping me with my music. I've been wanting to get some sort of MIDI setup where I can make some drum and bass loops to play guitar with. I thought I might be able to use the iBook for that with some software, and during my lengthy wait for the right Mac buying moment, Apple added GarageBand to the iLife suite. It looks like it is just the thing for what I need once I get a USB MIDI keyboard and a Griffin iMic (yet more accessories you will note).
I was playing around with it to get some practice. I just put together some of the included loops once I finally figred out how to get at the loops. It's pretty easy to use, but you quickly find out that it can't be all that simple, as you realize you need to learn more about music that you might have known (at least for me). It's a bit like getting into digital photography, where you realize you hav to do some of the things that the photo lab used to do, or running Linux and finding out you now have to be the bearded, long haired sysadmin as well as the oblivious user. The main thing that became apparent is that it takes quite a lot of work to make just 30 seconds. I'm sure it gets easier with practice, and I was trying to use it too much without the regular keyboard and mouse hooked up - the trackpad is rather tedious for this application. I can now understand the usefulness of the Griffin Powermate.
Next entry
I was playing around with it to get some practice. I just put together some of the included loops once I finally figred out how to get at the loops. It's pretty easy to use, but you quickly find out that it can't be all that simple, as you realize you need to learn more about music that you might have known (at least for me). It's a bit like getting into digital photography, where you realize you hav to do some of the things that the photo lab used to do, or running Linux and finding out you now have to be the bearded, long haired sysadmin as well as the oblivious user. The main thing that became apparent is that it takes quite a lot of work to make just 30 seconds. I'm sure it gets easier with practice, and I was trying to use it too much without the regular keyboard and mouse hooked up - the trackpad is rather tedious for this application. I can now understand the usefulness of the Griffin Powermate.
Next entry
Accessories make the Mac
In my quest for the ultimate in computer aethetics, I got some more cool accessories. First was the iCurve from Griffin Technology, which is very elegant looking, and, if nothing else, keeps you from not having a place to set your laptop when you come home. Next was the Creature II speakers from JBL in white, of course. I'm sure you can get better sounding speakers, but probably for more money, and these sound great as it is, and look great to boot. As long as you have a spot to put the subwoofer, which isn't really very big, the little speakers fit anywhere. However, the power brick is rather large, so you may have to hide that away cleverly, and the power cord is black rather than the white that all the other are. Oddly, I got the best deal on both these from J&R Music through Amazon. iTunes lets you save custom EQ settings, so I can have one for the iBook internal speakers and one for the JBLs. Now all need is to make a final decision on a Bluetooth mouse to complete the ensemble.
Next entry
Next entry
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)