Image by Yutaka Tsutano via FlickrWhile everyone else is looking at the dire disaster happening in Egypt these days I am focused on what is really important: I ordered my Verizon iPhone yesterday!
Yes, that's right, yesterday, even though ordering is supposed to only be available today.
Well, the official start time for the pre-orders was 3am EST, Feb 3 - today. 3am is midnight here in California. I signed in about 15 minutes early, suddenly, after only 5 minutes of waiting, the screen came alive and said I could now order. I completed the the whole thing before midnight which means I ordered on Feb 2. People in Hawaii are probably saying "What's the big deal." But I must have been one of the very first to order.
What really annoyed me is the site said it would ship on Feb 10, when it goes on sell for everyone in the retail stores. How annoying that I will get mine the same time as everyone else, a whole week from now. Checked my order today and it said "Already Shipped." I was amazed, what does it mean? No company was named and no tracking number so I'm thinking it hasn't really shipped, but it would be great if it did - it would mean I'd get the phone tomorrow since I got free next day shipping.
I'll just have to wait and see if it shows up tomorrow. Fingers crossed!!
I don't own an iPhone and never have, that's because I'm with Verizon where I have no dropped calls or reception problems at all in the last ten years.
Steve Jobs showed everyone how other smart phones had the same problem, that it's perfectly normal. So I took out my VerizonBlackberry Storm and covered it with BOTH hands in multiple places to see if I got a drop in bars. Nothing. I completely covered the thing with both hands and it never went down from 5 bars at all.
I think it's clear that it's ATT that's the problem, which is why I don't have an iPhone. The rumor is Verizon will have them in January 2011 if that is true then I will get one. Works out perfectly for me since my contract is up in November.
I think I will wait a month, after it comes out, though, to make sure there are no major problems.
I've been really depressed since Darcy died and it seems to be getting worse. I've been stuck with massive indecision that has been paralyzing, which is very unlike me. I usually make decisions instantly and don't ever regret them and never have any fear about it.
So I went out and bought some computer stuff! I'm typing this right now on my brand new MacBook, what fun. It's really a nice little computer, seems very fast, but we'll see if that holds up when I'm using photoshop.
I also got 2 new Wacom tablets. My old ones are 6 years old now and grungy looking, and worse, seem to be losing sensitivity. I do airbrushing and drawing in Photoshop and can't have the tablet malfunctioning. I went for the smaller one, 6x8, instead of the 9x12 that the old ones were. It made sense at time to have the larger one especially since I have 2 monitors, but the truth is all that real estate to move across is slow & tiring and the damn thing is HUGE on my desk. I can't get the keyboard in the right position because of it. I tried mini keyboards but don't like them, I need the numbers pad on the right. Now with the new, smaller Wacoms I can move across the screens very fast, and my keyboard now fits - it's great!
And, of course, I had to get an Airport Extreme so the MacBook can connect to the internet at
a good speed. My last one is a first generation Airport, 6 years old and really, really slow. Didn't matter much because the old iBook was Darcy's and she only used it for internet access and playing movies and didn't use it very often, but I intend to use the MacBook quite a bit.
And then I had to to get an iPod Touch and a new printer that also copies and scans! It's long bugged me that I can't do any scans at home but have to do it only at work, but for a long time another scanner was way too expensive. Now with the new all in one printers, copiers, scanners the whole thing only cost $70.
Then there was the 2 hours to set up the Airport Extreme. Networks really confuse me because I do the same thing 5 times until it works the final time. Why it didn't work the other 4 times is a complete mystery.
Then I had a major problem with the Wacom Tablet, it just stopped working completely, cursor would not move at all. At first I thought the iMac was frozen, but the Apple mouse worked fine. I restarted and it still didn't work. I couldn't figure it out and was getting very frustrated, then I realized I was using the pen from the old tablet. Sigh.
I've been rather disappointed in the iPod. It's hard to find good games the way they set up the app store. Then I found that all the fonts on the thing are way too small. I have reading glasses to use the computer but they aren't strong enough for really small type and things, which means I'll have to buy a second pair of reading glasses with a higher magnification, what a hassle. Got all my songs on there, though as well as a couple Audiobooks and a couple books to read. I do like the fact that Googlemaps has it's own application. But then again there were network problems. I found the network I had set up with the Aiport Extreme but it had problems connecting. I tried it 3 times but no go. Then I tried Safari and it connected, so it's working and but the sign on failed. I hate networks.
But it's all working now except the printer because I haven't taken it out of the box yet. That will be an easy set up and I'll do it later tonight. One cool thing is the Airport has a USB plug for a printer so I will be able to print from the MacBook. While working on all this I wasn't depressed at all, and feel a bit better in general. It's good to get my mind occupied, maybe even write in here more often.
This is the Onion so don't get excited, it isn't happening. The video is funny as hell, though. I like the commentators final sentence. "It's unknown if the Wheel will catch on in the business world, where people use computers for actual work and not just dicking around."
Lots of people have been complaining about having problems with Apple's new MobileMe service. My biggest problem is that they took my .Mac account and made it a MobileMe account without giving me a choice. Fortunately, I can still use my @mac.com address, because @me.com is too dumb for words. Didn't Apple do any marketing research on this? I have yet to find anyone who thinks "me" is a good domain name.
Well, now I'm more than annoyed because my email stopped functioning completely today and is showing no signs of coming back to life. This is my main email address, now I can't trust it. When problems like this happen and are so wide spread, they are often never fully dealt with and email never functions well again.
I've used .Mac since it first started back in 2001. At one point I let my subscription lapse and went on a crusade to find decent replacements for all the things it does. Much disappointed I came back to .Mac, but was a bit happier when they increased the storage space to 10 GB. Now they had to mess with it again. Disk space has now doubled to 20 BG but what good is that if I can't get my email?
The funniest part of these commercials is that the PC guy is a lot more interesting - and a better a actor - than the Mac guy. And I'm really only doing this to test out the new Flock 2, built on the Firefox 3 platform. Very fast and nice.
Man, do I want it! I've never been one to update OS's quickly. I've got an old beige Mac that is still running 8.1 (that's a pre-OSX system for the uninitiated). When I got my Quicksilvers in 2002 I ran OS 9.2 for a couple of years because I didn't want to mess with OSX. Didn't use it until Jaguar. Then when Panther came out I waited a year before upgrading to that. Tiger I went to much faster, upgrading after only a few months after it came out because it had some cool features.
But Leopard I really want. All kinds of good things in it. The most important for me is the new Finder, which works much more like Mail or iTunes but I especially like the preview mode, Quick Look, in Finder. I bought a Finder replacement app, Path Finder, a while ago mainly because it had a good preview feature and the few times I've stopped using it and gone back to Finder I've quickly gone back to Path Finder because I really needed the preview feature. Works even better now that InDesign makes previews as well.
But my favorite feature is Back To My Mac. If you have a .mac account (and I do) you can connect to any other Mac of yours that is registered on .mac and use it like you were there. Which means while I'm at work I can open my home Mac and vise versa. There has been many a time I've left things at work I wanted to work on at home and forgot to take with me. Nothing for it but to wait until I get into work the next day. But with the new Leopard feature I can access the work Mac right from the Finder. You used to have to buy Apple Remote Desktop for that, a $500 program. Time Machine looks great too. It saves a snapshot of your system and files every hour, but not the whole system only what is changed. Suppose you have a file you've been working on for days, at some point you realize you really want to go back to the version you had yesterday afternoon. You can flip through Time Machine until you find just that version of it and copy it back your hard drive.
And there are several other cool features, too. Preview will now let you combine several PDF's into one. Partition your hard drive without erasing it. Notes and To Do's in Mail look interesting. They have Dashcode, which is supposed to make designing Widgets easy, maybe I'll give that a try. Guest login so if I want to look up some porn without Darcy knowing it's all gone when that Guest account is gone :-) Or Private Browsing in Safari will do the same thing.
But my rule is to wait until at least 2 updates on a new OS for them to get some bugs out, but it's going to be hard. What does keep me in check is that there are several system enhancement apps I use that aren't fully Leopard compatible yet so I have to wait for them. Also, I just can't afford it right now which is what is really holding me in check.
A while back I wrote a post on the new iMac glossy screens, only problem was I hadn't actually seen one yet. So I went and found some at the Apple store so I could see for myself what all the fuss was about. Unfortunately, they were far worse than I imagined and I wrote a second article on it.
Today I was at Fry's to look for a couple of things and thought I'd see if they got the new iMacs in yet, they hadn't had them the last time I was looking. Now they did and I checked the screen out very carefully and it was much, much better. I'm still angry that Apple made the very stupid decision to put a 6 bit TN panel in instead of the 8 bit ips panels that Apple monitors have always been, but at least the color and tone was even over the whole screen this time.
So it must have been a bad batch in the first ones that went out and they seemed to have fixed them now. The screen looks good but it's still glossy, another really bad choice by Apple. And as good as this screen is it can't hold a candle to the screens in the last generation white iMacs that I ended up buying. Even the 24", which is an 8 bit ips panel, doesn't look as sharp and clear as my 20" because of that god-awful gloss on it.
But at least they have a usable screen now in the 20" imacs. A non-pro might not notice the lower quality of the new screens and if the glossy doesn't bother you, now you can at least be sure you aren't getting a monitor faded out on the bottom and too dark at the top. Although I bet there are still a few of those floating around.
The Classic and Shuffle remain the same, the Nano becomes a Mini Me of the Classic, which I think is an excellent idea. For those on a limited budget you get the full iPod just with smaller disk space. The 4 GB is $149, the 8 GB is $199, and you can watch videos.
But the really cool one is the iPod Touch. Looks just like an iPhone only slightly shorter with the full touch screen and WiFi. You can even download songs from the Apple Store if you have a WiFi connection. And they are working a deal with Starbucks to sync their music and WiFi with what Starbucks is playing in their store. Hear a good tune while buying your coffee? Just whip out your iPod Touch and you are immediately on a WiFi connection to the iTunes store where they will let you know automatically what song is playing and you can buy it with just a touch. Surf the web with Safari, too. Runs $299 for an 8 GB, $399 for a 16 GB.
They still aren't doing enough, though. This is the perfect opportunity for them to turn it into a full blown PDA with notes, calendar, games and things. They have half of that now and the touch screen for easy maneuvering and typing, why stop with it half full?Still, I don't own an iPod and don't need one (especially if it isn't a PDA). Darcy has one but after spending $299 just last Xmas I'm certainly not getting another one now, especially since I just spent a fortune on 2 new iMacs. Someday they will make the iPhone good enough, as well as AT&T good enough (and cheap enough) and I'll put away my Palm and LG flip phone. For now I'll just wait and see what develops.
Primate Labs, the blog for Geekbench, has tested the speeds of just about every Mac in the last 6 years or so up to the present. It's pretty spectacular. My old Quicksilver G4 comes in at 841. This is based on the score of a Power Mac G5 @ 1.6 Ghz being the base at 1000. My new iMacs came in at 2862, more than 3 times faster than the Quicksilver, and they probably used only 1 Gig of ram where I have 3. Tests at OWC show going from 1 Gig of ram to 3 is a better than 30% speed jump.
But it is very interesting to see where everything stands. At the very top is the new Mac Pro Dual Quad-Core Intel Xeons (which means 8 processors) at 8626. It better be that fast since a single one would have cost more than both my iMacs combined, which is why I didn't get one.
A friend of mine once told me that Mac people would rather click ten times than write a single line of code. To which I said: “Exactly the point!” Apparently very smart people like Macs as Noah Gift says in his article, the Zen of Mac:
“Why would I use a terminal, it is a mac, that is the whole point!”. That taught me quite a bit, as here was one of the most successful and intelligent people on planet earth and he “got” Mac. He didn’t want to think about his computer as his thinking time was spent in other areas like making sure Caltech continued to be one of the top Science Universities and doing research on curing AIDS.
I've been working on my new iMacs all weekend and enjoying the heck out of it, my kind of meditation.
I picked up a couple of the last white 20” ones, the new aluminum ones are simply unacceptable and an embarrassment to Apple. New ones are running fine and I got a very nice discount. I'm very happy, except for a few minor glitches, like my Keychain passwords won't copy over, or more accurately, half of them won't copy over. Weird. It's very fast but I haven't tried working with it yet, I will on Monday but after a 5 year old G4 anything would seem fast. The one really fun thing I've found so far is Photobooth, I can take pictures of myself with the iSight camera at the top of this thing and do it with special effects! Now what could be better than that?
But really, everything is VERY fast, even the new keyboard works better. Here on Blogger I see a movie icon up next to the image icon, wonder if that's new or if I just couldn't see it with my old system?
I finally got down to an Apple Store and had my first look at the new iMacs. At first glance it looked pretty good, but at second glance it didn't. If I didn't know what to look for I wouldn't have seen it but the 20” screens really are darker at the top and lighter at the bottom. When I put that standard image of the clown fishes in the green plants it looked terrible. Too dark on the top with medium tones going almost black then so light at the bottom that light tones just washed out. This is completely unacceptable for a graphic artist. And I didn't like the glare, either. It wasn't terrible and I was in the brightly lit store but why would I want to put up with that?
The 24” looked much better but still had the reflections in the glossy screen. I could probably adjust to it but why spend $1,799 for something that's less than I'd like? Very odd of Apple to not offer a matte screen and to go with a cheap TN Film 6 bit FRC screen on the 20”. Artists and photographers all across the internet have been complaining, saying they can't use it. This is a major blunder, maybe Jobs has lost it. And I really prefer the new styling of the aluminum, thin body, but the screen quality trumps everything else, including speed. I really wanted to like these new ones and I don't.
What it boils down to is that I'm not getting one, when I was all set to buy two. I'm going to go for one of the white iMacs, on sale everywhere for around $1,299. I'm even thinking of getting the Mac Mini for the home computer, that way I can still use my old monitor and the compact keyboard I bought. I was really looking forward to a new iMac screen and making my old cinema display the second monitor but maybe it's not worth the price.
I'd love to go for a couple of the white 24” iMacs but don't think I can afford that. But the bottom line is I waited for these new iMacs for nothing. And what about the future? Is Apple going to only make glossy displays from now on for everything? I'm very disappointed.
I was really looking forward to the new iMac and want one badly (2 actually). One of the things I was most excited about was the new, glossy screens. There was one single phrase that sold me on it - true blacks. I practically swooned over the idea of not having the gray they call black on the matte screen monitors.
But then I started seeing postings all over the internet about how terrible the glossy screens were - that they were totally unacceptable for professionals and that it was a vicious plot by Jobs to force pros into buying the much more expensive Mac Pros! And they had glare! Oh, the humanity! This didn't seem right so I started searching the web and found this article:Dr. Mac: Rants & Raves - Glossy or Not? by Bob LeVitus. The good doc really knows his stuff and most important, he posted comparison photos.
One look at the large image of this and I knew I was right the first time. Look at the greater detail and depth - and blacks!!! Look how gray and washed out the matte screen on the bottom looks. I'm amazed at pros who say they can't use it, hell, I could color a comic book on a grayscale screen if I had to and know just what the printed version will look. And for someone who used CRT monitors for over a decade I have the feeling I'm going to laugh at what they call glare.
And Dr. Mac's pictures are on the older MacBook Pros from 2006, not of the newer iMacs. The MacBook Pros are made with a kind of polyester but the iMacs are actually high quality glass. Still, I'm going to head down to the local Apple store to look it over in person before spending the money on 2 of these babies.
The new iMacs are here, I've been waiting for months for these babies to come out. They look fantastic, although I've only seen them on the web so far and not in person but best I can tell, Apple really hit this one out of the park. And they packed more punch into it at a lower price, too. I sent an email to a friend who is in the market for a new Mac but doesn't know what to get so I gave her a run down on types and prices. One of her concerns is how easy it is to move. Since it's pretty comprehensive I see no need to reproduce it when I can just copy and paste. ________________________________
You don't want the Mac Mini unless you already have a monitor and keyboard to hook up to it.
The iMac is the best buy, for $1199 you will have a machine far faster than you need, a new 20“ glossy monitor (which I hear is very good but I've never seen it) and a new slim keyboard. Weighs 20 lbs, though, only 2 lbs lighter than the last one.
If you go for the 15“ MacBook Pro it weighs 5.4 lbs but is $1999. It's actually got more power and ram than the iMac. The 17“ is 6.8 lbs and $2799. Either is available with a glossy screen.
Or you can go cheaper and get the 13“ MacBook, also available with a glossy screen and weighing in at 5.1 lbs. Price is either $1099 with an 80 GB HD, $1299 with a 120 GB HD or $1499 with a 160 BG HD and black instead of white.
The 13“ MacBook has just about the same specs for speed & power as the iMac, the main difference is the much smaller screen and much more portable.
So it's up to you if price, screen size or mobility is most important and in what combo. As far as power any of them would be plenty for you. The MacBook Pro's would probably be more than you need but that's the only way to get bigger than a 13“ screen.
Also, with all of them you will get a free trial of iWork which is a word processor and now also has a spreadsheet app with it like Appleworks did. Look around on Apple's site and you can see screenshots of it. You can use it for 30 days for free before buying it for $79.
If you buy directly from Apple you will get free shipping for any of them and I don't think you would have to pay sales tax, since you aren't in California. You should get Apple Care for 3 years which is $249 for the laptops and $169 for the iMac, but there should be no other costs. ________________________________
Her needs are simple, just basic computing, email, web surfing and other such things. For me, as a graphic artist, it's much more difficult. First of all, I need the bigger screen, I also need more ram for Photoshop work. I really need a Mac Pro but just can't afford it right now, even the iMac will be a problem. I need 2, one for work and one for at home, which makes things difficult. If I go for the 20” 2.4 Ghz with 2 GB of ram, which is really what I need, then 2 of them is going to cost around $4,000 by the time all the extras get added in like extended warranty, the extra gig of ram, taxes, etc. I'm thinking of going for the 2 Ghz which will only be around $3,000 for 2. That's actually pretty amazing when you figure I spent $2,000 for 64 MB of ram alone for my Quadra back in '95. close to $10 grand for the whole computer for a mere fraction of the power. Damn thing had a 80 MB hard drive in it!
No point in worrying too much about power, more is always good but I've been using a 2002 Quicksilver with a 1 Ghz dual processor and 1.5 GB of ram on the old PPC G4 architecture for 5 years and that has been fine for 90% of what I do. For the other 10% I just have to wait a bit for it to finish. Even the 2 Ghz iMac is going to be 3 or 4 times faster than that and I'll be in the new Intel technology. And if I have more money later I may be able to upgrade to 4 GB of ram and maybe a more powerful processor, I'm thinking 2 or three years from now. I usually use my Macs for 5 years. I'll be able to hook up my old 20” Apple displays to run 2 monitors on each, which helps a whole lot. That way I can put all my tools in Photoshop and Illustrator on the second monitor and have the main one free to be just working image.
I might have to settle for one now and the second one in a few months since my credit is maxed out too. But, I'm busy writing out invoices and trying to get them collected so it's possible I can pull in the $4,000 needed in 2 or 3 weeks.
Rumors have been flying about a new iMac coming out at the end of July, beginning of August. Of course, they were saying it would debut a month ago, too. People are speculating what it would look like and I found this picture, some one thought it would match the new iPhone. Looks very cool.
I need new computers now and was just looking to buy when I saw this rumor, now I'm waiting. It seems reasonable that a new one should come out, last revision was Sept. 2006, they just upgraded the MacBooks and the Mac Pro about a month ago so they should be doing iMacs soon. Some are saying they want it now for the back to school crowd, others are saying Sept. when Leopard comes out. I think sooner, in fact, they are behind schedule as far as upgrades, almost a year for the iMac when they usually do it every 6 months. I think it was supposed to come out a month ago but got pushed back because of the iPhone the same way Leopard got pushed back because they took their top people off of other projects and put them on the iPhone to get it out in time.
There is a short little article in Time Magazine on the idea that iPhone is going to create a revolution by turning computers into touch screens, making the mouse obsolete.
Odd article since it starts out looking like it's going to be all about the iPhone then suddenly ends up being mostly about Microsoft's Milan. Which I really didn't mind since I'd never heard of it, looks very interesting. Think of basically a coffee table with a computer in it that you can operate with your fingers. One example was to place your cell phone with a digital camera in it on the table and all the pictures you've taken suddenly show up on the screen and can be passed around to people sitting around the table, that would be cool. Makes me think of Tom Cruise in Minority Report.
But I wonder how great an idea this really is, after all, touch screens have been around for 30 years and haven't caught on at all, except maybe in bars. Seems far more appropriate for the iPhone, excellent for something small and hand held but imagine having to move your arm across a coffee table to use your computer, you'd get tired fast. And you'd have to be really paranoid about anything messing up the screen, which I would think is a problem for the iPhone as well. I'm a big Palm fan but you can't use one without putting a screen guard on it or the screen gets worn out really fast.
But I'm always a contrarian, I don't use a mouse I use a Wacom tablet like any good artist should. What I want is an iPhone but with a 21" screen and only a little thicker, that has a color Wacom tablet across the front and a complete Mac inside and you have to use a pen, not your finger. Wacom does make a 21" tablet with a color LCD screen but it costs $1,800 and you still have a buy a Mac to plug it into, too expensive and not mobile enough. Someday they will have it, but not yet.
The name probably looks intimidating but don't let it bother you. This is what it means: "Ballard (1981) coined the term "pharyngula" to refer to the embryo that has developed to the phyolotypic stage, when it posesses the classic vertebrate bauplan." The tag line under the log, in case it's too small to see is: "Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal."
See? Very simple. This is a science blog run by a biology professor but is really much more of a social commentary about the state of America today.
Take this interesting article which is about why you have to register with the government to buy a chemistry beaker in some states but any idiot can buy a gun without registering it at all.
Or this one: An almost biblical curse about a very tragic case of inbreeding in a small Mormon community that believes in polygamy.
This one is about Paul Hill, who murdered an abortion doctor outside his clinic:
A couple of deranged Christian organizations are planning to send their members to Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the end of July to thump about like a gang of gumbies, bellowing about what a good man Paul Hill was. God's man. A hero. A martyr.
And to crown this exercise in lunacy and poor taste, they're planning a reenactment of the murders."
It's truly amazing that there are people who think it's a good idea to celebrate a murderer, and that reenacting the murders is a fun day.
The whole blog is filled with these gems and is really worth a look. Back in the day the hippies used to say that our society was sick, they were right but we were downright sane back then compared to America in the 21st century.
I'm sure glad the iPhone will be out soon to cheer me up, though I probably won't be getting one for a couple of years, since I just signed up for 2 more years at Verizon with 2 new free phones. Hopefully in 2 years the iPhone will be even better, more affordable, and - wishful thinking - Cingular will have become a provider worth having. Or maybe a competitor will come up with a phone almost as good that sells only for Verizon. Sounds like a great idea for Palm or LG, because right now Cingular would have to pay me to use their service, and if it wasn't a whole lot of money I'd still turn them down. Which means I can be bought but I'm not cheap.
This is just about the coolest thing Apple has ever done, and that's saying something. It completely revolutionizes cell phones and even mobile computing because this is really like having a small Mac in your hand. But the most revolutionary part is the touch screen, I see a time in the very near future when touch screens on laptops is the standard.
Unfortunately, I'm not going to get one. Apple foolishly signed up with Cingular until 2009, who has a terrible reputation for service. I don't know of anyone who likes them and several who don't. I just checked out Consumer Reports and their most recent report is this month with a survey showing Cingular and Sprint fighting for last place with Verizon taking top honors. I have Verizon now and have had it for two years and have never had a dropped call and rarely any problems at all. As cool as the iPhone is the most important thing is getting - and keeping - a connection. And right now I can sign up for another 2 years with Verizon and get a $100 credit for a new phone, which means I can get a Chocolate for free right now instead of waiting until June to spend several hundred dollars. I'll probably wait and see if any terrific new phones come out of the CES show going on right now in Vegas, maybe there will be something to rival the iPhone.
But Apple more than hit one out of the park this time, this will be bigger than the iPod, I'll just have to wait a bit.
Image by Yutaka Tsutano via FlickrWhile everyone else is looking at the dire disaster happening in Egypt these days I am focused on what is really important: I ordered my Verizon iPhone yesterday!
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