A Rubber Door » Macintosh

Steve Jobs

Speener — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 03:16:50 +0000

Does a man really die when the world we live in is defined by his work?

The bondi blue iMac, white headphones, that original 5GB iPod, the iPhone.

1234; black turtlenecks and blue jeans; glass stairs and the Apple Store look; put the lowercase “i” in front of any word and an Apple lawyer will be at your door in a flash. A computer without a floppy drive or a CD. Hell, computers without keyboards.

Apple made innovation art under Steve Jobs. He showed us the way, now we can lead, create, innovate on our own. But we should start that tomorrow.

Tonight we mourn.

RIP Steve.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard available for pre-order

Spencer — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 19:29:08 +0000

I love that the upcoming version of OS X for the Mac, 10.6 Snow Leopard, is available for the dirt cheap price of $29 to upgrade. The family pack that allows you to upgrade up to 5 computers in a household is $49.

Couple of things:

This is the first version of OS X that is Intel only.
The upgrade only works if you’re running Leopard (10.5). If you’re on Tiger (10.4) or earlier you have to buy theMac Box Set – (with Snow Leopard)
or Mac Box Set Family Pack with Snow Leopard (5-User)

The new operating system has been promoted as a refinement of Leopard as opposed to an entire new OS. Focused on improvements as opposed to new features.

Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard

R.I.P. My iMac

Spencer — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 04:03:31 +0000

Just 4 years old and my poor mac is as dead as a doornail. Actually not fully dead, but $900 to fix. Ugh. Was planning to buy something but not now.

Apple has it in for me this week.

Mac or PC video

Spencer — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 21:06:30 +0000

I’m a iBook flippa.

WPvideo 1.10

"Mac or PC" Rap Music Video – Mac vs PC

Can’t keep a good iMac down

Spencer — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 01:01:28 +0000

I purchased an iMac G5 two years ago. Entirely new technology, a beautiful machine for a tidy sum of $2,000 or so. Apple announced that soon after my machine was released, that there were problems with the power supplies on this machine. I started to have problems earlier this year and held out until this weekend – when the iMac decided it wasn’t going to turn on. Thank god I purchased the AppleCare warranty on this machine.

After a crushing Eagle’s loss – I drove to King of Prussia mall to make my 5 o’clock appointment. By 5:45 I was on my way back home with a working computer courtesy of a newly installed power supply. On a Sunday! At 5 P.M.

Now I have to get back to my project.

Caller ID on Macintosh

Spencer — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 17:14:00 +0000

I have to HIGHLY recommend the program Silica for mac users that have caller id and a mac with a modem (not all do these days). Silica is simple – it provides an on screen display for any call coming in along with details it finds from your address book (picture and name) right on your monitor and that’s all it does. No more running to find the phone to see if you want to answer it. The installation is easy because there really isn’t one – just download it and start the program running. It’s also very customizable, allowing you to change position of the window, the color, and various timing options.Couple of notes – You need OS X although if you’re not using OS X why don’t you put OS 9 and your abacus away. Second, some of the current macs (all of them?) don’t come with modems – although there is a USB modem available made by Apple. Finally – you need to have Caller ID from your phone service (had to say it – someone would think this adds it).

If you use your computer a lot, Silica is really helpful.

What do I think about NBC?

Spencer — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 05:55:00 +0000

I’ve grown a facsination with the service YouTube. Those that read this blog probably know this already. Well part of what Youtube allows someone like me to do is to find content that I want to see without searching a million websites and without worry that it won’t run on my mac.

This past weekend Saturday Night Live ran a great digital short that was essentially a Natalie Portman rap video. It was up for a little on Youtube and then taken down due to copyright infringement. Apparently NBC says that users can go to the NBC.com site to view the video. This is true as long as you’re on Windows – their videos don’t run on anything but Explorer Windows.

What makes this such a bad decision is that they call this the “viral video of the week” – without truly understanding what viral marketing is. If you truly release something virally, it works best when it can be distributed freely. That way it reaches more people. As it stands now the only way to access this video is to go to NBC.com. Problem is who would? Doesn’t NBC suck outside of The Office and My Name is Earl? If you asked anyone on Sunday morning if they saw SNL last night, they probably would say no; why? Because it sucks. So all that said, wouldn’t it make sense to put a popular video in as many places as possible? Wouldn’t people see it and say “Hmm, maybe SNL doesn’t suck anymore.” Don’t you think they reaped the benefits of the Lazy Sunday video being passed all around the internet?

This is the problem with the media conglomerates of today – they want to take advantage of today’s users, but are unwilling to do it on terms that todays users will agree to. There are a ton of funny videos out there being provided by people who get it.

If I can’t view yours, I can move onto another.

Macintosh Intel: Obsolescence by innovation

Spencer — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 04:22:00 +0000

I knew this day would come. Apple introduced a new iMac that uses Intel processors. This effectively makes the iMac G5 I purchased in October 2004 obsolete. This doesn’t bother me as I expect that computers will go obsolete. I didn’t expect that a new, top of the line computer, wouldn’t be obsolete so soon but this is what happens with computers. What does bother me is Apple’s habit of providing significant upgrades so soon after minor ones.

Apple knew this computer was coming when the last iMac was released in October 2005. So my question is this: why release the last one? Many people purchased new iMacs for the holiday and then what does Apple do – release an even newer one 10 days after the holiday season is over.

Of course Apple has a habit of doing this. Last August I bought the newly released iPod thinking “this is a new upgrade, I’m safe for a bit.” Of course a little over 2 months later they release the iPod Video. Last winter they upgraded the iPod Mini only to eliminate it by releasing the Nano a few months later.

I’ve owned 5 macs since 1986 and am a professed Mac fanatic and Apple’s innovation is legendary but it comes with a price borne by those that are their most ardent supporters. We are taken advantage of.

I will never buy another computer other than one running an Apple operating system. It used to be counter culture, but now it’s really about owning a machine that’s better than a Windows machine. All that said, I warn anyone buying a Mac to wait and really think about it. Do your research. Look at the rumor sites. Only after you’re sure do you buy a new Mac.

Not they are out to screw you but they’re out to screw you. Trust me I will be following my advice the next time I need a computer – which unfortunately is too soon for my taste.

Macintosh and Yahoo (mac owners get the shaft)

Spencer — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 00:38:00 +0000

Yahoo and Google are all that’s left of the portal wars of the late 90′s. I use Yahoo all the time because of its breadth of service. There is almost nothing online that Yahoo doesn’t provide. It galls me that they don’t pay any attention to Mac owners. How do they hate us? Let me count the ways:

Yahoo Messenger hasn’t been updated in years. While AOL and MSN upgrade their product often for the Mac, Yahoo has abandoned the Mac version. None of the new features available on the Windows version are available on the Mac version: stealth settings, animated emoticons, launch player, environments, etc. None of these are available for Mac users. Hint: use the excellent IM client Adium as a replacement; it replaces MSN Messenger, AOL, Jabber, and others.
Launchcast, Yahoo’s music station only supports no Mac browsers. If Yahoo would provide support to mozilla browsers like Firefox it would cover up a lot of problems, but most of their products run only in Windows IE.
With Stattracker for fantasy football, the new version only runs on Windows IE. All other users pay the same amount of money and get the “classic” version. (If you’re not clear, classic means that Yahoo is too cheap to provide service to anyone else than windows owners).

You would think that Yahoo would go a long way to provide cross-platform support since it chips away at an advantage that Microsoft has. I’m not asking that Yahoo do as much for mac users as they do for windows owners, but they have a long way to go to be considered mac-friendly. By simply providing support to Firefox for all of their features, mac owners would be able to access more features.