Moltz on Macworld: It's Ether

If you don't read Crazy Apple Rumors Site, chances are you don't know John Motlz. A great introduction to his entirely sardonic take on all things Apple (a great laugh no matter which side of the Apple tree you fall from) can be found at Macworld.com, where Moltz gives his take on day one of the Macworld Expo. To wit:

In addition to touching Apple hardware, you can actually touch Apple executives and last year I did just that. I walked up to senior vice president of retail Ron Johnson and touched him on his arm. He was talking to someone else and after touching him I quickly walked away, as I just wanted to touch him, not disturb him. He looked confused but not concerned and I managed to avoid an unfortunate incident with security.

Via Macworld.

Apple, I love You

Cast your fanboy slurs aside, naysayers! I've a story of true love to tell, and with a happy ending to boot!

In case you weren't aware, I've been having some issues with my MacBook. Some from the start, some quite recent. The basic rundown, in order of appearance, is this:

• Emits infamous high pitched whine unless CPU is tasked.
• iSight microphone always records with static noise interference.
• Piece of palm rest cracks off.
• iSight camera breaks completely, green power indicator light remains on while computer is on.

Through it all I've loved my MacBook for its Mac user experience, namely the joys of OS X, but my patience was starting to wear thin with all these hardware issues. I began to wonder what Steve Jobs would think of all this.

So I wrote him and asked.

Two days later, or 20 minutes ago from the time I'm typing this blog entry, my phone rings and a gentleman named Tajai from Apple's executive relations here in Canada is on the other end going over the contents of my e-mail to Jobs with me and assuring me he is now personally going to see this issue through to resolution.

How do you like them Apples?

The situation is being handled thusly: Tajai understands I need my computer for work and can't afford the downtime a repair would incur, so he's willing to pay up to $300 for a rental Mac while my MacBook goes into the shop. If the issues can't be resolved via the repair attempt, the MacBook will be replaced.

One of my main concerns when writing Steve was whether my MacBook experience was common to all MacBook owners. Tajai assured me my situation is rare, which, along with his personal commitment to seeing my MacBook through all of this, was reassuring.

I was starting to fear Apple had become just another faceless corporate greed machine, having turned its ear away from its customers and towards the ka-ching sound of money bags falling from the sky. That fear has now subsided. Apple is still a company that builds relationships with its customers, as this experience only proves.

Like any great relationship that goes through a hard time and comes out the other end in tact, my love for Apple is now stronger than ever.

Apple, I love you.

GUI of the Future: Reflection of the Past

First, quickly: Every OS (operating system), like Mac OS X or Windows XP or Vista has a graphical user interface, or GUI (lovingly pronounced "gooey"). The GUI is basically all the stuff you interact with in the operating system, like folders, icons, windows, buttons, menus, even applications. Most of what you know about your computer exists on the GUI level, and that's the way it was intended. The GUI is just a shell for the guts of all that's really going on inside your computer, which is incredibly complicated stuff, which is why you need the GUI to dependably and easily interact with it, to get it to do things like play movies, burn CD's, send e-mails, write blogs, etc. Some GUI's are arguably better than others, and there are often trade-offs between functionality and appearance when designing a GUI (though I think OS X has a pretty impressive handle on both). As technology and our understanding of it improves, however, this trade-off diminishes and we come closer and closer to having pure functionality co-existing harmoniously with alluring appearance in an OS, the way it truly ought to.

While our OS should be smart and fast at doing all the tasks we require of it, its appearance should tell us things, not only about our computer, but about ourselves. What I would like to see as a feature in a future OS would be "aging". I'd like every unique aspect of the OS, every individual application's screen, every menu, button, folder, wallpaper, all of it to age based on use. Applications we use a lot, buttons we press a lot, would all show signs of aging sooner than ones used less often. The edges of windows could start to chip and crack and peel, buttons could wear down, smudge, fade, or even fall off. Folders could tear, wallpapers could scratch and peel and even fall on a slant. Just like objects in the real world, our GUI objects could all show wear and tear. This would give us some sort of feedback on our usage habits, which would be interesting to see in such a real world fashion. Of course, if we really started to dislike the look of all these signs of aging, would could initiate repairs, bring elements back to their original condition, keep on top of it all and have things looking nice and cared for part of or even all of the time, if such were our inclination.

I can do this for the exterior of my computer, and this care or lack thereof is in part a reflection of who I am, so why shouldn't the rest of my computer be the same?

Back it Up There, Buddy

When it comes to computers, a lot of people sort of idly think, I don't need to bother backing up, chances are I'll never lose any of my files, that's the sort of thing that only happens to other people. If the odds are even remotely in a person's favor, then the path of least resistance is the path we'll almost all take, and in the case of personal computers that path involves doing absolutely nothing to safeguard our personal files.

The only problem is, people have the odds figured all wrong. Chances are that in your lifetime you will experience a hard drive failure, system crash, power surge, house fire, theft, a sudden case of butter fingers, whatever, which will result in the loss of your data - photos, music, e-mails, precious porn, you name it. It'll be gone. Forever. When that time comes, and it will come, you'll wish, oh how you'll wish, that you'd done something to back those files up.

So start backing up now.

I lost 5GB of photos once because I kept them in one place, on an iPod with an invisible ticking time bomb inside. When that bomb went off and the hard drive failed, my photos were gone. Two years of my life in images, gone. Was I upset? Yes. Did I learn anything? No.

Today I almost lost everything. After running an update for my Mac that somehow went wrong, my computer wouldn't boot. It would just hang on the welcome screen, unwilling to go any further. I had some stuff backed up, my screenplay, some TV shows I've downloaded, my music is mostly all stuff I own on CD, but some big things, like all my photos from my life in London, and little things, like carefully crafted playlists in iTunes, all hung in the balance.

I was lucky today. A reinstall of the operating system solved the problem, kept everything in tact like nothing had ever happened. I'm writing you from that same computer right now. But it reminded me that I'm still a total dope when it comes to holding on to the things I think are precious.

I survived the loss of those photos from my early twenties, its true, but I still wish I had them today and I'd do an awful lot to get them back. So why aren't I doing anything to keep what I still have?

As of today, I am.

Feed Me

I've been a sort of half-assed, casual user of feeds for something like a year now. My Goggle home page is set up to receive feeds from some of my favorite blog and news sources, as well as a few pass-time items like word of the day and quote of the day, but the interface is clunky and limited at best. As far as browser home pages go its a knock out, but a true RSS reader, it is not.

I've just tonight made the rather simple leap to a full fledged reader, the stunningly simple and elegant Vienna RSS Reader, and the difference is everything. Now I can keep up on the latest news, technology, Mac buzz, recipe ideas, and yes even words and quotes of the day without the need to open my web browser; without even the need to go looking. Any feeds I've subscribed to arrive in my reader the moment they're available online, organized and ready for me to read/view right there on the spot. Along with the text you'd see on the web page if you were using your browser, embedded photos and even videos come through in tact and in place. I don't know why I didn't do this before.

An easy way to peg a website that uses feeds is that you'll see a little orange coloured square icon in the far right of your browser's address bar with a white little dot and two curved lines in it (looks like a little frequency pulse of some kind). That signifies the page is set up to offer a feed - any time that page updates with new content, a feed will be sent out to anyone subscribing to it with the updated content for them to view.



www.macinstruct.com offers an RSS feed, as indicated by the icon in the browser's addres bar. Clicking on it would give you a choice of how you'd like to subscribe.

If this icon isn't present, its unlikely a feed is available. Sites like Macsurfer's Headline News and Facebook, sadly, do not offer feed services. The former is the greatest daily culminating effort of Mac related news the internet has ever known, and the latter is a social networking site where the activities of friends are constantly offered as updates on your social home page. Both would be ideal providers of RSS feeds, but alas neither does.

The coolest thing about an RSS Reader? You could even subscribe to this blog.

More Severe than Significant

Finding auditions when I lived in London was really tough without an agent, and finding an agent was impossible. Eventually I gave up on that and was a lot happier for having done so, but in the time I was still trying I did manage to get one audition for a film, a short in fact. It was a French short called Bed and Breakfast. I read the script and thought, really? It didn't seem to make any sense, and not in a thriller way or a hidden metaphor way but more of a pointless way. I was heading to Soho for my audition regardless, and despite knowing that they wanted me to have American citizenship (I lied when they asked and quoted the names of places from a Sufjan Stevens song to describe the area I grew up around in Michigan).

Its not necessary to tell you I didn't get the part. I'd more or less forgotten about the whole thing until tonight when I stumbled upon this interview with Ellen Feiss of 2002's Mac Switcher ad fame, a fame due mostly to the rumors that she was stoned in the ad. The interview, more than four years after the fact, focused mainly on the trials and tribulations of her Mac ad fame. She wasn't an actor before the ad and never tried to be one after, but recently she'd been in a short film in France, only taking the part after two months of convincing over the phone by the director who wanted her because the character drops mushrooms at one point and from her performance in the Mac ad he thought she could pull it off. The film is called Bed and Breakfast. My memory isn't terribly good, but something about that title twigged. Then when she said what she thinks of the film, that its "ridiculous," and "doesn't really make sense," I thought, my goodness, could this be?

A quick click on the link provided and a skim of the synopsis confirmed that this was in fact the film I'd auditioned for in London more than a year ago. An obscure, foreign, decidedly poor short film with no distribution, which I auditioned for in a place and time where I was getting no auditions whatsoever and subsequently forgot about, had suddenly come back into my field of vision all this time later. A coincidence of no significance and yet so severe.

People say the world has become a smaller place since the advent of the internet, but I can't say that I completely agree. The world was always quite large as it was, and now with the infinite ether of the internet extending out from its every electrical orifice, it has grown, and continues to grow exponentially. Should this growth have an increasing or decreasing affect on the rate or scale of coincidental occurrences in our lives?

Or, more to the matter, does it simply give us the means to prattle on about them to a greater extent when they occur?

Where Am I?

A couple of friends of mine have been using Macs for years, and for years I would poke fun at them and they would ignore me, and then I got a Mac, and now I digress.

They've been putting out an online comic strip for nearly a year now called John Smith, which details the life of the title character, an accountant with an abundantly common name, and a perhaps more and more abundantly common desire to see his name move up the ranks of it's Google search results. Implicated are the lives of his coworkers and neighbors, though to what degree we're always yearning to learn more. Oh, and its really funny. Everyone in the industry takes a hit, from Google to Apple to The Matrix. Even optical mouse manufacturers aren't safe.

I can relate to John's plight. I sometimes like to google this blog to see where it stands in the rankings. I've yet to actually find it in there - my hand gets tired after about 30 "next" clicks and my eyes start scrolling uncontrollably. I'm sure I'm out there somewhere, though. I mean, I blog, therefor I am. Right?

John Smith is published every Monday.

Review: Macbook Core 2 Duo

Considering your first Mac? A lot of people are. I've recently made the switch. Here are my thoughts after just a few days of owning my first Mac.

I was struck by its elegance and simplicity, by the way it felt and the way it opened itself up to me. Apple really understands packaging as a user experience. The Macbook comes in a slim white box with a handle protruding from the top so that you carry it like a briefcase. Inside, everything has its place, everything is revealed in a way that prolongs your enjoyment of the act of discovery. Included are a power adapter with MagSafe cable and a proprietary extension cord, software discs, user guide, apple remote and of course the Macbook itself.

The Macbook is thin and light, though it feels substantial when you hold it. The lid does not use any locking mechanism but remains firmly closed until lifted via the small nook at the front. Upon doing so, you are immediately struck by the glossy sheen of the screen - more and more notebooks are moving away from matte screens, but if you haven't spent any time with one yet the difference is certainly noteworthy. Look up and there's a tiny black square with a little dot on either side acting as built in webcam and mic. The keyboard features flat keys in a recessed bed and below is a very large track pad and single button for mouse functions. A white plastic casing with rounded corners and an Apple logo on the lid (behind the screen, glows when running) acts as enclosure, while plenty of ports and a slot loading DVD burner are there to keep your gadgets and media flowing in and out.

The MagSafe power cord slots into place with a sudden tug just as it nears the port, its tiny LED light turning amber to indicate it is charging, and I'm ready to turn my Macbook on for the first time.

Apple touts its computers as being ready to go right out of the box. After a very quick and slick Q and A with the setup wizard, OS X 10.4 Tiger was off and running, and me along with it. No discs to insert or drivers to download; any software that came with the computer is already installed, including the full iLife suite of applications. Configuring preferences in OS X is incredibly simple. There are no "Ok" and "Apply" buttons like in Windows settings dialogs, which only serve to cast doubt on whether or not you just did what you thought you did. The graphic user interface, or GUI, which is what you see when you interact with your operating system, is clean, beautiful, fun and loaded with productive little features.

Expose is a feature that quickly and intuitively allows you to see what you're doing and choose what you want to do next. Say you've got several applications open, and each application has several windows open. With a quick press of an F key or flick of the mouse to the appropriate corner of the screen you can view every single window at once, or bring forward all the windows of a particular program, or move everything off screen so you can browse the contents of your desktop. Widgets recess into the background of your computer keeping tabs on things like the local weather or your system's performance, or await to provide services like translations or conversions, and surge forth at your command to place themselves, in all their tiny gadget splendor, at your disposal. Spotlight is a built in search tool that's in every Finder window (think Explorer window in Windows) as well as always up in the menu bar in the top right corner, which keeps track of everything on your computer and intuitively brings it to you as you type in what you're looking for. If you download an application, and there are hundreds of free and very useful ones out there for the Mac, most of the time the installation process is as simple as dragging the application icon into the Application folder in the Finder - simple as that. I could go on, but I'd be gushing. Bottom line: Windows has never been this convenient or this much fun to use.

The built in webcam and mic, iSight, are lots of fun. I was video chatting with a friend in Japan the other day over Skype and it was as easy as making a phone call. The track pad is generously sized and has a great feature of acting as a scroll wheel when you use two fingers. I haven't tested the batter specifically, but I have used it from full to nearly empty a few times and it seemed to last plenty long for my liking, well over 2 hours with heavy usage. When in sleep mode the battery could seem to go on forever - I left it in sleep overnight once running on battery power and after 8 hours it had depleted maybe 5% - which would be great for long journeys where you want to use the computer periodically but not have to shut down and start up over and over again. The screen is very bright and vibrant, and can be turned down in increments to suit your brightness needs or to save battery power. The MagSafe power cord has saved me more than a few times already - it stays firmly in place yet comes loose when a sudden force pulls on it.

Overall I am very happy and very impressed with this Macbook. It runs fast, without hiccups or lags, OS X Tiger is a joy to use and the machine looks stunning.

There are, however, some caveats worth mentioning. This laptop gets very warm, sometimes even kind of hot to the touch at the bottom. Prolonged use on my lap gets uncomfortable after a while. According to Apple this is normal behavior for today's laptop computers and they recommend against actually placing it on your lap for extended periods of time. The fan occasionally gets noticeably loud, obviously in an effort to combat the excessive amounts of heat produced within the computer. As far as fan noises go its not terribly obnoxious, but in a quiet room I expect it would call attention to itself.

If you've been considering your first Mac, like so many people have been since the market dominance of the iPod and the move to Intel brought Apple to the attention of nearly everyone with a steady pulse, I can't think of a whole lot that would keep you from switching. All my files migrated seamlessly from my Thinkpad (a fine machine, passed on to my parents), most applications I used on Windows are on the Mac, with lots of great applications on the Mac I'm discovering that were never on Windows, and even Adobe is about to migrate their video applications back to Mac now that Intel's inside.

I've been elbow deep in my love for computers for around 7 years now, this being my 4th carefully considered computer in that time, and I've never enjoyed using one so much as I'm enjoying my new Macbook.