Yes

I know: I haven't blogged for a long, long time.

It's just that, every time I think of something to blog, it's usually a fleeting thought of a subject. And it's usually when I'm not near a computer (or don't have time to cozy up to the keyboard because I'm in a rush to leave). So by the time I'm actually at the Mac again, I forgot what it was I wanted to say.

That's the gist of it.

Though I will say that I'm thinking about buying a Time Capsule (still undecided on the 500GB vs 1TB) and an Airport Express pair. For home, and for travel, respectively. Advice?

Born Every Minute

I'm a regular person; I have strengths and I have weaknesses.

I'm a sucker for Apple stuff. That kind of attention to detail, that consideration for the overall user experience, just makes me want to throw blank cheques at their coffers.

I'm a sucker for a good burger. It reminds me of a sunny afternoon, whether just grilling in the backyard or at the beach, or sitting outside a deli and enjoying the sights of the park.

I'm a sucker for a sweet smile and a kind word. After all, in this world where everyone is getting increasingly grouchy, who isn't? You'd be surprised how far a kind demeanor can really get your these days.

But I'm definitely not a sucker for girls who are trying to be all cutesy/whiney. At this firm, there are tons of girls like that. They plead with you to work faster and meet their deadlines so they can look good in front of the customer. No, sorry, it doesn't work on me, sorry. Plus, those deadlines are usually just fabricated anyhow, so I make sure to check first with the client directly. Never trust a cutesy girl; as one of my ex-bosses warned me, they are trouble!

So, that's me. What are you a sucker for?

Regret

Dammit, I hate it when I make rushed decisions, because more often than not, they turn out to be rash decisions.

Remember how I said I really should research more before making a purchase? Well, I walked in to the Bellevue Square Apple Store a few weeks ago, all set on getting the iPod nano (as a birthday gift from my girl). The next day, I returned it and upgraded to an iPod Touch.

And now I regret it, and wish I would have bought the iPhone instead, because it really isn't much more, but comes with so much more out of the box.

Plus, I'm finding that I'm carrying the iPod Touch and my regular mobile phone with me everywhere, so why didn't I just submit with the extra $100 and converge them into a single unit??

Dammit. Ugh.

Should iPod?

Should I get an iPod nano? Those new ones are pretty sexy and slim.

On another note, I had a dream last night: I was in my (apparently) rented penthouse in a 10-storey building with tons of my friends.

This takes place in Taiwan, but a lot of my friends from Vancouver and SF were there (sometimes they make cameo appearances in my dreams). An earthquake shook and (though my dream skipped right over the violent shaking of the quake) my building collapsed. At least, parts of the rest of the building collapsed; my apartment seemed to be still in one piece more or less. Some of the middle floors actually collapsed, and my whole apartment fell several storeys lower and our top fragment of the building was now at a tilt, leaning against a neighbouring highrise. Pandemonium and general paranoia sets in, and all my friends jet out of the building and down to the ground (perhaps by some miraculously still-working elevator? I dunno).

And what am I doing?

I'm upstairs all by my lonesome, disconnecting my Mac mini and LaCie harddrive from all the cables, packing them with my Powerbook slowly and carefully into my backpack, and contemplating whether I should pack the power cords and cables as well, and which accessories to bring with me ...

The New White

Some 7 years ago, Apple made white the new black, and we loved it. We called it revolutionary in the aesthetics of computing design, and we proudly displayed our white computers.

And now, Apple's making black the new white. And even though it's just the old black, we'll call it revolutionary in the aesthetics of computing design.

Now, I'm not saying I don't like the new look -- I do, though with reservations -- but I am saying that it's not the amazing transformation that I'm sure a lot of Apple fanboys are going to be saying it is.

It's just the old black, folks, but back again. Like disco.

Ground to a Halt

So on Friday, my external hard drive went down. No, that's not some kind of metaphor for a sad sex life: my LaCie mini hard drive really failed. Just up (down) and died. And because of it, everything else is grinding to a halt.

I can't caption and upload more photos because I have no more room on my Powerbook drive. I can't free up more space on the pb drive because I need to move stuff onto my LaCie mini drive. I can't move anything over there until I've restored it and reformatted it. I can't do that until I have another drive to copy the restored files onto. Everything's stopped for now.

I'm no stranger to harddrive failures, so this time I'm going to buy a brand new drive just for backups. I mean, this was a big scare, because I nearly lost -- well, maybe I shouldn't speak yet, since I haven't gotten my files back off the drive yet -- all my iTunes music. And this drive was my backup!

iWantOneToo

Apparently, this past weekend for Apple meant roughly $275 million USD in sales of their 500,000 iPhones sold! I wonder if anyone I know is actually one of those half a million iPhone purchases ...?

Apple Play-by-Play

Dammit. Apple is having their special event live coverage, and while MacRumors.com is giving a per-minute update on their site, I can't stay up any later because I really should sleep. Plus, I want to actually watch Steve Jobs doin' his thang on-stage. I'll watch the streaming broadcast tomorrow instead, then.

Not New, but New to Microsoft

This is just too funny. Well, at least, it's funny to Mac fans like me.

It's basically a Microsoft demo of Windows Vista that someone ripped the audio from, and paired with a video of those same features in Mac OS X! Us Mac users have had these "new features" for, what, over half a year now??

You Like Fruit, Don't You?

Damned that Apple and Steve Jobs' keynote speeches. They keep coming out with purty li'l laptops and apps that make me want to so readily part with my hard-earned cash. And even thank them for taking my money, to boot!

And Then Slapped Again

My Mac won't boot up.

Ginza

_so here I am, in the _apple store on Ginza, in _tokyo, Japan. _This place is absolutely packed, so even though the rent on this storefront much be absolutely impossibly high, they:re probably raking in a good amount of money. And far as I can tell, the store itself is actually quite small -- a lot smaller than their silver crunchy coating would suggest. _apologies for the weird typos and stuff, because on these versions of the Powerbooks, they moved stuff around from where (I think) they:re supposed to be.

[ edit: I was wrong. There:s 4 floors in this place! first floor is all the stuff you find at the front of the other stores; 2 is where the iMacs and PowerMacs live; 3 is a theatre for workshops and tutorials; 4 is the iPod area with Shuffles and kids stuff and other accessories. Fun fun fun. ]

[ edit again: Okay, now I:m in the Shibuya Apple Store and just spent about an hour and a half listening to a live session from People to People as part of the Apple Store's "LIVE: a month of great music" program here. Happened across it as I was strolling through the area and heard this wicked beat coming from down yonder. Anyway, time to find some chow and people watch around here. ]

Down, Girl

Yesterday, though the Sony Ericsson makes no claim that their W800i is compatible with Apple computers, I plugged the USB data cable into my Powerbook and my phone. And, as with all peripherals plugged into Mac OS X, it worked great: the Memory Stick Duo in the phone showed up as a removable drive without fuss.

So I setup up the phone as a Bluetooth device for my Mac, and no problems: now my phone is a file vault, and I can sync contacts and calendars with it, and it can also act as a remote control for my Powerbook! Fantastic. I had several applications open, connecting to the phone via USB and Bluetooth. Life was rolling, comin' out Milhouse.

And for some reason unbeknownst to even my little peanut brain, I just grabbed the phone and unplugged the USB cable without first unmounting it from Mac OS X. Wow, the Powerbook did not like that: I got a shaded-grey screen of death, which told me to hold the power button down for several seconds and let it reboot.

I did, and it did. But it didn't completely, which I felt was a little unfair, since I did do what it told me to do, and I figured it was only right that it should hold up its own side of the bargain.

But it didn't. All the apps that were running at the time of crash have now decided to side with the computer in protesting that I so violently yanked out the volume when they were so happily using it. That means ... no more access to IM (Proteus), music (iTunes), email (Mail), contacts (AddressBook), calendar (iCal). That also means ... I'll need to do a full archive-and-install these next few days to get her back up and running again.

If it were Windows, I would gripe for a few minutes, and then accept my fate because of my choice. But this is a Mac. I expect more. I paid (slightly) more, and it hurts to see that I'm getting this kind of Window(s) treatment. But for some reason, a strange suspicion came over me. I checked it out, and I was right: my baby is just over a year old, meaning the warranty is out now. If she behaves and recovers, I'll buy her a little cupcake or something.

Guts

I must be getting more gutsy: I'm weaving in and out of traffic more with my scooter now. I run yellows and reds (after someone else has done it). Heck, last night on the way back from the gym, I even had my iPod in one ear while riding home. (At a certain speed, though, the wind completely turns the sound into noise.) Maybe one day, I'll even be brave enough to try for my license test again.

My PC is a Wanna Be

So last Wednesday, I got admin access to my laptop (at least temporarily). I remember reading an Engadget article some time ago, and figured I'd use it to ease the pain of moving from a Mac to a PC.

So here's what I installed to turn my PC into a Mac (on the surface):

- To make all the window frames look Mac-like, I installed StyleXP with the Panther theme pack (which loaded automatically). Now at least my windows have the right looking borders.

- Then moved the taskbar up to the top, I dragged it up there. Hey, it's not an exact copy of the Mac menu bar (because it shows the running apps like the taskbar), but it worked better than ObjectBar, which somehow seemed pretty flakey for me.

- And iTunes.

- Now, the fun part. ObjectDock does a great job of replacing the Dock in MacOS X, except there are a few issues with the icons not showing properly, and it's a little buggy with the layering. Otherwise, nice.

- Of course, what's a good wanna-be without trying to mimic the slickest part of Panther's Mac OS X interface, Expose? I have a trial of Entbloess 2. It's good, but it's not Expose. It doesn't shrink the windows into view as nicely as Expose does, and while it's quite a lot slower and choppier, it might still do (functionally).

- And finally, I installed a launcher that's similar to Quicksilver on the Mac (arguably my most-used and favourite productivity utility): it's called AppRocket, it's free, and it works mostly the same (though not quite as pretty). I can conjure any program, utility, control panel, bookmark with just a few keystrokes!

- Oh, and Konfabulator, of course, which some argue is what Apple ripped off for its Dashboard feature in Tiger.

Now my PC is a nice Mac wanna-be, and way more usable! (Oh, wow, look what I found.) Yay! And serendipitous benefit: nobody else can figure out how to use my PC, which means more privacy. Now how to go about fixing the cheap plastic feel, and expand the 14.1" screen out sideways ... ?

The Reverse

I started work today. And they gave me a laptop.

So at home, I have a Apple Powerbook G4 17"; at work, I get this Dell Latitude D600. I moved from Mac OS X 10.3.9 to Windows XP SP-frickin'-2. I hate it, I just hate it. I hate Windows. I hate Dell. I hate how cramped the keyboard is, and how narrow and tall the screen seems. I hate how Windows seems unnatural now, and how you can close a window with CTRL-W but can't close an application with something similar -- you instead need to shift your left hand to hit the ALT-F4.

I wouldn't wish this reverse switch on my worst enemy. Well, actually, I would, because it would be super funny to watch them get frustrated the way I did today. And it was just the first day of many that I get work on that Dell P.O.S. Yippee. I think I should have just mandated an iBook at work for myself.

But actually, I think what I hate most is not having admin privileges to my own computer. That sucks rocks. But I think I will be able to change that over time. I have to install my iTunes and Trillian, after all. And at least I have my Firefox now.

Getting Something for Nothing

Okay, I gave in. I've never signed up on this before, but I figured, "Why not?" I really want one of these, and it would be even better if I could get it for free. And you can get a Mac mini for free too. Help me help you. So ... [groan] ... here's the silly email I'm supposed to send out and ask everyone to help me out.

Hey-

Check out this great site that is giving away totally FREE Mini Macs! I've joined and I think you should as well. It's a completely legitimate offer, and this company has already given away $4 million in FREE stuff!

All you have to do is join, complete an online offer, and refer friends to do the same. That's it!

Here is my referral link. To help me get my Mini Mac, click this exact link to join, or copy and paste it into a browser:
http://www.FreeMiniMacs.com/?r=14308221

So yeah, that's the message with my referral link in it, which is main point of this whole thing.

• Head on over to FreeMiniMacs, using my referral.
  
• Fill your basic information (ie. where to send the Mac) and an email. (I suggest you use a semi-junk email account.)
  
• Choose one of the offers, and take it through to completion. I did the eFax 30-day free trial one. eFax does a quick credit card check, but no payment -- the other ones require some kind of purchase or commitment to validate it.)
  
• Wait for eFax to notify FreeMiniMacs that you did your part of the deal. They say this takes only a day or two, but I'm going to leave it for two weeks, just to be sure.
  
• Don't forget to cancel your trial period before the 30-day trial is over -- after that, eFax is $12.95/month. (I set an alarm on my calendar to remind me after 14 days.)
  
• Ask 10 of your friends to play along (like how you've been so kind to do), and you can get a free Mac mini too!
  

And, of course, if you don't want a Mac mini, you could always just sell it on eBay or Craiglist.org when you get it. Or you could give it to your parents. Or me. :-)

Apple of My Eye

[ Just now, I read Stuff In My Head, where Van linked to a hilarious Switch spoof. I made comment about the Apple-love phenomenon from my own viewpoint; I'm reposting an edited version here, because I think it warrants an entry of its own. ]

People may not have noticed that with the iPod Shuffle, it's a USB connector. That's okay, but the key point is that it's not the Apple dock connector, meaning that you can't use a lot of the iPod accessories available today: speaker sets, in-car adapters from the major stereo and car manufacturers, etc. Keep that in mind, folks. All those things that you simply plug your iPod down into and control remotely ... they won't work with the Shuffle. Enjoy that uncertainty.

As for being "ripped off" by Apple's "elevated" pricing, a lot of people are looking at it the way I used to: based solely on goods for the money. But we shouldn't be just looking at the device in your hand. We need to consider the software package and the whole ensemble that you get for the price: the simplicity of iTunes with the iPod, the ease of using it all. It's the same philosophy as I chose in selecting a digital camera: the more usable it is, the more it is likely to get used, and the more you'll "get out of it", thus increasing its value-in-use. Making it that easy to use also introduces those who used to be "too scared" or apprehensive to even explore that.

There's another intangible for buying Apple products (at least for me). It's the joy and pride of ownership. The corners of my mouth turn up just slightly, every time I'm at my Powerbook, everytime I pull it out of my BOOQ (pb17-custom) laptop bag. When I use MacOSX, it pleases me at how it reacts to my bidding, instead of how Windows used to frustrate me. When I use my iPod, the clean interface makes it simple to change songs, volume, ratings, and listen to audiobooks -- it's really a joy to use, to sync up, to change, etc. For me, these are priceless, and worth the higher cost of ownership (though I am Chinese, and will go to the ends of the earth not to pay retail prices).

Granted, some people don't care about any of the above. Then in those cases, you're better off buying the barest, most functional unit you can get your hands on. Nothing wrong with that at all.

Yet, if we all thought of things in their basic need-solution components, why do we have fashion shows? Why buy suits from somewhere other than the outlets? We should all be shopping at Target and Walmart if we just have the basic need to be clothed. And then there's food, which we don't even need to go into. We all like nice stuff -- the question is where your personal threshold is for what you feel you're getting out of it. I don't buy concert tickets, because I enjoy buying their CDs more. I don't ride first class because I don't feel it's worth the price over the regular cattle class.

Anyway, I bought my gf an iPod mini late last year, and a lot of it was fueled not just because it was pink, but because it was the right size in her hand and had an informative screen, and because it's "so cute". She loves using it, and it means it will get used a lot, which is worth volumes more than a semi-okay device that doesn't get used much, right?

My name is Ben and I'm an Apple addict. And honestly, I'm quite happy being one.

Apple's Mighty Mini

Yeah, the iPod Shuffle is cool, but the product announcement that really gets my juices flowing is the Mac Mini: the previously rumoured "headless Mac", because it just has the guts of the machine. No monitor, no keyboard, no mouse, or anything else. Stack up 6 or 7 CD cases (if you still have any around, now that you're an iPod user). The Mac Mini is that size, but a whole lot better looking.

A $499 little box that holds all the computing power, it's priced just a sliver over a similarly-equipped barebones PC server. As the iPod Shuffle allowed value-conscious music lovers into the Apple family, the Mac Mini is aimed at bringing Macs further into the mainstream. And they've adopted miniaturization techniques from the iMac and from their notebook computer experiences to create the most compact, dense desktop we've ever seen.

But the best part is that I was just thinking the other day that I wanted some way of attaching my external harddrive onto my network (instead of constantly plugging and unplugging it from my laptop). But I figured that while I'm at it, I may as well have the "dumb machine" to act as a fileserver, FTP site, and a downloader machine: that would free up my pb17 for my own work.

Two days later, Apple launches their Mac Mini to answer my prayers. I'm telling you, those guys rock.

[ I just went and priced one, the 1.25GHz : 40GB version. But then I upgraded to "512MB DDR333 SDRAM - 1 DIMM", "80GB Ultra ATA drive", and their "SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW)". Then I added some wireless options "Internal Bluetooth + AirPort Extreme Card", and the subtotal suddenly grew to "$853". Youch. ]

They Did The Shuffle

Goshdarnit, they dunnit again.

Today's keynote speech from Steve has unleashed the latest iPod Shuffle, which is a flash-based (literally skip-free and low-power-consuming) MP3 player that offers 512MB or 1GB on the slim white stick. It's got the signature clean white design, the little circular control buttons reminiscent of the first iPods back in the day, and a switch in the back that changes the shuffling mode (you know, in order / repeat / random). Even comes with a lanyard so you can hang it and show the world that you're an iPod lover (as well as advertise what a casual snatcher should steal from you).

This concept isn't anything new. In fact, it's even kind of overdone already. What's worse, there's something seriously missing from the iPod Shuffle -- a traditional display! Of course, Apple being who they are, they've carefully worked around the need for a display (as opposed to the "want" for one) by making all the controls simple and primitive. Apple is playing up the "feature" of just being random about your music and not worrying about seeing the song name displayed at all. "Enjoy uncertainty." Clever. And with only 1GB on it, there aren't that many songs on there anyhow -- definitely fewer than the 240 they say you can put on it, even you collect today's popular 192kbps MP3 files. Plus, why do you want to know what song you're playing? Heck, you're the one who put it on the iPod in the first place!

I have to say that I'm not completely impressed; this product doesn't hit me as the target market at all, but it's not meant to. That said, I think it will stillbe successful.

Why? Because when you buy Apple, you're already forgoing finding the absolute best features-for-price fundamental -- and they know it. It's not about what you need, but what you want -- there are cheaper players that do the same thing (play MP3s) and even have displays on them. But what Apple brings to the "whole package" is the simplicity of its functions, and a fantastic dose of Cool^TM. It's slick: it's got that aire of Mac and Apple that makes the Apple Store such a magnet for me everytime I'm in the mall. It's simple: they've broken down the "needs" of a music player even further so that, along with iTunes as a duo, even computer illiterate grandparents can bop to the latest Limp Bizkit tracks. (If they wanted to.) It really has everything you need, and nothing you don't. And finally, it's cleverly priced to bring all the other people into the iPod family. Now that we have the $99 (512MB) and $149 (1GB) options, more people can afford the admission ticket into the open arms of the Mac community.

And that's just where it starts. It's like the mob family: once you're in, you're in for life.