Around Mac

I haven’t had a lot of time to devote to Around Mac lately, but obviously, couldn’t let this pass.

Admittedly, I’m an Apple Fan Boy, and it’s accurate to blame Steve Jobs.  The Apple II was the first computer I worked with and the one that started a life long interest in the damned machines.  I remember drooling over the first Mac in 1984 and loving it, but the price of a PC in those days just kept me out of the market.  College got me my first DOS PC and I remained in the Microsoft camp for 18 years.

Then Steve came back.  Man, what a second act.  I drooled over the iMacs, made fun of the stupid mouse, and finally in 2003, I bought my first Mac and haven’t looked back.  I work on Windows, but I LIVE on a Mac.

Jobs will be remembered as one of the icons of American industry and certainly the tech industry.  He is the Henry Ford of a new century.

I’m 44 now and 56 doesn’t seem like such a long time.

Apple II, Mac, Pixar, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad… You know what?  That’s not 56 years.  That’s a lifetime.

Steve Jobs   1955 – 2011

There are more drama queens at TechCrunch than an all girls elementary school… really.  The AOL fired Michael Arrington skit wasn’t quite the ratings blockbuster, so they cranked up another one.

I’ll get right to the point: this is my last post on TechCrunch. And it’s my resignation letter. The first resignation letter I’ve ever written, in fact. Usually I get fired.

Really Paul?  I’m shocked – how could anyone let you go?

To those who have been following the recent TechCrunch drama, this post won’t come as much of a surprise. A little over a week ago I wrote that, unless Mike Arrington was allowed to choose his own successor as editor of TechCrunch, I would no longer write for the site. Sure enough, this past Monday, a statement from AOL announced Erick Schonfeld as the new editor.

Shocking what can happen when you sell your company – imagine losing control.

What I knew last week, but can only write now, is that while Heather, Mike and other senior editorial staffers were making a stand for the site’s editorial independence from The Huffington Post, Erick cut a side deal with Huffington to guarantee him the top job once Mike was gone.

Basically: “Arianna, if you don’t quit it, I’m going to tell Mike Arrington.  Erick you’re a poopy-head”

How cool is it, that in America – people can make a living (and get rich) doing stuff like this?

Paul Carr:  I’m Leaving TechCrunch. Here’s Why.

Update 9/17: Erick Schonfeld responds… “No, you’re a poopy-head!”

Erick Schonfeld: Paul, I Accept Your Resignation

Update 9/17: MG Siegler, arguably the most (only?) respected writer at TechCrunch joins the chorus… “You’re all poopy-heads!”

Also the truth: AOL has not reached out to me once in this entire situation. You’d think they might care about something like that. Evidently, they don’t. I’m not losing any sleep over it, but it’s curious.

What a surprise – management didn’t consult a staff member before making a decision.  Shocking.

MG Siegler:  What Needs To Be Said

Maybe I’m old fashioned, but the whole thing, although funny, it feels unseemly.  Is it a requirement at TechCrunch and AOL to discard your personal pride to work there?  It’s public and unprofessional.

Andrew Nusca nails it at The Editorialiste: How To Lose Colleagues And Alienate Employers

I’ve been following James Kendrick for a while – his mobile technology reviews are one of my first reads when looking at new gadgets.  He’s decided the new MacBook Air will be his next laptop, in fact, it will be his primary computer.

I will certainly pay more for the MacBook Air than I would a notebook from one of Apple’s competitors, but in the end it will be worth it. I will be able to get more done and with less trouble, and that is worth the extra cost to me.

James Kendrick at ZDNet:  Why my next laptop will be a MacBook Air

As I mentioned in my Lion post, I just upgraded my 5 year old Core-Duo iMac.  Yes, that is the first gen Intel iMac – not even a 64 bit processor.  So after 5 years, I was considering a Mac Pro, but ultimately decided the iMac was again the sweet spot.

I went with the top of the line build to order, with 16 GB memory (aftermarket).  27 inch Core i7, 256 GB SSD, 2 TB HD.  Feel free to drool.

This is my first use of the SSD (Solid State Drive) and I can tell you – flat out, this is the fastest PC I’ve ever used.  The SSD makes all the difference.  This machine boots up, fully, in 1 minute.  The Core i7 Quad (with Hyperthreading) is crazy fast.  The only beachballs I see are when the HD spins up.  The default power settings wind it down when not in use – if you tweak that setting, problem gone.  Honestly, it’s not that big a deal.

The glossy screen isn’t as bad as I thought.  The ambient light sensor really manages it well, but your mileage may vary, especially depending on your room lighting.  By the way, it is the best screen I’ve ever used; blacks are deep and colors pop on this LED backed monster.

Apple really scores lousy on the configuration of the dual drive Macs and Migration Assistant.  I don’t understand why Apple didn’t design it so that the Home folders are on the larger, spindle drive by default.  It’s annoying because I have a huge iTunes library and couldn’t move it with Migration assistant.

In the end, I moved everything else, then created  new iPhoto and iTunes libraries on the spindle drive.  Copying the iPhoto Library was easy, but for iTunes, I used the consolidate feature to copy the media from my old iMac’s iTunes library (booted in target disk mode, via firewire).  It took a while, but got everything where I wanted it.  Caution:  It did not bring over the tags/info for the movies/TV shows I had ripped (just the video I ripped, everything else came over).  I had to manually fix that.  It also did not bring over playlists, but they are easily exported on the old machine and imported on the new.

I will eventually move all my data, including documents over to the spindle drive, using symbolic links, but haven’t set that up yet.  User data will go on the spindle and OS and Apps on the SSD.  (Note – I didn’t redirect my Music, Movies and Pictures folders – I just used the option to choose libraries on iPhoto and iTunes.)  The symbolic link idea is sound, but not for normal users.  Apple realy needs to address this on these high end machines – it shouldn’t be this hard.

All that said – I love this machine.  I didn’t realize how slow my old iMac was (well, except Safari – a memory hog for sure), but this new one screams.  I can’t recommend the new summer 2011 iMac highly enough.  Now, just waiting for Thunderbolt HDs to speed up Time Machine…

Lion is here, no surprise.  After a day some observations:

The upgrade process was excellent.  I have Verizon FIOS so the download wasn’t painful, but neither was the install.  The install on my primary machine, via the app store was quick and painless.  I created an install DVD from the install package (not something the typical user will do, but hey – I’m a geek) and used that to install on an old machine – worked fine.

Gestures I just upgraded my primary machine to a top of the line iMac with a Magic Track Pad.  I haven’t decided yet on the Magic Track Pad – it’s been good so far, but I have to say, under Lion it’s really proving to be a great pointing device.  I like the gestures in Lion.  I don’t use all of them, but really they become natural fairly quickly.

Scrolling The change to scrolling is jarring at first.  I’m giving it a try for a week, but after a day, it’s till awkward.  They made 2  changes: by default, scroll bars only appear when needed and fade out after, and, when scrolling now, you move the content, not the scroll controller.  What that means is, using Safari for an example, the Safari window holds the page – to scroll down, you don’t pull the scroll controller down, you pull the page up to bring the lower section into the window.  Obviously, this is how it works on iOS – and it makes sense on the smaller screens and in context of the more focused use case on the i-devices.  However, on the desktop, with plenty of screen real estate, I’m not sure it fits.

You can change the behaviors back to a “normal” setting, and I may do that – but for now, I’m giving it a try.  Oh – when you look at the preference panes to make the change, it looks like George Carlin wrote the setting description.  It’s the most obtuse description I’ve ever seen on an Apple device.

Launchpad I love it.  I’ve never been a complete keyboard jock and haven’t used things like Quicksilver or LaunchBar, so being a “click to launch” person, I really like Launchpad.  The gesture to trigger it is OK, but you can, and I recommend, set a keyboard shortcut for it.

Auto Save and Versions This is feature I need to spend more time with.  I’ve been using it for Numbers, and like it.  This is a long overdue idea and so far, I think the interface is excellent.  I’ll reserve final judgement until more apps are updated to support it, but so far, this is a huge win.

Mission Control No opinion on this yet.  If you’re a fan of Spaces, this may be useful for you, but honestly, even on my macbook 13, I’ve never taken to Spaces.  I’m a big fan of exposé, but this mash up with Spaces, well, I’m just not sold.

Color Scheme They damned near don’t have one anymore.  All the color is gone from the Finder side bars, and other tool bars.  This is a bigger deal than it sounds because it does make it harder to distinguish some of the icons in the GUI.  It’s a more dramatic effect than you might think.

Safari Again, gestures are the big change I noticed and I like it.  The cosmetic changes to Safari are ugly, but not really material.  Reading list – I’m an Instapaper user, so I haven’t used it yet.  Not sure that it offers anything I don’t already enjoy in Instapaper.

Finder The color scheme aside, the new All My Files view is a step toward the the idea of getting away from the folder metaphor.  This abstraction of the file system is interesting, but with large numbers of files, across applications, I’m not sure how useful it is.  (Windows 7 users will recognize it as similar to Libraries).  Combined with spotlight, I’m sure it will be helpful for “normal” users – they no longer have to remember where they saved a file.  Again, a concept borrowed from iOS, but adapted to a file manager.

Oh – power users, they’ve hidden folders in finder.  the Library folder is no longer visible under your home folder.  Annoying, but use the Go menu, Go To Folder option to get there (enter ~/Library).  This will work with other hidden folders as well.  Most users don’t need to go into these folders and probably shouldn’t.  If that’s not the case now, it will become the case more and more as developers update their apps for the new conventions.  Until then, the Go menu is your friend.

Mail and Calendar Calendar, I don’t like.  I think the hang up of making it look like a paper calendar is foolish and limits usability.  Do people really find this familiarity comfortable?  Mail, I’m neutral on.  I need a few more days to work with it.

Animations I hate this.  The new expand-from-a-point animations are annoying.   I haven’t found a way to turn them off if it exists.  Again, borrowing from iOS, it just is not for me.  Make no mistake – it’s not a performance issue.  This new Core i7 iMac doesn’t notice the load, I just don’t like it.

Other Applications So far, the one I hate is also an application I love and use every day – 1Password. I hate the new Safari plugin look and behavior.  Please go back to the more subtle approach.

There are a lot of great detailed reviews of Lion out there.  You definitely, assuming you have a 64 bit Mac, NEED to upgrade.  The price and the new features really make it worth it.

The ultimate geek’s review:  John Siracusa at Ars Technica

Another trusted reviewer:  Andy Ihnatko at the Chicago Sun Times

Beware, a trusted, but Windows centric point of view:  Paul Thurrott at the Supersite for Windows

Sony’s network breach is all over the news.  By now, everyone in America should know that millions of Sony customers had personal information, including credit card numbers, stolen.  Well, the networks are back up and honestly, I can’t understand why.

Everything Sony did in this incident was incompetent.  They were slow to identify the security breach, slow to assess the damage and unconscionably slow to notify customers.  Security is hard, no question – but this is not a mistake, it’s rank stupidity.

According to this story in  Business Week it wasn’t even a sophisticated attack – contrary to Sony’s claims.

Bret McDanel, a veteran security researcher, says a program known as penetration testing software, which methodically checks a network for vulnerabilities, began scanning Sony’s PlayStation Network at 7:09 a.m. on Mar. 3. McDanel knows this because Sony left one of its server logs, which record all the activity performed by a machine, completely unguarded on the open Web. “Having these logs in the public domain gives a potential attacker insight into the system,” he says.

McDanel says the probers used an off-the-shelf program that is easy to obtain and not very stealthy. Anyone checking the server logs would have been able to recognize its telltale signs and prevent the break-in, and Sony was “negligent” for not doing so, he says.

I have to agree – Negligence, plain and simple.  This breach is a failure of most basic IT security principles.  I’m sure people will go back to the PSN, Qriocity and Sony Online Entertainment, but I don’t understand why.

Sony: The Company That Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

Interesting data from Read it Later about how the iPad is affecting reading habits.

While many have speculated that the iPad is going to replace printed newspaper and magazines, it is already changing the way we read online content too.

When a reader is given a choice about how to consume their content, a major shift in behavior occurs.  They no longer consume the majority of their content during the day, on their computer.  Instead they shift that content to prime time and onto a device better suited for consumption

Is Mobile Affecting When We Read?

via minimalmac

Jason Perlow in his latest post at ZDNet discusses Apple’s major advantage in the tablet space:  Supply Chain.

As I discussed in an earlier piece, “Next-Gen Android tablets can’t hang with iPad on price“, Apple has set the bar at $500.00 for an entry-level 10? Wi-Fi tablet device. So far, there are no products scheduled for release that even come close to this price point.

How is Apple able to do this where nobody else can? It has to do with buying up the entire supply chain and being able to leverage Q10M+ manufacturing orders in advance with its partners in China like FoxConn and with semiconductor component suppliers such as LG, Samsung and Philips.

Apple’s investments in purchasing components, backed with $50B in cash, give them an advantage that to date, no other manufacturer has matched.  That’s not to say that HP, Samsung or other competitors don’t have the ability to do the same, but clearly, none of them have been willing to make the big bets that Apple has.  It’s not just a matter of money. Many of the components only have a few manufacturers, so there is  a definite first mover advantage when purchasing supply commitments.

Apple’s secret iPad advantage: The supply chain

Paul Thurrott compares MS vs Apple in handling their phone platforms.  Both platforms shipped early, with minor flaws, and missing features, but Apple immediately began to update and fill those holes.

To summarize, the Microsoft of 2011 doesn’t compete effectively with the Apple of 2007. How, exactly, are they going to compete with today’s Apple?

Anyone familiar with Paul’s work knows he really likes Windows Phone, in fact, he wrote the book.  He sees such potential in the the platform, that he’s front and center trying to hold Microsoft’s feet to the fire as they fumble this product launch.  It’s a shame too, because where Android was largely a copy of iOS, with Windows Phone 7, Microsoft started over and came out with something unique.

Check out his rant on the Windows Weekly podcast

Software updates: Windows Phone vs. iPhone

Reuters reports that Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is beginning to stand and use an iPad.  The iPad thing is cute, but there is no doubt this is one tough lady!

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the day to day and play with our toys, but perspective is important.  This lady survived a gun shot to the head – a miracle in itself, hopefully the first of many for her.

iPods, iPads, TVs – all of it, just noise.   Hard to say I have any problems next to this lady.

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, You Rock!

Giffords standing up and using iPad