Groovechicken's Coop

Ecclesia stained glass window pics

2011-09-24T13:11:00.005-05:00

I just added my pics of the Ecclesia stained glass window to the photography section of my site:

http://groovechickenstudios.com/Photography/Ecclesia.html

Motorola Photon 4G for Sprint Review

2011-09-17T15:06:00.002-05:00

I just posted a pretty extensive review of the Motorola Photon 4G over at gdgt:

http://gdgt.com/motorola/photon-4g/reviews/f44/

To summarize, this phone feels like the future. Go check out the full review and feel free to join the community over there if you like discussing gadgets.

The Diamond Mako - A love story in five acts

2011-06-19T21:46:00.000-05:00

Act 1: Love at first sight

In thinking about my answer to "What are your favorite gadgets on your gdgt lists and why?", I had so many thoughts about the device at the top of my list that I decided to make it a full-blown blog post. If I seem to ramble, I apologize in advance, but this is meant to be an ode to the one device that I loved more than a person should ever love inanimate objects. (feel free to skip to the "Epilogue" if you want a short summary)

I remember the day I first saw it. I was on my way out of Circuit City and made my customary pass by the last row of the computer section, where they kept the hot items to make them more visible. When I got to the last item, I stopped dead in my tracks. I couldn't believe my eyes... a folding device, with a full keyboard, that would fit in a pocket. I slowly moved up to it, glancing at the product placard on the way... Diamond Mako. How had I not heard of this before? I immediately started operating the touch screen and found the interface to be completely obvious and familiar. I opened the word processor and was delighted to find that it was a fairly competent piece of software. I started testing out the keyboard and found that I could type perfectly well in the word processor with it... not as fast as a real keyboard, but fast enough to do real writing, especially after a little practice.

This was like a revelation. I had been trying to finish my book about my journey to Ireland for years, and found that I could never stay on task when trying to write at home. Much like in college, I did my best writing at a coffee shop, away from the distractions of my daily life. I immediately began to have visions of finishing my book in the local coffee shop and beginning my next project. I couldn't justify the cost of a laptop at this point and none of the PDA type devices I had looked at before really intrigued me. I needed something mobile desperately, though.

The only problem was the cost... $299.99 is nothing to sneeze at even now, and it felt like a lot more back in 2001. Yes, it was a lot cheaper than a laptop, but still expensive in relation to my budget at the time. I left the store without it, of course, but I couldn't stop thinking about the possibilities for the next several days. After discussing it with my wife, I started saving money and managed to scrape enough together after a few weeks. While I was saving, though, I started doing some research online and discovered that the Diamond Mako was an American repackaging of the Psion Revo Plus. I started bookmarking pages of programs I planned to install when I purchased it. Of course, this was building up quite a bit of anticipation in me and I was hoping I would not be disappointed when I finally got it home.

Phase 2: To know the Mako is to love the Mako

The day finally arrived and I rushed home with my prize. I read through the manual while it was charging and installed the sync software on my PC, checking out the options to convert documents from the device over to Word format on the PC. I was stoked.

When the charging was through, I sat down and started writing the next section of my book. This was going to work. I then started entering my calendar into the calendar program on the Mako and setting alarms. I was thrilled to discover that the alarm would ring indefinitely until you told it to stop, even if it killed the battery in the process. I needed this to keep me on task. Over the course of the next few months, the calendar feature proved itself to be an even more valuable feature to me than the word processor, as this was a very busy and stressful time in my life. The calendar program worked exactly the way I think and made the Mako worth its weight in gold to me. I have never found another calendar program that I like as much or that is as useful to me. Everything I have used since feels like a clunky collection of half-solutions to produce the same results I got in one simple place on my Mako.

Next, I found myself loading up text files of things on my reading list, which allowed me to start getting reading done that I had been putting off. Being able to pull the Mako out of my pocket any time I had 10 minutes to spare and pick up where I left off was like adding another hour to my day. Granted, we have better dedicated reader programs now than we did then, but it worked, and it changed my vision of what a portable device should be.

The pinnacle of my Mako days was when I finished the first draft of my book, at long long last, while riding on a train returning home from Christmas vacation up north. The Mako had accomplished its goal admirably and helped me to complete my long-procrastinated work. I could have kissed it that day.

Act 3: Infidelity

About this time, another thing was happening in my tech world. I had discovered the Mac by using one at work and began longing for an end to the misery of dealing with Windows 98. I had reached a point where I hated Windows and couldn't wait for the day I shut that machine down one last time. Through some video work I was able to do, I finally managed to buy my first Mac. All was well with the world... almost. Only after the Mac was in my possession did I bother to look for Mac options for syncing up my Mako. It was not pretty. There were two Java-based projects I found, but neither was complete or bug-free, and I only managed to get one of the options to even pretend to work. This was a huge blow to morale. It meant that I had to fire up my Windows machine, the one I wanted to get rid of, every time I needed to sync my Mako or move files on or off.

This got to be irritating enough that I started looking for Mako replacements that would work with the Mac. At the time, that meant Palm Pilots. That was all that would work very well. The more I looked at Palm devices and portable keyboards, the more I tried to convince myself that they would be better in the long run. Deep down, though, I felt that I couldn't really forsake my beloved Mako... or could I?

Then fate happened. My Mako developed the dreaded rechargeable battery death problem. It would no longer charge properly and I couldn't get it to run on battery. I was sad, but, at the same time, I was hopeful that my extended warranty might get me a new Palm device since the Mako had been discontinued for a while. After sending it off and waiting for weeks, I finally got the call from the warranty company that I would receive a full credit of the original purchase price since they could not fix it. Now that the deal was done, I got excited about a new Mac-friendly device and used my credit to buy a Palm m125.

Act 4: Regret

It didn't take long for the excitement to fade. In fact, I felt sick to my stomach within minutes of seeing the ridiculous Palm Desktop sync software at work. How much more convoluted could they have made it if they tried? The Palm's address book and calendar felt like pathetic Fisher Price "My First PDA" garbage after using the Psion software. Not having a physical keyboard began to grate on me within days. And writing while on the go? Forget about it. The only thing this was very good at was keeping a shopping list. I felt duped, then angry, then depressed.

I very quickly began to regret my decision to send in my Mako. I wished that I had kept it and tried to find a way to replace the battery myself. It took me a few weeks to get over this feeling and just accept my fate. I made due with the Palm as best as I could, but I never liked it.

Act 5: Nostalgia

To this day, I have never found a portable device that I have loved the way I loved that Mako. Losing my Mako sent me on a perpetual quest, like seeking the Holy Grail, that I am still longing to complete. I have since tried the Sharp Zaurus 5500SL, which I liked in many ways, the Psion Series 5, which couldn't compete in terms of pocketability and reliability due to the AA batteries, and several modern phones including the original iPhone, the Nokia e71x, the Samsung Moment, and the HTC EVO. None have inspired in me the love and appreciation I had for the Mako.

Granted, my attempt to use a Psion Series 5 after years away from the Psion software showed me that we had come a long way since the days of the Mako in terms of software, but it did not quench my nostalgia completely. The Mako had the perfect form factor for the tasks I used it for, and none of my devices since have given me such a perfect balance of size, shape, weight, battery life, and keyboard. I have been watching the gadget world closely for a modern Revo-inspired device, but every close contender falls short in one way or another. So my nostalgia remains, possibly to never be satisfied. Perhaps one day this nostalgia will inspire me to give up the search and take matters into my own hands by learning enough electrical engineering to build a replacement myself. Rest assured, though, any company that builds a device that can truly replace the Mako in my heart will be the recipient of my undying affection.

Epilogue

I think the reason the Psion Revo / Revo Plus / Diamond Mako was such a winner is that it was designed and built by a company who saw a problem and wanted to provide a solid solution, believing they would be rewarded by those who would buy it, love it, and promote it. As we know, those kinds of aspirations don't always work out in the marketplace. The best products often fail to be the winners in their categories, losing to the "good enough" alternatives.

The Mako really felt like it was designed to solve a problem, and, for me, it did so perfectly, inspiring the most devoted affection I have ever held towards a gadget. Most modern devices feel like they are designed less to be a solution to specific problems, and more like they are built to be just good enough and flashy enough to get people to buy them so the company responsible can use the device as an ad platform, content sales mechanism, or multimedia ecosystem lock-in. Some might argue that I am too cynical in this opinion, but I would only challenge them to show me some examples of modern portable gadgets that really do address specific, and possibly niche, sets of needs. Sharp may be the only company with any shred of that attitude left, but they seem to have lost their will to soldier on. I thought I had found my answer in their IS01, but it hasn't gotten any attention and seems to be too under-powered to really handle the demands that Android will make of the hardware going forward. If I find one cheap enough, I may give it a shot, but its cost in comparison to other modern gadgets that fill similar needs makes it hard to justify.

If any of you Psion hardware designers are out there and listening, please know that there are still those of us who would love a modern Revo running Android, with a small high-res screen. If you can wade through the present climate of ecosystem lock-in that threatens to kill problem-solving innovation, it's not too late to come out of retirement and fill that Revo-sized hole in our hearts.

Todd Russell

June 16, 2011

Why I hate Android...

2011-05-23T18:54:00.000-05:00

Anyone who talks tech with me should be scratching their heads at the title of this post. "Hates Android? I thought he was an Android fanboy?" Actually, yes, I am... which is why I am hating Android. No, I'm not bipolar, but I can see how you might need this statement clarified.

I absolutely adore Android. I have been using computers and gadgets since the 80s and have experience with a wide variety of operating systems. Android is, by far, my favorite "small form factor" operating system from the list of those I have used regularly. I even like it better than some of the desktop operating systems I have used. I'm even crazy enough to have tried running it on my netbook.

The problem comes in when that operating system I love gets put into use by the current cabal of hardware manufacturers. If only I could get a pure, unedited version of Android on hardware that is nice and actually works as expected, I would never be able to write such an opening title.

My first Android device was the Samsung Moment. It was running Android 1.6. It was a pure Android, with no custom modifications by Samsung. I adored this phone. The keyboard was great, and Android lived up to almost all my expectations. When Android 2.1 arrived on it, I loved it even more... Well, mostly.

You see, there was this one "small" issue. I call it small because Samsung has never been bothered to treat it as anything more than that. Unfortunately, for those of us who live in areas with meager signal strength, it was rage-inducing. Whenever the phone would switch from a 3G signal to a 1X signal then back to 3G, it would cause the cell radio to lock up. No calls, no data, and no way to fix it but a reboot... Which would take at least 2 minutes. In our area, this would happen almost every time you entered a large aluminum-roofed structure, a.k.a. a store.

The day I stood in Office Depot rebooting my phone 3 times in a row before I could make a call was the day I gave up on this phone that I otherwise loved.

I suffered with this until I could get an EVO, which took a while due to the supply shortage. Within days, I was almost willing to go back to the Moment. You see, HTC, in their infinite wisdom, decided they could make a better interface than Google, which they call "Sense". After having spent almost a year using a stock Android install, I hated every change HTC had made. The music player was downright ugly and looked like something designed by a honky disco king. I despised it. Unfortunately, you can't just download Google's stock music player. I finally found a slightly modified version of the stock player in the Marketplace, which relieved most of this annoyance.

Then there was the browser. Try as I might, I could not figure out how to make the thing stop running in fullscreen mode. I must have gone through the settings 10 times desperately looking for it. I finally accepted defeat and downloaded Dolphin Browser, which was good enough, but sometimes just didn't feel as snappy. While the gestures can be useful, there were enough accidental triggers of features in my daily usage that I could just manage to tolerate using it, but never liked it.

Then there was the modified calendar app. I liked the clean look of the stock one, but this was ugly in the same ways the music player was. Worst of all, though, were the bugs. I experienced constant syncing problems with it. I would add an event to my Google Calendar at work in my browser and set a reminder, only to get angry hours later when I realized I had forgotten something important because the phone never picked up the new item. It would go the other way, as well. Sometimes, I'd add something from my phone and it would never make its way up to Google. Other times, I would add an event from my phone, then, when I realized I had missed the event I would check to see that the event had mysteriously vanished from the calendar on the phone altogether. It was so bad that I stopped using the calendar app and started using the browser version of the Calendar site, with reminders being sent to me from Google by SMS.

Then there were issues with the wifi radio that would cause connections to mysteriously stop working properly even though the phone still indicated that it had a working wifi connection. I would often have to turn wifi off then back on to get it working again. It would also cause weird issues with downloaded audio files (whether through the browser or Google Listen) where the audio files would have missing bits throughout them. It was as if wireless packets had been dropped and the OS did not realize it, and just treated the file as if it had been fully downloaded. I never experienced issues like this on the Moment.

After about 9 months of this pain, I decided to root the EVO and put CyanogenMod7 Beta on it. I loved Android 2.3 and the additional abilities that came with having a rooted phone, but there were so many bugs that I decided to go back to version 6 until the final release of 7, which I am on now. Throughout all this, I have continued to experience the wifi radio problem, though not always, just on certain update versions. So, even Cyanogen can't seem to save me from HTC's radio engineers.

I have looked at the other Android options on Sprint, but they haven't been much better. At first, I had thought about switching to the Samsung Epic, until I read about all the GPS problems with it. Then I thought about the successor to the Moment, but the keyboard on it was terrible, the hardware was actually lower specs than the Moment, and... big surprise... I was reading a lot of complaints from users due to major bugs. There was the Hero, but that had its own set of issues, in addition to having too small a screen to want to use a virtual keyboard on a daily basis.

And so the story goes. Even now, all this time later, it seems like every Android phone on the market has some ghetto custom skin on it from the manufacturer and / or some fairly major hardware problem of one sort or another... or it is an AT&T phone, which I won't even consider. At this time, the Samsung Nexus S is the only fairly stock build of Android you can get. After all the other problems with Samsung's radios in the past, can I really have any faith that the Nexus S will be any better? I'm looking into the EVO Shift, which looks nice from a hardware perspective, but has Sense on it... oh, and of course, I have found a lot of complaints from owners of fairly major bugs.

And this is why I hate Android. It's not that I hate Android itself, but that I can't actually buy what I would consider a "real" Android phone from a company that makes reliable hardware. It's really Android in its current state in the market that I hate. All I want is a phone that is well-built, with a nice keyboard, that has no radio issues of any sort, and that runs a stock build of Android that gets its updates immediately after they are released by Google. Is that so much to ask? Apparently.

Will this utopia ever exist? It is starting to look as if it will not. The few attempts by Google to work closely with hardware manufacturers to make something like what I want haven't turned out to be huge successes. I can't see Google ever making their own hardware, and I guess I wouldn't really recommend that they do, either, since they have bigger fish to fry in the software and platform arenas. So, I am left with a thirst that cannot be quenched, living with compromises and daily annoyances, clinging to the hope that some company will finally decide to stop counting pennies and just do the right thing. Until that day, I am left with my bitterness... hating not the Android that should be, but the Android that is.

Todd Russell
May 24, 2011

Popped collar...

2011-03-03T21:21:00.001-06:00

Sporting a popped collar on his jammies... 'cause that's the way he rolls.

Love covers a multitude of sins

2011-01-23T13:05:00.000-06:00

Recently, my wife's grandmother passed away. To all of us in the family, and many outside it, she was "Gram". Everywhere she went, she made connections with people that they would never forget. To this day, there are still people who met Gram at our wedding that will ask me, "How's Gram?", whenever I bump into them. And as I relay the news to those people the next time I see them, there will be genuine disappointment in their eyes as they say they are sorry to hear it.

Gram lived to be 92. She saw a lot in her lifetime. In all the years I knew her, the one thing that most defined her to me was her interest in people. When I first met her, she had me take her arm, and we went down to the family room to sit by the fire and chat for what must have been nearly 2 hours. What she did to me, and to so many others that she ran into for the first time, was to ask a lot of questions. She always wanted to know who you were, where you were from, where your family is from, what you do, and a whole host of other questions that would spring from those. And then she would tell you about herself, which inevitably led to some funny story about the latest event in her life. When I met her, she was still telling the story of "the shawl". I think that is the story that made her the life of the party for a handful of the attendees at our wedding.

No matter what you talked about, though, there was sure to be laughter. Gram loved to laugh, and she had one of the best laughs I've ever encountered. She would tilt her head back, lean toward you, put her hand on your arm, and dive right into this great big belly laugh that would shake her whole body. It was contagious.

Over the years, we often chuckled at the many times Gram would start asking questions of perfect strangers, leading them into a series of laughter and funny stories that those people would always mention if we ever saw them again. Door men, flight attendants, friends, relatives... it didn't matter who you were, she'd ask you questions and tell you stories and make you part of her life.

Even to the end, this trend held true. A doctor who came to check on her in the last days at hospice got "the grilling" about who she was, whether she had any family, how old she was, etc.... And she wasn't afraid to give her advice either. "You've been doing this for 35 years?! You need to retire and live life a little. It's later than you think." In that brief encounter, even that doctor was so touched by Gram's interest in her as a person that she later referred to it again. And that is why people everywhere never forgot "Gram", or "Anna" as many of them knew her.

A few nights after we arrived in Pennsylvania for the funeral, Mary Beth's family was all gathered in the family room to go through the questionnaire that the parish sends out to gather info about a deceased person so that a priest will know something about them before the funeral. The resident priest, who certainly knew Gram well enough not to need this, was out of town and we would have a visiting priest to do the funeral, so we needed to go through this. Although we were going to go around the room and give answers to the questions for Kerry to record, we ended up just telling stories, reminiscing, and sharing the things that we had learned from Gram. It was a great bonding experience. And throughout this time together, there was a lot of laughter.

Certainly, like every one of us, Gram had her rough spots and faults. Everyone in that room knew most of them, some all too well. However, as we talked and laughed and cried, all those things were forgotten and forgiven... passed into memory like the leaves of autumn. And what remained was the laughter, the love, and the memories of generosity, care, and concern. To be quite honest, it all felt like a foretaste of heaven. I couldn't help but wonder if, somehow, our individual times of judgment would be like this... with Christ, the angels, the saints, and perhaps some of our deceased loved ones gathered around to discuss with us what our lives had become in our time on earth.

I suddenly understood the passage from the Bible, "love covers a multitude of sins", in a whole new light. While there were hurts and faults that each of us remembered, the love and laughter she had shared far outshone those things, for we all have faults and sins, but not all of us have love. That love was what we remembered and shared as we discussed Gram's life.

This had an impact on me and made me reflect on my own life. Everywhere Gram went, she left behind a trail of laughter. What kind of trail am I leaving behind? If I died today, would my loved ones sit around and forget my many faults and failings, telling stories of the times I had made them laugh or feel loved? Or would they sit around and talk about the weather and the sports for lack of anything positive to say?

For, while we were passing over Gram's rough spots in light of the far greater memories of love and laughter, surely there are many who leave behind nothing but a trail of pain, sorrow, and bitter memories. And now I realized how sad it must be at their passing, for if there is no love to cover their multitude of sins, is that the surest sign that their salvation is unlikely? Some theologians say that, in heaven, we will not mourn the lost because it will be to us as if they never were. Is this experience the key to understanding that assertion? We forgot Gram's faults, or at least found the lesser ones cause for further humor and laughter, and we were left with many happy memories. But what of those for whom there are only unhappy memories? As the memory of those faults passes, and there is nothing left afterwards, will it be that they will pass entirely out of memory as their loved ones go on to heaven, so that it was as if they never were?

So I ask myself (and I encourage you, reader, to do likewise): what kind of trail am I leaving behind? Will there be a gathering of friends and family to laugh and share stories of me at my passing, or will they simply forget me and move on with their lives, with no hope of ever seeing me again? What in my life is of lasting worth, that will live beyond the passing of this frail, temporal frame? Love covers a multitude of sins, and there must I begin, keeping the end ever in mind.

That night after having that discussion, I had a vision flash into my mind of Gram seeing her deceased daughter and husband in heaven, letting out her "belly laugh", filled with unspeakable joy, and running to embrace them. I pray that when I pass from this life, there will be enough love in my life to carry into eternity, that there will be someone waiting to embrace me as well, and that there will be those who sit around together and laugh, looking forward to the day when we will be reunited.

Peace,
Todd Russell
January 23, 2011

WWGS?: Tomorrow until tomorrow

2010-12-05T23:48:00.001-06:00

That's peculiar, I have never one entirely new england either.

Hey, it's not. It's Theresa, How are you doing You know I have never one entirely new england. It'll be and If you are so I can. Maybe tomorrow tomorrow because I am here for 2 nights now and tomorrow until tomorrow. So. Please call me. If you if you need to me if you can. Okay thank you bye.

The Morning After, 2010

2010-11-03T23:59:00.000-05:00

This November 3, 2010, the day after the Congressional elections, I have been pondering what took place, the reactions of so many, and what it all means in the big picture. I did my duty as an American, and played my part in the Grand Charade, then went home and didn't think much more about it until right before going to bed. This morning, I checked in on several news sources to see the results that we once again have a bipartisan Congress. I skimmed through all the emails I got from conservative sources talking about how great this turn of the tides will be... etc... etc... yada... yada. The more I thought about it, the more I just couldn't help but feel strongly ambivalent [oxymoron intended].

As I pondered, I thought through some logical reasons for my general indifference. Despite how the GOP managed to co-opt the Tea Party movement right out from under the independents, I have a hard time believing this was anything more than business-as-usual, using any tactic necessary to try and stay relevant. Change? Yes, some of the names changed, but I am not naive enough to expect much to come of it. My inbox was loaded with messages from Pro Life groups talking hopefully about the possibility of the abortion scene changing. Apparently, they've forgotten that nothing changed when we had Republicans in control of the presidency and both parts of Congress, or else I am not sure why they would expect much to happen with Republicans in control of only one of the three pieces of the Triforce of Power.

The reality is, government and law can not solve the problems we face as a people. Government and law are only necessary in the first place because men choose to live in the squalor of their fallen natures rather than rise above to follow the Golden Rule. Every time a government is formed, and every time a law is passed, it is an inherent admission that men are failing to love their neighbors and are choosing their own selfish desires over the just good. Government and law are a desperate attempt to put the reigns on man's fallen nature. These means almost never effect a change in man's behavior. Instead, they merely give us a means to punish and put a temporary stop to the selfish acts of a single individual or group of people. The bigger government gets, and the more laws we pass, the more we inherently admit that human sinfulness is getting worse, not better, and that we are powerless to do anything about it.

Why, then, do men of good will still make the foolish assumption that we can make the world a better place by government or law? Government and law belong to the domain of human sin, and therefore cannot effect true good. Law, despite our foolish hopes to the contrary, can not bring about "the greater good of humanity", it can only minimize "the greater evil". Law really is the wrong tool for the job of changing men's hearts, just as a glass vase is the wrong tool for hammering nails into boards.

The only thing that can truly effect good in this world is the transformation of men's hearts. When people truly desire goodness and justice and are willing to set aside their own selfish desires for the sake of others, then, and only then, can we begin to hope for "the greater good of man". Law has never, and will never, bring about this change in men's hearts. Only the love of God can bring this change to a human heart.

And when a man has been instilled with this love and chooses to seek the good and the just in all his actions, he will not need government and law to tell him what to do... he will know inherently from the law that is written in his heart. All the more reason that men of good will should see the vanity in placing any hope at all in the governments and laws of man. If these things are only needed where sin abounds, why should we hope for them to solve our problems? If we spent more of our time working for the conversion of men's hearts, and less time chasing the false hopes of a government to save us all, perhaps real change could begin to take root.

I think of Moses in the wilderness. At first, God only gave ten simple laws that were already written in the heart of every man who was honest enough to recognize them. If men had lived in love, these simple laws would have sufficed in showing each how to do unto others as they would have others do unto them. Rather, since sin abounded, a more elaborate Mosaic law was proscribed in an effort to reign in the wandering hearts that were following the selfish desires of the flesh.

I think of St. Augustine's command to "Love and do what you will". Wow, how bold a statement. To those whose hearts are weak, this sounds frightful and dangerous. It is so obviously true, though, to anyone who governs their actions with an honest effort to love beyond oneself. When you truly love someone, you don't need laws or governments to tell you how to treat that person.

So, I will continue to do my part to help put limits on the general sin of society, but I will never again be foolish enough to put my hopes in the vain structures and laws of man. If you must, then be my guest, but while you are hoping for the tools of man's sin to bring about the promised land, I will be hoping for the day when there is only one law needed to govern man, that which is written in every heart.

Peace,
Todd Russell
November 3, 2010

Free to be weird

2010-10-04T23:25:00.001-05:00

Recently, I overheard a friend tell a joint friend of ours that he and I are the weirdest people she knows. This was all in jest, of course, but I wanted to go interrupt their conversation and thank her for the best compliment I have received in quite some time. I call this a compliment because I have always taken great pains to be as weird as possible, as often as possible. And now, some of you who know me well may say that I jest, for you have known me to be normal enough over the years.

The context of the statement, and the sphere in which I exercise the trait, both refer to likes and dislikes, mannerisms of speech, and style of humor. This friend called me weird for being a fan of something that only a true geek can possibly appreciate. She laughed as she said it because she recognizes in herself a healthy dose of that same "weirdness". It takes one to know one, they say.

I must admit that my interests include things way outside the realm that our current American culture considers "normal". For instance, how many people do you know that would sit in a coffee shop and type a blog post like this one in a computer programmer's text editor while listening to Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells II Live"? Not many, I'll wager. Then there are other oddities like wearing my SAS half-dress / half-casual black shoes with white socks, cargo shorts, and an Empire Strikes Back t-shirt... and, yes, in public. I'm sure people must look at me at such times and think I am quite the dork. The great thing is that I really don't care because my feet are comfortable and that is more important to me than someone's comparison of me to the "norm".

Growing up as a teen, I tried the whole "fit in with the cool kids" game. Like most, I found it to be quite painful. What was cool one day was lame the next. I could never seem to keep up. By high school, I had given up on that and decided to figure out who I am, not who others expect me to be. I found it quite freeing.

The problem with being "normal" is that society's definition of that changes routinely. Sometimes in less than a week's passing. I'm sure the Facebook era must speed that process up. Thankfully, I wouldn't know because I haven't participated in popular culture in more years than I care to count.

I do observe people, though, who attempt to be normal and fit in with society's expectations. I also remember the stress of it all. Since the definition of normal changes so often, a normal person must constantly redefine themselves. They must change their wardrobe, add to their music collection, see movies they might otherwise care less about, arrange their schedule around the weekly new episodes of the "in" tv shows, and keep tabs on what their friends are liking and disliking in an effort to stay aligned with current styles.

This can wreak havoc on the psyche. Normal people can never truly "Know Thyself", for they are ever-changing, a ghost of the culture around them. I see the emptiness in their eyes, and I can feel their pain, for I remember it well despite the years that have passed. How can our culture be anything but shallow when its members are slaves to the process and can never dig deeply enough inside to discover more meaningful ideals?

Then there are the counter-cultural, who, in their attempts to reject the prevailing culture, become the flip side of that same coin. They spend too much of their time becoming familiar with what is normal so they can mock it and become the opposite. They put themselves in the same slavery to change as the people they are trying to contradict. In so doing, they often end up even more emotionally scarred, but in ways they may never realize until they have wasted a great deal of their life.

The weird ones, on the other hand, can truly know peace because we have stepped outside that storm and have spent enough time in the silence to know ourselves and appreciate ourselves for who we are. We seem weird to others because our interests are not confined to categories, but span all areas of human creativity and interaction. We seem to be weird because we wear things that are out of style, but we are ignorant to the styles and we are just content wearing clothes we find comfortable and interesting.

There is great freedom in choosing a haircut because it is comfortable and easy to manage, in listening to music which few of our peers are familiar with because it moves us, in watching a movie for the fifteenth time that makes us laugh while missing out on the movie everyone else is talking about at work, in choosing a car that fits our practical needs despite what "everyone else" is driving, etc....

Yes, being weird is highly underrated. If you are feeling unsure as to who you are, insecure, insignificant, lonely in a crowd, confused, or tired of life, I recommend you give it a try. Jump out of the maelstrom and analyze who you are. Go see a movie that you think sounds interesting regardless of whether the people around you think it sounds stupid. Spend some time sampling music on a site like last.fm, pandora.com, or grooveshark.com, and ignore the "Most Popular" lists. Buy some clothes or shoes that you find comfortable and appealing to you, and ignore what others around you are wearing.

In short, find yourself... and stay there. You will no longer have to redefine who you are every other month to keep up with the crowd. You can experience the joy of being just the person God made you to be, as you finally have the time to discover who that is. And when someone laughs at you for wearing "that dorky t-shirt with old Nintendo Zelda graphics on it", you may just find yourself laughing with them, but with the laughter that comes from the joy of being free.

P.S. As I finish this, I realize how fortuitous that, despite having planned to write it for about a month, I am just now getting to it on the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, who embodied the ideal of rejecting what society considers normal and becoming who God has made us to be, no matter how foolish that might appear to those around us. St. Francis, pray for all of us that we may experience the freedom of this foolishness.

Todd
October 4, 2010

WWGS?: Speaking clear enough

2010-10-02T14:24:00.002-05:00

Here's what happens when someone deliberately tries to speak clearly enough for Google Voice to transcribe. Thank you Google for keeping it real!

Mr. Russell, This is is Josh, common. Speaking clear enough for That's cool, voicemail. System, to pick up. What I am, saying He, but hopefully it's not garbled like all the other W W to be Adams, messages you've gotten. That's all. Have a good day. And come on plus bye bye.

Poetry section added to my site

2010-09-23T00:06:00.002-05:00

I was inspired to write my first poem in years, so I decided to add it to my site along with a new section for my poetry. As I have time, I will post some of the few older poems of mine that might possibly be worth reading. Enjoy!

http://groovechickenstudios.com/Poetry/ComeLight.html

Update: I just added a few more from years past.

Review: Arcade Fire

2010-08-31T23:12:00.000-05:00

There was once a time when people would ask me what new music I had been listening to. This was because I was known among family and friends to have a knack for discovering music that they would like. I finally reached a point, though, where I stopped keeping up with new music. In the midst of a drought of decent music, I went back into the catalogs of the bands I already liked and found enough music that I no longer needed new music. And this is my excuse for being late to the parade on hearing of Arcade Fire.

I heard them mentioned by someone I know recently, then they did the crazy HTML 5 web music video with Google, then a friend mentioned how much he liked them. I thought the song in the video was not bad, so I decided to check them out. I headed to grooveshark.com and searched for them, then started picking songs from the list to listen to.

The first song I listened to was "Wake Up". It reminded me right off the bat of the band Plankeye. It wasn't a bad song, but as the song progressed, I realized I'd rather be listening to Plankeye.

The second song I chose was "No Cars Go". It was different. I appreciated their attempt to use odd instruments and samples throughout. It sort of reminded me of Jars of Clay and their use of interesting sounds and instruments. The rhythm reminded me a little of old school Sixpence None the Richer. As the song progressed, though, I realized I'd rather be listening to Jars or Sixpence.

The third song was "My Heart is an Apple". Not bad. It reminded me, though, of Death Cab for Cutie, and maybe a little Waterdeep, possibly with a dash of Blind Melon thrown in... or maybe Belly. And again, as the song progressed, I realized I'd rather be listening to Death Cab or Waterdeep.

Last up was "Rebellion (Lies)". Even though there is not a direct correlation, it reminded me of old school Peter Gabriel, and a touch of Death Cab... and maybe a heavy dose of Coldplay on the repetitive instrument loops. You guessed it... as I listened, I realized I'd rather be listening to Peter, Death Cab, or Coldplay.

So, the music isn't bad, and I do appreciate the fact that they are different from a lot of other mainstream bands, but different has been done before and by bands with more musical talent than these folks have. If the music just keeps reminding me of other bands, why not listen to those bands instead? I hope none of my Arcade Fire lovin' friends take this as a dis to them. In a world without all these other bands, I'd probably be just as stoked as they are. From what I heard, though, I'd rather spend my precious music listening minutes in the week on other music I like better.

If I am missing something, I am willing to be proven wrong. I did consider while listening to these songs that they could be the kind of band you have to listen to several times to really "get". This has happened to me a number of times throughout the past, to the point that I now consider that while going into a first listen. I can now, usually, spot that effect on the first listen and realize that if I listened a few more times it would grow on me. The second listen through these songs for this post didn't convince me of that being a probability in this case.

My final analysis... if they are on, I won't turn to something else, but if I am in a specific music mood, there are other bands that nail my specific moods much more precisely. If you like any of the bands mentioned above, though, at least listen to them.

Why I still hate Windows

2010-08-31T20:26:00.004-05:00

Those who have discussed computers with me over the years know all too well my vehemence towards Microsoft. Those who were in my circle of Mac-using friends have been, perhaps, a little dismayed by the fact that my vehemence had lessened a great deal in the last year. Several factors contributed to this:

My love for XBox Live
Windows 7
Accepting my fate of never being able to move people away from Windows at work
Microsoft Security Essentials
The Kin phone debacle (it's no longer fun to make fun of a company that is beginning to look less evil and more mentally handicapped)
Declining software quality assurance in Mac OS X and other Apple software

I must admit, given my many frustrations with the lemon MacBook Pro I had and the annoyances that have crept into Mac OS X, I was becoming predisposed to going easy on Windows 7. After having installed it on a number of machines at work and dealt with it on a regular basis while helping others out, I have actually come to like Windows 7 a good deal.

In terms of general annoyances, Microsoft has done a splendid job of cleaning up the user interface and organizing things in a way that is more rational than it has been since the beginning of Windows. They have added handy features that actually make using Windows sometimes pleasant. I can appreciate the window management they have implemented, and I think I even like it better than Apple's handling of multiple windows on OS X, though not quite as much as the straight-forward approach offered by Gnome on Ubuntu Linux. The window previews while hovering over the taskbar and the window snapping were much needed additions to Windows.

Getting to configuration options in Windows 7 has been more natural to me, now that I have adjusted to the changes. Image previews are better than ever before, and I like the Windows approach better than the gimmicky Cover Flow that Apple employs. Networking is only mildly improved over the past, but the addition of preset firewall configurations that you choose from when connecting to a new network makes me feel safer about showing a novice how to connect their laptop to wireless networks.

Microsoft's having finally owned up to their responsibility for the virus problem in giving away Security Essentials for free goes a long way towards reducing the many years of ire I have held towards the company. I find it to be the least intrusive virus software I have used and it tends to do a better job of staying up-to-date than a lot of the other options. In a world full of novices, this is essential (no pun intended).

With all these in mind, I can actually say that I like Windows 7 (in some ways, better than even Mac OS X). File management is great, window management is finally some of the best around (at least for the way I think), and security has improved to the point of actually being viable.

So, by now you must be asking, "Wait, I thought you said you hate Windows?" Well, yes, despite the fact the I may like Windows 7, I do still hate the Windows ecosystem. The distinction is likely to be lost on those of you who do not work in technology, so I'll explain.

As I said, Microsoft has improved security to the point that it is mostly viable... well as long as you ignore the evidence of the August Patch Tuesday... and the DLL loading order exploit... and the recent icon preview vulnerability... ohhh, right. Hmmmm. So, they still have a lot of work to do. How much we will never know since the exploiters (I refuse to use the word hackers because I am old school enough to remember what it originally meant) seem to keep finding new vulnerabilities every time Microsoft patches the known ones. Admittedly, Windows security is better than it has ever been. If you install the 64 bit version, run as a Standard user for daily use, and use Microsoft Security Essentials, you have a reasonably secure machine. At least until the next vulnerability is found. If you are careful about where you visit on the internet, though, you might make it through unscathed with such a system. This is the first time I feel confident in saying that about Windows, with the caveat that you must run your updates regularly.

Left at that, I could almost like the Windows ecosystem. The chink in this armor, though, is one that Microsoft has no control over: 3rd party software. Sure, run the system I described above and you are fairly safe. Oh wait, you want to use Adobe Flash? Bad news. And Adobe Reader? Sigh. An old version of Corel Draw? Groan. HP scanning software? I feel the tears welling. Some freeware game that you downloaded from the internet? Okay, I quit.

Seriously, though, if it weren't for all the 3rd party applications, Windows could be pretty secure. At work, there is a financial package that requires us to disable User Account Control or else it will not function. Why? Because it was written for DOS and has been dragged along into the Windows world along the way, always several generations behind whatever Windows is current. So, great, we upgraded all the machine in the business office to get the better security that Windows 7 brings, and we just threw most of that out the window to get the financial software to function.

Despite Microsoft's best efforts, it will never be able to secure its ecosystem because so many companies are still writing their software to support old versions of Windows, and are dragging a lot of legacy baggage along with them. The same issue is also responsible for many of the stability issues of the platform. Poorly written drivers, poorly written services that hook into the kernel, tools that replace built-in Windows functionality with their own decrepit attempts, etc..., all combine to make Windows the Sanford and Son junk collection pickup truck that it is.

Even though I am becoming disillusioned with OS X to some degree, and Linux never seems to properly support the Apple hardware that I am stuck with, I just can't bring myself to go to Windows as my daily OS. I honestly wouldn't mind giving it a try, but there is no escaping the frustration of dealing with incompatibilities, bugs, crashes, and security issues. While I may know enough to be able to reduce my risk of getting a virus to the low, single-digit percentile, the fear of absent-mindedly clicking a bad link early one morning while I am half asleep and ending up at a site that is hosting some new virus that has not yet been added to the virus definitions keeps me far away. No amount of reward is worth that risk for me. I don't have the patience.

I admit that I like Windows 7, but I can't help but continuing to hate Windows in general. Having to put up with the stuff I do every day in my day job keeps me reminded that it takes more than good intentions, and even strong efforts, to clean up an entire ecosystem. Unfortunately for Microsoft, there doesn't seem to be a lot they can do to remedy the situation themselves. Perhaps one day I will be able to write another post entitled "I can finally love Windows", but don't hold your breath waiting for it.

Todd Russell
August 31, 2010

Pre-Review: The Facebook movie

2010-08-26T22:40:00.001-05:00

"Pre-review? Don't you mean preview?", you ask. No, I am very deliberate in my choice of words whenever I write, and even more so when I choose words that aren't really words. By pre-review, I mean that I will review the upcoming Facebook movie, "The Social Network", before it comes out. To answer your question... no, I haven't seen a pre-release copy. Nor have I read the script. What am I, Creskin the Time-Travelling Magician? Not exactly. Although I like to think of myself as "often prescient", I'm not even relying on those skills for this review. Pure logic will suffice.

Before you get too irritated with my banter, I suppose an explanation is in order. In regards to "The Social Network", I have no more direct knowledge than any of you readers have at the time of this posting, which amounts to having viewed the movie trailer. From that trailer, however, it is pretty clear that "The Social Network" follows closely to the book, "The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook". And that is where my pre-review is coming from... sorta.

I listened to the audiobook version of "The Accidental Billionaires" about a year ago, and watching the trailer for the new movie incited flashbacks to listening to the book. If you are starting to think it sounds interesting to read a book about how Facebook was founded, let me assure you that doing so would be one of the worst mistakes you would ever make. Perhaps you think that sounds a little exaggerated, but it is rather difficult for me to put into words the pain, sorrow, and misery you will feel while reading (or listening). The thing is, though, these are not feelings that will be created in you by a gripping tale that makes you identify with characters who are experiencing sadness or loss. Nor will these feelings be created by entering in to the events of a great modern tragedy. No, these feelings will be created by what must be the most sophomoric writing I have ever had the displeasure to experience.

I literally hated this book. There were times when I actually yelled out loud in my car at the author for his pathetic attempt to describe scenes that "might have happened". The level of writing made me feel as if I were grading papers for a 9th grade English class and stumbled through the manuscript of a teenage boy who has just "discovered" that his calling in life is to become the next great author. Ugggggggh. The dialog was often ridiculous. His filling in the gaps in the story by pondering what "might have happened" as Mark went from one screw-up to the next annoyed me so badly that I wanted to throw the iPod out the window of my car and drive back and forth over it to make sure those bits would never be transferred to another storage device again. The over-abundance of adjectives and needless words drug the story out at least an additional hour or two in total. The whole experience was almost as pleasant as being kicked repeatedly between the legs by a giant, red, Bozo the Clown shoe. Incidentally, the last time I felt that my intelligence was so insulted was probably the last time I watched Bozo the Clown on cable tv in the eighties.

"So why did you listen?", you ask. Believe me, I asked myself that same question every time I pressed play. I felt I needed to know the story, though, so that I could better understand the motives behind the constant abuses of private information being added to Facebook as "features". I was pretty sure I already knew the reasons, and this would be a good way for me to confirm or deny my suspicions. In the end, it did confirm for me what I believed... that Mark Zuckerberg has no concept of the rights or concerns of others... that he is either autistic or has narcissistic disorder (or even a little of both). The story clearly showed this to be a fairly accurate read. It was good for me to know this so that I would be reminded to be very judicious about what personal info I let out into Facebook, even through such features as the supposedly-private messages.

I have heard a lot of comments about this book and it appears to be the general consensus that it is roughly historically accurate. By extension, I will assume that the movie will be as well. The trailer seemed to connect with a lot of the scenes from the book.

After watching the trailer, it is pretty clear to me that watching this movie will be every bit as painful as reading (or listening to) the book. The dialog will be terrible. The acting will be laughable. The script will be disjunct and fail to tell a deeper story beyond simply retelling what happened on a surface level. On top of that, people with moral sensibilities will be routinely scandalized by the events and their portrayal. There will be almost nothing redeemable about this movie... with one exception. Like the book, it will probably at least give you a poorly rendered portrait of Mark Zuckerberg, the self-centered social misfit who is dealing in the private info of millions of average people.

For that alone, I will recommend that everyone who uses Facebook see this movie. Yes, I know I just trashed the movie and assured you that it will be the most painful experience of movie-going you are likely to ever experience. However, if you want to continue to use Facebook, you should know who you are trusting your info to. I would like to hope that you will walk out of the theatre a little scared, even.

If you would rather not spend $9 at the theatre to see this atrocity to mankind, just wait for it to hit DVD. I am pretty sure that, within a month or two of its release, it will be in the $1.99 bin of your local Wal Mart. You can buy a copy, watch it, then smash it into tiny pieces and throw it away. At least that way, you can feel like your participation in this travesty brought some good to humanity by reducing the watchable copies in existence. Or, just watch it on hulu.com for free when the studio gives up on trying to market it and just settles for the advertising money.

Though your time will have been wasted whichever route you take, at least you will have reason to think twice about every click you make on Facebook from that point on... and that can only make the world a better place.

Todd Russell
August 26, 2010

Dreams Do Come True

2010-08-18T22:17:00.000-05:00

Flashback... 1979... I'm standing in Kmart, staring in awe at the 12" Boba Fett figure on the shelf which is gleaming like the Holy Grail of toys. I'm sure I must have been drooling. This was the most wicked toy I had ever seen in my life, and I could only think of one thing... Christmas. I was already a Boba Fett fan, having been one of the lucky few kids to get an original Boba Fett figure in the mail after sending in the requisite number of Proofs of Purchase and money. I still remember the picture of the Boba Fett figure on the packages of the figures I owned, even though I was only 5 at the time. He could shoot a missile out of his back!!! Admittedly, getting the real figure in the mail, while very exciting, was a bit of a letdown. He looked different than the original picture and his missile wouldn't shoot, no matter how many ways I jammed a butter knife into his back. It took my mom a while to finally convince me that they must have changed the design and that this figure was not going to be doing any shooting. Once I finally let go of that, I quickly realized that this was the coolest figure in my collection. I only had him for a short time because I decided to slide him up a guy-wire at recess during kindergarten to simulate flying, and he flew off at some random angle when he hit the knuckle of the guy-wire anchor, landing on top of the breezeway cover. My poor kindergarten teacher tried desperately to help me find it for what must have been at least a half hour (I'll always love you Mrs. Crowell!). I'm not sure how many tears I cried that night, but I was sure that I would get a replacement for Christmas.

So there I was, standing in Kmart, staring at the 12" version of Boba Fett, who looked so much cooler than the small figure I had lost. I thought for sure that this was to be my reward to replace the lost object of affection. As I stood there, a family came along and grabbed one of them and moved on. There were now only 3 left. I realized that the remaining 3 might disappear while I went looking for mom, so I resolved not to leave that spot until she came looking for me. And if it came down to only 1 left, I would simply grab it and carry it with me throughout the store. In hindsight, I don't know why I didn't do that in the first place, because it might have been easier to convince her to buy it if she thought about the nuisance of having to go back and find the place on the shelf to replace it. So I waited what felt like an eternity.

When mom arrived, somewhat irritated that I hadn't come to find her first, I began my excited pleas and begging. Her immediate "no" almost left me crushed, but I reminded her of my lost Boba Fett and that Christmas was coming and this was the only thing I wanted for Christmas. She wasn't convinced. "We're not buying that now. If you still want it at Christmas, maybe we'll buy it then." "But mom, they might all be gone by then! There are only 3 left! What if you can't find one later?" None of my begging, whining, or bargaining worked, so I sulked away, turning to give what would be my last look ever at an original 12" Boba Fett figure. I hoped beyond hope that there would be more near Christmas time, but Christmas came and went, and Boba Fett never made it back to the shelves of any store I entered again after that.

Flash forward... 2010... I'm standing in Target looking at the new line of Star Wars figures that had just been released with the reproduced "original" Empire Strikes Back backing cards, and having flashbacks to many years ago. As I'm wandering through nostalgic memories, I hear my oldest daughter say, "Daddy, look at this cool Boba Fett helmet". My heart leapt into my throat, but I didn't want my kids to see me acting like an excited 5 year old, so I replied, "I'll see in just a second after I finish looking through these figures", in as nonchalant a voice as I could fake. After scanning the rest of the figures, I looked down and saw a full-size Boba Fett helmet much like the recent Clone Trooper helmets that had been released over the last few years. I'm sure my jaw must have hung open, because my kids laughed when they saw my reaction. I picked it up and looked at it and immediately had a flashback to 1979, looking at the Boba Fett toy in Kmart. Now this was truly the coolest toy I had ever seen, even better than the figure I never had. "Wow, this is really cool, maybe I should get it", I said. I looked at the price... $34.99. Not too bad for an item this cool, but did I really need it? Should I spend that money? I looked at the shelf and noticed that there were only 3 left. Another flashback... "But mom, they might all be gone by then! There are only 3 left!"

I decided right then that it wasn't going to happen to me again, so I tucked the package under my arm and said, "Okay kids, let's go." At the checkout counter, the lady asked if my son had his eye on this and I said, "No, this one is for daddy. I've wanted one of these since I was 5 years old." She laughed and smiled. On the way to the van, I must admit that I felt like a 5 year old on Christmas and couldn't wait to get home to open it and check it out. Of course, my wife just laughed and kind of rolled her eyes when she saw the addition to "Daddy's collection", but once I told her the story, she got into the excitement of opening the prize as well. The kids were huddled around, waiting impatiently to see it in action, and I was trying my best to hide the childlike surge of emotion I felt as I restrained myself from just ripping the packaging to shreds. Once it was out and put together, I immediately put it on and modeled it for my wife and kids. We all had some good laughs and my son ran off to get his Clone Trooper helmet, thrilled to join his daddy in the fun. So, we chased the girls around the house for a few minutes, then I placed my new toy in a prominent place in my office so I could see it clearly every time I entered.

After having it for over a week, I still haven't tired of staring at it every time I pass it, and I don't regret the purchase for even a moment. It's my little reminder that dreams can come true, even if they sometimes take 31 years to do so. It also reminds me how good it is to never entirely lose the simple excitement of childhood and the laughter and joy that can bring. I hope that when I am old and retired, I can still find moments of childhood laughter in the midst of the seriousness of daily life.

And now, for some pictures so that you can revel with me in all the glory of this story:

He was almost mine!

My prize, just before it was opened.

I am Boba Fett!

Todd Russell
August 18, 2010

WWGS?: I hope you get to see you

2010-07-31T15:10:00.001-05:00

Dude morning to you to. You're on your way from where? And yes, I did see myself today, so all is well in that regard.

Okay, my love. It's 8 after 11, and we're on our way from ass out of meet at the we couldn't make it at 8:30. I felt so awful. Dude morning, but I just even as bad as I'm feeling now. I really feel compelled to go to Madison. The kids are excited too. So and lunch is ready, because it's damps left over from last night and part of that of children's choir so I'll be able to do so. Anyway, I hope you get to see you at some point. The well, we're out here. I love you bye.

Why you pay more for an Apple Mac

2010-07-18T08:26:00.001-05:00

"You pay for what you get" in the words of Dave Matthews. I always liked that phrase. I don't remember the context in the lyrics, but it always reminded me that when we buy things, we often pay a price in blood, sweat, and tears well beyond whatever bargain we thought we were getting. If your time is money like mine is, you are very familiar with the hidden cost of products in terms of the time that gets wasted when they do not work as expected. This factor can make it worth spending much more on a product if it will save you more time or last a lot longer than a cheaper competing product. However, it can become quite galling when you pay more for a product expecting to reduce the wasted time only to end up with a lemon that blows this strategy up in your face.

Those of you who talk computers with me or have folllowed my previous posts know that this is exactly what happened to me with the purchase of a MacBook Pro as my work computer. At the time of the purchase, I was still very much the Apple fanboy. This MacBook Pro was the first straw on this camel's back which sent me on my exodus outside the land of Apple.

It was the first MacBook Pro with an LED backlit screen, and it was a lemon right out of the box. To make a long story short, there were build quality issues like I had not previously seen in any Apple machine I had owned. Then there were the bugs. I chalked it up to OS X bugs for 2 years and my friend kept claiming his machine didn't have the same problems. I did not listen to his theory that my machine had issues because I knew that the quality of OS X had begun declining rapidly anyway late in the 10.4 life cycle.

When the dreaded nVidia graphics chip death hit me just prior to the 2.5 year mark, though, I began to consider that perhaps it was the case that this could have been the source of some of my previous woes. Graphics cards get hot and this could have been overheating nearby components.

I had not purchased AppleCare with the machine because I had not anticipated needing it. I knew that Apple tends to be good about extending coverage of known build or design flaws, and, aside from such flaws, their machines tended to last a long time. I was right and Apple did own up to this and cover the nVidia problem for 3 years, which meant this would get fixed for free. When I got the newly repaired MacBook back, I began to experience a lot of the same problems I'd had before, especially with USB drives. I thought this proved my theories about the bugginess of OS X and moved on to using Ubuntu on the machine full time. I had already been using it a little less than half time, but this was a clean break. I only booted into OS X when I really had to after that. This was fine for a few months, then I began having a lot of weird bugs. At first I assumed it was just poor linux drivers for the Apple components, but after a few complete lockups caused when using USB drives, I realized there was a common thread with what happened in OS X on this machine.

I then started doing some cross reference testing and realized the same problem occured in OS X, Ubuntu, and Windows 7. Now I knew it had to be hardware. Runnnig Apple Hardware Test on it confirmed that there was a problem with the temp sensor on the graphics chip. Research showed that others with this problem also experienced weird issues with USB. I haven't researched this further but I assume that the USB chipset must be in the near vicinity of the graphics chip and was getting overheated as well.

I contacted Apple and explained the situation and they were very helpful and sent me a box to send it back to them. They say they replaced the logic board, temp sensor, and fans. When I got it back, I ran the Apple Hardware Quick Test on it. At first I thought all was finally well, but I decided to run the extended test. Then I got the same error again. I then ran the quick test to see if it would show there now. It did. I shut down, waited a few minutes, turned it back on, and ran the quick test again. It tested clean. I let it sit there idle for a few minutes, then ran it again. Clean. I waited a few more minutes and ran it a third time. Now it showed the error. This confirmed that when the chip gets to a certain heat, it must be causing the temp sensor to malfunction.

I called Apple and talked them through the scenario. The guy said that though they were puzzled as to how this could still be happening, this was the third strike and they would simply replace it with a brand new MacBook Pro of the current model that was as nearly equivalent as possible to the old one.
I have been fairly critical of Apple lately, but that, folks, is how you do customer support and I can only give them praise for this. Granted, my work originally paid $2000 for a machine that ended up being a piece of crap by design, and it took three years of pain, but at least we are finally getting the machine we paid for.

And that is the moral of this story... that with Apple you do pay more for hardware than you would pay for similar PC hardware and you are not getting hardware that is necessarily better since they are all made in China by the same few manufacturers, but what you are getting for that premium is pretty good support and some assurance that the company you are dealing with generally makes an honest effort to take care of problems when it is proven that they produced a defective design.

So, you pay for what you get, and boy have I ever paid for this one. I am appreciative, though, that Apple was willing to make good on the purchase in the long run, even though this machine was within 1 month of the 3 year cutoff for coverge on this issue. I will be buying 3 year Apple Care on the new machine as soon as it arrives now that I have a better hands-on experience of what level of support to expect for the investment. Hopefully, this machine will be rock solid enough that I will be able to use it without all the problems I was having in OS X. So, yes, this will get me to give OS X one last chance and I can finally confirm whether the USB drive problems I was experiencing are bugs in OS X or were just caused by the hardware in the other machine.

If the hardware ends up not being properly supported by Ubuntu and Windows 7, I may have to pass it on to a coworker and get me a new PC laptop anway, but I'm at least willing to try after seeing Apple's support in action.

To further prove my point, contrast this to HP. Someone brought me an HP laptop at work that was showing the beginnings of the nVidia graphics failure. It was already known that several brands were affected by this, so I was not surprised. The machine was just over 1 year old, and just out of warranty. I had heard that HP was covering this issue responsibly, so I called them expecting to get this fixed for free on nVidia's dime. Imagine my surprise when the tech support rep told me this model was not covered. Other models in the same series were covered, but he insisted this model "was not affected by the nVidia problem". After getting off the phone and doing some further testing, the graphics died completely. Hoping to have better chances with a different rep, I called again. I was told the same story. "Now let me get this straight. This machine has the same graphics chip, the same symptoms, and is even in the same series as some of the machines you are covering, but you are claiming this model is not affected?" "Yes, this model is not affected." Unbelievable.

HP had a web page that listed the covered models, which I kept open in a browser tab for several months hoping HP would eventually own up to this one. They never did. This was a $1300 laptop and if only lasted for 1 year. For the Apple, we paid $2000 and it had slightly better specs but lacked many of the cool features of this laptop. One could argue that the HP was better hardware for $700 less. Even though the Apple cost us $700 more, we actually got our money's worth in the end as Apple was willing to replace the machine at the eleventh hour, just before the 3 year extended coverage expired. HP wasn't even willing to cover their laptop beyond the 1 year warranty.

In the past, you paid more for a better machine when you bought an Apple. These days, when you pay more for an Apple, you don't necessarily get more reliable hardware or more features, but you do get better support. The "time is money" value equation could go either way depending on whether it is more inconvenient for you to just buy a new machine and move on or whether it is more inconvenient to make a trip to a local Apple Store and possibly be without your machine for a few days. At least you know now what you are in for and can decide how you will "pay for what you get".

Todd Russell
July 17, 2010

Forecast: Would the real OS X please come forward?

2010-06-03T00:17:00.001-05:00

I've been pondering the state of OS X on Apple computers, Apple's shifting focus, and some obvious signs in developer land, and I think I have solved the riddle regarding the fast downward spiral of code quality in OS X.

Many of us have lamented what happened to NeXT when Apple bought it and morphed it into Mac OS X. NeXT was beautiful in all the ways that any OS aficionado wants an OS to be. Granted, the visuals were a little "industrial", but that's easy to fix with a few graphics designers and several weeks of man-hours. The underlying design of the system, however, was really amazing for its time, and was a good deal ahead of Windows or Macintosh. I remember being blown away by the NeXT 3.0 demo video I watched a few years ago and wondering why OS X had apparently lost some of the features that were in its predecessor. Ironically, if you were to take the pre-Apple code-base of NeXT and update the graphics, then re-release it, it would probably get a lot of praise for being a well-thought-out OS... even after all these years.

Apple's attempt to force Macintosh compatibility into NeXT pretty well destroyed its potential as a real contender to become THE operating system of the next several decades. As I have pointed out elsewhere, OS X has gotten worse and worse in terms of stability and bloat as time has gone on. For a while, I just assumed that when Avie Tevanian left, all the good programmers went with him and the new guys just weren't up-to-snuff for something so complex. That would explain some of the brain-dead bugs and bad decisions that went into the implementation of new features (you can go to rixstep.com to find a long laundry list of complaints about these). Although this was the obvious conclusion on the surface, I found it hard to believe that a company like Apple could really be so inept as to trust their OS to such rookies and let it fall apart. It didn't make sense.

I don't know why it took me so long to think of this more probable explanation, but it all makes sense to me now, and there is even precedent in Apple's history to back up this theory. Perhaps others have already put this theory forth, but I haven't heard it put exactly the way I am about to.

Another Apple switcheroo
When the iPhone was released, Apple went on about how they simply took OS X, removed the irrelevant parts, and put it right onto the iPhone. Many of us were skeptical, but, looking through the file system and OS, there appeared to be support for this claim. It still seemed somewhat implausible, though, given how bloated OS X was becoming at that time. Like other times when Apple twists the details to hide what they are really doing, though, I think this was a hint of the future of OS X.

When Apple bought NeXT, they put the Classic OS on life support. They fixed some of its problems to buy them some time, but it is obvious in hindsight that they did no more than they absolutely had to in order to keep from losing their loyal customers. I wasn't an Apple user at that time, even though I did use OS 9 a good bit in the first year or two of OS X, so I can't say from experience whether the Classic OS got progressively worse through 8 and 9. My impression of the situation, based on many conversations with old-time Mac users, however, is that this is precisely what happened.

I bring this up to show the precedent for my theory, namely, that Apple is moving to a new OS, and is leaving Mac OS X to die on the vine. We already know the OS, even though we've been told the opposite story... Touch OS. "Wait a minute!", you may be saying... "Touch OS is just a stripped down OS X." Is it? As I mentioned before, there were many who looked at the "OS X" on the iPhone when it was released and strongly questioned Apple's claims that it was merely a stripped down OS X. While there are some code overlaps that might seem to back up that story on a superficial level, I believe this is a typical case of Apple telling us one story to throw us off the real one. (Similar "stretches of the truth" would include "No one wants to watch video on a small screen", "We're not doing a tablet", and others)

If you think it through, it makes a lot of sense. There is a lot of legacy baggage in OS X, even in version 10.6. Now that Apple has officially killed off Classic support and PowerPC processor support, it must surely want to make a clean break from the past. Does it make sense to continue weeding old code out of a system that is so complex? There comes a point where you just have to take what you have learned from your years of mistakes, and start over. This is often the only practical way of moving forward without wasting untold amounts of effort in bug tracking.

Probable cause
iPad and iPhone when there are plenty of companies who make very nice ARM chips that they can buy in mass quantities.

iPad proves this to some degree, as it has taken the core Touch OS and added some functionality that brings it closer to desktop usability... USB and Bluetooth keyboard support, USB Mass Storage access through the card reader, support for larger resolutions, and the beginnings of video output. It is always easy to add features to a solid core, so they should be able to extend this out to full desktop duty more easily than fixing all the problems in OS X. Of course, that is assuming that they designed this new OS well enough to handle the growth. [Note: Yes, we know that Apple first intended to make a tablet, but Steve Jobs decided to make a phone instead after seeing the prototype. In his own words, though, the tablet was just a display with some mock-up scrolling functionality at that point. They then shifted gears and built out the iPhone and iPod Touch first, only going back to the tablet idea after these were settled in.]

The second advantage they gain is a shortcut to simplifying computer use at the desktop level. Apple has been attempting to simplify things in OS X, making it more accessible to the average tech neophyte, but there is only so much simplification you can do without breaking existing software. They tried with the Simple Finder, which could be enabled to make machines more kid-friendly, but even that never felt like anything more than a kludge; and it certainly didn't simplify the applications any, just the means of getting to the applications. With the Touch OS, Apple truly has simplified computing in a way that no one has in recent times. There are still some UI problems in the general inconsistency between modes of interacting in different apps that people develop, but that hasn't seemed to stop the very young and very old from figuring it out anyway. I have watched my 4 year old figure out, pretty much on his own, how to get to the Lightsaber app on my retired iPhone, and how to get around in the app. I have shown him how to manage some of the finer points, but even that is simple enough that he easily remembers after having been shown only once. I have watched a man in his late 60s (who has the early stages of Alzheimer's setting in) figure out how to get around fairly well in the parts of the phone that matter most to him: address book, calendar, and email. While my second biggest complaint about the iPhone is the limitations it places on what I can do with it, I can also recognize that these same limitations make it more approachable to Apple's newfound core audience: the average human. If they can keep things simple while building this core functionality back out to a more work-focused desktop use, they very well could win over a large portion of the people who hate computers and only use them because they have to. They may lose the prosumers and geeks in the process if they refuse to put in that much-begged-for "I am an advanced user, stop treating me like a moron" switch, but, at this point, it is pretty clear that they have already lost a lot of us anyway, and they are making more money than ever.

The third advantage is that they remain a moving target in the security world. Just as the first bits of trojan software are starting to hit the major download sites for Mac software (MacUpdate and Softpedia being two of the known ones), they could be in the process of shifting to a new architecture, forcing malware writers to start over. While this is not a real strategy against malware, it is at least an advantage of shifting the underlying OS architecture every 10 years or so. Granted, there have already been some major security flaws found in the Touch OS, but malware authors have tended to stick with sitting ducks up to this point in the game. By not being afraid to break backwards compatibility with every major OS shift, they at least are spared the problem Windows has with untold amounts of security flaws in legacy software support.

The fourth advantage is the potential of extending the platform out to build the kinds of desktop machines that never would have been profitable for them in the past, such as small netbooks or thin client computers. Having this new compact OS gives them the advantage of running on more efficient ARM processors which they can build in-house. As they showed us with the iPad, they can build and sell some stunning machines at prices lower than the competition when they are no longer forced to buy parts from Intel or the graphics chip makers. They can save money on cooling and materials by building smaller machines. Of course, no one will want to do movie production on these machines, but they will be plenty fast for the majority of what the "average human" wants to do on a computing device.

The fifth advantage (and probably the one that most excites the people on the inside at Apple) is the ability to focus on a single OS for all their devices. The current state of OS X shows us how pathetic Apple can be at supporting more than one platform simultaneously. This was also evident in the overlap days of OS 9 and OS X. While they sort of claimed they were already only working on one OS when they first showed the iPhone, very few of us believed them. In a dishonest sort of way, though, they may have been speaking the truth only insofar as they weren't really focused on OS X anymore and were in the process of this transition already. Apple hasn't shown much acumen in supporting an array of hardware in their past efforts with OS X (don't get me started on model-specific bugs with each OS X release), but I would like to assume the situation would be a little better if they begin building their own processors for all the machines at every level of their product line.

Reading the tea leaves
Some of the points I've mentioned included hints from Apple that things may be heading this direction. There are some other hints that we have seen that give some support to my theory. The one that stands out strongest in my mind is that there is no category for Mac OS X apps in the Apple Design Awards this year. Many others in the tech press have pointed this out as well. We have all seen this as Apple giving a not-so-subtle hint to the developers that OS X is not the future and they would be wise to begin looking at the Touch OS if they plan to continue making a living in the Apple software world. The conclusions many others have drawn from this is that Apple will simply abandon the desktop market in favor of the iPhone and iPad money-makers. I think my theory makes more sense, however. As I mentioned, if Apple is able to do all their design and building in-house, they can still make interesting laptops and desktops and not have a need to sell them in high volume in order to still make a profit off that division. Steve Jobs recognizes, and has stated clearly, that the old model of computing is fading fast in favor of portability and more personal devices. If Apple is able to reduce the cost of product development drastically, though, it can still service that shrinking portion of the market without sinking the ship like many other PC makers will.

The missing pieces to my puzzle
While all of this seems very feasible to me, I will admit there are some big pieces of the puzzle that are missing for which there seems to be no clear replacement in this course of action. First and foremost is the current need to use Mac OS X to develop software for the Touch OS. While it is true that a Touch OS version of XCode could be built to replace the Mac version, I can't imagine any developer in their right mind wanting to sit through code compiling on an ARM processor numerous times a day during testing. Apple would need a good replacement for the current development workstation before this theory could become reality.

Second, there is no way that real movie editing, compositing, or even advanced graphics work could ever be done on ARM-based machines in the foreseeable future. I suppose a 48 core ARM tower could conceivably begin to approach usability, but we are a long way from that possibility. So, unless Apple just decides to give up that segment of the market to Windows and Linux, we are a good ways out from a total replacement of OS X on the desktop.

Third, I am tempted to mention servers, but, in all reality, those of use who have attempted to use Apple servers in environments with mixed platform clients would say that they have already given up on that market anyway. I'm sure that those of you running Mac-only businesses with Mac servers will tell me how wrong I am on this point, but I will just leave it at this and let you continue to live on your little fantasy island outside the hell of the "real world" that the rest of us face. For some of you, though, this third reason might be valid.

Conclusions
Aside from those few caveats, I think they could make a pretty good run at it with such a plan. While it would only further cement the hardcore Windows and Linux users into their particular parts of the computer world, I do believe it would cause a mass exodus within the general public, making Apple far-and-away the market leader in desktop computing among home users and possibly even small businesses.

While I would not be a part of that new, easy-to-use future myself, I think the contribution Apple would make to the computing world would be very valuable. It might even force Microsoft and Google into competing on that level, which would give people options at every level of computing. Although I have grown beyond the borders of Apple's vision of computing myself, some part of me still can't help but hope that they do go this route. Who knows, perhaps if they did, they might even change my mind about the shiny, locked-down world of the Touch OS.

[With Apple's 2010 developer conference coming up next week, perhaps my theory will soon be confirmed or obliterated. If anything revealed at the conference affects what I have stated here, I'll add an addendum to the bottom of this article.]

Todd Russell
June 3, 2010

Apple... you have failed me for the last time

2010-05-24T22:07:00.000-05:00

Those of you who discuss technology with me on a regular basis know that this has been brewing for quite some time, but I have officially forsaken Apple software and hardware. I know I will get a lot of questions from people who I have helped switch over to Apple in the past, so I am writing this now before the word gets out. Hopefully, I can just refer people to this post when they ask, which will save me from having to repeat myself on a regular basis.

There has been a steady collection of little annoyances that have built up over the past few years, to the point I'm just not willing to deal with them anymore. I'll summarize these down to the big issues to spare you from an exhausting (yes, I meant to choose that word) list of nitpicks. I do recognize that the issues are not all important to the average user, so I'm not necessarily recommending that people follow my lead here... this is just to answer the inevitable questions.

Software
Apple apparently has some of the worst programmers in the industry. How they could have taken something that was so well-built under Avie Tevanian's guard and turned it into the buggiest OS this side of beta Linux builds is beyond me. I suppose they pulled all the programmers with any real chops off their projects and put them on the iPhone OS, leaving all the interns to work on OS X and the desktop software. Life was pretty good with OS X 10.3, despite a few bugs here and there. With 10.4, things got a little worse, but the OS was still mostly tolerable. With 10.5, I started referring to it as Mac OS X Vista. Seriously, on this MacBook Pro, it was terrible. I tried hanging on for a few revisions and finally had to go back to 10.4, only to face the keyboard bugs all over again. When 10.6 came out, I thought everything would be solved... they did promise, right? So much for that. 10.6.1 didn't solve a single one of the problems I was facing either. 10.6.2 came out, all the SD card reader problems persisted, the keyboard bugs reappeared, and I finally gave up. I installed Ubuntu Linux and Windows 7 alongside OS X and have been happy in Linux ever since. When 10.6.3 came out, I updated, spent a few hours with it to give it one last chance, but after having to do a hard power down within 3 hours, I had seen enough. I'll keep it around for the occasions when my open source tools aren't getting the same results as Adobe CS3, but I have not missed it much at all. To think that I am experiencing fewer bugs and daily annoyances on a free, open source operating system that supports hundreds of thousands of hardware configurations says a lot about Apple software quality. They only have to support a few hundred hardware configurations, which they know inside and out, and they can't even get that much right?!

Security
I have been telling people for years not to run antivirus software on OS X. I still believe that the problem will never be widespread on OS X to the extent that it is on Windows, even if OS X does get significant market share. However, in the past few years, there have been so many serious security flaws in Apple software that I fear for the average user. It is only a matter of time before a major exploit hits the wild that will likely result in Apple users having a significant portion of their private info stolen. I am now having to recommend that people not use Safari if they care at all about their system security. This is exactly the kind of thing that led me to flee Windows back in the day before the problem exploded.

Hardware
I never liked the fact that all Apple's hardware solutions were proprietary, even at the time I switched. I had decided, though, that I would just make that compromise to avoid the other nuisances I was looking forward to with the coming release of Windows XP. I managed to put all this aside to the point of liking Apple hardware design and just accepting that a complete solution requires compromises. As the epidemic hardware problems began cropping up, though, the compromise was becoming rather annoying. Having to waste almost 2 hours tearing apart and rebuilding iBooks for people when the hard drives failed got old fast. Meanwhile, I could change a hard drive in a Dell in literally 5 minutes. The first time I had to pull a hard drive out of a dead iMac G5 Rev. 2 was when the frustration grew to anger. From that point on, each successive computer design became more and more ridiculous to change hard drives in. Changing the drive in MacBook Pros, trying desperately not to bend the flimsy aluminum top half of the body was where my anger finally grew to hatred. This has been festering for a few years now. The cracked glass on my original iPhone, the design of the aluminum iMac where the hard drive is just not worth the effort of getting to, the cheap plastic on the white MacBook that falls apart and stains, the graphics chip problems of many MacBook Pros, and the list goes on. All little thorns in my sides. So remind me one more time why we are paying such a high price for Apple hardware? I thought it was supposed to be for quality?

Servers
Well, I just hit my last straw last week. We have an XServe at work which has been collecting dust for over a year. I recommended against buying it originally, but the previous Director of IT before me ignored my pleas. When I took over, I switched things over to Linux servers, which are better in every way than OS X Server in mixed environments. In a Mac-only environment, the XServe has a home. In a mixed environment, it is an albatross. Well, we had some hardware issues after a really nasty lightning strike, so I decided to try and repurpose the old XServe. I quickly discovered that the XServe's EFI does not contain BIOS emulation like the other Intel machines... meaning that running Windows or Linux on it is more trouble than it is worth. I thought about giving OS X Server one last chance... to do a very simple task... basic file-sharing. I knew better, but I needed another machine, so I tried anyway. After trying a solid state drive in it, then a new 1TB hard drive, I did some searching to find out why they might not be working... and I discovered that Apple has designed the XServe to ignore drives that do not have Apple's custom firmware on them. So, if a drive dies, there's no option to run to Best Buy and pick up a replacement in an emergency, and there is no option to pick the brand and model of drive you want to use for performance and reliability. Instead, you have to pay Apple triple the going rate for a drive and just hope that they are using a good brand and model of drive. Some people may think I am over-reacting. "Just buy a spare and keep it around for the day something fails", they'll say. They just don't get it. After all that, the file-sharing didn't play as nicely with Windows 7 as the file sharing I am running on our Linux file server.

Lock-in
In the past, the DRM on songs purchased through iTunes didn't bother me... I thought I'd be using iTunes forever. Then they started releasing DRM-free versions of everything and I thought all would be well. I sucked it up and paid the extra $.30 per song to get the new versions as they came out. Somewhere along the line, iTunes stopped telling me when the DRM-free versions of my songs were released. When I had reached the point where I was ready to move on from Apple's ecosystem, I went looking to see what the deal was with these songs... only to discover that they had, in fact, been updated. I was never notified, but no problem, I'd just upgrade them now... ummmmmmmm, where is the upgrade buttom in the iTunes Store? Yes, this little convenience disappeared and now I couldn't just pay $.30 per song to get the "plus" versions of these remaining songs. I'd have to buy them again... so I spent many hours having to do manual conversions of everything to DRM-free songs. Sigh.

Slave devices
As a techno-geek, I just got to the point where I could no longer tolerate having devices that were "attached" to a computer, much less a single computer. If you use an iPod, iPhone, or iPad, you know what I am referring to... "This device is already being synced with another computer. Would you like to delete everything and start syncing it to this computer?" This one really makes me want to punch someone at Apple. What year is this? Did I just have a weird dream? Are we still in the late 90s? Or maybe it is actually 1984? Here's a clue Apple: many people have more than 1 computer. As nice a device as the iPad may be, I will never even consider one for this very reason. I don't want devices that are tied to a computer, nor will I recommend them except in very narrow cases where I know the person has a single computer and isn't likely to stop using iTunes. With the other phones I have had since the iPhone, a Nokia E71x and now an android-based Samsung Moment, I never need to connect them to a computer. I can go to librivox.org and download the next chapter of whatever audio book I am in the middle of, while on the go, without having to wait until I get home to "sync" it to a computer. Thanks to Google Listen, I always have the latest episodes of my podcasts and don't have to plan ahead before leaving the house. It's great. Yes, I know there are workarounds to get the same end-results on the iPhone, but they are cludgy and frustrating. I guess this is Apple's desperate attempt to keep people buying computers in a world where they are becoming increasingly less necessary. It just annoys me to no end. They may come around at some point, but I'm not waiting.

Conclusions
While these are just a few of the many reasons I have lost my patience with Apple, I think this list makes the point that I'm not just leaving the Apple world on a single issue or because I'm just having a bad day. This has been growing, and, for the ways I want to use computers and devices, Linux and android are making me happy in all the places Mac OS X and iPhone were driving me crazy. When I replace the current hardware I am stuck with, rest assured it will be PC hardware and not Apple. I like my Acer netbook and it is tough as nails, which is more than I can say for the MacBook Pro I am running a triple-boot setup on. Granted, I'm not not about to replace my full-sized laptop with that little netbook, but at least I know that it is possible to find decent PC hardware that will last as long or longer than Apple's when this thing dies.

Again, I'm not saying everyone else should bail on their Apple products. I don't expect most of you to whom I have recommended Apple in the past to switch to Linux. Linux has improved to the point that a lot of you probably could, but I am enough of a pragmatist to admit you're probably better off where you are... for now. I can safely say that Windows 7 is not any more buggy than OS X at this point from my experience of running both extensively at work. The only real advantage OS X has over Windows 7 anymore is the lack of constant virus issues. Microsoft is actually making some progress in this area, and with the 64 bit version of Windows 7, coupled with the free Microsoft Security Essentials, and running as a Standard user, the situation is at least manageable. Those who switched to Apple to get away from the virus problem, though, may as well stay there... for now.

In the world of technology, nothing is sacred, and nothing is perfect. Each of us has different levels of tolerance dealing with the annoyances inherent in the solutions we are stuck with. For me, Apple was stabbing a knife in every pain point I have. Linux is only cutting in a few areas, so it wins for me. I am a realist, and will still probably recommend Apple machines to many people, just not to tech-savvy people who care about these issues. At this point, I am even recommending some Windows users just stay where they are and get a new machine with Windows 7 64 bit. To those of you who know me well, that should say a lot about how things have changed in the past 5 years in Apple's ecosystem. We'll see what the next 5 years brings, but I'm seeing a lot of Linux in the forecast.

Todd Russell
May 24, 2010

Apple's Requiem: A Prosumer's Lament

2010-05-23T03:07:00.000-05:00

[Update: This was written in 2007 before the release of OS X 10.5 Leopard, before the release of the MacBook Air, and soon after the release of the original iPhone and iPod Touch. Most of what I predicted basically came true in terms of quality and the focus on the average consumer. Since then, I have moved on to Linux as my primary OS, an android phone instead of the iPhone, and I am no longer recommending Apple computers to PC users. OS X got progressively more buggy with Leopard and Snow Leopard to the point I could no longer tolerate it. Then there are the technical issues in OS X such as the terrible decisions made in regard to the file system. Meanwhile, android is getting progressively better than the iPhone with every update and Windows 7 (despite the fact that viruses are still an issue) is the best version of Windows to date and I find it no more buggy than OS X. Given the growing list of security vulnerabilities in every piece of software Apple codes, it is only a matter of time before malware becomes a real issue. While my post is dated at this point, I still find it interesting for historical context.]

While many people have been complaining about some of Apple's recent decisions and hardware issues (iPhone, iPod Touch, and aluminum iMac for a chronological reference point), I have yet to see anyone label these as the obvious progression of a trend that has been evolving at Apple for the last few years. This trend is the slow and steady driving away of what I refer to as Prosumers. We Prosumers are the hobbyists, the early adopters of new hardware, the computer geeks, and the unofficial support technicians of friends and families. We are the ones who write reviews, who lead user groups, and whose opinions people seek when deciding what to buy. What Apple seems to have forgotten, though, is that we are essential to Apple's success, and they are driving us away.

I switched to the Mac back in 2001 because I saw the direction Microsoft was going with XP and activation, and I was tired of the way they abused their customers through pointless upgrades at high prices. My previous experiences with Macs were limited and had not been very good, but Linux was still very rough for desktop use, so what other choice did I have? I ended up falling in love with OS X (10.0.4 at the time). I also fell in love with Apple's hardware designs and their general reliability. Since then, I have recommended Apple to many people and have personally converted at least (I've lost count) 10 families, 5 individuals, and 2 businesses to the Mac platform. This has equated to many machines purchased from Apple... and all because people trusted my word, were convinced by my passion, and knew they'd have me to help them when there were problems.

Despite my love for Apple, though, the passion is fading fast. Their focus has been turning completely toward the average consumer and I am beginning to feel as if I'm losing my place in the Apple ecosystem. I will admit outright that I understand why Apple's attention has focused on the consumer. They are the ones who have spent all the money that has propelled Apple to newfound success over the last few years. They are also the ones most desperately in need of simple solutions such as Apple offers. It is good that Apple is fulfilling this need. Unfortunately, though, Apple has been neglecting those of us who convinced those average consumers to spend the money that got them to their current growth rates, and they are on the verge of losing many of us.

The first reason is the lack of variety in hardware. Apple has often maintained models that fulfill the needs of us Prosumers. The G4 towers, in particular, struck a good balance of practicality, elegance, and expandability. They were easy to get into for hard drive swaps and RAM upgrades. There were enough PCI slots to upgrade them at will. They were not perfect, but they satisfied us enough and were even good for doing some crazy hardware mods. In the laptop realm, the 12” PowerBook was the Prosumer's dream. Granted, there was no PCMCIA slot, which limited upgrades, but the portability of it (while still possessing enough graphics horsepower to do some real work), more than made up for the trade-offs for those of use who live and die by our portable machines. I would wager that this model sold less than any other Apple laptop in production during its time, but it gave us Prosumers something to fill our niche needs. Then there's the Mac mini. Niche? Absolutely. Low sales numbers? I'd be willing to bet on it. Beloved by Prosumers? More so than any other specialty machine in recent years. Just check the internet for all the crazy hacks that fellow geeks have built with these things. I'm sure the bean counters at Apple keep suggesting this product get the axe. It was rumored to happen just recently, but has seen at least one last revision. I hope that someone at Apple is wise enough to see the value of this machine beyond its apparent fiscal viability, though. There are other classics, like the Cube, of course.

If you look at Apple's current lineup, though, it starts to become obvious that the willingness to satisfy the niche is evaporating. We still have the mini, but, beyond that, there is really nothing for us geeky Prosumers to get excited about.

The Mac Pro? While very expandable and customizable, the thing is a monstrosity. It is way too big to be practical and way too expensive for those of us who have other gadgets and hobbies to spend money on. They call it the Pro, and that is precisely who this machine is good for: graphics, audio, and video professionals... and not too many others.

The iMac? Yes, it looks beautiful, but they have proven with this model that they are willing to throw practicality out the window for the sake of consumer glitz. Prosumers like to upgrade their own hard drives, to experiment with their hardware, and to add upgrades from time to time. It is a foregone conclusion that expansion is out with all-in-one machines, but Apple's design decision with the new Aluminum iMac is madness!!! You can't even get to the hard drive without special suction cups to remove the glass from the front, and a clean room environment to avoid getting dust inside the glass when you put it back together. This is similar to the idiocy that went into the 2nd and later revisions of the G5 iMacs. I had to take one apart recently to get a hard drive out for someone because it had the bad capacitor problem and would not boot. I almost gave up three times in this process. Just as a point of reference, I have torn down and rebuilt about a dozen iBooks, as well as my 12” PowerBook. This is no small task. Yet the G5 iMac was such a nightmare to get into that I didn't want to do it. With the new ones, this problem is only worse. I cannot recommend these machines in good conscience to anyone. Hard drives fail. They will have to ship them to Apple WHEN their drives fail. Madness, I say. This exhibits to me a deeper madness that is setting in at Apple, which troubles me greatly. Do not get me wrong, I have long extolled the beauty of Apple design. I have a very strong appreciation for the philosophy that EVERY detail is important and that having an integrated whole is a sign of beauty and order. However, this philosophy has been pushed to an extreme at Apple lately, and all practicality has been sacrificed in the process. I predict that the new hardware designs of the other models when they come out will be just as offensive in this regard. I hope to be proven wrong, but the iMac is such a magnanimous affront to the balance between practicality and beauty that the G4 towers represented, that I cannot trust their decisions until I see them. In fact, I had been looking forward to the rumored slimline notebook Apple is working on. Further rumors and the evidence of the iMac, though, have caused me to lose interest. The screen will be too big, the machine will be too fragile due to its aluminum casing, and I fully expect them to drop ethernet and other ports for the sake of making it beautiful... in the process making it useless to those of us who miss the 12” PowerBook and would like something even smaller. They could still prove me wrong, but the evidence at this point is that they will not. [Update: I was wrong about the casing since they introduced the unibody design, which helped solve the denting problem, but I was pretty close in my other predictions.]

The MacBook? A very close contender. It is, in my mind, Apple's best overall design at the moment, but there are several flaws which make it a complete non-option for us Prosumers. First is the video hardware. It is perfectly fine for most people and probably even overkill. It is not enough to run Final Cut Express, though. Keep in mind that many Prosumers use our machines to make additional income through side work or hobbies. Not being able to run an advanced video editor means we can't even consider it as an option. As far as I am concerned, the screen is still too big on this machine to make it as portable as we need it for great mobility. Then there are the hardware problems. This model has been riddled with manufacturing problems from day one of its existence. I am not sure if the design is the problem or that Apple is using cheap manufacturing, but it makes it hard for me to recommend this machine to people now that there have been several known and widespread hardware problems.

The MacBook Pro? Let me start by saying that my place of employment bought me one of these latest models (the LED screen model) to use as my work machine, and it is a huge part of the reason I am writing this letter. I literally hate this machine. There are so many bad decisions built into this machine, and such poor quality in the build, that I am disgusted with it and often consider turning it in and telling them to pass it on to someone else. The screen on this thing is not well-designed. I was looking forward to LED screens, but they did not use a true Matte finish on the glass, so the light waves do not diffuse. To put that in simpler terms, the light waves come directly out of the screen and do not spread out in multiple directions. Yes, this is bright, and it looks pretty good... if you are looking perfectly perpendicularly at the screen. However, if you get off-angle at all, you will see a strong yellow cast to everything. Why? Well, they used cheap LEDs with a blue tint, and then apply a ColorSync profile that adds yellow back into the mix to balance the colors. If you view the screen at an angle, though, the colors do not mix properly and everything looks yellow tinted. This makes it impossible to do graphics work unless you set up a perfect environment. This also means you cannot do real work while using the thing on your lap, because the screen does not tilt back far enough to get a good perpendicular view. When I have had several people huddled around me, I have to apologize and explain why the colors do not look right to them. This is rather embarrassing to someone who is known as an Apple evangelist. The keyboard on the MacBook Pro is worse than the screen. I absolutely loved the keyboard on my 12” PowerBook. I was expecting the same one on this MacBook Pro. The key caps are the same, but the important parts, the key switches, are TERRIBLE. They are entirely too stiff and I find myself constantly having to spellcheck everything I type for missing letters since I often fail to hammer the key hard enough to register the keystroke. I had also been excited about the backlighting... until I tried to use it. Why doesn't it work like the screen? I like the ability to use the brightness keys to choose a static brightness level for the screen. The keyboard, however, does not allow you to turn off the ambient light sensors. The practical effect of this is that the backlighting is constantly changing brightness and turning on and off. It is terribly annoying. I installed a hack that would keep the backlight at a set level, but it was very buggy and I ended up having to just turn off the backlighting and leave it off for good. As I mentioned, the screen does not tilt back far enough for those of us who spend hours using our machines on our laps in our favorite chairs. The trackpad is not very precise and I find it annoying when I am stuck trying to do image editing without a mouse. Then there are the build quality issues: outer screen case warping for no reason that leaves a gap in one corner when the lid is closed, cheaply put together plastic trim ring that has too much play above the optical drive, a shoddy optical drive that has problems with discs burned in a G4 iBook as well as making a terrible racket when it is burning, and the aforementioned problems with the sensors and LCD. The wireless network performance is horrendous when benchmarked against older Apple laptops and is not fast enough regardless of signal strength. Finally, there have been so many bugs that I have had to reboot this machine more times in the two months I've had it than I rebooted the 12” PowerBook in two years. Is the Intel version of OS X really this buggy, or is the motherboard in this thing just a hodge-podge of barely supported cheap bits? [Update: I still hate this thing and have been considering trading it for an equivalent PC laptop because running Linux and Windows on this Apple hardware is a bit of a nuisance, and I just can't use OS X any more as a daily operating system. Also, the graphics card went out, requiring a motherboard replacement in less than 3 years]

The Mac mini is the only saving grace in Apple's lineup right now. Granted, it does not fill all the needs of the Prosumer, but it at least gives us something to use for projects and has been the only model in recent memory that has not exhibited widespread hardware problems of one sort or another.

And this brings me to another growing problem: manufacturing. As Prosumers, we understand the value in paying more and getting what you pay for. As I said earlier, we use our tools to make money or practice our hobbies. For this, we understand the value of having good quality that we can rely on and we are willing to pay the premium... knowing that it always pays off in the end. This used to be the philosophy of the Apple we knew and loved. I have a G4 Cube running 24/7 as a backup server. It is 7 years old. It works perfectly and runs for months at a time without being rebooted. When it was introduced, it was pricey, but it has lasted. In comparison, the guy who bought the the G5 iMac I pulled the hard drive out of paid hundreds of dollars more for his machine, and it only lasted about a year and a half. There have been numerous failures among Apple's all-in-one machines over the last few years, and some of the people I advised to buy these have suffered from it. The G5 PowerMacs have started to leak their coolant, ruining the motherboards. The plastic on the MacBooks has started discoloring and cracking for no reason. MacBook Pros have had problems with RAM, Airport, and improper application of thermal paste on processors. The number of people I know who have had to do without their machines for weeks at a time while they wait for repairs that only Apple can make due to the proprietary nature of the parts supply is growing rapidly. It has started to make me feel guilty for advising these people to make the purchases they did.

Why is this happening? My theory is that Apple got tired of PC people complaining that Macs were so expensive. To combat that, they decided to cut prices. In order to cut prices, they had to move away from their former manufacturing plants, and hand it all over to the Chinese. This MacBook Pro I am typing on shipped straight from China to here. Yes, it cost less than a comparable PowerBook would have cost a few years ago, but at what cost to reliability? We Prosumers were never happy about those high prices, but at least we were comforted in the fact that we were buying a machine that should last us 5 years of solid use, followed by 5 more of other useful duties (like my backup Cube). Presently, it does not appear that any of these machines will last even 3 or 4 years. Apple wanted to compete on price, but the price they paid to do so has taken a heavy toll on the loyalty of those of us who have advised people to buy Apple hardware for its reliability. If Apple continues using the same Chinese manufacturing that its PC competitors use, how can we expect the overall quality to be any better? And how can I , in good conscience, recommend someone spend more for a machine on the perception of higher quality when the reality is that the quality is now no longer likely to be much better than the $750 PC? We Prosumers would much prefer a return to higher prices, as long as it means a concurrent return to higher quality and reliability. Very often, our livelihoods depend on these machines. We do not have time for extended downtime.

So, that sums up the hardware selection and build problems, but there are other ways Apple is driving away the Prosumers. Look at the iPod Touch. It could have been the Prosumer's dream machine. Instead, they made some really terrible decisions and left out all the features that make the iPhone so good... the speakers and volume control, by extension of that the ability to have alarms in iCal, the ability to add events to iCal, and the camera. Instead of being a tool, it is merely a glitzy plaything. It is the technological equivalent of the sugar water Steve Jobs chided Scully into leaving behind so that he could change the world... the Touch is nothing that changes the world, just something to satisfy people's need for more. To add insult to injury, the build quality of these is pathetic. The screens are terrible from all the accounts I have read and this makes them useless for the one thing they seem to be intended for: video.

The last trend I want to point out is the terrible software QA we have seen lately. Mac OS X 10.4.9 and 10.4.10 have been the buggiest releases of OS X I can remember suffering through since 10.0.4. The Finder is so crash-prone that I am starting to feel like I am using Windows. Just the other day, I was connected to my Cube here at home. I forgot to disconnect before putting the MacBook Pro to sleep. When I got to work, I noticed this and clicked the disconnect icon, expecting to watch the beach ball for one whole minute before I could do anything. Instead, I waited five minutes before giving up and doing a forced power down. The subsequent reboot, reopening of all my apps and browser tabs, and trying to remember where I left off on other stuff I had open cost me about a half hour of frustration. Why can't they fix this?! Did they outsource the coding to Microsoft? Wireless transfer rates have been pathetic on Intel Macs and I assume this is driver related. Other Finder bugs and app crashes have become more routine. To add salt to the wound, I used my old 1.33GHz 12” PowerBook to do some DVD burning recently, and realized that, despite the multiple times faster processor in this MacBook Pro, it doesn't feel much faster for most routine tasks, and even slower in some. The only place it is obviously faster is in video encoding. Unless they can get better speed out of these machines for GUI tasks and general usage, why are we enduring the bugginess of OS X on Intel? If I didn't loathe the prospect of having to use 2 laptops on a daily basis, I'd go back to my 12” PowerBook for all my personal usage. If it were not for my need to use Final Cut Express and Live Type, I'd probably turn this one in and just request them pay me a small stipend for using a personal machine as my work machine. [Update: QA at Apple has only gotten worse, not better, and 10.5 and 10.6 have been terrible in terms of stability and bugginess. Speed has improved under 10.6, except when the Finder starts locking up and requires a hard-power-down, which you have also experienced on numerous occasions if you use USB SD card readers extensively.]

Software QA for many of their other products (don't even get me started on iLife) has also been fairly abysmal over the last few years. It often feels as if they are taking the Microsoft approach to software development, where they release software when it is 90% done and rely on the crash reports of the users to make up the last 10%. I'll say it again... we Prosumers use our machines as a vital part of our livelihoods. We cannot tolerate a broken production workflow and hours of lost time because Apple decided to update QuickTime to support some fluffy feature that got added to iTunes without proper testing. If I could have back all the hours I've wasted cleaning up after Apple updates and working around bugs, I could earn enough money in those hours to buy a machine or two.

The whole thing is just starting to build a lot of frustration in me. I feel like there is no longer room for people like me in the Apple ecosystem. This ecosystem I once loved for its great tools and variety of choice is leaving me with no option for hardware that I actually like and want to use. Meanwhile, I continue to see small PC laptops and specialty machines like the Sony UX and I can only drool over them since OS X only runs on Apple hardware.

This is starting to feel like a relationship going sour. It is still in that stage of denial, where you hope you are just going through a dry spell and the other person is not really trying to push you away... but the feeling lingers.

It is sad that we Prosumers should ever feel left out here in Apple land. I can assure you that we are a large part of the reason for Apple's growing momentum. All those people who asked us what they should buy, all those favorable blog posts, all the free hours of tech support we have given to Mac newbies, and all the times we have sworn by the hardware we used and loved have all contributed to people being willing to try a Mac despite their fears. We helped them through the switch, then they told others. Without us, I do not believe Apple would be gaining steam right now. By way of illustration, I've never met anyone who said they bought a new Mac because the “Mac Guy” made the “PC Guy” look like a fool in a commercial.

If Apple loses our enthusiasm, who will assure these people they are making the right choice? Who will coach them through migrating their data off their old PCs? Who will praise the lesser known virtues of the Mac OS that make it so powerful? [Update: Recently, two different people who were planning to buy Macs changed their minds after discussing with me what they were going to primarily use their machines for. The benefits that still remain, fewer in number with every update, no longer justify the price difference to most people.]

So, how can Apple prevent driving us away? The answer is not as simple as they'd like. They will need to start by taking us seriously again when making decisions about what hardware and software to provide. True, we make up a very small percentage of all purchases, but having us around helps build peripheral sales. Remember all those people I mentioned having converted? I didn't buy those machines, but they would still be using Windows PCs if they had not known I'd be there to help them through the switch. I would wager that each Apple Prosumer wields similar influence on the purchasing decisions of others. If there is not a single piece of hardware for us to get excited about, why should we spend a premium price on something that is a compromise for us? We are the kind of users who are perfectly comfortable making the switch to Linux because it will run on that really cool Sony handheld computer. Apple needs to keep this in mind. It needs to listen to what we want in our hardware and software, and try to meet those needs. Granted, the specialty hardware will not sell much, but they can take the R&D money out of the marketing budget, because, if they keep us happy and give us products to get really excited about, we will share our enthusiasm with others, and that word of mouth will be hundreds of times more powerful than another Mac vs. PC commercial in bringing switchers over. There is a very high, yet intangible, value to Apple to have us around and enthusiastic. When we lose our enthusiasm, as I am starting to, we are less willing to recommend someone buy an Apple. Just the other day, a long time Mac user was asking me what to buy when his PowerBook G3 finally dies (it is on its last legs after 7+ years of faithful service). In the past, I would have been quick to recommend one model or another for his needs. Instead, I half-heartedly mentioned the MacBook, but followed it up with a warning that it will not last as long as his PowerBook has because the Chinese manufacturing is much shoddier than the old manufacturing. I even had to say that there was not a single model of Apple hardware I could confidently recommend for reliability except for the Mac mini, but that model would not meet his needs. It was a sad day for me to have to admit that if he buys another Apple, it won't really last longer than the HP laptop he bought his wife. [Update: Every person I know who bought the white MaBooks or the pre-unibody MacBook Pros have had one significant hardware problem or another, in most cases requiring Apple to send the machine off for repairs.]

That's when I realized that something has to change. Come on Apple, give us something to brag about again. We love beauty, but not at the complete sacrifice of practicality and ease of repair. We love lightweight, but not at the complete sacrifice of expandability. We want to see some more great designs like those of the past that struck a balance between beauty and usefulness. We want to be able to replace our own hard drives without having to send our machines in.

We need the Apple of old, which fights for us and defies the trends in the industry that prevent progress and take us for granted. I do not know if you have any official “devil's advocates” in your teams or not, but you need some. You need people who will be able to see the practical consequences of every design decision and point out the potential flaws before they happen. You need someone who can see clearly what details of a product will annoy customers, and who will point these out to the engineers and software design people without the fear of hurting feelings. You need more critical thinking. How did no one challenge the iMac and the fact that practically no one would be able to change their own hard drive? How did no one point out that removing the ability to add calendar events on the iPod Touch would cause way more ill-will than such a decision would ever be worth monetarily (assuming this decision was made to protect the iPhone)? With better critics working in these areas, you could prevent a lot of anger and frustration. Hire me, I'll do it. I have the critical thinking skills needed for the job. Hire anyone. Just please do something before we Prosumers lose all our enthusiasm and start considering the limitations of running Linux just so we can have better options in hardware (note to all Linux fans: yes, I stay up-to-date with latest releases of several distros... I am speaking from experience strictly concerning desktop use so don't bother trying to recommend distros to try). Save us from having to half-heartedly recommend the MacBook to people, not because it is the right option for them but because it is the only option available to them if they want to use OS X. And if you are not willing to do this, please license OS X to companies who will. You've been our champions all these years, please do not abandon us to the pain of having to run Photoshop 7 in Wine on Linux, using gimpy fonts, having to abandon iTunes, and having to live through the Linux version of Firefox. We really do not want to go down this path... please don't make us. [Update: Linux on laptops has improved dramatically since I wrote this, Gimp is now usable enough that I can mostly do without Photoshop, and Google released the Chrome Browser, sparing me the pain and suffering of dealing with Firefox's slide into irrelevance. I am the happiest I've been in computer land in the last few years with the two most recent releases of Ubuntu - 9.10 and 10.04]

Todd Russell
October 7, 2007

Review: Why I love my Acer Aspire One

2010-05-23T02:03:00.002-05:00

[Update: Since writing this review, I have been using Ubuntu Linux Netbook Edition on it and have found it to be even more useful, although with reduced battery life. Aside from the minor issues of the right SD card slot not working, and the machine locking up if I attempt to sleep it with an SD card in the left slot it works great and I still love it. With Ubuntu, it has improved in almost every area mentioned below and I have also added 1GB of RAM, which allows me to boost performance a little by not using swap.]

There are other reviews of the Aspire One out there, so I won't treat this as a basic review, but will focus specifically on how well it works for the way I intend to use it. Let's start on the positive side.

Size: Well, this size is about as perfect as it could be without some irredeemable compromises for a machine to do real work on. It is not quite small enough to fit in a cargo pocket, but I can accept that now that I have had it for over a week. It is small enough that I have been able to carry it around without a laptop bag. I even discovered that it fits perfectly into the glove compartment in my car. At just over 2 pounds, carrying it in hand is actually preferable to having a bag slinging around at my side. The footprint of it is small enough that I am able to set it up next to my MacBook Pro at work on the edge of the desk, or in front of my monitor at home. When it is closed up, it can be set darn near anywhere until its next use. And yes, it passes the "use in the bathroom" test. While it would seem nice to be even a tad smaller, now that I have used it, I realize that getting any smaller would make it so much less useful than it is because the keyboard is awesome. I am able to type at nearly full speed on this keyboard because it is just big enough to not throw me off.

Keyboard: Speaking of the keyboard, the action on the keys is great and the keyboard is mounted firmly, giving it a good, solid feel as opposed to the squishy feel that people complain of on the other brands' netbooks. The biggest advantage, though, is that it has a REAL right Shift key, making the typing at near full speed possible. The little Shift key on the other brands just doesn't cut it for real typing from what I hear. Arrow key placement is also very good, and the inclusion of the F keys makes it possible to have easy sleep, mute, and monitor toggling. Lastly, the Home key in place of the Windows key is very useful since Acer programmed it to hide all windows and take you to the desktop. I also discovered that the keyboard has a good design for resilience when a friend knocked over his coffee nearby, sending several splashes of coffee onto the keyboard. With a napkin, I soaked up as much as I could, then let it sit overnight before restoring power to it. All the keys are working fine.

Trackpad: I thought the trackpad would be a complaint since the buttons are on either side, but the more I use it, the better I like it. I will admit that the buttons are stiff and loud (which is embarrassing when you try to sneak in a refresh of Gmail while sitting in a meeting). This actually caused me to reconsider trackpad tapping. For the record, I have always hated trackpad tapping due to the inevitable accidental clicks. So, I have always turned it off on any trackpad I was going to use for any period of time beyond helping someone with their new machine. I turned it back on, though, and adjusted the timing a little with the settings slider, and now it is perfect. No accidental clicks yet, and this has enabled silent use of the trackpad in meetings. Bonus. After using it for a week, the surface began to smooth a little and the feel is great now. There is also a handy slider to change trackpad sensitivity, which allowed me to get it just right for my fingers.

Screen: The screen seems to use led backlighting since it has a slight blue tint to it and because if I thump the side of the screen, I do not see the waver that is normal with standard backlighting. This is good, if so, as that means longer life and lower power drain. The vertical viewing angle on this is roughly equivalent to most other laptop screens, but the horizontal viewing angle is amazing at almost 180 degrees. The horizontal viewing angle is one of the best, if not the best, I've ever seen.

Hibernate: Hibernate actually works! Still not as good as a Mac, but better than what I expected based on my experience with PC laptops in general and linux laptops in particular. It takes about 15 seconds from hitting the power button to the point it is scanning for wifi signals again. Not bad. I carry it around everywhere in hibernate, just like I have always done with my Macs.

Wifi: Works great and has a good network connection manager that does a good job of switching to new networks when availability changes. It is miles better than what I have experienced from linux wifi in the past. There is one caveat mentioned below in the cons.

Speed: Despite the limited 512 RAM and slow SSD drive, the thing is surprisingly fast for most tasks. Opera browsing and OpenOffice loading blow the doors off my old G4 Powerbook. I really did not expect it to be as fast as it is. I am happy with the speed and may not even bother with the RAM upgrade.

Linpus Linux: While it can be a little restricting to an advanced user, I am finding myself resisting the temptation to switch the desktop to advanced mode. I am enjoying the simplified GUI as it makes it quicker to launch apps than a typical menu-driven desktop environment. Besides, one of the reasons for getting this was to advertise it to friends and family who I am trying to convince to stop using Windows. Having a simple GUI is a nice way to grab their interest. I think both Microsoft and Apple underestimate the demand for a truly simple to use computer. This is getting really close.

Battery: I am pleasantly surprised to find the battery lasting between 2.5 and 3 hours, which is what I had hoped for but not expected. This is a 2200maH battery, so when I get the 5500maH, that should equate to roughly 7 hours of battery. I have waited for that day for too many years. Now, if Acer would get off their butts and release the darn thing instead of just talking about it. With the retired 2200 as a backup, I'll be able to get roughly 10 hours of mobility. Awesome.

Speakers: Wow... no way no how did I expect something this small to have speakers that are as loud as these. They sound pretty decent too, considering the size. Perfect for pandora.com.

LVM card slot: The left SD card slot on the machine can be pooled together with the internal storage to create a bigger "drive". Not sure if I will use it, but the idea is pretty cool.

Fun: With all these factors combined, the machine becomes fun to use... almost addictive. I find myself wanting to carry it around with me everywhere and doing more reading than normal just to have the excuse to use it. It's been a while since I could say that about a machine.

- - - - - - -
Cons
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Balance: Not a major con, but it can be a little back heavy if the screen is tilted too far. This is ONLY an issue when using it propped on a leg or in a hand. As long as it is on a flat surface, tilting the screen all the way back does not cause the machine to become unbalanced.

Wifi crashes: Sometimes, after waking from hibernate, the wifi driver will crash, preventing connections to wifi. A reboot, which only takes about 60 seconds, will fix it, but the quicker fix is to simply turn off the wifi card using the physical switch on the front-right of the machine, then turning it back on.

Updating: After running my first Live Update of the system, the Network Manager lost all my saved networks that I had recreated. It's not a huge ordeal for me to recreate them, but it makes me wonder what else got set back to default without my noticing. Speaking of defaults, I have found that some GUI tweaks, like adding a location to the left sidebar in the file manager, disappear after a reboot with a return to the factory default setting. There is surely a way to make it keep changes like this, but I haven't had time to dig that deep yet.

Right SD card slot: I just discovered the other night that the right slot is not deep enough for a card to go all the way into the body of the laptop, and leaves about a third of an inch of the card still sticking out. This is not the end of the world or anything, but it would have been nice to have the card all the way in, especially when carrying it around by hand rather than in a bag. As it is, the amount of the card that sticks out is not enough to create enough leverage to break the card unless you dropped it right on the card from several feet, and even then it might survive. Having been schooled by Apple design, though, this just bothers me a little on principle.

High gloss: High gloss plastic makes for ugly fingerprint smears. Not a big deal, but for someone with Aspberger's this can cause undue amounts of wiping with shirt tails. The plastic around the screen is high gloss, too, and can be reflective, making for ADD distractions depending on what is going on behind you. The screen is high gloss as well, but it is not bothering me due to the brightness of the screen, so that is good.

External resolution: Using the default external monitor port, Acer's screen manager will still use 1024x600 even if you switch to using only the external monitor. There is a quick hack which amounts to running the terminal command:
xrandr -s 1024x768
You could choose another resolution if so desired, but I have used this and it works fine. Of course, you have to remember to run it again and set it back to 1024x600 before switching back to the internal, but I can live with this for now. Hopefully Acer will update that in a software update.

Power brick: To be fair, Acer's brick is very small and includes a velcro strap for wrapping the cords together to try and manage the mess. Really, this con is leveled against the PC world more so than the Aspire One's brick specifically. I am spoiled by Apple's power bricks that roll up nice and neat, so I hate the way the PC industry does laptop bricks. The cables are a mess during transport. Oh well, can't win them all.

Got root?: It is entirely too easy to get root access on one of these if you have it in your hands. The sudo timeout is set too high, so all you have to do is reboot, open a terminal, and type "sudo -s". Bingo... what would you like to delete today? Or, simply click the network manager icon in the taskbar, disconnect and reconnect the network, then open a terminal and run the command. From a security standpoint, I'll agree that if someone malicious has your machine it is toast. In this case, though, even a prankster or a friend can quickly get root, so you better trust anyone you hand this over to for "trying it out".

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Final thoughts
- - - - - - - -

This machine is actually becoming my main machine, although I did not expect it to. The portability covers the minor faults, leaving the whole picture a very positive experience. The first thing I did was install Opera, then edit the desktop config file to show launchers for Opera and the terminal, and that makes life with the Aspire happy. The default Firefox was fine, but I love Opera. Anything I can run the full Opera on is fine by me.

Considering the current retail price is down to $329 (I ended up getting mine for $309 at Circuit City on sale!), this is the netbook to beat. No other netbook in this price range has a real right Shift key, and that is really the killer feature when compared to others. I feel like the addition of the 5500maH battery will finally give me the piece of hardware I waited many years for Apple to make. Well, I certainly am not waiting anymore and am happy with what I have. I can also easily recommend this to first-time linux users as a way to get their feet wet with minimal risk. After all, they could install Windows or OS X if they just couldn't stand linux. If they give it a chance, though, I am sure they will be happy with it for the uses it is designed for. If they basically just want something to get on the internet with, this will meet their needs and keep them safe from viruses since it is running linux. Score a win for Acer.

Todd Russell
September 12, 2008

Review: The Book of Eli

2010-05-03T22:26:00.003-05:00

I don't know why, but I just love apocalyptic / post-apocalyptic movies and literature. Some of my favorite movies fall in this category, and I tend to be very lenient toward the genre as a whole when judging individual works. Needless to say, then, I was excited to see The Book of Eli after hearing comments from friends. After having seen it, I'm finding it hard to let my traditional leniency win over my one big gripe, though. If you haven't seen this movie yet and you don't want to have the ending revelation spoiled for you, do not read past this paragraph until after you watch it. Let me assure you, though, the revelation was pretty lame, and I now wish someone had spoiled it for me beforehand so I could have just pretended that wasn't part of the movie.

Admittedly, the movie was pretty brutal in its portrayal of what life would be like in a post-nuclear world. It did have a resonance of truth to it, though, and certainly seemed more authentic a vision than the world of Mad Max. The main character, Eli, is believable enough, despite his unexplained ability to take down a crowd with a sword without suffering so much as a scratch. He's a dead-eye marksman with a firearm and pretty sweet with a bow and arrow as well. These are just 3 reasons why the revelation is so ridiculous. Blind? Really? Come on, folks, you can do better than that.

I appreciate a plot twist as much as the next guy. I remember the "Aha!" moments in The Usual Suspects and Sixth Sense. They left me thinking, "Brilliant! That explains everything!" The Book of Eli, on the other hand, left me thinking, "Hey, you lied to me!" The script tried so hard to disguise his blindness that they actually put in countersigns like those listed above that no blind person in a million years could ever pull off. Only with divine intervention could such feats be possible, but they don't ever give any real indication that he is being guarded and guided by the hand of God. True, he tells the girl that he heard a voice and followed it, but that is as close as we get to any kind of explanation along those lines, and there is nothing in the script to concretely back that up.

The really ridiculous part of it all is that they could have just left out the blind revelation and the movie would have been an entertaining post-apocalyptic movie without it. Instead, they drop this bombshell that is so unbelievable that it spoils the entire movie for me. Had there been some obvious (in hindsight) setup, I might not be so disappointed, but the only real hint I can remember was the scene where he holds the iPod up to his ear and tries to turn it on when the battery is dead. If I watch it again, I'm sure I will spot some other subtle hints, but a revelation like this has to immediately bring to the mind of the viewer a lot of scenes to make it believable.

I appreciate the effort to make an interesting script, but I just can't get behind this movie after feeling lied to. Come on Hollywood, you must have better writers than this?

WWGS?: Baby growing

2010-05-03T22:24:00.002-05:00

A call from the womb, perhaps?

Hey Todd, This is baby growing. You did tell me to give you a call because I got a computer problem in you knew you could help me with it. I got your cellphone. I'll call you a little bit later on your cellphone and tell you about it. In case you do wanna call me back. My number is [number withheld] Hey thanks a lot. Bye.

WWGS?: Women bone

2010-05-03T22:22:00.000-05:00

Wait, huh? Are you sure they sell that?

... I want to see if I could if you made it to springs of life yet cos i really i don't know if I have enough we. Christy give me Citi quick or C and then I want to see if you could go by sunshine garden to get some women bone for me, so I will try to call you can. Love you bye.

WWGS?: Dudette to your boot screen

2010-05-03T22:20:00.000-05:00

It's dudette to my boot screen... sooooo, is that a good thing?

Hi, this is john Calling from the Apple store for Todd about your computer in the computer testing fine right now. It's a it's not exiting any of the symptoms you described so and it path. All of our testing, so I'm gonna get this to be set up to. Ready for Pickup, I rebooted it multiple times and it's dudette to your your boot screen every single time. So all you need to do is come in with your photo I. D to come and get it and if you have any questions number is [number withheld] extension 5. If you have any specific concerns about the computer itself. Please do make another appointment Apple, dot, com slash like side shopping center, okay. Have a great day. Bye bye.

WWGS?: Coming to terrible?

2010-05-03T22:16:00.002-05:00

Here's a real doozy from the Google transcription engine. I don't know about you, but I always like "coming to terrible". It's so much fun. :D

Hey James, It's 2:15 and I'm wondering how I get exempted typical images. Let me know that google imagined the pictures that are coming to terrible. So image. If you have any insight. I love you bye.

WWGS?: I'm believes

2010-05-03T22:14:00.000-05:00

That's right, I'm believes... to the E Friday straight, yo! Here's another Google transcription classic for your viewing pleasure.

Hey Todd. It's versaLock. I think you said you needed information on your investment account, I think you said you needed a ride at check. I'm believes. Anyhow, let me see if I can get you may be some information on that. I'm not really sure if you want me to leave this on your cellphone, or not, but I'll get it. I'll call you back and I'll leave it so just you know. Keep me posted. Okey dokey. Talk to you later. By the way you have $[censored] in your money market okay. [censored] bucks. Okey dokey that says it the E Friday straight. Okey dokey. Call me if you need me. Bye.

WWGS?: You get the happy

2010-05-03T22:10:00.000-05:00

Get the happy, okay, I'm right on it.

Hey Todd, [name withheld] spots almost noon on Tuesday. I've got a computer here at the home is a desktop you machines. He was that you know. Hi week. I don't know 5 years old so it's it was running for me in the ended up getting a new H. P and I will come on now. We will start it was working in Creek. Good luck. Kind of all, could you know West course, but I've got a recovery gaskin in the and and I'm on a through the whole deal. Yeah, so if you could you get the happy give me a call back. I'm going the rose today. I can. I can run it by your house. So whatever, it's not working. I don't make it work and I'm grateful for just a trash up. This will put that in the trash, so. Anyway, give me a call back.

WWGS?

2010-05-03T21:47:00.002-05:00

WWGS? Before you will understand the phrase, I must explain. I have been using Google Voice (previously GrandCentral) for a while now and I absolutely love it. It has made my life so much easier. Since I am still stuck with AT&T Wireless at the time of this writing (not for much longer, though), Google Voice is priceless. I have my Google Voice number set to ring my office phone and cellphone during the day, and the home number and cellphone in the evenings. During the day, my cellphone is basically a PDA since I can't get any AT&T reception at all in my office. As long as people call my Google Voice number, though, they will still reach me because I can answer the call on my office phone. Brilliant.

One of the features I like about Google Voice is that it will transcribe every voice mail to text and send it to me by email and SMS. Often, I can glance at this to see what the message was about and avoid having to dial in and listen. I love this.

However, sometimes (perhaps that should be most of the time) the transcription is so far off that it can only be considered comic relief in a busy day. I'm cool with that; I can use a good laugh every now and then in my line of work. Seriously, these transcriptions are often just ridiculous.

This isn't Google's fault, though. Think of what they are stuck working with... a recording that is made through a cheap cellphone mic (most of which are terrible), then sent over pathetic cell signals that often drop bits and pieces of the audio to fit the weak bandwidth, and even with background noise and interference in the mix. Given the poor quality of most voice mail recordings, it is probably a small miracle that Google's transcription engine gets as close as it does. Perhaps as networks improve, this will become more reliable.

Until then, though, we have this section of my site, labeled WWGS for What Would Google Say, where I will post the ones that make me laugh out loud so that you can enjoy the hilarity. I've been saving the good ones to give myself a buffer so I could have enough to keep a consistent schedule of posting at least a few a week. So, if you like these, you'll probably want to subscribe to site changes to get alerts when I post new ones. Enjoy!

Peace,
Todd

Review: Bean - OS X Document Editor

2007-06-01T23:01:00.001-05:00

[If this is your first time here, see my post about how I do reviews.]

If you are anything like me, you may feel a little depressed about the state of document writing on OS X.

Yes, there is Microsoft Office, but I have philosophical reasons to be opposed to everything Microsoft (I'll extrapolate this another time) and I'd rather use pen and paper than Office.

NeoOffice is pretty good, but when I want to write a quick document, I hate waiting 3 minutes (I know, this is a little exaggerated, but you get my frustration) for the darn thing to load up to the point I can start typing. I could fire up an old Mac SE/30 and be 3 sentences in by the time I see the icons in NeoOffice.

I love simplicity, but, for crying out loud, Apple's "TextEdit" is just ridiculous. You can't even resize the window without changing the margins. This is fine for doing plain text, but if you want to do a real document, this just doesn't cut it.

Fortunately, I have discovered Bean (http://www.bean-osx.com/Bean.html). Bean is a great document editor and you will love it if you are like me and fit into any one or more of the above mentioned categories of complaint.

First of all, you may notice I am referring to it as a document editor rather than a text editor. This may seem odd to many of you, but I am a programmer and my definition of a text editor is something that only does plain text and is generally only useful for coding or simple ReadMe files. By referring to it as a document editor, I am highlighting the fact that this program makes actual documents... formatted, multi-page pieces that generally include styling of some sort. This is what most people generically refer to as "Word documents". This annoys me to no end by the way, so please cease and desist said practice if you fit that category. A Word document is any document of the Word format, denoted by its filename extension of ".doc". Okay, now that my mini-rant is over, let's move on. ;)

As I hinted at above, Bean is simplicity. It does not have boatloads of features. It does, however, take advantage of all the built-in OS X goodness such as the Dictionary features, live spell-checking, Text-to-Speech feature, the excellent Font Chooser, the system-wide Color Picker, and drag-and-drop from Finder. These are what I consider the essential basic features for a document editor. These features also exist in Apple's TextEdit and were the only reasons I could tolerate it from time to time. Now, I can get these features in an app that works the way one expects a document editor to work.

There are several other features of Bean that come in really handy:
1. "Paste and Match Style" - If you've ever copied something from another document and pasted into the current working one, you have noticed that it kept the font settings of the other document (depending on what program you are using - but most do). Sometimes, this is good. Most of the time it is not, which means you now have to highlight the text and change it to match the surrounding text you just pasted into. In Bean, under the Edit menu, you will find Paste and Match Style, which will bring you happiness. :)
2. A live wordcount + character count + page count on the bottom of the window - Now you can keep an eye on how long winded you are at all times and save yourself the guesswork of having to go back and edit words out at random.
3. "Send to Mail" - Granted, it is easy enough to attach a document to a new email the old-fashioned way, but having a menu item to do the work for me makes the lazy person in me want to smile (dancing for joy wouldn't exactly promote the lazy ethos now would it?).
4. The ability to save as Word and other formats - For me, this is not a great feature because I prefer to just send someone an rtfd document and tell them they should be using something more universal and free than Word format, but I know this is a big deal to many of you, so I included it. Yes, there are easy ways to convert to Word format, but being able to choose it in the Save dialog is so much better.
5. Its default document format is rtfd - As I said, I prefer to promote file formats that are more open and not locked to a several hundred dollar piece of software created by an evil empire. RTFD is accessible to most document programs and allows for styling. Admittedly, the OpenDocument format is best in that regard, but it is less accessible until everyone gets a copy of OpenOffice or NeoOffice installed on their machines (they are free, by the way).

I have used Bean a few times now and am really happy I discovered it. It is still in Beta as of today's writing, but I have not had any issues with it and the only quirk I have noticed is that the document focus will sometimes shift up or down as you are typing near the top or bottom of a window. This doesn't cause a problem because the cursor continues doing what it is supposed to do, however, it can cause you to do a double-take the first time or two as you make sure you are still typing in the right place. After a few times, you know to trust it and keep typing and it is no longer a concern.

For really complex documents, you will still need something more robust, but if you are like me and want simplicity as much as possible, be sure to check it out:
http://www.bean-osx.com/Bean.html

Peace,
Todd

Review: Creative I-Trigue 3400 2.1 Speakers

2007-03-10T16:03:00.000-06:00

[If this is your first time here, see my post about how I do reviews.]

If you are too impatient to read my philosphical setup for the actual review, scoll down to the image and start there. Otherwise, carry on....

Speakers are something we all take for granted. They're everywhere these days, for better or worse. Due to that fact, we have all been conditioned to unflinchingly accept sound waves coming at us through terrible tv speakers, cheap headphones, flat car speakers, and the worse-than-atrocious things they put in cell phones. I must admit that I fit the average here, which is rather strange since I am such a music lover. My taste in music spans almost every genre, with my deepest appreciation being reserved for music that is moving to the soul. Such music is often woven from numerous instruments and sound sources, or sung by people with amazing voices and equally amazing lyrics. I'll be doing a review soon of one of these, but on to my point.

Over the years, I have settled for any way possible to get sound to my ears. I have been willing to listen to music over the little speakers built into the Nintendo DS, over baby monitors, with FM static, and on free(for a reason) computer speakers. I have still enjoyed my music despite the flat mid-range that all the highs and lows of the songs have been smashed into. I'm easy like that. I had one such set of speakers in my entertainment center for a long while, a set of 2.1 Juster speakers that someone had given me after I fixed a computer for them. I thought they sounded okay, but eventually the "crackle" while adjusting the volume was grating on my nerves and I started looking around for a better, but still cheap, set of 2.1 speakers to replace them.

Roughly 9 months ago, I started the quest in earnest. I decided I wanted to stay in the $50 price range since we have a need to be frugal in all "amenities". I began watching sale ads for the local electronics dealers and doing a weekly browse through several of my geek shopping sites. Very often, I'd see a set of speakers in the price range and I would go check reviews of them on newegg.com, amazon.com, and circuitcity.com. Every time, the speakers got wildly mixed reviews, but it was obvious enough that they were not well built or sounded terrible. I would sigh in dejection as I continued my quest.

A few weeks ago, Circuit City was selling the Creative I-Trigue 3400 2.1 Speakers for $49.99 after Mail-In-Rebates. In the past, I have had a 100% track record with Circuit City Rebates, so I started looking for reviews. Oddly enough, there were not many out there, but the few I found were overwhelmingly positive sans one by a person whose review was so discrepant that he either had a damaged pair or had issues with his setup in Windows. I decided to bite the bullet and headed down to pick up a pair.

For more info on the Tech Specs, click the image above to see their page.

Setup took a while because our entertainment center is actually a 5ft. tall computer hutch with closing doors, occuppied by a Mac mini and a 17" Sony Trinitron as the "heart" of our entertainment needs. This is not ideal for movie watching, but we mostly listen to music anyway. The Bass Sub fits almost exactly into the cubby hole at the bottom of the hutch, and the speakers are standing in the back corners of the area for the monitor, with roughly 6" of separation from the walls of the hutch. These speakers come with a volume knob that is separate from the speakers which works perfectly for our setup because we have it tucked into one of the top cubby holes where little ones cannot reach it. The cables were all long enough for this scenario and I am extremely happy with the volume knob.

With everything in place, I decided to test them with the most worthy of tests: "Dark Island" from Mike Oldfield's album "Voyager". I was struck to silence. It was as if this was the first time I had ever listened to the song. Mike Oldfield has numerous layers in this song and I was hearing things I had never heard before. After fiddling with the Bass setting and volume for a moment, I backed up a few feet and stood in awe. I could literally feel the music. I could feel the Bass, and the 3 individual speakers in the satellite caused a spatial separation between the highs, mids, and lows that made me feel like I was listening to the music in a live studio, where the instruments would have been coming from different places, and at different strengths. I could not believe how amazing these speakers sounded.

Excited, I grabbed the mouse and started scrolling through the iTunes Library for some other songs that would be good tests. I wanted to hear some vocals, so I headed to Sarah McLaughlin's "Silent Night". I was now grinning from ear to ear as I felt the harmony voices coming at me from separate spatial locations, and could hear every emotional waver of her voice. Again, I had never heard music this way through speakers before and it gave a very live feel to the experience. I tried some Michelle Tumes, Leigh Nash and Dan Haseltine, Jars of Clay, and Marc Cohn. I was so excited at all the nuances I was discovering for the first time in songs I had listened to hundreds or thousands of times before, that I just wanted to go through and listen to every song in our collection all over again.

I went into the kitchen and told Mary Beth, "You have to hear this." She came in and we started going through some more of our favorites, both in awe and noticing things we'd never heard before. We ended up standing there almost an hour doing this. For the finale, I put on Marc Cohn's "Ellis Island", and we heard this amazing song in an even more amazing way than ever before. Over these speakers, we could feel the emotion in his voice more powerfully than we ever had before.

I now understand why audio snobs are audio snobs. After using these speakers, I do not think I will ever be able to buy another cheap set of speakers again. I only paid $50 for these, but now that I've heard them, I'd willingly pay $200 if I had to. Yes, they are that good.

If you read the synopsis on their page, they discuss the technical reasons for this sound quality, and I can tell you it is not just marketing. The titanium microdrivers make all the difference in the world. As I said, they do such a great job with the separation of highs, mids, and lows, that it creates a more live feel to the music and different instruments have different intensities at which the waves hit you, causing you to distinguish them clearly as separate instruments, and also to distinguish the different strengths of the instruments in the mix.

There are some great practical advantages to this speaker set as well. I really like the feel of the big volume knob on the control, and the Bass setting is a smaller knob on the side of the unit so that you are unlikely to accidentally change the Bass once you get it the way you want it. The other features of the control are the headphone jack, which I haven't used yet, and the Line In jack. This feature is fabulous if you have friends you like to trade recommendations with. Now, if a friend comes over with an iPod and wants to play a song for me, it is easy to just plug it into the jack on the front of the controller and play it through the speakers. The convenience of this is superb. Interestingly enough, when you plug something in, it does not override the audio from the main connection, but mixes the 2. So, if there is music playing on the mini, I have to at least pause it before playing the external device. This is not a problem, but it is not what one would normally expect. I tested the Audio In jack with my Nintendo DS and it sounded great.

So, in closing, if you have never listened to your music on a set of real speakers, you owe it to yourself to go out and buy a set of these and reserve a few hours to listen to your music collection for the first time all over again.

At the time of this writing, the cheapest place I could find a set was at Directron for $83. They are definitely worth that price. You can also buy them directly from Creative's site. If they are unavailable at the time of your reading this, I would recommend buying one of the other models that use the NeoTitanium Tri-Array[tm] Technology, as I believe that is what makes these speakers so incredibly good.

About My Reviews

2007-01-07T00:59:00.000-06:00

I have a handful of reviews coming down the pipe, so I figure it is best to first give some disclaimers in regards to the way I will be handling reviews. There seems to be a fairly common practice in the Tech industry of giving favorable reviews in exchange for money or free review models. Hey, I'm not knocking the people that do this. We all need money to pay bills and gadgets to play with, right? That's not the way I will be operating here at the Coop, though.

I'm pretty hard-headed, some say to a fault, about sticking to my philosophical point-of-view when it comes to issues of fairness and justice. Part of this is that I simply refuse to be bought. One does not easily win my favor or approval (especially in regards to products), and attempts at winning me over through gifts or money only solidify my refusal to bestow either favor or approval.

So, rest assured that you will never read a review here that is anything other than my opinion. I take my opinions seriously, as they exhibit who I am to a great degree, and I will not hold back whatever praise or enmity I have for a product regardless of the circumstances that brought it into my possession. As I said, we can all use a little extra money to help pay off those credit cards. I can only assume that my sheer brilliance as a critic will become readily apparent after a few of my reviews, so if a company saw this and offered to pay me cash or goods to do a review of their product, I'd certainly entertain the notion. I would be upfront with them, though, that my review would clearly state that I'd been paid to do the review, and that I would not be shy about verbally assaulting said product, no matter how much I had been paid, if I find it to be lacking. Fair enough, right?

Another aspect to my reviews is that I really only intend, at this point, to cover things that I have first-hand knowledge and experience of that have not already been reviewed to death by others. If I do review something that has been reviewed a lot, there are only two circumstances under which I'd cover it anyway.

The first is if there is some aspect of the item in question that I feel has not been adequately commented upon by those others. Having a philosophical and theological way of analyzing things, I often observe things that others simply do not care about. For instance, there are mountains of reviews of Mac OS X, but how many of those observe the way Apple works from a "big picture" perspective in their design and expect the user to think rather than memorize when getting familiar with using the OS? This is the type of thing I may write about despite all the other reviews.

I definitely want to cover items I have that are slightly more obscure, though. It is hard to find reviews of some of the things you can purchase at geeks.com and places like that, so I plan to fill that void where applicable.

The second situation is if an item was a gift to me. I often receive gadgets or entertainment as gifts for Christmas. I plan to honor the people who gave them by taking the time to give back to the community through a review of the product. Again, I will not hold back in my criticism if the product is a failure, so people who give me gifts just have to know not to take my reviews personally, for better or worse.

One other important detail is that I will usually put up a link to the place I purchased the item from. In instances where I have an affiliate account, I will use the affiliate link. Please do not think from this that my reviews are just meant to be a way to fish for affiliate money. I only sign up for affiliate accounts at places that I actually buy from and like. So, I have an affiliate account at Meritline because I like their service. If I review something I buy from there, I will definitely use an affiliate link since I do not hesitate to recommend them to others. On the other hand, I wouldn't sign up for an affiliate account at TigerDirect if I was broke and eating scraps off park benches, so if you see a link to them, know that I begrudgingly bought from there because I could not find what I needed anywhere else. I certainly would not go sign up for an account just so I could try to make money off the fact that I am posting a link to their product. Again, only in cases where I like a place enough to recommend them will I be using affiliate links.

I think that sums up my approach to reviewing. I am a harsh critic of a product when it fails, but I will have undying loyalty to a company that makes good products and I will recommend them every chance I get. That's just who I am. I could sell anyone something that I myself am pleased with, but couldn't sell a bad product to someone even if it was the only job I could find. Then there is my famous blacklist, which you may have noticed a hint of in my mention of TigerDirect. Consistently do the consumer wrong, or do them wrong one really bad time, and there's almost no escaping the depths of my disdain.

Having bored you now with all my disclaimers, let me move on to some actual reviews.

Peace,
Todd

Forecast: Regarding Leopard's Boot Camp

2006-12-16T16:58:00.003-06:00

[Update: this was written before I realized that Apple had given up on desktop innovation and is only worth reading for the sake of seeing a cool idea that Apple could have added... if only they still cared]

Lately, there are a lot of people in geek-land (no facetiousness here, I love being a native of this strange place) talking about the fact that Apple insists they have no plans to do virtualization in Leopard, and wondering what this means for Boot Camp. Apparently, most people who care about this discussion assumed the current implementation of Boot Camp is no more than a beta leading up to a standard VM solution, a'la VMWare or Parallels. Has everyone forgotten that what we were promised by Intel with their new chips was not software virtualization as we know it now, but a model in which 2 OSs run concurrently, each with raw access to hardware?

Although this is still called virtualization, it is very different than what we generally mean when we talk about virtualization, which is typically a host OS with one or more guest OSs running within it. I've just gone back over Intel's whitepaper on the feature that is now a part of their Xeon chips, and it distinguishes it as a hardware solution rather than a software one. Ironically, it then discusses a micro OS which manages access to the hardware for the running OSs, so, technically, it still basically depends on software. We'll overlook that for now, though.

We use VMWare, Virtual PC, and Parallels at work, and virtualization is a drag as far as I am concerned. Apple is right to have no interest in it as it is mostly a pain in the nether regions to manage, and never really delivers on the promises. I just wasted a whole day trying to migrate a VMWare instance of Windows to Parallels, then wasted another half day trying to get a database backup out of it since it currently cannot access USB, constantly drops its network connection while copying the file, and, of course, can't burn a CD since that seems to be too much to ask of a VM. Don't tell me this is the future because I'll dig an old Mac SE/30 out of my closet and find some new floppies if that is the case. Come to think of it, I think I have a 56K modem laying around here somewhere that will work with it.

To me, Intel's hardware solution is a fairly obvious next step for Boot Camp. This is why I believe Apple is smugly saying they have no plans for virtualization, as they are going to one-up everyone else when Leopard comes out by offering the real solution, of which current virtualization solutions are merely rest areas on the way to. At this point, I'd even say most current solutions feel like one of those creepy rest areas where you're afraid to sit down on the toilet seats and the soap dispensers are all broken. In comparison, if this whole concurrent OS feature of Intel's lives up to the promise, it will be like one of those fancy bathrooms with the dude sitting on a stool handing out mints and real hand towels. Okay, enough of the diversion....

This might also explain the "Top Secret" features nonsense of Steve's keynote. Okay, so he says they want to protect some things from Microsoft's copy machines, but we all know that Microsoft will never make a rapid turn-around in trying to copy real features into the Windows OS. Heck, they can't even finish the features they already planned and promised, do you really think they will try to steal Apple's? And Steve's certainly not concerned about them trying to beat Apple to software virtualization since they already did that when they bought out Connectix. This move gained them their own virtualization solution, VirtualPC, and they have been spending a lot of time lately giving it away and doing viral marketing to try and take the wind out of Linux's virtualization sails. Until Parallels came along, I might even have conceded this victory to Microsoft since I'm just not a big fan of VMWare, but the competition is on again as Parallels has been trouncing VMWare in every category for our uses.

In theory, though, taking advantage of Intel's virtualization might be something Microsoft could pull off in a reasonable amount of time since the hardware is supposed to do the hard part already. Not to mention that they have a whole division of people (again referring to the Connectix acquisition) who weren't always Microsoft employees and might be used to getting real work down within deadlines.

If Apple keeps this somewhat secret and provides whatever drivers would be necessary for Mac and Windows to support the hardware, and get the 2 running concurrently, this could be a huge coup on their part and could add another major level of advantage to the XServe line, and all future Macs that are sold with Leopard pre-installed (presuming they will use chips that include this feature in the consumer lines).

You may ask what the big deal is, but I can promise you that when dealing with mission critical services, having multiple instances on one piece of hardware can save a lot of headache. The current problem, though, is that if the host machine goes down or needs a reboot for maintenance and upgrades, you lose all the guest OSs with it. Under Intel's model, each OS can be rebooted (or crash in the case of Windows) all it wants without any affect to the others. This has obvious appeal, especially if Apple can find one of its typically slick ways to allow passing files and clipboards back and forth between the running OSs.

Back to my point now. Apple is claiming they will not do virtualization. They could be telling the truth, they could be outright lying (hey, it's happened before - they said no support for running Windows and here I am talking about Boot Camp), or using classic marketing BS to tell lies while telling the truth. I feel that the latter is most likely, and that they will be unveiling support in Leopard for Intel's hardware solution. Since it is very different from current methods of virtualization, they'll come up with some fancy trademarkable phrase (like Concurrent Computing or Super Multi-Simul Boot) for the technology and continue to insist that it is not the same as virtualization, indemnifying them from their white lie.

Regardless of the actual strategy, the current abilities of Boot Camp and Paralells are causing Apple to have such a huge surge of sales to previous Windows-only users that they simply cannot let Boot Camp wither. The people have spoken... it's a multi-OS world, like it or not, so give us what we need and we'll happily bite your apple of temptation.

Thoughts?

[if you are new here, see the first post (http://groovechicken.blogspot.com/2006/12/new-look-new-purpose.html) for an explanation of what the point is and the way this house operates]

New Look, New Purpose

2006-12-13T23:55:00.000-06:00

Okay, so if you've been here before, you may be wondering what happened. To keep it short, I recently decided to go a different direction with this blog. As far as waxing philosophical goes, those who spend any length of time around me hear enough of that as it is, and the rest of the world couldn't possibly care. And I'm not about to bore you with yet another site that compiles links to other places. I'm sure we all have more of those than our feed readers can refresh in 30 seconds (yes that is roughly an eternity to those of us with ADHD).

Which leaves me with something that is perhaps just as overdone, but not nearly as well done in as many places as those other types of blogs. That something is analyzing the tech industry on the level of what we have and what we want (we being those of us with some level [or at least a desire to have some level] of computer tech savvy). Perhaps you are immediately thinking of several other blogs that are already doing this and are asking, "Why?!?!?!" Trust me, this will be a little different. I plan to code each post in the subject line by what type of post it is, so you can skip it right away without wasting your time reading half the article first if you do not care about certain types of post.

For instance, when you see a post entitled "Review: Canon MP460" (it's coming, I promise), you can skip it if you don't care for my reviews. Or read it as the case may be. The idea here is that I do not plan to use gimmicks to trick you into reading an entire post if it is not the kind of thing you would normally care to read. I will try and stick to just a few codes / types of post so this doesn't become some rambling diary of tech madness that often graces the caches of our favorite browsers.

Review is self-explanatory. Another you will see is Informer, which will be a post in which I clarify something ambiguous, such as explaining a new technology or buzz-word, exposing a scam or gimmick, or letting you know of something cool that is not getting the press it should. Then there will be Rant. Apparently, some people actually are entertained when I get annoyed and fly off on one of my sarcastic rantings. I will only inflict you with those that received critical acclaim from a live audience first, though, to spare you the uncomfortable moments of wondering whether I truly have lost my mind. There will be others as I think of them, but there is one that you shall see most prominently here, as it is the area I am trying to fill in the most: Forecast.

I really wanted to use Prognosis since it sounds interesting, but I've lost my faith in the American education system and don't expect most people to even know what that means. So, I settled on Forecast, as it captures both sides of the coin. First, it is a prediction of what is to come based on good evidence. Second, it could be just as wrong as the local weatherman (unless you live in the desert where I presume the weatherman is always 100% accurate), so don't base any stock purchases off it.

As I mentioned, my Forecast posts will be based on good evidence... well, mostly. Sometimes, I will have real, concrete facts to back me up. Most of the time, it will just be a combination of logic and observation. You see, everyone is born with some gift that they excel in. For me, it's logic. This is a two-edged sword, by the way, in case you feel a little jealous, but bear with me. This logical acumen gives me some pretty darned good problem-solving skills, but also gives me a good sense of what "should be" when combined with my observational skills. So, I often see clearly how a series of events will unfold just based on the pure logic of it all. Sometimes, I'm even right. Apparently, however, not all people rely strictly on logic when making decisions, so this often causes my little prophecies to blow up when, much to my dismay, people start letting things like emotion and fear become part of the decision-making process. How dare they?

Another aspect of my Forecast posts is that they will sometimes involve upcoming products. Before you move your cursor up to that little "X", let me assure you that I have no plans to make yet another tech rumor site. My product forecasts will have some good reason behind them. Perhaps I may have some insider info from somewhere. Or maybe, they are actually just things I'd like to see and I am presenting them as if they were reported to me as insider info in a clever and elaborate scheme to give advice to companies in such a way that they can actually use it without fear of being sued for stealing my ideas (I call this a good reason because, in general, if I want something, it is so outrageously cool that lots of other people like myself with more money than good sense will also want it). And yet still, maybe St. Isidore of Seville, patron saint of the internet, appears to me from time to time to give me the lowdown on what's shaking in the valley. You just never really know, do you? So, if are just an average Joe or Jill, ponder the possibility. If you are a company rep, no one here has offered you any ideas in such a way that you can't claim them as your own, so go ahead, pass it on to R&D for crying out loud. If you are looking for stock advice, well move along, there's nothing to see here.

So, I think that mostly sums up why there's a new vision here at Groovechicken's Coop. If you are still reading this, then you must either be someone who finds my writing at least mildly entertaining or who has way too little to do with their free time. Either way, welcome. I hope you continue to find a reason to waste space in your Bookmarks or RSS feeds here at the Coop. Make yourself at home and, please, if you must get jiggy on the dance floor, mind the disco ball.

Peace,
Todd