On Apple

    Lovely fruit – all crunchy and juicy 🙂 oh wait…I mean the computer manufacturers…

    Now I really like Apple computers – ever since I first used a Mac Plus, I was impressed with how east to use they are, and how difficult they are to crash.

    Of course, now and then you’d get the ‘sad Mac’:

    This (in my experience anyway), was never anything major – unplug everything but the keyboard and mouse and it’d usually start up fine…

    The company I work for used to have a Mac Classic:

    This baby came with a built-in 9″ screen, a whopping 2MB of RAM and a 40MB hard drive, running System 6. This was a real workhorse – I ran CAD, PageMaker, Accounts software on this for 10 years with no problems.

    Then I went to work in the US, and Corina was taken on in my place. Within 2 weeks, I was getting calls from the UK: “The computer won’t startup!” So I called in when I was back in the UK, fussed over my baby some and got it up and running again.

    Fast forward 18 months or so – I’m back in the UK (you all know about the refused entry, 24 hours in an immigration cell, and me being shipped back to Blighty – if not, I’ll maybe blog it some time), and I called in to see my ex-boss on the way back from a job interview.

    Looking round the office, I couldn’t see the Mac, so I asked the question…

    “Oh THAT! it never did work so Roger* burnt it…”

    I still swear to this day that the computer died of a broken heart as I was no longer there for her it 🙁

    Since then, I’ve bought a few Macs from fleabay – mainly the Mac II series (with PCI slots!), and still have 2 sitting in the small bedroom.

    When Apple released OS X, I was already playing around with various Linux distributions on low-end PCs, so the idea of the OS being based on a Linux kernel made me want a newer Mac – one that would run this fabulous new OS, but I never did get one…*sigh*

    But I digress, this post was mainly to complain about the recent rash of ‘i’ products – iPod, iPhone, iPad, and I’ll address these in order:

    iPod

    What a total waste of time – unlike generic MP3 players, this insists on iTunes (there’s another iFuckedApp) being installed on the host computer, along with the full version of Quicktime, thus making your computer’s startup feel like it’s running through treacle. My opinion? most cellphones have ample storage nowadays – my N97 holds enough music to last me almost 4 days without repeating a track – ditch the iPod, buy a £5 MP3 player and make everything easy (Media Player in Windows will sync your computer/player too).

    iPhone

    Great phone, easy to use – I actually was going to get one of these after playing with Marina’s (oo-er missus). So why didn’t I? because the powers that be decided not to release the SDK for it thus enabling that apps can only be purchased through the Apple store. Back to my N97 – SDK is available, people happily play around making apps, or changing how existing ones work 🙂 (You can tell I’m a big fan of Open Source huh?)

    iPad

    Where to start with this…on it’s launch it couldn’t connect to a printer, probably the most basic of peripherals. Also, it’s just a massive iPhone**, so the same argument as above applies.

    *Roger is a big fan of bonfires

    **As the newer iPhone4 had issues with making calls, then in fact, the iPad IS a huge iPhone 🙂

    Anyway, I should get some work done – have a great day!

    Related Post

    One thought on “On Apple

    1. Ahhhhhh, sweet moments in life.
      The Mac I used at work was east also.

      **sniggers**

    Leave a Reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

    This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.