Category: MacWarz!

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Irresistible iPad Video… and One Notsomuch Irresistible

And continuing the dissing of Apple’s latest bid to leech money from suckers, this article and discussion at PCMagazine’s site compels me to respond (here, because with a couple hundred W3C errors on the PCMag page, wouldn’t you know that one of ’em is making my comment submission fail). But first, the “official” Apple iPad intro:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDNVAgxOIew

Apple: “The best web surfing experience, the best email experience, the best photo and movie watching experience… ” And no, I did NOT add the emphasis. Just watch the thing. It’s in the original Apple video.

These claims are simply over the top, unsupportable, ridiculous. NONE of those experiences on a 9.7″ screen with NO keyboard and tiny lil speakers can be “the best” anything.

Also from the video, “…a screen THIS large…” *feh* As large as my usual 23″ widescreen I’m using to view this page? “Large” is silly. Large compared with a iPhone? Sure, but that’s not what 99% of folks use for their primary web browsing and email and video viewing experiences. For a reason. Actually, many reasons.

Contrast the iPad’s really minimalist feature set (designed to do almost nothing but sell more media from Apple) to something like the ASUS Eee PC T91MT Multi-touch (convertible, on the fly) Tablet Netbook. 32GB SSD (+500GB included online storage), actual keyboard and touchpad for real computing needs, USB, media card slots, WiFi, Bluetooth and more… for $115 less than the base 32GB SSD iPad.

Add 3G hardware to the iPad and bump it up another $130, but add the same functionality with an UNLOCKED 3G USB peripheral to the ASUS unit? Easily done for about $50. Oh, and did I mention almost unlimited inexpensive expandability for the lil ASUS via the USB ports?

What’s to like about the iPad in comparison to the lil ASUS?

Well, the chief “benefits” of the iPad seem to be paying (lots) more for (a lot) fewer features and being locked into the Apple Straight Jacket. Woo-hoo! Sign me up to blow more of my money for fewer features!

Not.

Caveat: I don’t own one of them–yet; gotta save those nickels and dimes, folks–but I gather from users that the first thing to do with one of the lil ASUS comps is UNinstall the preinstalled Touch Gate software, since it is just a hanger-on from when the comp was designed to be able to run XP with multi-touch. Win7 Home Premium (preinstalled) has all the multi-touch capabilities built in.

BTW, the lil ASUS unit has been in the channel since at least November of last year, and numerous tablet notebooks abound. So, tell me exactly, just what’s so new and ground-breaking about the iPad? Oh, the Apple book/media store? Kindle for PC, and Barnes and Noble’s eBook offerings alone top 1,000,000 in the ePub and pdf formats, downloadable without a B&N nook and usable on a PC, why! even on a lil ASUS (or any other) tablet PC with higher screen resolutions than the iPad.

Color me unimpressed with the iPad. Just another way for Apple to con suckers out of more money in the Apple Straight Jacket Store.

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Der Führer Disses the iPad

As much as I hate to find myself in agreement with “Hitler” I simply cannot find room to disagree with this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQnT0zp8Ya4&feature=player_embedded

And the thing is, this video only scratches the surface of the stupid feature set. iPad: just the thing for thoughtless and dim-witted Apple junkies (there does exist a class of thoughful and intelligent Apple junkies *heh*) who like to waste money.

h.t. Planck’s Constant

Micro-mini-update, in an article at eWeek I found this lil gem,

Digital device expert Walt Mossberg called this “amazingly low-priced for an Apple product.”

*heh* And I’d bet dollars to donuts Apple addicts would think that’s praise, while the rest of the world would recognize the qualifier (“for an Apple product”) as acknowledgement that Apple products are generally over-priced.

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A Lil Book Searching for Its Raison D’être

I guess you’d have to be me (or someone who’s tired of grading “grad” papers from subliterates) for this to bother you,

“But the Dock is so much more than just eye candy. It’s an ever-accessible venue where [sic] your frequently-used applications can call ‘home’.”

Sadly, this is typical of the writing in the otherwise excellent and useful (to newbies and those who need even more hand-holding than the Mac straight jacket already provides), “The Mac Manual” from makeuseof.com.

While there’s nothing really ground-breaking, and really nothing that someone of average intelligence cannot figure oput on their own, for those who find Windows just toooo hard and those who just want to know how to use the oh-so “intuitive” Mac interface more quickly, this is a very nice cheat sheet.

69 pages with loads of nice white space makes “The Mac Manual” from (makeuseof.com) and really quick read and even a handy enchiridion for incurious or lazy newbie Mac users.

But yeh, I have a copy of it and may even carry it with me for the next Mac user I meet who needs some help. 🙂

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What a Chuckle

What’s so humorous? Apple’s $80+ “Magic Mouse” (with prices all the way up to $130!). For $80+, IF you have a compatible Apple product to use it with (otherwise, you can shell out even more for a Bluetooth interface), it can almost duplicate–after making modifications to the way the OS normally uses a mouse (why! you can actually have it emulate a TWO-BUTTON MOUSE! *pfui*)–what my lil $30 Logitech wireless RF mouse can do. Oh, wait. That was $30 with the wireless keyboard as well… And with shipping.

*feh*

Well, I do have to admit that it will do a couple (but only a couple) of things my setup won’t, but since it’ll ONLY do them with compatible Apple products (and some very recent Apple products will need additional–can you say, “More $$”?–hardware just to use this “Magic Mouse”), and even then, are “features” more searching for users than features users search for. What? I need something that lets me, “swipe left and right along the Multi-Touch surface to advance through pages in Safari or browse photos in iPhoto”? First of all, I can do the mouse gesture forward/back in Opera now, and only use one finger, so why make things harder for myself? Second, iPhoto? Who wants to use iPhoto?

Wait. That two-finger gesture thingy doesn’t count, since I can do it with one finger, so that’s only ONE thing this over-priced dummy-catcher can do that my cheapo Logitech wireless mouse can’t. What’s the other thing? 360 degree “pan”. I’m still trying to imagine a use I might put that to. Sure, it’s a “gee-whiz” feature, but useful? I can scroll up n down (and left-right in most apps) with my lil cheapie Logitech mouse. Good enough. 360 degree “panning”? Sell me on it, if you can.(You can’t)

Apple’s Magic Mouse: just the thing for folks with more money than brains and worth a few chuckles for the rest of us.

N.B. Apple does make some very fine hardware. MacBook Pros, for example, can make very nice Windows machines. Well, apart from that quirky Mac keyboard. Which just highlights the main issue I still have with Macs. Why not just buy some very fine hardware (for less than equivalent Apple hardware) and if one wants a BSD-based OS (like OS X) just install PCBSD? A very nearly bulletproof OS with LOADS of free software, suitable for almost any user’s needs: what’s not to like. Heck, it can even be “skinned” to be more maclike, if one should desire such a thing.

And it works with real mice and keyboards. 🙂

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Apple/Mac “Loyalty”? Notsomuch

Apple computers are reputed to inspire fierce loyalty among users, but that may be due more to a highly vocal, rabid fringe of fanboiz than anything else.

More than 12 per cent of US homes have at least one Mac, according to NPD’s latest Household Penetration study – a rise from nine per cent the research company polled in 2008. But of those Mac owners, nearly 85 per cent have at least one Windows-based PC.

So the die hard Mac loyalists are… about 15% of Mac users. Since Mac comprised well less than 10% of PC sales, that yields a core of Mac loyalists that is a minuscule and very nearly irrelevant class of computer users. Just sayin’.

*heh*

(Just think, though: with high-end Intel-compatible hardware and PC-BSD, current Mac users could have their [possibly] preferred GUI, or something very like it–and the security of the base Unix OS they want and lower cost, too. Of course, they could always install a VM in the PC-BSD machine and plop Windows in there, too.. :-))

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2X As Much for a Mac?

Are Macs really worth it?

It depends. eWeek has a couple of companion articles implying that Mac market share will plateau (or perhaps even decline) if Apple doesn’t address its pricing. Overall, average retail selling prices for Macs are about twice the price of similarly-configured Wintel computers. And in the isolated examples where the disparity is not so great, it’s still: Macs pricier by a country mile. For exampe,

iMac: $1,199; 2.4GHz Intel Core Duo processor, 20-inch widescreen display (integrated), 1GB DDR memory, 128MB ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT graphics, 250GB hard drive, 8x double-layer DVD burner, Bluetooth 2.1, 802.11 g Wi-Fi, Webcam and Mac OS X 10.5.

Inspiron 518: $739… ; 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor, 19-inch widescreen monitor, 3GB DDR memory, Intel GMA X3100 graphics, 500GB hard drive, 8x DVD burner and Windows Vista Home Premium Service Pack 1.

OK, so the Mac includes a Webcam and Bluetooth. If you need either of those, tack on about $20 each (street price). Big. Stinking. Deal. OTOH, the Inspiron does come with Vista…

Of course, if one were to not need or want a notebook (I have little need for one, for example) and were just comparing desktop pricing, the “double–or more!” pricing for Macs really kicks in. And that doesn’t even count those, such as myself, who can and do prefer taking a “barebones” or components approach to assembling our own computers. Doesn’t count such folks because bareboning or assembling ones own Mac is a fiendishly difficult thing (or at the very least a hassle) to accomplish, the way Apple has a lock on things.

So, it’s a firm lock: Apple’s back in the arena of high-end premium pricing even for its low-end merch. So, are Macs worth the premium?

For the high-end Macs, they very well may be, since so many graphics and multi-media folks have made the platform their home for many years and the software they use is mature and pretty much industry standardized for media production. There are probably a few other niche applications where the high-end Macs might make a lot of sense, as well. Although… all the apps Macs have captured niche markets with can either be found ported to (or have equivalent replacements on) the Wintel side as well, and similar apps can usually be found for other (free) OSes, so that argument is less valid than in times past.

But mid- and lower end Macs are a different story, IMO. Unless the Mac interface is all someone knows and that someone is too stupid to be able to train to a new GUI, then I see no reason to buy a Mac, other than a desire to waste money. Better GUI? Heck, you can get the same BSD code base and better GUIs by using PC-BSD.

Heck, why even pay the “Microsoft Tax” by buying/using Windows? Sure, I’ve detailed my woes switching off Windows to Ubuntu 8.04, but most of those were caused by idiosyncratic hardware choices I made that wouldn’t affect the average user one whit. I’ve installed and used Ubuntu on a slew of other machines (for temporary or intermittant use, or for others, not the continual use that’s now my norm), and for most folks’ normal computer use, it’s way more than Good Enough.

So, subtract the “Microsoft Tax” and non-Apple Intel (or AMD) computers become even more pocket book attractive. Are Apple computers well made? Yes, but “them’s not that good,” as an old farmer I once knew might say.

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OTOH… Mac OSX gets much-needed update

Earlier, I wanred y’all to watch out for the Vista SP1 from Microsoft. Now, word is well and truly out (and Apple’s servers being well, urm, serviced): news of much-needed “updates” (*cough* fixes) to OSX:

Sundry changes improve the performance of, or fix bugs in Dashboard, iCal, iChat, Mail, Parental Controls, Preview, Safari and Time Machine, while iSync gains support for Samsung D600E and D900i phones. The Finder has also been updated, with fixes for eight issues, including a couple that could cause unexpected quits.

Yeh, yeh, I know: MacCultists insist only pure, pristine and perfect code issues from Apple and all the crap code is limited to Me$$y$oft. Move along. Nothing to see here about “fix[ing] bugs in” various things in OSX folks depend on daily or things in Finder (Finder, fer heaven’s sake! You’d think they could fix the dumb name for the thing, too… *heh*) that “could cause unexpected quits.” (Yeh, “Crash Different” indeed.)

I will hand it to Apple for having created an atmosphere where its bug fix releases are viewed as something other than… bug fix releases, patches, fixes for their own “shrink-wrap betaware”.

Once again,

Crash Different

(On the gripping hand, Apple does fix its broken products, eventually. Mostly. Well, they are computers, aren’t they? ;-))

Well, at least I’m not counseling you to avoid this round of fixes, as I did with the Vista SP1. 😉

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Macs are sooooo easy! (Not)

Page on down on this post at Chaos Manor (View) for the rest of the comments excerpted below:

I am beginning to hate Macs. I cannot empty the trash. I get a message saying that “Send to” is blocked. To empty everything in the trash including locked items press the option key while selecting Empty Trash. Needless to say I have pressed the option key until I am blue in the face. It won’t empty the trash…

…NOW I CANNOT MOVE SOME OF THE ITEMS from the trash to the foo folder. I do not have sufficient privileges!!! The MAC is protecting me from deleting old Windows backup files. I don’t have sufficient privileges. This may be the stupidest operating system yet with the possible exception of Vista.

Ye gods!!!

After consulting with 6 Unix gurus, active Mac users, he finally ended up with…

Plugging back in the external hard drive I was informed that it is unreadable, and disk utility opened. It offers to reformat…

…Macs are great if you’re me, with access to lots of advisors. I am not so sure about Aunt Minnie.

Macs are “intuitive” and “easy to use” if you already think like an Apple programmer (and sometimes that’s not even sufficient *heh*). If not, they can be terribly frustrating machines, largely because with a Mac it’s “The Apple way or the highway, bud,” and that’s that.

Once again, may I offer PCBSD, which has essentially the same (BSD) Unix underpinnings as Mac OSX without the quirky Mac straightjacket?

At least it’s not Mac OSX…

*heh*

Trackposted to The Midnight Sun, The Random Yak, A Blog For All, Shadowscope, The Pink Flamingo, Big Dog’s Weblog, Wake Up America, A Newt One, Dumb Ox Daily News, Adeline and Hazel, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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“One CLICK to rule them all… “

…and in the shadows bind them…

I recently recieved feedback on an email where I’d referred the readers to a page and included download instructions (for a book on intelligence). Part of the instructions were “Right-Click on the link… ” The feedback I recieved? From a Mac user, paraphrased, “Right-click? What’s that?”

Well, obviously that was from a traditional Mac user. Contemporary Intel Macs often come with multi-button/multi-function mice that do not require keyboard-one-button mouse combos to emulate the functionality Windows and Linux users have long enjoyed. Traditional one-button Mac mice were apparently based on the Apple assumption (or perhaps it was solid research into the Mac user base) that MAc users couldn’t handle anything as complex as two-button mice, either because of the extreme mental effort required to manage such a large number (2) or because of poor physical coordination.

Regardless, it seem that in order to attract more users, Apple has had to adopt more and more features from the PC side of the divide (along with th hardware it has been adopting for years until now it simply sells PCs with the Mac OS tacked on), and true multi-function mice are now available for Mac users as well as the rest of the world, which has had them for many years.

Now, that’s “innovation” eh?

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