I Love Apple

[Rolf]

Hehe thats nice, but laptops are no way as fast as 'real' desktop machines. So again, what are the stats for those? Say an Intel quad core QX9650 against the fastest Mac?
Also, I must say for that hefty price tag of US$3000 I could buy at least a couple of quad core destop PC's...

[Landwatch.com]

I just love my Mac for its superb graphic user interface. Take any of Apple's hardware and software, you will find that they all are more focused on the needs of the user. Mac OS has always been regarded as more user friendly than Windows. And that is the reason that it has a niche but a loyal fan following, who have always remained true to Apple through thick and thin.

[PeterEmpowerEd]

Warren Gatland's Welsh Six Nations Rugby Champions use Apple macs



Bigger version

[Gerrard]

Bloody hell they's almost more people in the coaching box than on the field!

That looks like a joke that should start with "how many coaches / management team does it take to play a game of rugby?"

[PeterEmpowerEd]

Bloody hell they's almost more people in the coaching box than on the field!
That looks like a joke that should start with "how many coaches / management team does it take to play a game of rugby?"

Yes, Gerrard, I know!! It looks like the makings of a scrum, doesn't it?

A better caption might be: 'How many coaches etc does it take to build a champion team?'

Hats off to Warren Gatland, though, eh? Great result for the Welsh.
-P

[Gerrard]

Yep another good one gone. With a bit of luck he'll be back in NZ one day tho.

[b.b.flockling]

Hey guys,

you are right, regular Macs are no match for high-end custom built machines in the Windows world (even the expensive Mac Pros) but the Notebooks (particularly MacBook Pro) are very good machines that can hold their own compared to any Windows-notebook.

I believe that there is only so much computing power you can effectively use (unless you do video editing or CGI).

B.

[PeterEmpowerEd]

I agree with Matthew Gilligan

I like the Tiger.

Funny, I wouldn't have picked Matthew Gilligan as a Mac user ... but I can be wrong about people. (sigh)

I like Tiger too! It did me very well for ages, but I got Leopard with my new MacBook Pro in June and got a voucher to upgrade to Snow Leopard for $19...

So the upgrade DVD arrived last week and now that 10.6.1 is out (l always think it's dangerous to install the .0 upgrades = crash test dummy) I took the plunge and upgraded tonight, (Monday). It took 45 minutes then another 10 to get the 10.6.1 update and some HP drivers the system picked out as useful for me based on my recent printer history.

So far ZERO issues and it is gorgeous.

I was showing 97.65 GB free space on the HD before the upgrade and now with 10,6.1 and Rosetta, I show 114.26 GB available (but they did shift to 1GB = 1000MB instead of 1024 so, hmmm, I don't care to do the maths -- maybe Matt will help me out?)

I'm running Safari in 32 bit mode so that 1Password 2 still works and it is definitely zippier.

Just tried the new exposé -- cool. Ha! I'm enjoying it.

Anybody else got anything to report? I'll drop anything major in this thread as it appears.

- Peter
(oops, just struck my first thing: Textpander didn't work -- it was the original free version, and said it didn't work on an intel mac in Leopard, but still did work... sayonara, I guess.) 14/9/09, 8.02PM

[PeterEmpowerEd]

Snow Leopard

Ha! Textpander came back! All by itself...same as Leopard -- all the shortcuts I had loaded are there, just not editable, as the preferences won't open. Good enuf.

Whoah, big 'small' improvements in Snow Leopard ... in Preview and PDF handling, and Quicktime is very slick indeed.

Peter 14/9/09 10:11 PM

[PeterEmpowerEd]

More on the migration to Snow Leopard -- pointing the finger in the wrong direction!

I learnt a lesson about assumptions (or re-learnt it) yesterday.

I spent a couple of hours trying to solve a printing issue: freshly laden with Snow Leopard 10.6.1 and the latest HP drivers (like, that morning's batch!) my MacBookPro could see our office Laserjet (HP 2420 dn - networked via ethernet) but could not print to it.

Trawling the support discussion forums made my heart sink -- LOTS of reports of issues with printers under SL. Eeek.

Tried to work it out by myself for an hour, then called Apple support -- GREAT questions and advice from Maheri (sp?) in India, then a transfer to Matthew in Singapore.

Something slightly geeky you need to know about Snow Leopard is that they dropped Appletalk networking language support -- if you don't know what it is, don't worry -- and thus IP printing (way faster) in a routed environment is the way to go. That's what we use these days.

As it turned out, someone had manually set an IP address on my printer (maybe it's a default setting? We had the printer long before our broadband router) ... we use a TCP/IP network but because our model printer had built in Appletalk, the IP address NOT being set by the router had never been noticed, let alone a problem (Appletalk just looks for the printer name).

Remove Appletalk from the picture (Goodbye Tiger, Leopard, Hello Snow Leopard) and the wrong IP address becomes a factor.

So all the energy I put into re-installing the drivers, downloading a COMPLETE 400 MB set of HP drivers (instead of the 60 MB Mac's software updater had selected as the ones I actually needed) was a WASTE of time. Uninstalling and reinstalling the print queues etc likewise.

3/4 of an hour later, and after having me 'ping' the printer, Matthew worked out the significance of the fact that the IP address on the Laserjet didn't match the router (i.e. it couldn't be on the same IP network) -- a quick change from Manual to Auto and the printer bought the IP address the router sent it ... and success. (And blazingly fast print spooling!) Terrific.

And stunning service from Apple, considering the outcome. The thing that struck me was how patient both Apple support techs were with me as it became clear the issues were nothing to do with Snow Leopard or the Mac or the Drivers ... we still got there.

The other striking thing was the wrist-slashing tone of some of the posts on the Apple discussion forums. I may have misunderstood something but I posted my 'fix' there to help out.

Cheers, P 16/9/09 3:34 PM
(Posted in case it's useful to somebody.)

[PeterEmpowerEd]

BRILLIANT article on Windows vs Apple ...

Microsoft's grinning robots or the Brotherhood of the Mac. Which is worse?
Windows works for me. But I'd never recommend it to anybody else, ever.

Charlie Brooker
The Guardian, Monday 28 September 2009

The most nauseating advert in history? The Windows 7 ‘launch party’

I admit it: I'm a bigot. A hopeless bigot at that: I know my particular prejudice is absurd, but I just can't control it. It's Apple. I don't like Apple products. And the better-designed and more ubiquitous they become, the more I dislike them. I blame the customers. Awful people. Awful. Stop showing me your iPhone. Stop stroking your Macbook. Stop telling me to get one. ...

I know Windows is awful. Everyone knows Windows is awful. Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it. OK, OK: I know other operating systems are available. But their advocates seem even creeper, snootier and more insistent than Mac owners. The harder they try to convince me, the more I'm repelled. To them, I'm a sheep. And they're right. I'm a helpless, stupid, lazy sheep. I'm also a masochist. And that's why I continue to use Windows – horrible Windows – even though I hate every second of it. It's grim, it's slow, everything's badly designed and nothing really works properly: using Windows is like living in a communist bloc nation circa 1981. And I wouldn't change it for the world, because I'm an abject bloody idiot and I hate myself, and this is what I deserve: to be sentenced to Windows for life.

That's why Windows works for me. But I'd never recommend it to anybody else, ever. This puts me in line with roughly everybody else in the world. No one has ever earnestly turned to a fellow human being and said, "Hey, have you considered Windows?" Not in the real world at any rate.

Read the full column here

Yes, I'm a bigot too. (But Snow Leopard is working out very well, BTW. -- Does saying that make me 'a monk' ? ) - Peter