Blog

I'm Now A Mac.

2009-11-19T05:14:40Z

I took the plunge this week and bought a Apple Macintosh. Now back in the late 1980's I used to work for a Authorized Apple retailer, so I remember the old Mac, Mac+, Mac SE, and so on, but this is the first one I have actually owned. Having not used a Mac in about 20 some years things have changed, not to mention i'm used to the way windows does things, so needless to say this is taking some getting used to.

There are several reasons I bought the Mac, first was the price was right, but more to the point I have been thinking about buying one for some time now, and I wanted to experience OS X. To be clear this is not going to be a Mac vs. Windows thing, to be honest Windows 7 is the best version that Microsoft has ever done, and by the way Vista was not that bad. I plan on doing most of my work on the Mac, and use my PC for gaming.

As I said earlier this is going to take some getting used to, but I think it will be worth it. I'll keep you posted.

Windows 7 Firefox woes.

2009-11-16T08:34:07Z

Since my last Firefox dilemma appears to be popular, hears another story of woe. When Windows 7 went RTM, I immediately went, and installed the 64 bit version on my system, but even before that I was having a problem with the Windows 7 RC 64 bit desktop wanting to crash constantly. After uninstalling different software I had on my system to no avail, I removed Firefox and it stopped. Now I can only speak to the 64 bit version of Windows 7, but for some reason it, and Firefox did not want to play nice with each other. This problem persisted across several builds of both software.

Now here's the weird part, when I went and installed the retail copy of Windows 7 I had purchased, I decided to install Firefox, and to my surprise I have had zero problems. I don’t know if something in Windows changed between RTM, and retail release, or if something was changed in Firefox, but the two seem to be getting along nicely now. I have also heard of some other software having a similar effect so the best advice I can give, is to try removing different software until you uncover the culprit, but I would start with Firefox first.

IS The OS X Genie out of the bottle?

2009-09-12T18:49:50Z

Lately I have been toying with the idea of building a “Hackintosh”, for those not in the know a “Hackintosh” is a PC that in not manufactured by Apple but, can run OS X. This of course got me wondering, if Apple would be better off selling OS X to run on third party computers not unlike Windows?

The two main reasons that people build a Hackintosh is to save money, and because it can be done. Now don’t get me wrong Apple builds really great hardware, but it is a bit pricey, and in today's economy every little bit helps.

Now at this point with people starting to run OS X on non Apple hardware the genie is out of the bottle, it still takes some doing to get it done but it continues to get easier. If Apple were to release OS X much like Microsoft does Windows, I don’t think that it would be a huge change for them, since Apple already develops, and sells different apps for the Macintosh. The downside for them would be a negative impact on their own hardware sales, which would be a good reason not to do it.

Now if Apple were to say release OS X, and say charge like $50.00 for it, they could put a big hurt on Microsoft. Microsoft would have to respond by lowering the price of Windows, I also think the number of OS X users would just explode.

So will Apple do the unthinkable? I don’t think so, not as long as Steve Jobs is running the show at Apple. Steve wants to control your PC experience on both the hardware, and software side, I think as a way of quality control, at least in his mind anyway. But if he did do it, I think it would be a game changer.

Is the apple app store more trouble than it’s worth?

2009-09-11T06:12:35Z

Over the past week I have been watching the on going saga of the Commodore 64 emulator for the iPhone. Apple at first rejected the app, then approved it, now it’s been pulled from the store, because the developer did not fully disable the BASIC interpreter, which I find to be a silly reason. Apple seems to be all over the place in regards to what’s acceptable in the app store, and what’s not, and changes the rules on the fly.

It’s no secret that Steve Jobs is a control freak, which can be a double edged sword, but I think now it’s starting to become, or already is a ongoing problem for developers. Now if I were a developer I would have to consider if trying to guess what the app store folks are thinking is more trouble than it’s worth. I also think, especially in the case of the Google Voice app rejection, it’s also hurting the customer. In the Google case Apple says that Google’s app duplicates already existing features, which in my opinion is a crock, there are a number of apps in the store that do that. The developers are between a rock, and a hard place, in that the Apple app store is the Smartphone version of Wal-Mart, and you have to play by their rules.

Now all this got me to thinking, what if the developers were to just stop, stop creating new apps, and stop updating existing ones, and tell Apple, until you come up with some guidelines that are written in stone, and make sense, do not expect to see any submissions from us. Now of course this will really tick Steve off, but I think the developers would be in the better position of the two, unless Steve just decided to close, or suspend the app store. The bottom line is that Apple needs to come up with a happy medium where, they can exercise some type of quality control, and yet let the customers decide if a app sinks, or swims by voting with their dollars, and the developers don’t have to have ESP to figure out what Apple is thinking at any giving moment. The current situation not only ends up hurting the customers, but also opens the door for someone with a more open platform to come in and try to steal the show, and some developers may decide to move to other platforms, which not only hurts Apple but also the consumer.

On a side note, it was nice to see Steve Jobs back in the saddle at the recent iPod event on 9/9/09.

The Great PC Slump of 2009.

2009-08-09T17:40:14Z

Like most other industries in this economy, the PC market is taking a hit; sales are down across the board with some companies taking less of a loss than others. I think there a several factors a play here, one being of course the economy, I also think another factor is Windows 7, and one that I have not heard anybody comment on is games. I'm not going to go into detail as far as the current economy goes, I think everybody knows it's bad.

Any time you get close to a new Windows release, PC sales take a bit of a dive with people holding off purchasing a new system so they can get the new OS preinstalled, which saves them from having to purchase the upgrade, and installing it, also it's easier to get manufacturer support for a pre-installed OS. The release of Windows 7 will occur in the late fall (Oct. 22 2009) So sales will pick up for the back to school season, as these systems will qualify for a free upgrade to Windows 7 if It's not already installed. Having worked for a large electronics retailer while in college I can tell you that students are only part of the picture, it seems that everybody comes in to buy a new PC in the fall.

Having been around PC's longer than I care to mention, I can tell you that in the past that games were a driving force in faster and more powerful hardware sales. It's actually a vicious circle, as new games come out they require faster hardware to run them, or to run them with all the eye candy turned on. I can remember planning hardware purchases around game releases, so I could take full advantage when the game it came out. The only problem now is that PC gaming is not nearly as big as it used to be, with consoles taking a large part of the market share, so allot of folks including myself are not upgrading hardware as often as in the past.

With all the above factors in play it's not surprising that hardware sales are in slump. I don't see the PC game market improving anytime soon, you'll have the occasional title that gets a lot of buzz, but I think for the long term, consoles will be the gaming platform of choice for most people. Almost everyone I talk to uses their PC for getting online/work/e-mail, and those things don't require allot of computing power to get them done, so I think allot of people like myself are hanging on to older hardware longer because it works. I have had my current system for about 3 to 4 years, and it's still plenty fast.

How to Get Rid of Duplicate Contacts on Your iPhone When Using Google Contacts.

2009-06-21T18:06:43Z

So the other day I decided it would be cool to sync my iPhone contacts, and calendar up with Google Contacts, and Calendar. Well the first thing that happened was I accidently deleted all my contacts, but I was able to pull them off a old phone so no big deal, syncing of the calendar went fine, so I decide to check out my handy work after I recovered my lost contacts, and the syncing was done, and now I have double contacts for everybody…Great, just great. To make a long story short, when I went to all contacts on the phone it was merging contacts from Google, and somewhere else, still not sure from where. So here's the fix, it may work even if you're using someone other than Google to sync with, best of all its simple. Ok, once you've synced up with Google, and they have all your contacts, go to your iPhone and click the settings icon, then click "open Mail, Contacts, and Calendars", now where it says "Accounts" if you followed Google's directions there should be a account on the list that you set up for talking to Google that you had to give a name to, open that account, now under account info you will see "Mail", under that "Contacts", and under that "Calendars". Make sure that "Contacts" are turned off, and that should solve the problem. Next plug your phone into your computer, then go to iTunes, and click on the info "tab", and at the bottom of the page under "advanced", under "replace information on this iPhone" check the "contacts" box, now sync your phone. The contacts on the phone will be deleted and replaced with to ones from your Google account, just make sure that the Google list doesn't have double entries too. After you've done that, all should be right in the world, at least concerning your phone anyway. By the way two things I would do first. Backup your phone, and print out a hard copy of your contacts from Google just in case something goes terribly wrong. One more thing, this applies to iPhone 3.0 firmware, so it may be a little different on version 2 not sure, so keep that in mind.

E3…Yawn.

2009-06-12T09:34:54Z

Well E3 2009 is now a recent memory, and maybe I'm becoming jaded, but it seems to me that it wasn't much better than GDC was. The general consensus is that Microsoft was the big winner over Sony, and Nintendo. The Biggest news was Microsoft's "Project Natal" motion control for the Xbox360, which everybody who saw it, seems to be impressed by it. The next, if you can call it big thing is Sony's new PSP, which we knew about before E3. Other than that it seemed to be kind of underwhelming, everything else showed we already knew about. I'm starting to get the feeling that the public is getting the itch for a new console, well according to both Microsoft, and Sony their looking at both the Xbox360, and PS3 to be current generation until about 2015, and with the Wii selling like crazy I don't think Nintendo is in any hurry to get a new system to market. With the Xbox360 being the oldest of the current systems, I'm thinking that public demand may move up Microsoft's timetable, of course they may be saying 2015 to throw everybody off. I would not be terrible surprised if we were to start hearing rumors of new hardware at E3 2010. Tokyo Game Show is coming up in September, but usually nothing huge gets announced at that event, it's more of a software event, the biggest thing out of it will most likely be new titles. Let me know what you think, leave a comment, or send email.

Integrity… You Either Have It, or You Don’t.

2009-06-11T20:07:15Z

The other day I was surfing the net, and came across Leo Laporte from TWiT.tv going off on the Gilmore Gang Show. The short version is, Mike Arrington of TechCrunch was trying to make a point of how a reviewer's opinion of the new Palm –Pre might be influenced, if Palm gave said reviewer a Pre. Leo thought that Mike was saying, that since Leo received a Palm-Pre to review for a week that his integrity was compromised, So Leo thinking he was be insulted, went off, and pulled the plug on the show. Mike, and Leo did work things out later in the day, and everything appears to be cool with them now. In Leo's defense when someone insults my integrity it really ticks me off, so I get where he's coming from. Here's the clip.

My take is you either have integrity, or you don't. If Palm or any company were to drop their latest and greatest in my lap, and say "Go ahead, keep it. We look forward to your review." they will still get an honest review, good, bad, or otherwise. If a company thinks that their product is really good, they shouldn't have to do it anyway. Just because a company tries to garner a good review from someone by giving them a "gift", I don't think that it automatically compromises the reviewer, but I can see someone being tempted by that, and I can also see how it would look bad. To me compromising ones integrity is a kin to selling your soul, once you've done it, it's hard to get it back. You know, if you're dealing with a company or individual that thinks that they can garner favor that way, well to paraphrase Leo "screw them!"

The Post About Nothing.

2009-04-14T07:26:27Z

I've been trying to come up with a cool idea for a blog post since last week and came up with nada, so instead of going two weeks without posting I'm going to just kind of ramble about nothing particular. No real big tech news as of late, everybody seems to be waiting for Windows 7 to go RC/RTM, and Apple to make a possible iPhone announcement, or announce another device. I'm hearing the same things everybody else is, that Apple is going to announce either a new iPhone, netbook, or a cross between the two, I'm not planning on buying a new iPhone this year, but if they drop a netbook I could use one of those. Rumor has it that Microsoft is talking to Yahoo! Again (yawn).

Systemax the company that bought what was left when CompUSA when it bit the dust is apparently buying what's left of Circuit City, and for those not in the know Systemax has reopened about 30 CompUSA locations, so I look for Circuit City to return from the dead in the future. E3 is just around the corner, and I think you might start hearing some rumors about next gen gaming platform from Microsoft if not this year it will be E3 2010. Well it's getting late, and I'm running out of things to talk about, so I'll sign off now.

GDC 2009, And OnLive

2009-04-01T07:11:59Z

I've been looking at some of the GDC (Game Developers Conference) coverage on the web, and I must I feel underwhelmed. The only note worthy announcement was the OnLive service, and not much else, bring on E3.

So here's the deal with this OnLive service, say you have a computer that's pretty much crap, but you have a burning desire to play Crysis, well OnLive to the rescue. What OnLive does is they have a server farm with a whole bunch of high end pc's that can run Crysis, or whatever game you desire, and they run these games with all the eye candy turned on. You log into the service over the internet using a broadband connection, pick the game, and then all of the rendering of the graphics is done on their side of the connection, on their pc's, then they pipe it back down to you.

So the idea is you don't have to worry about having to have the latest and greatest hardware to play a game because they do all the heavy lifting. Ok, sounds great, but I see some problems right from the start. When I first saw the name OnLive, I thought it was a Microsoft/Xbox thing, so I think they may get a letter from Microsoft's legal eagles in the near future. The next problem is the internet itself, if you start having any lag, or connection problem the game will be unplayable, now the folks behind OnLive say that they have that problem solved, but that's a pretty tall order, I'm not saying it's impossible, but I'll believe it when I see it.

When my internet connection goes down, I like allot of other folks will go off and do something else until it comes back, and that something else is usually a game. So if your connection goes down, so does your gaming if you rely on the OnLive service. So as a gaming platform I really don't see this thing taking off, it's a neat idea but with the current nature of the internet, I think it might be a product that's ahead of its time.

I do think there are other areas besides gaming where this idea of remote processing would be more useful. The one that comes to mind off the top of my head is rendering of high end graphics for video production. With this technology one could for example, run a production company making animated movies without having to invest in some very expensive high end rendering machines.

As I said earlier, as far as gaming goes I think this is a idea that may be a little ahead of its time, and I don't think your hard core gamers will go for it. I for one like owning the games, and the hardware to run them on, so if I have no net connection I'm not completely dead in the water. But for other applications where you need serious computing power and you don't need to own or have onsite access to the hardware I think it's has its purpose.

This idea that the OnLive people have kind of reminds me of when I was in school, and we had dumb terminals that had no processing power hooked up to a mainframe computer that did all the work. All the terminals were networked into the mainframe, with the mainframe being the most expensive component since it housed all the computing power. Kind of a new spin on an old idea.