Apple-hating

I feel that it’s time on my Mac blog to completely destroy the idea that Apple is a company to be hated.

When I first switched several years ago, I was extraordinarily surprised to find out how much people REALLY hated Apple.  And since I’d gone on completely HATING Microsoft for several years before this, I found this Apple-bashing completely ridiculous and extraordinarily ludicrous.

First, let me tell you: My computer hasn’t really had to go in for software-related issues AT ALL.  In fact, unlike my LAST Windows box, my copy of Mac OS X was completely legal, and the store wasn’t skirting the law in selling me my computer.  Also, I had to use my computer to do assignments for a programming class I took in my first year of college, pre-MacBook.  I found it to be unbelievably hard!  My computer kept crashing, and using a Windows machine to program seems extremely ludicrous to me now.  Why, then, do Web designers use WINDOWS?  Never made sense to me.  I guess they were skilled at making do with what they were dealt (and maybe having 500GB of RAM had something to do with it as well *sheer exaggeration*).

Second, yeah we Mac geeks can be insufferable bores at times, but that’s because we want everyone to know about our beloved Macs, and hopefully they can ditch their AWFUL Windows computers for something far superior, if they’ll ever listen.

Third, if you think about it, your beloved Dell is MORE expensive than a Mac.  I think PC World did an expose recently where they compared prices of a similarly featured Dell XPS laptop and a MacBook, and they found that, for the EXACT SAME FEATURES (like a built-in webcam and 13.3-inch display, among others), the MacBook was LESS EXPENSIVE.  Now get over yourselves.  We may bitch and moan and whine that Macs are “more expensive” (note my emphasis), in reality, they’re cheap as chips when compared to similarly featured computers on the Windows side.

Fourth, the interface of Mac OS X is NOT so hard to figure out!  Instead of having ALL your apps in a convenient menu on the bottom of the screen, you ONLY have the apps you use a lot at the bottom of the screen in the “Dock”!  It makes a big difference!

You can have whatever programs on the Dock you choose!  I’ve cleaned out my Dock as of recent, and here is what’s on there that I could remove if I so chose:

1. QuickTime
2. NetNewsWire: A RSS reader for those pesky blogs, and I read a TON of them; it’s great to have them all in one spot!
3. Mail: Apple’s email client, it really helps for my Gmail, and since I’m considering getting MobileMe, it’s going to be indispensible to have almost ALL my email in one spot on my computer, although I don’t use my Brevard College or Western Carolina University email with it, and I have effectively killed my Yahoo email account, although I keep it just for the Yahoo Groups email and my Flickr account (http://www.flickr.com/photos/bjwanlund)
4. EyeTV: Elgato’s DVR software, although I’ve yet to update to Version 3.  I may do that for this blog, although finding the cash will have to wait…
5. Safari: A must for all Mac users (and you poor souls still on Windows!), and with Apple’s recent Mac OS X update, it’s more secure (although an anti-phishing filter would be nice, but I really don’t want that in my browser, kthx Microsoft)!
6. iTunes: If you don’t get it, and you “lost all your tracks” due to some “error”, give it another chance and BACK IT UP, STUPID.  iTunes EVEN REMINDS YOU TO BACK UP.  Good God, Apple’s really on to something with their Time Machine backup system, and the utter lack of people who back up on a regular basis, or who don’t back up PROPERLY, still amazes me.  This has all sorts of amazing things, including the App Store (which they recently added), the largest LEGAL music selection on the Internet, the largest LEGAL copy protection-free song catalog (sorry folks, but Amazon and eMusic don’t seem entirely legal to me), movie rentals, movie purchases, and TV show purchases.  It’s not the largest catalog possible, but I really hope it grows and keeps growing, because iTunes is my de facto TV show purchasing headquarters anymore.  The future of TV is on-demand.  Heck, even Steve Beverly of TVGameShows.Net sees it.
7. Audio Hijack Pro: Since the music companies are slow to realize that DRM-free is the only way to go on iTunes, the only choices we REALLY have in the matter at present are to either purchase ONLY DRM-free tracks or purchase any track we want to listen to and go through the arduous process of ripping the audio and re-importing it into iTunes using any number of methods available to us, and I choose the latter method with a program called Audio Hijack Pro.  The reason I chose this method is because I can’t stand to not have options, and when I chose this, the iTunes Plus catalog was severely lacking.
8. iPhoto: This, along with ALL of iLife, is my defacto thing.  Windows has the lame programs that comes with it, these programs are incredible.  I don’t use them all the time, but it’s useful to have them, believe me.  My first YouTube video (the one where I showed the lyrical difference on Jimmy Buffett’s Volcano in the version released as DLC for Rock Band on Xbox 360) was made entirely in iMovie ‘08 Didn’t take me more than 5 minutes max for that little video.
9. Pages: My word processor of choice.  In fact, I have completely weaned myself off of Microsoft Office, and I now no longer need it.  Thank God, too.  Pages might have a bit less functionally than MS Word, but I’d rather use it than the extremely complicated MS Word.  And yes, Virginia I have used the new version with the ribbon interface.  Seems to overly overcomplicate matters to an extreme never before seen, however.
10. Skype: I’m almost never online for a chat (Username BJWanlund), but it’s useful for those times when I am.
11. RealPlayer Downloader: Sometimes it’ll download the most inappropriate crap, but it works most of the time when I want a video from a site that won’t let me download the video (YouTube is notorious for this, I used to use Keepvid for the same thing, now I rarely use it!)
12. Jiggler: It basically says, “Don’t kill the screen buddy, I’m actually using it!!”  Although there is a downside to it: apparently I’m getting some screen flickering, but I’ll bet it’ll go away if I let it rest, maybe when I go to sleep or something.
13. VLC: For anything QuickTime and iTunes don’t catch, I have VLC.  Also, the volume can be set up louder than iTunes or QuickTime, so when I’m not in headphone mode, I’ll be able to hear my music (and it’s PERFECT for those times when I need my music somewhere, like on retreat or something).
14. iChat: Great AIM and Jabber Client, even though I’m rarely on.
15. iSquint: FLV-MP4 conversion, which is all I need really.  Don’t need VisualHub for this stuff.

So there you have it.  Unwittingly they’re also my software picks, imagine that.

So until next time, so long!

Shade and sweet water to you this evening, BJ