Mac Ads

The funny thing about the Mac ads (vs Windows 7) is that they are based on truth.

I’m beginning to think that John Hodgman actually works for Microsoft…

-Popgun

Nifty Application for the iPhone

Here’s a nifty application for the iPhone, if you have any interest in the sky.

It is Pocket Universe for the iPhone. There’s a review here.

Amazing. Probably useful to amateur astronomers, too. You can take it outside and it can show you the sky from where you are – and help you identify what you are seeing.

Absolutely cool.

-Popgun

Internet Goodness!

HughesNet is up and running. When I got home from work, I rerouted the ethernet cable to the Apple Airport 802.11g and back to Texas Grandma’s computer. Then I told my MacBook Pro to connect to the Airport, which it did on the first try. I hadn’t used it in 8 or 9 months, but the passwords were still in there, so it connected instantly. Then I took my iPhone and went into settings, told it to connect to the WiFi and fed it the password – worked on the first try.

Now I get internet on every device, at home or at work, without plugging anything in and without changing any settings. That’s nice, after months of fooling with a USB dingus from Alltel, and needing to tell it to connect. Tomorrow I cancel the Alltel service.

It’s all good, so far.

-Popgun

Internet Goodness?

This morning, I’m getting HughesNet to come install new internet service here at the home place. I’ve used them before, so I pretty much know what to expect. I’ll let you know how it goes.

To balance out the costs, I’m going to drop my Alltel cellular broadband contract. It has certain advantages, but I have Wi-Fi at work and later today, I’ll have Wi-Fi at home; so the times are rare that I actually need it. The major advantage cellular has over satellite service is that it will work in a thunderstorm. It’s also a bit less expensive. The major disadvantage is that it can’t easily be shared.

-Popgun

OS X Snow Leopard

OS X Snow Leopard – if you’ve got an Intel based Mac, get Snow Leopard.

I installed it Friday. Install time was about an hour and 15 minutes. In my case, at least, no glitch so far. It freed up about 7 GB of disk space, and everything runs noticeably faster. Many things open up much faster.

For an upgrade cost of $29, it’s a great value. So far, I like it!

-Popgun

Recursiveness in Blogging…

Here’s a picture of my blogging…

Recursive!

-Popgun

Synchronizing the iPhone

I just synchronized my iPhone 3G, 16 GB model, with my MacBook Pro. I was noticing all the empty space on the iPhone – like 13.24 GB free; so I decided on a whim to put all my photos on it. I turns out that I have 12,482 pictures. And I still have 5.48 GB left on the phone.

I figure probably 80% of them are my grandkids… what can I say?

Heaven

I bet the Mac’s in Heaven are free, wireless access is everywhere, and the internet speeds are so fast they can’t be measured. (I guess that would be Godspeed!)

-Popgun

iBotnet and the Mac

Interesting. iBotnet is a ‘Trojan horse’ that infects the Mac. I see that the PC people are cheering.

Funny, though – you have to download and run pirated software (iWork 09) to get it. Since I don’t steal software, I’m safe from this one.

Realizing that could always change. But it’s been really nice not having to purchase antivirus software (and support it, update it, fool with it, and try to outsmart it when setting up a network) the last couple of years. Most antivirus software is nearly as bad as having the virus. You should try removing Norton Antivirus from your system sometime – not easy at all.

OS X still rules!

-Popgun

Microsoft Windows vs Apple OS X

There have been some ads put out by Microsoft recently that emphasize that Macs cost more than Windows machines, for equivalent hardware. This may in fact be true to a certain extent, though not nearly as much as Microsoft would want you to think. They made some highly selective choices in their ‘report‘.

Also, their numbers don’t take the operating system and bundled software into account. Even if it is true that Macs cost more, you are getting a lot more for your money. Nor do they mention that, since Apple provides both OS X and the hardware it runs on, the system integration is much better than on Windows machines – everything works very well together, since every piece of hardware was tested with the operating system.

I switched to the Mac about the time Microsoft came out with Vista. I do use XP and Vista on several other machines, daily, and have since the advent of Windows; so I have the background to have a valid opinion.

I’m not going back to Windows as long as OS X, and the software that runs on it, continues to be of the quality it is. There are a number of reasons for this, but the biggest thing for me personally is probably that OS X is so much more efficient to use, from my perspective. I can do more, in less time, and with lots less pain, on OS X than I can on any version of Windows to date.

I’ll bet my blood pressure dropped ten points when I switched to the Mac.

Furthermore, I’m still using the 17″ MacBook Pro I bought 28 months ago – and I’m still happy with it. It still feels as fast as the day I bought it – it hasn’t slowed down from sludge in the system as happens with Windows, even though I test a lot of software. So I bought a pricier computer – but I’m keeping it longer and enjoying it more.

Shucks, the difference is so great that I find myself writing articles like this one. Amazing.

-Popgun