esrosedotblog

I use RefDesk as my default web site.

Is that the right term?

It is where I tell my computer to go when I open a screen.

Today, "This Day In History", a regular bit each day, features

this item.

Odd that it is not a 0 or 5 anniversary, it is a 31st.

I had one of these rather soon after they came out. I was not interested in a computer before this but the friendly features and the suggestions of my knowledgable kids won me over. Never to be the same again.

I became a member of the Mac universe. Never to use a PC and even hostile to it. The evil empire MS. DOS. Whatever the hell that means.

In the beginning it was kind of a movement and Steve and the boys at Apple were our demigods.

Now I am on my fifth iteration. The big flat screen one running 10.9.5 or something. I have never looked much past the screen. The great MacAdvantage.

Labels: history, macintosh

I took sides early between the Mac and the PC.

The Mac had all the graphics heft so we used it in the business for our training materials. And what is more, from the very beginning, Mac was a far more interesting company to be a customer of.

We had Steve Jobs. They had that other geeky looking guy. Bill something. Oh yeah, Gates.

I also liked Mac because they were second. The one behind. The undeserved underdog.

But look!

After all these years the tide is turning.

Windows Reign 'Is Coming To An End' ... And The Mac Is Taking Over

This is mostly because of the iPad and the iPhone but never mind.

My early loyalty to the company made it possible for the new generation to kick the big guy's ass.

I still believe that Mac software has it all over the competition. Look how they have had to copy us.

It is an old argument. An entire ad campaign was waged over the distinctions. Here are all the ads. Over thirty minutes.

I found this later in the day.

This photo is from some hearing in 1984.

Labels: macintosh

WAITING

We have been waiting for a new shipment of iMacs to arrive at the local Apple store so that I can get a replacement for the one that blew a gasket.

I found out today that there won't be a replacement. We bought the last two and the store cannot get any more.

I will have to wait for the new model to arrive "soon", the rumor is December.

That is not great but it is better than hanging in suspense over the replacement.

A slim possibility exists that we could get one from another store or through a friend who is an officer at Apple.

But I am betting on the 2012 model.

In the meantime, I have been able to reproduce almost all my bookmarks on John's machine (in my own folder) and can use it on a regular basis.

It is mildly inconvenient but not a serious problem. The new iCloud connection that I now have allows me to work the live parts of the email and the calendar, all day long.

So it is better to know than not. For me. I am not a guy who likes doubt very much.

See? It is skinny. So I will have to go back to an outboard optical scanner (DVD).

Labels: computer, macintosh

TROUBLE

My new iMac has had a burp.

I put it to sleep and it won't wake up.

I have talked through it with my consultant, run the possibilities on line and now will take it back to the store tonight.

You have to get an appointment. Mine is for 515.

I am not too happy about this but, at the same time, know that I am the one in a hundred who hits this kind of thing and so we will work through it.

In the meantime I can use Johns new machine and, so far, there isn't anything that I have thought of that I can't get out except my calendar but maybe people will call me when and if I do not show up.

Labels: computer, macintosh

MOSTLY DONE

We got the new iMacs up and running today.

The helper was very good.

It is pretty clear that we would not have been able to do this by ourselves.

He was a real pro, Mac Authorized and very well organized. A nice guy too.

There were a number of issues, none un resolved except for our new email address in i-Cloud. It is all ready to go. It just doesn't want to drop down.

We are all set on the old earthlink.net on the new machines so there is non problem.

Our guy is working through this.

We got a new Time Capsule which is a combination two channel router and a backup for the Time Machine. It is very fast. He tested our internet and we did very well on speeds.

We have both used our new machines and there is a learning curve but most of it has been worked through even before he left.

It is a very very big screen to navigate. It will be great for movies. I even tested that part.

A long day.

I had a new program guy to work with this morning and that had some startup anxiety but went very well.

I will sleep well tonight.

Labels: computer, macintosh

ONE YEAR LATER

Apple's one year memorial tape.

Labels: macintosh

MORE STEVE

Must read. Steve Jobs sister Mona Simpson.

A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs

I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I’d met my father, I tried to believe he’d changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people.

Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.

By then, I lived in New York, where I was trying to write my first novel. I had a job at a small magazine in an office the size of a closet, with three other aspiring writers. When one day a lawyer called me — me, the middle-class girl from California who hassled the boss to buy us health insurance — and said his client was rich and famous and was my long-lost brother, the young editors went wild. This was 1985 and we worked at a cutting-edge literary magazine, but I’d fallen into the plot of a Dickens novel and really, we all loved those best. The lawyer refused to tell me my brother’s name and my colleagues started a betting pool. The leading candidate: John Travolta. I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James — someone more talented than I, someone brilliant without even trying.

When I met Steve, he was a guy my age in jeans, Arab- or Jewish-looking and handsomer than Omar Sharif.........more

Her best known novel is "Anywhere But Here".

I have started reading the biography out just last week.

Somehow I got an extra copy if anyone wants it, just say.

Labels: heroes, macintosh

TRIBUTE TO STEVE JOBS

Beautiful.

Johathan Ive the Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple Inc. He is the leading designer and conceptual mind behind the iMac, titanium and aluminum PowerBook G4, G4 Cube, MacBook, unibody MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

And one hell of a speaker.

This was at the Apple memorial.

Labels: macintosh

WOZ ON STEVE

Labels: computer, heroes, macintosh

EVERYWHERE

"And there may be no greater tribute to Steve's success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented"...........Barack Obama today.

Labels: macintosh

STEVE JOBS DEAD

Labels: macintosh

EARLY ADOPTER

Labels: Barack Obama, macintosh, technology

GAY POWER

Well, not really. But, since the new CEO of Apple is an out gay man, we can say that there was just a power shift in the gay straight balance.

Or something.

Tim Cook: Apple’s New CEO and the Most Powerful Gay Man in America

It is worth a headline here but, actually, is a mere step in a progression of outings.

The funny thing is that business is the most out segment of our culture. Cook is, by no means, the only out business executive. We are everywhere. And, today, you can see most of us.

The second, my guess, would be government. Not politics necessarily but the whole ball of wax. After all, it is illegal to discriminate anywhere but more so in the bureaucracy than anywhere else. Federal law trumps everything else in the federal government.

It is interesting. I can remember, easily, when to be an out gay man in any corporation would be the kiss of death.

I can also remember when it was the kiss of death to be a Jew in most companies.

Black? No way.

Women? Not even now. A gay black jewish man has a better chance in corporate America than a woman.

Labels: business, macintosh

END OF AN ERA

Steven P. Jobs Is Stepping Down as Chief Executive of Apple

Steven P. Jobs, the co-founder of Apple and the creative genius behind its rise to become the world’s most valuable technology company, is stepping down as chief executive, the company announced Thursday.

Mr. Jobs has been battling cancer for several years and has been on medical leave since January, his third. He recovered from pancreatic cancer after surgery in 2004, and received a liver transplant in 2009.

The company named Tim Cook, its chief operating officer, to succeed him as chief executive.

“I have always said that if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know,” Mr. Jobs said in a letter released by the company. “Unfortunately, that day has come.”

New York Times email alert.

Labels: macintosh

MACMANIA

Labels: computer, macintosh

DRIED APPLE

We are getting an Apple Store in the Coachella Valley.

Apple store's draw touted as boon for other city retailers

I have mixed feelings.

For a few years I have been going to an "authorized" dealer and retailer in La Quinta.

What happens with them?

This morning, their web site doesn't open. Maybe they got subsumed in the Apple Store.

I suppose that I will go to this new place. I hate the location. Palm Desert. El Paseo Drive. Ritzy titz.

But when the Mac ails you go to the MacDoctor.

And it is closer.

Labels: computer, macintosh

SATISFACTION

This has been a long time coming.

New King of Technology: Apple Overtakes Microsoft

I have been with Apple from the beginning. Partly because of our company's use for desk top publishing, in which Apple has always excelled, but because it is a happier, friendlier, easier company that still serves its customers.

I have rarely heard a negative word about Apple products or service and never, at any time, the kind of vitriol that MS has elicited.

And yet people still stay on the PC platform and suffer. There is no accounting for it. It used to be compatability but no more.

Anyway. Yay Apple!

Labels: computer, macintosh

BUG OUT

I have been holding my breath a bit.

I got the new disc drive on my iMac a few weeks ago.

I wasn't ready to report complete success because my problems have always been time related. It would run OK for awhile and then "deteriorate".

So far, so good.

The performance is quite astonishingly better than it was.

I am beginning to think that the machine had always had something not quite right going on.

I accepted a few needs to restart or a slowness with shutting down windows.

I had corruptions occur when I knew that John's machine, which is the same but a bit newer, was not having any of this.

I just had a buggy machine.

Now, since the repairs, I have none of this.

It is hard, of course, to isolate the effect of adding RAM from changing to the new disc but I am pretty sure that what I am seeing is an overall operating improvement based on the disc alone.

After all, I had the RAM added and then the machine failed a week later. Hence the disc install.

Things are so fast on the web. Movies play faster. I have not had to restart the machine except for adding updates to the software. No restart to "clean things up".

Happiness is a bugless machine. Also a warm puppy but I already had that.

Labels: computer, macintosh

WHEW BOY IT'S BACK

We went and got the machine, man.

We fired it up in the shop and there was everything. All saved.

Miracle.

My calendar, the bookmarks on my browser, the old emails in the email files.

All there.

Like I said, whew.

One problem is that we had to reopen the accounts and shit with the email and while I can get email I can't send it. Something wrong with the codes.

There is no reason for this to be so complex.

But it is.

So I am getting some help with that.

I can use the laptop and as John says, I don't do all that much email anyhow.

Yes. I do.

First thing I did is make a hard copy of my calendar. God, I worried about that calendar. But everything is OK and will be OK because I now have a hard copy.

The new calendar does not run on the old machine.

Now, onward and upward.

Labels: computer, macintosh

RELIEF IN SIGHT

The MacGallery just called and my machine is ready with a new disc and a successful backup.

I will be getting it back with all my stuff on it.

No need to do it myself.

I am astonished that this is so.

The backup.

I am usually astonished that things do not get done completly or professionally. It is nice to be astonished at something good.

I will be back to more regular blogging with a normal keyboard and all.

Labels: blogging, computer, macintosh