Cold storage

Posted on July 21st, 2008 by phiber811, under Publicity, Site News, main.

I haven’t posted recently. My usual random postings and the tech support series kinda came to a grinding halt. Up until now, I’ve not said why. So, here’s why.

I have a new job. I’d bore you with all the details of who, what, when, where, and why, but I’m posting from my iPod touch, and I don’t feel like boring you.

Anyway, you’re probably wondering why a new job would affect my ability to post. Well, that job is with Apple. Given that, there will be a lot more that I can’t talk about as opposed to what I can talk about. And quite frankly, I’m not going to jeapordize my job by blogging about it.

Therefore, until such time as I deem otherwise, MYM is going silent. I’ll still post about general life stuff and other geeky stuff over at my personal blog at mygeeklife.com, so check that out if you like.

As I write this, I realize how hard this is. MYM has existed since 2003, when I had the idea in the shower one morning. It’s been the record and sometimes the catalyst for my modding pursuits, and a decent chunk of my experience with wordpress. It’s been a constant, an adventure, and one of the ways I defined my little piece of the mac universe. But, one must pay heed to reality.

My deepest thanks to everyone who’s read, posted, commented, linked, loved, hated, flamed, apprecieated, and noticed my stuff.

Thanks to Tom Bridge, a true friend I’d have never made if not for mym.

My thanks to Macslash, who never hesitated to link to me and publish my stuff.

My thanks to Washington Apple Pi, who always put up with us at the yard sales.

My thanks to Macworld Magazine and Cyrus Farivar, who published the NecroMac.

Evan Keeling for 17 years of friendship, and all your invaluable help with the Necros, and Pimp My Mac. You, sir, rule.

Anthony, the Jacobs, and Mr. Whitlock of MacMod.com. Macmod, painted iBooks, and vampire dolphins. It’s all been more fun than I ever imagined. I never thought I’d do my own podcast series. Serious awesome.

Barb & Dave. You never really complained all that much about the garage, cause you loved what I was doing. It meant the world to me.

LeAnne. Yellow and white. Only for you.

Mikey-San. For naming it the pimpty-400.

And on that note, I encourage you all to check out the wordpress app for iPhone/iPod Touch. It really is awesome.

Thanks again,

John Hart
Space Monkey Alpha
ModYourMac.com

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Those who cant research, shouldnt write tech articles.

Posted on June 24th, 2008 by phiber811, under main.

Wow. Just…wow. TheStreet.com has an article written by a guy named Jonathan Blum. In this article he espouses the the many awesome abilities and capabilities of Automator. However, in paragraph two, he tells us point blank, that he didnt do his research, and that he has little idea what he’s talking about. And I quote,

“This piece of code, which Apple describes as a “personal automation assistant,” is part of the new Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac (starting at $400) suite of office software.”

Hello? McFly? For the love of butter. Do some research. Let me make this abundantly clear. In October of 1993, apple released a scripting language called AppleScript that was the outgrowth of their previous product, HyperCard. Then, in April of 2005, Apple shipped Mac OS 10.4. Included with 10.4, was an application called Automator. Automator is designed to take common actions, that are pre-defined, and then let you build actions that can play out, in sequence. Its basically a simplified plug and play building block kit for AppleScript. Was it devised, written, developed, tested and released in any way by Microsoft? Nope. 100% Apple.

Please, Mr. Blum, learn to read. If you’d done even the most basic research, you’d have pulled up the “get info” window on the Automator app, and seen that its Copyright 2004-2007, Apple Computer. What does this mean? It means that Microsoft had nothing to do with it! Two seconds, and you’d have known this. Pay attention.

As a caveat though, I will offer this. The “full version” of office comes with some Automator actions. Now, to say that the Student and Home edition isnt a full version, given no automator, is kind of stupid, but still. To think that because Office came with automator actions, means Automator is an MS app, thats silly. Thats like saying that because my U2 edition iPod came with U2 songs, Bono made it for me. Uh, no.

When I put something up on MYM, I look shit up. I check stuff in order to make sure I’m not misstating something, and that I’m not wrong. And this is my small mac nerdery blog. Blum’s article got published on The Street, which has some decent readership. I guess that when it comes to technology writing, fact checking is optional these days.

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WWDC Keynote and pundit thoughts.

Posted on June 11th, 2008 by phiber811, under John, main.

Within the Mac Modding community, and the Mac Nerd news community I’ve read several articles so far that were slamming the WWDC keynote. Its run the gamut from people being pissed that Apple has “forgotten the Mac,” to people complaining about there not being enough about Mac OSX, to the iPod getting left out. Oh, and there was lambasting over there not being “one more thing,” the fact that Mac OS 10.6 is called “snow leopard” and so on. In essence, the sentiment was stated as feeling ripped off.

My reply to all of this is simple. Quit whining, grow up, and get over it.

Allow me to elaborate. Steve Jobs promised you round about nothing. Nada. Zilch. Steve was in no way required to even have a keynote speech. He’s not obligated to give you “one more thing,” nor is he required to dedicate any of his time on stage to anything other than that which he wants to. Hell, the man could come out with a banjo and sing two hours of John denver tunes rewritten to be about AppleScript, and it would be entirely his prerogative.

So what if WWDC’s keynote was all about the iphone. Its only recently that WWDC has warranted any such thing. With the amount of public darling that Apple has to contend with, steve jobs farts in a stiff wind, and the nerd news machine is trying to figure out what it means. Hello? Maybe he just farted.

Now, lets address that which did and didn’t happen at the keynote, and my thoughts as to why.

Apple had a sold out venue for WWDC this year. Thats the first time ever. Let me say that again. For the first time in history, apple has sold out the World Wide Developers Conference. What does that tell you about development for Apple hardware and software? That we’ve got more devs working third party than ever before. That alone is impressive.

Then lets notice that Apple had separate tracks for the desktop Mac OS and the iPhone OS. Both Mac OSX, but unique to their hardware. Notice that Apple has without telling the entire world, gone and turned OSX into a legitimate portable OS that people WANT to develop for. Thats impressive as well.

So, why was the Keynote all about the iPhone? It wasn’t. It was about software development for the version of Mac OSX that the iPhone runs. So too with the iPod Touch. Why was it all about showing off software development? Big hint. They keynote was at WWDC! It was a keynote for developers! Not for the nerd news, and not for the average joe consumer. Sure, they announced the iPhone and MobileMe. They knew it would give the end users something to talk about. But the majority about mobile OS development tells the developers that Apple is serious about this as a platform. It tells the public that there are amazing things in store. And by doing a developer oriented keynote, it tells the nerd news that Apple will not put on a big show and cater to “what the peoples want” in order to get headlines. They’re going to gear towards the correct audience.

So, why didn’t Apple talk about 10.6 very much? Because they didn’t want to. What have they got up their sleeves? They don’t have to tell you. They can do whatever they want. And if history is any indicator, what they told us on Monday is barely the tip of the iceberg.

Now, lets address Snow Leopard. What’s in a name? In this case, very little. The cat names were Apple internal project designations. Apple has always used names like this on an internal scale. However, the nerd news picked up on “tiger” and “leopard” and such, and the names stuck. And as far as Snow Leopard? Okay. Sure. Current Mac OS is Leopard. Many people also call it Space Kitty because of the default graphics. I’d guess that would make Snow Leopard “Frozen Space Kitty.” And, for the record, if you think Snow Leopard is bad, lets take a moment to remember some other internal apple product names, that are a hell of a lot worse.

Mac OS 8.6: Horatio
Mac OS10.2.7 for the PMac G5: Smeagol
Quicktime Early Dev: Road Pizza
iWork 07: Garlic
PMac 6100: Piltdown Man
Pbook 3400C: Hooper
newton Messagepad keyboard: Bazooka
Apple OneScanner: Moosehead

And thats just a couple. Many times, devices got names like Q98 or M68. The fact that apple cares enough to give us a cat to call the OS is pure icing, since other than being named after a cat, it’ll more realistically be called Mac OS X 10.6. To wit, quit whining about cat names.

Finally, lets roll the rest of it together. The rest of it being that there were no new machines other than the iphone, nothing got speed bumped or entirely redesigned, the ipod didn’t get any real stage time, etc. In order of my listing:

No, Apple did not promise you any new boxes. They dropped the MacBook Air on you in January at MWSF, a Consumer and corporate trade show, which was in fact, the correct venue to do so. Also, during the 2008 calendar year, they’ve updated the Xserve, the MacPro, the MacBook, and the iMac. They also released an N-Compliant Airport Express. So far, I see plenty of of updating and new product movement. Sure, its not high profile, but apple is not required to make everything a high profile event.

No, nothing got speed bumped, they just hit up the iMac’s recently. Currently the product line is pretty well diverse, so mucking about with it would have been more of a hassle than not. They’ll get around to it in their own sweet time. Good things come to those who wait. Be patient and Apple will bring the Awesome.

The poor iPod. Its so lonely in iPod land. No mention at all. Whatever. In first quarter 08 financials, apple noted that they had sold 22,121,000 ipods during the quarter. for second quarter, their numbers were 10,644,000. Thats 32,765,000. Yes, thats almost 33 million ipods. Let that sink in. 33 million. That works out to pretty much an ipod for every man woman and child in Canada. Its 3 million shy of an ipod for every man, woman and child in California, in 2 fiscal quarters.

Now, the last time I checked, Companies always put money into development, but they don’t start heavily revising their product line until their current product hits market saturation and sales begin to decline. Then they hit the market with a revised product line, and the cycle starts over. Bearing that in mind, ipod sales are pretty strong. People like and want ipods. Therefore, since the product line isn’t broken, there’s no need to fix it.

Now also bear in mind that the WWDC Keynote figured heavily in terms of software development for their portable device OS. Maybe I missed it but that includes the iPod touch. And if you think that Apple isn’t planning to work more of the iphone/touch features into the rest of the iPod product line over time, you’re not paying attention. The WWDC Keynote was all about software and OS development for the iPhone and the iPod.

Now, bearing all this in mind, Steve’s keynote speech makes perfect sense to me. It contained targeted info, for a targeted audience, with candy for the kids sprinkled in here and there. Was I disappointed? No. Did I get what I expected? Yes. Was it impressive? I thought so.

And yes, before I forget, Mobile Me. Watch that space. Closely. Carefully. Pay attention. Apple has. Google’s online features? Microsoft’s talk of web based subscription based applications? The proliferation of web based email, the decentralization of data across multiple machines and devices? Having all of your data be cohesive across those multiple devices? Yes. Apple’s been paying attention. Lots of attention. And they’ve got a master plan for keeping you organized, on the go, and connected. This isn’t the .mac of current, or the iTools of old. Apple has a vision of the future, and they’re just starting to give us a taste. MobileMe? Cant wait, roll over my .mac account now. Show me what I’ve been missing, and give me a reason to love what you’ve got to offer. Go ahead Apple, win me over with cold filtered awesomeness.

In short, if you hated the keynote, and felt ripped off, then you’re most likely in the category of people it wasn’t targeted at. if you saw Steve “Bring The Awesome” and the awesome wasn’t the iPhone, then you’re totally in the keynote crosshairs. Not that this will stop a million tech writers from filing a million articles about “what the new ipod means.” It wont. It just means that Apple is still as good as ever at hiding things in plain sight.

Pay attention to the future. Steve showed you on Monday. It may not be here right now, and it may not be a phone, but its coming. And we’ll see it soon enough.

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ModYourMac.com Tech Support Series Episode One. Should I buy Applecare?

Posted on June 11th, 2008 by phiber811, under John, Tech Support Series, main.

You just dropped anywhere from $599 to upwards of $18000 on a new Mac. Or you dropped anywhere from $149 to $499 on an iPod. Regardless of whether you purchased on line, in an Apple Retail Store, or from an Apple Specialist, a human being or a website offered to sell you AppleCare. You were quoted a price ranging between $39 and $349, depending on the device in question. Depending on the device, and your wallet, that can be a pretty sizable chunk of change. So, what is Applecare? Why do you need it? Why should you buy it? And why is everyone trying to sell it to you?

Many would typically categorize AppleCare as a service contract. However, its a bit different. Instead of locking you into taking your machine one place, and having to have it serviced by one company, or selling you extended warranties that you’ll probably never use, Apple capitalizes on the simple fact that they service all their own hardware. Yes, you read that right. When your Apple technology is repaired, it is repaired by either Apple, or an Apple Authorized Service Provider. This could be in the Apple Retail Store, or at a 3rd party Apple Specialist. Regardless, what this means is that an Apple Certified Macintosh Technician (ACMT) will be diagnosing, repairing and testing your hardware. Kinda nice to know that its not being done by some chump, right?

Given this, Apple knows that your machine will be repaired by their authorized people. Since you’re already going to go to them in some form for service, they’re willing to sell you piece of mind. Does that catch you off guard a little? The concept of purchasing an intangible? It shouldn’t. When we buy a car, we’re always interested in the warranty. 3 years, 30,000 miles. 5 years, 50,000 miles. 10 years, 100,000 miles. Bumper to bumper, power train, etc. Warranties are important. They give us piece of mind that if our expensive car breaks through no fault of our own, the manufacturer will repair it. What a novel idea!

Big surprise, Apple does the same thing too. Your new device comes with a standard one-year warranty against manufacturer defects and failures. Just the same as most other big ticket items you buy. But here’s where AppleCare shines. For that nominal fee, you can extend your one year warranty to two years for the iPod line, and three years for your computer purchase. Simply put, your warranty just got longer.

So, why is this necessary, good, and so on? Simple. You just spent money on an expensive piece of technology. You bought and Apple device, so you’re expecting quality. But, sometimes things fail. Its inherent in electronics. And wouldn’t you expect to keep that iPod or MacBook Pro for more than oh, a year? Say, two, or three at least? One should hope. So why arent you protecting that piece of technology like the expensive jewel that it is? As any and all Apple tech’s will tell you, you should. In fact, we’ll beg you. If you haven’t bought AppleCare and you come in for a repair in your first year of warranty, we’ll gladly tell you what that repair would have cost out of warranty, in order to illustrate the value.

For example. You drop $2499 on a MacBook Pro. Its an amazing machine. AppleCare is $350. Now, in your second year of use, the video chipset fails. If you have AppleCare, getting your machine will cost you nothing. Apple will replace your Logic Board and cover the labor for free. Why? Because you bought AppleCare. But, what if you didnt? Well, you can expect that a replacement logic board will run you between $500-$800, and you’re looking at being charged between $100-$125 in labor from your service provider. Do the math. even at its cheapest, you’ve already justified the cost of AppleCare by $150.

Now bear in mind that the aforementioned scenario is very illustrative in terms of cost. But if you think logic boards never fail, hard drives never die, screens never lose their backlight, and DVD drives never stop burning or spinning, then you’re in for a rude awakening.

In short, AppleCare is a repair guarantee. If your machine fails through no act of negligence, misuse, abuse, or act of god, Apple will repair it at no cost to you, because you bought AppleCare. But dont think for a second that Apple is doing this to be nice to you. Just like you’re buying piece of mind with your AppleCare purchase, Apple is hedging their bets that you wont ever use it. They’re hoping against hope that you’re machine runs perfectly from day one, until you replace it, and/or the warranty expires. Why? because if it does, they’ve just made between $59-$349 off you without lifting a finger. Put simply, its free money to them. And if the majority of people buy AppleCare and never use it, Apple still comes out ahead in terms of the people who do. Its financially sound on their end, and proactive on your end.

So, with all of this said, please buy your AppleCare. You can purchase AppleCare any time within the first 364 days of ownership of your device. It gives you the piece of mind to know that if something happens, you’re covered. It also means that when you come in for repair, we can smile at you from behind the service counter and tell you that parts and labor are covered and not to worry, rather than telling you its going to cost several hundred dollars. Believe me, we’d much rather bill apple, than bill you.

(John Hart is an Apple Certified Macintosh Technician since 2001. He’s worked for Apple Specialists for the entirety of his professional career. He has repaired and worked on every Macintosh model shipped in the last ten years, and many beyond the last decade.)

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Foiled Again.

Posted on May 20th, 2008 by phiber811, under main.

This is a little note, just for the comment spammers. No, I dont mean people who write idiotic things in comment to posts. I mean those morons who post 300 links to porn or online poker, or random garbage in cyrillic, over and over again.

YOU FAIL.

Let me elaborate. My comment system screens all comments. it tags those that are obviously spam, and then asks for approval of all non spam comments. spam comments are deleted automatically. I just noticed this morning that the spam system has delete 9 thousand spam comments in the last couple months. Ye Gods. Seriously, spammers, take a hint. Your comments arent getting through. They are not going to, cannot, will not, and never will get through. You are wasting your time. Move on to someone else’s website. You’re going to get no click-thru luck with my shit. Beat it.

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