Category: Technology

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Hoo boy! The Follies continue

I’ve been busy.

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Turns out my computer was dying a slow graceful death. I’ve seen this before with Apple Machines. I don’t know if it’s by design, or I’m just damn lucky, but I’ve had machines that developed serious problems continue to operate when by rights they should have folded.

My computer had been glitchy and getting glitchier but I figured it was something I’d done during one of my forays into writing code. I’m a terrible hack and it’s a wonder that my code doesn’t cause machines to burst into flame. 

(I’ve actually seen that; a machine bursting into flame, but it wasn’t due to my poor coding skills. Another story for another time.)

My computer told me it was having problems when the camera failed.  I probably wouldn’t have noticed for a long time except that I wanted to make a FaceTime call and couldn’t.  As I investigated I came to the conclusion that whatever the problem was, it was something that I couldn’t fix without help.

This led to the call to Apple. During that call, I discovered that the internal diagnostics were apparently corrupted and the Apple support person said I needed to return my baby to the Mother Ship.  The internal diagnostics are part of the firmware of the machine. If they’re not available, it suggests that something really bad has happened to the firmware which means it’s sort of amazing that the computer is still booting or running.

This unexpected turn of events led to a mad dash to backup everything, and finish then publish some things I’ve been working on riky-fuckin-tick.

Which explains my lack of posting. I’m writing this post on my iPad. My computer is expected back sometime next week.

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^&*%@&^% iTunes

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I have a love – hate relationship with iTunes, the application running on my computer, not the store.

Mostly I think it’s a hate relationship but I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

When iTunes works I’m happy with it although I’ll admit in the most recent iterations I’ve become very distrustful of the application and am more likely to listen to music from my iPad or iPhone.

Distrustful? Why you ask?

I fully expect iTunes to crash at least once, if not two or three times a day depending on what I’m doing. Three times if I’m downloading a video from the cloud.

If it were just the application crashing I’d probably be ok with it. But it has a very nasty habit of taking my entire system down.  First iTunes becomes unresponsive, but if you’re listening to music you might not notice because it’s continuing to play.

You’ll find out though when you try to save a file in another application, or try to open a webpage, or another application or file. Then and only then will you realize just how well and truly fucked you are.

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In my case, to regain control, I have to disconnect the USB, and External monitor. Then I have to pull the laptop from it’s cradle, then I have to press and hold the power button.

I shouldn’t have to do all this but by the time you notice symptoms, the OS is so corrupt and the CPUs are so busy that they’re no longer processing any user input.

Then the computer informs me that I shut it down because of a crash and asks do I want to reopen the applications that were running? UHHH NO! Since that’s how we came to be in this situation in the first place.

After the reboot things are usually pretty normal and it’s only very rarely that I have lingering issues.

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Sunday is a case in point.

iTunes was up, I’d been syncing my iPad and iPhone then I was chatting with a friend on the phone, and at some point asked my computer to do something.

Locked up! Zero response.

Aww shit! How much of what I was working on got saved? Doesn’t matter… The reboot is inevitable, might as well press the button.

When the system came back, it still wasn’t right, Four reboots, a permissions repair, and a trip through recovery disk, and safe boot later. My computer came back mostly normal.

But then again, maybe not.

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You read it here first!

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Slightly over a year ago, I wrote a blog piece explaining that Adobe was going to a subscription model, and why I personally was uncomfortable with that model.

You can read the original piece here.

Yesterday, Adobe’s cloud blew up.

I was blissfully unaware because I have only local copies of Creative Suite and Lightroom. I haven’t signed up for the subscription services and don’t use Adobe’s Cloud.

The chatter on the net was that lots of people couldn’t work because the Adobe Cloud service couldn’t log them in. This single point of failure, resulted in their software being disabled.

I never anticipated that as a failure mechanism. I honestly expected a failure to occur with the download of the application or it’s updates.

In the original piece I did question what happened when the application “Phoned Home”

Does the software degrade? Or does the software continue to work until the next time it phones the mother ship then self destruct?

I’ve got my answer. Without verification, the software stops working altogether. NICE!

I’m glad I didn’t drink the kool-aid. I’ll hang onto my local copies of Creative Suite and never connect any of the programs contained therein to Adobe’s Cloud.

I’m very content having software that works because my license key is local.

I do wonder if it’s time for me to start looking hard at other alternatives to Adobe.

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Another one bites the dust…

NewImage.pngMy Aunt received an iPad today.

This is to replace the samsung Galaxy Tablet she’d been struggling with.

All the lady wanted to do was print some of her emails occasionally. And with the addition of a new printer AND 12.99 piece of software she could more or less, from the Galaxy.

NewImage.pngI say “More or Less,” as long as she remembered how to access the software and waited long enough for the software to wake up the printer. Then remembered not to send the item to be printed several times because of the time it took for the Samsung OS to be overridden by the $12 piece of software.

Part of the software’s function is to allow the Galaxy to see that the printer was in fact ready, and had been available the whole time.

NewImage.pngApparently, she was overjoyed when she asked the iPad to print something. And it DID without her having to fiddle with anything.

I’m unimpressed with the Samsung tablets just due to the experience I had with hers.

Android is an open OS and it’s a smart system. What Samsung did to the Android OS as they implemented it in the Galaxy Tablet is a crime.

NewImage.pngI can see making changes to the OS that are specific to the hardware, the OS is running on.

I can’t see purposely limiting basic functionality in the hopes that you’ll force customers to buy your printers. Yes! I call printing basic functionality.

Arguably Apple engages in a similar closed system with FaceTime, AirDrop, and a number of other features. I recall that Apple took it in the shorts with the first generation iPad because it wouldn’t print.

Unknown.jpegI also recall that 1 or 2 IOS updates fixed that deficiency because people were flat out pissed off.

I wish FaceTime could interface with Skype so that I didn’t have to have two pieces of software that did the same thing on my systems. I wish AirDrop and Bluetooth file sharing worked across devices regardless of the OS.

I’m a big believer in choosing a machine because I like its specs, looks, and comfort rather than what OS it runs.

Seamless connectivity is one of those things I believe in.

I ought to be able to make a video call from my iPhone to a friends android.

I should be able to do this WITHOUT having to turn on Skype, determine if the person I wanted to talk to is online. Text them if they’re not online, telling them I’d like to talk to them, then wait for their Skype call.

After all of that, hell it’s easier to just call ’em on the phone and burn cellular minutes.

Apple, with FaceTime has in fact made calling another Apple customer as simple as clicking on the video camera icon and the FaceTime application doesn’t have to be running at the receiving end. The new FaceTime VoIP feature is very nice too.

I video chat to my Apple enabled friends a lot more than my Skype or Google Hangout friends, precisely because of the seamless integration.

Seamless, that’s what I want and, as it turns out that’s all my retired parents and Aunt want too.

Before you write me off as another Apple fan.

I’ve worked with and owned PCs for years. I spent the last five years dealing with Blackberries and Androids. I’ve used Skype on the Android, I even thought that Google was going to make a unifying seamless application that would allow the user to call, or video chat, or use VoIP.

They do kind of, as long as you’re running their application in the background, and it hasn’t crashed, and you have a Google account.

So I know how that stuff works and how it doesn’t, especially if you’re running on limited internal memory on your device. When it works, it works pretty well.

However, the Apple solution works better.

That’s why I’m overjoyed that my Aunt has an iPad.

I’m hoping that in short order she’s going to have an iPhone too. I like the thought that she can walk into any Apple Store and get assistance. Unlike the situation where she walks into an AT&T store and is lied to or cheated, or “up-sold” to something she has no use for, but will have to pay for anyway.

I’m also jazzed that my Mom and Aunt will be chatting face to face more often.

After all, the technology was designed to bring us together, wasn’t it?

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Pity the poor Microsoft Software Engineers.

th2TKQPARXI’ve been transitioning from Windows XP. I didn’t use it very much anymore, but I decided to move to Windows 7.

I know, lots of you out there know I like Mac systems.

Hey how can you go wrong with a Mac?  At it’s core it’s running BSD UNIX. You can even set the system up to just present you with a command prompt.

VMware Fusion allows you to run practically any other operating system you’d like on your Mac. Red Hat Linux? No problem. Windows? Which version would you like?

Mind you, it’s not like I have Windows running all the time. But I have some applications that don’t have Mac equivalents. Those applications are important to me, so it’s worth it to me to have the option to run Windows.

Recently, I converted my 32bit Windows 7 from my old netbook to a Fusion Virtual machine. It worked OK but was so large (40 GB) that I found myself rethinking the merits of keeping Windows around.

After tinkering for a couple of weeks off & on, trying to trim the size, I was about to chuck it and keep using “Old Faithful” (My Windows XP) until it became useless or I no longer needed Windows.

Then I happened to notice Amazon was selling copies of Win 7 Professional 64 bit at a very reasonable price. “Hummm, I said to myself, that could be a solution to the problem.”

After some research and soul searching I ponied up the cash to Amazon. Yesterday I received my shiny new Windows 7 disk. Less than one hour later I had a working version of Windows 7 Professional.

The Win 7 that I’d transferred from my netbook to Fusion was 32 bit and slow. It was what Microsoft called Windows 7 Home, I’d upgraded it to Windows 7 Home Premium and even then I wasn’t impressed. I couldn’t back up to my network drives. Windows contains a backup utility, but it was crippled in the Home edition so that it would only backup to DVD or some kind of physically attached storage.

Sorta makes the backup utility useless and meant that I didn’t have a backup of the netbook. Sound familiar?

After seeing what Windows 7 Professional is like I realized what Microsoft had done and that’s when I felt compassion for the Microsoft engineers.

The software developers created a very nice operating system with Windows 7.

It’s obvious that they worked hard and tried to correct issues that people had complained about with previous versions of Windows. At the same time, they clearly worked hard to advance user convenience and make a robust feature rich system.

They succeeded! Dare I say it, Windows 7 Pro is actually pleasurable to use.

That will get me excommunicated from the Mac world!

thV76JZMNHIn the case of Windows 7, I think what we have here is a case of marketing run amok.

There appear to be no less than 4 different versions of the OS.

I remember looking at the versions when I got the netbook and thinking really? There were all these versions and they all had different price points. ALL EXPENSIVE! and it was unclear what you got from one version versus the next version.

The average user doesn’t give a damn. But their experience with the OS is unsatisfying when they find they can’t change their desktop backgrounds, or that they can’t backup to their network drive unless they upgrade. 

It feels like Microsoft is nickel dimeing them to death for simple and realistically expected features. (This is especially true when Apple distributes a fine robust operating system for $20 or as they’ve done most recently for FREE.)

The software engineers probably built two versions of Windows 7, a 32 bit and a 64 bit version. They probably built some ad-on packs that made the security more robust for corporate America.

They tested it and called it good. Then marketing came along and said “It’s nice but we’d like to charge for features that the ‘Average’ user will never use. so we’re going to need you to remove all this nice stuff and create a Home user edition.”

thAA1L8H7OThat’s when the butchering began.

Think of it like this, You’re lying on the operating table and the doctor has just finished surgery for some illness. Then the accounting people from the hospital come in and tell him to remove one of your kidneys, one of your lungs, perhaps one of your testicles or ovaries, and oh, one eye. After all they’ll preserve these things and should you decide you really need them, they’ll charge you to put them back in.

I’m sure that the Software engineers were pretty bummed out. There’s nothing worse than having to butcher your creation in the name of dollars. Especially when the changes you’ve been told to make are tantamount to hacking the shit out of it. (Interesting side note, The number of security fixes for Win 7 Pro, is significantly less than for Win7 Home Premium.)

thH2BFDT2SNow that I’m using a version of the OS that is probably close to what the engineers intended I’m actually impressed.

I’m glad I got a copy of Windows 7 Professional to replace my old Windows XP. Hopefully, I’ll get 6 or 7 years out of this version.

It also occurs to me that in this age of bring your own equipment, I’ll potentially have an OS that will work just fine if I end up at a company that does the BYOE thing.

The other surprising thing was that this installation of Windows only takes 12GB. I’m happy, it’s fast, small, and really a pleasure to work with.

Oh, by the way, The VMware folks produce a product that is absolutely awesome. If you’ve got a Mac and need to run Windows, buy their product. If you’re thinking of buying a Mac but are afraid of leaving Windows, VMware has you covered and their product is worth the price.

Microsoft, you really should reconsider the complications you’re creating. Have a couple of Operating Systems NOT 90! It will make it easier for you to maintain, and it will make it easier for us to decide what we’re willing to buy.

Just Sayin…