The iPhone Fever

I’ve always had a healthy respect for Apple products, especially after buying my daughter an iPod.  The ease of use of iTunes and the iPod was awesome, and frankly, I think Apple should use this as part of the advertisement.  Not just say it, but show it.

However, when the iPhone came out, I was naturally curious, but pretty steadfast in my decision to stay away from it.  The first one was way deficient in their ability to use it as a work phone.  I didn’t consider a smart phone, I considered it a toy.

Since I am in Sales, and I need a good phone that has more abilities than just texting and taking a few pics and a yahoo mail account, I never figured I would want to have one.  Even when they upgraded the device so it could do corporate e-mail, I was still pretty ambivalent towards it.  I just didn’t get the hype.  Or the fascination.

Then a few people I knew got one and showed it to me and I have to admit, I was a little impressed.  When the new 3GS version came out, I was even more impressed.

I no longer needed to spend 10 bucks a month for a navigation feature on my smartphone.

I could store music on it and sync it up with my Microsoft Sync system in my car and have hands free operation

I would no longer have to carry a pouch filled with CD’s around with me in a my car, which is already filled to the brim with work stuff.

In short, I caught the fever.  The iPhone Fever.

So when I got the change to complete some company training, and get a bonus, and when my old phone decided to get into playing the buggy game, I bought a new 3GS iPhone.

So what do I think about it?

There is a lot to say about the functionality of the phone. There is not so much to say about the battery life.  There isn’t a lot to say about Slow Responding Microsoft in upgrading the Sync system to give full function sync capabilities with the new version of the phone.

But over all, I would have to say, I really like the phone.  I just have to be careful in keeping it charged.

With a 3 megapixel camera, I can use it for pretty decent work pictures.  I don’t care much about the movie function, as I only used it for fun, but now with the high quality of the movies it takes, I could actually use it for work.  The corporate e-mail works great.  I was surprised at how easy the virtual keyboard is to use.  I love the cut and paste ability.  I love the maps feature, the compass feature (which comes in handy when directions tell you to start out North on such and such street), and of course, I love having my music handy all the time.  The safari browser and the way it shows the internet is beyond comparison.  The way you can zoom in and scroll it fantastic.

So, in short, I would recommend the phone.

Now, I only have to wait for Microsoft to get off their butts and provide an update to the Sync system so I can have full sync functionality.  I can still use the Sync system for the phone, which is awesome.  But I can not plug the phone into the USB port and change the phone and play music.  Why?  Because while it seems to play music, you can’t hear anything while it’s plugged up.  You can only stream music by bluetooth.  Which works great by the way, but it kills your battery and you can’t plug it in and stream music.

Now, for the last part.  The apps.  This is one feature of the iPhone that I had high hopes for and I must admit I couldn’t have been more disappointed.  There are 1000’s of apps the commercials say, but most of them are pure junk.  There are a few useful ones out there and some of them are even free, but as of this day, I have not been impressed.  Most of the apps seem to be silly little things, like poking a cow to make it go moo, or a fake taser, or apps that allow you to record your voice and it plays it back in a different kind of voice.  There also seem to be a lot of fart apps.

I hope in the future, more useful apps will come out, but until then…..

~Kev

Apple Macbook big heap of trouble

When I joined the work force out of college, they finally had desktop computers.  In high school, I had taken a computer class and learned on the Apple IIe, you know the one without a hard drive that had that shoe box size floppy disk drive (external of course).  So I was familiar with Apple from then, but the work force was already using DOS machines and Word Perfect as their choice of “typewriter”.  Yes, I said typewriter, because really, that was mostly what everyone used it for.

Several years later, I bought my first computer, and because I knew DOS, I bought one.  The processor was a 286.  It had a 10 MEG hard drive and thought I had hit the big league.  I was SOMEONE.  I had a COMPUTER and a PRINTER and wow, I could fill it up with useless stuff and erase it when the hard drive got to full!  Those were the good ole’ days.

As my career continued, everywhere I worked, they used a PC.  I remember when Windows first came out and I was like, oh man, this is AWESOME.  I was in awe.  The PC had this neat little thing called a “mouse” where you could point and click and start up programs and other wonderful things!  Of course, I went out and bought my own.  A 386 Intel Based PC with Windows 3.1.  Made by Compaq, the sucker was TOP OF THE LINE.  I can’t remember how much memory it had but it had a 320 M hard drive which was UNUSALLY big for that time.  I thought I was in the big leagues before, well now I KNEW I was.  I was SOMEONE greater than before!

Over the years, I have stuck with PC’s, mostly for the reason that that is what I knew.  It was compatible with what I had and at the time, Mac’s where behind the curve.  They only thing they were used for in those days was Desktop Publishing.

But then a major change happened at Apple.  They released a slick new system and a slick new operating system.  The landscape began to change.  Suddenly, a certain type of person HAD to have a Mac, and sneered at Bill Gates, Microsoft, and all of us PC users.  You know the ones I’m talking about, the ones wearing Berets, sat in coffee shops for hours reading or typing away, writing poetry, or taking notes on the artistic things they were into.  Maybe that is a completely unfair description, but hey, this is MY story, so deal.

Over the years, Mac has done some major work.  They came out with the iPod, new Macbooks, and the iPhone.  I could have switched, in fact, the beret wearing people I knew who used Mac’s kept making fun of me for not changing.  But I didn’t feel like learning a new system.  Lazy?  Yeah, so what?  All the companies I have worked for still used PC’s, and so it just made more sense to stick.

Over the last few years, the pressure really increased.  I was beset on all sides, people telling me to MAKE THE SWITCH, you Won’t. Regret. It.  Nope, I would tell them, not me.  I’ll stick to what I knew.  Of course, I suffered just like everyone else with system crashes and other issues that are typical with Microsoft and PC’s.

Then a strange thing happened.  My daughter grew up (and no that wasn’t the strange part) and became one of those Beret wearing, Coffee Shop sitting, Artistic types.  She had a PC and she killed it, and when she did, I started having to deal with the worst thing in the world, a crying teenage daughter, pleading and begging me to buy her an Apple Mac.  I was firm.  I was strong.  I wear the pants in this family and I am a man’s man.  So I told her no.  Then my wife stepped in and to make a long story short, my daughter’s tears of anguish turned into tears of joy when I took her and bought a Macbook.

You can stop laughing at me now for giving in.  YOU try living in a house full of females with all their weird monthly issues, mood changes, and other assorted stuff.  I bet you fold, just like I did.

So, when I announced to my Mac toting, hippie tree hugging, beret wearing, coffee shop sitting friends that I was taking the plunge, FOR MY DAUGHTER, they were so excited they jumped for joy!  They threw me a party!  They bought me a cake!  They ordered fireworks and skywriting planes to mark the event!  Ok, no they didn’t really.  But they did tell me, over and over again, how I would see how much BETTER a Mac was.  I, of course, sneered at them, and mumbled things under my breath that included words such as “fire”, “Aruba, Knife in the back”, “I’m a sucker”.  The rest of the words will remain between me and my brain.

When I got the Macbook home, I started it up, and I will admit I struggled some at first getting the thing going.  To me, this was a piece of alien machinery with alien software.  The type of alien that goes around in saucer ships and have names like Gliximbartumbar, with 10 fingers on each  hand, and a trunk for a nose.  Despite all that, I made it through.  The first hint of unease I got was when I installed the first piece of software and the entire system locked up.  I was actually surprised, because of what everyone had told me.  I called all my Mac friends on the phone and when they picked up, said only “neaner neaner” and hung up.  Ok, not really, but I WANTED to, and that makes all the difference.  I had a stern talk with my daughter, who was 15 at the time, and tried to convince her that because this Mac was so expensive, she had to take extra special care of it.  Of course, being a hormonal 15 year old teenage girl, I got a vapid expression, since really, why would she care what I spent on it?  That’s how they are at that age ( I refuse to confirm or deny that the older ones are the same, for my own safety ).

Things went pretty well for 14 months after buying the Mac.  In the mean time, I was still getting taunts, because I was using a PC, an HP Laptop running Windows Vista.  I won’t even GET INTO the torture I had to endure from my friends.  This HP is older than that Mac and has served me well.  I’ve never had a problem with it, other than when I let my virus subscription run out and got some viruses.  No system crashes, only a few program crashes that were so easy to recover it wasn’t funny.  In fact, I’m writing this on that same laptop, which is till older than PART of that Mac.  And that, my friends, is the problem.

14 months old, and the Mac hard drive FAILED.  I’m telling you, Apple and the Macbook is full of massive FAIL.  I can not even begin to describe the horror.  But that horror got worse when I priced having it replaced, the OS re-installed, and the data from the failed drive recovered.  Let’s just say that the horror equaled around $ 500.00 dollars.  I thought I was getting a joke played on me, that maybe these Mac repair people saw something in me that they could TELL I was a PC user.  I ran to the bathroom and checked, and my wife had not secretly marked me with a PC USER stamp.  The fact was, to get the thing fixed, it was going to cost me way to much money.  I thought about selling my daughter instead, but my wife persuaded me not to ( by smacking me upside the head ).

Well, I’m not a dummy and I have been inside computer before, so I decided to take the plunge.  I would fix it myself by replacing the hard drive.  Which I did.  It wasn’t hard, I’m glad to report, despite the fact all the experts were telling me the wrong information on where the drive was located and how to get it out.  Thanks to my friend Nathan, I got the old drive out and the new one in.  Even as I type this, the new drive is having OS X installed on it.  Now all I have to do is data recovery from the old one and I am not looking to plunking down the $ 100.00 dollars to get it done.  But, to save my sanity and my ears from a wailing 16 year old daughter, I will do it and count myself lucky.

But the point of all this is:  I just don’t get it.  The Mac experience for me has not been all that great.  System crashes and a failed hard drive after only 14 months.  Odd.  I think Apple installs a timer in the thing to force a failure after the warranty runs out.  Ok, I’m sure they don’t but I’m suspicious!  It’s not right ya’ll!

All I can say is that the next time one of you Beret wearing, hippie tree hugging, coffee shop sitting, artistic types start harping the virtues of the Mac over PC, don’t be surprised when I make bull horns, charge you, knock you down, kick dust in your face, bark at you, then sneer with a haughty attitude and tell you to mind you own business.  I’ll stick with my PC thank you.