Stray Dog Strut

This is by no means a definitive list or a hard sell

It doesn’t take into account the latest Mac OS, “Leopard”, with all it’s cool new features like Time Machine for backups. I’m still happy with “Tiger” myself, but maybe Leopard will arrive in the form of a joint family Christmas present? *hint hint*

(Score another one for Macs: Mac OS X is significantly cheaper than Windows and comes in only ONE version)

Nor does this post mention the renovated .Mac service, now under the moniker MobileMe, with it’s suite of cool online services and iPhone connectivity. It also doesn’t mention Vista, which, for all intents and purposes, has quite a few nice features. Problem is, we’ve seen them all before

These are just a few of the personal reasons I have formed since going Mac and why I haven’t looked back. Enjoy=)

1) Gorgeous

Although I take exception to the black border around the screen of the new iMacs, the first thing that attracts with a Mac is definitely the look. Macs aren’t the grey box under the desk (unless you count the MacPro ), they’re sleek, futuristic pieces of kit, that you just can’t help but show off. Of course, with nicer looks comes a higher price tag – especially if you prefer black to white – but it’s worth it in the end if you want a machine that doesn’t scream “I’m a computer!!”

The thoughtfulness doesn’t end with the Mac itself either. The box it came packaged in was up there with some of the best designs i’ve seen. Every Mac item treated with care in it’s own little section. There’s a bit of a ritual around the opening of the box, it’s just something special. So special that my box is safely stored for when my Mac needs to move again. Then I can open it all over again=)

2) Stable

This is relative mind, and it’s possible to break any technology if you try hard enough. Can’t say I have the technical background to assess Macs’ real stability either, but in my experience they just ‘feel’ stable. The OS is chunky and what really pleases me is if an application does have a (rare) hiccup, you can easily force quit the app and keep working. I can even force quit Finder (The Mac version of Explorer) and all the apps I have open stay open, the OS doesn’t just kick the bucket. Of course, all technology can have it’s hiccups, but there’s reassurance in the whole Mac package being an Apple product, and it shows. Plus there’s regular, one-click updates (None of that “Installing x of x please wait…”) I haven’t had a single serious problem with Tiger in the year that I’ve had this baby, yet several with Windows *sigh*

3) Free software and decent third party software

Spoilt for choice we are. Macs come with the iLife suite of applications: iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iWeb and iDVD (The newest iLife also comes with MobileMe Gallery for sharing pictures online). The best thing is, they’re all actually pretty good. No 30-day trial or frustratingly limited features. Within a few weeks of getting my Mac I made a wedding DVD for a friend using iDVD – always something of a difficulty on my old PCs thanks to mismatched hardware/limited or expensive software. The software pre-installed on a Mac is designed for the Mac so it works straight out of the box.

Good third party software is subjective, of course, but in my experience I’ve found lots of applications that really feel at home on a Mac. Most of them also take advantage of all the nice drop-shadow and aqua effects of the Mac OS too so they look suitably gorgeous=)

4) Automator

This nice little app deserves a separate mention all of it’s own. Automator brings scripting to the masses with a nice, easy to learn drag and drop approach. No coding experience required (although you can get into that too if you want with AppleScript), Automator lets you create workflows to automate tasks on your computer just by dragging actions together. It’s brilliant! Combine it with iCal – Apple’s calendar program – and you can easily automate any ‘task’ (I highlight the word ‘task’ because Automator’s not just used for housekeeping, you can create all kinds of useful scripts). I’ve currently got one to backup of all my emails and one to play my favourite iTunes playlist as a wake up call in the mornings. I’ve also used Automator for FTP’ing, launching websites and batch processing files. It’s great fun just to combine actions to see what you can come up with.

5) Windows

Yes, Macs can run Windows now and at the time this was the final tipping point for me. You have two choices – using virtualisation software like Parallels Desktop or natively using Boot Camp (Basically dual booting). I’ve gone for the latter because virtualisation software isn’t quite there yet with making full use of the Mac hardware. If graphics aren’t important for what your doing, virtualisation is definately worth a look since I believe you can now drag and drop files from a Windows ‘window’ straight to your Mac and vice versa.

In my case, it’s a slight hassle having to dual boot, but I actually prefer to keep Windows and Tiger separate. Besides, Tiger can access the Windows partition if you format as FAT32 – Just not the other way around which, from a security point of view, suits me fine. To be honest, despite HAVING to use Windows, I try to spend as little time as possible away from Tiger;-)

6) Intuitive

I have to applaud the designers of the OS on this one. Considering the different working methods between Microsoft’s solution and Apple’s, I was pleased to find I didn’t have to so much as look at a manual when I first tried the new OS. Everything is intuitive, the menus are clearly marked and once you unlearn the Windows approach to storing files such as pictures, it just makes sense. Macs are action-oriented, they let you do things, without having to worry about all the techno-babble (no perplexing error messages!!). There’s also a full range of in-built accessibility options such as voice-overs and display settings – something that can be a pain to setup correctly in Windows – and there’s in-built voice commands. You can talk to your Mac as soon as you take it out of the box!

7) Customisable

From the icons right up to the applications themselves, a Mac is geared towards customisation. There’s all the usual wallpaper and screen saver settings (Really cool, there are RSS feed screensavers installed by default), but you can tweak loads of other stuff. A very nice feature is changing icons: it’s as simple as copy and paste.

It Just Works (Real Plug and Play)

Again, the whole system being built by one company helps, but I haven’t yet found a situation where plugging in a device led to me hunting around for a compatible driver. With the exception of my Sony Walkman mp3 (All the more reason to get an iPod), the cameras, scanners, PSPs, USB drives, and tablets i’ve plugged into my Mac have all worked first time. Plus, Macs come with built in iSight cameras and, in the case of the iMac, a handy magnetic remote for controlling Front Row (The Mac’s media centre) and iTunes.

9) Easy installs

It might be a small detail to some but this really impressed me. To install an application you simply mount the image (usually done automatically when you download the application, or when the cd starts up), then just drag the icon of the application into the applications folder. Tiger does the rest and for most apps takes a few seconds. Let me repeat that: A few seconds!! More often than not there’s no need to restart either. It’s so simple, this really rates up there on the intuitiveness of using a Mac. Your average user doesn’t need to worry about complex installations, they just do what should be natural on any system. I don’t know if it was difficult, but this seems like a real coup to me. I really like this approach,
more so because it keeps the apps folder looking nice and clean=)

Of course, not every developer follows Apple’s advice on making a drag and drop app, and some older apps don’t have that functionality. But they just give you an installation window and three clicks later and your done. Another cool feature is .plist files. These are property list files, (aka preferences files) for applications. If something stuffs up in an application, you can usually just delete these to fix it – no need for a full reinstall (Of course, this resets all your saved preferences for that app).

10) Masochism

At the end of the day, I simply derive pleasure from the sound of Habboi’s weekly catchphrase: “Macs Suck!” I simply smile to myself knowingly. You know, strangely, someone once called me “Smug”;-)

Work continues slowly on the new site. I’ve started writing some of the content for the additional pages i’ll be adding to complement the existing blog and i’m knee deep in the template’s innards at the moment. Nothing to show off yet though.

Annoyingly, i’m still having trouble with the Blogger to WordPress conversion. Remember I said that the importer doesn’t import images? Well I found the Blogger Image Import plugin over at Notions which allows you to get around this. It works well except it only works for jpegs really and it puts the images in a convoluted folder structure in the WordPress uploads folder.

I probably could have soldiered on like that but it bugged me. I’m also not sure that it updated all the links correctly as promised – it’s been a while since i tried it. Anyway, to satisfy myself I manually downloaded all the images from my Blogger blog, placing the images into a folder structure like WordPress uses – uploads/year/month – before copying this over to WordPress. It was a monumental effort – nearly 300 images – but I did it. Now i’ve discovered another problem: despite the files being stored in the WordPress Uploads folder, the Media Library can’t see them!

Apparently, the only way the library can see them is if they are uploaded using the built-in WordPress uploader (ie, at the time of writing a post). Since I don’t fancy having to manually import them one by one (something I may have to do), I had another look round for a solution. I found two plugins by Dion Hulse (DD32). Add From Server and dPost Uploads.

Add From Server allows you to copy images from a server into the WP uploads folder, at the same time telling WP to recognise them and show them in the media library. A downside is that it dates them as today’s date. I haven’t actually tried it yet because it has another feature: When you select to copy files already in the uploads folder, it doesn’t copy them but it still creates the links to show them in the gallery AND it dates them based on the folder they were found in – so 2008/11 would yield November 2008. This would be perfect, except it didn’t work for me=(

It has certainly created the linkage to show the images in the media gallery, but it seems to have assigned their urls as the full directory structure of my website (ie from the root folder on the server right down) and the result is broken links in WP. I’m still waiting for a reply to the Q I posted on Dione’s forum so we’ll see how it goes.

His other plugin, dPost Uploads claims to allow you to change the date an image is posted at based on the existing post’s date, rather than just using today’s date. It’s useful if you’re adding an image to an old post. I’ve yet to try it though.

Anyway, if I come up with a solution, you’ll be the first to hear!

We watched Heat tonight, a typical cop thriller with Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer and John Voight. Oh and a young Natalie Portman. It was the usual deal, a flawed hero cop hunting down a flawed criminal. Thing is, like many of these films, I usually end up rooting for the bad guy, despite knowing that Hollywood rarely lets them win (Oops! Sorry to spoil the ending, but the film is like thirteen years old!).

It’s not that I glamorise the bad guys, but I can usually empathise with their aims, despite the controversial stuff they pull to get there. Besides it’s always nice to play the villain, and contrary to what my lecturer said about not being able to play the bad guy in games, I find it REALLY FUN!. In Black & White the first thing I did was fling those needy villagers into the sea..build a boat? Pah! Try swimming- woosh! Also let’s try to forget the countless Sims who’ve starved, drowned, burnt to death, and gone insane with me as a landlord. Or the innocent villages my armies have burned to the ground on our march to victory – well, we can’t have any enemy sympathisers can we? Think nothing of all those poor Mudokons blindly following my lead, or all those helpless inhabitants of Liberty City or Tamriel that i’ve bludgeoned to death for the sake of it (and a few gold coins).

I’m sure there’s many more but you can’t expect me to remember them all, after all it’s hard being an evil mastermind you know?;-)