MacNoob

Daniel Suarez has written a couple of novels that should be on every geek’s reading list. I’ve listened to Leo LaPorte go on and on about these titles for months, but I was afraid to buy them in fear of shirking my other duties to read them.  My fears were well-founded.

If you’re a techie, Daemon and Freedom™ contain the ingredients necessary to push all your geek buttons. Daemon begins as a millionaire computer genius/game developer Matthew Sobel dies of cancer leaving an AI version of himself running loose on the internet to carry out his vision of socioeconomic re-engineering of the world’s power structure. While the tech is a bit futuristic, the setting is present day and very believeable. If you’ve ever played a first-person shooter, you’ll be instantly familiar with the described “darknet” where followers of the deceased Sobel rebuild their crumbling world. Suarez does an excellent job developing the characters while not overdoing the touchy-feely stuff and I found myself very interested in the human side of the story. But let there be no doubt, these books are high-tech action thrillers and the reader is not left wanting death and destruction.

I bought Daemon on a Friday.  By Sunday, I was back on the Whispernet purchasing its sequel, Freedom™. After Daemon I wanted more and Freedom™delivered IN SPADES! Rumor has it, Suarez is working to complete the trilogy. I’ll be first in line.

Hello again folks.  I abandoned this site a couple of years ago (um, EXACTLY two years…How weird is that?) when I decided to start MacTexan.com.  I think that decision was a bit premature.  Turns out, there’s more noobs in the Mac community than ever.  Apple has been selling Macs like Get out of Hell Free tickets.  Seems there’s still some kick left in this site and I’m just the blowhard to get things up and running again.  I’ve learned so much about the Mac since buying my first one in 2006 and I gathered most of my knowledge from sites like this one.  It’s time to give back.

Well, stay tuned.  I’m working on our first comeback tour and will be posted up in a few days.

I listen to a ton of Mac podcasts, read many Mac blogs and visit lots of Mac forums in my quest to become a better Mac user.  One of the issues I’ve always had with the Mac, the Menu Bar, is one of the most touchy subjects one can mention when criticizing OS X. Real fanboys look down their noses at those of us who dare question Apple’s wisdom in locking down this most valuable piece of screen real estate.  If you’re one of those zealots, read no further, I’m about to commit blasphemy of the highest order.
First, I get it.  The whole Mac philosophy revolves around a stable, consistent user experience.  To that end, Apple needs to limit the amount of “tweaking” users can do to their systems.  I also understand that for reasons of efficiency, it makes sense to have a single, dynamic menu system that changes to display the menu of the focused application.  OS X’s menu design saves a ton of screen space when you tend to have many applications open simultaneously.  But what about when I don’t need to save space?  What about when I’m using a 30″ second monitor and it feels like a half-mile hike to mouse back to my laptop display to use a menu function I can’t remember the keyboard shortcut for?  Is it too much to ask for me to be able to move the menu bar to a more handy location?  Would it unbalance the space/time continuum were I to resize or auto-hide the thing?

Send your hate-mail to: bikerfunjoe@mac.com

I received my copy of Aperture 2 from Apple today and could not wait to get it installed.  In doing so I crossed over my self-imposed free disk space threshold of 20 gigs.  I bought the largest 7200 RPM hard disk available when I purchased my Macbook Pro, 160 GB.  At first I was amazed by how lean the whole OS X environment was with regards to disk usage.  Being accustomed to Windows [where bloatware is the norm], I couldn’t believe how much free space I had after installing everything I could think of.  Vista Ultimate on a 30 GB Bootcamp partition, MS Office 2008, my entire music collection, Firefox, Google Earth, Gimp…the list went on and on and I still had over 65 GB free.  Not until I installed Logic Studio 8 did I even concern myself with disk space.  Logic took almost 25 gigs and I installed most of the loop library on an external drive!  So at that point (three months ago) I still had over 35 gigs available.  You know how it is though, freeware, additional music, a few iDVD projects and “disk creep” was becoming a factor.

I really prefer to do “complete” installs of most software because I hate to go digging for a DVD or CD when a feature I want to try is an optional one I didn’t think was necessary at the time.  This Aperture 2 full install left me with less disk space than I’m comfortable with.  Maybe it’s my Windows upbringing, but I like a little more “elbow room” than 20 gigs.  (Can you imagine how stupid that statement would have sounded five years ago?)  It was decision time.  Something had to go!  I decided to do a little investigating, so I rebooted into Vista to see how long it had been since I last used it.  The fact that I didn’t remember how long should have been answer enough.  The first thing Vista told me was that my anti-virus files were out of date.  The last update was in December of 2007!  End of investigation.  I thought, “If I haven’t booted to Windows in over four months, I don’t need it that badly“.  Still, there was an anxious moment of indecisiveness when Disk Utility asked me if I was sure I wanted to delete the Windows partition.  In the end, I took the leap of faith.  No more Windows on my Mac.  I could almost hear Darth Vader saying, “Your transition to the dark side is now complete“.

First, a confession.  I am an input junkie.  The parts of a computer that most people seldom upgrade when purchasing a new machine, the mouse and keyboard, are the items I tend to spend too much money on.  It has always been a mystery to me how some folks can spend over $2000 on a nice computer and settle for the bare-bones $20 mouse and keyboard most manufacturers supply as “standard equipment”.  Think about it, aside from video there is no part of a computer you spend more time interacting with than the keyboard and mouse.  Almost every computer manufacturer offers a very nice upgrade to these devices for just a few dollars when you purchase a new machine and almost no one takes advantage of it.  Gamers are the exception.  Their special “need for speed” often drives them to spend over $200 for input devices that allow them to do custom key and button mapping or may even be specifically built to accommodate their favorite game.  Most “normal” users, on the other hand just need an accurate and comfortable keyboard and mouse to get their jobs done.  If you’re like me, and are very particular about the feel, function and style of their input devices, Logitech’s diNovo Edge is the ultimate keyboard in all three categories.  This sleek beauty’s smoked glass finish and razor thinness will compliment even the most tasteful desktop.  The built-in touchpad, touch-sensitive volume control and programmable function keys make the Edge as functional as it is beautiful.  The best feature of the diNovo Edge though, is its feel.  The keyboard layout is more similar to a laptop than a standard desktop (eg. no number pad) and the feel of the keys’ tactile response reminds me of the best Lenovo models.  It is a real joy to use, the bluetooth setup is a snap and I highly recommend the Edge to anyone willing to spend a little extra to have the very best.  The list price is $200 but I bought mine on-line for less than $140.  At the time of this post it’s on sale at eCost.com for $120!  WORTH EVERY PENNY!

It is a bit disconcerting that Logitech has not seen fit to make a purely Mac version and the Setpoint software they provide for programming and tuning the device is Windows only.  The Edge’s base functionality (touchpad, volume control, etc.) works just fine with my Macbook Pro and the device looks and feels so good I’m willing to put up with the absence of the “trickier” features.  I’d never been a big fan of Logitech keyboards, feeling they spent too much effort on gizmos and not enough on feel, function and style.  The diNovo Edge changed all that.  If Logitech were to make a Mac-specific model there would be no question, but even without Mac support it’s still my favorite keyboard ever.

Maybe I’m dense, but I can’t seem to get network shares, wired or wireless to work consistently in Leopard.  When I was using Tiger everything just worked.  I could connect to network-attached storage, shared folders on other PCs (Windows, Mac or Linux) shared printers, everything.  Leopard is a different animal though.  Pardon the pun.  Sometimes, I double-click on a network share in Finder and I’m connected like normal.  Sometimes though, the shared device doesn’t even show up.  Other times, I can connect, use the share but then it inexplicably disappears.  Every now and then I have to use the Go: Connect to server… menu to manually connect to a share.  Every Windows PC on my network seems fat, dumb and happy.  Vista and XP can see and use everything.  My neighbor still runs Tiger on his Macbook, and it works perfectly on his network and mine.  I’m not completely clueless when it comes to networking, I’m a MCSE, but there is obviously something going on behind the scenes in Leopard that I haven’t figured out yet.  Am I alone?  What about all this “Out of the box useability” Apple braggs about?