MacNoob

I have a big problem with my Mac.  I like the way it looks.  I like the way it works [all the time].  I like OS X and the software that runs on it.  The problem I have is that, after using my Mac I don’t want to use Windows machines at all.  Why is that an issue?  I own 4 PCs, my job requires I use two others and administer 120 more.

This is not a recent problem.  It began in October, 2007, the day my MacBook Pro arrived.  Back then I just thought it was because the Mac was new but I’m pretty sure that has worn off by now.  Back then I had a habit of mistakenly pressing [ctrl + c] on my Mac to copy text.  Now I have the problem of pressing [command + v] to paste on my Windows machines.  I truly have crossed over.  Is Apple coding some sort of mind control into OS X?  I never thought I’d live to see the day when sitting down at a PC would be completely distasteful.

This must be what the married guy with four kids feels like after falling for his twenty-something secretary.  I’m still obliged to care for all those PCs but I really used to love doing it.  That’s why I’m in this field.  Yes, I’m one of the lucky few on this earth who turned his hobby into a vocation.  Back to my dilemma.  Of course, my predicament isn’t nearly as dire as the secretary guy’s, but I’m still stuck with all those Windows machines at home and at work.  If I had one-tenth of one percent of Steve Jobs’ money this wouldn’t be a problem at all.  I’d just donate all my PCs to charity and replace them with Macs.  I’m certainly not a pauper, but don’t have near the disposable income to make that sort of wholesale changeover.  I guess I just need to be patient and nibble away at all those Windows machines as attrition dictates.  Where is a good ol’ natural disaster when you need one?…

…hurricane Ike would have been a perfect opportunity for some unfortunate “flood damage”…or maybe…a lightning strike would do it.  I could erect a lightning rod and connect it to my house’s electrical ground.  I’ll need to make sure everything I want to keep is unplugged when the thunderstorms come…

This is silly.  Is my Mac tempting me to commit insurance fraud?  A man can dream, can’t he?  I suppose it’s just going to take me a few years to convert completely.  After all, I collected all those PCs over a period of a few years.  Maybe five years from now they’ll all be just a bad memory.  Perhaps that is a little too harsh.  After all, working on Windows machines has provided me with a good livelihood for quite some time.  Let’s face it, the opportunities for enterprise Mac admins are sparse at best.  It almost sounds silly using the words “enterprise” and “Mac” in the same sentence.  Not that the concept is completely unthinkable, but twenty years ago [when I started]  it was.  For that, you have to tip your hat to Microsoft.  While Apple was busy donating and promoting their product to educational institutions, Microsoft set out to build an enterprise juggernaut that still dominates the corporate landscape today.  And while Apple steadily chips away at Mr. Softie’s market share, they still show no signs of becoming a significant enterprise player or targeting much of their R & D resources toward that end.  Don’t believe me?  Just have a look at Craigslist or Monster and see how many companies are looking for OS X admins.

One ray of hope is the iPhone.  With Exchange support and its ability to be wiped by admins, the iPhone looks like Apple’s first full-fledged attempt to wedge itself into a real chink in Microsoft’s enterprise armor, Windows Mobile.  I know many of my  Treo & Blackberry users would swap to the iPhone in a minute if it were approved by the corporation.  Almost every one of them has asked me if it was possible to do so.  It’s the same with Macs.  People I work with see mine and ask if they can have one too.  More of them are discovering Mac & OS X through friends, family or co-workers and buying their own or hitting me up to spring for one out of my budget. Unfortunately, we employ a couple of mission-critical applications that are Windows-only or I’d be happy to sprinkle a few Macs throughout our network.  The point is, cool is cool, and Apple’s growing market share is showing up in the form of customer pull for IT managers to include Macs in their enterprise plans.  When enough people of appropriate rank within corporate America feel the same way I do about their Macs, some sort of critical mass will be reached, I’ll get to buy and administer more Macs and loving my Mac won’t be such a problem.  Till then, with PC prices in the toilet, it looks like I’ll be anxiously awaiting the next hurricane.  Not really.

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Just because I’m what Macheads call a “switcher”, doesn’t mean I’m any less zealous about my adoration of the machine.  Just because I’ve only owned a Mac for the past 17 months (roughly 6% of its lifespan), my birthday well-wishes shouldn’t be afforded less weight than those of lifelong Apple aficionados.  Quite the contrary.  With Steve Jobs’ leadership of Apple in question, I worry about the future of my newly-adopted platform; especially after viewing several of the multitude of retrospectives spawned by the Mac’s silver anniversary.  Steve Jobs is to Macintosh as Henry Ford was to the Model T.  Like Henry Ford and his affordable car, Steve didn’t invent the personal computer, he made it practical for everyone to own one.  Not by making the least expensive machine, but by conceiving and producing the most usable one. 

The 1984 Mac was the first PC with a mouse, but more importantly the graphical user interface (GUI) it introduced simplified computing to the extent “mere mortals” could do it.  I was a DOS + PCTools user at the time and remember how beautiful the monochrome display on the SE/30 was.  To actually see a finished document on the screen in Mac Writer looking just like it would when printed made me feel extremely deprived when I had to go to work and use Wordstar on my DOS 3 ASCII machine.  That feeling must have been quite widespread given the speed with which Microsoft played “catch up” and released the first version of Windows 20 months later.

Maybe it was because my professional life forced me into the Windows world that I never bought a Mac.  I always admired the machines, but in the early days, work done on a Mac was only transportable to another Mac and working for a multinational corporation standardized on Windows prevented me from considering the possibility.  Today things are very different.  My Mac Office ’08 docs open quite nicely in the Windows version and networking, while not completely “plug and play” is no big hurdle either.  Additionally, as more work moves to the cloud, desktop platforms are becoming less and less relevant.  I am the lone Mac user at a site with 120 Windows machines and I love it (especially when I listen to people worrying about patch Tuesday, the latest spyware or other Windows-centric maladies).  Don’t get me wrong, I have a Windows Vista machine on the desk right next to my Macbook Pro, but it is a machine of last resort for the most part.  Hopefully, some day soon I won’t have any need for it at all but that day isn’t here yet.

Maybe by the Mac’s 30th birthday it won’t make any difference which platform one chooses.

Happy birthday Mac! (and get well soon Steve)

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I really want to buy an Apple desktop. I mean, REALLY! The problem is, an iMac is sort of like a laptop with a stand. By that, I mean there’s nothing user-serviceable except the memory, just like a laptop. The Mac mini is much the same and way underpowered for my needs. Buy what you want or think you’ll ever need, because upgrading a Mini or an iMac is virtually out of the question. That leaves the Mac Pro starting at a whopping $2700, way out of my league. As much as I hate to admit it, I’ve seriously considered a Psystar machine because it offers something Apple doesn’t, an upgradeable OS X platform for under $1000. Maybe I’m showing my PC roots, but for the life of me I can’t understand why Apple can’t provide a user-serviceable chassis for under three grand. I know Apple’s philosophy about providing a seamless and complete user experience, but would it kill them to throw us tinkerers a bone? All this switching to Mac that’s going on may very well peak prematurely as switchers like myself quickly feel trapped by our machines. I’m already starting to feel it with my Macbook Pro. I bought the largest 7200 RPM hard disk Apple offered (160 GB) at the time and I’m starting to feel the pinch. I’m a bit claustrophobic and don’t like feeling as crowded as my 20 gigs of free space makes me feel. With my Dell XPS, upgrading the disk was as simple as removing two set screws and sliding the drive tray out. My Macbook Pro will require a complete disassemble to get to the drive. I’ve viewed the procedure and it’s not for the feint of heart. It’s the same sort of thing for the iMac and Mac Mini. Sure it can be done, but who but the most ardent geeks are willing to do it?

So, instead of a just a $2700 Mac Pro, why doesn’t Apple offer a $1200 Mac Semi-pro or $900 Mac Amateur? You know, something for the rest of us without engineering degrees who want to swap hard disks or video cards occasionally.

The Mac technorati are all aflutter about a new Macbook “Brick” carved from a solid chunk of aluminum, but I’d be more excited if Apple would drop the worthless Mac Mini in favor of a real desktop machine. You know, like the ones Dell, HP, Acer, Gateway and every other computer manufacturer in the world make. I know, I know, I’m supposed to “Think Different”.

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I know its been a while, but things are finally getting back to normal at the MacNoob estate.  Hurricanes are a real pain in the ass!  I’ve spent every spare minute of the last two weeks trying to recover from this storm.  A flooded house takes a bit of effort to correct.  We’re nowhere near done, but all the wet and ruined appliances, furniture, carpet and walls are now hauled off to the local landfill, so we’re just now in a position to start rebuilding what was destroyed.  What the heck, I didn’t have much else to do without an internet connection anyway.  With the return of our cable modem internet service two days ago, our world feels like its spinning in the right direction again.

It is amazing how integral a broadband internet connection is to the MacNoob family’s way of life.  After doing without one for 13 days I can honestly say I’d rather lose television service.  Maybe the MacNoob house is atypical.  After all, our home network is rather extensive for a residence.  The list is: three workstations, four laptops, three networked printers, a PS3 and a DirecTV HR20 DVR all connected with wired gigabit and an 8-port switch, a wireless N router and a wireless G access point.  Not to mention the two iPod Touches, an iPhone and a Blackberry all sporting wi-fi.  And there are only three of us living here!  When everything is fired up that’s 19 nodes!  Sheesh, I am a geek!

The point is, I may be “out there” when it comes to my home network, but I’m certain it won’t take the world long to catch up.  The old cliche about the “internet connected toaster” may have been an exaggeration, but the world is definitely heading that direction.  Sears is selling a refridgerator with a built-in LCD!  How long before they offer a choice of Windows or Linux?  I remember the day I got my first broadband connection at home. It was only eight years ago and sported a whopping 384 Kb down and 128 up, but I thought I had died and gone to heaven.  Now I complain if my download speed drops below 2 Mbit.  I really felt isolated while hurricane Ike damage had my modem’s sync light looping in a constant rapid blink cycle.  No podcasts, no new music, no movies on demand and, worst of all, no blogging and surfing.  Yes, like electricity, what once was a luxury has become one of the bare necessities of life.

Sheesh, I am a geek.

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While listening to the Mac Geek Gab podcast a few days ago, Dave mentioned that his friends at iPhone Alley were interested in hiring writers.  Since “The Alley” is one of my favorite sites, I decided to give it a shot.  Here’s why:

#5
Why not?  I’ve been writing MacNoob for several months now and find I enjoy writing as much as anything I’ve ever done [professionally].

#4
It’s time to move on.  I’m one of the fortunate few who have managed to obtain some level of financial security at an early age and I feel I’ve done everything fun there is to do in my current position.

#3
I’ve dreamed of working virtually (remotely) since I got my first internet connection .  You know, from home, Starbucks or any place my Mac’s battery will allow.

#2
Maybe I’m overly confident, but I think I have a ton of expertise and experience to contribute and writing about it comes easy.  (I’ve had my articles published in three nationally-distributed periodicals.  I also used to write and sell term papers in college to supplement my ridiculous income.)

#1
The iPhone and my Macs are my favorite subjects.  I’m living proof of the “halo” effect.  Since I purchased my first iPod two years ago, I’ve bought nothing but Apple products for all my computing needs.  What could be more ideal than working with things I love?

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Me & Bob Starner

My very best friend of 28+ years, Bob Starner, passed away this weekend losing his battle with cancer.  He took part of me with him.

I’m someone who doesn’t use the term “friend” lightly.  To be counted as a real friend, a person must pass the 2:00 AM test.  If you call or show up on a person’s doorstep at 2:00 AM needing help, knowing you can count on them, then [and only then] can they be counted as a true friend in my book.  Bob was all that to me and more.  Although we were physically separated by 1500 miles for the last 20 years of our lives, there was no person on this earth outside my wife and children that I loved more or felt closer to.  I have no words to express my sorrow.  Please keep Bob’s family in your prayers.

Joe

I’ve posted a photo album of some recent pictures of my dear friend here.