Am I a Mac or a PC? Part 3 of 3: The Arrival

My FedEx tracking habit become quite rampant to the point I was checking it on an hourly basis. The Mac Book Pro had been shipped from China and took what seemed like the longest 4 days of my computing life and then a dark reality was cast upon me. Nashville, TN was the States-side FedEx hub being used which had recently been victimized by torrential rains and horrific flooding all that week. There had been a little red-fonted warning at the top of my tracking data which I had ignored all week until I realized that Nashville was my Mac Book's next stop. Luckily it only sat there for less than 24 hours before departing for Columbus. At around 10am that morning I took my track habit to the next level and made a visit to the building's mail room to inform them I was expecting a “very import” package and if possible for them to please hold it so I can promptly run upstairs to pick it up. By the time I walked down two floors to my desk FedEx sent me an email indicating my package had in fact arrived and within seconds the mail room called my desk to let me know they had my “very important” package in-hand... which meant a quick return trip back upstairs to grab my nice, new, generic brown box from China and give it the football cradle treatment back downstairs.

I got it back to my desk and there it sat... for 90 minutes. My immediate co-workers knew I had been expecting it and kept pestering me as to when I was going to open it like they were kids looking at some sort of Christmas present that they couldn't wait to set their eyes on. I kept telling them "I had work to do before I start playing" and they all thought I was crazy for what I considered exceptional self-control. All the while inside I couldn't wait to tear into the box and crack that bad boy open with the little "good angel" sitting on my shoulder winning out on the "bad angel" keeping me restrained. Around lunch time I decided it was time and started extracting my prize.

Apple's box was much thinner than I had anticipated. The Dell XPS was a pretty thin laptop for all of it's power but was no where near this thin. Upon removing the seal and revealing my new Mac Book I was presented with a very neat and clean aluminum top of a laptop with the iconic Apple logo on it. At this point I couldn't wait just to see that little Apple logo start glowing which was just as iconic as the Apple logo itself in my opinion… but first there were other things to do first like *gasp* glance at the manual. What a foreign concept for someone so technically inclined in the world of computing but I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything which was so important that I may lose sleep and not figure out for days. Luckily that chapter didn't exist in the little black manual. I had already scoped out and discovered a lot of the multitouch gesturing, the click functionality of the touchpad, and the ever-elusive "right-click" while paying a visit to the local Best Buy during a lunch a day ago so I was set there. Time to press power…. *doooooooong*…. we have lift off.

I liked the Apple set up interface much more than the WindowsXP dull and drab first boot-up interface of old. Thankfully Windows 7 strayed form that same boring formula and Apple did the same with a quick little "welcome, who are you", a video while things initialized, and then you were in. Now what in the hell do I do? I had downloaded some apps and utilities over the past couple of weeks in preparation for this moment so I stuck in my thumb drive and started installing them. XCode, Oxygen XML, Open Office, Twitterific, all the necessities. With that being a pretty quick and painless process I decided to start screwing with the power options and System Utilities as I was so accustomed to doing in every new Windows box I had ever owned. There I found the security settings, my background, screwed with Expose, account settings, power schemes, sharing, everything I could. I found the interface to be much more inviting than the standard Windows "classic" control panel options and just as powerful and customizable as well.

After playing with the software for a while I brought my attention back to the Mac Book from a physical perspective again. It was very clean looking with the solid aluminum chassis, the keys felt very sturdy and didn't "jiggle" around of shift when I typed. All of my ports were on the left side of the body, a couple of them like the firewire800 and mini display port were very foreign to me of course. I absolutely LOVED the new power adapter - it was still magnetic like Mac Book Pros I had seen in the past but it no longer protruded straight out of the laptop but instead was contoured to run parallel with the body. The screen was very vivid with its colors though I can see why some reviews may say that it isn't as bright as other laptops. My guess was this had something to do with the advertised 8 hours of battery life which, at this point, I can attest to as long as I keep my usage to web browsing or even XCode believe it or not (the latter surprised me). When viewing some video I did in fact notice a step up in the Mac Book's physical system resources as the fan I didn't even know it had kicked in during some portions of the video… this also started cutting my battery life down to about half. These of course were all first impressions form the first hour of usage which I was very open to having my opinions changed through everyday usage.

Fast forward to today… my opinions haven't swayed much. This thing is a beast when it comes to doing almost anything. Converting Nikon RAW images to JPG was insanely fast to levels I can't even compare even on the XPS or the basement dualcore desktop… INSANE. I've had XCode hang on me once with the only indicator being the fan started to kick in to jet engine proportions and the bottom of the aluminum chassis got very hot which I suppose is both good and bad. Good that the heat was being dissipated properly, bad that "properly" dictated the heat being transferred directly to the tops of my thighs. A quick trip into the Activity Monitor took care of the problem and I was back in business.

The webcam doesn't seem to do as well in low-light as the XPS did but I suppose you can't win them all. Recovering from Sleep Mode is very speedy as well, typically about 5 seconds at most (and that's on the high end). Usage of the firewire800 is ridiculously fast when transferring data to my portable hard drive, though, the eSata speeds I was accustomed to were obviously 3x faster on average. The advantage here, though, is that the firewire drive is powered by its own connection (we can call that battle a push). Even though I love the touchpad I find myself gravitating to my Microsoft USB mouse while I'm seated at a desk or diving into XCode as it is more natural and fluid for me to have an actual right-click. After extensive sessions with the touchpad I have found it frustrating to go back to the XPS as I'm continually finding myself two finger tapping to right click and two finger sliding to scroll up and down. I have always loved the Linux-style scrolling that comes in to play when the mouse is hovering over a window which is not in focus as this leads to what I consider greater productivity since I don't have to constantly bring my windows in and out of focus to read something of reference. There are many other little nuances I like about the Mac Book but frankly don't want to catalog just to get it out there.

What do I miss now with my Mac Book that I had in Windows? Surprisingly very little at this point other than familiarity. The newer window docking gestures in Windows 7 have been slightly missed but I;m getting used to it. ALT-TABbing after minimizing an active window and it not appearing is a battle I'm still fighting but luckily the F3 key handles that for me. One thing I would like start getting into more is utilizing the Terminal window more to see exactly what I can do with it but I suppose there's time.

So the question remains… am I a Mac or a PC? If you gauge the answer based on physical hardware the Mac wins. They have a consistent physical presence from model to model without the multi-branded PC hardware setups (and God awful color schemes) that are sometimes so grotesque that it completely takes away from the fact that the PC is a performance powerhouse. If you gauge it based on price the PC wins hands down. If you look at it from a usability perspective the Mac wins again, though, Windows 7 I feel greatly bridged the gap that Apple (unknowingly to me until now) had built compared to its competitor. The verdict: it's looking more and more like a Mac.... but..... I obviously still have ties back to the PC realm. I suppose we'll see what happens if I ever need to attempt tech support on my own Mac Book Pro. (if such a need even exists). Mac FTW!

Am I a Mac or PC? Part 2 of 3: Apple gets its foot in the door

Throughout college, including a 5 year stint working at Best Buy, I amassed several PCs - three desktops and three laptops. The 366MHz desktop was pushed to the wayside by a newer HP which was also pushed aside by an HP Athlon64, which was ultimately replaced by a dual core 2 beast of a custom build with 8GB of DDR2. On the laptop side there was a Celeron Toshiba Satellite usurped by an AMD HP Pavilion which failed to live longer than 3 years and was ultimately replaced by a Dell Studio XPS which rivaled the processing power of the custom built desktop and had a nice leather accent to boot ;) My house was in PC harmony as it should have been. Fully networked. Directories shared. Remote desktops enabled. I had no idea nor was I prepared for the dynamic shift that was going to be subtly introduced into my computing life.

A month and a half ago I was invited to a local Apple demonstration for corporate developers to showcase how the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad can work in the corporate world. Apparently a division of my company has been itching to be able to leverage the Apple technology for its "coolness" and ease of use appeal with its employees. From a development perspective it's tasty from a technological "coolness" factor. In any case some gears started turning and foreign wheels were put in motion amongst the developer team that was strongly suited and fluent in the PC world like myself. Personally I have obviously never owned a Mac, haven't used one since the first Gulf War in middle school, and have definitely never programmed in Objective-C or even knew where to start.

Fast forward about a month - I'm researching Mac Minis versus Mac Books versus whatever is out there in the Apple world and lightning strikes in the form of my wife picking up the 6 year old Toshiba Satellite, the screen going black, and never powering on again. Wasn't the hard drive, wasn't the RAM, wouldn't even post. It was like the Little Engine Who Could had suddenly run out of water, cracked his block and his tiny Celeron processor was suddenly silenced forever. Suddenly a personal Apple purchase was in play and surprisingly I had spousal approval for the venture. It may have had something to do with the fact that my wife would be getting a gigantic computing upgrade, inheriting the 1 year old Studio XPS with its dual core 2 processing, 4GB of RAM and 1GB of Nvidia love amongst other little bells and whistles.

Going along with the "custody agreement" decided for the Dell and taking into consideration that a laptop was being replaced a quick internal decision was made that a Mac Mini was eliminated from the runnings. The solid body aluminum chassis of the Mac Book Pro was much too alluring to pass up versus its non-Pro counterpart as I like a solid feel to anything I purchase whether it be power tools, laptops, or even a pen. It has to hold up to its eventual beating and not feel like it's going to fall apart. Size does matter as well - going from a 16" Studio XPS to a 13" MBP was easily out of the running officially putting me in the category of spending money I didn't necessarily have and possibly chopping off a limb to the 2" upgrade.

At this point I was in well over my head and was well into the $2200 range so I decided to say "screw it". Give me the i7, the full 8GB of DDR3, the 512MB Nvidia, and the 7200rpm hard drive. Oh, and don't forget the high resolution graphics. If I was going to dive into the Apple pool I was going to dive in head first.... with my wallet close behind it.

I bit the bullet, placed the order, and $2700 later I was transformed into FedEx tracking junkie watching my new Mac Book Pro being built and shipped from... China...? I can't say it surprised me but it caught me slightly off guard. I figured my configuration was somewhat common since Apple's choices were mostly vanilla but so be it. China it is and all I could do was wait.....

Am I a Mac or PC? Part 1 of 3: A History of Me

I'm your prototypical Microsoft guy - started exploring DOS when I was 4 (yes 4) back in 1983 on the original dual 5 1/2" floppy, no hard drive, 8 color, now in the Smithsonian original IBM Personal Computer.

This beast of a machine lasted me through 1994 learning BASIC and Turbo Pascal, scouring local BBS systems on an external Hayes 300baud modem

While the IBM was still in working condition we eventually leaped into the future in the form of a blazing Packard Bell Pentium 1 desktop, Windows for Workgroups 3.11, a single speed CDROM, 256 color monitor and probably an unheard of 20MB of hard drive space. This opened me up to the world of the internet and AOL, the leader in getting people online (my how the times have changed). Porn in the form of images that could be fetched from AOL chat rooms in torrent style fashion. Games like Myst and Doom2 on CD that simply blew the mind, especially since my shiny new 14.4kbps internal modem could call my friend Paul's PC and we could play Doom2 against each other LIVE head to head (id software always had the right idea) hoping that no family member at either house would pick up the phone and taint our modem session.

One of my "fondest" memories was when Windows 95 was released and a classmate had been given a beta copy of it who passed it on to me to install on our now 3 month old Packard Bell. This was my first introduction into the Blue Screen of Death and learning the ins and outs of Windows. After a very intense night of trying to get Win95 to successfully boot on what I then considered a "broken" PC I threw in the towel late that night and attempted to get some sleep trying not to panic that I had completely hosed our $2000 investment. Thankfully the first thing I had done before attempting the upgrade was back up the entire PC on 25 to 30 some floppy disks. Needless to say I spent that Saturday nervously re-installing Windows 3.11 and no one in the house had a clue as to what I had done or what I had gone through in order to get the Packard Bell back in working condition. I seriously never saw Win95 again.

College saw me continuing my PC background in 1998 with the purchase of a generic barebones 366MHz Windows 98 box that I actively tinkered with. 56kbps modem, 8MB graphics card with 16million color graphics, 32x CDROM (still no CD burner), 100-something MB hard drive, and eventual broadband internet. Napster, Lime Wire, Bear Share, IRC and Kazaa lead the pack for downloading music, warez (which introduced me to Visual Studio) and God knows what else before they all became victims to viruses, worms, the RIAA, and the ever-reaching government (again - how the times have changed). I was a PC through and through and simply scoffed at Apple and its Macs which I hadn't used since middle school to type reports and play games during my free period. I had actually dual booted the PC for some time with Red Hat Linux. Apple as a foreign, dirty word that had no place in my little expanding PC world that had become old hat and was obsolete unless you were deep into photo and video editing.

Exiting Facebook: The Big Brother of "Social Networking"

Below was my last post on Big Brother Facebook.....

http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/

Dear Facebook,
This link says it all. Your motive has steeply steered away from actual social networking and shifted directly to data mining with the intent to sell. I was always hesitant to sign up (and held off until mid 2009) because you seemed to be a boring waste of time and ultimately you turned out to be just that... a boring waste of time. While it was sometimes neat to read about friends of the past it is not an *actual* interaction. Close friends that I used to talk to all the time have now had their lives turned into one line blurbs and snapshots, snapshots that can only contain so much feeling but stops right there. No excitement in your voices, no real pain to sympathize with... just a blurb. For that, you have become a one trick pony who's trick became not only quickly old but broken as well when you started selling out your users for the almighty dollar. For that, you, Facebook, and Mark Zuckerberg can go fuck yourselves. Peace.

...and that's about all of Facebook I could take. I remember a couple of years ago when analysts were wondering how Facebook and other social networking sites planned on making money. "Open" Graph and data mining has become their outlet and I want no part of it.