The two stores we didn't hit yesterday:
FlatIron Crossing
Boulder
The Denver Apple Stores
Before we left Phoenix, Ben and I visited all of the Apple Stores in the Phoenix metro area to get a photo of each (it's a Geek thing). We had nothing scheduled or pressing that we had to do today, and wanting to decompress a bit from the events of the past week, decided to do the same thing now that we're in Denver. We didn't make it to all the stores today, but we made a decent showing.
Aspen Grove
Park Meadows Mall
Cherry Creek Shopping Center
We'll hit the remaining two over the weekend.
I am continually amazed at how good the pictures are that I get from the Sony DSC-W330 Point-and-Shoot camera that Ben got me for Christmas last year. Granted, they don't have the detail that I get with my DSLR (at least not when blown up), but for posting to the internet, they're great. And the fact that the camera fits in a pocket makes it all the better.
Disappointed
I've been wanting to get a USB hub to use with my Mac while I'm at work. It's not something I absolutely needed, but between my cell modem, external hard drive, various thumb drives, and printer, I often ran out of available ports. About six weeks ago while trawling the interwebs I ran across this and had to get one. I got my order in the day before Apple sicced its lawyers on the manufacturer and since I never received a confirmation email I was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to receive it. So imagine my surprise when it showed up in my mailbox last Friday.
It's understandable while Apple went after the company. It looks (right down to the packaging) like something Apple would make—if they made stuff like this. But despite the superficial resemblance to a genuine Apple product, once I got it out of the box it was obvious this was not made by Cupertino.
The fit and finish was a bit off. The small USB cable that came with it had bits of excess plastic still attached, and the light-up logo (while cute) was not evenly illuminated (even though it appears that way in photos) as you'd expect from a genuine Apple product. On the whole, kind of cheesy. But then, what do you expect from a company that produced not one, but two Steve Jobs action figures?
I was even more disappointed when I actually plugged it in and attempted to use my peripherals. Maybe it's a problem endemic to non-externally powered USB hubs, but my modem wouldn't work. It would show up on the Mac, but would stay stuck at "initializing." My external hard drive wasn't recognized. Hell, even the printer kept telling me it was offline. And it wasn't like I tried to plug everything into it at once; this behavior was exhibited when only a single item was attached to it.
To its credit, It did work fine with thumb drives, however, as well as powering and syncing my iPhone, so I guess it wasn't a total loss. And I'm sure I could easily double what I spent for it by putting it up on eBay…
So, Um…Yeah
I have a little—and let me stress a little—new Mac envy right now. Like many other people, the new MacBook Air has captured my imagination.
I went over to the local Apple Store today and played with the 13-inch model (the 11-inch is just too friggin' small as far as I'm concerned). My initial list of the two things that need to change before I would buy one remain: more storage and a backlit keyboard, but damn…it is still one sexy beast. And despite its older processor, it's fast! Applications opened almost instantaneously—or at least notably faster than on my MBP.
I've only had my MBP for a year and still love it to death, so I'm obviously not in the market for a new laptop right now, but when it comes time to retire The Precious (and assuming the two items on my Airbook wish list have been put into production) I'll definitely be looking at the Air line when the time comes.
While I was there, I had the opportunity to check out Office 2011 as well. I was not impressed; at least not impressed enough to want to upgrade. One of the biggest hurdles I had to get over when switching from Windows to Mac was the loss of Outlook, and while I was glad to hear that Microsoft was bringing it back in this release, I don't even need it any more, having happily moved on to Postbox.
Several of You Have Asked…
…how I'm getting on with the new Mac, having left the Wonderful World o' Windows behind last Friday night.
In a word, fabulously!
In all honesty, it was a little touchy "the morning after." I had a brief, "My God what have I done?" moment Saturday afternoon while attempting to do something that was rote, second nature to me on my Windows box and it was causing me no end of frustration. Ben, sensing my mounting aggravation, suggested we go to Borders and see what kind of books might be available to help ease me through the transition.
I picked up Switching to the Mac, and it has been incredibly helpful in navigating the familiar, yet strangely back-assward-to-what-I'm-used-to way of life on the new machine. I know I have to be patient with myself; I've been on Windows for the last 20 years; I've been on the Mac only 4 days.
But I have to say, now that I've calmed down and have a decent reference book at my fingertips (so I'm not constantly bothering Ben with "How do I…" questions) I'm back to totally loving it. I'm using Entourage for email, and while it was a bit of a pain to bring all my data over from Outlook and its feature set is nowhere near as rich, last night I was doing something on it and caught myself thinking, "Why doesn't Outlook do this? (Microsoft is supposedly returning Outlook to the Mac platform in their 2010 Office for Mac release. Go figger.)
It was also a very rude awakening on Monday when i went back to work and had to deal with Dell again. For the first time in my life their construction (which had always impressed me, especially in relation to other manufacturers and the slew of home-brew clones I'd lived with over the last two decades) now really seemed flimsy and hacked together.
Last night I found a free VNC server application for Mac, and while I haven't had a chance to test it from the office, I have used it successfully on my local home network, so if I can verify that it will allow me to connect to home from work, my old Dell Inspiron can be retired and given a much needed rest. (I'm not going to get rid of it; I bought it from Ben about a year ago and it does have a certain amount of sentimental value.)
The only thing I had been outright missing from my Windows box until this evening was ThumbsPlus, an incredibly full-featured graphics cataloging/editing program that I've been using for at least the dozen or so years. But Adobe's Bridge comes close, and since I just learned how to change the default image viewer from Photoshop to the built-in Mac Previewer in Bridge, this may not even be an issue any more.
Turning To The Dark Side
No, I'm not becoming a Republican.
Last night, after nearly twenty years of supporting Windows on the PC platform, I finally had a come-to-Jesus moment and bought a Mac: a sleek, sexy MacBook Pro to be exact.
What caused this paradigm shift in my computing universe? To be honest, it was a combination of things. Until about a month or so ago I was extremely excited about the new version of Windows that officially went on sale a few days ago. I'd been running various iterations of it on my Dell Inspiron laptop since the first public beta was available, and my initial reaction was that Microsoft had finally gotten it right. But one Sunday afternoon, all of a sudden it simply stopped displaying my chosen wallpaper. An admittedly small issue, but it was nonetheless profoundly annoying. After extensive troubleshooting and finding no answers through the Google, I wiped the drive, pulled out the RC-1 installation CD and began reinstalling. Immediately after typing in my license number (taken directly from my email from Microsoft) it refused to proceed. "Invalid Registration Key" or some crap. I double-checked the number and typed it in again. Same thing.
Fuck me.
This was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back. I turned to Ben and said, "This is bullshit. I've had enough. I'm getting a Mac!"
"Yay," he said! "My first convert!" (He's had a Macbook since 2008.)
My first impulse was to get an iMac to replace my rapidly aging Dell GX270 desktop unit, and after playing with a one of them at the Mac Store, I fell in love. (In the interest of complete disclosure, we were actually in the Mac Store because Ben had to take his MacBook for service because of a power problem.) But as the days drew on, the more I realized how foolish buying a desktop unit would be. 90% of my computing time was now happening wirelessly in the living room, and if I got a Mac desktop unit I'd be glued to it (and away from my Bubba) way more than I think either of us would like. So deciding on a laptop was a no-brainer.
I'm still getting rid of the GX270. It's way beyond its expiration date, and my laptop is a much better unit to keep around until I can figure out how to remote desktop from my work PC to the new Mac.
So what do I think of the new machine?
Love it. I know that Macs are not trouble-free, and when they crash they tend to crash spectacularly, but it's worth living with that risk for the sheer joy that has returned to my online life. It's sort of like how I viewed living in San Francisco near the major fault line in the United States for 16 years. The earth could shake at any moment, but until that time…damn what a ride.