The Brooks Review

Month: June 2012

  • My Nervous Mac Buying Spree

    I’ve talked about this off and on to [Shawn Blanc on listeners of the B&B Podcast](http://5by5.tv/bb/65), but I thought I would write up my recent experience here — should one of you find yourself to be this foolish with computer buying at any point, ever.

    ### The Story

    On Friday June 8th, 2012 my MacBook Air started acting up. In fact, it would later turn out, the logic board was shorting out. I noticed it when I went to put away my Air in my backpack before heading to work. A quick troubleshooting at the office and a genius appointment later, I found myself without a Mac — until Tuesday at the latest, I was told at the time.

    That’s OK, it was the weekend and then 1-2 days of iPad only, I would be fine. It’s not ideal, but I can make that work — I’ve done it before for a day here or there.

    Sunday night I received a call from the Apple Store, bad news, they needed to ship out my MacBook Air to “the depot” for repairs — that’ll be 5-7 days starting now. *Crap.*

    Since WWDC was the next day, I decided that it was time to get a new machine — that should something awesome be announced, that would be what I get — I resolved myself to getting something new to replace/compliment the Air. I just needed it to be under $3,000.

    After the WWDC keynote my plans were further complicated. The retina MacBook Pro was announced and it looked perfect for me, but you could only order them online. I still needed a computer for what could be 7 days worth of work — 7 days that I now realized I did *not* want to do with only an iPad.

    So I order the retina MacBook Pro, then drove to the Apple Store and purchased a Mac mini. I’ve [already posted about why I didn’t like that Mac mini](https://brooksreview.net/2012/06/mac-mini/), but there’s more to the story.

    My entire idea was that I could restore the Mac mini from a backup overnight, be up and running Tuesday, for the rest of the week. No problem.

    I spent all day Tuesday watching Time Machine and Migration Assistant fail to restore from my Time Capsule and from a cloned HDD. Ugh. Finally, Wednesday afternoon, I was up and running.

    *(As it turns out, the issue was that I had Mountain Lion backups from the Air, and was trying to restore from that on a Lion machine — OS X doesn’t like that.)*

    I used the machine happily Thursday morning, then got a call from Apple: my MacBook Air was ready for pickup.

    So I purchased a Mac mini to make my life easier for a week, only to waste a day and a half setting it up, to make my life easier for 4 hours of work.

    Yeah, that sounds about right. I figured my Air would be out all week — and had it been, I probably would be less embarrassed about this story, but Apple under promised and over delivered. Lesson learned.

    ### Why iPad Only Didn’t Work

    There’s something interesting that I learned about myself along the way. There are two main reasons I didn’t want to be iPad only all week:

    1. With Shawn down at WWDC with no Mac, I needed to be able to record the B&B Podcast with him — I knew I needed a Mac for that. And I didn’t want to have to push around the show. (I did get my Air back just before we recorded.)
    2. I really didn’t like the idea of being iPad only for a week.

    The first one is hard to get around (aside from borrowing a Mac and installing needed software), but the second really seems silly to me. I *can* and *am able to* do all of my work on the iPad, but I was terrified at the prospect of doing that for a week.

    Again: I can work productively on my iPad for both this site and my day job, with no problems.

    When I travel I typically only take the iPad, unless I know I need a Mac for a specific something, so this wasn’t an unproven theory. The idea of a week going iPad only was something I simply wasn’t willing to do, and I think I know why: there’s a stigma that I perceive to be attached to the iPad.

    I work in an office, like a real office with older people, and I think that they view the iPad as a toy and not a work machine. I think they view the iPad as something for consumption, not creation. Who knows how they actually view it — this is how *I* think they view it. And that mattered more to me than I thought it would.

    So only using an iPad for a week, well, I was worried that everyone would assume that I really wasn’t working. Turns out that in my effort to appear to be productive to others, I ended up being far less productive than I would have if I would have just used the iPad. Lesson learned.

  • Quote of the Day: John Moltz

    “I’m not saying Ballmer puts every Surface down his pants. I’m just saying that if you buy an iPad, you know it has never been down his pants.”

  • OWC Announces Mercury Electra MAX 3G 960GB Solid State Drive

    Nine hundred and sixty gigabytes in an SSD, all for an MSRP of $1299, … sorry I started to drool a bit at the idea of using this as an external drive for my retina MacBook Pro.

  • Microsoft Surface Pricing & Controlling the Message

    Why does Apple usually tell you the price of things before the frenzy around a new product gets out of hand? Because if rumors start up that the device is going to be much cheaper than Apple can, and intends to sell the device for, then Apple will look bad when they announce the actual price. It’s pretty simple and works this way because many casual observers of technology don’t/can’t/won’t distinguish between fact and rumor.

    So when Microsoft announced the Surface without a price, well they set themselves up for failure. Matthew Panzarino reports that the two prices for the two Surfaces will be $599 and $999. This has been so widely reported in news today that if my RSS reader had trending keywords, $599 and $999 would be the hottest trend in my RSS reader.

    So what happens if Microsoft cannot meet these all too reasonable sounding price points, price points that they never specified: disappointment happens.

    Microsoft may have copied Apple’s style for product announcement, but they forgot the most important aspect: controlling the entire message. Oops.

  • Command-Tab on Your iPad

    Neat tip to enable CMD-Tab behavior on the iPad — not sure this is something I would ever want or need, but pretty cool that it is there. This also would be great to use when you *are* trying to use your iPad as your only device.

  • ‘Blackballs’

    MG Siegler lays out exactly why Gizmodo has no credibility with me.

  • ‘Microsoft Has a Credibility Problem With Windows Phone 8’

    Loyd Case points out a really interesting problem that Microsoft has made for themselves by quasi-abandoning users of Windows Phone 7. This is not a good start and something Microsoft really needs to figure out.

    If Apple can run iOS 5/6 on a 3GS, then why can’t Microsoft run Windows Phone 8 on a few months old Nokia Lumia? Sad.

  • ‘Why Apple Is Making the Mac Harder to Use’

    Michael Schechter commenting on TextExpander 4 having to leave the Mac App Store due to the new sandboxing requirements:
    >I often complain that this is one of the biggest shortcomings of iOS (JUST LET ME USE TEXTEXPANDER IN THE MAIL APP ALREADY) and I don’t see how bringing the same restriction to OS X is better than finding an intelligent way to make useful software safe for the average user.

    [Chuck Skoda](https://twitter.com/skoda/status/215895982943113216) commenting on Twitter on the same issue:

    >Why does it seem like this isn’t clear to everyone? Apple doesn’t want things that change system behavior on the App Store.

    Yep. Moreover as users we shouldn’t want it either. By choosing to use an app like TextExpander, Moom, and others that lift up OS X’s britches is to make the choice that you *want* that functionality. It’s not something that you *need* to make things work, it just makes things work better. Schechter wants these apps in the App Store, but they should not be there — plain and simple.

    The App Store is for the average user. Apps that don’t fit in the App Store guidelines are simply not for the average user. That matters because the apps that don’t fit those guidelines can/will/could cause a massive support headache for not only Apple, but for the resident family geek. ((Who is probably you.)) Users should be able to make the reasonable assumption that anything they download from the App Store cannot and will not mess up their computer in any way that uninstalling the app won’t fix their computer. Now, TextExpander probably won’t screw up a person’s computer, but then again, what if a user can’t figure out how to stop TextExpander from launching snippets, because they hid the dock icon and menubar icon — perhaps they don’t even know that TextExpander is the culprit? And there’s your problem.

  • The B&B Podcast #66: Typing on My Microwave

    >Shawn and Ben talk about Tweetbot, Ben’s new Retina MacBook Pro, building your own desk, Thunderbolt drives, the just-announced Belkin WeMo, and the Microsoft Surface.

    Be sure to tune in, Shawn has some great thoughts on the Surface.

  • ‘Surface: Between a Rock and a Hardware Place’

    John Gruber:
    >Microsoft Surface is not fundamentally about Microsoft needing to control the entire integrated product in order to compete with the iPad on design. It’s about Microsoft needing to sell the whole thing to sustain its current profitability.

    Gruber also sees Microsoft buying Nokia, which is something I have long suspected.

  • DIY Standing Desk

    I guilted Chris into writing up something about his desk, and I love this line in his write up:
    >It’s not perfect. But having a work environment that brings you pleasure is important. And when you built the major piece of furniture in that environment with your own hands, the satisfaction I get is increased greatly.

  • TextExpander 4

    [A great update](http://www.smilesoftware.com/TextExpander/help/releasenotes.html) to a utility that I would be lost without.

  • Ballmer’s Rebound

    One of the most popular posts that I have written is “[The Ballmer Days are Over](https://brooksreview.net/2011/05/ballmer/)” — wherein I argue that it is time to kick Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, out of the company. I argue this as: a person that lives in Microsoft country, a person that owns Microsoft stock, and an Apple fan.

    Up and until this week I still believed that Ballmer should be gone. This week though, well Ballmer is making his move.

    Ballmer seemed to be a pompous ass, perfectly happy to rest of the success of the past — not really his success, mind you, but the success of the company he runs. Ballmer has famously dismissed Apple and everything they created, including the iPhone. He’s been proven wrong, many times over.

    This week, here’s what Microsoft did:

    – Announced a new tablet.
    – Got into making integrated software and hardware devices (see said “new tablet”)
    – Announced Windows Phone 8

    Those seem like par for the course if you are an Apple fan, but they are amazing feats if you are a Microsoft fan. Windows Phone 7 hasn’t been out that long and now we have 8? For the record Windows itself is just about to reach version 8.

    Then there’s the tablet, while it looks to largely copy the iPad, there’s clever features like a keyboard integrated into the cover. Now, they haven’t shipped this yet, but the simple fact that Microsoft is willing to piss off its hardware partners is impressive enough to believe that Microsoft is serious about doing this.

    So to recap Steve Ballmer:

    1. From 2001 to 2007 he had Microsoft on cruise control, rarely beating the stock market.
    2. From 2007 to 2011 he was Captain of a sinking ship and he seemed to be the only one not aware the ship was sinking.

    Today, today Ballmer is bailing water out of the ship. I don’t know if he can bail fast enough to right the ship, but I do know that I am willing to give him a chance to do that.

    What Ballmer has done this week (though to be fair these are *just* announcements) is something that I didn’t think Ballmer was capable of: he’s changing Microsoft’s core.

    This should be interesting.

  • ‘MacBook Pro 15″ With Retina Display Running 3 External Displays’

    Amazingly cool. The new retina MacBook Pro can run three external displays and it’s own internal display. If I had that many displays to test, I would test this myself. Until then I’ll just drool a bit.

  • ‘Samsung Finally Wins Its First Offensive Case Against Apple’

    But there’s a catch. Take it away Mr. Florian Mueller:
    >It’s not even clear that Samsung will make enough money as a result of this infringement finding to offset the 800,000 euros it now owes Apple in legal fees because it lost with respect to three of its four patents.

  • ‘Microsoft Kept PC Partners in Dark About Surface’

    Poornima Gupta and Lee Chyen Yee reporting on the secrecy that Microsoft kept with the Surface:
    >Windows chief Steven Sinofsky made a round of telephone calls but gave only the barest details on Friday, neither revealing the name of the gadget nor its specifications, two people close to Microsoft’s partners told Reuters.

    Basically, then, some Microsoft partners learned the name Monday, but weren’t left in the dark about specs, because really no one has the specifications… still.

    Also I love this bit:

    >Ovum’s Dawson said Microsoft was giving its OEM partners “a huge vote of no confidence” and they would “rightly feel slighted”.

    That would be true if Microsoft hadn’t been sitting and waiting since 2010 for the hardware “partners” to make a decent device — and I’m no Microsoft apologist, but you had to see this coming.

  • nRF8002 Bluetooth Low Energy from Nordic Semiconductor

    I’ve long speculated that a better way to use geofencing is to make use of bluetooth chip to tell your phone where you actually are. Turns out, someone else makes the hardware already. Here’s what David Edwin emailed to tell me about the product:

    >Nordic Semiconductor has introduced a new Bluetooth low energy chip, the nRF8002 which is a single chip and can be configured to last for years on a single watch battery. The size of the chip and battery is 3 dimes stacked on top of each other. This chip implements a proximity service and does not require any programming on the chip.

    >This chip with its battery (like a tag) can be stuck on a surface and the app on the iPhone can wirelessly detect the chip from a distance of a few inches or upto 15 yards. The tag can be built to have a range of a few inches or 10 yards or mode. The app on the iphone can detect the presence of the chip in a couple of seconds. See attached pictures for the size of the tag.

    That’s pretty cool. Edwin also said that he wants to arrange a couple free development kits for developers that read this blog, so get in touch if you would like to get one of those the giveaways are all gone, but you can buy a dev kit [here](http://www.semiconductorstore.com/cart/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=47363).

  • Stephen Hackett’s Custom Made Desk

    He put a glass top on it, but it has wood behind it so the only thing he’ll have to contend with is finger prints.

    [Here is part 2, with finished pics](http://512pixels.net/new-desk-2/).

  • Chris Bowler’s Custom Made Desk

    Looks fantastic, love the raw finish on it. I do believe it is standing height too.

  • Shawn Blanc’s Custom Made Desk

    I’ve always loved this desk that Shawn built. Truthfully (not to offend Shawn) this desk isn’t hard to make, you just need time. Good place to start.