Greater Satellites

So, I was in the midst of writing what I thought to be a meaningful article (which will get posted… eventually) when I came across several Mac vs. PC articles on none other than AOL News today.  I enjoy reading those types of articles because sometimes they make interesting points from an PC user perspective that I may have a difficult time conceptualizing.  Such was not the case with this articles, and here is why…

This article, which isn’t too bad, is by Michael Tolosa over at AOL Shopping.  He eventually concludes that Macs are superior products, but has a few shaky arguments in favor of PC along the way.

This laptop  acts as my remote machine for work. Unfortunately, the tools I use for work are not supported by the Mac operating system or the Safari web browser.

Sounds like your company’s system was one of those olde fashioned, designed-for-IE type applications.  You can’t blame Apple for poor software decisions made by your employer.  There are many viable browser alternatives to Safari on Mac including the venerable Firefox, Camino, Opera, and more.  If your company software isn’t supported on any of them, might be time to fire up Boot Camp or VMWare.  Oh wait…

The way I got around this was by installing a Windows partition on my Mac, where I could install all the Windows programs I needed and access them for work.  One downside to installing a Windows partition on your Mac, is it can take up to 32GB of hard drive space.

If I may borrow a popular internet meme:  You’re doing it wrong.  You can scale the size of a Boot Camp partition to any size you like, and some slipstreamed versions of XP I’ve encountered only require about 700MB total.  If you’re only using Windows for a few programs and Internet Explorer, you shouldn’t need to partition more than 4GB.

…many of the software utilities you use on a daily basis aren’t available in Mac versions. And even if they are available on the Mac, they’re usually limited in functionality compared to the more robust and fully-developed Windows versions. For instance, the AIM client for Mac is less functional than the Windows version. Other utilities (like FTP clients, bit torrent clients, etc.) rarely come in two versions. You’ll have to find completely different Mac products to complete these daily tasks.

Fancy that! When I switch operating systems I can’t bring my programs with me!  This part of the article here seemed like a bit of filler, truth be told.  AIM for Mac hasn’t been updated in years, that’s why Apple throws in it’s own great little chat client called iChat.  If you’re not happy with iChat, a quick Google search for “mac IM program” will direct you to Adium (which actually ranks higher than AIM in the results), a great open source instant messaging client.  Two FTP clients off the top of my head that come in both Mac and Windows flavors are the open source Filezilla and GlobalScape’s CuteFTP.  The official Bittorrent client is multiplatform, too, and another quick “Mac bittorrent” search will yield results for Transmission, which is comparable to uTorrent in features and functionality.

One thing you won’t ever get on a Mac is a version of Internet Explorer.

Oh really? No shit. Thank God.

The other big difference between buying a Mac laptop and a PC laptop is price. The Mac will cost roughly twice as much as a PC.

I went to Apple’s Online Store and Dell’s Online Store.  I then selected the higher-end white MacBook, which starts at $1299 and has a 13.3″ screen, 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM, and a 160GB hard drive.  Then I went to Dell’s site and selected the 13.3″ XPS M1330 and matched the specs.  The XPS ended up costing $1,174.  So while the Apple is a bit more expensive, it’s nowhere near twice as much.  You can buy a machine that’s half as good for half the price, though.

In conclusion, I believe Mr. Tolosa was a little lazy in regards to some research about the Macintosh platform, but I won’t hold that against him since he finishes with the line:

Once you switch to a Mac, you’ll never go back.

I recently came across an article on The Art of Manliness website that lists 100 books every guy should read. Needless to say I think it’s time I buckled down and read some of the classics. This post will be my running list of what I have read, re-read, and still need to read on that list of 100. (more…)

I had all kinds of fun playing around with this website: Knicker Picker

The next logical step would be full scale adoption by the porn industry!

Recently came across the site for the 2008 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue (a sports magazine that even I enjoy) and found a hilarious crossover of humor and sex appeal in a shoot featuring Heidi Klum (rhymes with boom, if you didn’t know) and one of my personal favorites, Will Ferrell. These are promotional shots, I would assume, for his upcoming movie, Semi Pro, and are pretty damn funny. Heidi never seemed like a typical supermodel to me because you always see her smiling and having fun, unlike other super models who always come off as looking bitchy, catty, or otherwise pissed off.

The official website has a boatload of pictures (the body painting is especially hot this year) and a few brief articles. Can someone remind me again why I should buy the actual magazine?

Jackie and I were watching this video the other night and at the end I was just… Well.  I don’t think there’s a word that properly describes the state it left my mind in… I want to say baffled, I also want to say stupefied and dumbfounded, as well… Let’s just settle on dumbafflefied.

Does he even know what the hell he’s talking about anymore?

I write about whatever tickles my fancy and recent news about Blu Ray exclusivity deals with studios was too good to pass up…

Let me preface by saying that I hate Sony as much as the next knowledgeable techie. I’ve owned three different Walkmans in my day, and have purchased every iteration of PlayStation up to the current monolith. I’ve made those purchases knowing that Sony products are often overpriced, sometimes cheap (paradoxical, no?), and the company itself has a record of poor customer service. In their defense on that last issue: any company as large as Sony is bound to have a few highly vocal, extremely unsatisfied customers — it’s science.

In recent months, though, I have taken notice of Sony’s product lines and I must say they seem to be genuinely trying to set themselves apart from the crowd with exceptional product quality and design (see: BRAVIA line of TVs). PlayStation 3 isn’t making them any real money yet, but they continually develop for it and it has seen 4 different variations in the 14 months since its initial launch. I know many disagree, but I think it’s a pretty sexy console. Add that to all the things it is capable of beyond just playing games, and $500 for my 80GB version didn’t seem like such a bad deal. It’s a product line AND format (Blu Ray) that Sony has engineered which is elegant and actually makes sense to use.

This has not been the case for Sony since the CD. Talk a brief walk down memory lane with me before I get to my point (I promise I have one):

1. Betamax - Whoops! This was the same format war we’re fighting now, only 80’s style (which I assume means the war paint was way more colorful, the hair was bigger, and the soundtrack was gayer). Why did Betamax fail? We can cut this down to two basic reasons: 1) It was more expensive and 2) Sony didn’t know what their customers wanted. They made a product that, in terms of sheer quality, was better than the rivaling VHS. But they didn’t invest any time doing research into features that people ultimately wanted in a video cassette player/recorder and so it faded into obscurity.
2. The Minidisc - Was supposed to be the successor to the CD and failed miserably… In the US, at least. I hear it did well in Japan. Again, I think the problem here was that Sony didn’t ask themselves “What does the customer want?”. What would’ve been my reason for trading in CDs, which were ubiquitous at the time, for a format that needs a specialized player and, in a few cases, software to work. Answer: there isn’t. Bye bye Minidisc.
3. ATRAC - Cool! Sony’s answer to the MP3. The only problem with this was that MP3s worked on ALL devices that supported them, not just shitty Walkmans.
4. Memory Stick - This wasn’t as unforgivable as the past three in terms of failure. Sony makes, well, pretty much every kind of electronic under the sun, so it makes sense for them to create a small Flash-based storage system that would work well between devices. Like all of the aforementioned Sony attempts, this died a fairly quick death at the hands of the other, more popular storage formats (SD, CompactFlash, etc).
5. Blu Ray - Wooooaaah. Hold the phone. A quality format from Sony backed by almost every other major player in the game except Toshiba and Microsoft? Way to go, Sony. What’s that? You’re going to incorporate the technology into your latest gaming console so that it can penetrate two markets simultaneously? That’s a pretty good idea. It’s also awesome that your proprietary discs hold about 10GB more than the competing format. I’m sure the pirates of the digital world won’t be too happy with all the layers of security, but I bet that helps sway the favor of movie studio in your direction. Sony, I’m proud of you. ::pats Sony on the head::

That’s right. It took them almost two decades, but I think Sony finally got it right. In the coming months, over 75% of movies coming to High Def formats will be exclusively Blu Ray. For once in the history of Sony making products, I hope they come out as a winner.