The colorful water ball of death
Leopard arrived. I took a 5er license to allow upgrading my MacBook and Kristin’s MiniMac.
MacBook went ok. Very slick. However, the MiniMac (one of the PowerPC ones) was not so lucky. Upgrade worked well, machine rebooted. Login screen appears. And a few seconds later the cursor turns in the cheery, colorful ‘rotating water ball’ that all Mac users know. And stays there.
I let the Mini run through the night, in case it is jut doing some indexing or disk reorganizing or whatever it is that Macs do when you are not looking. No luck.
Anyone heard of that? I don’t want to do a fresh install; there is some data on that box that Kristin would be very upset to lose.
apple leopard mac water ballBooks: iWoz
I was pleasantly surprised, when I found this book under the christmas tree. My wife got it for me in the U.S. and I thought that it will make a great read during the holidays.
Well, actually no. This book leaves me with mixed feelings. I still have no doubts that Stephen “Woz” Wozniak was instrumental in the birth of the home computer and subsequently the personal computer as we know it today. And that he probably did more trailblazing things in the computer industry than most people.
But does he really have that much of an inferior complex that he has to rub it in constantly? After reading the book, it is clear to me, that the “I” in the book title is literally. Because “I” is probably the most used word in that book. “What I did”. “What I invented”. “What I envisioned”. Now, that is not a bad thing in itself. But mix it up with a constant drone about “how a shy and insecure guy I am” and you end up with the book.
About halfway through, I was asking myself “Well, but what is the point?“. With fiction, it happens sometimes that I’m relieved when a book is finished (John Ringo comes to mind), but this was probably the first non-fiction book where I was glad when I could close the covers. And yes, I’ve read “The road ahead” when it came out.
My personal rating: I give it 3 out of 10. One for the fact that Woz is a bona fide, in the flesh, genius. One because there is some anecdotal information all around “the area that became Silicon Valley” in there. The last for the fact that imagining Steve Jobs wire-wrapping breadboards is fun.
apple book iwozCulture clash - My first weeks with Mac OS X
I’ve finally given in to all the Mac addicts around me and got one, too. There is now a Mini Mac sitting right next to main working machine and I toy around with it when there is some spare time. I’ve started asking myself if it was a mistake to get an Amiga 3000 instead of a neXtStation all those years ago.
Yes, it is a cool box. It is small, sleek and quiet. I’ve hooked it up to a 17″ LCD using DVI and while I still wonder why the image is so dark (though it is sent digitally to the monitor), it took me no time to get used to the Finder. However, for a long time Linux user, the Finder is still something to get used to. Why can I go to /var in a shell but I don’t seem to be able to go there in the Finder?
One thing that I’m really impressed with is the way that MacOS deals with all my gadgets. I do remember the pains getting my Palm to actually _talk_ to my Linux box (I’m not talking about syncing e.g. with Evolution. Never got that to work). On MacOS: Plug it in. Load the Palm OS Software. Select iSync conduit. Finished. Syncing with my mobile phone over Bluetooth? Piece of cake. Putting my contacts onto the iPod? Done in a second. Sweeeeeet!
Speaking of Bluetooth: Apple rocks here! I also got a naviPlay remote (Bluetooth headset) for my iPod. After a firmware update, the Mac finds this as an input/output device and allows me to use it with iChat.
There are a few downsides, though: I hate the fact that MacOS has “click to focus” and “raise when focused” just like Windows. And the keyboard sucks royally (not only the hardware, also the german layout. Where is ~ and | ). I’ve also decided to ritually burn the “Mighty Mouse”. Should’ve spent that money on a decent mouse and a PC USB Keyboard.
And I lose all my network drives when suspending the box. I have to log off and on again to get them back. There is probably a trick here that I don’t know yet.
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