Thoughts on new Apple things…

September 1st, 2010

I don’t suffer from the illusion that people actually read this blog, but I figured I would take a few minutes and jot down some thoughts on today’s Apple hoopla…although I have to question whether an iPod event really merits the term “hoopla”.  To be honest, the first I had heard of this was when I was at lunch today and MSNBC was speculating. I figured it was about time for Apple to update their iPods, but I only get a new one when I get a new Mac, and it will be some time before I get a new Mac…and even though I’ve got one of the newer Touches, I pretty much use it exclusively for Pandora and iTunes media.

Anyways, here’s another knee-jerk reaction to today’s news:

iPods

I wasn’t surprised to see that Apple finally put a camera in an iPod Touch. Adding a second camera was a bit intriguing, but given that FaceTime is a WiFi only app right now, there wasn’t any valid reason to leave it off, other than the slices of revenue Apple gets from every iPhone. Adding an A4 processor would be nice if you had games that have heavy resource demands, but my older third generation Touch seems to do fine and will probably keep running iOS for a long time to come.

What I find more interesting is that Apple didn’t update their iPod Classic. Granted, at this point you’re just slapping bigger hard drives in the same device; even Apple would have a hard time making a “revolutionary, magical” device that relies on a click wheel. Apparently people still buy the things, because Apple still sells them, but I give this model two more years before it’s taken out back behind the shed.

AppleTV

Years after releasing the first AppleTV, Apple has finally updated their little side project. I got an AppleTV as a gift at the end of a summer internship (it was kind of an awesome internship) two years ago, and while it wasn’t an investment I would have considered making on my own at the time, I have really come to appreciate having the AppleTV. It takes couch-potato-ing to a whole new level; now I don’t even have to get up to change DVDs.

That said, I am completely unmoved by the new AppleTV. Some people might jump at the $99 price tag…but I am not one of those people. A 140GB AppleTV cost $229; for a little less than half that price, I could upgrade to a device with 0GB of storage. Doesn’t seem like much of an upgrade to me. I realize streaming is all the rage now, but here’s why removing the hard drive is a deal-killer for me:

1. I have $20/month, 1Mbps Internet. I could get something faster, but it streams Hulu just fine, and I’m a patient man when it’s time to download some TV shows on iTunes. Plus there’s fiber at the office that I could use if I was really in a hurry.

2. Local storage is awesome when you’re moving into a new apartment and don’t have your Internet set up. Yes, you could bring your laptop and set up your wireless network and stream off of that, but I like the thought that my AppleTV can have no network connectivity and still entertain me. iTunes manages to freak out on my AppleTV often enough, but at least when it does that and I can’t stream anymore, I can still go local.

3. Wireless streaming is nice, but how many people really have an ideal wireless setup? Every time I try streaming something in HD from my iMac and I heat something up the microwave, my wireless tanks from the interference. And this is with an AirPort base station, not a $50 Linksys AP. Yes, you could use Ethernet and avoid wireless problems altogether, but running patch cables everywhere is ungainly and it harshes the vibe.

Speaking of Ethernet…what on Earth does Apple have against Gigabit? The only devices I can think of that still have Fast Ethernet ports on them are IP phones and wireless APs, and even those are starting to gigabit because it’s just not that much more expensive. Equally odd is that they stuck an N radio in the device which can get anywhere from 108Mbps to 300Mbps, but their wired adapter can only manage 100Mbps. Figure that one out.

Also gone are the options to connect the AppleTV to anything but an HDMI-equipped set. I realize a lot of TVs have HDMI now…but again, would it have killed them to add a few inches and another 8 ounces and give us the option for component video out?

If my AppleTV died tomorrow, I’d replace it with a Mac Mini. More expensive, yes. Louder, yes (barely). But the Mini has an HDMI port and I can stream Hulu on it without hacking the device.  The one nice feature that I hope will make it to the older AppleTV (rather unlikely in reality) in a software update would be the wireless streaming feature from an iPod Touch. I like the thought of being able to download TV shows at the office, sync them to my iPod Touch on my work laptop, leave the laptop at the office, and stream off the iPod Touch. Now if only we can get that whole wireless sync down…

iTunes 10

I realize I’m now pushing 1000 words on this post, so I’ll keep my thoughts on iTunes 10 brief. In short, it looks pretty nice; the TV episode rental option looks like an almost appealing choice for shows I want to watch that are either too short (Family Guy, American Dad, Community, and pretty much anything else 30 minutes long) to justify a $2.99 price tag or not something I’d want to keep around and eating up space on my NAS. I see more value in that feature as a “watch what I can’t see anymore on Hulu” than a “watch what I could find on Hulu but don’t want to wait for and don’t have as part of my cheap cable” option. Given that the average season of TV is approximately 16-24 episodes long, that’s pretty much in line with the cost of buying the DVD of the season; it might be something I’d be willing to try at some point.

AirPlay is the other feature I find somewhat intriguing. I was a big fan of AirTunes from the moment I got my AirPort Express a few years ago, but from day one I had issues with streaming consistently. I sincerely hope Apple has worked out the bugs with that. I just wish that I didn’t need to upgrade my stereo receiver to something wickedly expensive so that I could leverage AirPlay. Suggested workaround for making this feature work on your Sony equipment and old AppleTV at home: plug the AppleTV’s auto out into the receiver and use your remote for that. Problem solved, $500 saved.

Finally, Ping wins the award for most useless feature in iTunes since their Radio option. If Apple wanted to find a way to tie Facebook into iTunes, they should have just bought Facebook. They’ve got enough cash to do it two or three times over at the ridiculously overvalued figure that Microsoft established when they bought a stake a year or two ago. I like Lady GaGa and will even admit after a drink or two that I like Ke$ha, but I have no interest in seeing what kind of music they like. Unless Ke$ha also has a thing for the works of a certain Martin O’Donnell, in which case I might have to go about getting that girl’s number…

Posted in Ramblings | No Comments »

My first day as the guy formerly known as “Intern”…

December 21st, 2009

…in a word, rocked.  In more that one word, it rocked the free world and parts of Communist China.

I have said it before, and I will probably say it again a few more times in the coming years, but I love my job.  Quite simply, I absolutely adore the thing.

In between watching progress bars (a major part of my day some days) I sat and thought about how much I’ve learned since I started with this company three and a half years ago.  My interview was an interview by firing squad: I sat at one end of the conference space table and four of the other guys sat around the other end and asked me a bunch of questions, most of which I answered “no” to. Had I ever redeployed a system? I had no idea what that meant. Have I had much experience with computers? Kinda, I mean, I had a Mac for three years before then, but I wasn’t delusional: Macs don’t ever see outfits like this, and Apple was only just barely becoming cool, so my experience in that arena accounted for virtually nothing.  Had I ever reinstalled Windows before? Yes. Windows 95.

As I was told a few summers later, I was the only guy on the list, they needed help, and it seemed like I could learn pretty quickly.  I had come there looking for work as a web designer and developer, but by the end of my second summer I knew that the website stuff would be a sideshow to this.

But in the last three years, I’ve learned a ton.  I’ve redeployed hundreds of workstations, I’ve spent countless hours on the line with Dell technical support, I downgraded machines before OEMs offered to strip Vista off and put XP on for you at the factory, I’ve learned how to deploy servers and virtual machines, and I’m working on becoming a systems engineer.  I can use a PC just as well as I can use a Mac, and thanks to Windows 7, I can actually enjoy using my PC (I wish Microsoft would have paid me for saying that, but the truth is, if you clean enough of the crap out of Vista and lay on top of it enough stolen features from OS X, it’s hard to not make something somewhat enjoyable)

Three and a half years of interning have come to an end.  When I began, I was but the learner, now…I’m still the learner.  But I’m at the point where I can answer a phone and not immediately hand the call off to someone at the help desk.  I can actually solve problems, or do enough troubleshooting that my time isn’t completely wasted.  It feels pretty good, and we’ve got enough projects coming up at work that I should stay pretty busy.  I don’t know many people who would show up at 8 for work and leave happily at 7 that night, but it is an awesome feeling.

Tags: ,
Posted in Ramblings | No Comments »

And so it ends, not with a bang…

December 20th, 2009

…and not really with a whimper, either.  The ending just kind of came and went.  Like most major things these days, it seems.  Graduation from Western was a lot like graduation from high school; you did a lot of sitting, you did a fair amount of getting up to applaud, and some guy in a really really big robe was up there pontificating.  In other words, you basically got a college-flavored Catholic mass that ran 2 hours.

But it’s over*.

(* by over, I mean that it’s over pending the final submission of my final grades and a last check to make sure that I passed all the classes I needed to.  But the odds of that not happening are slim enough to not merit much concern)

So what’s next?  Quite possibly the most seamless transition ever.  I go back to work on Monday, and the only thing exceptional about that is that I haven’t worked a Monday in 4 months.  I’ll keep doing precisely what I’ve been doing, albeit with a bit more accountability.  I am an intern no longer, but I’ll still have the same company phone, company computer, and desk in the repair lab.  I suspect that some time towards the end of January it will hit me that I’m really out of college and that the next major thing to look forward to is either getting a house or getting married (or for added stress, both at the same time), but to haul out the cliche, tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my life.

I have to admit, I have no idea how I’m going to fill the time.

I also know that in 4 months I will look back at the above line and laugh at myself for thinking such ridiculous thoughts.

Still…for the past sixteen and a half years life has been defined by how close to the end of my formal schooling I am.  Now I’m there, and the end of my career seems inconceivably long.  45 years, maybe 50.  I can’t even imagine 10 years.  My mom mentioned to me today that there are teachers at the high school who are teaching students who can’t remember what they were doing when 9/11 happened; was it really that long ago?

In the short term, though, my to-do list is pretty basic.  I need to undo the last year and a half of beer drinking.  I’m going to paint my apartment in January, and within a year I’ll be a Microsoft Certified Enterprise Administrator (their acronym for it is something like MCITP: Enterprise or something ridiculous like that, but for those who know your letters, it’s the Server 2008 version of an MCSE).  Beyond that?

I have no idea.  And while I normally am one for having a well-defined plan, for now, I’m okay with that.  I feel like I’ve got enough under control that I can allow a little ambiguity in my life.

Tags: ,
Posted in Ramblings | No Comments »

So apparently there are a lot of games coming out next year…

December 17th, 2009

Including, but not limited to:

  • Halo: Reach
  • Starcraft II
  • Bioshock 2
  • Crackdown 2
  • The Force Unleashed II

Fortunately, I am only going to have a full-time job next year, so finding time to play video games doesn’t really concern me that much.  I’ll find a way.

What concerns me more is that last game on the list.  Please note that if you haven’t played The Force Unleashed before, and you don’t want to find out how it ends, then stop reading right now and go find something better to do on the Internet.  Surely your Facebook news feed has something new on it by now.

I was initially very pumped about the prospect of The Force Unleashed; the game looked like something original and a welcome departure from the previous Dark Forces/Jedi Knight line of FPS games and the sorry attempt to put Jedi combat back in for Battlefront II.  There’s nothing I like more than cutting my way through hordes of helpless enemies, but unfortunately The Force Unleashed is little more than a button masher; I’ve played through it twice now, beginning to end, and I still couldn’t tell you which combination of buttons to push to get the really cool lightsaber moves.  My advice: mash any combination of buttons you feel appropriate until it does what you want, but bear in mind that you’ll probably wind up linking so many different attacks you’ll never remember which set of buttons got you that one, really cool move.

The levels were alright if not difficult to navigate, and there were genuinely fun parts to it, but what really hacked me off about the first game was that God-forsaken Star Destroyer stunt that took forever.  I’d much rather have watched that in the form of a cutscene than earn it.

All that aside, I’d be ready and willing in a heartbeat to give The Force Unleashed II a try, but I’m having difficulty getting past the fact that at the end of the first one, the hero dies.  As in dead and no longer living.  Not simply mortally wounded or stranded on some fragment of a spaceship billions of lightyears away, but dead, regardless of which final battle you chose.  While I’m curious to know which magical twist LucasArts has dreamed up to revive said hero, at the end of the day, it’s going to be hard selling the resurrection of a guy who died on the Death Star in front of the Emperor, period, and bringing characters back so you can cash in on another game just reeks of laziness.  Bungie managed to release a brand new, full-priced add-on to Halo 3 that didn’t require the resurrection of anybody, and they did it in one year.  LucasArts will have had 3.  Come on guys, get it together.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Ramblings | No Comments »

I had almost forgotten…

December 16th, 2009

…that I actually still have this thing.  The fact that I go a month without posting to a blog that had 3 posts to begin with is probably not a good reflection of my ability to commit to something, but when you think about what I’ve been up to in the last month with finishing classes and moving, I suppose it’s understandable.

I’m officially fully moved in now.  Took me about 3 weeks, one trip to IKEA in a ridiculously oversized truck, and a whole lot of time at Target, but I am finally all on my own.  In a way it feels very familiar; I lived in a studio apartment last year and generally enjoyed it, but this time most of my friends are either out of town or in town and married, which kind of rules out gatherings like the Tuesday Night Daiquiris of old.

I finished taking my last exam ever last night, and I am beyond thrilled.  Sixteen and a half years of school will finally come to a head on Saturday at commencement, and while I still don’t want to go, I am excited for it, even if it is just to get it over with.

Tomorrow and Friday are my last two days as the Intern at the office.  The guys have apparently realized this, because I’m suddenly being asked to get them coffee and anticipate a need to bring coffee creamer to the office when I stop by.  Fortunately, I do enough other valuable tasks that coffee runs aren’t important enough to merit stopping what I’m working on.  Very little will likely change when I cease to be the intern and become part of the team, but in many ways I’m perfectly alright with that. I’ve found a job that I love, and how many people my age can sit at commencement on Saturday knowing that they’ve got the job they want waiting for them?

So, what to do with the next phase in life? There’s a to-do list, which shouldn’t surprise anybody who knows me. I need to do some painting and liven the place up, both in terms of my apartment and this site.  I’ve had this domain for a year and in that year I’ve barely made use of it…I should probably start getting some value from it…

Tags: ,
Posted in Ramblings | No Comments »

In case you were wondering…

November 20th, 2009

…I’m still suffering from CMS.  Except on mornings when I have to get up and go to work.  Those mornings I’m a little less motivated, but I’m starting to have trouble remembering which day it really is.

IKEA day was today.  I didn’t have access to anything big enough to move the larger pieces of furniture I needed, so I wound up getting a 15′ truck instead.  Not my first choice…I had wanted a club van, but this was the best they had.  So today I was that guy in the Ryder truck doing 60-65 on I-96 out to Canton and back.  The amount of space all that lovely flat-packed furniture took up in the back of the truck was almost as laughable as my moms’ and my attempts to move two flatbeds and a cart through the warehouse, but I made it there and back without running into anything.

Tomorrow is the big furniture-assembly day.  We put together my TV stand and my desk today after getting everything unloaded at the apartment, then I came back home and took apart my kitchen table and put the hardware on my coffee table drawers.  The screws are all 30+ years old, so some of them are rusty to the point of being stripped, but I figure I’m never going to have to take this thing apart again.  I’ll post a picture of it once I get it in the apartment; it’s a pretty cool piece.

The mattress arrives on Tuesday morning, but even without that, I could pretty much live there now.  My kitchen is over there, I’ve got Internet (every bit as important as heat and electricity and running water) and a sleeping bag and a pillow.  However, it will still be a few more days until I’m over there.  Tomorrow I move the rest of my big toys, I’ll probably get a Chistmas tree (half off is a pretty good before-Christmas special), and I’ll go into work for a few hours to make up for playing hooky today.

Now I just need to finish my thesis project and I can clear the next major hurdle.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Ramblings | 1 Comment »

Christmas Morning Syndrome…

November 14th, 2009

…is basically what I had this morning.  You remember when you were a kid and you’d wake up at 6 in the morning and not be able to go back to sleep because it was Christmas and there were all those presents waiting for you downstairs?

That was me this morning.  I finally had a chance to sleep in past 7, and I wake up at…7:30.  So I suppose I did sleep in for a while, but let’s face it, a half hour doesn’t really count.

But I am now happily in possession of my own place once more.  I have the keys, I have some of my things in boxes, and I don’t have a scrap of furniture, but I’m finally getting there.   An extensive array of before and after pictures will come, eventually, but for now, I need to pack.

Tags:
Posted in Ramblings | No Comments »

Perhaps I work too much…

November 12th, 2009

…or just dedicate too much time to not working.  Probably depends on your point of view.  I was going to post something that gave the world a slightly better notion of who I am, but it occurs to me that most everybody who reads this thing already knows me, which means I can probably wait a bit longer without depriving anybody of a more complete understanding of who I am.

Long-winded excuses for delayed posts aside, I would just like to say this:

I hate Windows Vista.

I realize, I am certainly not the first person to say this.  And I probably should have arrived at this conclusion years ago, especially considering that I work as a support technician at an IT consulting and support firm and it’s my job to fix people’s computers.  I probably should have deduced by the incredibly small number of Windows Vista PCs we support almost three years after Vista’s launch that the operating system did not go over well.  But I’ve been living in what could be called a Windows XP Reality Distortion Field, and as far as I have been concerned, there was Windows XP for a really, really long time, and now there’s Windows 7.  In between was just a period where Apple grabbed a moderate amount of market share among my demographic.

But today, I got to deal with Windows Vista systems, and I have to say, I really hate Windows Vista.  It’s really, really slow.  Part of the problem is that I was working on either a budget desktop or a pair of underpowered tablet laptops, and none of those machines can really handle Vista, but when you get done with your day and all you can say you did was run Windows Update seven million times, that’s not really a good sign.  Vista feels slow, clunky, and difficult to maneuver; it’s like trying to drive a truck instead of something far sexier, like a Mark IV Jetta.

However, today was not a total loss.  I discovered a not-so-secret cache of broken down cardboard boxes, which is a huge win for me because all of our other empty boxes at the office that I would normally pilfer for moving purposes have gone AWOL.  So I figure I’m probably set for boxes for now.  Reserved the van for IKEA Day, next Friday, and am especially looking forward to that, because I will finally have something to put the rest of my things on/in.  I’ve lived in furnished apartments the last two years and as a result, the biggest piece of furniture I have is a homemade TV stand that has been repurposed as some kind of nightstand/tech box of sorts.  It’s making this whole moving process very drawn out.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Ramblings | 2 Comments »

Disclaimer: I may be completely insane

November 11th, 2009

Let’s say that you’re wrapping up your final semester, working from 8-5 the two days a week you’re not on campus all day long, and you’re about to start moving into your apartment in four days.  What do you think you should be spending your time on?

Developing a blog, of course.  Because you don’t have enough on your plate already.

Don’t ask me why I’m doing this now.  Partly because starting a blog has been on my to-do list for almost a year now, and partly because I’m about to start life on my own and felt like I should let the rest of the world know about it.  Ultimately, though, it’s because I’m scatterbrained and this is where my train of thought has chosen to stop for a few minutes.  But it’s blocking some cars in the road, so get aboard, as we’ll be back on our way shortly.

All that said, welcome.  I’d say have a look around, but this is pretty much it for now.

Tags:
Posted in Ramblings | 1 Comment »