I have been working on Apple equipment since the Apple II+. I ran a Mac computer consulting company for ten years. I have seen much of the good and bad that has come from Apple over the years. I think that this Operating system version is the best Apple has ever released.
It was a long upgrade because I wanted to ensure that it went smoothly.
It involved:
buying two of the five Leopard Take Control books ($15USD for the bundle - CHEAP and GREAT!) http://www.takecontrolbooks.com
reviewing Macintouch reports (1/2 hour)
running Diskwarrior 4.0 on my drive first (and on my backup drives); (1/2 hour)
making two complete bootable clones of my machine; (2 hours) http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper
getting a VersiontrackerPro (http://www.versiontracker.com) membership ($50 for a year) and it helped me find, download, and install updates to about 40 applications. WORTH the price. (3.5 hours)
making room on my drive (1 hour of cleanups);
refreshing both backups again (smart updates using Super Duper - also a great little tool)
running the actual OS (used archive and install) (at least an hour - went to sleep instead)
ran Software updates (1/4 hour);
read "Take Control of Customizing Leopard) and did all system tweaks (1 1/2 hour)
tested out the newest applications (Mail, Calendar, Address Book);
First impression after reading both Take Control books (get them - they're worth it) is that Apple finally fixed many of the annoying things that had been in Mac OS X since the inception.
Pros:
The Finder is WAAAAY better, smoother, more sensible, faster.
Spotlight finally makes sense. They got rid of that sort of pseudo search window that was neither app nor utility nor modal dialogue - what the hell WAS that thing?
The whole system feels faster.
Spaces itch a scratch I have wanted to itch for a long time. I thought they'd be useless. I have used them for a half-hour and think I'll use them forever now.
Mail finally has bulleted lists (and they work!)
iCal finally put all three views (day, week, month) into the same window and it doesn't jump all over the place annoyingly like it used to (each window had its own place and they sometimes jumped around when you switched between windows.
It feels cleaner, more consistent (thank god the brushed aluminum look is entirely gone!!), and somehow more solid.
Cons
I have built at least a thousand backup scripts. Time Machine does what the best scripts in the world do.
But it's not there yet. You can't control it's schedule and you can't make bootable backups with it.
Use SuperDuper for that instead (http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper) and use TimeMachine for incremental data snapshots over time.
Safari is fast...but you can't load multiple home pages at start and it still doesn't work with Google Apps properly so it's not really an option for daily use;
General comments
The dock is not as bad as people have been bitching about.
The menu bar's transparency is not a problem as long as you have a background with a light bit at the top.
Great job Apple. I feel like I have a new, fast, clean Mac on my desk!
I read an awesome book recently that made me rethink many things about location, work, and business. It was Tim Ferriss' book which I highly recommend.
I recently had reason to head to Paris for personal reasons. I thought I would use the trip as an opportunity to try working somewhere other than Vancouver - to see if it's really possible to relocate and still work? Of course, in Ferriss' world, you only work 4 hours a week. Unfortunately I didn't get to experience THAT part of the plan.
It worked. Here's how I did it.
I moved all of my landline numbers into a Vonage account about a month prior - personal home phone, company land-line from San Francisco, company land-line from Vancouver - the works. I set up one voicemail box for all of the numbers and forwarded that to Simulscribe which transcribes voicemails to email (and does a pretty darned great job at it). Then I set up the cell to roll-over to the same Simulscribe address.
Once in Paris, I plugged in the phone and Vonage box. And realized that whoops - you can't plug 110V devices into 220V. I had fried BOTH of them. Or so I thought. It turned out that fortune favours the stupid. One of the plug converters was fried so it never passed any current through.
So I bought some transformers (220V to 110V step down transformers) for my other various chargers, bought a couple of plug converters (for the Apple power supply and the new phone that I bought) and plugged it all in. It took a couple of tries but after a call to Vonage tech support, the Vonage box was up and running on the local DSL connection and voila - my phone was plugged in and ready to receive calls at any of my numbers.
I have to admit that it was freeing (and a bit strange) to have people look at my calling code and say, "OH! You're in Vancouver!" and then have to explain that no, in fact I was in Paris, ten hours ahead of them! The sound quality was as good as it is in Vancouver, which is to say, on par with the regular plain old telephone lines that I had before.
There was only one glitch and that was more to do with the Siemens phone than anything else. It would ring but only at the moment it was actually ringing, could you hit the "ACCEPT" button. In between rings, it didn't look "pick up able". Weird.
But that very small issue aside, it means that with a laptop, skype, Gatherplace (for screen sharing), Simulscribe, a good DSL connection, and a Vonage adapter - have equipment, will travel.
I hear that Puerto Vallarta has good DSL... Or maybe Costa Rica....
Here are two interesting articles: one from Glenn Kelman, and a follow on from Guy Kawasaki on why serial entrepreneurs might not in fact be the best bet for funders. Interesting perspectives and I recognize some of Guy's cautions from my own experience.
I found this stunning YouTube video on John Chow's blog here.
The Bugatti has to race a mile, turn around, and race back. The EF-2000 has to take off, race a mile into the air vertically and then turn around and fly towards the ground another mile and then cross the same finish line as the car.
VERY well done and hilarious that somebody bothered to do it at all!
"The trouble with the first time entrepreneur is that he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. After a failure he does know what he doesn’t know and can beat the hell out of people who still have to learn."
“All companies that go out of business do so for the same reason - they run out of money.”
"Great markets make great companies."
"I like opportunities that are addressing markets so big that even the management team can't get in its way."
"I am 100% behind my CEOs right up till the day I fire them."
"The world of technology thrives best when individuals are left alone to be different, creative, and disobedient."
"One of my jobs as a board member has been to counsel management to avoid distraction and to execute with constructive paranoia."
I decided to get out for a run in the cold sunny weather today and ran around Ile Saint-Louis:
It was a crisp beautiful autumn day. I was the only runner in shorts, and one of the only runners out at ALL. There don't appear to be many runners in Paris. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places.
On the way back home, I ran through a back alley and found this great cathedral.
And a few blocks from home there is a little shop with this sign. I liked the sign and thought that it was worth taking a photo.
There are a lot of tiny little shops near our place that have art in them. Wait what on earth is that in the window??
Aujourd'hui était le jour 3 ici à Paris. Olivier et moi réellement avons obtenu de prendre le petit déjeuner ensemble, alors il se dirige pour travailler, et je suis allé au loin au yoga de Bikram. Il y a un petit studio impressionnant juste près de notre endroit, droite autour du coin d'un magasin de Apple.
(photos courtesy of www.yogabikramparis.com)
Alors je suis allé de nouveau au au braver les bas-côtés de BHV pour trouver un fusible pour le transformateur que j'ai fait sauter, et pour acheter quelques dishtowels. Je suis parvenu à diriger ma voie par ces essais et tout le personnel était très utile aussi longtemps que j'ai souri. Beaucoup. C'est un fait que des humains sont câblés pour sourire sur la commande pour long car vous les rayonnez un sourire et puis leur demandez de vous aider à parler meilleur français, ils semblent répondre bien.
Maintenant de nouveau au travail sur mon timezone américain du nord !
Oh yes, a little promotion for Vonage. I brought my Vonage adapter here to Paris so that I could have all of my North American phone numbers ring here. And it's working perfectly. So my SF and Vancouver numbers all ring my phone here and I can call out just like when I'm at home in Vancouver. It's a bit surreal actually how well it works. When did VoIP actually start to work?? It used to be a nightmare.
Today was my first weekday in the city. Unfortunately, there are no Crossfit gyms here in Paris. Seems like a business opportunity to me. There are about 30 gyms in downtown Paris, 22 of which are one chain.
The first gym I found was actually a combination gay sauna, bar, and weight room. All in one. Not quite what I was looking for. On to the local mega corporate chain Club Med - owned by...Club Med. Lots of neon, a lot of space, a ton of machines and almost no free weights in site. And it was also $36/day! Next, I went looking for the local Univers Gym. I never did find it. But while I was looking for that gym, I found this building facing a back alley. It looked like something from the future - possibly a set for Gattaca or Minority Report:
And then right across the street was an entry way that took me from the future all the way back to the past:
Inside a massive park was this man sitting with his feathered friends:
After wandering in the park here for a bit, I headed back to the other side of town to try to find Body Gym.
On the way, I passed through the Place de Bastille, a very large roundabout with this in the center:
It was ever more impressive zoomed in:
Eventually I found the gym. I almost didn't go in. The front entrance was all graffitied (graffited?) over. But once inside, the owners were friendly, the gym had real people working out hard, and they had free weights, a somewhat old change room, and the whole place looked like it needed to be...closed....or renovated. Perfect! And the price was right too. Managed 10 sets of "Cindy" (5 pullups, 10 pushups, 15 squats) in 20 minutes. That was about all I could do today between my minor jetlag and my bum cramps from the flights over.
Once the workout was over, I wandered home feeling like I was going to be sick. I'm sure that was the workout and not the jetlag which is gone by now.
As night fell, the neighbourhood seemed to get LOUDER as people came home from work. This is the view out of the window. It's pretty funny to watch. It eventually settles down though by bedtime.
Here are some pictures from Day 1 in Paris.
I'll be working and living here for the next two weeks. My blogging application is acting a bit weird so the images are all really small. I'll try to fix it for the next posts.
Here is Olivier at the Eiffel Tower. He was disappointed that I didn't think more of it.
The sun shone for a few minutes but otherwise it was a slightly chilly fall day. The grounds were not too busy.
Yes these are Citroen 2CVs. You can rent them. The renters all seemed to have bought berets for the occasion. Or perhaps they provide them with the cars?
I loved the way this guy parked his Smart Car. It was almost like he was trying to hide it behind the parking meter - "You can't SEE me!"
"Here lived Antoine de Saint-Exupery from 1934 to 1940". Home of the author of "The Little Prince".
Napoleon is interred here:
Sorry about the rotation. My darned iPhoto upgrade keeps rotating the photos the wrong way and it won't fix them. Here is Rodin's The Thinker from three sides. I didn't realize how buff Rodin's models were! They were either all gym rats or else he made them larger than life.
Looking out the rear of the Musee de Rodin at the gardens.
My view on the interesting things happening at the intersection of business, technology, society, and the environment.
