mikeg's blog - Apple

The wonderful thing about Standards is Standards are wonderful things!

mikeg@bsd-box.net (mikeg) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:35:08 -0500

OHAI! Long Time No Blog! I've been inspired by this post over at AppleInsider, titled "Apple details compatibility issues between iWork '08 and '09". Here's the gist:

Apple has acknowledged a problem with its productivity suite, iWork, in which the previous version known as iWork '08 cannot open files created by iWork '09. Posted earlier this week, the support article advises users of a workaround but makes no mention of any forthcoming corrective updates to iWork '08. The latest version, iWork '09, was unveiled at Macworld last month with updates to Keynote, Pages, and Numbers along with a new online service called iWork.com. Apple instructs users to save their documents as iWork '08 files if they need compatibility with the older version. While Apple used Keynote '09 as an example in the screenshots, the same issue affects the entire suite.

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DHL - When it absolutely positively needs to be lost in transit, accept no substitutes.

mikeg@bsd-box.net (mikeg) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:28:26 -0400

Hmm... So I finally get around to ordering my replacement battery from Apple (Go AppleCare!) Here's where we're at:

Apple shipped me the new battery last week.
DHL can't find my apartment. It's the only big fucking brick building on the block, but they can't find it.
I seethe and give them directions.
DHL STILL can't find my apartment - It's been 4 days since the battery shipped. I get annoyed and call Apple.
Apple helps me yell at DHL, and we reroute the package to my office.
DHL should be able to find the office - I've seen them deliver here before.
My package goes on a continental tour:
PA to NY; NY to NY; NY to PA; PA to OH; OH to NY

It's been 9 days since the package shipped. It's still not here. DHL. SUCKS. BIG. FLOPPY. DONKEY. DICK. (I feel bettah now)

The problem with Apple...

mikeg@bsd-box.net (mikeg) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:09:07 -0400

So, everyone knows I'm a Mac user right? that's not news? And I've never had a real complaint to make (Well, the "Genius Bar" is less than useless, but it caters to the clueless faithful who love OS X for the glitz and GUI, but phone support has never been anything but helpful...) So what's my bitch? Well here's the rub from eWeek's AppleWatch blog. It looks like we're back to harping on "Macs cost too much" -- and you know what, I think they do.
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Zoom Zoom (Apple, not Mazda)

mikeg@bsd-box.net (mikeg) — Thu, 01 May 2008 11:00:51 -0400

Apple Stock

So, many of you know that I lost my bet last year that Apple would close over $200 at the end of the year -- The beginning of our "Bagel" (that's what we're calling the recession now) caught everything pretty hard, and Apple is just now pulling out of the hole (See picture). Putting this in perspective a little, Apple has almost completely recovered it's December 2007 value, while both the Dow and NASDAQ indices are still in their valley wallowing in general sadness. Mind you not all of my investments are doing so well with the bagel-recovery (The mutual funds you're seeing are all still down compared to 12/2007 value, VMWare is still a net loss b/c of a 12/07 correction when they announced financials), but Apple continues to be a rising star in my long-term portfolio. For the record, my Apple stock is up 161.64% over cost (across multiple purchases during its rise in 2005-2007; The initial purchases back when it was a $50 stock with an uncertain future are up well over 200%). I'm pondering additional buys, but I'm really waiting for a split (& possible buy-back from Apple, Inc.). How's everyone else doing? :-)

[Apple] [Eye] [Phone]

mikeg@bsd-box.net (mikeg) — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 00:17:59 -0500

Y'all seen it.
The Apple iPhone has come to town. And yay verily it's fucking cool looking, and behold the faithful want them and will give up their left nuts to have one... Ya even me. So for those of you who don't know, I use a crackberry. A RIM 7520 to be precise. And it's not a bad little device, except for everything that's wrong with it:

eMail
The one thing the crackberry is good at, and it aint that good at it. In order to make my crackberry work with a UNIX mail environment, I need to forward my mail to my crackberry address. This means I need to manage two different copies of my mail (one in my inbox, one on the crackberry).
It also means I have an @nextel.blackberry.com email address, that gets spammed up the ass because it has no antispam protection. Can we say UberSuck?
SMS (Texting for you pflaming pfaggot kidiots)
Put simply, the crackberry BLOWS for SMS. On a good day, it shows me 1234567890@provider.com as the from address. On a bad day it just says "|". Either way I have NO clue who messaged me.
Linear Voicemail
OK, so I don't NEED visual voicemail. I don't NEED to be able to pick and chose whose messages I listen to...
I WANT IT! I WANT IT BAD AND I WANT IT NOW! GIVE IT TO ME!
Sorry... better now... but yeah... Apple is good at that -- You never realize how much you NEED something until they show it to you and say "Wait 6 months and we'll let you have it".
The bastards.
Browsing for a Browser
I want Safari on my phone. I want Firefox on my phone. I want to be able to view a page with FUCKING FRAMES!
I'm sick of being treated like a backward retard who is still running Nutscrape Navigator 2.x (If you dont understand this, you're too young to use the internet. Kill yourself. NOW!). I want FRAMES and JAVA and AJAX and Quicktime and I want it NOWWWW!
Goodies
OK Steve-O... you said it runs OS X. Bitch, gimmie my fucking terminal! And where's my ssh client? And you DAMN WELL better ship a VNC client (or let me run one).
This device could well be the answer to my mobile management dilemma - VNC, SSH and I'm good to go. All the better if it works over WiFi.

Of course the iPhone has some disadvantages too...

Price
I've never known Apple to compromise on this. $499. That's a tough nut to swallow. Not insurmountable, but ouch though.
Cingular
I've never had them... I've had friends who had them. They were unimpressed.
They lose bonus points from me for not being able to do WLNP ("keep your number") on my 914 number. T*Mobile said they could - why can't Cingular? (Note that this is based on their online "Thingy" -- I'll look into this in greater detail as I prepare to bail on my Nextel contract ;))
Battery
So am I the only one who noticed the seamless back? I don't know about you, but I happen to abuse the living shit out my cell phone batteries, so I'm kind of worried about iPhone possibly not having a replaceable battery.
More to the point, I think Apple should make it possible to replace batteries in ALL their products. How many of you have a 2G or 3G iPod that you dont use because it plays for 45 seconds and then goes splat? Wouldn't it be nice if you could use that iPod by just chaning out the battery?
Yeah, I'm t3c KrayZee.

SO, yeah... short version: I want an iPhone, but I can wait until July and do some more research first :-)

Rotten Apples?

mikeg@bsd-box.net (mikeg) — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 00:22:10 -0500

CF: Mac Observer Article and the original blog article. See below the cut for my take.
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CoreDump Two Duo?

mikeg@bsd-box.net (mikeg) — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 16:12:59 -0500

Long time no blog. I promise I have a good excuse, and as soon as I think of it I'll post it. AAAAAAAAAAAAAANYWay... As I predicted based on the Rumor Mill, right after I got my MacBook (Core Duo), Apple went and released Core 2 Duo machines. FUCKERS. So, here I sit with a problem that is equal in scale to Dr. Krish Pumping his Llama in the middle of the Automata Theory class. To Upgrade, or Not To Upgrade - Whether 'tis nobler in the balance of my bank account to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous hardware prices, or to take my medicine and hang on to the MacBook for 2-3 years like a good disciple of the Upgrade Cycle - and in so doing, save $2000.
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SEE! SEE! SEE!

mikeg@bsd-box.net (mikeg) — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 21:43:30 -0500

Apple Stock closed over $80, Just like I said ($80.85) iWeb - Just like I said OS X Upgrade (Not a leopard but still, it's something) Intel-Based Dual-Core MacBook (So it's not a powerbook) Intel-Based Dual-Core iMac. Only thing I don't like is the price... $2500 is a lot for a new laptop... I'll consider it eventually. That's all... Oh, and One More Thing that's not Apple-related :)

What here with the thing of Apple-y goodness?

mikeg@bsd-box.net (mikeg) — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 21:38:44 -0500

It's a reality distortion field. It makes people buy stuff. This would be good... as a.... marketing tool... for the boosting of the stock... in the cold winters... of the Osbourne syndrome.... And it's happening tomorrow -- That's right, The Steve is gonna get up on stage and do his thing with the announcing of the new products for the recovery of the stock price. I would like to point out that AAPL is currently at $76.05 (down $0.25) right now; I fully expect $78 to $80 tomorrow. I also expect, for the record: -> A .MAC improvement of some kind. I'm guessing iWeb (Apple web design software, obviously integrated with .MAC) -> An Intel-Based Something (Probably a portable; Either a single-core iBook or a dual-core PowerBook. -> The end of Firewire on "consumer" machines. (Yeah that sucks, but the piss is on the wall with that one) -> Cheaper iBook/PowerBook systems (Apple can't compete with the other Intel manufacturers unless they start cutting prices); -> A large cat in a black box with an X on it (OS X Leopard(?) - 10.4 has been out a while; 10.5 is coming) Anyone have guesses? :-A

Outlook and iCal and iPod - Oh My!

mikeg@bsd-box.net (mikeg) — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 00:03:35 -0400

So the first entry in the Apple Category - Outlook, iCal and the iPod Shuffle. Some background for the uninitiated - at work, I (and probably everybody else in the universe) am forced to use Outlook for all my groupware (Calendaring, ToDo Lists, eMail) needs. That isn't a problem -- Outlook is about the best groupware currently available, and until someone comes up with something better I'm content to use Outlook at work (as long as I don't need to PAY for it!). The problem is that my new toy (Apple's iPod Nano) syncs with either a Mac (my machine), or a PC (what I have at work), but not both. Thus you can sync with iCal (what I use at home for scheduling), or Outlook (what we use at the office), but again - Not Both. This presents a problem for me, as I bought the iPod mostly for portable calendaring. The solution, until now, has been to export your outlook calendar every day as an ".ics" (VCalendar) file -- usually by running a separate program -- and then copy that file to your Mac and import it into iCal manually. This solution sucked for me for many reasons, including the fact that I am both forgetful and lazy and would never actually remember to DO the export or have the patience to upload the file to my iBook every single day before I left work. My solution was to take the existing scripts, which do a great job of exporting Outlook data into standard VCalendar format, and modify them to also do WebDAV updates. iCal can both publish (via WebDAV) and subscribe to (via regular old HTTP GET) "web calendars" (VCalendar files uploaded to a web site). This works very well - I can save the basics of my calendar (Appointment summary & Location) with no extra work, and with the addition of Outlook Redemption the descriptions can come along for the ride (without Redemption, you need to manually authorize the script to access your Outlook information every time it runs - NOT Convenient when you want to update your calendar on a regular schedule and don't want to be there when the script runs). So, now the good part: The script. Cleaned up for your viewing pleasure, here is the Outlook2iCal Script. Outlook2iCal.js
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