Info

Reassuringly Expensive

Posts tagged mac

Choose another tag?

I’m playing with a cool new app on my Mac that shows great promise: Google Quick Search Box.

Google Quick Search Box

Developed by Nicholas Jitkoff, the developer behind the once great, but now sadly orphaned Quicksliver, Google Quick Search aims to combine Google Search with Spotlight search in one package. But, as with Quicksilver Google Quick Search is able to do much more than just launch apps and documents allowing you to drill down and carry out actions with your data; for example moving a document to a different folder.

Google Quick Search Box Open

I say that Google Quick Search shows promise because this release is described as a developer release; I’ve had a few crashes and also found it unable to play a track or artist in iTunes. This aside I have also found it more intuitive and easier to use than Quicksilver. With Quicksilver I did little more than launch apps but I can see myself using Google Quick Search for much more as it develops.

I mentioned in my earlier post A Quick Chat About Netbooks that I had had problems with both my Eee PC and a new MacBook ; so here, as promised, are the details of my circular journey from netbook to netbook.

When Jas interviewed me at FOWA I as using an Eee PC 901 and it was a nice little device. I loved how capable yet compact it was, but ultimately its size was its downfall. There were two areas, with regard to the Eee PC, in which I realised that size does indeed matter.

The first was the keyboard; I thought that I could and would adjust to its diminutive size but my hands are just too big and consequently my typo rate too high. When you find yourself thinking you’ll wait to type something on a “real keyboard” you know there’s a problem.

The next issue was storage. I didn’t expect this to be an issue as I had planned to store most of my data in “the cloud”, but one of the applications I use is the very excellent Dropbox which holds files locally as well as online. The problem is that the way Dropbox is configured to work on XP did not play well with the Eee PC’s limited storage.

The Eee PC 901 has 8GB of storage split across two 4Gb SSDs: the main faster drive for the OS and a slower one for storage. The 901 Windows XP installation is just over 3Gb which left just 1Gb spare of the main drive. Not a problem I thought with only 500Mb of documents especially as Dropbox allowed me to store this on the secondary storage drive.

However, one of Dropbox’s many great features is excellent versioning capability allowing you to un-delete documents and retrieve older versions. A brilliant facility but sadly the Dropbox client stores the version data on the main Windows drive with no way to change the location; very quickly the 1Gb disappeared.

I decided that it was time to change to a bigger netbook; bigger both in physical form factor and storage capacity. The new Samsung NC10 seemed to fit the bill nicely so it was time to wipe the Eee PC 901 and pop it onto eBay. Sounds easy right?

The 901 as with all netbooks has no CD drive so I had to buy an external USB drive. Once that had arrived I tried to use the Eee PC restore disc but could not make the 901 boot from the CD; so I decided to try an old fashioned install of XP. This process, which took an entire morning, left me with an Eee PC 901 that had two and a half copies of XP on it; none of which worked particularly well.

A wasted and stressful morning that reminded me why I moved to Macs.

The 901 went back to the store and I threw a, sadly characteristic, tech strop™ in which I vowed never to use Windows again and ended with me buying one of the new aluminium MacBooks.
So all was now well or so I thought.

The new MacBook is a lovely piece of design and engineering: solid as a rock and with one of the best keyboards I have ever used. However the honeymoon was short-lived as I became aware of the first issue with the new MacBook: the screen.

The screen problem is not, as you may be expecting, that it is glossy, and believe me it is GLOSSY but that it is simply not a god screen. Unless you have the screen at exactly the correct angle the colours wash out and text quality is degraded; sadly this correct angle often coincides with shocking reflections on the screen making the problem doubly bad.

I thought I might try and live with it, but combined with the second problem it became a deal breaker.

The second issue is the battery and power management. Many new MacBooks and MacBook Pros are experiencing the battery draining when the Mac is in sleep mode. Usually a Mac in sleep uses next to no power and can happily sleep for days. Mine would lose twenty percent overnight often meaning it was flat the next day.

At this point I decided that technology was revolting, at least against me, and returned my second notebook computer in as many weeks for another refund.

So what to do? Give up on a mobile computer? Stick with the iMac and iPhone?

I pondered this for a while and decided to return to my original plan of buying the Samsung NC10 which arrived at Hughes Towers this Saturday and I’m happily typing this article upon it now.

I’ll review the NC10 properly, but the highlights are: great keyboard, great screen and plenty of storage.

The perfect netbook? Well so far…

Caps Lock Done Right

Apple has a deserved reputation for for producing beautifully designed and made hardware. The iMac, the MacBook Air, the iPhone all are simply wonderful to use and to look at. But their appeal is more than just the surface; yes they look lovely on the shelf but it’s when you start to use them you appreciate the thought that has gone into all aspects of their design.

I was struck by this yesterday when I spent 30 minutes and two password resets trying to log into the expenses system at work; a system so bad that once you are logged in you generally wish you weren’t but that’s another story.

It was only when I gave up and went to use another system that I realised I had caps lock switched on. You see on the cheesy Dell keyboard I have at work and in fact all PC keyboards I have used, the caps lock key is on the left but the dim indicator light is over on the top right – about as disconnected as you can get from the button itself. Who thought that was good interface design?

Now, on Apple keyboards the indicator light is on the caps lock button itself, even on the iPhone the button itself changes. Isn’t that just so much more sensible? All it took was for an designer to say “hang on, why is the light over there but the button over here? Let’s change it.” and they did.

It’s not that Apple “Think Different” but they actually just think think about the user experience and how it can be the best it can be. Clearly other manufacturers do not.

I followed Steve Jobs’ Keynote from MacWorld today on my iPhone via MacRumors excellent page and have just watched the Keynote video from the Apple site and whilst it wasn’t an iPhone year but it was still a good year.

However, before we get into what was announced I just have to ask – can you name any other corporation that you would watch a keynote from it’s CEO? Amazing… and I have to say Steve Jobs is the best corporate public speaker I’ve ever seen. The demand for the keynote coverage was so high in fact that Twitter disappeared before it even started and TUAW took out an AOL data centre.

Anyway, to MacWorld 2008 – my guess you will remember was

HOME “MEDIA” NETWORKING

and we got that in full effect with the new Apple TV. The original Apple TV didn’t appeal to me much but this new “Take 2″ looks a much more complete and well thought out product.

Apple’s next target is most definitely your living room.

What other goodies did Steve reveal?

  • The Time Capsule – a wireless NAS backup hard drive and wifi router. Great idea; I’m in the market for a new backup drive so this looks very interesting.
  • iPhone 1.1.3 software update. I’ve updated mine and in addition to all the new features it feels a little quicker to. I like that they call this the January update implying that there are more to come in future months.
  • iPod Touch update – 5 new apps for $20. Not sure how I feel about the charge but it is a very significant update.
  • Apple TV “Take 2″ – looks like a nice product. Marks Apple’s new direction in addition to more traditional Apple products; who’d of thought we’d call the iPod traditional a few years ago?
  • MacBook Air – yes the rumours were true but they didn’t guess just how thin and downright slinky the new MacBook Air is. It is stunning. I’m planning on getting a new MacBook this year and that will most definitely be it, but not the SSD version… HOW MUCH?

And that was MacWorld 2008, no “one last thing” but plenty of “booms” and an accurate prediction for yours truly.

Now to bed perchance to dream…of the MacBook Air…