MaconMacGuy.com:

Putting the tech pieces together
for Macon & Middle Georgia
for "a good while now"

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=6294&tag=nl.e008

TCO: New research finds Macs in the enterprise easier, cheaper to manage than Windows PCs

—-

This is not a surprise – it has actually been true for years. I did some serious research on the matter back in 2003, and found several Fortune 500 companies who were mixed platform – and had to hire FAR fewer Mac techs than for the PC side.

I keep my personal machine for FAR longer then usual – but you actually could put mac OS 10.5 [Leopard] on the vintage-2000 iMac DV that is sitting on the floor to my right. I wouldn’t put Vista on ANY machine made before 2007.

Ran across an article on TechRepublic article A very personal Google Android vs. Apple iPhone war just got some more personality.

According to the article there is some real rancor between the iPhone and Android teams/CEO/whatever. Although that might make for some good soap opera type of entertainment – I’m more interested in a comment the article made comparing this spat with the Apple-Microsoft “war” of the 1980s-90s.

For those of you that have been around for a while, the Apple iPhone vs. Google Android war looks a lot like the Microsoft-Apple battles decades ago. Apple went closed ecosystem and Microsoft went with the “we’ll flood you with partners” approach. Nowadays, Google is playing up the Microsoft flood the zone approach with an open source twist.

I thought that was an interesting take on the business/coding/user/and mindshare battles that went on between the Apple OS and Winders….uh, I mean Windows. As a synopsis I suppose it works fairly well – but let’s take a look at what the aftermath has meant for the two companies, and see if there are any parallels to draw in the phone OS space.

Microsoft is now supporting well over TEN operating systems – there are multiple versions of Vista and Windows 7, all which have significant differences (although the cores are basically the same). Apple? 6, assuming you count the Server editions of 10.4, 10.5, and 1.06 separately. That doesn’t sound like a big difference until you factor in all of the possible hardware configurations that can affect system stability and usability – indeed, hardware can make the software look stupid in a blink of an eye, and an untrained user may not be able to tell the difference.

Plus Apple machines are MUCH less likely to go haywire on you – whether OS or hardware related.

In the marketplace, you can buy Macs from a variety of places, but have a relatively few models (albeit well-positioned in terms of capabilities!), all which perform well. The Windows side is a confusing array of options, sizes, price levels, support levels, performance levels, and even quality levels – none of which is easy to discern.

So assuming a similar path in the phonespace means that in a few years we’ll still have a few iPhone models (more than now, if you included the iPad in this scenario) – and tons of Android phones at varying levels of functionality, quality level, and usability.

…. and Google will be using the then-current release of the OS to integrate the features Apple added in their LAST release.

In any case, this is gonna be interesting to watch!

I’ve read with interest the introduction of the iPad from Apple yesterday, and have surfed through Macworld’s stories about the iPad.

I have a post for my Mercer CSC125 class with several links to the Macworld material, including photos, video, and some editor’s reactions. You can view that post HERE, over at csc125.blogspot.com.

I threw the lesson plan out the window, and we had a very interesting discussion about the student’s reactions to the iPad – was it a usable thing now, could it be usable on the job – in business, etc.

What surprised me was that the overall reaction was “yeah, it’s cool, but I don’t see how it’s useful for me”. Several questioned droppiong $500 on something they weren’t sure they’d use (which was actually  nice to hear! I’m sure their parents would be proud.)

Most of the kids have smartphones and laptops. Abvout half of them know about multi-touch capabilities, but relatively few have multi-touch capable devices. A surprising number said the omission of a videocamera was a deal-breaker for them – most who said this use video chat on Skype to stay in touch with home (several states away, even across the ocean in Britain).

My take?

A very cool technology which will again change how we interact with the computers in our lives – after the concept of “no keyboard” is adopted across the industry. I can see using one, especially given the iWork apps (which are Office compatible), projector interface, and the fact that I do all my email on the web anyway.

This is going to be interesting!

Techrepublic posted a few snippets from the presentation by Steve Jobs:

…and here are some reactions from the PC World and MacWorld editors:

Microsoft offers a FREE antivirus/anti-other-bad-stuff application called “Miscrosoft Security Essentials”.

It is NOT the best thing out there, but works pretty doggone well. It DOES “suck up some CPU cycles” – i.e. when it’s running your machine will slow down a bit.

It is DEFINITELY better than running nothing – so if your subscription to Norton or Symantec or whatever is running out, and you don’t have the cash, check it out.

http://ct.techrepublic.com.com/clicks?t=523334930-a275dfeedae0baeeab728d8c7a14c0c1-bf&brand=TECHREPUBLIC&s=5
for an article about it, with links to the download.

More details at
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/products/?p=839

Download the product at
http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/default.aspx

I am using using it on one of my machines, and it seems to work well. When it’s scanning the machine does slow down, but this is on a slower Pentium 4 machine.

The descriptions below are not exact wordings – but they do give the gist of what you have to click. This came from a friend whow anted to know how to transfer his iTunes library from his old PC to his new Macbook.

——-

Pop a thumb drive into your PC.

On your PC:
My Documents–>My Music–>iTunes
One of those folders inside iTunes has all of your audio files. Copy them onto the flash drive.

Eject the flash drive, and pop it into your Mac.

On your Mac:
Open up iTunes. Open up the preferences, and make sure “Copy files into the library” is checked. I also suggest checking “Keep the library organized”.
Slide the itunes window over to the side.
Open up a window to your flash/thumb drive.
Highlight all of those folders that contain your audio (Command-A is a keyboardshortcut). Click-n-drag them into the iTunes window.
Wait a while.
It may ask you about authorizing this machine blah blah blah. Allow it – you might have to add an AppleID and password.

OTHER RESOURCES
http://reviews.cnet.com/ipod/9602-12576_7-0.html?messageID=2510455&kw=ipod
http://lifehacker.com/242468/geek-to-live–how-to-move-an-itunes-library-from-a-pc-to-mac-and-back
http://www.jakebouma.com/2008/04/05/how-to-move-your-itunes-library-from-a-pc-to-a-mac-without-losing-metadata-ratings-playcounts/

Sometimes technology changes, even when we don’t want it to.

One of my clients is blind, and runs a computer-based recording studio (that is verrrry nice, let me tell you….). There’s a constant dance we have to do to keep his machines running, because not only do you have the inherent complexities of dealing with Windows (XP pro in his case), PLUS the weirdnesses of audio on Windows, you have JAWS, a screenreader fropm Freedom Scientific to boot.

It can get hairy keeping things running.

My client has depended on Outlook Express for years for his email – primarily because Jaws didn’t play well with the full Outlook, and webmail isn’t an option (for the same reason). Summer 2009 Microsoft stopped supporting Outlook Express on Hotmail because they moved to “Windows Live”, which uses a fundamentally different technology for email fetching.

Now, I understand the technical and business reason for Microsoft’s decision – after all, this is a FREE product they’re offering. I also understand my client SHOULD have moved off of using MSN for his primary email a long time ago, and moved it onto his own domain – but generally you don’t fix what’s broken, especially when you have a memorize what is onscreen because you can’t see it!

But this means my client can do NO business online, because email is how he conducts a good part of his studio work.

A tough situation – one he didn’t ask for. In the next installment I’ll describe what we decided on after much discussion – and let you know how it all came out.

As I type this I’m waiting to find out myself!

I have a client who called with some computer issues, and their situation serves as the inspiration for this entry.

This is a small business, with a couple of people in the office taking care of “just about everything”.

So, if you want to keep your office from working well, do these things:

1) Put the absolute minimum of RAM in your computers. (One machine has 260K for the OS – Windows2000). This will make your office personnel spend most of their time WAITING for their machines to do anything.

2) Never train them in anything. That way they won’t know anything about tools that will help them do their work – like Outlook, or web browsers, or….

3) Don’t share ANYTHING, even though they are on a network already. This way one person will have to wait until the other machine is open to get anything done.

4) Never backup anything. That way you’ll REALLY be hosed when (not if) a machine breaks down!

5) Don’t setup any standard communication lines – like a REAL email address based on the business’s domain. That way no one will know how to contact anyone – they’ll all be using yahoo, or hotmail, or…….

6) Don’t crosstrain – don’t let anyone know what anyone else is doing, especially in terms of websites, usernames, and passwords!

7) Don’t setup guest accounts on your machines – that way anyone who walks by can mess around with the machine.

So how is YOUR office doing? Need some help? Contact the MaconMacGuy for some mostly intelligent help!