Probstisms

  • The Funniest Mac and PC Commercial Yet!

    I found this new Apple commercial on Digg this morning. This is the funniest Mac and PC commercial yet from Apple.

  • A Few Notes from A Casual User on Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.1

    Mac OS X Leopard

    I’m a Mac fan … I don’t go all crazy and have to have ALL the latest gadgets. For the record, I have an iPhone, iPod (I’m a generation behind), and a new 20″ aluminum iMac. OK, so I have to have some of the newest gadgets, but by most standards, I’m a very casual user.

    Here is a list of the things I use the most:

    Apple Apps:

    -Safari
    -iTunes
    -iPhoto
    -Mail
    -iChat AV
    -iCal (but mostly only on the iPhone)
    -Address Book (to sync my iPhone)

    Third Party Apps:

    -Sirius Mac 2

    …and a few others but used too scarcely to mention. I didn’t even have Office on my machine until about three months after I bought it.

    So, in my casual use, there have been a few noticeable differences since upgrading to 10.5. I’m going to vent on two here:

    Let’s start with Safari. I use Safari as my main web browser. I know that Safari 3 is still in Public Beta but I never used to have this problem. When viewing RSS feeds, it takes what feels like forever (up to about 10 seconds) to load as little as 5 new feeds. It never did this on the previous versions. I have not tried the RSS feed in Mail heavily yet so I don’t know if the problem exists there or not so I’ll have to try that and find out. Point is, I like viewing the RSS feeds in Safari while I’m browsing my other websites.

    In iTunes, if I’m viewing a video (usually a TV show or music video), I often times will close the video window when it’s a music video that I don’t have the song file for. When I select another video, the audio will play, but the video window will not pop back up. If I select a size for the video screen, I get the turning beach ball, and iTunes quits. This also happened on Tiger so I’m not sure if it’s something I’m doing, but I don’t think such a simple thing should be such an issue.

    More to come as I continue to discover new and hopefully exciting things!!

    Editor’s Note: Greg Probst is the author of Blue Sleeves Blog and is a regular contributor to Probstisms.

  • Scoble’s Little Computer Problem

    It sounds like Scoble’s pissed off at his Mac. Apparently, his computer had a little trouble after the latest Mac OS X update, and it was restarting over and over again. What this usually means is that there is some conflict either with hardware or other software drivers. I haven’t had a problem with a Mac OS X upgrade or update as far are I can remember, and I’ve been using the same Power Mac G4 since 1999. To think back even further, I don’t remember having any problems with System 7, Mac OS 8, or Mac OS 9. Now, that’s a lot of solid updates over the years.

    I understand the frustration Scoble is feeling. There’s nothing quite like the feeling you get when your computer isn’t working right. There are so many potential issues that it’s almost overwhelming to even get started with troubleshooting, but you have to do it. I’m really surprised he gave up so quickly and ran to his blog to light up Apple like a Christmas tree. His post really sounded like a computer novice wrote it, and I expect more from someone who has a background like Scoble. He could have at least pulled out his Mac OS X disk to see if it would work. Sometimes, it’s something really simple, but you have to at least start the troubleshooting process.

    Unfortunately, I think this is just the beginning of the Apple backlash. There have been so many switchers in the last several years that there are bound to be people who feel like they need to run back to their Windows machines at the first sign of a problem with their Macs. They’ll spend a day or two with their Windows machines and realize why they moved to the Mac in the first place. Apple’s not perfect. Mac OS X isn’t perfect. It is certainly better than Windows, and that is coming from someone who has been using a Mac since System 7 and Windows since 3.1. Unless Microsoft makes some dramatic user-targeted improvements to Windows, I will confidently recommend Apple computers to anyone who asks.

    If you want an entertaining response to Scoble’s little rant, you have to check out Fake Steve’s reaction. Hilarious!

  • Sirius’ XM Acquisition

    For a really long time, I was very anti-Satellite radio. Why pay for something when you can get it for free? I just couldn’t understand why somebody would do such a thing!

    When the head unit in my car stereo went out on my old car, I thought about upgrading to an HD Radio unit but couldn’t justify the cost of it … so I went with an HD Radio-ready unit just in case I wanted to upgrade. Luckily for me, only a few months later I bought a new car that had Sirius Satellite Radio pre-installed. At first, I was still kind of iffy on it, and being from Chicago, I had my favorite radio station, The Mix … and when I don’t have my Sirius, I definitely turn them on, but they had been doing this stupid social experiment, and that’s when I turned off over-the-air radio for good.

    The choices that Sirius (and I’m going to be Sirius heavy here because I have never subscribed/used XM Radio) offers are amazing. Mainly, I listen to the music and talk stations as my two main staples. There’s a wide variety of point of views, from liberal left to radical right … and they seem to get along. Even the gay/lesbian station invites Fr. Dave from the Catholic channel on from time to time.

    And for a number of months, there has been talk about an acquisition of XM by Sirius. Personally, I’m in support of the merger. While I’m not a share holder and therefore don’t have any say in the matter, CNN reports that shareholders of both have approved the acquisition to continue. Now, the only thing that can stand in the way is the U.S. Government … hopefully, it won’t be too bumpy for the two, but who knows. We’ll definitely see how it will play out.

    I am very excited to see the combination of resources to focus on programming choice and flexibility of subscriptions rather than competition and customer retainment. From the same CNN article, it appears as if there has already been some preliminary discussion of the future choices that may be offered. You have Sirius, here, for a little more, pick some of XM and vice versa. Personally, I can’t see this going on for too long before they’re merged into one force. Why maintain two separate staffs, etc … But for my two cents, as little as they’re worth, I’m glad to see the acquisition move onto the next step. I know that Sirius has made a committed customer out of me (for now), so let’s see the service only get better!

    Editor’s Note: Greg Probst is the author of Blue Sleeves Blog and is a regular contributor to Probstisms.

  • A New Probst on Probstisms

    Today is a great day for Probstisms. I am very excited to announce that my brother, Greg, will soon be contributing content to the site. Like his big brother, Greg is a Mac guy and is into all of the latest and greatest gadgets from Apple and other companies. A love of music also seems to run in our family. Greg is almost nine years my junior so he will bring a younger perspective to Probstisms.

    I look forward having Greg’s posts published here on Probstisms, and I think you’ll enjoy them too.

    Welcome Greg!

  • Some New (Old) Posts

    Some time ago, I wrote three blog posts as part of an application to join the blogging crew over at TUAW. Having not heard from them since I sent the application, I figure that it is time to make those posts public on Probstisms. All of the posts have been back dated to when they were written.

    The first post is about the iPod halo effect.

    The second post is about the Apple/Starbucks partnership.

    The third post is a review of Google Docs from a Mac user’s perspective.

    I felt pretty good about the posts at the time, and I hope you enjoy them too.

  • The Leopard Backlash

    As my good friend, Scott Driza, so eloquently pointed out on his blog, Hobbub.com, there has been some negative press coming out about Apple’s latest operating system release, Mac OS X Leopard. While I haven’t had a chance to install Leopard on my own Mac, I find it incredibly difficult to believe some of the claims coming from historically pro-PC web sites and magazines. As far as I’m concerned, Walt Mossberg and David Pogue have given Leopard their seal of approval, and that’s good enough for me. Both of those guys know their stuff when it comes to the Mac so I trust and respect their opinion. While I also have respect for magazines like eWeek, I know that they are relatively new to the Mac scene so I take a lot of what they say with a grain of salt. I know their experience is mainly with Windows, and that’s cool because I use Windows at work and like to keep up with what is going on in that world too. Anyway, I have a feeling a lot of the negative comments about Leopard are being a bit overblown now that Apple is in the mainstream spotlight, and really, that’s a good thing because it will only make Apple work harder to make their products that much better, and that must really have their competition shaking in their boots. Many of Apple’s products are already industry standards for quality so just imagine the products they will introduce thanks to the increased coverage and pressure from the mainstream press and Wall Street.

    For those of you that want to get the scoop on everything going on in the Mac world, I would suggest Macworld, TUAW, MacRumors, and AppleInsider.

  • Hello from London

    I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted. I’ve been in London for the last week, and I haven’t had a reliable Internet connection from the hotel. I just wanted to drop a quick note to let you know Probstisms will be back to its normal schedule very soon.

    Cheers

  • Still No IMAP Love!

    Google GmailLast Wednesday, Google announced the long awaited availability of IMAP for Gmail. Gmail has had POP access for quite some time, but POP just doesn’t cut it when you want to access your email from more than one device.

    Now, I know some of you are thinking I should just access Gmail over the web, and you would have a pretty good point, but what happens when I’m 35,000 feet in the air or some other place where there is no Wi-Fi or cellular system? I want to use Apple’s Mail application with Gmail. I want to use Outlook with Gmail. I want to use my BlackBerry’s message application with Gmail. Basically, I want IMAP for my Gmail account. It’s been five days since the announcement, and I’m still waiting. Come on Google, hook me up.

  • A Fresh Start For An Eight Year Old Power Mac

    The Mac OS X Leopard launch this weekend got me thinking about how I could get more out of my good ol’ Power Mac G4. I didn’t buy Leopard because I’m waiting to hear how it runs on G4 processors. Based on my experience with iLife ’08, Apple is clearly not optimizing applications for the G4 and its Velocity Engine anymore. Take iMovie ’08 for example. iMovie ’06 runs like a champ on my computer. I find it very difficult to believe that iMovie ’08 could not have been optimized to run on a G4. It does not make any sense to me. The performance of iPhoto ’08 is also a bit suspect on my Mac especially compared to the last version. Anyway, that’s a whole other topic.

    The Leopard launch convinced me that it was time to give my Mac a fresh start. My hard drive was approaching capacity, and the performance of the machine was definitely starting to slow down a bit. To give a little background, the machine still had Classic (Mac OS 9) on it. It also had every file I had created in the last eight years. I’ll be the first to admit that a fresh OS install was way overdue.

    With my internal 120 GB hard drive and 250 GB FireWire hard drive both almost full, I had a bit of a dilemma. It was time for another external drive so off to Costco I went. With a new 500 GB FireWire hard drive in hand, I was now ready to implement my master plan. The first step was to do a full backup onto my new hard drive. Once that was finished, I broke out my Mac OS X Tiger disk and did a nice fresh installation for the first time since who knows when. I have decided that my internal hard drive will be used almost strictly for applications. With over 140 GB of photos, music, and videos, I don’t want to keep my media files on the internal drive. I plan to use the 250 GB FireWire drive for my iLife media files. The drive will be a little over half full when I move all of my files over so I will have room to grow. That will leave the 500 GB FireWire drive to backup every file on my other two drives. That will give me plenty of room not only for a full backup but also incremental backups for the foreseeable future.

    With my new setup in place, I feel like my Mac (barring anything catastrophic) should last for quite some time. I can see using this machine for at least another couple years. Now, don’t get me wrong; I would love a new iMac, but my Power Mac seems to be a lot more responsive so I am happy to keep on using it.