Mainly Macintosh

Apple - iPod - iPod iTunes Ad - Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan stars in a new iPod+iTunes ad video from Apple!

Apple - iPod - iPod iTunes Ad - Bob Dylan

posted by John Collins @ 8:28 AM 0 comments

installing the OSX is fast/easy - waiting 5 hours for updates to download is hard

I reinstalled the Mac OS X software on my Mom's computer yesterday.

I spent a lot of hours there, though the installation per se took only a few minutes, itself.

The OS and software updates presented by the Software Update command, which totalled over half a gigabyte (!), actually took less time than I expected. However, that is because I expected the updates to take 10-12 hours and they only took about 5 hours. Running the updater over and over again, and rebooting the computer at least 4-5 times, and asking my mom to type in her password a dozen times - that was the time consuming part.

Had she been on a dialup connection, I would not have finished unless I came back almost every day for 3-6 days. At that point, I would be better off just taking her computer to my home, and letting it spend the better part of a day while I let it download its feast of updates while I myself ate, read the news, studied a book, showered, fed the cat, watched some TV, and asked what time I could drop off her computer the next day.


Her computer was manufactured (judging by software file dates) in early February.  This reinstall+update was taking place in mid-August.  So, in about 6 months - over a dozen files totally a huge number of bytes were needed to get my Mom's computer safely running.

These days, if you only have a dialup modem connection for your computer - at certain times, you are going to be extremely unhappy.

The only practical way to update these giga-patches of software updates that seem to pile up is with a broadband connection.

In my mother's case, it would have been possible for Apple to fit the entire set of patches on one 700 MB CD-ROM, and send it to her.

However, I do not think they provide that service.  Their labor costs would be huge.  The list of available updates would be changing  every few weeks.  So not very many CDs could be produced in bulk.  That would increase the risk of a bunch of them being suddenly obsoleted.

In addition to burning them, they would have to e stockpiled.  Eventually, they would have to be (a) ordered by a customer from an employee, (b) got out of inventory, and (c) shipped.  No doubt, then tech support would subsequently get some extra phone calls asking for explanation for how to install the updates from CD/disk rather than by using the turnkey Software Update command.

Installing the updates in my Mom's case took almost half a dozen hours. That is virtually a full work-day. Or more accurately, a full non-work day!

Compared to that, installing the OS was trivilal. The installation proper, as it were, took only about 30-45 minutes - of which only about half a minute was spent actually telling the computer anything (Hey, Mom! What is your zip code?). Configuring her email took about a minute, as did importing her last 3 week's worth of email from the backup CD I made.

I also made a backup of my Mom's entire Library folder before we wiped the old OS prior to installation. Library contains some folders with all of one's email in it.  That turned out to be worthwhile.  It only took 5 minutes to backup and 1 minute to restore.

The lessons learned here are:

• Get broadband because, even if you do not need it for entertainment/performance, computer and software makers are all but forcing you to get it for downloading patches/updates for your computer(s).
• Do your own OS installation, do not abdicate responsibility for that five or ten minute's effort to the cashier or back room techs at your PC or Apple computer store.
• Be ready to spend a whole morning+afternoon or afternoon+evening doing the software updates needed to catch up your computer to the current OS/application/driver/firmware/utility software versions the same day you do your OS (operating system) software install.
• Get a computer-savvy friend who has installed the same OS before to help you, if you can - or just computer savvy in general, as the next best thing.
• Tell no one your passwords. Let no strangers pick your computer/OS passwords for you.
• Write down your passwords and hide them well.
• If anyone creates an email password, or any other password, on your computer make them tell you what it is, write it down, and enter it yourself so you know that it is right. You will need to know that email password when you reinstall your OS or your computer magically forgets it on some whim or due to your poking around.
• Install your applications yourself. If is your job, not the salesman's job. If it is done wrong, it is going to be your problem, not theirs - and you are in a far better position to do it right than they are.

So the point is, installing operating system software is easy and a very, very fast process.

Updating that software, which you need to do right after installing, is easy too - but it takes forever, so have a good book or a TV set or some knitting handy to keep you occupied while you wait for your computer to finish one download and start the next. This is not frighteningly complicated

Also, have two meals' worth of food at hand because by the time you finish everything, a good 6-7 hours will have passed since the time you have started. You run out to a restaurant a couple of times in the middle of that process, and you have just added an hour to an hour and a half to the whole overly-long yet mind-numblingly simple procedure. This is boring folks, not scary.

Unless you do not know your own address/email/phone#/name, you are going to spend zero time thinking, 30 seconds typing, and almost half the waking hours of the day looking at your watch being amazed your are still downloading just the 5th of 15 patches with far more than a couple hours to go. It is the downloading time that takes forever. The only thing hard about it is not going crazy from boredom or lack of food.

Hope this proves enlightening.

Technorati Tags:
macintosh, apple

posted by John Collins @ 12:35 PM 0 comments

weblog of MacUpdate

There is a blog about Macupdate.

posted by John Collins @ 11:13 PM 0 comments

European iTunes Music Store Tops 200 Million Songs Sold

Apple has sold a lot of songs at its European iTunes stores. As of the 2nd of this month, they have sold 200 million songs.

Not bad.

Apparently, while some orgs pondered whether Apple's cross platform, user-friendly, iPod-compatible music sales were okay for European consumers, those same consumers clicked their way into Apple's good graces.

Apple has really grown up since the 1970s. I remember decades ago reading that Apple did not want to sell any of its computers to the military.

Now, Apple sells its products worldwide to people in Asia, Europe, and of course the US.

Their products are manufactured in China and maybe elsewhere, designed and programmed in most - but not all - cases right here in the US. Of course, the parts for the Macintosh and the iPod come from all over the world.

Apple is quite the trailblazer.

Four years ago, Apple was not really a music company - they were a computer company, period.

Now they sell the leading MP3 music products and quite a few songs to boot. Name one store you have been in lately that sells 3 million different songs.

That is about 300,000 albums worth of songs.

Apple is doing okay.

European iTunes Music Store Tops 200 Million Songs Sold:

The iTunes Music Store features a selection of over 2,500 music videos, Pixar short films, and more than three million songs from the major music companies and over 1,000 independent labels.

posted by John Collins @ 10:16 PM 0 comments

Apple - Report on iPod Manufacturing

Everyone knows Apple Computer's popular iPod MP3 players are made in China. And by far, most MP3 players sold today are iPods.

Well, there was a bit of a flap earlier this summer when word came out that the workers who build these popular - and some quite expensive - iPods, make very little money themselves.

Worse, apparently a substantial percentage of the money they make goes back into their employer's pockets. The employer sells the employees food, rents them housing, and so forth.

In one sense, you could look at it as a modernization and employment outreach program.

On the other hand, you could look at it as a company town. Last I heard company towns were illegal in the U.S., owing to abuses by those employers who ran them around the era of the great depression.

Workers in company towns never quite seemed to earn enough money to be able to leave and get another job. The small salary or wage they were paid got reabsorbed back into the company in the form of food sales, housing, and so forth. Essentially, the employees not only provided labor but were also another revenue source for the corporation.

Apple - Report on iPod Manufacturing:

The manufacturing facility supports over 200,000 employees (Apple uses less than 15% of that capacity) and has the services you%u2019d expect in a medium city. The campus includes factories, employee housing, banks, a post office, a hospital, supermarkets, and a variety of recreational facilities including soccer fields, a swimming pool, TV lounges and Internet cafes. Ten cafeterias are also located throughout the campus offering a variety of menu choices such as fresh vegetables, beef, seafood, rice, poultry, and stir-fry noodles. In addition, employees have access to 13 different restaurants on campus.

The accusations leveled against Apple of indirectly creating, or at least fostering, a company town were pretty direct and included some specific numbers on wages - which were quite low by U.S. standards.

They did not convey much of the big picture however. While not really addressing the numbers in the original complaint, Apple does put the situation into the context of the whole facility.

Apple is a minority client of the gigantic facility in China. Nearly 30,000 people work on making Apple products there. However, more than 170,000 people working at the facility on other products for other vendors, not Apple.

Apple's report also makes it sound like the number of hours that employees worked kind of do evoke images of a sweatshop. If I interpret them correctly, employees are typically getting 3 days off a month. In the U.S., we have taken for granted for almost a century that employees theoretically get 8 days off per month.

In the short haul, it may not make much of a difference. But over time, month after month, year after year, those several extra days per month could possibly make or break someone. Especially, considering they tend to be working over ten hours per day, it sounds like.

On the flip side, maybe they do not have a long commute home. I have read of people who work in California and drive a few hours each way, 5 times a week. They commute between their California offices and their Oregon homes. They cannot afford the high cost of decent housing/living in northern California, and they cannot find the kind of employment they want in Oregon.

Hours of driving is certainly work too. I never heard of anyone being compensated for it either, if it is not part of their actual job description; e.g. truck driver.

I am not equivalencing the two things, I am not at all sure that driving 5-6 hours per day, plus working 8 hours per day in an office on top of that, is all that healthy or safe.

Apple's report makes some things sound better than the original complaint, without seeming to distort the facts.

Ironically, in some ways the Apple report mentions a few other concerns the original one did not mention. Some of them are significant, some probably not.

Too many details were left un-addressed in Apple's report to completely erase unease over the condition of workers. Maybe an expert could tell, especially if they were familiar with the overall conditions in the Chinese worker milieu, and the general trends in the economy for individuals there.

Really, it will not be possible to tell if people are well off until changes are made to bring the company into compliance with Apple's official policies protecting workers, and some time passes to see how people are doing compared to when they started working at the factory employing a fifth of a million workers.

One thing that cannot be argued: the numbers of workers, products made/sold, and revenue/profits are huge. And the numbers paid out in manufacturing wages to individuals is tiny.

Depending on your point of view, that is either ideal or deplorable. Either way, it is what it is.

Hopefully, people will benefit from Apple's scrutiny. There is some correlation between a worker's quality of life and the quality of the product that winds up in a consumer's hand. So Apple paying attention to these details and the big picture might benefit everyone involved, not just the obvious parties.

posted by John Collins @ 1:53 PM 0 comments

Apple Mac OS X - Leopard landing in Spring 2007

Apple revealed a bunch of features of Leopard to developers at WWDC, and they have followed up by telling the public what a lot of those features are too.

None of them seemed particularly earth-shaking. It sounds like Apple is holding back even more information than usual though, as they say a certain OS company has been copying their ideas and they do not want to make it easy for those guys to do so. So the lack of wow this time might be due to the fact that the really wow stuff will not be announced until the OS is almost shipping.

That brings up something that was a big surprise to me. I was figuring based in part on past OS product cycles, that Apple would realease Leopard around the turn of 2006/2007.

Not so. Apple's public page for Leopard says tat the bottom that the product will be available in Spring 2007. Tiger shipped in April 2005. Apparently, they have extended their OS delivery cycles to a full two years. Until now, I think their median was around a year and a half.
Apple - Apple - Mac OS X - Leopard Sneak Peek:

All these features and more are delivered to you in one universal, fully accessible, 64-bit operating system. Coming spring 2007.

Oh, well. I guess now that the conversion of Macintosh computers to Intel processors is complete, there is no reason to wait until Leopard comes out to buy a Mac. The new OS product is not just around the corner. It is at least half a year away, maybe more.

For the rest of this year and perhaps almost half of the next, Tiger rules the jungle.

posted by John Collins @ 1:51 PM 0 comments

Apple - Report on iPod Manufacturing

Everyone knows Apple Computer's popular iPod MP3 players are made in China. And by far, most MP3 players sold today are iPods.

Well, there was a bit of a flap earlier this summer when word came out that the workers who build these popular - and some quite expensive - iPods, make very little money themselves.

Worse, apparently a substantial percentage of the money they make goes back into their employer's pockets. The employer sells the employees food, rents them housing, and so forth.

In one sense, you could look at it as a modernization and employment outreach program.

On the other hand, you could look at it as a company town. Last I heard company towns were illegal in the U.S., owing to abuses by those employers who ran them around the era of the great depression.

Workers in company towns never quite seemed to earn enough money to be able to leave and get another job. The small salary or wage they were paid got reabsorbed back into the company in the form of food sales, housing, and so forth. Essentially, the employees not only provided labor but were also another revenue source for the corporation.

Apple - Report on iPod Manufacturing:

The manufacturing facility supports over 200,000 employees (Apple uses less than 15% of that capacity) and has the services you%u2019d expect in a medium city. The campus includes factories, employee housing, banks, a post office, a hospital, supermarkets, and a variety of recreational facilities including soccer fields, a swimming pool, TV lounges and Internet cafes. Ten cafeterias are also located throughout the campus offering a variety of menu choices such as fresh vegetables, beef, seafood, rice, poultry, and stir-fry noodles. In addition, employees have access to 13 different restaurants on campus.

The accusations leveled against Apple of indirectly creating, or at least fostering, a company town were pretty direct and included some specific numbers on wages - which were quite low by U.S. standards.

They did not convey much of the big picture however. While not really addressing the numbers in the original complaint, Apple does put the situation into the context of the whole facility.

Apple is a minority client of the gigantic facility in China. Nearly 30,000 people work on making Apple products there. However, more than 170,000 people working at the facility on other products for other vendors, not Apple.

Apple's report also makes it sound like the number of hours that employees worked kind of do evoke images of a sweatshop. If I interpret them correctly, employees are typically getting 3 days off a month. In the U.S., we have taken for granted for almost a century that employees theoretically get 8 days off per month.

In the short haul, it may not make much of a difference. But over time, month after month, year after year, those several extra days per month could possibly make or break someone. Especially, considering they tend to be working over ten hours per day, it sounds like.

On the flip side, maybe they do not have a long commute home. I have read of people who work in California and drive a few hours each way, 5 times a week. They commute between their California offices and their Oregon homes. They cannot afford the high cost of decent housing/living in northern California, and they cannot find the kind of employment they want in Oregon.

Hours of driving is certainly work too. I never heard of anyone being compensated for it either, if it is not part of their actual job description; e.g. truck driver.

I am not equivalencing the two things, I am not at all sure that driving 5-6 hours per day, plus working 8 hours per day in an office on top of that, is all that healthy or safe.

Apple's report makes some things sound better than the original complaint, without seeming to distort the facts.

Ironically, in some ways the Apple report mentions a few other concerns the original one did not mention. Some of them are significant, some probably not.

Too many details were left un-addressed in Apple's report to completely erase unease over the condition of workers. Maybe an expert could tell, especially if they were familiar with the overall conditions in the Chinese worker milieu, and the general trends in the economy for individuals there.

Really, it will not be possible to tell if people are well off until changes are made to bring the company into compliance with Apple's official policies protecting workers, and some time passes to see how people are doing compared to when they started working at the factory employing a fifth of a million workers.

One thing that cannot be argued: the numbers of workers, products made/sold, and revenue/profits are huge. And the numbers paid out in manufacturing wages to individuals is tiny.

Depending on your point of view, that is either ideal or deplorable. Either way, it is what it is.

Hopefully, people will benefit from Apple's scrutiny. There is some correlation between a worker's quality of life and the quality of the product that winds up in a consumer's hand. So Apple paying attention to these details and the big picture might benefit everyone involved, not just the obvious parties.

posted by John Collins @ 1:49 PM 0 comments

Apple Mac OS X - Leopard landing in Spring 2007

Apple revealed a bunch of features of Leopard to developers at WWDC, and they have followed up by telling the public what a lot of those features are too.

None of them seemed particularly earth-shaking. It sounds like Apple is holding back even more information than usual though, as they say a certain OS company has been copying their ideas and they do not want to make it easy for those guys to do so. So the lack of wow this time might be due to the fact that the really wow stuff will not be announced until the OS is almost shipping.

That brings up something that was a big surprise to me. I was figuring based in part on past OS product cycles, that Apple would realease Leopard around the turn of 2006/2007.

Not so. Apple's public page for Leopard says tat the bottom that the product will be available in Spring 2007. Tiger shipped in April 2005. Apparently, they have extended their OS delivery cycles to a full two years. Until now, I think their median was around a year and a half.
Apple - Apple - Mac OS X - Leopard Sneak Peek:

All these features and more are delivered to you in one universal, fully accessible, 64-bit operating system. Coming spring 2007.

Oh, well. I guess now that the conversion of Macintosh computers to Intel processors is complete, there is no reason to wait until Leopard comes out to buy a Mac. The new OS product is not just around the corner. It is at least half a year away, maybe more.

For the rest of this year and perhaps almost half of the next, Tiger rules the jungle.

posted by John Collins @ 12:47 PM 0 comments

Apple - QuickTime - WWDC 2006 Keynote video

Apple opened its keynote with a gag version of its standard PC-guy and Mac-guy ads.

The PC-guy is really pretty endearing, despite all of his faults.

Steve Jobs has pointed out he as 3/4 million registered developers for the Mac. Sun prided itself on two million developers for Java and that turned out pretty well for Java. It bodes pretty well for Apple.

Jobs said half of the people buying Macs now are first-time Mac buyers. Last quarter alone, Apple sold 1.3 million Macintoshes. Their growth rate is faster than the rest of the industry. Apple market share is growing.

I expected Apple's sales to stutter for a couple quarters while the market slowly accepted the change to Intel processors. No. The sales actually increased significantly.

With the release of the successor to the PowerMac yesterday, Apple completed its conversion to an all-Intel based computer line.

As usual, a riveting keynote.

Apple - QuickTime - WWDC 2006 Keynote:

Watch Apple CEO Steve Jobs kick off the company%u2019s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote preview of Mac OS X %u201CLeopard%u201D from San Francisco's Moscone West.

posted by John Collins @ 8:09 AM 0 comments

Apple - QuickTime - WWDC Intro Video

Via its Apple PC Guy, Apple expresses wan, sympathetic support for the non-Mac PC situation out there.

Apple released a bunch of videos about the new Macs and upcoming Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) at WWDC yesterday.

One interesting feature is that they are offering eye-dazzling animation at the OS/application level.

That will make it easy for developers, and perhaps people using the next wave of applications, an easy ability to create eye-popping commercials.

Right now in my other room, a Dell ad is playing. They are saying they can custom build a PC for you. Probably is, it comes with an operating system that is (c) 2001.

You cannot change or configure that. That year does not change. It seems like one option that is not configurable. Year after year. It just stays there.

Apple keeps moving, though.

posted by John Collins @ 8:00 AM 0 comments

Apple - Mac OS X Leopard Sneak Peek - Xcode 3.0

Looks like Apple has cooked up a doozie of a new Xcode for Macintosh programmers.

Apple descibes Mac OS X Leopard Sneak Peek - Xcode 3.0:

Xcode 3.0 delivers the performance you%u2019ve been asking for as well as innovations that let you create stunning Mac applications more quickly, with more features. Enjoy a graphical IDE in which form focuses your functions. Delight in a debugger so groundbreaking, you%u2019ll make mistakes just to see it in action.

I do not think they are kidding on this last point. I could see myself inserting a bug into a program I was writing just to see how the debugger handled it. Not right before shipping, of course.

Speaking of shipping. Notice how they mention 2006 at the bottom of the page.

I wonder if that means Leopard will be shipping in 2006.

It will be interesting to see if Leopard slides out of its den right after Firefox 2.0 comes out and before the Vista-né-Longhorn OS comes out.

There will be more competing going on in 2007 than has been seen in over half a decade.

Cool!

By the way, the Xcode 3.0 on the page pointed to by the link above - it's free with Leopard.

posted by John Collins @ 9:48 PM 0 comments

Apple Mac Pro - the superfast computer

Apple announced a new computer today. It is the fastest Mac ever. It sounds like one of the fastest personal computers ever.

It does not go at one gigahertz. The slowest speed it comes in is 2 GHz. The fastest speed? 3 GHz!!

How many processors? It has a Dual-Core Intel Xeon CPU. Oh, wait - it has TWO Dual-Core Intel Xeon CPUs. That is a total of 4 processors!

It hods up to 2 TB (terrabytes) of storage. You can put 4 500 GB drivers in it, or something like that.

Not only that, it is a 64-bit system. Not a little 1990s 32-bit system. No, sir. It's the real deal - a 64-bit system fit for the 2000s.

It sounds like the sort of a system power users and server shoppers would want to have hanging around their computer area.

Oh, one more thing. How much RAM can it hold? It can hold up to 16 GB of RAM!

Apple:

Quad Core. Up to 3GHz.
Every Mac Pro in the lineup features two of the newest Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors. Two dual-cores. One powerful quad workstation.

People used to complain Macs were some of the slowest computers around. Are they slow now? No!

People used to complain Macs were too expensive. Are they expensive now? No!

People used to complain Macs were incompatible with Intel. Are they incompatible with Intel now? No!

Apple has made the computers that the whiners were whining for. And they are still Macs. They can still run Macintosh software.

posted by John Collins @ 9:15 PM 0 comments