Philoking.comfrom Jason Burns’ perspective…

After reading this article on Macenstein this evening, I felt compelled to bang out a quick blog to add a little truth to the reality distortion field that is already reaching fever pitch more than 12 hours away from Steve Jobs’ keynote at Macworld tomorrow.

The article’s title "On Macworld Eve: Two more mails in Vista’s coffin," makes me want to ponder his points a little more. First let me be clear on a few facts

I am a Mac user. I love my Macbook Pro. I love my iPod, and I love OS X.

Now for the disclosure that will shock and cause your brain to hurt. I work for Microsoft. I use Windows Vista every day on a desktop and a laptop. I actually really like Windows Vista too. So with that said, let’s look at some reality and alternate points of view. For the sake of this article, I am going to pretend (actually I am not pretending, I do) use ProTools on a Mac. Let’s rewind to Mac OS X Panther and pretend that I am running a shiny PowerMac dual 2.0 Ghz tower with the latest version of Pro Tools on it. Again, it’s not really hypothetical, I was.

So OS X Tiger came out and I wanted it. The only problem is that ProTools wouldn’t work with OS X Tiger. Only Panther. Sound familiar?

Now let’s fast forward to last year, I ran out to get Leopard, installed it on a brand spankin’ new current 2.2Ghz Macbook Pro and bam, bluescreen. Time Machine ran like crap on a brand new dedicated hard disk. There were glitches abound.

Since when are these things unique to Microsoft? Now we read that there is a petition to keep Microsoft from giving up selling Windows XP. Here is the reality…

If you are using a new computer with current software, Windows Vista works just fine. If you are using an older computer, keep XP on it, it’s probably on it anyway.

Microsoft may very well extend the life of XP, that’s anyone’s guess. But the negativity is pointless. I say instead of giving Vista the finger, give Vista a chance. It’s actually pretty damned solid on good hardware.

UK Schools Ditching Windows?
Here is another take at bait and switch titling. Just because a school isn’t adopting Vista and Office 07 (which is common practice for corporations and educational institutions since Windows 2000 came out to replace NT4) doesn’t mean they are going all Mac or taking up the Linux bandwagon. It just means they aren’t making a commitment to Vista yet. This again, is common practice.

The point is that the tornado that is "hate Vista propaganda" is getting ridiculous. Ethical journalism has long left the building and people are now debating pure hyperbole and buzz. Nobody looks at the facts, the real compatibility and most of all most of the people writing the articles aren’t using it.

Get the facts, give it a shot, and don’t do it on your grandpa’s old commodore 64, use a reasonable system.

So here we are folks. I have been kicking around in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard for a few days over a month now. I have had plenty of time to form my impressions and thoughts, so I have collected them to share with you. For the scanners out there, the final outcome is I really like it. I am still a little iffy on the $130 upgrade fee considering the new features, but if you are a Mac head, it’s not much cash, so go get it.

Top 10 of OS X Leopard:

1. Spaces, spaces spaces: If I had to choose one feature that sells me on Leopard, it’s Spaces. I would speak to the usability of them, but they are so well designed that you don’t even notice that you are using them most of the time. The big benefit is a much cleaner looking desktop while you are working without layers upon layers of windows. 5 stars.
2. Stacks: For some reason, the most useful stack to me isn’t enabled by default. A quick terminal hack away, you can enable an awesome “Recent Applications” stack that has your 10 most recent applications a click away. Talk about useful! The other stacks are mildly useful at best. I am using one for Recent documents, which I organize so its just a list of folders, Recent Downloads which I don’t find very useful and applications which can be really handy. 3 stars.
3. Apple Mail: It’s still no outlook to me, and I miss the 3 pane view, but there are some very nice features. Autosensing dates and address info is very nice. I also like related email highlighting. Being a new convert to gmail, I really wish it organized by conversation. 3 stars.
4. Time Machine: While I have known a few people who are having great success with Time Machine, it ran horribly on my computer. Perhaps a fresh install would help. I’ll look at it more later, but for a bad out of the box experience, I have to give it 2 stars.
5. System Preferences: With a much more organized look, they have made great strides, specifically in the network preferences. It’s subtle, but a huge win. 5 Stars.
6. Terminal: two words, Tabbed Terminals! For someone who uses the terminal a lot, and for me it’s every day, this is a huge plus. 5 stars.
7. New Menu: Who cares? Why was this such a buzz feature. It’s a little transparent, big deal. It doesn’t bother me, but doesn’t excite me either. Bring the Apple Menu back and then we will have something to talk about! 0 stars.
8. Boot Camp: It’s official folks, and if you need it, it’s incredible. I don’t use it, but if I needed a screaming fast gaming laptop or had some apps I just couldn’t use in Parallels, I would be all over it. 5 stars.
9. Finder: I am torn on the Finder. The new features like coverflow are really slick. But slick isn’t always useful. It’s still loads faster in grid or list view usually. I’ll give them an A for glam, but not sure it’s substance. 3 stars.
10. Quick Look: This is kind of an extension of the finder, but it deserves it’s own mention. This is an awesome feature. I find myself using it all the time. With new additions for looking into zip files and folders, it’s a sure win. 5 stars.

So there you have it folks, my top 10 for Leopard 1 month in. There are some huge wins and some subtle ones, but if you aren’t using it yet, go ahead and get it. It’s pushing it at $130, but I think it’s worth the cash.

If you haven’t used Synergy yet you are really missing out. I apologize for the video being a little bit dark, but you can definitely see the tool in use and the benefit. I have four computers I use here not including my laptop.

• Windows XP SP2 w/ Dual 20″ LCDs
• Windows Server 2003 w/ Single 15″ LCD
• Windows XP SP2 w/Shared 19″ LCD
• Fedora 7 w/Shared 19″ LCD

As you can imagine, navigating three keyboards and mice across four computers can be a pain. I don’t concentrate on the second XP computer because I don’t use it much. So I have configured the main XP machine as the Synergy server, and the 2k3 server and the Fedora box as clients. I have set the top of the XP box to go to the bottom of the 2K3 server and the right of the XP box to go to the Fedora box. If you watch the video you can see that I can control them seamlessly and also share a clipboard between them.

I am sure I don’t have to tell you how absolutely handy this is. Work freely amongst PCs of Windows, Linux or MacOS X with Synergy.

I hope you enjoyed my first video segment, I look forward to providing them somewhat regularly.

Update: Since the video is so dark, here is a photo so you can see the setup more clearly.

I have blogged about Synergy before, you can read that article here.