Category Archives: Opinion

Apple Silicon MacBook Air is Amazing!

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I am really liking my new MacBook Air. The performance of this machine is amazing. Initially I had a few problems with some applications that weren’t quite ready for Apple Silicon yet, but as of today, every application I use is either Apple Silicon ready or runs extremely well in Rosetta 2. It’s actually pretty amazing to think that Apple has turned this major change around so successfully. In just a little over a month, Apple released new machines, delivered them, and was successful in getting developers to make sure their applications all run just fine on them.

I’ve been around the Macintosh community for a long time. I remember the transition from PowerPC to Intel. It was quite painful. Many applications didn’t work initially, and some never were able to be made to work.  But this time, everything is changed. Apple has provided such high performance in the initial offerings that developers realize they must keep up. And they have.

When I initially installed my applications on the new MacBook Air, I had a couple of major ones that I was unable to get to work at all. First off, I use a program called ScreenFlow to do video capture of the computer screen. I realize I could do that in QuickTime, but screen flow just makes it much simpler, and provides the ability to be able to do so many additional things, it’s just one of those applications I have to have. But as of now, screen flow not only runs in Apple Silicon, it’s been made to be M1 compliant. That means they did the conversion to make it function at a high-level.

The other major application was google back up and sync. This is the app that runs in the background and copies your Google drive down to your computer so that you have direct access to the files. Initially it didn’t work but today, I ran the application and all of a sudden everything works fine now. I suspect this was a result of either a Google update, or an Apple update that took care of the problem. Either way, everything works great now.

This leaves just one problem that I’m having on the new Apple Silicon device. I have a printer, a Canon PIXMA pro 100.  This printer, has an application that runs inside photo shop that allows me to print color matching photographs. Unfortunately, this application is so poorly written that every version of macOS breaks it. It’s actually pretty distressing after spending money on a printer that Canon uses so few resources for their macOS software that they can’t seem to get it right. Time after time it takes months for this plugin software to get fixed. And unfortunately, that printer is no longer manufactured so I don’t exactly know what to expect with it. I’m not holding this out as a major issue, but I will continue to check to see if that driver gets updated.

Overall, so far I’m highly impressed with Apple’s new Apple Silicon devices. Keep in mind, these are just the first three models that have been released, as new models are released, I’m sure they’ll add additional features, and additional performance. But overall, this MacBook Air is a keeper.

Today’s the Day: MacOS 11 Big Sur Release…… Please Wait…..

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Well today’s the day. Apple is releasing macOS 11 Big Sur and many people will be rushing to get the latest and greatest operating system released from Apple. But I’d like to give you a couple of good reasons as to why this year, may not be the year that you want to be first on the list with the latest operating system.

It’s been at least 12 years since Apple moved to Mac OS X. That’s a long time to be using the same code base each year and adding features to it. This year Apple has called the release macOS 11 on purpose. It is a major update to the Mac operating system designed to prepare the world for Apple Silicon processors. Apple has said that they are going to continue to update the Mac running Intel processors for quite a while in the future. We know they’ll continue to sell Intel Macs for the next two years, but with Apple Silicon Macs having been released, the hand writing may be on the wall for future updates.

First off, it’s important to note that the Mac you have today is going to be just as good tomorrow. This doesn’t mean we need to run out and buy a new computer and in fact I’d probably hesitate to do that until a lot of the bugs are worked out in the new Apple Silicon Macs. Doing that kind of testing and evaluation is what people like me live for. But for an average user, using their machine to actually do productive work all the time, and it being their only machine, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to move forward today.

But the same can be said for macOS 11. So many things will be changing in this release that I suspect the timeframe to update will be drug out a little longer than actually we’ve seen in the past few years. Typically in the past few years I’ve recommended holding off until we get the first point release. That would be 11.1 or possibly 11.01 depending on how Apple names releases going forward.  But this year, the massive changes were going to see as a result of making this operating system very functional with their new Macs, I suspect waiting a little longer might be better.

So even though today’s the day, if I were you, I’d take a wait and see attitude and put off even the consideration of updating until sometime around the first of the year. Give it a month and a half and will see how things are running.

But if you’re one of those people that just can’t wait, please be sure you have at least one and if possible to back ups of your machine as it stands prior to the update. There’s nothing worse than going in and trying to fix a bad update by rolling the machine back only to find out the back up is either old or not good.

I have all the believe in the world that Apple will make this the best operating system it’s ever released.  And that day will all look back and wonder as to how they made all of the changes work. But just keep in mind, today is not that day…

If you’re looking for an Android phone here’s the one to buy

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As most of you know, I carry an iPhone. I like the simplicity and the consistency that Apple has put in to the iOS interface but I would be the first to tell you, being in the Apple universe is not for everyone. Many people don’t want to spend the money to purchase an Apple phone but still want a full feature device that gives them the ability to run apps and perform their normal work functions.

In today’s world, if you’re not Apple, your Google.  There are really just two choices when it comes to phone operating systems these days. Now that would be hard to tell if you went out to Best Buy and looked at phones. While Apple is the only maker of an iOS phone, google has a licensed the android operating system to many developers. If each of these developers had used the base Google operating system, the android phone universe would be the same as Apple‘s. All the android phones would look very similar, have the same apps, and operate the same way. But vendors of android phones tend to all believe that they can do it better. They think the operating system from Google is boring and they can put their touch and flair to applications, cloud functionality, and just the general look and feel.  When you walk into the Best Buy store and you look at android phones from Samsung, LG, Google, and others, you believe you’re looking at completely different devices. They work differently, they act differently, and more importantly, they look differently.

Some of these interface improvements that phone vendors make on the android side are in my opinion not improvements. Somethings are intended to push you into using their services, many of them at an extra cost.  One vendor in particular, Samsung, does a lot of advertising to make it look like their phones are much better than any other android phone. But the reality is all android phones run the same apps that you can download from the Google store just like you would download apps from Apple’s App Store.  

One other big reason that people look to android phones is cost. You can get an android phone at your carrier for just a few dollars a month or buy it outright for $150. Now obviously this isn’t the best phone in the world and in many ways it may be four-year-old technology but it will still make calls, get texts, and let you run many apps. So I tend to look at the choice of an android phone differently.  If you want the top-of-the-line feature phone for an android you can get that, from all of the manufactures. For most people the middle of the road, maybe even an upper middle device is really the one to choose.

I’ve taken a look at the phones that are available out there and in my opinion it’s an easy choice. If you’re going to run android, I truly believe you should run android and the only native android phones in the marketplace are made by the company that creates the android operating system, Google. Google has a series of feature pones  called the Pixel that are quite expensiveIn the, but they also have one phone model  it fits nicely in the upper middle with great features and reasonable price. That phone is the pixel 3a. 

The features of the Google Pixel 3a include:

  • 8MP Front Facing Camera
  • 12.2MP Dual-Pixel Rear Facing Camera
  • 32 Hours talk time
  • 13 Days standby time
  • 5.6″ FHD+ OLED
  • 2220 x 1080 pixels
  • Google Assistant
  • 3 Years of Security and OS Updates
  • Bluetooth 5.0

It has an extraordinary camera with features like Night Sight, Portrait Mode, and unlimited storage at high quality with Google Photos. Pixel 3a has a fast-charging Adaptive Battery that learns your favorite apps and reduces power to the ones you rarely use. When you need a little extra help, just ask your Google Assistant to help you find directions, answer questions, send texts, and more. Plus, ease your mind about keeping your data safe with the custom-built Titan M security chip and automatic security updates. It’s everything you love about Google–in a phone.

Best part about the Google pixel 3a is that it starts at $399. If you want large screen phone they also have a larger screen available at a higher price.

Now don’t misunderstand what I’m saying here. There are many reasons that an iPhone in my opinion is just better than any of the android phones available. But if you’re looking for an android phone these days, take a close look at the Pixel 3a.  

Thank you Apple for saving me $400

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I watched with great interest Apple’s latest announcements on new iPhones. In the work I do I feel like I need to stay fairly current with new phone technology so I typically plan on replacing my phone every couple of years. It also helps that I have a daughter who still loves to have my leftovers and I’m always happy to help her out.

Apples this year announced three new phones. The iPhone 11, the iPhone 11 Pro, and the iPhone 11 Pro max. I am typically one that doesn’t like to carry a really large phone so I typically am not interested in the max version of the phone. Just a few years ago Apple would reduce the technology level in the non-Max version of their phone and that was really in my opinion a poor idea. I’m glad they’ve gotten over that and made both of the pro phones pretty much exactly the same with the exception of the screen size and battery.

Beginning last year, Apple inserted a new phone in the lineup just below the two top-of-the-line phones for people who are a little more cost conscious. Last year‘s phone, the iPhone XR, was a terrific phone that I had the opportunity to set up and make adjustments to over the last year while working with a number of different people. But generally, I have been one that wanted the highest end, top-of-the-line device. Until this year…

If you look at the announcements closely, it’s pretty easy to see Apple inserted a lot of filler material in between the true new features of the devices they were set to announce. This showed both in the phones and in the Apple Watch 5 announcement.  The long discussion of the processor describing the architecture of the cores struck me as filler particularly considering the fact that this type of announcement and presentation is truly intended for the masses who don’t care or know what a processor core is. The filler material at the end talking about the Apple Store also had me wondering if they just had a few extra minutes to kill.

In the end, after further analyzing the new announcements this year it seems to me that was exactly the case. Either some of the flagship features of the new phone design did not make the final cut or perhaps they did not work to Apple’s high standards.  If you look at the new phones, and you make the general assumption that there’s going to be a new faster processor every year, the additions in this year‘s phones seem to be a little thin.

So what’s new in the new iPhone 11 Pro? As I look at the announcement, you can basically say there are three major things but the Pro brings to the table. First off the processor is faster, significantly faster if you believe the pre-delivery reports. That additional performance will definitely allow for better Augmented Reality performance and less general phone lag. The second major thing was of course the camera pack. The addition of a wide angle lens to the standard and telephoto lens the previous version had. This three camera configuration is certainly state of the art and will definitely add the ability for people to take better photographs and more creative photographs. Couple that with the software magic apple can perform and it’s clear the point and shoot stand alone camera is definitely dead.  The third thing that could be considered major is battery life. If your phone is going dead in a normal workday, this phone may be the one for you. Four or five hours better battery life is a big deal and this phone can provide it. There are a number of other minor additional features such as support for new Wi-Fi speed, the addition of Dolby Atmos, and Apples new U1 chip (which they didn’t really talk about use cases) but by and large, that’s pretty much what you see in the new pro phones. And just as a note, those minor features are in the iPhone 11 also.  The case design is basically the same although they may have improved the materials to make the phone a little more impervious to breakage and I have to admit that Jade Green color looks stunning.  But again those are pretty minor things to the average user and not really compelling for the high end user.

That brings me to the third phone announced that day, the iPhone 11. This phone uses the same processor, has the same Wi-Fi, sound, and chip enhancements, has a one hour battery life extension from last years iPhone XR, and now has two cameras. Apple chose to remove the telephoto camera from the traditional two camera pack and add the wide-angle lens. So this camera has both the standard and wide-angle lens allowing for some of the new features to work from Apple‘s new camera app. The other thing Apple did with this phone was drop the price by $50. That’s pretty amazing considering the tariff situation going on right now. That Apple would actually reduce the price is actually pretty much unheard of. The new iPhone 11 also comes in a number of colors as the iPhone XR did.

So hows a person to choose. Well honestly I’d love to experiment with the new three camera pack in the pro phone but that said, when I look at my standard use case, it just seems to me it’s hard to justify the price of that phone for so little improvement. The pro phones definitely have a better screen, but all of the phones are retina and if you believe Apple’s hype from just a few years ago, beyond retina really doesn’t make a lot of difference. My last phone, and iPhone X, has 256 GB of storage of which I’m using 87 gig. But in the pro phones, you either get 64 gig or 256 gig. Bumping up that storage is $150 additional cost. Now I truly suspect the amount of ram in the phones may be different too. It wouldn’t surprise me to see 4 GB of RAM in the pro phones and only 3 GB of RAM in the iPhone 11 and that will certainly make the speed slightly different, but I don’t believe that’s different enough to cause me to change my analysis.

So here’s my analysis…

iPhone 11 Pro, 256 GB – $1149
(Telephoto camera, better brighter screen, possibly slightly faster)

iPhone 11, 128 GB Dash $749
(Same processor, retina display, white angle camera, and money in my pocket)

Cost difference is $400 for basically an additional camera lens.

So thank you Apple for convincing me that I can spend $400 less on an iPhone this year. The minor improvements, coupled with how similar the iPhone 11 and the iPhone 11 Pro are make me less able to justify that higher cost.

Now my biggest problem is trying to decide which color iPhone 11 I want to get.

Windows 7 forever! – Don’t Be that guy

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Windows 7 was a terrific operating system. In fact for many things you do today Windows 7 is still preferred over windows 10. Many people continue to use Windows 7 machines very efficiently and insist that they’ll never move to windows 10. To be quite honest, I completely understand that feeling and in many ways think they areright on the money. But there comes a point of time when you need to face a few facts and I believe the recent ransomware hacking that were seeing may be one of those first early facts that you might want to make note of.

Microsoft says it still supports Windows 7, and in fact Windows 7 is still the promenade operating system being used in business today. If you have a Windows machine running Windows 7 and are happy with it I think continuing to use it is the right thing to do. The real issue becomes when it’s time to purchase a new computer and have to decide what to purchase. Do you buy a windows 10 machine and move forward, or do you drag your feet in the dirt, insist on Windows 7, and join the window 7 forever crowd?  This is a decision many people will be faced with and I want to tell you a few things that I’ve seen in the past that make that decision pretty clear.

Of course, I use a Mac much of the time and I’ve seen the same thing on the Mac side. People don’t want to move to the new operating system because it’s different, because it may slow their machine down, or for many other seemingly valid reasons. But Apple does a good job of forcing you forward. It provides the new versions of operating systems for free, it provides updates for most of its apps for free, and it tries to ensure the new releases of the operating system make your machine run at least as fast as it did prior to installing the new release. But there still are a few machines that I run across still running old Mac operating system like snow leopard, an operating system that’s at least seven years old.  It’s many of the same people that then wonder why they can’t update their applications, or why new printers don’t provide drivers for them, or things just don’t quite work when connected to their brand-new iPhone.

Well people I’m here to tell you windows is going that same path. Windows 7 today may still be very viable, but a new machine you purchase today needs to be usable for at least five years, and I think that may be a problem. The recent ransomware attack, targeted Windows XP users. These people also believed the Windows XP was going to be the operating system they used forever. It was fast, and it was thin, so it didn’t require a lot of resources on older computers. But Microsoft ended support for Windows XP. So the XP operating systems quit being updated leaving holes open for attackers to go after. Sure, Microsoft did issue an emergency patch for Windows XP related to this outbreak, but we can’t depend on that and in fact in my opinion it provided a disservice to all computer users.  It’s just encourages people to stick with the old and not move to the new. Now Windows 7 today is not in that same situation, but it’s time must be coming.

I remember one time that OS2 was the operating system used by most banks. Many of those banks held onto that operating system as long as they possibly could until it got them to a point that there systems were in serious trouble. At that point they were forced to make an upgrade rather than making an upgrade in a timed and planned fashion.  In fact many believe it was that decision, that kept many banks from providing electronic banking and Internet-based technologies to their customers for a long time. In hindsight, they made a very poor decision.

Last week I set up a new machine for user that purchased Windows 7 on that machine. They didn’t want to go through the learning process to learn windows 10 so, they bought a brand-new Dell computer with a six-year-old operating system. Well that certainly works well for them today, I don’t believe we can depend on that continuing to be the case.

So what’s the point of my anecdotes this morning?  The point is, when you buy new hardware get an operating system that is new also. Resist the thought of trying to run on the old release. Bite the bullet and pay for those software updates that you’ll need for the new operating system. Move forward, don’t drag your feet in the dirt.

Just remember, a week ago many businesses were still running Windows XP thinking, “it’ll be fine “or “we don’t want to have to upgrade our operating systems yet “. But today, in the midst of these hacking attacks, I believe there are many government agencies, many hospitals, and many businesses, that may be rethinking their thought of staying on the old operating system.

Don’t make that same mistake. If your in the market to purchase a new Windows machine, go with windows 10. Microsoft has declared it’s their future, so it needs to be yours too.

The New Think at Apple

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I spent many years in government working for what I considered to be a very well run and productive agency. About 10 years before I retired, the organization when through a transformation that it never recovered from. They called it Quality improvement, participatory management, and a number of other things. They sold it at the time as the way private sector works in highly productive companies. But what it really was consisted of a way for those not in power to gain power and become important. It was a disaster. Lots of improvement meeting, teams formed, consensus building, and touchy freely crap that made people feel better but improved nothing and always caused decisions to drag out. We hired many consultants to help us down this path and they made millions while productivity was sucked out of us in meetings.

We went from an organization that always tried to quickly react and do the right thing to an organization that tried to not make a decision until everyone agreed. So many times the consensus decision was really the wrong decision but after beating us down we just wanted the process to end.

One of the hallmarks of this was a months long effort to develop a mission statement and values that everyone ‘bough into’.

The reason I recount this story is that I continue to see our beloved Apple going this direction under its current leadership.

I saw this article and now am convinced that this is the case.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/12/16/apple-gives-retail-employees-t-shirt-keepsake-credo-for-holidays

I guess ‘credo’ is todays word for mission statement and values.

So what is Apples ‘credo’?

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All this, at the same time I learn that Apple’s new policy on Applecare when work is done outside an Apple Store replaces the parts but does not load operating systems. Huh?

A client called Apple on an iMac hard disk failure under AppleCare. He was directed to take the machine to a company called Gravity in Columbia. He took the machine in and they were to replace the hard disk but wanted to charge $75 to load an operating system on the new drive and $75 to restore his time machine backup. I had him call Apple support and complain but he was told that they were free to charge whatever they wanted because the store was not a corporate Apple Store. So disappointing. He is now still waiting for the machine to be completed after 11 days. Had he called me first, I would have sent him to Joe Mertzlufft in Columbia but he didn’t.

This experience with Apple definitely did not “enrich lives”.

In my opinion, Apple needs to quit concentrating itself on saving the planet and work a little more on saving its customers.

…. and yes, in case your wondering how this ties together, we all got Mission statement TShirts too.

George
Sent from my iPad