mac

Apple are getting expensive. Yes, Apple products always are expensive but for the last three or four years prices have been low enough for me to justify moving to Mac from Linux - almost entirely (he said, typing on a Mandriva Linux box).

But lately, between the dollar/pound and other effects, Apple prices in the UK have gone through the roof.

MacBook (plastic): was £700. Decreased to sub-700 post the 15% VAT change.
After the new MacBook introduction, it gained a new Nvidia graphics chip and went up to £719 even though in US$ it was reduced by around 10%.

Mac Mini: up 25% to £500.

iMac: up from £800 to £950.

Importantly, if they had cost this a year or two ago I would not have bought them. The iMac was competitive against even a custom PC - it is not now although its pricing is on par with Dell equivilents.

What about the hidden costs?

The remote is no longer included with the machines. I didn't get one with a MacBook back in September 2008, even, though I did back in January. For the Mac Mini this is important - it is used in the sort of situations where the remote is most likely to be used - media, set top box, etc. I got one with my £800 iMac, yet if I upgraded to the £950 basic model now I wouldn't get one.

Moving on, the display adaptors. You MUST have a display adaptor. Apple use MiniDVI and DisplayPort and you need a special adaptor to connection to VGA or DVI.
For MiniDVI, these were £15 - I have a VGA and DVI for the MacBooks and a VGA on my iMac.
For DisplayPort, they're up to £20. Incredible. I'm all for making a profit, but these is really skimming cash off consumers.

Hard Disks and Memory have always been expensive in the Apple shop, but take a look at the 8GB costs - £800! Consider that they charge £200 for the 4GB removed to install the 8GB in the configurator.

I suppose Apple know what they're doing. I love my Macs. Linux would be difficult to back to full time. Windows is almost completely out of my life. Give it five years and I'll be forced into upgrading in some way... My PowerBook lasted four years and is still in use today, although not by me.

For my work Mac (I know, aren't I lucky?) I use an external USB hard drive to make backups using Time Machine.

There are several blog postings I can make about this:

1. Time Machine is incredible. It really is outstanding. I've gone nearly two years with Leopard without using it and now I regret not getting into it earlier.
1a. Time Machine can be made to work on Samba shares, and I will share how in a later posting.
2. Backing up to an external hard disk is cheap and very easy. To a large extent, small business can survive with this sort of backup and not need centralised servers and tape (but I actually can't recommend that - my current employer does not follow what I'd call 'best practise').
3. About using a Seagate FreeAgent on a Mac.

This is about number three.

The FreeAgent claims to be Mac compatible. Right there on the box. And generally, yes it is. Plug in, reformat, install software, and go. Not as quick as on a PC, for which it is pre-formatted, but it works.

Mostly.

Here's the problem: the Mac software lacks control over the sleep timer, and the installed driver has a bug which resets the sleep timer to between 60 seconds and three minutes, whether it's in use or not. Click, spinup, click, spinup, click, spinup, ... all day, every day.

There is a fix:

1. Remove the driver. You don't need it. Search your hard disk for System files named 'Maxtor' (yes, this device is a rebrand of something acquired in the Maxtor takeover). Delete the file. Prepare for the Mac to crash as you really shouldn't have just done that.
2. Boot WinXP in a VM, install the software for the drive on that and set the spindown to something sensible (1 hour or never).
3. That's it. Or at least, that's what I did. No warranties.

On the 1st of January, 2008, I ordered a new MacBook! Woo!

I've held off for months because:

• It's a lot of money.
• Which should I get?
• Need to upgrade my servers first.
• Want to replace the family PC with a Mac Mini.
• Aren't there new ones due out soon?

Well, on the last point there are always going to be new models due "soon". I'm sure they'll be out now I've paid the money and the current MacBook range is getting on for nearly two years old, but to be honest, I've realised that I don't care... I want a new Mac.

After a lot of deliberation, I've gone for the basic MacBook 13.1", white, 2GHz, no extras but for a VGA adaptor (yes, my monitor is DVI, but my Linux workstation uses the DVI - the monitor has a free VGA port and VGA works everywhere in stuff like projectors).

The fact is that even the basic model is going to be a huge step up from my current Powerbook G4 12". I have the model that just scraped through for running Leopard - 867MHz. In terms of memory and HD, I am happy to keep it at 1GB and 60GB for now and anyway, I work at a computer company that also retails this stuff. I can do the upgrades myself in the future for a fraction of the cost that Apple charges.

I can't wait :-)

The ordering process:
Buying direct from Apple is fairly painless, so far. I placed the order late in the day on the 1st. It was despatched on the 4th, a Friday - Apple's estimated despatch/delivery dates seem very pessimistic and quoted more than a week for just despatch. I'm now waiting for delivery (it's Sunday), with Apple quoting 'before this coming Friday'. I'm hoping for Monday or Tuesday.

The quality of the account/tracking/order history pages of the Apple site does leave something to be desired. I can't track the order with the courier - I have a code, but no information on who that code is for! I've tried all major courier's websites with no luck. Surprisingly the Apple site in the order/account side feels quite cheap, after the fantastic experience it gave up to actually placing the order. Silly things like inconsistent fonts, lack of a logout button, stuff like that. I suspect the UK version has been custom written on the cheap and is significantly different to the USA version, but I have no evidence.

I have a 12" G4 PowerBook, and I love it! It's the most usable machine I've owned (after my Amigas).

Stuff on the Mac is so easy that I find myself doing stuff I've either not done for years or never done - like making videos.

iMovie is really easy to use. But, it's also slow - if you use the wrong video formats. I learned this the hard way - I put up with 20 minute imports of a few minutes of video for ages, but by accident found that if you import a video in the same format as what you asked iMovie to create the video in, it's instant. Obvious, when you know about it... This means that I convert on my Linux box first (literally seconds for 300MB of film) then import that into iMovie.

On my Mac, it is however buggy. I can't add transitions. The transition doesn't render. And if I'm really lucky, iMovie crashes. I suspect this is my install. Sadly iMovie 08 doesn't support the G4 so there's no upgrade path, which means it'll have to wait until I get my new Mac laptop (which I've been promising myself for a long time now).

Strangely iMovie is the only app I get along with in the iLife pack. iPhoto is useless to me for example.
iWork I'm quite impressed with, but then Microsoft Office 2004 for the Mac is just excellent, in terms of speed, user interface and usability - suprising since I consider Office 2003 and 2007 on Windows the complete opposite!