World’s Best Spell Checker?
Once in a while while I am typing a document in Pages, TextEdit, etc. the spell checker flags a word, but can’t come up with a suggested spelling. Often it is a technical term that is not in its dictionary, and I’m not sure of the spelling either. But I’ve found a much better “spell checker”. Google
Just copy and paste the word into Google’s search box, and you will get a polite message saying something like “Searching for correctword, search for misspelledword instead?” I am amazed at how often Google guesses the correct spelling, even from badly mangled words. It must have an astounding database of common and uncommon misspellings and/or an amazing algorithm for choosing the best result.
Of course, when I decided to write this, I didn’t have any real examples handy, but here are a couple of semi-plausible made-up ones.
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MacKeeper is not a keeper
The promise of a total maintenance, anti-virus and backup solution for your Mac in a single app sounds very appealing, but you don’t want or need this app. If you have been lured in by the aggressive, intrusive web ad campaign and have installed MacKeeper, my advice is to uninstall it ASAP. If you are tempted to buy it, don’t.
In short, while not designed as malware like MacDefender was, this is an application that has caused significant problems with many people’s Macs, and is marketed and priced in what I consider a deceptive and unethical manner by the Russian developer, ZeoBIT.
It is advertised at $14.95 but you will find out after you buy it that that’s just for six months, then you have to renew. ZeoBIT is notorious for planting fake flattering reviews of MacKeeper on Web forums, including some reputable ones. There are also fake forums such as a web site claiming to be a review site for Mac software which has exactly one review on it; for MacKeeper. This review includes much misinformation including the patently false statement that “42% of Macs are infected with viruses” and other scare tactics.
If you want further opinions on MacKeeper, The Apple Support Communities discussion forums contain may threads about problems with this software and its developer. There is also some good documentation of ZeoBIT’s deceptive practices and lack of ethics in the blog post Beware MacKeeper. More importantly, this post also includes an extensive listing of free apps that accomplish everything that MacKeeper claims to do.
If you are tired of seeing the pop-up, pop-under and banner ads for MacKeeper everywhere, download and install the free Glimmerblocker in Safari. This will block most, but not all of them. I recently saw one on Snopes, a site dedicated to exposing and debunking fraud and misinformation on the web and in emails. It seems ironic that they would accept advertising from a company with so many complaints about deception and unethical behavior. Oh well, “When you see a situation you can’t understand, look for the financial interest”. And if it involves the French or a politician, you can add “cherchez la femme:”
Going Postal
The AshMUG-Talk discussion list is one of the best ways to get help with your Mac. You don’t have to wait to talk to someone at the next meeting. However, a recurring complaint from list members is that subscribing to the AshMUG-Talk discussion list adds a lot of email to an already overloaded In Box. There are some easy solutions.
One solution is to opt for the Daily Digest rather than for all the individual messages. This gets you only one email a day, although it’s a long one containing all of the day’s messages. The other solution is to create a separate mailbox for all those priceless pearls of infinite wisdom that are accessible via AshMUG-Talk. Actually, Doug Gentry, our able Listmeister describes both of these options and their advantages and disadvantages very clearly elsewhere on the AshMUG website, but for the benefit of the visual learners among you, I will illustrate setting up a separate mailbox in a bit more detail, complete with screenshots. It also addresses the very different way Lion handles mailboxes compared to earlier operating systems. Just click on the .pdf icon below to download it. Actually, if you are using Safari 5.1 or later, it will be displayed in a Safari window rather than being downloaded. If you move the cursor to the center just above the dock, a mini-menu will pop up where you can open it in Preview or save it to the Downloads folder. You could, of course, also Print it directly from Safari.
Appleworks vs Numbers Spreadsheet Functions
In my last post about converting AppleWorks documents, I mentioned that I hadn’t found a comparison of AW and Numbers spreadsheet functions and how they differed. Well, I decided to take on the task myself. It turned out to be one of those been there, done that, and won’t ever do it again projects, but it will help me convert the rest of my collection of AW spreadsheets, and a few other CompuNerds may also find it useful. If you click on the image below, you will download a .pdf file which lists and compares all of the functions in both applications. The ones that probably won’t cause any problems are in green, the ones that are likely to not work correctly after opening the AW spreadsheet in Numbers are in red, and there are a few gray areas as well.
Numbers has a much larger and more powerful set of functions than Appleworks, and there is a corresponding function in Numbers for most AW functions. However, AW has some unique functions, and some of the similar functions in the two applications don’t work quite the same way. The result is that most simple AW spreadsheets are translated into Numbers correctly just by dragging and dropping the AW spreadsheet, but many even moderately complex ones are not.
How do you tell?
1. For some problems, Numbers will pop up a “There are problems” alert box when it opens the AW spreadsheet.
2. The cells in which there are problems will usually be marked with a little blue triangle in the lower left. Clicking on the cell will give you some information about the problem.
3. Test it! Even though the conversion appears to have been done correctly, compare the numbers in the original AW spreadsheet with the Numbers spreadsheet. Change a few corresponding values in the two spreadsheets and make sure they both get the same new result.
How do you fix problems?
Well, you are just going to have to figure out how to accomplish the same task with Numbers functions and formulae. The good news is that Numbers has many more functions, and some of them can accomplish in one step what took several functions in AW. I have added some notes to the .pdf file comparing functions which may help.
For more information on exactly how a given function works in either AW or Numbers, go to Help in the respective top menu.
Disclaimer
I’ve tested most of these functions, but not all. Some of them I never use. There will probably be some surprises: Functions that should work don’t (maybe depending on the value of the arguments), and (probably rare) a function you don’t expect to convert correctly will. Good luck!
Beware the Fruit-Eating Lion
If you are about to switch to OS 7 Lion, you probably are aware that the old PowerPC applications will no longer run. One of the most important is Quicken 2007 or earlier. There has been lots of discussion about this on the web, and a quick Google search will bring up many suggestions for dealing with this problem.
Another problem for those of us who have been with the Mac since before about 2007 is AppleWorks. This was a great word processor, database, drawing, painting and spreadsheet application which will also no longer run under Lion (it even had some problems with Snow Leopard). Here are some tips for converting AppleWorks documents you want to keep. Do it before updating to Lion, because you will need to use AppleWorks for some of the conversions, and it will take some time.
Hint for finding all your AppleWorks files: In the Finder, create a new smart folder with the search criterion File Extension is cws
Notes on moving Appleworks documents to iWork and other apps
AW Word Processing to Pages
Straightforward. Just drag the AW document to the Pages icon in the dock. 90+ % of the time no further editing will be required.
AW Spreadsheet to Numbers or Excel
Drag the AW spreadsheet document to the Numbers or Excel icon in the dock. Some functions work differently in AW than they do in Numbers or Excel, so some calculations may not work correctly or you may get error messages in some cells. You’ll have to fix these. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a handy compilation on the web of which functions are different and how.
AW Drawing or Paint document to Pages
Just dragging the Drawing or Paint document to Pages doesn’t work. You will get an error message to the effect that this isn’t a Word Processing document.
Open the drawing document in AppleWorks, use “Select all” and then copy the selection. Now open a new Word Processor document in AppleWorks. Set the orientation (portrait or landscape) the same as the drawing document, and set all the margins to .25″. If you don’t have the tools palette visible, select Show Tools from the Window menu. Now click on the arrow pointer toward the top of the tools palette. This deactivates the insert text cursor from the WP doc you just created. If you don’t do this step your drawing objects will be pasted in the next step as a single un-editable object. Now do the Paste command and everything from your Drawing document is pasted into the WP document as a collection of individual drawing objects. Now save this document with whatever name you want, then open the resulting document in Pages. It will open and all the drawing objects are still editable (1,2). I’ve even found that you can still ungroup objects that were grouped in AW.
Note 1: Objects that span more than one page will be cut off in Pages. You will have to resize and/or rearrange them to solve this problem.
Note 2: In the Pages document if you try to select multiple objects by clicking and dragging rather than having to shift-click on them one at a time there is a problem. Here is a little trick to do it. Click and drag on the lower right corner of the Pages window to enlarge it so some gray is showing at the side. Click and hold in this gray area and drag over the objects you want to select. If you have included some unwanted objects on the right side, you will have to shift-click them off.
AW Database to Bento or FileMaker Pro
Unfortunately, iWork doesn’t have a database app, so you will need some other database. Two that I have used are Bento and FileMaker Pro. Bento is relatively cheap ($50), limited in capabilities, but fairly easy to use (see my Review). It is probably fine for most simple databases. FileMaker Pro is much more customizable and powerful, but is expensive ($180-$300). Both have free trials.
In AW, open the database document, then go to File/Save As. Choose ASCII Text under “File Format” and save the file. Locate the saved file in the finder and change the extension (or add one if it doesn’t have one) to .tab.
Now import the file:
-in Bento go to File/Import/File
-in FileMaker Pro go to File/Open, then in “Show” select “Tab-separated text files”
This will import the data with few problems. However, in either case, you will have to do a lot of customizing and rearranging of the fields in the on-screen layout to get the database to look the way you want it to.
Sound in the Round
We have a very pleasant patio on the banks of Ashland creek about 80 feet from the house, and I’ve often thought I would like to have music down there. I have some wired speakers on the back deck through which I can play iTunes music, but if I cranked these up so they could be heard down by the creek I’m sure I would hear about it from the neighbors.
There are lots of wireless speaker systems on the market, but most are pretty expensive and many also need 110V power. While browsing on Amazon a while back, I came across this odd speaker (Avtek NXG Wireless Indoor/Outdoor Speaker System) that looks like a cross between a Shop-Vac and a stubby rocket. Classic American Kitsch school of design, complete with blue LED “ambience lighting” which thankfully doesn’t pulse with the music. The speaker is only about a foot high, and the speaker and/or the transmitting unit can be powered either by 110V or by batteries, making it extremely portable. At less than $50, I couldn’t resist.
I got it just in time for the South Texas style BBQ we put on over the 4th of July for some friends and some of our Texas expatriate relatives. What Texas BBQ would be
complete without some tunes from Willie, Waylon, Jerry Jeff, Emmylou and the like? YeeHa!
I plugged the transmitter into the headphone port on Myrl’s MacBook in our home office, loaded the speaker with 8 C batteries and took it down by the creek. So how did it work out? Pretty well, actually. At about 80 ft. away, there was no static or distortion. The are no bass or treble adjustments and stereo separation is almost non-existent, but the sound is surprisingly pleasant and sufficiently loud. At least after a few music-appreciation-enhancing beverages. (Couldn’t find Lone Star or Shiners locally so we had to make do with Negra Modelo, Dos Equis, and Bohemia.) The speaker will run for at least 2 1/2 hours on battery, maybe much longer. Someone with superior musical tastes turned it off at this point.
If you want casual outdoor music on your deck or elsewhere at a low price without having to run wires this might be a good choice. Another choice is one of the many battery/110V powered small speakers into which you can plug in an iPod directly. I have one of these also, but I prefer the more robust sound of this funky Avtek unit.
The Elephant in the Traveling Circus
Most of the stuff in the digital traveling circus that accompanies us on trips is quite small. Maybe not Flea Circus size, but pretty portable; a MacBook Air, iPhone, iPod and iPad2. The exception is the circus elephant, the printer.
So why keep the elephant in the act? Well, for carrying around information, and especially for sharing it, the printed page is great. You can get a lot of information on a 0.013 oz sheet of paper. It’s eminently portable and the battery life is stupendous.
An illustration:
On a recent car trip we took along my MacBook Air, iPhone and iPad2 and my Personal Portable Printing Pachyderm, the Canon iP100. Well, it’s sort of portable. It’s about 1/2 the size of a six-pack of your favorite canned beverage and weighs 4.5 lbs plus another half pound for the 110V power brick. You can get a battery for it, but that adds another pound or so. By the way, there is much to be said of the virtues of the iPad, but printing isn’t one of them. Unlike my MacBook Air, it will not print to my Bluetooth-enabled Canon iP100, nor to most other printers except a handful of HP WiFi networked printers.
We met our friends Rita and Ed from Port Aransas, Texas, on the Oregon coast after they had toured the Oregon Willamette Valley wine regions. In addition to Myrl’s carefully planned (and compulsory) Oregon Coast Experience Tour, I knew we would want to send them to some other sights like Silver Falls on their way back to the Portland Airport. This is where a Google Map on a sheet of 8.5 x 11 in. paper trumps your iPad, iPhone, and laptop.
So I was glad I brought the printer along, but someone really needs to come up with something better. Here is my fantasy solution. What we need is a special paper that you could just lay over your iPad or MacBook screen for a few seconds, then peel it off with the screen image on it. Or maybe a flexible electronic pad you could lay on the screen, press a button to capture the image, then peel it off, place it over a sheet of thermal or photosensitive imaging paper, press a button and voilà, there is your screen image. I’d even settle for gray scale (at least in the first generation device). Come on, you geniuses at Apple, stop fooling around with ways to screw up Final Cut Pro and get on this.
Coping with Oregonophilia
I know what some of you are thinking, and it’s not that kind of disease. It’s also not an inordinate fondness for a particular Mediterranean herb. That’s Oreganophila.
I was first afflicted upon moving from the frozen tundra of Upper Michigan to go to grad school at OSU in Corvallis in the early 1960s. Within a short time I fell in love with Oregon. The mountains, forests, deserts, coast, wildlife and people. Even the politicians: socially liberal and enlightened, fiscally conservative. A species which is apparently now extinct. I intended to spend the rest of my life here, but took a short career path detour of 30 years through south Texas. Retirement brought me back.
The other night I watched an excellent biography of the Nobel Prize winning chemist (and OSU graduate) Linus Pauling on the local PBS channel. Following up on the link given at the end of the program to Oregon Public Broadcasting’s website, I found hundreds of videos available for streaming. All of the PBS national stuff (Antiques Roadshow, Frontline, etc.) that is on the PBS streaming website plus many more, including about 150 specifically about Oregon. My favorites are the 30 or so Oregon Experience videos. In addition to the biography of Linus Pauling I’ve watched A Cuisine of Our Own (the biography of James Beard, the famous chef who put NW cuisine on the map), Beervana (a history of beer brewing in Portland, which has more breweries than any city on the planet) and “The Road to Statehood“. If you are interested in Oregon history, this last one is a short, accurate portrait, warts and all, of the statehood process.
Check it out. A couple caveats: The streaming videos are in Flash format so they not will work on your iPad or iPhone. The site sometimes seems to be extraordinarily slow to load (must be Windows-powered), so be patient. Once you are there, streaming performance is very good. Resolution on my HD TV is comparable to Netflix and better than Amazon’s streaming video.
Defiled in Cupertino
No, this isn’t the title of some steamy romance novel set in silicon valley.
What I am talking about is the notion of literally De-Filing the Mac operating system. Doing away with the File System, the familiar folders and sub folders and Finder that are the users window into the Hierarchical File System that Apple developed and introduced with the Mac.
Take this quote from Steve Jobs at the Apple Word Wide Developers Conference June 6, 2011.
“A lot of us have been working for ten years to get rid of the file system. So the user didn’t have to worry about it. When you try to teach, … teach somebody how to use a Mac, the easiest of all computers to use, everything is going along fine until you hit the file system and then the difficulty is staggering for most people.”
The solution to which Apple is apparently headed is Documents in the Cloud, specifically Apple’s new iCloud which will be rolled out this fall, combined with file handling the way the mobile device iOS does it.
… everything in the cloud downloads and appears on the device. Even remembers position in document. No effort required to get the files. You’re in and out of documents in a flash.”
“On iOS, you don’t have to think about it. It solves how you move documents between devices. Apps can store documents in the iCloud and get them pushed to all devices, update on all when changed on any.”
A brief aside: As a frustrated MobileMe user, I liked this candid little admission from Steve Jobs while he is extolling the features of iCloud: “It just works! (long pause) Now, you might ask, ‘Why should I believe them? They’re the ones that brought me MobileMe.’ (laughter).”
This revolution is already well underway. Look at the iOS operating system that powers the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Files and documents are stored in the applications themselves. There are a a lot of things I like about the cloud concept, especially how it solves those annoying and time consuming syncing problems, but, I’ve been down this “store the documents in the application” path far enough with my iPad to know it just doesn’t work well for me on something which I want to use or need to use as my main or only device. Moreover, the file system isn’t really gone, it has been defiled (pun intended). You’ve just dumped all the documents for each application into a single “folder”, the application itself.
Here is the big problem I see if the hierarchical file system goes away and documents are stored by application á la iOS. What will replace the really valuable ability to collect together all documents relating to the same subject from whatever source or application, for use for a particular project or problem? Here is a real-world example:
In the Irrigation system folder are documents created by Text Edit, Pages, Numbers, even old Appleworks, and .pdf, .jpg and .webarchive documents. They are all related to one another, and all necessary for the continuing maintenance and operation of the irrigation system for our yard and garden. Same thing with folders of files related to our automobiles, finances, taxes, home maintenance and on and on.
So if related files are no longer kept together, but accessible only through their applications how do you find the related ones? Search? Well those of you who use this function often are probably either crying or laughing right now. First of all you have to remember the appropriate text to search for, and a single search invariably will miss many related items and find many unrelated ones, so you usually have to modify your search and re-run it. And searching for a specific image file? Good luck, unless you are a bona-fide obsessive compulsive and have named and commented and keyworded all your pictures in great detail.
When you do finally find all the pertinent files from various apps where do you collect and store them for the duration of the project or problem you need them for? Maybe you could use tags and subtags for each file plus a search function. Oh wait. Then you would have to remember what the tags were, or refer to a list of them to search for the appropriate ones.
OK, I’ve got it! How about a system of folders and subfolders? They could have fairly descriptive names, and it would be relatively easy to see or remember where they are. Even if you didn’t know, you could do a search for the folder and find all the related files all at once. You could even find the folder by searching for anything you remember that’s in it. And they’ll be there the next time you want them and you won’t have to gather them all together again. Sound vaguely familiar? Maybe I should remind Apple of what they may be losing. They probably won’t listen to me though. They seem to have their head in the Clouds.
iPhone Mail Sync Styncs
I know this is Heresy. They are probably getting the pitchforks and torches out in Cupertino as we speak, but I’m going to turn my curmudgeonly focus on two annoying iDevice (iPhone, iPad, Ipod Touch) Mail Sync problems.
First problem. Sent messages not synced. We are in the midst of a real estate transaction. I had sent an email to the mortgage broker with our homeowner’s insurance information from my iPhone. The next day, at my iMac, I received an email request from the title company for the same information. OK, I’ll just go to the Sent folder, find the previous message and re-send it to the title company. Except that it’s not there. The only place it is is in the Sent folder in the .Mac account on the iPhone, which isn’t synced back to any other devices. I had to go hunt down my iPhone and re-send it from there.
This problem is fixable. It turns out that it’s the fault of the default. There is a setting for where to store sent messages, but it is buried deep in the catacombs of the iPhone Settings and is by default set to keep sent messages only on the iPhone. Here is a map of the expedition to find it.
The path on the iPad is similar but a little simpler. You can repeat this setting for other mail accounts which you may have. Google mail doesn’t have this choice in settings. Sent mail goes automatically to the Sent Mail folder on the Google server.
Second problem. Only the Inboxes of mail accounts on the iDevice are synced automatically. If you have a lot of other mailboxes as I do for convenience in sorting your mail, they are synced only when you actually click on them. If you want to have up-to-date copies of the messages in these mailboxes that you can read when you are off-line, you have to remember beforehand when you do have a WiFi or cellular data connection to click on each mailbox in every account one-by-one to update it. Very tedious and annoying.
MacAlzheimers and the Magic Memory Pill
On Tuesday one of my LaCie external hard drives died. I noticed there were fewer hard drive icons on my desktop (I have 4 external drives and a total of 7 partitions among them) but for the life of me, I couldn’t even remember what the two missing partitions were called, much less what data were on them. I know I have all the important stuff backed up, but it bugged me that I didn’t have the faintest idea of what was gone and what I needed to restore from my backups when I replaced the hard drive.
After repairing and rebooting my personal CPU (Cranial Processing Unit) using the tried and true Take-A-Nap app, I finally remembered what the partitions were and what was on them.
The drive has been replaced and restored, but I thought it would be useful to have an application that could generate a listing of what is on each of my hard drives. A Google search led me to DiskCatalogMaker (available from the Apple App Store or from Fujiwara Software). This is a $30 app that quickly generates a catalog of the contents of any disk or folder in a nice OSX Finder style format with a number of viewing options. You can save the catalog for future reference, and when you want to update the catalog for a disk, you can just open it and re-scan the disk contents.
I quickly found an even more helpful use for DiskCatalogMaker. It will also catalog CDs and DVDs in the Mac’s optical drive. It even has a batch scan feature so you can scan many disks one after another. Now I can generate a handy catalog of exactly what is on any backup or archived data CD or DVD, of which I have many. This means I don’t have to actually mount the backup disk to find out if it has the archived data I wish to find. In fact, the disk catalog files are indexed by Spotlight, so a Spotlight search will find exactly which disk catalog that the sought item is in, and DiskCatalogMaker also has its own powerful catalog searching.
Now if I could only find some sort of magic DiskCatalogMaker-like pill to help out the obviously failing RAM accessed by my Cranial Processing Unit.
I’ve Scaled Mt. Everest (and it wasn’t easy)
I’ve scaled the printout of an image of it, that is. The reason it wasn’t easy is that there are a couple of annoying problems in the Print Dialog if you are trying to print something scaled to a certain size.
The first is that some applications simply will not allow you to scale the material to be printed there. No Scale option appears in Print Dialog. Pages, Numbers and TextEdit are examples of such applications. At least with Pages and Numbers you can scale the content within the application before printing it. With TextEdit, you are out of luck. Here’s how to pre-scale Pages and Numbers documents.
Pages: Go to File/Page Setup in the top menu bar, not the display size control in the bottom left of the window.
Numbers: In the bottom left of the window click on the Page View Icon, then use the Content Scale Slider to adjust the printed size, not the display size control. 
Even if the Print Dialog does allow you to scale the output there are still a couple of problems.
First, if you click on Scale and enter a new size (you don’t need the % sign), you will not see the change in the preview.
More seriously, if you enter the % size you want, then click on anything else in the Print Dialog, it will print at whatever original scale it had chosen initially, even though you have changed it in the Scale box and the number you entered is still there. Setting the scale has to be the very last thing you do. After you enter a number in the scale box, press Return. Printing will begin immediately, and it will be at the scale you entered.
Wine, Whine, Wine
Wine
First I’ll get the Apple-related part of this post out of the way so I can get on with the whining.
Wine Ratings Guide
I’m a wine aficionado, somewhere towards the middle of the scale
and I find the iPhone app Wine Ratings Guide very helpful in shopping for wine, ordering wine in restaurants (there are suggested food pairings) and finding new wines to try. There are dozens of wine rating apps in the iTunes App Store. I’ve tried a few and this is the one that I like the best. I use it on the iPhone, but there is an iPad version as well. It has a huge database of wines, too big to fit on the iPhone, which means you do have to have WiFi or cellular data access to look things up. Ratings are the average of ratings by users of the app, rather than the ratings of experts like those at Wine Spectator. I think most medium priced wines are over-rated by this method. Probably because that’s what most people drink and they are comparing it to other medium priced wines rather than to the really great, really expensive wines of the same variety that the experts can use as a standard. Nevertheless, I haven’t yet been steered wrong by this app.
Whine
Recently I was in an anonymous supermarket whose name begins with A and spotted a shelf tag “Wine Spectator 94 points, 2007 Ravenswood Lodi Old Vine Zinfandel”. I am a fan of old vine Zins (partly because some of the vines are older than I am and still going strong) and a 94 point Zin for $11 is a really good buy. However, what was on the shelf behind the sign was the 2008 vintage of this wine. As most of you wine drinkers know, there can be a big difference. The 2007 Gargleblaster Grenache might be near ambrosia, while the 2008 vintage might be closer to turpentine. It turned out the 2008 Ravenswood Lodi Old Vine Zinfandel had a Wine Spectator rating of 87 points, pretty ordinary compared to the 94 point 2007 vintage they were trying to pass it off as.
Here are a couple of other wine marketing deceptions I’ve run across:
● Right vintage and vintner but different wine. For example, a tag with the rating for the excellent 2008 Elk Cove Windhill Pinot Noir in front of the lower rated 2008 Elk Cove Willamette Valley Pinot Noir.
● Ratings by obscure publications. The big reputable names are Wine Spectator and a rather distant second, Wine Enthusiast , and there are some good regional and local review sources as well. There are also bogus wine review sources that are really advertising rather than advice. “Wine Club” reviews are especially suspect – some are legitimate, but some are only interested in getting you to buy at a big price what they have purchased at a bargain price.
● Gold and Silver Medals and other Awards. Make sure it’s an important Wine competition, not the 2008 Podunk County Fair.
Wine
OK. Whine finished. Lets go have a glass of wine. The 2008 Oregon Pinot Noirs are the best in years. Some of them are world-class. I presume you are buying 
.
The Medium is the Message
And the message is “Macs are way cooler than PCs”. Of course most AshMUGgers are already aware of this, but if you aren’t already convinced, pay attention to movies or TV programs. If a computer is shown, chances are it’s a Mac. In my highly unscientific survey one evening in front of the tube, Macs outnumbered PCs by 7 to 2. Pretty remarkable when you consider Apple has only about a 10% market share of computers. Sometimes the producers (Modern Family, for instance) try to anonymize the computer by putting a cover on it to obscure the Apple logo, but it is still usually easy to tell.
Personally, being an Apple Fanboy (correction: Fangeezer) is a great way to be cool at my age. Maybe I ought to start shopping for clothes at J. Crew and Banana Republic instead of Penney’s and Costco. Nah!
Save $ – Refurbished Macs from Apple
If you want to save some money on your next Mac, consider a certified refurbished unit from Apple. Discounts are typically around 15% but can be over 30% on some items. There is a selection of iMacs, MacBooks, iPods, iPads, Apple TVs, nearly every product that Apple makes except the iPhone, and most are the current model or the one immediately preceding it. These are units that have been returned under warranty and refurbished, both electronically and cosmetically. They are thoroughly tested, and in the case of battery-powered devices, they have a new battery installed. They come with the same one-year warranty as a new product, have the same eligibility for the AppleCare extended warranty and are shipped free. I’ve purchased two refurbished Macs and have been very pleased with them. I don’t think the odds of getting a “lemon” are worse with an Apple refurbished product than with a new one. After all, they go through a lot more testing after they are repaired than one fresh off the assembly line.
I think the key here is “Apple Certified Refurbished”. There are also 3rd party retailers that offer “refurbished” Macs, but I’d be much more cautious about buying one of these.
The selection of refurbished products at Apple seems to turn over pretty fast. Check the listings frequently for what you want and be prepared to act quickly when you find it.
Bento Database may finally “be there”.
Bento, the “inexpensive” and “user friendly” database app is now up to version 4. I recently downloaded a trial version to compare to my current V 3. The good news is that some long-standing bugs have finally been fixed, and two features that users have been requesting from the beginning are finally implemented: label printing (built-in Avery label templates) and the ability to do simple spreadsheet-like calculations on numerical data in the records.
There are some significant issues that are still outstanding in V 4. If you are counting on these shortcomings being fixed in the future, keep in mind Bento’s upgrade history. Only about half the bugs seem to be fixed and only a few of the many heavily-requested features have been added with each major update. You will pay for every update and Bento will soon become a very expensive inexpensive database.
For more details, see my review in the Product Reviews section.
TidBITS: Apple News for the Rest of Us
- TidBITS Watchlist: Notable Software Updates for 20 February 2012 February 20, 2012
- Default Folder X 4.4.9 February 20, 2012
- VLC 2.0 February 20, 2012
Daring Fireball
- MLB Simplifies Pricing for iPhone and iPad Apps February 22, 2012
- Dell’s Predicament February 22, 2012
- Helpful Tip for Messages for Mac Beta Users With Mac.com AIM IDs February 22, 2012