Re: No Porsche content.... I have gone over to the dark side...

Greetings from my new Apple MacBook Pro!

My first Apple product.

Well, my second... I ordered an Apple iPad mini but it won't be here for 2 weeks. I signed up to become an Apple developer and needed a development platform. Now I have it.

Once you go Apple, it's hard to go back. They are expensive, though.

Minus 40 degrees... Is that Fahrenheit or Celsius?

Congratulations! This is the bright side.

Sent from my MacBook Pro.

Ed B

We made the switch 2-years ago. I own a 27-inch iMac, a new 13" Air, an iPad 2, and an iPad 4. The whole family has also switched to iPhones.

Why? Because *They Just Work*.

And because I no longer have to spend several hours every two weeks doing updates, and cleaning bad stuff off the hard drives.

Driving a new-to-me '09S in Aqua Blue Metallic. It does .5 past light speed. I made the Kessel run in less than 12-parsecs.
Motto: If you have your top up, that storm outside had better have a name!
Motto 2: Having the top up on a convertible is an oxymoron. Don't be a (oxy)moron.

Greetings from my OpenSUSE 12.1 Linux box. Yea, I know - geek.

I use Linux at home for day to day email, web surfing, music, video, NAS storage, development, etc. But, I'm also a MacBook Pro user and have been for years. And Andriod for my phone and Nexus 7. I also have a work Win 7 laptop and a home Win 7 machine.

I'm not convinced that the Mac's TCO is that much different from Windows. No need for MS Office so I use OpenOffice (free), no anti-virus / anti-malware costs, but the big save is really time. My time. I've NEVER had to format a hard drive and reinstall on MAC or Linux. Can't remember how many times I've done that with Windows boxes - yes even Win 7. Of course, the lowest TCO is Linux. OS is free and it requires much less expensive hardware for good performance.

Dave - 06 987 S coupe SG/NL; gone (but still my first love): 03 986 AS/GG/BK;

For heavy duty use and compatibility, especially in a large company environment, they are lacking.

Formatting may not be identical. PPT presentations, in fact, and especially those with engineering drawings (lots of boxes and lines), or extensive tables, may not even be close. This is a serious problem for those of us who have no choice.

Mac Office is nearly 100% identical to PC office (except it runs slower, sigh).

You do need to step into the wonderful world of Mac shareware and sometimes even better - UNIX shareware (sourceforge.com and other places).

A must-have is GraphicConverter. $35. The Rosetta stone of graphics formats.

Also get CarbonCopyCloner (free, but requests a donation), and/or an excursion into the wonderful world of rsync.

Grant

Grant

gee-lenahan-at-gee-mail-dot-com

Agree. Powerpoints especially don't seem to be rendered near the same and fancy excel macros usually generate errors. There's also LibreOffice, which is a fork of Open Office. Try all three to see which you like...

Mostly I work with pretty basic formats in documents that are pretty compatible. I also like the fact that you can save in PDF format without having to buy Adobe creator. But, when I'm just generating documentation that is narrative, it works fine and the PDF save let's me distribute / store for others to consume.

Other Mac stuff that I use includes Google Chrome with the bookmark sync turned on, VLC to play .avi and .wmv windows video files and Adobe reader (Apple doesn't support embedded files in PDF documents). I also use a "sparse image" to encrypt files that I want to protect from prying eyes. You can google "mac sparse image" for instructions.

Enjoy your new toys. Google can be your friend for learning how to do the windows to Mac function translations. Give yourself a few weeks to get used to the interface and you'll never want to go back.

Dave - 06 987 S coupe SG/NL; gone (but still my first love): 03 986 AS/GG/BK;

... MarcW.
In 1984 I purchased my first computer to write my thesis. It was an Apple IIc.Oo
Since then I have had about a dozen Apple computers (Macintosh, Macintosh SE, LC, LC II, iMac, new iMac, Power PC G3, Power PC G4, and a bunch of portables such as the 190, 540, 540c 545c, MacBook, MacBook Pro and others I can't recall right now. Never a non-Apple product, and ...
... I still have every one of them. Never sold one or traded it and each one still works perfectly.
I've been a BIG Apple supporter and user also having each one of the different iPods that have been offered and several iPhones.
Back in 1992 I became a shareholder. The good news is that i still have those shares, the bad news is that I didn't purchase more back then.
So thank you Marc and all others who are making me a little richer
Happy Appleing,
Pedro

Pedro Bonilla
1998 Boxster 986 - 311,000+ miles: [www.PedrosGarage.com]
PCA National Club Racing Scrutineer - PCA National HPDE Instructor - PCA Technical Committee (Boxster/Cayman)

---

Racecar spelled backwards is Racecar

"Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting" ... Steve McQueen as Michael Delaney in "LeMans"

"If you wait, all that happens is that you get older"... Mario Andretti

"Being second is to be the first of the ones who lose" ... Ayrton Senna

single digits... Kick!

Also, years ago I was in a live steam club here in the bay area. The president of the club -- I can't recall his name -- was resigning from the club and in fact unloading all his live steam stuff. I picked up a nice switching locomtive kit and some other things.

I asked him why he was resigning and leaving the live steam world? He told me to start a new club a computer club, the Homebrew computer club. I scoffed at computers... I think he just smiled in return.

Had I not been so dumb I might have followed him and met up with Steve J. and Steve W. and gotten in on the ground floor at Apple.

Oh, well, I got into computers and software eventually in this area it was that or become an EE or starve and it has been good to me. But oh my it could have been really really really good to me. Kick! Kick!

When Apple was volatile, i routinely bought low (er), sold high(er) and made money. One of the few times I've actually "traded" as opposed to investing on a longer term basis.

The problem with Apple after the return of Jobs, was that it always seemed to be peaking - this can't last. but it did - it only got better.

You cant kick yourself for being sane and cautious - is saved me from many a bubble. i did run a bunch of Apple up from $200 to $700 and back down to [where it is when you read this - likely about $570].

bear in mind it trades at 12.7 p/e TTM at the moment. That's cheap for a solid company that still has growth potential.

Grant

Grant

gee-lenahan-at-gee-mail-dot-com

I switched to Apple for home use a year ago after being a PC since the 80's. I like the platform a lot but have been disappointed that Quicken doesn't really support Apple OS anymore. Any advice from you Apple boarders about what personal finance software you recommend?

PS. I parked the RS 60 2 weeks ago for winter hibernation and will be living vicariously through you warm weather guys to get through the winter, so keep the driving stories coming...

Current Love: 2008 RS60; 1st Love: 2001 base, triple black

I dont much like most of the financial programs. You can easily create your own - and download Tab-delimited data to populate it.

Quicken i think has an online version, as does MSFT Money.

Grant

Grant

gee-lenahan-at-gee-mail-dot-com

with bugs and bad publicity recently. When they were the best and no one had any criticisms they were reading, perhaps they could justify the Apple tax. But when will the luster dim? When will the next great thing come out and bomb? I talk to the college age kids and they are so beyond facebook, at what point will it be Crackberry to be seen with an Apple ianything? It will happen ... every company has an arc of success.

Said with the background of 37 years in the guts of OSs, a happy user of Vista (gasp) on an AMD eMachines from Costco bought on price and a Samsung Android 2.3 monthly plan. But then I always bought 4 year old Porsches except for my 914 disaster. Obviously I don't often spend on the latest. But my investments are up over the last 5 years.

I do not own a PC. My cell phone is a very basic phone from Wal-Mart. No big screen TV. No cable. No broadcast TV at all in fact. No house electronics at all. The only electronic gizmo I bought in the last couple of years is a Garmin navigation unit.

The iPad mini and the Apple Macbook I bought because I feel there may be an application for something related to my work. The costs are out of my pocket (a set of 4 new tires for my 996 cost nearly as much) but the additional experience/skills I pick up doing application development may help to keep me employeed longer than I would be otherwise.

Thus these new Apple items are an investment of sorts.

Also, my investments are up -- dollar cost averaging is not glamorous but works better than my investment crystal ball -- but oh these market dips. I'm wondering where to put my money when I start pulling some out of stocks.

- faults, yes, but fewer than Android.

Win 8 may be a major step forward.

Grant

gee-lenahan-at-gee-mail-dot-com

As to Win8, we shall see. I just got a Surface RT courtesy of Mister Softy.

It seems very stable, but i have not used it much. Many user functions are greatly simplified, just like a Mac. What i can say is its a bit of a two-headed monster. You have the pretty tile interface, and then sometimes, wham and you are in good old Win7 with zero apparent changes. God help you if the simplified stuff doesn't work! I suppose that's the price we pay for some compatibility. BTW note that the Msft Mail app that currently ships with it (no Outlook) is dumbed down to a sub-70 IQ. Darn near useless. In understand though, that Outlook is being rushed to the rescue, suggesting my opinion is common.

From what i see the changes to the kernel and basic system functions (NTFS, query handlers, DLLs) are minimal. Same control panels, same underlying architecture (or lack of same).

Lipstick on a pork product.. Note that bacon is a pork product and one of life's great pleasures, so that may leave me open to a revised opinion :-)

Grant

Grant

gee-lenahan-at-gee-mail-dot-com

I like my iPad, but prefer android phones over iPhones. Iphones are great out of the box, but I like to customize my phone os and that's not as easy on the iPhone.

I own. These are the only two I plan on owning. I have a cell phone but it is a Wal-Market Trac Phone, some plain jane basic cell phone for which I buy the minutes as I need them. Generally about 800 minutes per year sees me through the year although with all the family stuff this year I'm down to 395.2 minutes and the one year time doesn't elapse until June of 2013. I may have to buy more minutes before them. But no monthly plan.

50% if my iPad use is for book reading. I started having problems with the iPad2, but the problem went away with Retina Display iPad4. I took a look at the iPad Mini, and it does look good and is very light. Unfortunately, Apple chose not to include a Retina Display in the first model, so I will be waiting until the second model is released with the Retina Display.

I DO see an iPhone5 is my immediate future (next month when an upgrade becomes available).

MarcW: Great story. Do either of these names sound familiar?

From Wikipedia:

Quote

The Homebrew Computer Club was an informal group of electronic enthusiasts and technically-minded hobbyists who gathered to trade parts, circuits, and information pertaining to DIY construction of computing devices.[1] It was started by Gordon French and Fred Moore who met at the Community Computer Center in Menlo Park...The first meeting was held in March 1975 in French's garage in Menlo Park, San Mateo County, California, on the occasion of the arrival in the area of the first Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems Altair microcomputer, a unit sent for review by People's Computer Company. Subsequent meetings were held at an auditorium at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.[3]

Driving a new-to-me '09S in Aqua Blue Metallic. It does .5 past light speed. I made the Kessel run in less than 12-parsecs.
Motto: If you have your top up, that storm outside had better have a name!
Motto 2: Having the top up on a convertible is an oxymoron. Don't be a (oxy)moron.

when he left the live steam club -- a very nice person. The Homebrew Computer club IIRC was already in existence then he was leaving the steam club to be able to devote all his time to the Homebrew Computer Club.

nothing fancy just working through a book I bought on IOS programming/development and have realized the MacBook Pro with its 13" LCD is just too small for development.

Apparently I can return the MacBook to Best Buy and get a full refund (?) and then turn around and apply this towards an iMac with a 23.5" display. 4 core, faster core, more memory, bigger hard disk, and a bigger display for $300 more.

I plan on going by Best Buy tonight on the way home and work the deal.

Oh, the Geek Squad will wipe the MacBook hard disk clean and reinstall the OS and apps and defaults.

display. $229. I keep the MacBook and its portability and yet I'll have the large (23") external display to use at the office for development.

convenient

Works in coach class seats

drives a monitor bigger than godzilla

just get a good graphics card

Grant

(from his macbook pro, dual I5, 13", with SSHD - a magnificent, albeit costly, upgrade.

Grant

gee-lenahan-at-gee-mail-dot-com

I use a video connector and use both my 24" LED and my MacBook display. Works great and provides a lot of screen real estate. Another one of the "it just works" part of OSX. Hook it up and it does the new screen perfectly. IIRC, the default is for the 2nd screen on the right, but it is changable (mines on the left).

Dave - 06 987 S coupe SG/NL; gone (but still my first love): 03 986 AS/GG/BK;

which I guess based on what I can find out online is the same as Mini Display port.

I'll find out for sure later today when I visit Best Buy or perhaps the Apple store first to confirm just what external monitors I can connect to my MacBook Pro.

by going to systems preferences --> displays and seeing the list of supported resolutions.

The list is generally long. Almost anything reasonable will work.

Grant

Grant

gee-lenahan-at-gee-mail-dot-com

My current MacBook Pro is about 6 months old, so not sure if they've changed recently but from what I can tell from their website, it looks like it's the same. On mine, there's both the Thunderbolt and the mini display port. Left to right on the right side of the keyboard it's: power, ethernet, thunderbolt, mini display, USB, USB, memory card slot. I have a mini display to HDMI adapter and an HP 24" flat panel monitor. You can also get VGA and DVI adapters.

Edit: The monitor I have is not especially sold as "Mac" compatible. I've connected my macbook pro to many monitors and TVs in my travels. Haven't found one yet that didn't work.

Dave - 06 987 S coupe SG/NL; gone (but still my first love): 03 986 AS/GG/BK;



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/01/2012 10:17AM by Dave In MD. (view changes)

2 USB 3.0 slots, SDXC slot, Audio In/Out.

My research is the Thunderbolt is also a Mini Display port.

But before I buy the monitor I'll make sure I can connect it.

But now-adays i pretty much just use the laptop itself. I do have a 15" though, as well as my travel 13"

Grant

gee-lenahan-at-gee-mail-dot-com

Using Siri this is a nice feature I like!

Sent from my iPad mini.

seem to be less used today than in the past. This thread may be indicative of that change in that other technology has supplanted the function they performed. I quit wearing a watch some years back as cell phones (and now smart phones) became always with you devices and always have the correct time, usually even adjusting themselves to time zone changes.

The only time I ever wear a watch is at Drivers Education events when my smart phone transforms itself to a lap timer and I usually just leave it mounted in the car. For those grand occasions, I purchased a $20 Timex with large numbers on the face so I can read it without my reading glasses as I wander about the paddock....



Time marches on as they say.

Dave - 06 987 S coupe SG/NL; gone (but still my first love): 03 986 AS/GG/BK;

I thought something was very amiss with the watch. While comparing the time immediately following the reset, the watch was off by ten seconds or so. It is a purely mechanical autowinder, having some day-to-day variance of a couple seconds, but this was way off, and had me thinking it was time for a cleaning and re-oiling. Then I compared the phone and watch to my cable box, and saw it was the phone having the variation. (LG phone, Verizon service, very good signal area.) It has me thinking the phone itself has very poor clocking, and checks a time reference signal only every so often. The cable box and watch were synchronized.

Minus 40 degrees... Is that Fahrenheit or Celsius?