Think different – Actually, just try thinking all at

I made a decision a few weeks ago to reformat my Mac Mini and, later, my Time Capsule and sell them.

It probably seems strange that eight months ago I was in in full Apple/Steve Jobs fanaticism mode, watching documentaries about Jobs and reading his biography with great enthusiasm. I had my Mac set up more or less the way I wanted it and, following a hernia repair surgery, I had two weeks off work and an abundance of energy due to a bad reaction to the pain management medication I was prescribed.

I took the time to review some of the documentaries I had accumulated in recent months, including three about Steve Jobs. One portrayed him as a genius, a visionary, one who computer enthusiasts owe a great deal to. The other painted him as an unbalanced, obsessive control freak who stole unashamedly from everyone else. The third took sections from each and came to no clear conclusion.

My reading of Jobs’ biography was mostly honest, frequently unflattering and still slightly unhinged; I began to see why so many Christians seem to favour Apple products – there seems an almost religious awe to the way they market their products. There seems to be an appeal to those who aren’t seeking God as such, but someone to tell them how they should live their lives. The public face of Jobs was a most charismatic pastor to the Apple faithful.

When I was still working at The Unnamed Computer Shop, they had finally gained an Apple dealership after several years of unsuccessful applications, though the reasons given for declining were apparently always vague and inconclusive. We had a training session with a representative from our main wholesaler – the session took some time and demonstrated some of the amazing things that the Mac and its software was capable of, but also a clear indication that the Mac was no longer the tool of the free thinking, counter culture artists but now a fashion accessory that you could not live without.

I remember being both impressed and horrified by what I saw. I walked out of the training session and back to my desk suddenly sporting a Van Dyke, beret and a placard proclaiming “Linux power!” At least, that’s how it felt. My inner Socialist was enraged.

It became clear that Apple made use of some very persuasive people – even knowing that Apple was promoted as a lifestyle choice, I managed to get caught up in the hype. I purchased a second hand Mac Mini through the local classified adverts, upgraded the memory to 4GB and spent some time tooling it up until it became my main system for everyday use. My Windows notebook, my primary system for the last six years was relegated to the machine I took with me to LAN parties, programming meetings and when travelling. And yet I was left with a continuous niggling doubt…

One things that struck about Apple is how closed they are – they provide the hardware, the operating system and many of the applications we use. Everything worked together in an impressively seamless and consistent fashion. When comparing with Windows, the latter offers much the same functionality (after a fashion) but everything seemed cobbled together – a collective product by people who had a particular goal in mind but who made no effort to communicate with each other during development. Or sometimes software purchased or licensed from third parties and just dropped into place.

The closed nature of Apple has its benefits but once you try thinking outside of that glass box, you start to run into trouble – like Microsoft, Apple like to keep external developers at arm’s length. Its not that they prevent third party developers, but you will be frowned upon in you don’t follow very specific guidelines. Whilst I found a lot of useful, free tools for everyday general use, some of the software I needed for specific tasks (such as writing DVDs with verification) required some quite expensive software – having purchased this software for Windows, I didn’t want to have to buy it again for the Mac at twice the price.

Whilst I was recovering from surgery in late September and early October, I took some time to tinker again with Linux – my notebook has a rather obscure video controller and few operating systems seem to recognise or support it properly. Various flavours of Linux would operate but I would encounter odd problems like being unable to play streaming video at full screen or the audio stalling, crackling and popping like someone burping underwater. Previously, I had worked with Ubuntu 9.04 which worked pretty well for the most part, improving somewhat under 9.10 but when I upgraded to 10.04, the whole system went to pieces. Fresh installations of successive editions never seemed to work satisfactorily.

Having acquired a three year old Hewlett Packard desktop from a friend, I thought to try again – the same issue of not having the video controller supported properly reoccured, but the issue wasn’t as bad as before; streaming video would sometimes struggle but media systems like VLC could play full screen 720p video without any trouble.

Tweaking, refining and a little bit of research allowed me to get the system up and running to my satisfaction, even to the point of taking over from the Mac as my regular day to day machine. With more memory and something like 12 times the hard disk space, I could keep all my music and photos on the same machine. Features like Ubuntu One cloud storage and the built in backup software make sure that nothing goes astray. WINE had improved enough that Windows specific tools like Irfanview operated perfectly well but if I needed to run some software that demanded something more, I could run a virtual machine loaded with Windows XP for software like iTunes (more for purchasing music than configuring my archaic iPod).

In a way, both my inner Socialist and my outer Christian selves were satisfied with the arrangement. When my brother acquired an old PC from his local technical college, I put Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on it as I felt it would be easier for him to use and safer in his inexperience). Eventually, I want to install it on my parent’s PC as well – I just need to figure out remote desktop access for them should they get into any trouble.

The Poor Man’s Apple

Whilst I’ve been off work for a couple of weeks recuperating from my hernia repair, I’ve spent a lot of time tinkering with my multiple computers and thinking about their continued place in my life.

Since I first had a chance to work with a microcomputer back in 1984, I’ve gone from intrigued, to fascinated to completely obsessed with computers and their associated technologies. Though I use them every day for writing, research, composing and essential workplace transactions, I’ve been more drawn by their essential “computeriness” than all the things they could enable me to do.

My reason for having so many systems at home is more to do with the way each one does their tasks in a slightly different fashion, how one system is better for web design, another better for experimentation and another for just general web browsing.

As I write that, though, it strikes me as being similar to having multiple cars or vehicles to drive down different surfaces – a hatchback for traversing the suburbs, a boat for water recreation and a motorbike or four wheel drive for off road use.

The conclusion I came to when tinkering with each system is that whilst Windows 7 (and I’ve spent enough time over the last two weeks testing Windows 8 to learn to deal with its quirks and benefits) is probably most suitable to my requirements, I don’t particularly like it.

Its kind of hard to explain, but I suppose you have a system that has expanded and encompassed so many features and attributes that it has come to collapse under its own weight. Having multiple versions, each with their own licensing scheme, confuses matters more. And having come from a background where individualism and innovation were encouraged, it has long frustrated me the way Microsoft often made a person feel that if you weren’t following their instructions specifically (and thus using only their tools and hardware), you were a dangerous and potentially destructive influence.

Of course, with Apple‘s resurgence in recent years, Microsoft have learned to pull their head in a little and get on with making products that work, as well as showing a little more respect to their customer base.

I bought a second-hand Mac Mini a couple of years ago as I wanted to find out what all the fuss was about but find out on my terms, not as according to the marketing material and hype (and fashion culture).

That is certainly one area of the Apple marketing that caused me much frustration and indignation. They had a very good system and peripherals, but they promoted it like a fashion accessory. I’d encountered too many people who pushed the “coolness” factor rather than the “ability to do stuff well” factor. If you had a Mac, you probably drove a BMW and had a house in Nedlands as well. That Sort of Approach. Of course, you probably just used it to type an email now and again and defrost the occasional pizza…

I upgraded the memory on the Mac Mini 18 months ago and after a few false starts, configured it more or less the way I want it and have been using it as my primary system for a while now – although I still flip back to the Windows notebooks from time to time.

About five weeks ago, I purchased a three year old second-hand PC from a friend with a house full of such things. He was clearing things out in an effort to raise some cash by selling old and unused items at the JAFWA geek-mart swap meet at the end of August. I pre-empted it by a few days.

With a little tweaking and adjusting, I had Ubuntu Linux 12.04 LTS and Windows 8.1 Pro preview up and running to greater degree of satisfaction. Ubuntu running well enough that I decided to clear out one of my backup drives, do a fresh installation of Linux onto a 1.5TB drive and copy all my essential data to the new setup. Once configured, I had what I felt was the poor man’s MacIntosh – a layout that does more or less everything that I can do on my Mac, and perhaps a little more, for a fraction of the price of a real Mac. With WINE installed, I can even run a number of Windows applications if required (though I’ve found that there are few tools that I need that I can’t already find a Linux equivalent for).

But despite all of that, after only a couple of days, I went back to using the Mac.

Maybe its the coolness factor.

One of the things I wanted to do whilst I was resting was catch up on a few documentaries I’ve collected over the last few months – including two about Steve Jobs. Its impressive how much influence and charisma the man had, his “reality distortion field” as its frequently referred to, though “Billion dollar hippy” portrays Jobs as an understated genius, “One last thing” is more critical and suggests that Jobs was not a particularly nice man at all. I still find the whole affair fascinating though, so I’m looking into buying his biography and related books (in dead tree format, I’m not much into ebooks just yet).

Its a shame Dennis Ritchie didn’t garner so much fame or riches during his lifetime.