Apple MacBook Pro 2014 Review

It's been many months since I've blogged, I've been quite busy with a lot of cool things happening in my life, which have conspired to keep me away from the old BlogSpot.

Last week saw the launch of the refreshed 2014 Apple MacBook Pro, and I ordered one on the day of release.  As luck would have it I happened to be working in a state with a nice low sales tax, so I figured I could save some money too.

Specifically, I ordered the MacBook Pro 2.8GHz with 8Gb of RAM and 512Gb of HD space.  This is a bump over my 2012 MacBook Air of 1GHz of processor speed, twice the RAM and twice the HD space.

Back in 2012 when I ordered my first Mac computer I opted for the Air simply because I travel a lot with work, and was looking for lightweight.  Back then the MacBook Pro contained an optical drive and a mechanical hard drive, making for a heavier and arguably more delicate machine.  This, as well as the price, was the ultimate reason for the choice of the Air.

Fast forward two years and I am now a total Apple convert.  I now have my MacBook Air, an iPad Air, four Apple TVs (one for each TV!), and the iPhone 5S.  Apple really have won me over, big time.

The new MacBook Pro has thus far proven to be an excellent investment.  First off the Retina display is like going from DVD to Blu-Ray.  Everything is just smoother, faster, and more beautiful looking.  It really cannot be underestimated how gorgeous the display is.  Rich vibrant colors.  No pixelation.  Just beautiful.  Some reviewers whine about refections from the glossy display.  Not an issue unless you sit with a ton of light behind you when working (and why would you do that?).

Migration from the old Mac was perhaps one of the easiest I have ever encountered in the 32 years I've been using computers.  It was hampered by the fact that I am beta testing OS X Yosemite on the old Air, unfortunately making some of the migration tools throw a hissy fit due to backwards compatibility issues.  Had I been doing a more traditional upgrade from OS X to same OS X or newer, then the transfer would have been way easier.

Even with this little wrench in the works, the migration was still super easier.  I purchased a 3Tb external USB 3.0 HD for $129 (amazing how cheap those are now), and did the Time Machine back up.

From there I had to manually transfer folders over to get around the OS X incompatibility.  Many of the smaller apps just copied over.  I had to download the re-install Office, because it's not like Microsoft to make it easy to migrate anything ever.

Adobe were their typical evil money grabbing bastards.  I ran into issues downloading Dreamweaver CS6, when parts of their web site that happened not to be trying to sell me their stupid rip off subscription service mysteriously malfunctioned and then pointed me back to ads for their new products rather than allowing me to download software I already owned.

Adobe further annoyed me by ignoring my request for customer assistance via email.  Even when I did finally find part of their web site not returning error messages, and re-download my software it insisted that I track down my serial number for my older CS5.5 version, enter that, and then put in the serial for CS6.  I only purchased an upgrade last time, so they had to waste some of my time as punishment for not emptying my bank account in their general direction.

In fact, truth be told, installing three pieces of Adobe software was actually the most time consuming of all, even Microsoft beat them out.  Not because it was hard to do, but because Adobe was doing all they could to persuade me to ditch the software I have paid for in favor of simply sending them $30 every month FOREVER!

I have to say, I think this software subscription concept is bullshit.  I use Dreamweaver a handful of times a month for a few minutes; yet I am expected to pay $20 a month for it?  And if I refuse, I get stuck with old software that won't ever be updated?  Nice blackmail Adobe.

In fact if I bought into this whole subscription model nonsense it would cost me $30 a month for my Adobe products, another $10 for Microsoft.  So now I'm giving away $1440 every three years for the basic productivity tools I want, along with paying for a bundle of software I would absolutely never use.  Oh and Microsoft have not even bothered to update the Mac Office software since the 2011 release.  So much for the promise the subscription model has of always giving me access to the latest software.

The standout was Parallels 9.  I have some work software that will only run on a PC, so I run Windows 7 along with a couple of applications.  I remember it being a hassle to install originally, because I had to buy a DVD player since Microsoft insist on using old school optical discs.  After installing Windows, I had to configure it and install two applications and configure them.  It took a while to get it all working right, and I was dreading doing all that again.

Parallels saved me from all that work, it simply grabbed the Parallels datafile off my back up, wiggled around a bit, and before you know it, a fully working clone of my old machine.  Just incredible.  Windows 7 and the software I need for work runs fast and flawlessly.

In conclusion, I'm very pleased with the MacBook Pro with Retina display.  Just an outstanding machine, and weighing in at just a shade heavier than my old Air it's going to be great for travel, which I spend a lot of my life doing.

Apple have made it child's play to migrate a machine, and within a few hours I was reunited with all my apps and data, working just fine.  I've never had such a stress free experience with a PC ever.

Really my only beef is with Adobe being dicks about their software, which of course has nothing to do with Apple. 

iPhone 5 Lightning Connector Blues

I'm not sure what episode of Star Trek some critics were hoping would be re-enacted at the iPhone 5 launch yesterday, but ever since the launch I keep reading the baby-like whining from some techno journalists about how the phone doesn't have teleportation, or an invisibility cloak, a holographic keyboard, or the ability to render Siri into a real living person to feed your cat when you are at work.  In some areas it seems that some people were expecting a little much from Apple.

Another gripe I've been reading about this morning is the one about the new connector that Apple call Lightning.  It's smaller, faster, better etc, and yet people are whining about it.  "What am I going to do with my old cables and accessories?" they ask with a quiver in their lower lip.

I'll tell you what to do, throw them in fucking garbage along with your VCR, Razr, eight track, and CRT monitor.

Seriously, we really want Apple never to innovate again, because we've gotten used to a certain type of cable?  Should we still be using analog data cables because we didn't want to change to HDMI?  Should we demand that Apple never changes the screen size because our eyes have gotten used to the old one?

Technology is always about change.  It's like the people that always whine when Facebook gets refreshed, and some losers start a page demanding it be rolled back to the old version.  If you don't like new technology don't buy it.  Go get a nice book, and read it over and over.  It won't change shape or size or require some new connector that makes you mad.  The fonts won't get smaller or bigger, and the color will only change slightly over many years as the paper decays.

What I want to ask these so-called journalists though, is why they choose to write about technology if they get so angry when it evolves and improves.  Just seems strange.

Anyway, rant over, time to decide to stay with AT&T or move to Verizon for my iPhone 5 order.

CashForSmartPhones.com Review

I recently admitted that I am now Apple's Bitch.  There's no denying it.  I have decided to simply buy every new phone Apple make after my horrible AT&T / Android experience.  But this leads to a problem, because of the business model of cell phones these days, specifically smart phones, early upgrades tend to cost a lot more money than the price they advertise on TV.  And we all know why, and it's no big deal.  So what to do with the old phone?

I found a web site called CashForSmartPhones.com (part of the Cash4Laptops.com company) and they seemed to have a very reasonable sales pitch, credible reviews, and decent ratings.  You type in the smart phone you have and they give you a quote for what they are willing to buy it for.

So I entered the Samsung Infuse 4G, and my old Apple iPhone 3GS.  They quoted me $240 for the Samsung and $80 for the iPhone.  Not bad.  So I decided to take them up on the offer and filled out my information.  Within a few days a box and shipping label arrived at my home.  All I had to do is reset my phones back to their factory settings (although this company claim to erase the data themselves upon receipt), and send them in, shipped free via UPS.

A few days later I got an email saying the devices had been inspected, I called and they offered me $220 for both units.  I accepted, they PayPal'd the money right away.  Easy money.

Now you may notice that the price they offered was lower than what they paid, and I'm fine with that.  The iPhone was old and crap, that's why I replaced it.  The case was cracked at the back, the battery was in poor shape, and I had neglected to supply the charger or cord with it.  And despite the newness of the Infuse, the case was already getting worn thanks to the cheap ass crappy materials Samsung used in the construction.

I probably could have pushed for a bit more money, or tried to sell them on eBay, but then you have to deal with random buyers, the usual eBay bullshit, fees, etc.  This was straight up an easy transaction by a company that did what they promised and gave me money for something that frankly would have been left sitting in a drawer if I hadn't found this web site.

It's always exciting to see a company doing business the right way, and really I had no complaints about this whole transaction.  The $220 they paid me easily offset the penalty for early upgrade, and when the iPhone 5 comes out, I suspect I'll be doing the same again.

Apple Own Me

Back in June I wrote about my break with Apple bondage.  After dealing with a bunch of bullshit with Apple and AT&T I decided to try the Android option and purchased a Samsung Infuse 4G which I have been using up until the beginning of December.

Unfortunately, this was a case of the grass being greener on the other side of the fence.  AT&T helped screw the phone with their shitty network, but even the crap network doesn't excuse the dropped calls, lack of reception in my study, and several minutes the phone could take to get a GPS lock on anything.  The phone would sometimes spontaneously get hot and turn itself off.  Really nice if you were expecting a call, only to find your phone had been off for a couple of hours.

AT&T have been promising to release the newer version of the OS for the phone for some time too.  But they never did.

And at the end of the day the big screen is pointless because if you have it on full brightness the phone is going to die long before you get a chance to watch that movie or do anything else useful with it.

So it was six months of disappointments and poor functionality. Finally I was sitting in a restaurant in Orlando Florida not 20 minutes from all the famous Disney / Universal / Harry Potter stuff and I could not get a signal (at least not one that worked) and I decided it was time to try something else.

When it came down to it, I don't want to lose my AT&T unlimited family plan.  It is pretty competitive price wise.  So faced with buying another phone on their network, there really was only one choice.  The iPhone feels more solid, better built, and looks cooler than anything out there.  And reviews told me that the 4S has the best camera of any iPhone yet.

So I broke down, got me an iCloud, paid the $200 penalty for an early upgrade, purchased the sucker warranty from Apple for $90.  And presto, I now own an iPhone, while Apple owns me.

I decided to wait a little while to review it because it's easy to have a honeymoon period with new electronic gadgetry and I didn't want to gush about something I was destined to hate.

The phone itself looks and feels much like the iPhone 4 of course, which is no bad thing.  And although I've been used to a 4.5 inch display for the past six months, the sharpness and clarity of the display made it an easy transition back to the smaller display, with the added benefit of a phone that is physically nicer and easier to handle.

Here's a summary of the iPhone 4S experience:

What I love

Okay, so Siri is fun.  There's something very science fiction about being able to say, "Siri, play me a U2 song."  The voice recognition still isn't Star Trek, but it's coming along.  This is just about the most impressive AI/Voice recognition that I've ever seen, and my hat is off to Apple for going down this road.

The camera delivers as promised, and in typical Apple fashion, it just works.  There is no F Stop, no ISO, no scene, no this, no that.  Point the camera and press the button.  The camera takes fabulous pictures, despite the lack of user configuration or control.  It beats my Samsung Infuse big time, especially in low light.

The new processor is faster and anything I try and do on the phone just zips along nicely.

GPS is super fast and the most accurate of any smart phone I've used.  FourSquare is nice and quick, which is great, because I don't want to spend two minutes checking into a location.

What I like

The battery life is pretty good.  On a full charge I can do everything I want to all day, and still have plenty left when I get home.  I mean battery life being good is a relative thing on a smart phone.  Clearly it's not going to last a week, and you are going to have to charge it every night.  But it's the best smart phone I've used.

Despite the substandard AT&T network there is some kind of dual antenna in this phone that makes it work better.  So I am getting stronger and more reliable signal with this phone than I did with the iPhone 3GS or my Samsung Infuse.

Minor Grumbles

Configuration was pretty easy.  Although the usual corporate pissing match made it harder than it should have been to port my music off my Amazon cloud, my ringtones off my old phone, and my contacts off my Google contacts database.  In fact when it came to contacts I eventually gave up and simply retyped them all into the iCloud.  Then I got a sync app to pull the pictures from Facebook.  Again, I believe that if corporations played better together, this process could have been a lot simpler.

Speaking of the iCloud, again I feel like Apple have tried to over simplify it and as a result lost some of what could have been useful functionality.

Facebook has much improved their standard app, but I've still found a few minor bugs that annoy me.

In an effort to over simplify the sync process, I somehow feel like they have made it more complicated in reality.  Because I have an iPad 2 for work, iTunes was trying to push apps from that onto my iPhone in a rather annoying way.  Fact is, many of my apps for the iPad are work related, and I don't necessarily want them on my iPhone.  Similarly, just because I put it on my iPhone doesn't mean I want it transferred to my iPad.  And if I download a 4Gb movie on my iPad, I certainly may not need it downloaded again onto my work laptop.

Overall

Until the competition radically improves their product, I've just decided to stay with Apple.  The 4S is an incredible phone, and so far it does all I want it to.  Sure, some things are very Apple and you just have to accept control in these areas.

I can't say I'd recommend AT&T, they do after all come in bottom every time Consumer Reports does a survey.  But I can't in all honesty tell that I'd be any happier with Verizon.  It would take me several months comparing them side by side to know that.  I travel a lot with my job, so it's not something I'd know right away.

In the end, if you can't beat them join them.  I tried to break away, reject the evil corporate BS of Apple, but I wasn't prepared to accept the price I had to pay in terms of lost features and functionality.

I found one of those websites where you can sell your old phone, and in theory sold the Samsung for more than I bought it for.  I'll wait until the money is in the bank before I let you know if that service worked right.

As for the iPhone 5.  Now that I am back drinking the Apple Kool-Aid, I'll probably just buy it when it comes out.  I mean sure, it will probably cost me the best part of $500, because I am not eligible for a cheap upgrade until 2013.  But so what.  I understand the business model, and I get that these modern smart phones are worth more than they sell them for with the contract.  Just don't expect me to camp out on the day of release.  Apple may own me, but I still have some dignity.

How To Make An iPhone Ringtone (For Free)

Apple didn't get where they are today without making a few dollars here and there. And like so many other manufacturers they can't help but want to cash in on youngsters who want ringtones.

Ringtones have been around a while and while I can't be bothered to look up the figures, I suspect that many corporations are getting rich selling tiny samples of music for some outrageous price. And quite how a 20 second sample of a song can end up costing more than double the price of the entire song is quite beyond me.

But for those of you who wish to make your own ringtones from a song you already own, this is how you do it. I'm assuming a PC, iPhone 3G, and the current version of iTunes. In time no doubt Apple will try to prevent the method I am about to describe, but for now, this works:

Making A Custom Ringtone For Your iPhone (For Free)

1. Open iTunes, without your iPhone connected to your computer.
   
2. Find a song you want to make into a ringtone.
3. If you purchased the song from iTunes and it is a DRM protected MP4 file, you will need to do some extra work. If it is an unprotected sound file like an MP3 from Amazon.com you can skip to step 6.
4. Burn your protected file onto an audio CD, just as you would do if you intended to listen to it in a CD player.
5. Rip the song back off the CD using iTunes. The song will no longer have that stupid DRM crap on it. There's probably another way to do this, but this one works. If you wish to make multiple ringtones you can put all the songs you want to use on the CD and then rip them back off. Again, this is only necessary if the songs have DRM protection.
   
6. Play the song you want to turn into a ringtone and decide what part of the song you wish to use for your ringtone. Maybe you want the first 25 seconds, maybe you want the chorus. In any case, watch the counter as you play the song in iTunes, and write down the exact time that your desired sample begins and ends. So for example, you might want 22 seconds of a song that begins after 2:04 and ends at 2:26. Make a note of those times (start and end).
   
7. Right click on the song and select Get Info.
8. Click on the Options tab.
9. You will see a box where you can specify the start and end time of the song. Enter the figures you wrote down earlier into those boxes, and make sure the checkmark next to the times is present. This tells iTunes to play only that portion of the song you want as a ringtone. Keep the ring tone less than 40 seconds. (Note: iTunes is actually capable of using fractions of a second if you have to be very accurate.)
10. Click OK.
11. Right click on the song again, and this time select Convert To AAC. A duplicate of your song will be created, but it will be the length of a ring tone, using the numbers you previously specified.
12. Right click on the newly created ringtone and choose delete from the menu.
13. You will see a dialog box open, click keep files.
14. Now you will need to locate the file using Windows Explorer. It will usually be in My Documents > My Music > iTunes. Generally in a folder related to the artist or album the song came from. It will have a file extension of m4a.
15. Right click on the file and select rename.
16. Change the file extension to m4r. You may see a warning message about the evils of changing a file extension name. Ignore it.
17. Once the file has been given the new extension, double click on it. It should automatically be imported into iTunes as a ringtone, appearing in the ringtone folder.
18. Attach your iPhone to your PC and sync. You may have to go to the ringtones tab in the sync operation and ensure that ringtone syncing is enabled.
19. You're done. Your new ringtone should now be available to select on your iPhone.

It sounds more complicated than it is. Once you've done a couple, you'll see how easy it is to use. Not as easy as it would have been if Apple just relaxed and stopped trying to exploit people with over priced ringtones, but still, it works just fine.

Apple Users Less Smug

Despite loving my new iPhone, I have often been irritated with the smug look on the faces of Mac users who have long claimed that their precious Apple computer is invulnerable to viruses and other mal-ware.

But it seems that the honeymoon is over. Apple have stopped short of recommending anti-virus software, but they 'encourage' users to take precautions.

I wonder if they will feature this new revelation on their irritating but amusing TV commercials. "I'm a Mac, I seem to have this rash..."

The iPhone Has You

When it comes to technology I am a sucker for products with a blue LED and anything that seems especially high tech. So while I tried to fight it, I knew it was only a matter of time before I was compelled to purchase an iPhone.

So on Black Friday I went down to the local AT&T store and picked one up, along with my obligatory bargain which turned out to be a Bluetooth headset for just $15 after rebate (50% off and $20 rebate). Amazingly the store was empty when I arrived (at 10am), no stampedes, and no one being trampled to death, which was nice.

The iPhone 3G did not disappoint. I'm not going to bother blogging about all its features and review the pros and cons of it; you can read that anywhere. But I will say this, it is absolutely amazing. I can quite understand why people lined up for hours when it first came out. I wouldn't want to do that personally, or pay the crazy price it was when it (the original iPhone) came out. But for right now, $199 and no waiting is an absolute bargain. I haven't even scratched the surface of the capabilities of the phone, although I've done enough to be hugely impressed.

I do have to gripe about iTunes though. I think Apple are being greedy once again and trying to overly control how people use their devices. It's never easy to just upload a file, or create a ringtone (without some rip off charge for doing so). I had to follow a tedious work around just to upload an MP3 as a ring tone.

Little things like this piss me off. But other than that, I have to take my hat off to Apple for creating the most impressive phone I've ever seen. Despite being a huge fan of the Blackberry as of late, the Curve and Pearl pale into insignificance next to the iPhone. Sure there are some new Blackberry's out now, but I don't think they are competative either in price or specifications to the iPhone.

I am happy to be shackled into one of those outrageous two year contracts with my new phone. Or at least as happy as I can be with the absurdity of forcing consumers into two year contracts with their phone providers.

Why I Hate Apple

There many reasons why I think I should like Apple. They make pretty products and they are highly innovative, but for some reason something about the company always manages to piss me off. Here's my list of why I hate Apple:

1. iTunes. It's fucking shit. They are up to version 8.0 as of today, and it is still clumsy and annoying. It can't be that hard to copy some MP3s onto an iPod. Does it really need to be 80Mb? Why can't I plug my Shuffle into multiple computers? Over simplification actually makes it harder to use.
2. Genius. The new iTunes feature. All it seems to do is tell me to buy more songs similar to what I am already listening to. Audio Satellite did this some five or six years ago. Sure it was illegal back then. But the technology is hardly new, and I have no idea why it took them so long to offer it. But in any case it is just a commercial to buy more songs from iTunes.
3. Quicktime. I consider this to be the worst of all media players. It is ugly, badly written, and generally shit in almost every way. Also like spyware, once you get it on your computer it is hard to get off. It likes to seize file extensions from other players, and integrate itself into your web browser. And worst of all they always bundle it with iTunes just to piss me off.
4. DRM. Just fuck off. I don't want some file that I can't easily use as I see fit. And you know what, if I buy a song and email it to my wife, that's my business. I don't need some big brother telling me how many times I've copied the file. As easy as it is to purchase music on iTunes, I will never do it again (unless they have some exclusive thing I can't get elsewhere). I can buy my music on Amazon.com for the same or lower price, and get an MP3, that I can do what I want with. No DRM. Amazon just need to tidy up their purchase interface a bit.
5. File structure. Why the fuck does Apple fuck around with file names and weird directory structures on their iPods? F1, F2, F3 etc. WTF? Why not just store all the files in a sensible directory structure so I can back up my iPod to my computer with ease.
6. Arrogance. Apple are just so arrogant about their Macs. Guess what? They do break down, you can get a virus for them, there are a lot of things you can't do with a Mac, and malware is not exclusively a PC problem.
7. Safari. I don't care if it is the most amazing browser in the world. I don't want to be told to download it every time a bug fix comes out for one of the programs I do use. If I wanted to download Safari I would have done it already.

Despite all these little rants, I have to say the new iPod nano looks sweet, and I am quite tempted to buy an iPhone. Although I do like my Blackberry Curve a lot.

I really want to like Apple, but I just wish they would stop fucking about.