Marianne Schultz

the musings of a geeky girl

Musings of a geeky girl. About | Contact

Social

iTunes, App Store, iBookstore, and Mac App Store

Categories

My upcoming donations to Apple

by Leave a Comment

Apple announced some product updates last week which will cause me to make a donation to Apple in the very near future. Of course, this will not be a completely unwilling donation and I do expect something in return for it – one Magic Mouse, to be precise. Don’t get me wrong – I’d love to make a much larger donation in exchange for one 27″ iMac as well, but that would put one significant strike down against me in the Mac inventory tally my husband keeps, and no good would come of it. Unless “good” in your book means “I now have enough proof to show my wife is crazy and should be institutionalized.”

Getting a Magic Mouse would free me from the wireless Mighty Mouse I currently use for my left hand (my right hand uses a Logitech trackball – I switch mice hands throughout the day in a vain attempt to minimize repetitive motion injuries). The Mighty Mouse is a great concept and it’s kind of cute, but I will say that it regularly causes me to envision doing horrible things to the engineers who designed it, usually involving a frantic, pants-less game of musical chairs and lots of really sharp thumb tacks. The damn ball in the damn thing keeps getting gummed up so that I can’t damn scroll down – scrolling in any other direction always works. If they’d worked out a way to easily disassemble the mouse so it could be cleaned thoroughly, I wouldn’t be so upset. But they didn’t, and I do. Regularly.

The next Apple product that will join my collection
I am still coveting another Mac of some sort. That 12″ PowerBook I mentioned recently may still be for sale and I’m going to make an offer. 🙁 I really should save my money and wait until January or so to see if a tablet is released, which would change my whole game plan, anyway. In the meantime, I do want to buy the AppleCare extended warranty for my MacBook Air, which I have only a few weeks left to do at this point. I think that will help greatly with its resale value when I get around to selling it.
Speaking of the game plan for early next year, it’s shaping up thusly:
  • Buy a Mac tablet for portable use (but only if it has a usable keyboard or I can connect a Bluetooth one to it easily)
  • Buy an iMac for desk at home (27″ if possible, but that’s highly doubtful unless I win the lottery)
  • Sell current MacBook Air and 20″ Apple Cinema Display plus husband and/or firstborn child to fund new purchases/appease husband
  • Keep iPhone (duh)
Do you have any Mac purchases planned in the near future?

Someone may need to stop me

by Leave a Comment

My first Mac laptop was a 12″ PowerBook G4 that I bought in 2003. Prior to that, I’d been on the Dark Side for a while, owning PCs for a few years after having my very first Mac, an LC40, at university. My 12″ PowerBook was absolutely perfect, if a little hot on the lap, at just the right size to make it very portable yet with specs that made it powerful enough to do everything I needed. I sold that lovely little beast when I bought a black MacBook and regretted it despite the upgrade in processing power. I’ve come across a mint last-generation 12″ PowerBook for sale in a forum I frequent and I’m .35 millimeters away from making an offer on it.

Why? I have no idea. I have a MacBook Air which does quite fine as my main computer. I don’t need another Mac. If anything, I should be saving up for the rumored tablet that may or may not make an appearance early next year. I have such fond memories of that 12″ PowerBook, though. Maybe it was more Tiger than anything, but I don’t seem to remember as many glitches with it – it went to sleep on its own reliably, didn’t get bogged down by invisible processes, and was small enough to carry around in a bag that looked like a purse. I still miss the damn thing and it makes no sense.
Gah! What is wrong with me? Am I moving into the Collector stage in my Mac obsession? If I started at the Mac N00b stage and moved through the Mac Snob stage (the Fangirl/Fanboy status is not a stage – it is a permanent state of mind once one enters the Mac Snob stage, by the way), I must indeed be into the Collector stage where I will begin to obtain older Macs and reminisce about them fondly. I still have the urge to buy new Macs, so I must not have lost my Excited Mac Nut status (combined with the standard card-holding Geek rank I have held for many years now) yet either. Well, let’s just hope that I don’t go overboard in this stage. If I start talking about getting a Mac Mini and changing it into a Cube, someone plan an intervention, please.

Ode to Snow Leopard – a.k.a, Snow Leopard looks cool and I’m a horrible poet

by Leave a Comment

Thou still uninstalled OS of loveliness,
Thou upgrade of smaller size and faster speed!
Yes, yes, I’ll stop. No more horrid Apple-inspired attempts at regurgitating poetry I last studied in high school. I promise.

Are you talkin’ to me? Are YOU talkin’ to ME?
You’re probably wondering how I like Snow Leopard so far, right? I hate to disappoint, particularly since I dub myself “macgirl,” but I haven’t installed it yet. I was out of town all last week, and while there was an Apple store nearby, I did not go out to buy it on release day because a) it was over 100º where I was and I despise going outside when it’s assured that I’ll break into a sweat the moment I step out the door, and b) I did not have all of my gear nor enough time to do a clean install then. So, I’ve since ordered Snow Leopard from Amazon (and saved $5 over the price from Apple directly – woo hoo!) and should get it shortly.
I plan to do a clean install (i.e., wipe my hard drive before installation and transfer documents, media, etc. manually afterward) which takes a bit of work but makes me happy. Why? Because I’m paranoid and like to start with a “clean” set-up on my Mac once a year or so. Plus, there’s less of a chance of having some corrupted file/setting/whatever act up and cause some unexpected chaos.
I’m still very impressed that Apple priced Snow Leopard at just $29, though I’m not quite sure how the math works out for them to make any money on it with the hundreds of software engineers they’ve had working on it for over a year now. I won’t worry too much about them, though, since I’m quite sure I’ll be buying yet more stuff from them in the near future to make up for any shortfall.
There are already multiple reviews of Snow Leopard up, including this one from Macworld magazine and this one by Engadget. There’s also this entertaining blog post/rant by Merlin Mann about his experience upgrading. From what I’ve read so far, it is faster most of the time and includes some nice tweaks and I’m looking forward to some 64-bit goodness. Unfortunately, it sounds like Mail is still the opposite of robust, but I suppose I need to wait for a major OS upgrade to get something meaningful there.
I expect to spend several hours one day this weekend doing the upgrade, complete with rolled-up sleeves, hair in disarray from frequent pulling, and vile curses sullying the air around me. I’m hoping that if I expect that, it will actually go much better. Reverse Murphy’s Law, perhaps? No? Damn.

How to devastate a geeky girl: break her iPhone

by Leave a Comment

I know I’m being a little dramatic here, but you know how my iPhone is the center of my geeky digital life, right? Well, the booger is broken. Not so broken I can’t use it, mind you. It’s the damn silent/vibrate switch. It stopped working suddenly a few days ago. Of course, it has to happen during the week when I need to go out of town to attend a funeral, where not hearing a cell phone go off during the various related events would be really nice, if not required if I don’t want my mom to take a swing at my head with her 20 lb. purse. So, yeah. Stupid broken switch.

“Well, why don’t you just turn the iPhone off when you need it to be silent?” you ask. Good question. However, it is one that clearly demonstrates how little you know me and the extent of my geekiness. An iPhone turned off is not an option. Period. Now please don’t think I’m a total boor who has loud cell phone conversations in public, blatantly ignores others while they’re speaking to me by checking email on my iPhone, and other sordid acts. I turned the volume down to the lowest setting, selected the Sonar ring tone, and turned every other sound alert off. I did not expect any phone calls – everyone who normally calls me knew where I was and that calling during the funeral was definitely not acceptable – and didn’t receive any at inappropriate times.
Of course, I’m definitely taking my iPhone to my local Apple Store when I get back home to get it swapped. From what I’ve seen so far, getting a replacement with this issue shouldn’t be a problem. I know that this isn’t true for everyone, but I’ve had 7 iPhones throughout the years (3 first-generation iPhones at various times, 2 iPhone 3Gs, and 2 iPhone 3GSs) and this is the first one I’ve had with any hardware problems. Must be luck or the geek gods looking over me…
Verified by MonsterInsights