The Unpacking Experience: PC vs. Mac

I wrote that I recently purchased two 13-inch (mid-2010) MacBook Pros as gifts for myself and my wife. Late last week I also had to unbox and configure a Dell Inspiron 1750 (reviewed by PC Mag here and on Amazon here).

There is a significant difference in pricing between the two laptops and it wouldn't be fair to bitch about things that are primarily pricing differences. On the surface, there are several similarities that would make little difference to the end user; four gig of RAM on both, they both have webcams built in, they both have ports for external video (although the Mac isn't standard and requires a $30 adapter purchased separately), disc burners, etc. Most people, the vast majority, won't care about the manufacturer of the RAM, the brand of burner, or for the most part (unless it's really really bad) the resolution of the built-in camera.

The differences that really slapped me in the face were due to the differences between operating systems. This is something that is very much in the control of the manufacturers, regardless of the pricing of the laptops and the included hardware for the most part. Every time I cursed because I hit another roadblock to overcome was another "papercut" that makes me hate the hardware and software just a little more.

The Mac started up with a nice little flying welcome and music score before asking me some questions for basic setup. It took a few minutes before I was at the Finder desktop. Then I proceeded to run system updates; despite the system being introduced, literally, a week ago, it had two somewhat large updates (a little north of a hundred meg of downloads as I recall). Two reboots, done. My system had iWork already installed and I then proceeded to download some software that I planned to use (OpenOffice, FireFox, etc.) and all was well. I literally had a system ready for my personal use in about an hour or so, not counting the long process of copying my personal data from my old drives to the new laptop.

Not everything was gummy bears and rainbows. For my personal use, I wanted the laptop to run with encryption. The Mac uses FileVault for built-in encryption protection of your files, which is fine (aside from scary stories of the disk image now used for your home directory becoming corrupt; if it gets corrupted, you lose your whole home directory, not just a few files).

I also wanted backup protection. For the longest time I was very much a manual-protection person; I ran a script that synced my hand-created directory structure for personal data to external drives. I kept my photos in a folder structure I made to my own specifications, I kept my documents neatly organized, and if something happened I would just rebuild the computer from a clean install and copy the "files" folder from my external drive to the new computer. Fairly simple.

The Mac encourages...strongly...using a feature called Time Machine. It is really snazzy in that it creates hourly snapshots of your data to an external drive and has a neat almost Dr. Who-like flying-through-space interface for browsing your data as it changed over time. Just plug in an external drive and the Mac pops up asking if you'd like to use it as a Time Machine volume and from there handles the backup details in the background.

The problem? Use FileVault, and it will only back up your data at logoff for FileVaulted users. And you can't restore individual files from the Time Machine interface if you use FileVault, only the whole home directory. Ouch...

The process of enabling FileVault and Time Machine together on the Mac wasn't one hundred percent smooth either; the first time I enabled Time Machine, it said I was backing up about 150 gig of data (everything I read said this wasn't possible, as about 140 gig of it was my home directory and that wouldn't work until I logged off). Hmm...I think I'll log off to help it.

When you log off of a FileVaulted system the Mac will go through a process of recovering space on the disk; it's shrinking the disk image used in the background for storing your home directory data. Usually it doesn't take too long (unless you created and deleted a huge file during your session, I suppose.) Here, it did. It was going on ten or fifteen minutes before I made the decision to kill the machine from the power switch.

Reboot, came up, logged in without error (disk check revealed no problems). I did a reformat of the drive I was using for backup so I could start from scratch. Then I let Time Machine do its thing, this time staying logged in while it ran the first time. It told me it was backing up around 150 gig. Chugged along, and all of a sudden said it was done. Apparently it backed up the system and quit once it found the FileVault home directory image.

Logged out, and this time it recovered disk space in just a few seconds and the prompt changed to "backing up..." with a progress bar. Hours later (hey, it's USB...) it completed without issue. Definite user friendliness issues with how that was implemented, despite the somewhat scary warning that comes up when you turn on Time Machine with FileVault enabled.

Thinking back over the past week or two that's the only thing that really stood out as an operating system issue in migrating a brand new out-of-box system to my primary workhorse so far.

The work laptop running Windows 7 was in my experience far more frustrating.

Turned it on and the system asked me a few standard questions for configuration. Nod nod, yeah yeah, click click.

Next I was going to install our licensed copy of Microsoft Office. Usually it's pretty standard, but I had the slight irritation at having to remove the "trial copy" that was on the Windows 7 system first. I hate it when makers license "trials" of crap. It's a trap for users; they think they own the software or it came with the system, only to have it pop up errors a month down the road asking them to purchase it if they want to keep using it.

Then McAfee popped up with notices for updates and advertising. Another big peeve of mine related to what I just noted, because the user thinks they have antivirus protection when really it's a limited trial that will bug them to purchase further protection down the road. Users really don't think about these things and remain largely ignorant of the topic, right up until it stops protecting them. Errors pop up but the user just typically clicks through them until something goes really wrong, takes it to their resident geek, and he finds that the computer hasn't had updated virus definitions in six months and the user assumed it worked because they had McAfee (or another vendor's software) installed.

Uninstall uninstall uninstall.

Next I tried to put it on the domain. Guess what? Whoever purchased the laptop bought it with Windows 7 Home. Windows 7 Home won't connect to a domain. Another peeve of mine; artificially crippled software. I know it's a licensing issue and Microsoft has every right to do this with their software. It explained that this version of Windows is unable to join a domain. It's still a pain in the arse that I threw into my curse-pile after having to uninstall trialware crap.

I next had to uninstall a Dell wireless utility. On our network for reasons never fully explained the Dell utility for wireless interferes with the ability to connect to our Cisco wireless access points. Delete the utility, let Windows manage the connection, generally there's no problem after that (although now that it can't connect to the domain, I suppose the point is somewhat moot). I deleted the utility as we've done with countless Windows XP systems. Suddenly the system conveniently forgot it had a wireless card, period.

A big sigh and a dig through the box yielded a Dell Resource Disc with the drivers (ALREADY INSTALLED, it proclaimed). I inserted the disk and it prompted me to run a setup program first. Huh?

Okay...run install. Then it prompted me to remove the disc and reinsert it. Okay.

Then it popped up an error that I had the wrong volume in the drive.

Told it to continue twice and it suddenly decided it was okay. It ran a program that detected my hardware. Okay, I think, this is a turn for the better because now I don't need to guess the hardware!

It popped up with the Inspiron 1750 page and gave me an option of installing one of four or so drivers for the wireless card. Um...aren't you supposed to have detected it?!

I ran the first one. It told me that hardware wasn't installed.

Started running the installer to the second one. Suddenly Windows detected the wireless card, installed driver support (while the second installer hadn't run yet, it was just finished extracting files). So Windows now had the driver rediscovered and working, apparently, as it now had it in the device manager again.

That resource CD was a waste of time, and who knows what the installer littered on the drive?

The Mac doesn't have this issue because Apple hardware is tightly integrated with the operating system. If you buy OS X as an upgrade, it will have drivers to update all the hardware that it is known to support built right into the operating system.

What I don't understand is why Dell goes through the trouble of creating a separate utility that rides on top of or supersedes the Windows wireless utility. If it works fine for the purpose I'd far prefer having the built-in system over a third party utility. When I sit at the Mac, I know what to expect when I want to change settings, whether it's my system or a friend's system. On Windows, there's the Windows utility and there's a vendor utility or there's a manufacturer's utility (do I use the Dell configuration program? Windows? Intel?), and sometimes they work or they goof each other up.

Confusing, and definitely not user-friendly.

Not to mention that adding additional layers of software for redundant functions adds complexity, and with complexity comes more possibility for failure or bugs.

In the end I'd prefer that manufacturers stop adding trialware crap to entrap clueless users and stop adding software with redundant functionality. Unless you can genuinely add functionality to the system, I don't need a utility to join wireless networks when Windows has that function already built into Windows, and it's a real boon for the neighborhood geek when he doesn't need to know the ins and outs of each manufacturers crap utility just to join a laptop to a home router. Worse, I don't need to have two or more utilities that fight each other for access to the hardware and in the process can disable settings that were put into one program and now won't work when switching to the other program they ran intuitively (what do you mean I wasn't supposed to run the Windows network settings to join the network? Windows told me too, dammit!)

Overall these little papercuts in the process of configuring the system started having even minor things like the wallpaper, a series of upside-down boomboxes for reasons I haven't yet figured out, really grate on my nerves after the fourth reboot for updates and configuration settings.

I'm sure there are apologists that will point out that the circumstances were different between unboxing my system and unboxing the Dell. I'm aware of that. And I'm sure that there are good points that I'm overlooking. The point is that there was a lot more friction in just getting this Dell system configured for even basic use than I encountered on the Mac, and it was almost always due to problems and peeves that were under control of the manufacturer, right down to the gawdy and irritating upside down boombox wallpaper (c'mon...what the hell is that?? Look at the links at the beginning and see if you can see in the screenshot of the product for the reviews the wallpaper I'm referring to.)

There are people who will be anti-Apple no matter what. There is an "Apple tax" for their hardware; and it purchases less irritation for me. The hardware integration with the operating system simplifies things and standardizes the interface and removes the need for two different ways to turn on my wireless networking, and I don't have to go through and delete trialware from the computer to clean it up. It's not perfect by any means (why can't they use a networked Finder, like X? Or workspaces that allows me to rotate a cube or slide the screen for multiple desktops like I can with Ubuntu's desktop? Yes, I know it has Workspaces, but I always found the Ubuntu enhanced GUI features a little easier, if not glitchy at times, to work with, but maybe that's just habit speaking right now.)

What it boils down to is that I am an Apple fan because despite the money I have to spend on their hardware they generally treat the customers right. They remove friction, for the most part, in using the system. Their walled garden is expensive to get entrance into and has a few bees hovering around. It simply seems that the more I use Windows 7, OS X, and Ubuntu, the more I appreciate the differences and enhancements each offers.

To tell the truth though I'm still looking for the enhancements Windows 7 has over Ubuntu and OS X...anyone? Honestly?

MacBook Pros (or, Surprise, Honey!)

I recently emailed a friend of mine about an unrelated item in life but alluding to self imposed stresses that I'd blog about in the near future. Well, here it is!

I've been going through both a technology crisis and a crossroads with technology. I've been working on trimming costs around the house and trimming my computer taxes (i.e., shutting off home servers because of the electricity they suck down) while evaluating how much I really need for using technology. By that, I mean, do I really need a desktop computer? I've been finding myself more often than not trying to work on my novel from a notebook or netbook at Barnes and Noble or in the bedroom, or having to remotely edit things to my desktop from another room.

So I began testing whether I could use a netbook for my computer needs. That was a mixed success for another blog entry.

At the same time, I had my "podcast" computer, a lowly Windows computer used pretty much for Skype for my son and podcast syncing to my iPod in the morning, die on me.

On top of that, my wife's MacBook had Applecare die. Again, topic for another blog post so I won't dive into it, but as a tech person who wants minimal hassle in supporting his own gear, any notebook that has gone out of warranty is a pain since the hassle in replacing anything beyond the most basic component is probably going to cost you more in time and parts than a whole new laptop would cost.

My wife's computer was going out of warranty. My netbook was adequate, but barely, for anything beyond basic web browsing, email, and working in OpenOffice.org on my manuscript. My multimedia computer was toasted, so I had to improvise another system that used to be my primary server/workstation but the CPU cooler was loose from the motherboard and thus rather unreliable (at least enough that I don't leave it alone for long periods while it's running).

So I formulated a plan.

And despite my constant debt worries, I purchased two new MacBook Pro's. One for me, one for my wife. With hardshell cases (one blue, one pink) to protect them.

And my wife knows that I constantly stress over bills and income, so she wasn't expecting it.

But I didn't just give it to her. That would be too simple.

When I was younger, my mother would (rarely) play this game to entertain me where she would hide clues around the house and give me the first clue, which would lead me to the next clue, and the next, etc. until I arrived at the final prize, usually some small toy or food or something. I don't remember the prize. I remember the fun of running around the house looking for hidden notes and the rush of figuring out her clues.

So the day FedEx finally delivered the notebooks I enlisted the help of one of my wife's coworkers and hid a number of clues around the campus of her workplace after hours (she usually hangs around with work after 90% of the other people have run home).

I had come up with clues and taped them to cut out foam letters spelling the word "apple". I also took an empty MacBook box from a friend and stuck a Fuji apple in it along with a "congratulations, you found the final clue!" note. I then messaged her to Skype me and I chatted for a few minutes before reminding her about my clue game as a kid, and said that now it was her turn. Then I gave her the first clue and told her she was on the clock.

Confused, she started following the clues until she arrived at a backpack that I normally use for my work equipment, but unbeknownst to her I had switched everything out of it and instead had her notebook and equipment inside. The MacBook box hinted that the Fuji apple inside was the prize, but there was a hint that it was the "final clue", meaning there was one more thing. In the hint, the words "under" and "me" were capitalised, so she had to figure out that she needed to look under the plastic insert in the box to find a printed picture of my bag that in turn had the MacBook Pro in it.

It took her about twenty or thirty minutes to figure everything out and get all the clues, but in the end I think she was rather surprised. I had spent, literally, weeks going over specs and finances and talking myself into doing this, since you can imagine these are not overly cheap computers. These are 13" MacBook Pros with iWork installed. I have been saving money whenever I could to help offset the cost. I also spent weeks coming up with the clues, the props, and the plans to pull this off on my wife, without her stumbling onto the equipment (the hard shell cases came days ahead of time).

So when I told my literary friend that I had some self-imposed stress on the docket, this was it. Weeks of planning culminating into this big surprise. I think she kind of liked it.

My biggest regret is that I am far enough in debt that I couldn't justify the expense of getting SSD drives, despite the added durability they offer. I juggled the numbers and figured that these were investments for the next three years, and over that time I would be using this almost every day. My wife uses her system almost every day as well, although I can't comment on how important her computer is to her. I know how vital it is to me, considering how much I work with computers at work, how much I work on my manuscript, online research, etc. and the computer I was using before the MacBook Pro was nice in some way, woefully underpowered in others.


So now I go back to worrying about paying bills. The fact that I'm using these laptops all the time probably means I made an okay decision this time around and probably  won't regret it. Yeah, it's more debt. But I know that unlike many frivolous purchases, these will be heavily used for the next several years, and I'll make a small amount of money back in saved electricity. Oh, and did I mention that my wife and I aren't buying anything for our birthdays and Christmas? Yeah, this was our gift for this year, so that also factored in to the cost.

With some luck, I'll manage to finish, and perhaps (dare I dream it?) sell a manuscript that is finished and polished on the new laptop...

Well, there's that, and I think my wife really liked her present. But I can't speak for her...

Eye Candy

Quick note on a blog with some very interesting notes on how people react to eye candy. Check it out at "A List Apart".

When I was much younger I strongly disliked the Macintosh running MacOS. From the technical viewpoint, it was horrible...the multitasking model was horrible, the memory management was horrible...all it really had was a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get...it used graphics at a time when the average computer used text commands to work and Windows was just beginning to catch on) interface that appealed to non-technical people.

I stand by my arguments from back in the day. I was later validated when Apple ended up throwing MacOS out altogether and adopting the UNIX-based OS X. If you needed something a little more rock-solid and reliable, the MacOS Macintosh wasn't the platform to use.

This article has some interesting points, however, on how design affects us psychologically. My view has always been (in the case of technology) that once the basics are met...fix the memory management, fix the security, fix the multitasking model, etc...eye candy and ease of use are differentiating factors. After all, a Ferrari isn't useful if you can't start it!

Operating System of Choice

I have long despised Windows. I have to support it at my day job and in supporting it have grown to despise it. The lock-ups, the weird behaviours, the overwhelming amount of evidence that it has had feature after feature bolted on to it instead of having been engineered for security and multiuser capabilities, the number of malware programs that take full advantage of Windows users...it drives me nuts.

Many years ago I started using Linux. I found it to be flexible and far more stable than Windows ever was. It had great features while at the same time none of the licensing bull artificially limiting the operating system that Windows had; for example, Windows NT Server is basically Windows NT Workstation with some registry hacks in place to cripple it. You were even limited to a certain number of client connections to the operating system because you didn't pay a few extra hundred dollars. With Linux I could run a web server with as many connections as I wanted, no licensing limitations.

Today my main workstation is running Linux and my workstation where I'm employed is running Linux but my employer-supplied notebook computer is a MacBook, so I get to play with Apple's OS X as well now. This has influenced some of my opinions on the current state of operating systems.

Linux is still a strong contender but I run into a few shortcomings that are significantly annoying. Case in point; my webcams. There was a kernel update in the Ubuntu repos where after updating, my web cam no longer worked properly. I later found out that some applications will work with the webcams, while others don't. Searching for a solution...something that seems to be common in using Linux...yielded no solution other than running what is now a kernel several releases old.

And so far there doesn't seem to be any work being done to get these cams working again. Since it works with some applications and not others the consensus seemed to be that part of the interface to the drivers that interact with the kernel has been changed...so of course blame is shifted to the developer that used a library that no longer works.

Huh? Basically, no one takes the blame, and no one seems to be working on fixing it, and even if they were there's no one to really ask about it or get updates on the situation.

I have issues with the computer working with sound properly. Sometimes it just disappears. I end up having to restart the pulseaudio server on the system (most people probably just restart the computer).

The fact that I have freedom in configuring and using my Linux system is where a lot of its power comes from; at the same time, the fact that I can use an image capture program to get motion captures from the my webcams but can't use a live viewer of what my webcams are viewing or use Skype on Linux to view anything but a garbled green video image is very frustrating.

Then there's the Mac. The Mac is nicer in that most of what I have will just work. I can usually get work done on it. When I have to go through and restart a rogue PulseAudio process I end up thinking that the next time I am looking at a new computer I may very well get a Mac.

But I know I have issues with the Mac as well.

For example, when I secure shell from the Mac into my Linux system, it seems to take forever to connect. From what I can find it has something to do with DNS lookups, but I'm not sure because even after trying to change some settings in the configuration file it still takes forever to connect.

Another problem is that OS X doesn't have any of the neat features inherent in X Windows. For all the issues with X, one of the greatest features I use is to remotely run programs so that the display appears on the computer I'm sitting at, but the drive, resources, processor, etc. are all on the remote computer. This means that if I have Thunderbird set up on my desktop computer with all my filtering rules and preferences then I can run it on a remote computer without redoing all my preferences and filters. It also means that if the computer I'm on is slow or low powered while my desktop has plenty of processor speed and memory to spare then my mail program can be run on the weak system with the only bottleneck being the network connection.

OS X can't do this. It can run an X server as an application so I can launch programs on my remote computer from the MacBook, but I can't launch applications on the Mac so the display comes up on my Linux computer. Note that this is different than remote control software like VNC; those programs show your desktop and let you see the desktop as if you were remotely using that desktop. When you're bringing up a window of your files in a window or reading your email through that then someone else in the room, who you may not see since you're somewhere else, can be sitting there reading your email along with you. Forwarding X doesn't do that.

There's also an issue where things on the Mac either work well or don't work at all. I just plugged one of my webcams into the MacBook; nothing happened. The MacBook wants to run an iSight or it won't work at all without a special third-party driver.

The last big issue I have is with Apple Support. Apple support is great; quick turnaround, relatively easy to work through...the problem is that if I have to call them it's probably because the hardware has a problem. There's no easy way to get new parts without sending the computer away and I really really really do not like sending my personal data to a company where you don't know what is going on behind the employees-only door. While I don't think they're stealing my data or going through information I still have that hesitation in not knowing for sure unless I encrypt everything first. It's the same feeling I have to shove aside in going to a fast food joint. Hear the rumors of people spitting in the food or doing other nefarious things to your burger because you looked at the fry cook in a way they took offense to? It's always in the back of my mind, and I don't like having my tax information, documents, personal images, etc. being sent off to another company to trust that they won't dig through my data.

The Linux system on the other hand can be pretty easy to get parts for since it's a PC with generic parts. The Apple system I can try getting parts and void my warranty coverage if I replace my hard disk or some other part. Very annoying.

The musings here can be summarized as this: I hate Windows. I really like Linux but am running into some limitations that are starting to wear on my nerves. The Mac is very nice and is a strong contender...for the home user I don't hesitate to recommend a Mac, having converted my wife and mother to MacBooks...but even the Mac has some issues that if I switched over I'd have to find a way to work around the problems.

It shouldn't be a problem until the time comes when I have a few spare thousand dollars to spend on a new configuration for my workstation. But it never helps to think about what I'd do differently next time around.