The move to Apple

I’ve never been one of those “Macs are stupid” or “PCs suck” kind of guys.  I’ve always had an appreciation for the Mac design ethic but I’ve also never really appreciated that the way they keep their systems so ‘easy’ is that they so adamantly control every aspect of the user experience.  This in particular has always struck me as a little contradictory – I mean, Apple launched the Mac with an anti-Orwellian campaign and yet here they are keeping a tight fist on the Apple experience.

That all being said, The main reason I’ve avoided Apple products in the past is their price.  For the same price as a Mac desktop or Laptop I was able to build a screaming PC – for $100 less I was able to get a Creative Labs MP3 player with the same specs as an Ipod.

But eventually I caved and got an Ipod and of course loved it.

So, when it came time to buy a laptop computer, I decided on a MacBook Pro.  This is actually the first laptop that I’ve ever owned (the rest being company machines) and I really like it.  My main reason for buying the Mac was that I figured if I get another computer through work someday, it will more-than-likely be a PC, so I might as well supplement that experience with the Mac.  But since loading up photos, music, applications, and preferences, I’ve really started to like it.

.. So much so that I decided to go whole hog.  I’ve spent the last few days converting all of my files over to my new Apple Time Capsule – which acts as my wireless network router and backup storage device.  I can’t believe how well it works!  I’ve never – NEVER been able to get two computers in my apartment to talk to each other before – until now.  So now I can easily transfer files between machines – and even share a printer.  And having the disk drive in the system means that I can wirelessly access my files from anywhere in my apartment (thus negating the limitation of the 200gb laptop hard disk).  But of course, being Apple, it doesn’t stop there.  I can access this hard drive from any internet connection – meaning I can keep just the files I want on the laptop (read: the files I have room for) and know that I can still access anything as long as I can connect to the internet.

It’s going so well in fact, that I’ve also got Apple TV running on my stereo/television.  Again, this solved a problem that I’ve been toying around with since I bought an Audiotron so many years ago. I can now stream my music (in good quality) easily to my Stereo – but in addition I can watch photo slideshows on my TV.  And I can even queue up podcasts (audio or video) and try to stay better on top of all of that content that I’m downloading…

I never thought I’d dive in so fully to the Mac experience, but I’m glad I have.  iPhone here I come 🙂

Managing large volumes of photographs

Returning from Africa I was faced with a pretty typical situation for me – a massive pile of photographs to sort through.  I have always tended to take a lot of photos while on trips, and Africa proved the rule – and was definitely not the exception.

Last year I discovered Adobe’s Lightroom product and I’ve been very happy with it.  I use this program to organize, filter, tag, caption, and even “develop” (modify for better screen presentation) all of the photos that I take.

The problem is, even with this great tool it still takes me a while to get through the whole process.

I guess all of this is to say, I’m working on my photos from Africa and I expect to upload them pretty soon.  I’ve already filtered through most of them, tagged all of them, and set up captions etc.,  The only tasks that I have left are the minor edits to the photo developments and then export smaller versions for web presentation.  I will tackle these tasks once I’m back in the Bay Area sitting in front of my desk monitor – I don’t trust my laptop screen as a judge for exposure or color.

So hopefully I’ll have some photos next week.

And now that I’m returning to California I’m expecting to make more regular updates to each of the web sites that I’m keeping these days.