The Blog Less Traveled

Yeah, I know. A lame transformation of René Descartes’ original saying. Sacre bleu! Anyhow, the other day I was loading up my iPod that I use when I go for a run and I realized that I have a ton of Apple stuff. The picture on the left is my current iPod collection. I started buying Apple products about 3 years ago. I took a quick inventory, and here’s what I have so far:

• Apple MacBook Pro 15”
• Apple MacBook Pro 13”
• Apple MacBook 13”
• Apple iPod Shuffle
• Apple iPod nano
• Apple iPod Touch
• Apple TV
• Apple 24” Cinema Display
• Apple Airport Base Extreme
• Apple Airport Express
• Apple Wireless Mouse
• Apple Keyboard

I guess I’ve made the transition from Windows to Apple! I gave away my last Windows laptop a couple of weeks ago and my last Windows desktop about a year ago. We are officially a 100% Apple household. It’s not that hard to make the transition. There is a bit of a learning curve to get used to the Mac OS X system, but it’s not too bad. Most of the software you tend to use on a day-to-day basis is already included in the basic system. Unless you’re doing Windows software development, pretty much any type of software is available for the Apple. Even then, if you really need to run a Windows program, you can run it on your Apple in a virtual machine or using the included Boot Camp software that comes with every Apple. There’s even software that will let you make an exact copy of your current PC and import it and run it on your Apple in a virtual machine environment. It’s really pretty slick.

So, when are you going to take the plunge?

I thought I’d do a little write-up on the Apple TV. I’ve shown the unit to several people over the last year and most never knew it existed or knew very little about it. For those not familiar with it, the Apple TV is a media entertainment center made by Apple, Inc. It’s essentially a compact computer with no screen or keyboard. You connect the unit to your widescreen TV via HDMI or Component Video connections. The unit is quite compact at about 7.5” in width/length and about 1” high. You’ll need a broadband Internet connection, a wired or wireless network connection and an iTunes account from Apple. To take full advantage of all features, you really need to install iTunes on one of your computers. The unit can work with Apple or Windows computers.

The unit provides two methods of playing media files on your TV. You can stream them directly off your computer or transfer them first to the Apple TV and then play them. Either way works fine unless you have a marginal wireless network in which case streaming some video files may get somewhat choppy at times. In addition to letting you view all the photos in your iPhoto library or music/video/podcast files in iTunes, you can rent or purchase pretty much any movie DVD. Also, you can rent most TV shows in case you miss an episode. The unit also lets you connect to YouTube and watch anything available on that site. The quality of most YouTube videos isn’t that great but it’s nice to be able to watch it on the widescreen, nonetheless.

The other day, I hacked the Apple TV and installed Boxee software on it. This is alpha software that isn’t officially supported by Apple. Boxee is a media management software application with a user-friendly interface that can run under Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, etc. The really cool thing about Boxee is that it lets you connect to the Internet and get access to dozens of websites that have free movies and TV shows. You can connect to CBS.com and Hulu.com (NBC and Fox) and get access to all their current and past TV shows. Instead of paying to watch a past TV show on iTunes, you can get it for free, legally. If you want to see old TV series classics like Star Trek, Twilight Zone, Have Gun Will Travel, etc., it’s all there for free. There are also thousands of free classic movies available on other media websites that Boxee is set up to access.

I highly recommend the Apple TV to anyone that has a widescreen TV. The ease of displaying all your various media from one location will make you wonder how you got along without it. At only $229 for the 40GB version, it’s definitely a worthwhile investment.

If you don’t know what OS X is, just skip this post.

I happened upon a ZDNET blog today that was discussing the next version of Windows (click here). In typical fashion, there were the sophomoric flames in the comments section. Instead of using reasoned arguments to make their case, they eventually degrade to my operating system is better than yours and yours just sucks. However, there was one comment, in the form of an analogy, that I thought was hilarious and worth repeating. The commenter’s blog name was “Nonzealot”, and here’s what he/she said:

OS X girl thinks she is hot because she’s just had her metal braces replaced with clear ones. She hangs around all the popular girls all day and wants to be just like them although if you were to ask any of the popular girls what they thought of OS X girl, they wouldn’t know who you were talking about. OS X girl knows this and when she gets home at night, writes Facebook posts about how much she hates all the popular girls and wishes they would die. The next morning, she will go into the principal’s office and make up a story about how one of the popular girls stole her purse. At lunch though, she will be sitting at the table next to the popular girls laughing at all their stupid jokes.
OS X girl gets either really high marks on her assignments if her parents did it for her, or really bad marks if her parents were busy and she had to do it herself.
OS X girl prides herself on never having gotten an STD unlike some of the popular girls although this is mostly because none of the boys want anything to do with her. She did convince one of the chess club members to make out with her after school one day and immediately got mono although she tells herself that mono doesn’t really count as a disease because it doesn’t affect your genitals.
She drives an Acura CSX and sticks her nose up at all those tacky Civic drivers, ignoring the fact that she basically paid Honda $10,000 to put an Acura logo on her Civic.
Windows girl, however, doesn’t exist because they are all so different. There are the promiscuous Windows girls who get the disease of the week from the jock of the week but most Windows girls are either waiting for marriage or practice safe sex and are always perfectly healthy.
Some Windows girls drive muscle cars because they like to go fast, some drive their daddy’s BMW, some drive a used Civic, it really depends on their circumstances although all of them make it to school on time.
When working in groups, they tend to get top marks although they are more than willing to take ideas from the girls in the debate club when it will get them even higher marks. All of this will help them get into the top universities and have really successful careers, if that is what they decide to do. They’ll probably be really polite to OS X girl as she is cleaning their house although they probably still won’t know her name.

BTW, I own and use both Windows and Apple computers. In fact, I’m using an Apple computer to type this, but I still appreciate good humor.