12 Month Windows

Over the past several months I've been making the switch away from Apple and taking up with the likes of Windows and Android instead of MacOS and iOS. Don't get me wrong, the strides Apple has made in the hardware industry are outstanding and there is certainly a use case for Apple hardware in professional settings of all kinds. I'm not here to trash Apple, but to instead point out that often when we look upon something as "The Enemy" we are doing a disservice to ourselves. For decades I was a staunch Apple supporter, always looking for the next best product from Apple, constantly upgrading my hardware when Apple would release something new, trying to keep up with the best they had to offer because I felt it was THE BEST. In many cases, objectively, Apple simply is the best. But after all that time and money spent in Apple-land I could never find that spark that spoke to me the way my PowerBook 145B did way back in 1993. I've owned PowerBooks, G3 Towers, iBook...

As my few readers know, I used a Moto X for while - twice. The first time was the 1st gen Moto X which ended up going back to Motorola because AT&T was dumb. I then waited until the next release round as I discovered that they would be releasing a new Moto X sometime in the fall. It was released around the same time as the iPhone 6 and 6+. I got the 2nd Gen Moto X and I loved it, yet I still returned it and replaced it with the massive iPhone 6+, which is certainly no slouch. If you were just to compare the internals of the two devices you would think that the iPhone 6 and 6+ has quite an advantage over the Moto X - but as Apple liked to advertise with the release of the original iMac, specs aren't everything. It's what you do with the specs you have. So, if I'm using an iPhone 6+ why would I be saying that the Moto X is the best smartphone on the market currently? Why would I have sent that beautiful piece of technology back to Motorola instead of simply continui...

One of the best hardware features on the MacBook (Air or Pro) is the trackpad. It's likely the best one on the market. It's accurate, it supports multi-touch, and has an excellent texture. It works like a dream on the Mac side of things, supporting gestures which allow quick navigation within the operating system. On the Windows side of things, it's much different. Obviously the hardware feel doesn't change, but the way the hardware interacts with the OS is drastically different. Gone is support for gestures and multi-point input (outside of a two-finger right click). None of the Windows 8.1 specific gestures function with the Apple built driver, so you're kind of stuck in this weird limbo experience. If you don't know what the trackpad is capable of in Windows 8.1, then you don't know what you're missing out on, but if you are aware of what is possible, then you will feel a little frustrated at the lack of ability to perform the quick actions to ...

After much searching of the interwebz and finding no easy solution, I decided to start poking around myself. So the symptom is that you're running Windows on your Mac via Boot Camp and you setup iCloud mail in Outlook 2013, but when attempting to setup the iCloud contacts folder as an Address Book the check box that says "Show this folder as an e-mail address book" is grayed out and cannot be checked. As reference, I'm running a Late 2013 15" MacBook Pro retina with a discrete graphics card (which has nothing to do with this issue, but full disclosure and all that), but I've found this issue referenced multiple systems (including non-apple systems). The solution, it turns out, is far easier than anything I found online. Perform the following: 1. Right click on the Windows button (Windows 8.1) or click on the Start Button (Windows 7). 2. Open Mail control panel. 3. Click E-mail Accounts button 4. Click the Address Book tab 5. Click "New...

For the longest time we were fighting for the smallest, thinnest phones, laptops, and other pieces of technology. That trend appears to be reversing itself in recent years with the advent of "the phablet." When I first saw the gigantic Galaxy Note I almost lost the Coca-Cola I was drinking out my nose I thought it was so insanely huge. Now I have an iPhone 6+ and I'm officially a Phablet owner. What does this mean? For somebody who thought that the size of the Galaxy Note was obscenely over sized, I now find the size of my 6+ to be perfect for me. Perfect in ways my previous phones have been imperfect. First of all, I no longer feel as though I need to carry around a laptop and a tablet and a phone. I now have my phone, which is big enough to be a small tablet, and my laptop. It's easier to carry around than either an iPad Mini or Nexus 7 (or any of the other smaller form-factor tablets) and I find it's more useful than a tablet. I also ordered myself an iWerk...

Since 2007 I have been carting around some version of the iPhone. Somewhere around August 7th, that won't be happening anymore. After much deliberation, window shopping, hands on testing, research, and thought I have purchased a fully customized Motorola Moto X phone. If you're interested, it's got a natural ebony back, black front and Red buttons and highlights. The screen will actually say "Welcome, Micah" whenever I turn it on. Beyond the ability to customize the look of the device and have my name engraved on it (which is possible with the iPhone as well), Android gives me features I've been waiting for on the iPhone. While iOS 8 promises to catch up in some areas, namely the ability to swipe in text as opposed to tap typing, it's still lacking in others that I have made heavy use of in my work provided HTC One. While I did consider the HTC One (M8), when I starting toying around with it, it had gotten too big. As much as I loved the one work pro...

I will start this by simply saying that for many years I used Microsoft's Entourage software on the Mac as my primary email, calendar and contact application. While it didn't have all the features of Outlook, I also wasn't completely aware of what I was missing since I'd not really used Outlook by that point in my life. Entourage was discontinued after the Office for Mac 2008 release. It was replaced with Outlook for Mac. It was around that time that I switched from Entourage to the Apple Mail, Calendar and Contacts system that came baked into the OS. I never really liked it as much as I liked using Entourage since everything was kept in separate containers. Sure, the various applications could talk to each other, but if I wanted to go through my contact list in any meaningful way I had to open my Contacts application instead of just checking out contacts within the software. It was also around this time that I began using Outlook quite heavily in my professional li...

I've been a user of Apple's iWork suite for quite some time. Because Pages wasn't as feature rich as MS Word, I actually preferred it over the feature rich MS suite. Pages did everything I needed it to do as a writer and made creating basic page layout documents a snap. But today I realized that in Pages 5 they stripped out something I used heavily in my work life: Mail Merge. I have a ton of documents setup to use Mail Merge from various sources. Every year I would simply update the sources and hit merge. Done. I starred agape at the notice that said "Mail Merge is not supported. Your Merge fields have been turned into plain text." How could one of the basic features of any word processor be stripped out of their productivity suite? Have they really just given up to the point of no longer caring? Have they reached the levels of hubris that Microsoft reached in the 1990s? Is Steve Jobs rolling over in his grave? I don't know the answer to that - his ...

After a hiatus, I think I'm coming back to this blog. I am still fascinated by what Windows has to offer as it tweaks and tries to perfect the Windows 8/8.1 experience. While I am still primarily a Mac OS X user, I have installed the latest version of Windows 8.1 Pro on my 15" Retina MacBook Pro. Since the original inception of my failed experiment, there are still the nuggets of gold that I saw as potential, and initially loved, about Windows 8/8.1. Now that I'm using it more as a Desktop and less like a Tablet, I have a new perspective on how it functions for millions of people, and it's not half bad. Coupled with the release of the new Surface Pro (3) and you're looking at something that is actually appealing as a Laptop/Tablet hybrid with the power of an ultra book and the portability of a tablet. Many people note that when they compared the new Surface Pro on a scale, it was to a 13" MacBook Air and not an iPad. I think those people are missing the ...

I lasted about 2.5 months, give or take, on the experiment that was supposed to last 12. As of this moment, I am typing this entry on my MacBook Air which replaces the Lenovo I had purchased for the experiment. Now let me say here that I'm not dissing Lenovo in any way. The system was everything it was advertised to be, but it couldn't be what I needed it to be and when I upgraded to Windows 8.1, it failed. I honestly don't have the time to deal with attempting to fix issues, hunt down drivers and manually patch things up that seems to be par for the course with Windows Machines. I'm retracting anything I said regarding Windows when I started out on this experiment, but I am going to provide some further insights I've had since my last post. I went into this experiment because people hated Windows 8 with such a passion I wanted to see what all the hate was about. Jumping from Mac to Windows 8 wasn't that difficult in most regards. The interface found on ...

Today has been really been the first time I’ve been frustrated with my decision to jump from Mac to Windows, and I’m not sure where to point the blame for it. The biggest issue I have both with Windows 8 and Android is the lack of quality apps. I know the Android lovers and Windows fans will decry me being a blind Apple Fanboy, and anybody who is that close-minded is just a waste of my time. They can live in their happy little bubble the way I used to live in my happy little Apple bubble. The fact that Apple OS X and iOS have a better selection of Apps available isn’t Apple’s fault, per se. I’m not saying that the Apple Branded Apps are better than the Windows branded apps of the same vein, I’m talking strictly 3rd party developers. I would imagine that with Android having more market share than Apple at this point there would be a better selection of Apps available for the platform and more high quality apps. The issue here is 3rd party developers. I’m not a part of any developer p...

And the iPhone 5c is REALLY Dumb This post is in no way meant to negate my previous post titled iOS 7 is Dumb. This is merely meant point out the parts of iOS 7 that really aren’t dumb at all, and are actually brilliant. The iPhone 5c feels like Apple is trying to jump back in time. First, iOS 7 Anybody who knows anything about computer programming or engineering understands that iOS 7 isn’t dumb in the least. The underpinnings of the OS are quite sound and incredibly stable, more-so than Android and Windows Phone. What is dumb about iOS 7 is the feel and look of the interface, but that’s not to say that there isn’t brilliance there. While Notification Center has gotten better, it’s still more annoying than it is useful. On the other hand, the swipe up from the bottom to get to some quick-action controls that are frequently used is brilliant. So is the addition of a flashlight button available from the lock screen that also stays on when you lock the device, unlike the 3rd part...

When I first held the iPhone in my hand back in 2007 it never felt cheap to me. It was solid, it was aluminum and, despite people’s grouch regarding a lack of customizability, it felt like a professional, slick device. I was proud to own one and I felt like, to use a Maine saying with a wee bit of profanity, King Shit of Turd Island. I never fully understood the switch from the aluminum back to plastic with the 3G and 3GS, but they were still solid phones. I had two at the time – for work and home – and the one I used for work took a beating. I dropped it on cement, I kicked I across marble floors, I dropped it down some stairs. It never broke, though I’m certain that it should have about twenty or so times. I was impressed. Then there was the app store. Prior to that, I admit, I had done the whole jailbreak thing on my phone until the app store appeared. At that point, I didn’t really feel a need to jailbreak. I could get anything I wanted and I felt that the people who designed the...

One of the biggest complaints I’ve heard about Windows 8 is the fact that it’s useless without having touch. I accepted the challenge and spent a week using just the mouse and physical keyboard interface on my Yoga 11s. This won’t be as long as many of my other posts have been because there’s not much to say. Touch is nice, but it is not necessary to make Windows 8 as functional, if not more so, than Windows 7. The gestures take some getting used to, but after just a couple of days they’re second nature and highly useful. There are also a huge number of keyboard shortcuts that create a fast, easy experience to work within Windows 8. Over all, I will say that touch is absolutely not necessary to work with Win 8 and that the computing experience can be just as productive and fun as Win 7, if not more so. The more I use Windows 8, the more convinced I am that people hate change, not the OS. Again, Windows 8 is perfectly usable without a touch interface. But maybe that’s just me. ...

I would be remiss if I didn’t address the Apple Keynote for the new iPhones that was held last week. While I should have posted sooner, I needed time to digest it all and form an opinion I was more or less certain of. When Steve Jobs passed away there was a camp of people who were worried that Apple would lose its direction in the absence of the man behind Apple. I had hope that things wouldn’t change much in his absence. I had hoped that he had created a company that was self sustaining with creativity and innovation and would just keep going. As it turns out, I fear that that group of people may have been correct. I’m not seeing anything exciting from Apple. There have been no game changers since Steve Jobs passed away, merely incremental updates to existing hardware. Perhaps the ONLY exception to that is the Mac Pro, but it holds the moniker of its predecessor, even if it doesn’t hold the same form factor. The hardware in the new Mac Pro is very innovative, but it’s being used to...

So I called Lenovo tech support last night because the volume rocker on the left side of the device stopped working. It would only send the volume down, not up. This was only a mild annoyance because there are three ways to control the volume on the Yoga 11s and that was only one of them. On the keyboard you have function keys that can be used to control the volume and in tablet mode you have the setting area when you bring up the charms bar on the left. Having an additional volume control seemed a little overkill to me, but I didn’t design it. The first thing that happened upon this discovery was that I wasn’t overly upset by it. I had two other, perfectly functional methods for changing the volume – I didn’t need a third. If it had been an Apple device, I would have marched my ass down to the Apple Store and raised a stink. Which I did with my 15” MacBook Pro with Retina on multiple occasions – in fact, they replaced it five times over the course of a year. Maybe now you understand...

Windows Live was an answer to Apple’s iLife suite in just about every possible way. It offered a number of tools that were quite similar to the offerings that Apple had. A quick breakdown would look something like this: iPhoto – Photo Gallery iMovie – Microsoft Movie Maker iMessage – Messenger iCloud – SkyDrive Garage Band – Nothing Now iLife is one of the tool sets where Apple wins hands down with the features that each of their tools holds and the integration between all of them. Within iPhoto you have the ability to share out to Facebook and other social media outlets with little effort on the part of the user. The Windows 8 Gallery has the option to share, however that option is removed in Windows 8.1 (when last I used it). I think this was a mistake. Regardless of the ability to tweak your photos, people want easy ways to share their photos without having to jump from app to app. Speaking of jumping from App to App, iLife is so strongly integrated with everything that it’s...

I think this is the longest I've gone since I started the blog without posting something. In the time since my last post I have spent a good deal of time on the phone with a friend walking them manually removing certain pieces of Malware. I didn't even have a shared screen in front of me, so that was pretty cool. I also helped my Mother-In-Law work with a photo just enough to reduce its size using MS Paint of all things. This has convinced me of two things: First, that I'm kind of a genius to even think of seeing Paint could resize a photo (who uses Paint anymore at all?) and second, Microsoft needs to do something about the malware issue. Okay, honestly the best piece of free Virus Protection Software I've found has been Microsoft's own Windows Defender. It's light weight, small and doesn't eat through your process cycles when it's running. More importantly, it's effective. And lastly, it doesn't try to sell you upgrades to some better, ne...

If there's one thing that Apple nailed right on the first go round, it was iTunes. I'm an iTunes junky and will always be an iTunes Junky regardless of what OS I end up using as my primary. Most of the complaints I've heard about iTunes are invalid complaints because they revolve around either A) They have to pay for the music/TV Show or B) They don't have a particular artists/television show/movie they feel should be available and C) There's DRM on them and I can only watch them through iTunes. For all of these issues, I will point past Apple to the content providers who are stuck in a model that's now severely outdated and which they cannot seem to divorce themselves from. "Sure, you can have our show, but you can't let the customer burn it to a disk or share it out to anybody who's not them." It's been found that, in general, the people who pirate music are also the ones who spend the most money on it. Why is this? That's sim...

I don't remember what cloud service I started using first. It was either DropBox or SugarSync and they are still the primary file sync services I use. To be honest, I think Apple not only missed the boat, but missed the bus that took them to the boat when it comes to cloud services.  I can only speak of what's currently available as I don't yet know what Mavericks will look like when it's released, presumably, on September 10th alongside iOS 7. In my previous entry, I noted that I had to step backwards out of Windows 8.1 due to some rather annoying issues revolving around the keyboard and mouse on my Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11s - namely that when it was flipped around into Kiosk Mode, the keyboard wouldn't turn off. I didn't blame anybody in that post, if you'd like to go read it, I just jumped back to Windows 8 and have been happy (though anxiously awaiting Windows 8.1). When I logged into the freshly imaged Yoga with my Microsoft Account, all my settings...