December Days - 12.17.10

Late last night I went to turn on my MacBook Pro and nothing happened.  Panic went through my body as I am all the way across the country and was depending upon my MacBook to help keep me connected and to get some work done as well.  I had never encountered this type of problem before, but I hit the Mac support forums looking for possible causes and solutions.  It got even worse when everything I was ready was pointing to a problem that would require a significant repair process.

I continued my due diligence to determine the cause of the problem and eventually ended up at a Apple Repair store.  I described the problem and everything I had done to try and fix it to the technician I was speaking with.  He nodded an understanding, held the Macbook in his hands, turned it over to inspect the outside and underside, opened it up and pressed the power button.

Right before me, my own little Christmas miracle occurred. The machine powered up exactly as it was supposed to and has always done. No problems at all.  I was stunned!  The technician ran a detailed scan on the machine and system and everything checked out exactly as it should.

It was a strange situation, but I left the store much happier and thankful I wasn't going to have to go through a week long repair process.  I know there are greater miracles occurring in the world, but I'm thankful for the Christmas miracle I was given today.

Hello, I'm a Mac.

This is just me venting.

I choose to live in a Mac world.  My family all use and prefer Macs.  The ease of use, the stability, the design, and the quality of components are all, by our experiences, awesome!

I have to work in a Windows environment.  It's a hostile place, full of enemies who try to attack me, viruses spreading, conflicting devices, and cheap components that are constantly breaking down.  (Just to clarify, I'm talking about computing environments, not the actual work environment)

In less than three years, I have gone through four different HP Laptops.  My most recent one dying Monday and leaving me without a computer.  I can't access my work files, my email access is limited, and my frustration and stress level is building as I'm unable to get to and complete my work.  In contrast, I've had one iMac over the past five years.  It has worked perfectly from day one and continues to work as well today as it did in 2005.  The only difference is that it is relatively slow by today's standards, but for most things I need to do, it still works great.

I have an associate that resisted Macs with his company for years, but has now converted his entire company to Macbooks and iMacs.  In his words, "Our systems are faster, more stable, secure, and our productivity has increased significantly since switching to Macs."

I have been a constant advocate for bringing Macs into our work environment, but after the last 48 hours I am ready to evolve from advocate to street corner evangelist.  It's time to embrace change and fight segregation in the workplace..... Macs are more than capable machines with more than capable software for our business needs - and certainly capable of running Windows if it's really that hard to let go.

Callout to my I.S. Director (I know you're reading this) - let ME be the guinea pig and show how effective one can with even better tools to work with!

Thanks for letting me vent.

December Days - 12.9.09

We're an Apple biased home, that's really no secret and five of us have had our own iPods for some time now. As of today though, Caeden, at only seven years old, is now the first person in this home to have his own iPod Touch. We've been resisting the switch over to iPhones only because we're locked into Verizon, but the iPod Touch has been a tempting piece of technology for a couple years. Caeden has been saving his money for some time and finally had saved enough to purchase his own. The funny thing was that when we went online to order it, he chose to have it laser engraved with "Number One" on the back. When I asked him what that meant and why he wanted "Number One" his response made me roll....."because it will be the first iPod Touch in the family!"

He's been the envy of the household all day and we've all had fun playing with his cool new toy! We'll see how much longer we go until there are more of these iPods around the house....