ramblings of a wandering nerdan aimless amble on a winding road

The Snow Leopard of course.

I received an email from Apple on Wednesday reminding me that Snow Leopard was out on Friday. To my surprise, my AMEX flew out of my wallet and within minutes I had pre-ordered it.

It was kind of strange. I did it without really thinking. All I knew was I had to have it.

This Apple experience is pretty serious.

I find myself pause as I walk past an apple stand in a store now a days. I’m currently entertaining the idea of buying a desktop Mac. 24″ monitor is pretty appealing.

But since we’re off to Vegas in November (more to come) I probably shouldn’t……..

Well in about a weeks time I’d have had my Macbook for 1year. It’s been a quick year and a pretty steep learning curve. Simple stuff like short cut keys and the fact the minimize/close buttons are on opposite sides of the screen have made it fun and annoying to get used to.

Would I swap? Not for the world. I truely am a Mac convert. I find myself eagerly awaiting Snow Leopard. I’m interested to see Windows 7 but having been burned enough, Windows ME, Windows Vista, Office 2007, is there any reason to give Microsoft another try? I think not.

Although Windows 7 is fairing well in the media. I came across this article on Friday.

If you have a PC and you want the upcoming Microsoft OS, but don’t want to buy a new computer, Microsoft has your back. The minimum specifications listed on the Windows 7 RC download page are a 1 GHz Processor, 1 GB RAM, and 16GB of free hard disk space. This means if you have a computer that is more than a few years old, you can still get some functionality from the latest OS rolling out of Redmond. Intel hit the 1 GHz processor mark on March 8 2000, which means theoretically Windows 7 could run on computers over 9 years old! Since Microsoft is known for understating their hardware requirements, I grabbed an old PC out of retirement and put it to test.

The PC I chose had an Intel P3 933 MHz processor, 768 MB of RAM, and an 80GB hard disk. My test subject was manufactured in 2001.

I particularly like “Microsoft has your back”. Yeah right. Exchange 2007 – rip & replace. Exchange 2010 – rip & replace. Microsoft Vista – Even NEW PC’s have trouble running that busted OS. Microsoft has your back. Sure.

And after replacing half the hardware to get the thing to install, performance was crap. There is no denying it. Could it be done. Sure. Was it usable? If you were slow I’m sure it would be. But in a day where I can go to Dick Smith, JB HiFi’s or even Harvey Norman and grab a PC under $1000 (under $800 if I look hard enough) or a Notebook even cheaper, the damn license is going to cost you half the price of a new PC (with an OEM copy included).

I’ve been using a 13inch Macbook at home for pretty much everything since July last year. I’ve been doing a lot of web based things lately including a lot of Uni research as well as heaps of work towards some personal projects I can hopefully start talking about in a month or so.

But one thing that is really annoying me is the way Safari handles tabs. Unlike FireFox, you don’t seem to be able to do much with tabs once they’ve moved off the screen. WHY!

It seems impossible to close a tab that’s moved off screen, and also impossible to rearrange it. FireFox solved this with the ability to scroll across the tab bar. Safari doesn’t seem to have evolved that far yet.

Now the obvious solution is to stick with Firefox and I do have it installed so I might just do that, but I was trying to keep it real!

I hope this isn’t just Apple being stubborn, like the missing second mouse button, missing page up/page down/end/home keys. I shouldn’t need to have to use key combinations to do basic things I could always do on my PC irrespective of how uncool Apple may think it is.

While on the subject of Apple, with all this talk about Steve Jobs and his rumored ill-health, there seems to be a lot of doom and gloom surrounding Apple. It’s amazing to think one man holds the key to success for such a large organisation. CEO’s of course are a key component of large organisations but more for their unseen work with strategy and the internal workings of the business than their name. How often do we as the consumer attribute a the success of a brand we like to a single person?

If you look at other organisations/brands that we as consumers love, can you name their CEO without a quick google search? CEO of Sony (Playstation3), CEO of Nintendo (Wii), CEO of Microsoft (XBOX 360) …. well we all know the CEO of Microsoft because he’s a gigantic douche and we certainly don’t associate him with the XBOX360 (if you’re a 360 fan of course, if you’re not you may happily make that association). What about the CEO of your favourite movie studio, or perhaps your favourite car manufacturer. 

I sure can’t. So is Steve Jobs’ enormous influence and fan base a good thing or a bad thing? It highlights how good he is at what he does, or does it? Shouldn’t the company be more than him. Wouldn’t he be  a more successful CEO as the creator of an organisation capable of independent thought, one that will continue to thrive after he’s left?

Of course we all wish him the best, and indeed Apple for the future, and while I don’t think for a minute that it’ll collapse after he has gone, why does the worlds media even entertain that thought? Maybe they worry about history repeating itself? Perhaps there needs to be some serious work done within Apple sooner rather than later to transition him out?