Disney notes
Posted on February 22, 2004
Filed Under Misc. | Comments Off
Tomorrow life returns to “normal”. It was a fun vacation, but not a relaxing one by any stretch. Some random Disney World thoughts:
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Back from the Mouse
Posted on February 20, 2004
Filed Under Kids | Comments Off
We got back from Disney World. We flew to Orlando on Sunday. I think 4 days is the perfect length of vacation of this kind with kids. 3 days isn’t enough, 5 starts to be too much.
We had a great time and we’re settling back in to cold country. I have some stories to tell, but I’m not in the mood to type them out at the moment. Maybe tomorrow.
In the meantime, here’s a picture of Laini celebrating her 8th birthday with Goofy. 
PC iChat!
Posted on February 14, 2004
Filed Under Macintosh | 1 Comment
My inlaws live about 300 miles away and they have a PC running XP Home with a cheap USB webcam.
Thanks to the new AOL/Apple messaging clients, Emily got to show off her new missing tooth to grandpa!
As you can see from the capture below, the picture quality on the PC end is not great. I’m sure it’s due to the quality of the webcam and the slow USB connection on their end. Sound quality was excellent. But it’s still much, much better than any Mac-PC video conferencing solution out there. Starting up the connection was as easy as with any Mac user. Click the camera icon and connect.
Now my mother-in-law wants to look into Firewire cards and webcams for her PC.
Major email blunder!
Posted on February 12, 2004
Filed Under Misc. | Comments Off
Ack! Ack!
If you emailed me in the last 4 months or so using the link on this site, and I never replied it’s because I’m an idiot. 
When I transferred email clients way back when, I apparently forgot to set a check for that address! Yikes. I happened to catch it this morning and I downloaded about 200 messages. A lot of spam, of course, however there were about 45 legitimate messages dating back as far as last October!
If you were one of those 45 or so folks who wrote me and didn’t get a response, then know that I got your message and I’m working my way through replying. I’m now checking that address every few minutes along with my other email accounts, so this won’t happen again.
Chicken Little
Posted on February 12, 2004
Filed Under Macintosh | 4 Comments
According to this article at Brighthand, Palm is planning to drop development of Hot Sync and/or PIM software for the Mac in its next operating system (codename Cobalt).
Everyone’s talking about it, but it’s all pointing back to the same vague source. This reminds me of when the Apple community was up in arms because the “next generation” operating system wasn’t going to support the early PowerPCs. By the time Mac OS X finally shipped the fact that it wouldn’t run on a 6100 didn’t matter all that much.
Palm OS 6 has shipped to handheld licensees but as far as I know, not one manufacturer has announced a device that will run it. A lot can change between now and then.
But let’s assume for a moment that the report is entirely true at face value.
For the past week or so I’ve been syncing my Tungsten T3 to both the top-of-the-line Mac G5 and an entry level PC running Windows XP Home and I have to be honest here…syncing to the PC is a better experience. It’s faster and the conduits are better integrated with desktop components. I have been using Agendus for Windows as my desktop PIM and have never felt more organized. iCal feels like a toy in comparison. There are stand-alone Mac PIMs (Now, Chronos for example) but they are much more expensive and Agendus does everything I need while retaining the category structure I’ve set up. Nothing is lost between the desktop and the handheld. On the Mac side I’m using Entourage, but as a PIM alone I hate it. I only use it to send/accept Outlook/iCal meeting invitations and for the email address book.
So Palm, either do Mac syncing right or get out completely and let someone else pick up the slack.
That someone else appears to be Mark/Space. Their Missing Sync for Palm looks like quite a product, however there’s no demo. It appears to be tightly integrated with Apple Mail, iPhoto and iTunes and of the three I only use iTunes. I don’t need Avant Go anymore since I’d rather read a novel on my Palm when I have time to kill instead of news. I can use the web browsing/email capability of my Palm, but why would I want to use my Palm for that when it’s sitting next to my computers? I’m having a hard time justifying $30 sight unseen so I’ll wait until Palm gives me no other choice.
Apple’s iApps work very well together, but they don’t play as nice with the rest of the world. That’s a big problem for me.
The reality for me is that nothing changes. I just purchased a new Palm that will last me at least the next 2 years. By the time I’m ready for a new device, who knows what the market will have to offer. Based on this article, I highly doubt I would purchase the PDA it describes (if such a thing is really coming). Looks like a cool concept and all that, but easy portability of my data between applications and platforms is a higher priority for me than “cool.”
Update: I edited the above paragraph slightly since Eric Albert is right….my bias is not against Apple, it’s against a PDA that uses a proprietary OS that only communicates with its own applications/conduits.
