Tralfaz

Category: Tech

  • An old friend

    An old friend

    My iPad that I bought in 2011, is nearing the end. Not that it isn’t still functional, but at near 4 years old, it is finally showing its age.

    I shouldn’t complain, nearly 4 years out of any tech gadget is a remarkable feat, and a testament to Apple’s quality and standards. My iPad, a generation 2 unit, is showing its age. When iOS 7 came out I dithered about upgrading, knowing that some of the features wouldn’t work and be disabled, but it was a worthy upgrade.

    Until early in 2014, Apple kept the core hardware in the generation 2 iPad alive, as it was the entry level iPad. It still had a strong use in educational and corporate markets. And to be quite frank, for applications that are written to its spec hardware, it is still a good performer.

    The battery life is quite good still, easily allowing a full day of heavy use (video watching, surfing, and email) without straining a charge, and the 3G cellular connection, while not as snappy as the newer 4G LTE connection, is just fine for email and casual on the go surfing.

    But with the release of iOS 8, and all the groovy integrations with the iPhone, and the new Mac OS X, the recommendation is to not upgrade the well aged iPad 2. iOS 8 is just too taxing on this hardware. The responsiveness suffers, and it is just painful.

    But time goes on. I will continue to use it, but alas, it will not get updates for security issues. And more and more of the applications that get updated will begin to run more poorly on this tablet.

    It has been a faithful friend, a road warrior, a great e-reader, and still a fun platform to play games like Plants versus Zombies. I am sure I will replace it in the coming year, but for now, it will be a companion.

  • Mac versus PC – Longevity, Lifetime

    I live a schizophrenic life. For work I am coerced into a PC world. Windows, AD Domains, MS Exchange, and all that lot. But for my home and personal work, I am a devotee of the cult of the Mac. My wife and I both are Mac users, and here are some observations from a long time use perspective.

    Work – HP Elitebook 2560P

    My work laptop was issued to me when I joined in 2012. It is an HP small form-factor laptop. It has a 160gb Intel SSD, it came with 4G ram (which I upgraded to 16 at my own expense), it is not an ultrabook (it is as heavy as my 15″ Macbook Pro).

    It came with Windows 7 enterprise, 64bit. It has a lowish performance core i5 processor. Of course it has all the work mandated items on it that hinder its usability. Full disk encryption, and a bunch of startup macros that really make this thing a slug.

    As the laptop is now near 2.5 years old (it is a 3 year leased system) it is beginning to show its age. The graphics chip “blacks out” for a few seconds occasionally. The boot time is now approaching the speed of a spinning disk (I have about 140G of programs and data on it, so free space is running low. And, no, I don’t have any music on the system).

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  • Whatever happened to … Adobe Flash

    Whatever happened to … Adobe Flash

    Remember a few years ago (was it really 2008?) when the iPhone was hot, Android was beginning to take root, and the big argument was … Flash support in internet browsing?

    Yep, I was just thinking about how much outrage that Steve Jobs dared to say that Adobe Shockwave Flash was awful. At the time the number one brag that all my friends who were on the Android bandwagon waved in my face was how they could browse to Flash based websites on their phones.

    Of course, they could, but then they discovered something. Yes, Flash sucked. Battery power was visibly drained from their phone. A day’s worth of juice gone in 15 minutes. Add to that the fact that Flash wasn’t really useable with fingers (it really liked the resolution of a mouse and pointer.) Quickly Flash was no longer in by default, and then you had to sideload it.

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  • Initial Thoughts – Mac OS X 10 – Yosemite

    I have been using the latest OS on my MacBook Air for about a week now, and in general I really like it. Not Earth shaking, but solid, and the improvements really add up to a better experience all around.

    The UI – briefly

    The first thing that you notice is the flat visuals. Bowing to the contemporary design trends, the windows, the visuals, and all the other decorations are devoid of shading, gradients, or any other visual eye candy. Naturally all the skeuomorphic bits are long gone. Neither good nor bad.

    Of course, with it comes a new typeface for the UI, Helvetica Neue replacing the long time OS-X typeface Lucida Grande. Unlike a lot of geeks on Slashdot who wailed like they were having their hands lopped off, I don’t really mind. In fact, with such a large change of the UI, it would seem de rigueur to go all the way.

    Of course, these changes alter the look and feel to better mimic the experience on iOS 8. So it is not a surprise that many of the changes are to applications that will help unify the experience.

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  • The Mac Book Air – One Year In

    The Mac Book Air – One Year In

    Last July, I splurged and bought me a Macbook Air. The product line was refreshed, and brought faster, more energy sipping processors. I had been using a monster MacBook Pro (still have it) 15″ that was loaded. Max memory, SSD boot/spinning rust extension disc, and the high resolution screen. But lugging it around was tiring.

    The factor that tilted me in favor of the air was the lightness, and the battery life. Purported to be 10+ hours (I regularly get 12 or more hours on a charge), was the key point. I was honestly considering a chromebook (the google one with the retina level display), that was about 3/4 the price, but when I went to see it at the local Best Buy, I was underwhelmed.

    How has it held up to a year of daily use? Quite well. It is my main home PC. I write on it, I do some light web development, and of course consumption of media. It is comfortable to use, and even when there is 10% of battery left, it isn’t a mad dash to find an outlet to charge it up (once my 15″ MBP hits 15% you get really nervous). I have taken many trips with it, so I can say that it holds up well to the rigors of travel, and it is a joy to use even on a cramped fold out table on a typical airplane seat (nb: I am a million miler on United, so I get complimentary economy plus seating).

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  • Office 2013 – First Impressions

    Office 2013 – First Impressions

    My work laptop got wonky and my copy of Office 2010 was corrupted. Really weird stuff happening, but the icing on the cake was it saving corrupted files. I used all my ninja mojo, ran out of ideas, and then turned to our internal desktop support group, again to no avail. The last ditch effort before re-imaging the laptop was to try Office 2013.

    Office 2013 with the release of the first service pack became “supported” on our computers, so a quick transaction on the SW lifecycle management tool, and it was installed. A couple reboots later and it is working.

    It had no trouble finding my exchange email account, and syncing, and the plugins that I have installed work well with it (seems like the Acrobat plugin is a bit wonky, but I virtually never use that).

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  • More Comcast Love

    I felt a little bad in my last post ragging on Comcast. Apart from their tech whiffing on connecting the cable last Friday, and the snafu’s until their technician was here on Tuesday, it really wasn’t their fault.

    Today, I have more awesomeness to report.

    We had far too much stuff in our small apartment, so until Thursday, I hadn’t even unpacked our Plasma TV. Naturally, I hadn’t been ready for the Cable TV install.

    No big deal.

    Of course, I assumed that in our hall closet (that is deep, and our movers piled with boxes) our AV cables were. BZZT, thanks for playing. I did have cables for the XBox 360, so Friday I hooked us up to Netflix streaming (friggin kick ass), but my wife wanted the cable hooked up to watch the Tour de France.

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  • Comcast Suckage

    A week or so ago, I raved about the in store experience with Comcast cable, our tv and internet provider here (yes, I know their reputation, but what I am going to use instead, fucking AT&T U-Verse?!?) I connected immediately with a great customer service rep in their store, who set me up proper.

    One of the issues was that they needed to visit sometime the day after to hook up cable, as it had been a long time since this apartment had cable. The day they mentioned was Friday, and that was cool as we were moving on Friday.

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  • Nightmare: Computer edition

    At work, we are being split into two companies. A week ago, my computer was supposed to be migrated to the new domain. So I followed the directions to the letter, and naturally it failed.

    That night, I had a nightmare. That instead of just switching domains, that my laptop automagagically upgraded to Windows 8. Metro interface and all.

    <shudder>

    Fortunately, when I woke up, I found that I was still running Win 7 Pro. Phew.

  • The Day of Reckoning: Apple abandons Aperture

    Not quite yet, but the winds are blowing that Apple will end support and sales of Aperture, their “pro” photo application. A recent story on Wired gives a brief outline. “Photos” will take the lead, and it will be all about getting all your images into iCloud, and managing them there.

    I had smelled this stink coming for a while. The updates to Aperture have slowed down, and the last major one definitely turned into the wrong direction, more integration with iOS, and iCloud, your photostream, and all that. Sigh.

    About 6 months ago, I started migrating to Adobe Lightroom. I looked at it way back when I moved from iPhoto to Aperture, and at that time it was almost 2x the cost, and it pretty much lacked capability.

    But in version 5, Lightroom has become a lot better, and it comes free with my CC subscription to Photoshop. I have installed it on my Mac’s and on my work PC, and am getting the feel for using it. In many ways it is similar to Aperture in capability, but it also has some significant differences, particularly around storage and file handling. Where Aperture created large libraries and buried the images and version inside them, LR seems to use the native file system. A bit confusing, but in the long term it will be better I am sure.

    I can understand Apple’s strategy shift, and their migration away from the pro applications that really brought the power to their system. The all unified, iOS/MacOS world is a good goal, but I will be taking a pass at the upcoming Photos application.