Saturday, July 12, 2008

OS X or Windows Vista?

[Nairobi, Kenya]
SO, IS Windows Vista better than Mac OS X? This is one of the most hotly discussed topics in cyber space. Quite frankly, I've just become a Mac convert after scoring an iBook G4 (1 GHz PowerPC G4 chip, 640 MB DDR RAM, OS X 10.4.11) of a friend. In short, I'm hooked on OS X, and ya know what? "I AIN'T GOING BACK...TO WINDOWS. NEVER!!!!" Yep, you heard me folks! MaxTheITpro is now a 2-timer who's cheated on Windows to start a long lasting love affair with Apple's deliciously sexy line of Mac laptops, desktops and software (OS X, Mail, iLife).

It's the little things...
Why did I break up with Windows? Well, she just didn't pay any attention to me. For instance, I'm tired of catching all of her STDs (System Transmitted Diseases) when we're together. Also, she has this insecure desire to be continually updated with the latest (bug) fixes in order to make me (and her) feel safe and secure about our "relationship." There are times we'd be "together" and then she'd flip out on me, and get all blue in the face. Sometimes I'd insert my stick (USB) when we go on dates at the cyber cafe, and she'd give me a damn virus even though she's supposed to have protection - considering she's been around the block (Windows 95/98/ME/SE/XP) for so long now. You call that love? :-)

In short, she was just a fussy gal that everybody wanted to take for a ride simply because she's good at "playing games" and performing other unique hard/soft-ware tricks that no one else had an answer for. Plus, she was much cheaper to take home on dates compared to that red hot Apple gal. But I've learnt my lesson: You get what you pay for. :-)

Viruses be gone...
All joking aside, I just can't overemphasize to you all how "LIBERATING" (in more ways than one) it feels to go to a cyber cafe, connect my iBook to the network and not have to bloody worry about viruses. Heck, I've always been nervous as hell whenever I insert my USB stick into one of those sleazy Windows PCs at the cyber cafe, and then take it home to my "innocent" desktop PC. I've lost count of how many times that damn autorun file has started up upon connecting my USB stick to the home PC. Then, it proceeds to load a nasty virus, worm or trojan horse on my machine. You can see it just by hitting CTRL-ALT-DEL and peeking your process list. Remember those annoying AdobeR.exe entries? Well, no more worries folks! What's good about OS X is the fact that it's based on the rock-solid BSD Unix architecture that goes waaaay back to the 1970s at that great American institution of higher learning: The University of California - Berkeley. Oh, BSD stands for Berkeley Software Distribution.

Mac die hards, reveal yourselves...
Ya know, I've read a lot of reviews on a wide range of topics since I became an Internet whore around 1993. Never in this period have I read a review that's as moving as this one. This dude's passionate beliefs about Mac computing is truly moving. He's sold me. See for yourself!

It took awhile for me to understand this article...then it hit me. You can't write an article about why Vista is better than Mac without your tongue planted firmly in your cheek! Congratulations - you had me going for a bit :-)

The essence of the article is that Microsoft makes broken software intentionally - a blatantly ludicrous concept. It is broken, that is for sure. It is broken because they don't know how to do it right, don't want to take the time to do it right, have such powerful marketing that they don't need to bother...but certainly not because it is better that way. Nobody is customizing Windows XP or vista because it is easier with all the broken parts. They customize it in a huge, costly and never ending effort to compensate for it's flaws - not to celebrate them. In the Windows World, the word "customize" is a euphemism for "fix." They do it because they have to.

With the Mac, which just works right out of the box perfectly, there is nothing you need to fix, or "customize" for most people (some gamers and scientific apps aside). Anything you can do on XP/Vista to actually customize usability you can not only do easier on a Mac, but now you can do almost identically with VIsta, because they knock off the Mac OS. But why even bother - the Mac works just fine as is for most people and is easy to learn.

Microsoft has been knocking off the Mac's usability features for years, and never more "transparently" so than now with the coming of Vista. The real customizations users need aren't in the user interface anyway - they're in the hardware - more memory, bigger hard disk,faster graphics - and these days the Mac can keep up with anyone there. A Mac APPEARS less customizable to XP/Vista users only because it doesn't need to be fixed or customized, but they need a justification to "believe" in. Like many mindless fanatics, so called "believers," it is a blind act of faith not founded in facts.

That also applies to the more software argument. Other than some very technical, scientific or business apps or some games, most users will never need anything that is not available, and working better, on the Mac. You don't even need Parallels to switch to Windows, unless it just makes you feel better or saves you the cost of replacing some software you already have. I do audio & video editing, photography and retouching, Powerpoint, flow charts, web development, office apps, you name it - all on the Mac. And there are some things I do now on a Mac and never could do on a PC.

And then there is the experience of FREEDOM the Mac gives you, freedom to get your work done without worrying, freedom from hours every day fighting off viruses and malware, freedom to just love and enjoy your computing experience. There is no price for that, it is quite literally invaluable. So there goes your cheaper PC argument. If you value your time, your “cheap” PC is far more expensive than the highest priced Mac, far too expensive to even be in the running. At minimum wage, a PC user is probably spending over $1,000 a year as a premium or service charge - for the time they spend servicing their own PC. Bill Gates made his billions stepping over the dead bodies of million sof Windows users. Businesses that bought PC's because they seemed cheaper have been spending untold billions on computer support, repair and maintenance. In terms of total cost of ownership, productivity, reliability and every other measure, Microsoft has stifled industry, crippled innovation and reduced productivity. In the long run, there is never anything really gained by using something cheap and low quality to substitute for a quality, well made and effective product. The short term gains are illusions.

Since its inception, Apple has been reinventing every market paradigm it touched, inspiring innovation and creating new opportunities. The Apple II virtually invented the modern personal computer. The Mac, inspired perhaps by Xerox, reinvented computing. The Laserwriter reinvented publishing and typesetting, with help from Pagemaker. The Newton, though not successful at the time, was a vision of the future of PDA’s and smart phones ultimately leading to the iPhone, which successful or not will reinvent the cell phone for everyone. The iPod reinvented the MP3 player and turned the music industry on its ear. The Intel Mac is just such an opportunity.

What has Microsoft given us – incremental improvements in an operating system that was and still is a bad knock off of the Mac/Xerox concept? Crushing innovation and competition to the point they were investigated by the Justice Dept.? An OS so full of holes that it can never be secure (perhaps intentionally- ever wonder what happened to the vigorous pursuit of MS by the Justice Dept., and why they suddenly didn't feel a need to keep pushing the industry for a "back door" into all computers in the name of national security?). Office apps that basically just copied, bought out or scavenged, and destroyed other existing products that were actually less bloated and better in some ways? The Xbox? Well, ok, I’ll give them that one.

I have a Powerbook G5, which I will keep another few years since I have learned to love life without anything from Microsoft (I love using open source software). I wouldn't exchange even this slightly older Mac for the latest high-end Vista notebook ... though I would consider donations of a new MacBook :-)

What about you? Are you now convinced that Mac computing is the greatest thing since sliced bread, Barrack Obama, Bal en Blanc, The Winter Music Conference, The World Electronic Music Festival, and House Music? I knew you'd see things my way. :-)

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Posted by MaxTheITpro at 7/12/2008 06:45:00 AM 0 comments Links to this post
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Friday, May 30, 2008

Get Free POP/IMAP from GMail

[Nairobi, Kenya]
I REMEMBER when I used to be a Yahoo! Canada email whore. I had the choice of downloading my mail via POP in any of my favourite email clients like Thunderbird, Eudora, Pegasus or Outlook Express.

Anyone with a yahoo.com email address didn't get this privilege though. Instead, you had to pay something like $19.95 per year, which also increased your email storage to 1Gb. And Hotmail teased you a bit by allowing you to download your email into Outlook, but no luck if you were using a competitor's email client. Thank you Microsoft! Back then, it would've taken a miracle for netizens to get free POP and IMAP service. In fact, Hell would have to freeze over first.

Hell freezes over...
Well, I was shocked when Google first announced it's revolutionary GMail service. The fact that they gave you 2Gb of space totally screwed Yahoo and Microsoft. But they also included a lots of FREE goodies that everybody else was charging for. Overnight, paying for POP and IMAP services became a thing of the past. I haven't looked back since.
In short, I'm a GMail addict. Yes, I still have my Yahoo Canada email addy, but I'm in love - with GMail. It's like meeting the woman of my dreams who's smart, sexy, witty, creative, dignified, a great cook, charming, yet "naughty" under the sheets. Once you find a woman like that, you can never let her go. Ditto for GMail in the realm of email hosting. Yep, I'm hooked for life.

POP vs IMAP...
To quickly find out the differences between POP and IMAP, just peek this blog post on the GMail blog. For those of you blessed with a constant, reliable broadband connection, IMAP is the way to go. In all honesty, now that Google gives me a whopping 6771 Mb (6.8Gb) of storage space, I haven't used POP/IMAP services in a looong time. What's shocking is that I'm a power user and I've only used 10% of my space so far.

Besides, I'm here in East Africa so I just check GMail on my Nokia 6070 via Safaricom or Celtel's EDGE/3G/HSDPA mobile network. I surfed to gmail.com/mobile and downloaded a tiny, slick app right onto my Nokia that feels like a tiny desktop email client. Heck, it's fast as hell!! Those Google programmers sure know how to write "gooood" software that goes down nice. :-)

You are currently using 728 MB (10%) of your 6771 MB

Well, at least I know of a top notch POP and IMAP service that's free when I'm ready to use it once again. For now, I'm quite happy using GMail either in the Mozilla Firefox browser or on my Nokia.

Now, imagine being on a safari or hanging out somewhere remote in Kenya and you're still able to read your email since most of the country is covered by EDGE...and the cost is only something like 10 or 12 Kenya Shillings per megabyte. That's a paltry US 20 cents for sending and receiving a ton of emails or web browsing. Simply amazing!

Thank you Safaricom, Celtel and Google.

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Posted by MaxTheITpro at 5/30/2008 12:37:00 AM 1 comments Links to this post
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Thursday, May 29, 2008

MacBooks rock, mega patch for OS X

[Nairobi, Kenya]
AFTER SEEING the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro machines at Elite Digital Solutions' (aka AppleCentre) Sarit Centre and 3D Peponi Plaza locations in the Westlands section of Nairobi , I'm now seriously contemplating ditching my plans on purchasing a Toshiba or Lenovo notebook with either an Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD 64bit chip. Damn it, but those Mac notebooks are slick, super stylish and just so yummy running its flavour of BSD Unix (Mac OS X) under the hood, which provides it with loads of power, security and scalability. Quite frankly, anyone who knows operating systems will tell you that the BSDs are vastly superior to Linux, which has been a media darling for a very long time. Oh well!!

By the way, Elite just happens to be "Kenya's 1st Apple Reseller" according to the business card I got from Nash Bilkhu (Apple Sales & Support Executive) who happens to be a chill super kool dude that's passionate about Mac computing.
His company also gives lots of FREE workshops on using Macs to the max...such as learning GarageBand, iLife and other kool Mac apps. How many computer stores around here actually do that??

Decisions, decisions...
In fact, my good pal Samantha Phillips -- author of the best selling book, Blonde Ambition, and Managing Director of Bedouin Camp (Samburu, Kenya) -- is interested in the MacBook Air and asked me to visit the AppleCentre and give her my unbiased opinion.

Well, although the Air is the thinnest laptop/notebook in the solar system, I still prefer the MacBook Pro. Come on Samantha, it's just a tad heavier but you get tons of included hardware that you have to pay extra for the privilege of owing the super thin Air. On the other hand, I'd quickly steal an Air laptop from the AppleCentre if no one's looking. I certainly wouldn't throw it out of my bed (er off my desk) :-)

Better than sliced bread...
What, you're still not convinced about how amazing these MacBooks are? Then take a peek at these enticing ReviewStream MacBook reviews. Are you now convinced that these notebooks are the greatest thing since the invention of electricity, the transistor, flight, the Internet, and the Human Genome Project? I knew you'd see things my way. :-)

Nobody's perfect...
But alas, updates are nothing new in the PC world and I guess this is also the case on Apple's platform. No worries though...it's still not as bad as buggy Windows XP/2000/98/ME et al. I'll give Vista a little credit, but it's just annoying a lot of people right now in regards to device drivers and being too restrictive. Heck, I'd run Windows Server 2008 as a workstation OS if I were you. The word on the street is that it makes a dynamite desktop OS without all of Vista's aches and pains. Anyhow, this article on ZDNet is a must read for all you Mac folks out there:
Oh...
I wrote here how annoyed I was with the Mac Finder. I still prefer the Windows Explorer for file management any day of the week. And you Mac folks can take that to the bank. I think it's because of the idiotic idea of "someone" at Apple who felt that there would never, ever be a reason to have 2 buttons on the mouse.

Well, now we know how stupid that was. But I still have much respect for ya Stevie boy. So much in fact that I'd do almost anything for one of your MacBook Pros with: 17" screen, a 2.5GHz Penryn Intel Core 2 Duo, 6MB L2 cache, 2GB RAM, 250 GB hard disk, Gigabit Ethernet, and a ton of other goodies that just makes my mouth drool. And Steve, did I tell you how sexy that metallic silver finish looks on it? Heck, forget about skirts...gimme the damn MacBook Pro...now!!!! :-)

Happy computing!

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Posted by MaxTheITpro at 5/29/2008 03:22:00 AM 3 comments Links to this post
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Sunday, April 27, 2008

Dream Job vs High Paying Job

[Nairobi, Kenya]
GREETINGS everyone. I know, I know...I've been awfully quiet for like a WHILE. Well, a part of me got a little burnt out; more so from the fact that I have lousy Internet access here in Kenya. So although I had tons of things to write about here and on Go Africa Go!, I just got annoyed with the Net access thingy. Plus, there was a "little bit" of political "excitement" in these parts due to the post-election "challenges" that ensued in Kenya.

Since I'm house-sitting my pal's house here in Lavington (a Nairobi suburb) until the end of April, I've had the privilege of daily Internet access courtesy of her $200 per month iWayAfrica satellite (VSat) hookup. In a way, my friend Samantha (of Bedouin Camp fame) is doing me a favour by letting me house sit for her.

Decisions, decisions...
Well, I was peeking some enticing IT articles & discussions on ZDNet, SlashDot, Jon Auza's blog, and a host of other spots in cyber space. And I ran into this gut-wrenching scenario that a programmer had to face: Should he choose a programming job using a language (PERL) that he loves versus a 66% pay rise with another company that's using Microsoft's .NET framework.

Heck, in my state of affairs, I'd take the damn .NET job if I was that dude. I can always do PERL scripting in my off time, or even take part in a kick-ass PERL project on SourceForge, which just happens to be the world's largest Open Source Software repository. Here, you'll find tons of FREE amazing software projects - like the OpenBiblio Library Information System (LIS) that I implemented for the Jewish Youth Library of Ottawa (JYLO) back in 2004.

Anyhow, I urge you to peek the discussion...lots of interesting points for and against taking both jobs. See Choosing Your Next Programming Job: Perl or .NET. I even blogged about .NET here a year ago. See, I was right! .NET is gaining momentum. Heck, I'm sure a lot of .NET coders are paying off their mortgages in 3 years or less. :-)

Gripe central...
Since I'm using Samantha's iBook G4 laptop while she visits the south of France, the UK and Dubai, I've gotten a bird's eye view of the Mac OS/X operating system. And to be honest with you all, I'm not that thrilled with it. The major reason is just the little things. Have you ever used cut & paste in the Windows Explorer? Well, I couldn't find a similar feature in OS/X at all. I had to bloody copy a file or folder from somewhere, paste it to the destination, and then delete the original file. Damn it, but how bloody ANNOYING is that? Yeah, Windows has some warts, but give me Explorer over the Finder in OS/X any day of the week. I think I'm just gonna turn Windows Server 2008 into a workstation (see info on how to do this here, here, and here) on the laptop I plan to buy within 30 days - if all goes well. Let's just say that I'm skipping Vista after hearing so many horror stories.

Thanks Steph...
By the way, my good pal whom I met on XVI dropped by Nairobi en route to Rwanda and Uganda to do 6 months of academic research. You see, she's doing her Masters in Peace Building & Conflict Resolution through Royal Roads University. Oh, that's waaay over there on Vancouver Island, which is in the beautiful province of British Columbia on Canada's west coast. She hung out with me for 4 days, and I got her to deliver the goods. You see, since Stephanie was coming from Canada, I got her to download a ton of software on her super fast DSL broadband connection before she left for Africa.

Now I have the latest versions of PC-BSD (a kool desktop distro based on the popular FreeBSD server O/S), SimplyMEPIS (a Linux distro that's getting tons of rave reviews), OpenOffice (a free alternative to Micro$oft Office that runs of Linux & Windows), PostgreSQL (a free database manager that competes admirably against Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Sybase et al), VMware Player (Linux & Windows versions), and XAMPP for Mac OS/X.

Heck, I would never in a million years attempt to download all that stuff over here. Nope! Anyhow, I'm gonna take them all for a spin and I'll review them right here. It'll give me a chance to spread some open source love here in East Africa. I hear po-po (er police) has been going around Nairobi nabbing peeps in offices and cyber cafes using pirated software. This is a good thing as it'll force EVERYONE to utilize open source software like Linux, FreeBSD, OpenOffice et al.

Happy computing!
Posted by MaxTheITpro at 4/27/2008 02:40:00 AM 4 comments Links to this post
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Saturday, April 14, 2007

Web Services and the Programmable Web

[Nairobi, Kenya]
I MENTIONED in a previous post that I felt ASP.NET programming would be a lucrative ($$$) area for coders looking to move on to bigger and better things. Well, I still believe this, so I’ve been getting up to speed on this excellent technology thanks to Matthew MacDonald’s well-written book (er bible...um, it’s 1148 bloody pages), Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 in C#: From Novice to Professional. Here's a nice book review. You see, I’m eager to take full advantage of the web by using web services as my secret weapon to create powerful applications. This should definitely bring in the big bucks. :-)

For example, I could easily pass or share information (data) between various computer networks (B2B, B2C, etc.). Or, I might simply want a universal method in order to allow other web programmers to execute a shared, public function (programming code that does a particular task) on my web server that returns a piece of information (ie. a price quote, stock lookup, flight info, etc.). At the start of Chapter 21, Matthew does a fantastic job introducing web services. I also love his suggestion on how to “look” at said technology. See for yourself:
Web services enable the same evolution that COM did, with a twist. Web services are indi-vidual units of programming logic that exist on a web server. They can be easily integrated into all sorts of applications, including everything from other ASP.NET applications to simple command-line applications. The twist is that, unlike COM, which is a platform-specific standard, web services are built on a foundation of open standards. These stan-dards allow web services to be created with .NET but consumed on other platforms—or vice versa. In fact, the idea of web services didn’t originate at Microsoft. Other major computer forces such as IBM helped to develop the core standards that Microsoft uses natively in ASP.NET.

The root standard for all the individual web service standards is XML. Because XML is text-based, web service invocations can pass over normal HTTP channels. Other distributed object technologies, such as DCOM, are much more complex, and as a result, they are exceedingly difficult to configure correctly, especially if you need to use them over the Internet. So not only are web services governed by cross-platform standards, but they’re also easier to use.

You can look at web services in two ways. Application programmers (and the .NET Framework) tend to treat a web service as a set of methods that you can call over the Internet. Of course, these methods have all the capabilities that ASP.NET programmers are used to, such as the automatic security and session state facilities discussed in other parts of this book. XML gurus take a different perspective. They prefer to treat web ser-vices as a way to exchange XML messages.

Which perspective you take depends to some extent on the type of web service you are creating. For example, if you need to pass messages through several intermediaries as part of a long-running business-to-business transaction, you’ll have an easier time looking at your web service as a message-passing system. On the other hand, if you’re calling a web service just to get some information—such as a product catalog or stock quote—you’ll probably treat it like any other useful function. {source: Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 in C#: From Novice to Professional ; pg. 815}
Posted by MaxTheITpro at 4/14/2007 08:30:00 AM 0 comments Links to this post
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Saturday, March 17, 2007

PHP 5 book passes 1 Million FREE downloads

[Dar es Salaam, Tanzania]
THIS is old news (forgot this post in my drafts folder) but I think it's worth mentioning here in 2007. Hopefully, more web developers will start coding PHP5 specific web apps instead of playing it safe with the well-tested PHP4.x lineage. What annoys me, though, is that most web hosting companies are also playing it safe and fail to install PHP5 on their web servers. This keeps developers from taking advantange of its new features.

Get cracking
If you want to start cranking out some PHP5 code, but are unfamiliar with the new OOP features/syntax, etc., then I suggest you download the book (PHP 5 Power Programming) I don't think you're going to find a better learning resource since the authors of the book are gods in the PHP world. Here's the link. It's in PDF format. Oh, did I mention it's FREE? :-)
Posted by MaxTheITpro at 3/17/2007 06:32:00 PM 1 comments Links to this post
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Friday, March 16, 2007

New WiFi standard offers 100Mbps speeds

[Dar es Salaam, Tanzania]
WOW, just when you thought the benefits of WiMAX was going to steamroll over WiFi's affordable ubiquity, things appear to be taking a 90 degree turn in favour of the old guard while the new hearthrob (er WiMAX) irons out a few compatability wrinkles. :-) Check this out:

With every man and his dog rushing to proclaim that the advent of WiMax will mean the death of Wi-Fi, proponents of the most popular local area wireless technology believe there's a healthy future ahead for it - and it doesn't depend on the laptop...

...A standards body is set to ratify 802.11n by September next year, giving Wi-Fi a throughput of 100Mbps and helping to bolster its potential uses in bandwidth-heavy situations. {source}

My thoughts
So, you mean WiFi is still alive and kicking? :-) This is a good thing because all the WiMAX "pushers" are selling their drugs (er hardware) at such ridiculous prices. Like, what are those guys smoking (or drinking)? :-) I've said this before and I'll say it again. Once a WiFi phone comes out with a mobile Skype application attached to it, then all hell's gonna break loose because those greedy mobile operators are going to be in some deep doo doo. Of course, this is dependent on cities and municipalities around the world offering free (or almost free) WiFi services to their tax paying citizens. Fat chance of that happening though. Government leaders cave in soooo easily to big business. Heck, why the frig are we even bothering to vote?

Posted by MaxTheITpro at 3/16/2007 04:38:00 PM 0 comments Links to this post
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