I sort of hate to say it…

But I’m sort of liking Vista.

First, let me give the reason why. When you’ve been working with OS X (10.2,3,4) for the last three years, I’ll be the first to tell you; it gets boring. As I said in my post two posts down, Apple needs to mess with the interface more. The interface is still stuck nearly the same as it was back in 10.2 (Yeah, they eliminated the pinstripes. So? They gave the menu bar a glossy look. So?). Hell, the Pinstripes still exist if you right click something to bring up a contextual menu.

I’ll give MS this one on the battle of interface change. We have windows that appear to just fade in and out of the desktop. We have Windows Flip 3D (Which if were mapped to alt+tab, would be extremely useful). We have Aero Glass, which, while a rip off of Quartz, works quite well in making Vista’s interface look perty.

Microsoft took the interface of XP, changed it up, added a ton of stuff to it, and wham, we have the familiar Windows interface which feels like a breath of fresh air.

…Why couldn’t Apple do the same? And execute it better than Microsoft? I’m sure it can be done, especially with Quartz, and Leopard.

Seriously, Apple, while I love the OS X interface, I believe it’s high time for a interface refresh. Something to make OS X feel as new as it was when we all transitioned from 9 to X.

You’ve gotta be kidding me.

iTunes is actually suggesting cRap to me? And hip hop? Seriously, what the hell?

Vista vs. Mac OS X

So, since I recently took Vista for a test run, shall we see who appears to be the clear winner in my book?

Short answer: None. Both were so good and so bad that they don’t have a clear gain on one another.

Long answer: After trying out Vista for a while, I found that I was sort of warming up to it. Vista felt like a breath of fresh air compared to XP. The visual effects were certainly a nice touch to the OS.

OS X, however, has been parked pretty firmly where it’s at. The visual appearance has changed very little. the only things changing being the pinstripe menu bar being faded out and eventually ditched in OS X 10.4, replaced with a glass-like bar. Same thing with the windows, however, inactive windows still have that ugly pinstripe look when they aren’t active.

See?

Unfortunately, just looking at the interfaces, Vista has leapt ahead of Mac OS X just looking at the features. However, Mac OS X regains ground once we look into some problems that Vista has.

Vista’s Flaws

Unfortunately, while Microsoft has done a lot of work on Vista, and it shows very much, there are just a few problems with Vista.

First off–Compatibility. A game I play a lot of simply wouldn’t work under vista. Make that two. Diablo II and Space Cowboy online. SCO wouldn’t work at all, and Diablo II would be choppy and have no sound. Wow, a lot of people left out in the cold on this one.

The second one is partially attributable to the first, which is when something crashes, Vista restarts it. Seriously, what the hell. Some programs send a crash signal upon closing (A manual close, you know, at the user’s will), and Vista will restart it again and again.

The third problem is huge to some of us IE haters. Vista simply won’t let you ditch Internet Explorer. At all. Vista won’t let you default Firefox (It will, but), but rather, keep three defaults to IE, one of which is internet shortcuts. So if you click some link in an IM or IRC, Vista will tell IE to open it, not FF. And there’s no way to change this.

Now it wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t attribute some blame to OS X…

OS X’s flaws

1: Seriously, Apple. Give us something new in the interface department. We’ve been using the same thing since 2001, with only minor improvement here and there. While yes, OS X is plenty stable and plenty usable, I feel I’m still in OS 10.1. I wouldn’t mind sticking with the current look, but many people are getting tired of it, and even I’m feeling it’s becoming a bit long in the tooth (but still usable). Especially if people grade on graphics and prettiness, Vista will cream OS X in this area.

2. Make things consistent.  Ditch the pinstripes completely if they aren’t going to be used in other areas. Unify the interface. We have rogue programs such as iTunes in the applications suite whose interfaces seem to be inconsistent with the OS itself.

Vista stuff.

I’ve been running Vista on my MacBook Pro, and here are some screenshots. I’ll post more info later.

Let’s get jumped!

Today’s been a hell of a day.

First thing that happened, while on the bus to the theatre to see Pirates 3 (Good movie, BTW), some kid decides he’s going to try and pull something.

He comes up to me. I know this kid from my electronics class, and he’s always coming in late, and getting in deep crap with the teacher. He says to me: “I heard you’ve been talking shit about me.”

I come back with “Why would I talk shit about you? I don’t even know you that well.” He replies with “You know me from electronics class.”

So I say, “Dude, I’d never shit-talk you.” He turns to his friend, who happens to be close friends with my girlfriend’s ex-friend, who is trying to split us up in any way possible. The friend replies “Yeah, that’s the person she told me about who was talking smack.”

At this point, I’m enraged. That person has sunk so low as to spread rumors to damage what little reputation I have? Oh nice.

At this point, the dude looks at my girlfriend. “Who’s this, ‘yer sister?” he asks with a really rude tone.

“I’m his girlfriend.” she fires back with the same tone.

He turns back to me, and says, “Have you ever been in a fight before?” I say “No, and I don’t intend in getting in one anytime soon.” At this point, his friends are all around me. “Better get used to it.”

At this point, the bus driver finally takes note of what’s going on, and boots the suckers off the bus. Whew, close save.

Religious Stuff. What fun!

Today was a horrible day, and religion is most likely to blame. Or maybe it was a cop out. I’ve no idea.

Here’s what happened. For a long while now, I’ve been keeping my music collection in my car, on CDs. I had them all ripped to my computer, so I made nothing of them being out in the car. I had come back from the store after listening to a mixed CD I had made earlier, and left the car for an hour. In that time, my mom’s boyfriend drove the car.

My mom then asked me to drive back to the store for her. I get in the car, fire up the CD player, and lo and behold, my CD is gone. I check the glovebox, and all my CDs in there are gone too!

To get to the bottom of this, I went to my mom’s boyfriend and asked where he had put the CDs I was missing. He had said that he threw them out into the street while driving.

My jaw hit the floor. My entire collection – gone.

“Why did you do that?!” I asked.

“Because I dislike your taste in music.” he replied.  “Well shit, you could just fucking pop the CD out and put it in the glovebox!” I said.

“Don’t curse at me.” He said. I got sick of it, and told my mom. After all, it was her boyfriend.

All she had for me was a “Well, you can make new ones.”

One of those CD’s, no, two of them happened to be store-bought, 20 bucks each, and you tell me to make new ones?! What the hell?

So I walk off with a nice “Well, you can take yourself to the store, then.”

And then later, I find out that the reason her boyfriend threw the CDs out was because he considered it the “devils music”. And this is also why she agreed with him. That’s what you get when you put two religious fanatics together.

And that killed any chance of me going agnostic.

Chat transcript of the last few weeks.

Because this will tell you what happened the past few days, and I don’t feel like repeating myself:

<Anti> Well, her friend has got her all paranoid.
<Anti> Saying she caught me cheating and shit.
* Vulnavia-Dahlia huggles anti even more
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> mean girl.
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> she was lying i assume?
<Anti> Yep.
* Vulnavia-Dahlia gives Melissa another kiss
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> good good…
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> we know you’re well behaved.
<Anti> http://flickr.com/photos/anticitizen/496081001/in/set-72157600209622097/ This is the bitch who’s saying it.
* Vulnavia-Dahlia waits for the picture to load and thinks Anti neds to burn off some anger
<Melissa_Mao> pink fat and evil
<Melissa_Mao> true evil not the hot kind of evil
<Anti> Ever heard of “Every 15 Minutes”?
<Melissa_Mao> nope
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> nope
<Anti> Okay…here goes.
* Vulnavia-Dahlia curses her dial-up connection
<Anti> It’s where the school puts on an elaborate show (With the help of a mortuary, funeral parlor, and the local authorities) showcasing the death of three students killed in a drunk driving accident.
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> oh…
<Anti> It’s REALLY graphic.
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> my friends had to go to that.
<Gunther> heard of it
<Melissa_Mao> fear mongers
<Anti> Let’s just say that the whole thing made me flash back to some serious events, and I was a nervous wreck at lunch, so I told my girlfriend I needed some time alone.
<Anti> So I went walking around the school a bit, and left her behind.
<Anti> Then this stupid bitch pushes my buttons by talking shit behind my back, saying that I was going to find the “other girlfriend I have”.
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> evil.
<Anti> It gets better.
<Anti> Much better.
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> you should explain the truth to your girlfriend /in/front/ of the other girl.
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> make her look like a stupid gossiping bitch.
<Anti> So I walk into Animation for 6th period (Actually, TA), and I’m a wreck.
<Melissa_Mao> that type would not care
<Anti> I tell the animation teacher “Don’t count on me today. I’m not all there.” She agrees soundly and lets me relax.
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> oh good
<Anti> Then, my worst. fucking. nightmare walks into the room. The tech teacher I was telling you about yesterday.
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> argh
<Anti> I’m trying to put myself together, and he starts bitching at me that the scanner doesn’t work, so the animation students can’t get their animations done.
<Anti> I told him that the computer won’t log on to the damned network, and it’s not a problem I can handle. He asks if I checked the physical connection, and I said yes.
<Melissa_Mao> for every good teacher there are 2 bad ones and 3 crappy ones
<Melissa_Mao> and all nurses are gossiping lama bugs
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> lol
<Anti> So he orders me to download the scanner drivers. I explain that I had predicted that we would have to move the scanner to another computer, and had already had the file downloading to my laptop. I told him that I think it would be better if we had the driver on a CD for future installations.
<Anti> He just sneered and said “whatever.”
<Anti> So I run off, and grab a drink. Then he comes back and yells at me again. “Why aren’t you downloading the driver?”
<Melissa_Mao> !?
<Melissa_Mao> fucking dumbass
<Anti> I Cmd+Tab to Firefox on my laptop and show him the download. He mans the trackpad and cancells it, saying “I specifically told you to download it to the machine that needed it.”
<Gunther> what a retard
<Anti> Touching my laptop is a venial sin as it is, but he took it further.
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> eee…
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> what’d he do?
<Anti> So I slowly explain back to him that he didn’t seem to care about my course of action.
<Melissa_Mao> somebody take that one out back and shoot it
<Anti> And that I felt I was doing the right thing.
<Anti> He put his foot down and told me not to question my boss, for that would get me fired in a work environment.
<Anti> (And THIS, is why I hate anything and everything to do with Corporate America.)
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> sneaky.
<Melissa_Mao> put your foot down and tell him that if all his employees quit because he is a retarded ass that he cant do anything
<Anti> So I’m now pushed to the edge, and I argue back that he should have been more specific when he told me what to do.
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> true
<Anti> And I also told him. “It’s a fucking 200MB file. It’ll cost time we don’t have to get it to work on the school computers.”
<Anti> So he got pissed, and INSISTED that the wired computers were faster than my wireless connection. As we know, this is bullshit.
<Melissa_Mao> lol
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> heh
<Melissa_Mao> bottleneck is at school connection
<Melissa_Mao> not wireless
<Anti> My Wireless was going at 70k/s. The school computers were going at 30k/s.
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> wow
<Melissa_Mao> hell my wireless is faster than my harddrive can write
<Anti> So I argue that my computer is indeed faster, and he is costing us time.
<Fallout> no decay this time at least
<Melissa_Mao> oh your back
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> which would be bad in a work environment. ^_^
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> decay?
<Anti> He gets pissed off, and told me “I want a report highlighting the speed advantages of wired vs. wireless. And consider that the computers are connected to a gigabit switch.”
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> what an arse. he’s making you do his job.
<Anti> And I start telling him “What good is a gigabit switch when these computers only support 100mbit link speed?”
<Melissa_Mao> lol
<Gunther> XD
<Melissa_Mao> idiot
<Anti> He cut me off at “what good”.
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> arsepick.
<Anti> So whatever. I figured I’d write the report, and prove his sorry ass wrong.
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> he sounds like he knows you’re right.
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> good boy.
<Melissa_Mao> they always do in the end
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> true
<Anti> So I swivel around on my spinning chair, man my laptop, fire up TextEdit, and he cuts me off again.
<Anti> “You will use Pen and Paper.
<Anti> :
<Melissa_Mao> wtf
* Fallout has to cut out some carpet
<Melissa_Mao> what is the fing computer for anyway
<Anti> And I countered by saying “I’m typing my report as per my IEP.”
<Melissa_Mao> he is a freaking tec teacher
<Anti> He cut me off with “You will use pen and paper.” again.
<Gunther> That’s when I’d quit by nonstandar means
<Gunther> IE: Shit in boss’s cofee mug
<Vulnavia-Dahlia> lol

Faster MacBooks? Now I feel like crap.

http://www.apple.com/macbook/intel.html

I saw this headline this morning and thought to myself, “Hey wait, didn’t I buy the Pro model for a reason?”

I was expecting to see the MacBook Pro bumped to 2.33 and 2.66GHz as well, but no cigar.

And now the wittle MacBook (The computer I ACTUALLY wanted, had my grandfather NOT insisted that I buy top of the line) is up to par with the Pro.

In a way, I’m kind of happy I DIDN’T buy the MacBook, as it would have been obsoleted so soon.

But now I want that little MacBook more than ever. Simply because polycarbonate case = less heat conductivity, unlike the Pro which I own. I swear, even with the Core2 Duo, the MacBook Pro seems like it scorches my lap off sometimes.

Genius Bar

Today I had to meet with a Genius at the Apple Store’s Genius Bar. Some jackass (My girlfriend’s ex, to be exact) chucked his cellphone at my MacBook Pro’s screen. I had to take it in for an estimate, thinking it wouldn’t be covered.

Well, they covered it! And I am very happy. Even better, they let me keep the computer until the part arrives. Should be there in five to seven days.

Now getting to Walnut Creek again is a different story.

Win-doze problems

I may have stridden on the side of Windows most recently, but now I’m discovering that Windows isn’t so great. I stayed over at a friend’s house recently, and his PC took a dump on him because of a virus.

I should mention that this computer was a newer HP, which, for some unholy reason, required that you make your own restore discs, either using 15 CDs or 2 DVDs.

Why in hell were these not included? Do they really feel they are saving *that* much money on not including the restore discs? Oh well.

Anyway, my friend decided to wipe the OS and reinstall. After taking forever to reinstall the OS, he was then prompted to do the setup (You know, where it asks for your administrator name, and other accounts, and registration info.). After this, it showed him the “Thank you” screen, and stuck like that, setting the preferences for the ENTIRE NIGHT. It didn’t budge from that screen until 8 AM the next morning. WTF?

Then things got even worse. The drivers hadn’t installed! The audio drivers were gone, and we had to wait a bit on those.  Isn’t the restore CD supposed to install the drivers?

Nice one, HP.

So, back on track here, after getting all the trial software uninstalled (Wow, I guess Apple had a point on the trial software in their commercials), we proceeded to update the computer.

How hellish this would be.

First off, we tried getting the automatic updates to work. No avail there. It wouldn’t update, it’d just sit there, looking at us like we were stupid.

I suggested he try manually updating it by going to Windows Update in the Start Menu. All went well until IE balked that ActiveX wasn’t working correctly. As most people know, ActiveX = Total shit. And that’s why we love Mozilla Firefox. So we looked for help on Microsoft’s website.

We got the usual stuff. “Are you logged in as Administrator?” DEET-DEE-DEE, Windows.

One pinpointed ActiveX as the problem, but didn’t give us much information. So we looked into the IE help to find more information on ActiveX.

Not one damned iota of information.

As a last resort, I suggested downloading a network installer of SP2. So we decided to do that. We began the download, and for about 10 minutes, IE would stand still, saying “Getting File Information”. Then it’d fail to download.

“Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you”, my friend muttered.

So now, he decided to totally wipe his PC out. It seems like the last resort now, unfortunately.