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Here’s a really terrific little video by David Pogue, of the New York Times, where he definitively demonstrates that Microsoft did NOT deliberatly copy features directly from Apple’s OS-X operating system.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6YO30GhmQ[/youtube] 

When I purchased my new Apple 24″ iMac, I spent quite a bit of time asking all sorts of questions.  I don’t know about you, but I get really annoyed when I spend time asking all the right questions, and get wrong answers.  I mean, why do stores bother hiring people to sell stuff when these folks don’t know their ass from their elbow when it comes to the stuff they’re selling?

In the case of this Apple iMac, I asked about extending the RAM from 1GB to 2GB.  Well, the fellow I talked with said it’s quite complicated opening up the box and changing the RAM, but I figured I could probably handle it, given that they wanted $75 to plug in the RAM.  So he happily sold me a couple of 1GB DIMM memory modules to install after I got the computer apart.  Unfortunately, he couldn’t give me any advice about doing this install — probably because they’re told not to do that.  Later on, I think I figured out why… Continue Reading »

Happy New Year, everybody!

On Thanksgiving night last month, CompUSA ran a special where they offered a deal where you could get 24 months 0% interest on any Apple product purchase over $999. I’ve been eyeing a 24″ iMac for a while, and decided to take the plunge. I was talking with a friend today about some of the challenges I’ve encountered, and he asked me if I’d posted anything abou this to my blog. Hey, I’m just a programmer; blogs don’t live at the front of my mind — I usually post stuff here after-the-fact.

But in the context of “useful content”, I suspect that this path is probably of broad interest, and thus worth blogging about. So here we go! This is the first of many installments where I’ll be documenting my travails in acquiring a new iMac — this from the perspective of someone who’s worked with Windows and DOS forever. (It might be useful to add that I spent a couple of years working at Motorola learning Unix and C before I ever encountered MS-DOS. So, in a way, getting into the iMac — which runs a Unix variant under the hood — is like coming home.) Continue Reading »