So it was supposed to arrive tomorrow, the 24th and I was all set to wait at home that morning for it but then I got all these emails saying it'll arrive on the 23rd instead - by 10:30am. It's now 11:15 and no sign of FedEx. What's the deal?
And on the tracking page, it somehow made it from Indianapolis to Madison in 17 minutes but can't make it to my place in 6 hours. Weird. :-)
-T
Update: And then as I was leaving it noon, it shows up!
Yes, you can wash your Apple / Mac keyboard in the dishwasher. I've done it with other PC keyboards before. This is the best way to wash a Mac keyboard. Below is a video that talks about it. When done, you'll have a brand new looking Mac keyboard.
Make sure you let it dry 24 hours (or longer) after you wash it. So either have a back up keyboard or do it on a Friday night, take Saturday off (go outside and play!) and then you can use it again on Sunday or Monday.
Ok, you Apple Mail developers - I need you to cool it!
I get used to all the quirks about how to reply to emails without them looking like a huge mess (clear communication is important with my business) and then a new version comes out and it gets all changed around. At least twice now.
So quit trying to be all fancy and just give me basic editing - that's it. Cool it with all the crap. I'm using the program because it integrates really well with everything, which is awesome but if it takes me forever to reply to an email and have it look nice without tons of extra lines added to previous replies, then I don't know. I might go back to Thunderbird or something. At least just stick with one way so that I can get used to it and not have to relearn it every 6 months.
I love working on a Mac. The thing just works. While my Windows PC gets slower and slower, the Mac just keeps going strong. Snow Leopard, the new operating system (like going from Windows 98 to XP for all you Windows people) has some great feature. One thing in particular really stood out to me:
Snow Leopard takes up less than half the disk space of the previous version, freeing up about 7GB for you - enough for about 1,750 more songs or a few thousand more photos.
So by installing an upgrade, you free up 7GB of space. Wow. That would never happen with Windows. It's going to be faster and there are a lot more upgrades, too. I can't believe it's only $30. Yay, Apple!
Their operating system runs on their own hardware - so there are less problems on Macs. I like that. Kick butt!
-Tony
Ok, it seems I spoke too soon. I've had numerous problems with Snow Leopard already:
Mail is all jacked up. They changed it too much and now I have to get used to how to write messages all over again. I hate this. I find that I have to keep a plain text editor open all the time now to sanitize text in my clipboard. This sucks.
I was having problems pasting from Firefox to Dreamweaver all of a sudden. I'm not sure if this is an OS X thing or a Firefox thing. That sucks, too. It slows me down a lot.
MS Word now doesn't want to print when I click the print icon. It complains about the printer. I go to the print window and it works fine. One more step there, now, too. Sucks.
The Finder seems slower to me, not faster. I like the old one.
Printing from Mail is slow. It takes 5 second or more for the Print pane to show.
When printing to PDF the name of the file no longer appears there automatically. You have to manually copy and paste it in now (?) - another extra step.
There were a few more things. If I remember them, I'll add them above. It just seems like everything is taking an extra step - so in a lot of way, Snow Leopard has taken a step backwards. Not cool. I'm glad it was only $29 but now that doesn't even seem worth it. I hope they come out with fixes.
-Tony
Another update.
I got printing in Word working again.
Scanning is way easier now. I love it once I figured it out.
I think pasting from Firefox to Dreamweaver is a Firefox issue but I can't find anyone else having the problem.
I use a Mac for my main computer. It's a laptop and it's great because I also have an iPhone and they work together beautifully. I also have a PC at home running Win XP. It's a 3 GHz processor which, of course, started out fast but became slow.
Mac vs PC
The great thing about Apple and Macs are that their operating system runs on their hardware. Smart move. With a PC, it's Microsoft's software running on who knows what kind of hardware - thus all the problems with drivers and funky hardware that helps contribute to all the problems (blue screen of death/BSOD). Also I read the Mac core OS is like 1 MB and the Windows core OS is like 1 GB. So with Windows, they have to create new operating systems for phones and whatever else they make. That's why they don't work well together. With Apple, you have the same operating system running on your iPhone as your laptop. Easy. Simple.
Microsoft in the Tank
Let's face it, Vista bombed. Many people had to downgrade to Windows XP. I'm putting together a PC for here at work for our conference room table and Vista won't even install! It's a huge pain in the butt and I don't know what I'll do - probably go get XP. Microsoft's profits are way down, too:
Shares of Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) fell 7.7% in premarket trading Friday, a day after the software titan posted fiscal fourth-quarter results that fell short of Wall Street's expectations and reflected a sharp slowdown in software sales, as demand for new personal computers waned during the recession.
The stock was recently down $1.97 to $23.59.
Apple's Market Share
Apple owns about 10% of the market and that's where they like it, actually. They're making profit and delivering a high quality product. I love this article that I found yesterday. It's so right on. It's a quick read, so check it out:
If Apple wanted to make a range of low-end computers, it absolutely could. And such machines would sell like crazy, boosting Apple’s market share. But there would have to be some trade-off in quality, and perhaps more importantly to Apple, to its high margins. And as it has proven time and time again, it has no desire to give up either.
...a way to think about it is if Windows-based PCs as a whole are thought of as a top selling car like the Toyota Camry, Apple’s Mac computers would be more like a luxury car, like a Porsche. Porsche sales are just a fraction of Camry sales because it does not sell any models in the low-end price range. But at the same time, Porsche makes more money on each car sold and maintains a premium branding. If Porsche started selling cheap cars, it would move a lot more units, but it would no longer be the Porsche brand that we know.
This article also mentions those PC commercials out there where people go and find cheaper computers. There's one where Lauren wants a 17-inch laptop for under $1000 but Apple doesn't even make that, so of course she's getting a PC. It's like saying you want a brand new Porsche for $15,000. They don't make that car so you can't buy it.
The great thing is the PCs are getting cheap. You can get a laptop starting at just under $300 today. That's insane. It's also great for people who can use them, so Microsoft just keep doing your thing and Apple will keep doing theirs.
What I like is that even in a tough economy, Apple keeps their prices up. They know what they're worth and don't compromise. That's a lesson we can all learn from.
Ok, here's something I didn't know and just found out. Apparently, on the 2nd generation iPhone and the 3rd generation the left side is a speaker and the right side is a microphone.
I had a first generation where both sides were speakers. The microphone must have been the normal phone microphone or something.
So that's how it is.
This seems to be the most popular iPhone question out there. :-)
I love working on a Mac. The thing just works. While my Windows PC gets slower and slower, the Mac just keeps going strong. 
The great thing about Apple and Macs are that their operating system runs on their hardware. Smart move. With a PC, it's Microsoft's software running on who knows what kind of hardware - thus all the problems with drivers and funky hardware that helps contribute to all the problems (blue screen of death/BSOD). Also I read the Mac core OS is like 1 MB and the Windows core OS is like 1 GB. So with Windows, they have to create new operating systems for phones and whatever else they make. That's why they don't work well together. With Apple, you have the same operating system running on your iPhone as your laptop. Easy. Simple.
