(Patently ridiculous stuff has been bolded)Last month, in Law Technology News' Tech Counsel column, California attorney Ed Siebel sang the praises of running his law office with Apple Inc. computers and peripherals. Today, I'm singing a different tune. In fact, right now, I'm completing an online ad to sell my Power Mac G5 Dual 2.7GHz computer.
I was suckered in by the hype about freedom from viruses, simplicity of computing and versatility. Instead, I bought a boat anchor that can't view Web sites properly, is not compatible with Microsoft Word and can run only dumbed-down versions of regular software.
This time, I'm buying from Hewlett-Packard Co. or Dell Inc. -- anything that runs on Windows. (I'll assume the risk of flaming batteries.) Goodbye Steve Jobs, hello Bill Gates. I'll be lucky to get half of the $4,552.71 I paid for the Mac on May 21, 2006.
I realized it was time to unload the silvery box of frustration when I had to buy a "Dummies" book on how to operate it. I'm smart; I shouldn't need this. Aren't Macs supposed to be intuitive and easy to learn? My mistake.
With a former PC, I had to have my hard drive wiped clean and formatted -- several times -- after catching nasty viruses. So I was enticed by the thought of being online without fear of viruses.
I dreamed of going fearlessly to all the sheet music and game sites that are rife with Trojans, spyware and other dangerous bugs.
I was encouraged to make the switch by artists, ad agency employees and junior high school kids, even though I don't really create graphics, listen to iTunes or make movies. They all used Macs and were intractable in their support. They seduced me with siren songs, especially good customer support -- which did turn out to be excellent and was staffed with American speakers working in the United States. I liked the sexy FireWire with its zippy transfer speeds, although I used it only to transfer data to my external hard drive.
The signs of doom were there on day one, but I ignored them. I pretended that I liked the one button mouse. I quickly started using click + command keys (and other keyboard shortcuts). I really missed the little scrolling wheel in the center of the mouse. I put up with the fact that the HP printer, which I had purchased on the recommendation of an Apple Store, would work about 50 percent of the time with the Mac. I was constantly deleting print jobs and starting them over.
I noticed it was slow; I saw that stupid spinning colored wheel a lot. The Mac would hang up; the TV ads said Macs didn't do that. The widgets were cool and snappy, but after a while I stopped using them. They were fun -- for five minutes. I did like the Finder because it was quick in locating files, but it would turn up a lot of false hits. It was comparable to the Google Desktop searcher on my PC.
What drove me nuts was that I would open Word for Mac and couldn't delete files while I was in Word. There is no File | Delete option. So the documents took up space on my hard drive, until someone told me I had to find the document in Finder and then move it into the trash from there. This seemed stupid to me; I just wanted to highlight a file and tap "delete."
Word files transferred from the Mac were missing pictures. PowerPoint files transferred from the Mac would lose their formatting. PCs and Macs are not compatible, regardless of what they say.
The multiple clicking to accomplish simple tasks was a constant annoyance. Things I could do with a PC in two keystrokes took four or five clicks with the Mac. To do a "fast print" required clicking File, Print, find Copies & Pages, click Paper Type/Quality, click Normal and finally clicking Fast Draft. And there was no way to leave the setting as the default. I had to do it manually every time.
Doing a simple screen capture was an immense chore. On a PC you just press Alt and tap PrtScr. With the Mac I had to download and launch special programs to accomplish this simple task.
I didn't even bother with the Mac's iCal or Mail, which required me to buy an @mac.com address. Instead, I went straight to Outlook for Mac. A lot of the software for Mac -- such as AOL for Mac OS X -- was dumbed down and missing may features of the current PC versions.
For me the killer was the Web browser. Safari simply cannot read Flash. It is, quite simply, a second-rate browser.
I even called Apple headquarters and asked when a better version would be available and was told that Apple is in no hurry to improve it.
On the suggestions of friends, I downloaded Netscape and Firefox, which were no better.
I scraped along with Internet Explorer 5.0 for Mac, and then discovered in 2006 that Microsoft would no longer support the Mac version. You can't do WSYWIG on Typepad (where many folks create their blogs), which you can on a PC.
I run several Web sites, all optimized for IE 5.5 or higher. I couldn't operate my own Web sites with the Mac. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. Then the hard drive croaked on me after only three months of owning the machine. I couldn't tell what was going wrong and had to hire someone for $125 an hour to come over and tell me what the heck was happening. Apple replaced it for free, but I became leery of what other hardware would fail unexpectedly.
I let the repaired shiny Mac sit on the floor for weeks, and instead used my reliable IBM ThinkPad, and rediscovered how much I enjoy it. Wish me luck on selling the Mac.
And some of the responses to his pretty obviously (to anyone who has ever used a mac) stupid and unwilling to ask anyone for help article.
And now some assertions that what he's written is somewhat, eh, "inconsistent with the facts."http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/2006 ... s_mac.html
Law marketing consultant Larry Bodine had some problems with his new Mac. Now, some of his complaints sound pretty serious and I don’t blame him for wanting to deal with them.
But Larry, there’s a few things you mention that I thought maybe I could help you with.
"Word files transferred from the Mac were missing pictures. PowerPoint files transferred from the Mac would lose their formatting. PCs and Macs are not compatible, regardless of what they say."
I don’t think that’s -
"Doing a simple screen capture was an immense chore. On a PC you just press Alt and tap PrtScr. With the Mac I had to download and launch special programs to accomplish this simple task."
Ah, no, see there’s a useful little -
"I didn’t even bother with the Mac’s iCal or Mail, which required me to buy an @mac.com address."
Um, Larry -
"Instead, I went straight to Outlook for Mac. A lot of the software for Mac — such as AOL for Mac OS X — was dumbed down and missing may features of the current PC versions."
Larry?
"For me the killer was the Web browser. Safari simply cannot read Flash. It is, quite simply, a second-rate browser."
Larry? Hello?
I don’t think he can hear me.
"On the suggestions of friends, I downloaded Netscape and Firefox, which were no better."
Larrrrry??
"I run several Web sites, all optimized for IE 5.5 or higher. I couldn’t operate my own Web sites with the Mac."
You know what? Never mind.
"Wish me luck on selling the Mac."
That’s probably an excellent idea. Good luck, Larry.
I want a response to those from this guy - I somehow doubt there'll be a serious one forthcoming. Meanwhile, in other Apple-related news, here's some interview with Steve Jobs. The only bit worth reading is this:http://theshapeofdays.com/2006/10/a_con ... l_shu.html
Blogger Giles Turnbull called my attention tonight to an article on the Law.com Legal Technology Web site. The article, dated … um … tomorrow is by Chicago-based marketing consultant Larry Bodine. Titled “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree,” the article describes Larry’s nightmarish experience with a Power Macintosh G5 computer.
Or does it?
A computer from beyond the grave
This article smells as fishy as last week’s halibut. Let’s start at the top. Bodine describes his Mac as a “Power Mac G5 Dual 2.7GHz computer.” He then says that he paid $4,552.71 for it “on May 21, 2006.”
Okay, that’s our first moderately fishy assertion of the night. See, Apple did in fact produce a Power Macintosh G5 personal computer with two 2.7 GHz microchips in it. The model was announced on April 27, 2005. But as with most Apple computers, that particular configuration of the Power Mac G5 only stayed in stores for about six months. It was discontinued on October 19 of that year when Apple introduced new models to replace it.
Is it possible that Bodine bought a year-old computer? Sure, I guess so. People do it all the time. Though it doesn’t make a lick of sense why he would do it.
Most of the time people buy old Macs either to save a little money or to stay with a certain model they liked or needed after a new one is introduced. (Just last week, I bought a Power Mac G5 from a third-party reseller who still had one in stock because I needed to run software on it compiled for the older PowerPC chips rather than the new Intel ones.)
Bodine claims in his article to be a user of Microsoft Office, one of the few remaining popular computer programs not yet ported to the new Intel architecture. So maybe he bought his Power Mac G5 second-hand or refurbished in order to avoid having to run his programs in emulation on a new Mac Pro.
Except no, because the Mac Pros weren’t announced until August. He says he bought his computer in May, when PowerPC-based Power Macs were still sitting on shelves.
All about the Benjamins
So maybe he did it to save money. Only that conflicts with his quoted price: $4,552.71. Not “about $4,500,” either. Bodine quotes the figure down to the last penny. He could have bought a brand new Power Mac G5 Quad, with twice as many microchips in it, for a mere $3,299 in May 2006.
Oh, but maybe he bought accessories with it. He says in the article that he bought an HP printer — he doesn’t say which one — “on the recommendation of an Apple Store.” Maybe he’s including that with the purchase price of his Mac. If he bought a really expensive laser printer, that could have jacked up the price to the point he quoted. Or maybe he bought other things too.
If he’d bought his Power Mac brand new, with two 2.7 GHz microchips in it, he would have paid $2,999 for it. That’s a difference of $1,553.71 from what he says he paid.
If he bought a computer seven months after it was discontinued, it’s reasonable to expect that he would have paid something comfortably less than full retail for it. How much is an entirely open question, but we can make an educated guess. You can buy a refurbished Power Mac G5 Quad from Apple right now — like, tonight; it’s on their price list — for $2,699. That’s $600 off the original retail price, or a price drop of about 18 percent. If we take 18 percent off of the original retail price of the computer Bodine says he bought — just to give us a ballpark estimate, you see — we end up with $2,459.18. Meaning of the $4,552.71 he claims to have spent on his Mac, $2,093.53 went to stuff other than the computer itself.
Again, these are just back-of-the-envelope figures here. Just for conversation.
Where’d the money go? Not sure. Software, a screen, accessories, his printer … stuff like that, presumably.
Of course, since Bodine is a savvy professional already, one would expect that he wasn’t buying a new computer wholly from scratch, but rather replacing one he already had. The software I can understand; software written for Windows won’t run on a PowerPC-fired Mac, so he had to buy new stuff. But a screen and a printer? It’s a little odd to think that he wouldn’t just have continued to use the ones he already owned.
About that impossible software
But then we get to the part that really makes my bloggy sense tingle. In his article, Bodine says, “For me the killer was the Web browser. Safari simply cannot read Flash. It is, quite simply, a second-rate browser. … I scraped along with Internet Explorer 5.0 for Mac.”
Now that’s just damn peculiar. Because, see, Internet Explorer 5.0 won’t even run on Mac OS X, the operating system that shipped with Bodine’s new — or not-so-new, or whatever — Power Mac G5. Internet Explorer 5.0 only ever ran on Mac OS 9, an operating system that has never run on the Power Mac G5 at all.
It’s at least theoretically possible to run Internet Explorer 5.0 under “Classic,” an emulated environment that Apple included with the original Mac OS X in order to help people transition to the new platform. But “Classic” requires Mac OS 9 to be installed on the computer alongside Mac OS X — even if the computer can’t run Mac OS 9 itself, it’s still required for emulating older software.
And Bodine’s Power Mac G5 didn’t come with Mac OS 9. The last iteration of Mac OS 9 shipped in 2001, and it hasn’t been bundled with Apple computers for several years now.
It hasn’t been available in retail stores, either. There is, in fact, no plausible way that Bodine could have gotten his hands on a copy of Mac OS 9 for his Power Mac. Sure, maybe there was a copy sitting in a dusty bargain bin at a Fry’s somewhere, but does a guy who complains so vociferously about perceived inefficiencies in his computing life strike you as someone who’d dumpster-dive in the discount section of his local software store?
Or that other impossible software
Okay, so maybe it was just a typo. Maybe Bodine didn’t mean Internet Explorer 5.0 at all, but rather 5.1 or 5.2, one of the various versions that would run on Mac OS X. Problem is, there’s no way he could have gotten ahold of either of those legitimately either. See, Apple didn’t ship Internet Explorer with Mac OS X Tiger, the version that shipped with Bodine’s Power Mac. It simply wasn’t included. And Microsoft removed the software from their Web server on January 31, 2006, months before Bodine says he bought his new Mac.
And Internet Explorer never was available via retail outlets, so even the laughably implausible vision of his rooting through a bargain bin fails to explain this.
So which was it? Did Larry Bodine put his hands on illegal copies of Mac OS 9 and/or Microsoft Internet Explorer? Or is his article in some way inconsistent with the facts?
Between the unexplained trick he pulled getting his hands on a discontinued Mac nearly a year after it vanished from stores, to the outrageous price he claims to have paid for it, to these software shenanigans, I’m voting “inconsistent with the facts.” And snickering at my clever euphemism.
I’ll take it
The closing line of Bodine’s article is, “Wish me luck on selling the Mac.” His electronic mail address is then provided.
Of course I e-mailed him to ask how much he wants for this Mac. It’s a sweet little machine. As I said, I still use one piece of software that’s not yet available in an Intel version — thanks a lot, Adobe — and if I’ve got an opportunity to snatch up a bargain here, I’ll take it and try to justify the expense report to my boss later. (My attempt at justification will probably consist of my yelling “What in the world can that be?!” and running out of the room.)
If Larry writes back with any additional info about this amusingly unlikely series of events in his electronic life, I’ll be sure to let y’all know.
He really is dodging the whole 'sharing' question, but he does it so well. And with three plays/three days as the "killer app," I don't think a better response is required.Microsoft has announced its new iPod competitor, Zune. It says that this device is all about building communities. Are you worried?
In a word, no. I've seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you've gone through all that, the girl's got up and left! You're much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you're connected with about two feet of headphone cable.
Good luck to anyone who read that all. Sorry. I should get back to work.
