Technology

The Case for Two Tablets

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On last Wednesday Apple announced several product refreshes as well as a new iPad mini. It was very funny that a company as secretive as Apple had this product announcement predicted so perfectly weeks before. I for one was hoping the rumors were true since I really wanted a smaller iPad even though I love my third-generation iPad.

The dilemma for me has been I want a tablet to use in multiple situations. MC and I use my iPad around the apartment, usually on the couch to do all sorts of things. We will order take-out, fresh direct, browse the web, or just look up where we know some actor that were seen on TV using the IMDB app. We use it when we travel as a map, research tool, email checker, reading a book, watch a movie, and probably lots of other things I’m not remembering. At work it’s what I take to go to a meeting. I have a notebook and a pen but I barely ever use it. With the iPad I can take notes with Evernote, jot down a task with remember the milk, or quickly pull up a story on our Jira system via the web browser.

For all those situations the iPad is fantastic! The screen size is beneficial and it’s either sitting on a desk or not being held long enough for the weight to matter that much. If there were no other use cases for me one device would be perfect. Problem is I also want something that I can use on my 45 minute commute each direction to work. I could use my smartphone but the screen is still pretty small and sometimes it’s difficult to read for long periods of time. If I’d better vision maybe that would be in, since plenty of people just use that. A Kindle is a great idea, but the regular ones you can only read books on. I would love to catch up on just by reading but during the commute time I want to be able to get up to date on all the overnight email at work (I get up to 100 overnight). I also want to review my tasks for the day, read news stories, books, and watch movies or podcasts. I don’t do that every day but each day in the mood to do something different. Using my full-size iPad is difficult since it’s hard to hold in one hand while standing on the subway. If I get a seat it’s usable but still not the best option. Let’s face it I don’t always get a seat anyway.

When Google announced the Nexus 7 I was excited because I thought that form factor would be perfect for my commute to work. I was right. Reading on it perfectly fine with one hand for less than an hour at a time. The screen size was okay. I would’ve liked bigger but I understand the need to be aware holding one hand was more important. The problem is it’s low and kind of buggy. This is an about the Nexus 7, so not going to all the details. Let’s just say I got what I paid for but the experience is still lacking. So much so that I do not always take it with me each morning.

I am hopeful that the iPad mini will be as well built as the larger iPad. There’s no reason to believe otherwise. With the smaller device I’ll be able to use it on my commute to and from work, possibly in meetings, when empowered about in the city for the day, and as a second device when MC and I both want to use it at the same time. That last one has happened several times when we traveled even though she’s not wanted to get her own.

I will admit that it’s an expensive device for specific purpose, however that aside I see need just by looking at how much I’ve tried to use the Google tablet. I opted to spend the extra $130 to get the LTE model. I’m not sure if I will activate it but I have seen the limitations of just Wi-Fi only in both the original iPad and the Nexus 7 slut want the option. Now all I have to do is wait three or so more weeks and give it a testdrive. Worst-case scenario is it gets eBayed. The unlikely but possible best case scenario is I eBay my iPad three.  More likely is I end up keeping both, but we shall see.

I will end this post by saying that no one really “needs” a tablet computer.  There are people out there who can’t afford food so having one or two niche devices that didn’t really exist before 2010 is not necessary   Whats necessary and what people want or makes their lives easier is a totally different story.

Thanks to Quicken 2013 I am Now Using iBank

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I would like to thank Intuit for releasing Quicken 2013.  It was what I finally needed to ditch Quicken (hopefully for good) and try a native Mac application.

I have been using personal-finance software since my first year of college. I remember getting a free copy of Bank Street writer Pro. From there I moved to a copy of Quicken. I’ve been using various versions of Quicken since.  Things were easy for almost a decade. That all started to change after I bought my first Mac in July 2002. At that time I still had a Windows machine and didn’t switch to a Mac as my primary computer until late 2002 or early 2003. Back then I still had several machines so there was always a Windows box to run Quicken. At that point I’m using that software for so long there was no way I was going to stop. Microsoft Money didn’t appeal to me. By then the ability to download transaction data from banks and credit cards locked me in.

The problem turned out to be was using Windows less often as the Mac dominated my computer use. As I transitioned from Windows to Macintosh try to identify all the pieces of software that I used on Windows so I could find the equivalent Mac software. This is where I ran into a problem. Quicken for Windows is great. On the Mac not as much so.

After a time I made the decision to export my data from my Windows Quicken import into the Mac version. That was a generally painful process but I did succeed. I happily used the Mac version of Quicken for a year or so, maybe longer. The limitations became pretty painful. I am not going to go into the limitations of Quicken for Mac. They are well-documented all over the Internet. Let’s just say I wasn’t pleased. The only viable option I had which was to bring all my data back into Windows Quicken. That process was equally painful than the previous conversion. After moving back to a Windows version for a time (somewhere in the area of a year or more) I had a laptop or desktop basically for the sole purpose of running one or two pieces of Windows software. One of those was Quicken.

By the time Apple came out with Intel-based Macs most of my personal computing was all Mac except for some pieces software like a mentioned that didn’t have a Mac equivalent. For work however I was very dependent Windows centric software. Parallels and then later VMware fusion allowed me to consolidate down to one computer. I was able to use a Mac running a VM of Windows. That was a huge win for me and probably millions of other people. To this day I have a Windows VM on my MacBook Air. The reason I bring all this up is after the Intel Macs came out I was able to transition pretty much every application I use to a native Mac Application or to a web-based application. At my current job they have a bring your own device policy which allows me to bring my Mac and use it on company networks. I stopped needing a VM for work a little over a year ago when the exchange server was on got upgraded and outlook for the Mac work perfectly with it.

By this point the only reason I need a Windows VM regularly was to allow me to use Quicken. It is the last piece of software that I rely on Windows for. The problem was I really liked it and I hadn’t been able to find a replacement for it that was a native Mac app. I had used mint, the web service ironically owned now by Intuit but without the ability from you import almost 2 decades worth of data I was never going use it full-time. No other Web service allowed me the ability to import either. That got me looking at Mac programs that did personal finance. Surprisingly there were several I tried a few of them but none of them have the features that would equal Quicken. I probably went back and forth trying out applications on all for the past year or two with no success. During this time I had a growing desire to be able to use my smart phone to sync with my desktop bank software. It bothered me that years ago I could do this with my Treo and Quicken yet I couldn’t with a modern smartphone.

In late June hyper down and force myself to try iBank. It had the smart phone thinking that I wanted and the major features I was looking from Quicken. It wasn’t perfect but I thought it was a better choice than Moneywell or Money Dance.  I spent several hours exporting my data from Quicken importing it and cleaning it up in iBank. I was all set to cut the cord from Quicken when I ran into some reconciliation issues using iBank. Turns out if you have transactions in your register with iBank that are from the same payee and for the same dollar value as a new transaction being downloaded the software will sometimes get confused and think you’ve already downloaded it and not suggest that it’s a new transaction even know the date may be different. I’ve never really had a problem with Quicken doing anything like that. The first time it happened with iBank it took me about 45 minutes to figure out what happened and fix it. It spooked me to the point where I didn’t really trust the software and fell back to Quicken.

That brings us to this month. By now I accepted the fact that I would be stuck with my one holdout piece of Windows software. I figured I have been using our virtual machine for years and it wasn’t such a huge deal to continue using one. It bothered me to do it but it was something that worked even if it was not very elegant of an option. I also figured at some point into it had to offer a smartphone app.

I got excited when I read about Quicken 2013 and the option for using your iPhone just as I had wanted.  I went out and purchased a copy, and downloaded it right away.  I didn’t do too much research online because they offered a 60 money back guarantee. I should’ve looked at reviews and forum posts before I bought it. Downloading and installing the new version was trivial. The problem was you it wouldn’t sync to the iPhone, or technically to their cloud service at all.  I wasn’t a fan of the fact that they needed to sync my data to their systems before it could goto my smartphone in the first place, so it totally aggravated me to find out that because of that the data wouldn’t sync at all. At that point I went online to check out the forums and noticed lots of people with similar problems. There didn’t seem to be a solution other than Intuit was hard at work fixing the bugs. I deal with software development and if a major function of the software doesn’t work you don’t release it.  I personally wouldn’t have purchased the upgrade without that function.

I was really pissed off. First I thought I should just downgrade. Then I decided enough was enough and it didn’t seem like there ever really was going to be a stable solution from Intuit so I decided to sync up my iBank file again with my current Quicken data and give it another try knowing the limitations that I learned in June. I also immediately requested a refund from Intuit.  The only positive out of this experience was intuit was true to their word and I got a refund without any hassle. Now they might fix their bugs but at this point their lack of an up-to-date Mac version of their software that isn’t crippled and the fact that their new Windows software is still so buggy they convinced me to use to finally go all Mac and use iBank.

It has been only three weeks or so and I am still getting used to the new software.  There are things I liked much better in Quicken but now that I have a handle on the transaction download issue I am pretty happy.  Some of the bulk edit and change functions of Quicken I miss but I don’t use them that often to have that really be a reason not to switch.  Am I at the point of no return?  I hope so but don’t know.  After 3 months you can’t retrieve your data from banks online anymore (typically so wanting to switch back after that will be problematic   For now and hopefully for good I running all Mac.

Ordering an iPhone 5 Drama

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I think I’ve said this before, I’m a fan of Apple but I don’t just blindly buy their stuff. I’ve actually tried android phones for over two years or so and keep coming back to my iPhones. I mentioned that now because I’ve gone out immediately ordered every iPhone that’s been out. I’m not sure if the original counts in that statement since I returned it the next day. I’ve written about that in the past, that just goes to show me the product inferior even know it’s Apple product I’ll send it back. With the iPhone 5 it was the first device that I was not 100% sure I wanted it since the original.  I ordered one as a knee jerk reaction to the fact that there was one.  I did want the bigger screen and LTE but I really wasn’t sure it was enough to upgrade.

I went online at 6AM the day you could pre-order only to find that even though i was online 2 hours after you could start ordering my order wouldn’t show up for 2 weeks after the launch date.  I had second thoughts about my order after reading that even though the Verizon iPhone was LTE it would still not be able to do voice and data at the same time unless you are on wifi.  I was not pleased since that was one of the reasons i didn’t go with the CDMA Verizon iPhone. 4.  My initial reaction was that I wasn’t sure if i wanted this new phone with that limitation so I went and canceled my order.

I went back and forth on what I wanted for almost 2 weeks.  I know its just a phone but lets face it I use this thing all the time so making the right decision is important to me.  That and I like technology that works, and wont stand for using something every day that just doesn’t work right.  Note to self that means my microwave needs to go soon!  In the end I realized that I do want a bigger screen, and having a phone that be used with one hand is important especially with a new baby being held sometimes in the other hand.  The final straw was that yes voice and data wont work at the same time but at least i will get both voice and data to work period.  Lets face it AT&T just does not work at my office, and that is right in the middle of Times Square.  Everyone with Verizon doesn’t claim any issues.

So here I am ready to order my phone now.  Well Apple didn’t want my order.  For some reason by caneling my last order they didn’t like me anymore.  it had something to do with the credit authorization for a new verizon account.  Whatever the reason i wasn’t happy.  I ended up placing an order with Verizon directly.  I went with the black model, again.  I kept telling myself i wanted a white one but concerns over it getting dirty looking got me to go with black again.  The only issue was Verizon told me I wouldnt get my new phone until October 19th.  I was not pleased but at least i could use IOS 6 on my 4S in the interim   I was suprised to get a note in late Sept telling me that my order had shipped.  In the end I got my new phone from Verizon around the same time that Apple said I would have gotten my phone if I ordered it from them on the first day of pre-orders.  Go figure.  So after a bit of drama I now am sporting a new iPhone 5.  The best part is I can now make and receive calls at work.  Something I havent been able to do since 2009, but more on that in another post, maybe…

Dragon Dictate 3 Upgrade

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Since I like writing, but typing at the end of the day after working at a computer all day is not the most fun thing to do I have been using dictation to write. It has been fantastic.

The issue is since I upgraded to mountain lion my dictation software on the Mac has not been working. I’ve actually been using the dictation on my iPhone 4S. I think I’ve written about that before. It’s actually quite good, but nowhere near as good as using the computer. As if to prove a point, the WordPress app on my iPhone 4S just crashed for the second time in a day. I lost about two paragraphs of this post and had to write it over. That sort of thing doesn’t happen on the Mac.

Today, Nuance the makers of Dragon Dictate released an upgrade for Dragon Dictate for the Mac that works with Mountain lion. Because of the limitations of the iPhone dictation I am pleased to be able to upgrade. But I’m not pleased about is the rather expensive price of the $149 to be able to upgrade. I don’t typically buy software is expensive. The only other software that comes anywhere close to this price is Microsoft office. Even that I got a rather steep discount through work the last upgrade. I just hope the price was worth it.

I am downloading it now, and I hope to have it working tonight. I’m wondering if I need to train it again. This software I like the mobile phone versions of the software requires you to train the software by reading. It does not take very long, but it does require some minor concentration to read to a computer. I will give my opinion in a later post.

Plex On AppleTV

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I have had an AppleTV since the first generation one came out years ago. When the second-generation one came out I pick that up and sold the original on eBay. I have loved the idea of an AppleTV for years. I have even made my own homegrown media center on several occasions. If you read this blog you’ll read about several of those iterations. The problem is in practice I really haven’t had huge luck with the AppleTVs. The second-generation AppleTV I currently have has been replaced with a Mac Mini running Plex media center. That has been my media center of choice for a while. I have tried the Boxer box, and the Roku. with both of those I was hoping to plug into my media centers the a library, and with the Roku to use it as a front end for Plex. neither of those options worked out very well. All along the AppleTV has been powered on but not plugged into my TV. I would plug it in to music, but not really using it for TV. I have been generally lazy and didn’t want to jailbreak it. The Mac Mini has functioned generally well so I was in no rush to try anything different again. since my move I have had some more buggy experiences with the Mac Mini then the previous two years or so I’ve had it. It wasn’t enough for me to go making drastic changes, that is until I read that the Plex team had made a front end for the jailbroken AppleTV. So I gave jailbreaking a shot. At first I thought I had bricked the AppleTV, but after about two days of leaving it plugged in and I forgot about it. I turned on my TV and it had worked. I got really lucky.

After the small drama in jailbreaking, it was trivial to get Plex installed. After it was installed I ran into some problems with choppiness of the video. I fixed that by tweaking some of the bit rate settings. Since then it has been working perfectly. I got even luckier when less than a week after I had configured Plex Apple announced that Hulu is now available on the device. I covered that in another blog post.

For right now the AppleTV is now my main media center. I still have my Mac Mini. It’s needed to run the Plex server, and host all the videos and music on my Drobo. it is just not plugged into my TV anymore. It has been an pre-smooth experience so far. MC likes it that she can stream music again directly to the AppleTV without me having to plug it in or read it up since it is now always attached to the television.

We still have a TiVo, and use it for a DVR. Longer-term I would love to find a way to use Hulu, the Internet, and my AppleTV to replace TiVo and and really expensive cable bill. We are not quite there yet in trying that out.

Back to Blogging

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I’m back to blogging full swing this week. A lot of what I have posted for May June and July have been things I’ve just written and never got around to posting, or things I had rough notes about and just never really elaborated on them. Not fully sure what got me to start posting again, but what’s made it really easy has been the ability to dictate what I want to say to my phone. Currently I’m running Mac OS X Mountain lion. Unfortunately it is not currently compatible with Dragon dictate that I have. After a long day working and writing on the computer typing a blog post sometimes is physically uncomfortable. So before I stopped blogging I was using dictation on my Mac. I was getting mixed results from it, but I was using it. With me being unable to use the dictation software on the computer I gave talking into my phone a try. I’m pleasantly surprised by the positive results. I first tried my android tablet because it has off-line dictation, but honestly the keyboard editing on android has not been very fun to deal with. So now I’m using my iPhone 4S and the WordPress app to edit after I dictate has been pretty simple.

Next Gen MacBook Air

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After much pondering I broke down and put an order in for a new MacBook air 13 inch. I bought a 2011 model last August and I’ve been very happy with it, except for a few drawbacks. The new model seems to correct all the drawbacks I’ve experienced. The only thing I had to do to get it was spent a lot more money for it. I think it’ll be worth it in the long run. I have been generally upgrading laptops every year so, and in the near future I don’t think that’s going to happen with a baby on the way so I want to get the upgrade out-of-the-way and be happy with additional capacity now.

This new MacBook air is sporting eight gigs of RAM and a 512 gig SSD drive. The old model didn’t have enough memory for what I was using it for, especially running a virtual machine. I also maxed out the 256 gigs on the old one SSD, so going for the 512 gig SSD was a must. But that upgrade broke the bank. I contemplated going for a MacBook Pro 13 inch with the regular hard drive but the cost difference and the performance difference really didn’t make it worthwhile for me. I’ve been spoiled with the SSDs in the Air’s for the past two years so going back to a 5400 RPM hard drive wasn’t really something I wanted to do. Other notable improvements is the USB three, but I really don’t have any use for it at this moment. Also the Core i7 dual core processor is slightly faster than what I’ve been used to all my old air.

It doesn’t come with Mountain Lion, but I get a free upgrade when it comes out in a few weeks.  I will probably buy the upgrade anyway since I have other computers I want to upgrade anyway, and the free upgrade is only for this laptop.

So far I’ve been extremely pleased with the upgrade. Now all I have to do is eBay my old laptop.

Almost All Mac, Well Sometimes…

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For over a year I have opted into a “bring your own equipment” pilot with my company.  It basically allows me to use a Mac at work.  There has been a great community helping with how too’s, what apps to use to replicate Windows apps, etc.  For the bulk of that time I have generally opted to continue to use a Windows machine.  It wasn’t because I wanted to, but it was because of limitations of email.  More specifically it was Entourage was a horrible app that came no were near its Outlook for Windows equivalent, and then it was that Outlook 2011 wasn’t compatible with the Exchange system I was using.  Last month that last part changed and I was able to use Outlook on the Mac.  It was the last major piece to my going all Mac again at work.

Over the past month I have been going days using all native Mac apps when working remotely and then days of using my Windows machine in the office.  For the most part I am able to work 80% or more on native apps on my mac when I try.  There are a few websites I need that require IE, plus doing certain things in Sharepoint is better looking or just easier to do in IE.  I can do a lot in Sharepoint on the mac but I do default back to IE a lot.

I also had a few issues with Webex on Lion.  I still have issues if logging in via one of the two Webex portals I use.  The other I found a work around for and it does work.  So half the Webex’s I need I have to goto my iPad or a VM.

As I mentioned earlier the big hold back was email.  Now that I can use outlook 2011, for a while I didn’t want to.  It is Outlook and much better than Entourage, however it is not as feature rich as Outlook 2010.  Plenty of reviews covered that.  But even with its limitations it is growing on me.  I am not yet ready to go all mac every day but I am getting closer.  Right now I am at 2-3 days a week.  Since I sit at a computer 8+ hours a day a change like this will take a while to get used to.  For now I hope to continue to be mostly Mac at work more days a week.

 

The New MacBook Air

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This week turned out to be a two laptop week.  I was already thinking about selling my existing 2010 Macbook Air and upgrade to the new i5 2011 Air’s that just came out in July  when I convinced M to order a new Macbook Pro but I finally pulled the trigger on the new Air today.

I was waffling for a while since the 2010 model is still perfectly good.  The big drawback for me was the processor wasn’t anywhere near a desktop or even a bigger laptop’s speed.  That changed when the new i5 Air’s came out.  After figuring how much i could sell my old Air for i decided to make the jump and upgrade.

I have bought lots of stuff at the 5th ave Apple store but today was actually the worst experience i have ever had there.  It was super crowded and it took forever to find someone to help me, only to have them tell me oh you need to find a free computer and tell the ipad sitting next to it you need assistance and then you will go into queue to get help.  Problem there is everyone is on these laptops for hours surfing Facebook and two no one tells you that is the process.  I have bought more than one computer from this store and this is the first time i have ever had to do that.

Drama aside i was able to get the model I wanted and headed home.  Well after more minor train drama i was able to get home but that is another story.

I had already taken a backup of my old Air using Carbon Copy Cloner so setting up this computer was as simple as plugging in the backup hard drive and saying yes restore from an external hard drive.  For that function alone i have to love Apple!

 

 

Another Convert

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Today the unthinkable happened.  I ordered M a new computer.  Since 2003 M has had the same HP laptop.  Long ago I gave up making fun of her for it.  For me I like something new, and I know that most people don’t.  For her even though the laptop was old by any standard it worked for her.  If she was happy, I was happy.

Recently however M has been rebooting the laptop constantly and commenting on how slow it is.  I am not sure if something changed recently or if it was just that she has been using my new iMac and noticing the difference in speed.  She was hesitant to spend the cash on a new one.

I finally convinced her to take the plunge.  I was pushing a Macbook Pro, but I really didn’t know her usage requirements so I wasn’t sure if she could do everything on a Mac.  After running a test of the one app in question I ran into a snag.  A remote desktop app she used required an activeX control and couldn’t be used on a Mac.  After talking with M I realized that app wasn’t used that much so using VMware was an option.

With the activeX issue squared away we ordered the entry level Macbook Pro 13″.  I am hoping M will be a happy Mac convert.  She is not the first person I have converted to the Mac.  Besides about a dozen friends or more I finally got my parents converted to an iMac also.  I think everyone has been happy as a convert with the exception of Jayson, but Jay is now looking to get another Mac so I will have a 100% conversion rating.

We await the new Mac to arrive later this week.  Then I have to figure out how to migrate all the data from the HP to the Macbook Pro.