Category: Tech

When it comes to computing gear, I’ve been an Apple fan since college. I love my Macs, iPhone, and iPad and wouldn’t trade them for anything. They’re reliable, beautiful, work great, and hold their resale value very well.

But I admit that when it comes to price (as opposed to value), Apple has never been the cheapest option. That’s why growing up in a working-class family, I never owned an Apple computer. We just couldn’t afford them.

But we could afford (barely) a succession of Commodore 64s and, eventually, an Amiga — all of which I got great use out of. So while I may have grown up envying my friends’ Apple IIs and Macs, I didn’t miss out on the benefits of computing. Commodore truly made computers for the masses, which I’ll always be grateful for.

Given this, I was especially happy to see these old hallmarks of my computing youth during a recent visit to the Computer History Museum. I also liked that the Commodores sat on the top shelf of their affordable early microcomputers display. For those of us who loved computers but didn’t have much to spend on them, they truly were top shelf items.

(Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA)

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Recently, I visited XFR STN at the New Museum with a group of archivists. The folks behind the exhibit gave us a brief but very thorough overview into their data recovery workflow.

I totally geeked out seeing their workstation of old drives for reading obsolete digital media like floppies (3.5/5.25/SD/HD/SS/DS), Zip disks, Jaz drives, and (soon) optical. I got nostalgic for the Commodore 64s and Amigas I owned during childhood. I also got a little sad thinking about all the data lost forever on the floppy disks I threw away.

I’m glad exhibits like XFR STN exist, because I don’t think there’s nearly enough awareness of the digital dark age we’re potentially living in. I made Digital Antiquities a few years back in an attempt to bring attention to this issue and I have a feeling I’ll revisit these ideas in future work. I hope this is a topic that becomes part of the cultural conversation in a bigger way, soon.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpchan/9624323879/

From “How I became a password cracker” at Ars Technica:

Watching your own password fall in less than a second is the sort of online security lesson everyone should learn at least once—and it provides a free education in how to build a better password.

It seems like every week there’s a new totally terrifying story about how widespread hacking has become and how even tech-savvy folks have found themselves victims.

I admit it: I used to practice the lazy habit of re-using weak passwords on multiple sites. Then I read too many stories like these and got religion. Read them for yourself and then consider whether turning on two-factor authentication and using an app like 1Password is worth the hassle.

For the longest time, precautions like these weren’t worth my time and effort. But now they seem like very cheap insurance.

John Siracusa writes:

On paper, the Mac Pro may no longer be a viable product, but it would be a mistake for Apple to abandon the concept that it embodies. Like the Power Mac before it, the Mac Pro was designed to be the most powerful personal computer Apple knows how to make. That goal should be maintained, even as the individual products that aim to achieve it evolve.

I completely agree with Steve Jobs: tablets are like cars, PCs are like trucks. And most of us don’t need to own trucks.

But some of us rely on trucks for a living and we’re willing to pay for the things that only a truck can do. At both my day and night jobs, I rely on five year-old 8-core Mac Pro workstations to do my work. Originally released in early 2008, these Macs are still fast and rock-solid reliable. The initial sticker price was high, but these machines have paid for themselves many, many times over in every metric you can measure.

If you need a truck and you love Macs, there’s no other machine that’ll do. That’s why I hope that the “really great” Mac Pro revamp that Tim Cook promised us last year doesn’t disappoint. Here’s to hoping that the new truck is, er, a monster.

(Hat Tip to Daring Fireball for the link to Siracusa’s post.)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpchan/6926963319/

I’ve very cleverly hidden a Sony FS100 camera somewhere in this photo — I bet you can’t find it!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpchan/6768631349/

There’s battery chargers, and then there’s the ANSMANN ENERGY 16.

Yes, I am bragging.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpchan/5902945747/

The biggest surprise is that it’s a Mac. Usually when I see these public errors it’s a Windows machine. Dude, you’re letting us Apple fanboys down…

(Chelsea Market, Manhattan)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpchan/4635950922/

I’ve been collecting pre-2000 electronics of all kinds for an upcoming movie shoot and snagged this gem in my sister’s garage, complete with floppy drive. Woohoo!

(Houston, TX)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpchan/4532768147/

My 2004 12″ PowerBook 1.33 is one of my favorite Macs ever, but it was finally time to replace it. The 2010 MacBook Pro 13″ 2.4 is a worthy successor, even if it’s not quite as compact as the PowerBook. I guess if I ever want a Mac as small as the 12″, I’ll have to buy an iPad.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpchan/3565010304/

In a few hours, I’ll either have a 320GB Apple TV or a paperweight with an HDMI port.

(Bkyn Blggng HQ)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpchan/3392133785/

With the Mac’s built-in Migration Assistant, it’s easy to move all all your files and apps from your old machine to your new one. But be prepared to wait a while if you’ve got a lot of stuff; it took at least ten hours to move my files.

Update 4/26/2009: my resident Mac consultant DV tells me I should have used Firewire instead of Ethernet. Dude, where were you four weeks ago!?!

(Bklyn Blggg HQ)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpchan/2274790598/

I love the Apple Retail Stores, but they can be a total zoo sometimes because of the crowds. I was checking out this Macbook Air for about 30 seconds before this very aggressive woman started to hover over me as if I were taking too long and a passing middle-aged guy made a joke about how I was handling the machine too eagerly. After about another minute with the Macbook, I fled the store for the relative peace of Prince Street and let the woman and the middle-aged guy fight it out. (The woman won.)

I tried not to take the experience too personally, but I did wonder if there’s some truth to the theory that Mac users are self-centered and arrogant. Or maybe, it’s just that Apple consistently makes products that make people a little crazy, myself included.

Oh…and about the computer: it’s awesome engineering and surprisingly sturdy, but it’s not for everyone. Having said that, I can already see that there’s a 50% chance I’ll replace my beloved but aging 2004 PowerBook 12″ 1.33 with an an Air rev. B in 2009.

(Apple Store Soho, Manhattan)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpchan/2169387060/

I don’t know how they do it at them fancy Apple Stores with the pretty girls, but here at the Bklyn Blggng Genius Bar, we have our own custom tools for removing Macbook RAM.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpchan/148703492/

I thought the new MacBook looked rather cheap in the photos I’ve seen, but in person it’s quite cool, especially the black one. (Though not $150 extra kind-of-cool.) Even the funny keyboard seemed usable and felt decent under the fingers. This is probably the laptop I’ll buy when I replace my beloved PowerBook G4 12″ sometime next year…unless an even smaller model comes out before then.

(Apple Store Soho, Prince St, Manhattan)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpchan/111661077/

The great thing about being on vacation is that it gives you the psychic license to do things you’d never even consider doing at home — like walking by an Apple Store and not going in.

(Apple Store Valley Fair, Santa Clara, CA)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpchan/3826699/

Help me, I cannot escape the Cult of Mac. I own a PowerBook. I own an iPod. I want to buy more Apple stuff, even though I don’t need it. A power adapter, some extra RAM, even one of those damn iPod socks — I need to buy something…

Or help you buy it. If you need assistance purchasing a Mac or an iPod, I can offer advice and probably even help you set it up if I have enough frequent flyer miles to get to where you are. Just drop me a line. You know the URL. Please do it quickly.

(Apple Store SoHo, 103 Prince St at Greene St, +1-212-226-3126, open 7 days)