This is just a note to thank everyone who contributed towards my new laptop. I didn’t raise as much as I hoped, but I raised enough to offset most of the cost of a new MacBook which I got at a great price. This is the first time I’ve gone with a Mac in my life. It’s kind of strange but I just got sick of all the little problems I kept having with PC’s. Plus, this Google Wave demo convinced me that Microsoft has no future. For that matter, I don’t think traditional blogging platforms have much of a future either. Google Wave will subsume everything.
In any case, thanks to all of you, I have something to type on again. And it’s pretty nice.
Please give us an update on if you like your Mac in the future. I am a Mac lifer, and have listened to my fair share of ‘Your stupid to go Mac’ comments.
nalbar
l’ve had the opposite experience…all l’ve ever owned/used are macs…and everyone l’ve ever known who switched from a pc to a mac has evinced the adage,: once you go mac, you never go back.
excellent choice boo.
Had and used both platforms over the years, but as I work in software support, I’ve been forced for business reasons to gravitate towards Windows.
So I compromised: I own a Macbook Pro, and run XP in a Parallels virtual session. Works fine, and I can use the hardware I think is best, for all the different applications I need to support.
As for Google Wave–looks good, and Google certainly appears to have stolen the march on M$, but don’t give up on the big M yet. That much money can make up for a lot of lost development time, when it comes to rollout time. Secondly, count on M$ to find some way to make a Google profit-center a free product or service….it worked really well against Netscape….
That’s what I’m planning to do with my Mac simply because I use some applications that either are not available for Mac, or are too costly/difficult to get for Mac (if you understand my meaning). Also, I have not yet figured out how to switch from left-to-right to right-to-left typing on Mac applications which makes it utterly useless for typing in Arabic, which I need to do. So, if I can run both OS’s simultaneously on the same set of HW, that seems like the best course.
Have you tried the Input Menu under System Preferences >>International section? If you have it, it enables the standard QWERTY keyboard to be written into different languages. Arabic looks like this:
«قشزهذ سشوحمث فثطف.
ّ مهنث هف، ثدثر هب ّ ذشر؛ف قثشي فاث فثطف.
Thanks. Yes, I have that set up, and can switch from English to Arabic script easily. The problem I am having now is that it is putting down the Arabic script from left to right, which is the wrong direction. I have not played around with it much, and only with iWorks. Office applications have a button on the toolbar that allows me to change text direction, which is very handy because I often need to switch between languages in one document or spreadsheet, and there is also an International tab in Tools > Options that lets me set language preferences. So far I haven’t found anything like that in the MAC applications.
In TextEdit, the default text editing/word processing program, there is a command under Format >> Text >> Writing Direction that enables right to left writing. The Mac here at work doesn’t have things setup to show Arabic writing, otherwise I’d produce a sample line. My iPhone (which I am posting from) doesn’t have an Arabic function by default, either.
Thanks. That is really helpful, though I do often need to produce spreadsheets and documents that are probably more sophisticated than that program is capable of. It’s hard to believe that Pages and Numbers don’t also have that capability, so probably I just haven’t found it yet.
I would love to see what you produce in Arabic. :o} I wonder if an infinite number of monkeys sitting at an infinite number of computers could produce all the poetry of Mutanabbi. :o}
Much to my chagrin, iPods, and almost certainly iPhones do not have Arabic capability at all, unless something has changed recently. This is a big problem to me since most of the stuff I have on my iPod is Arabic music or spoken word, and so I have to go into iTunes, delete all the Arabic song names, and rewrite them in English script. If I don’t do that all I see on the iPod is blank spaces. I find it very difficult to believe that if they can manage Chinese and Japanese, and all the other alphabets they do that they cannot manage Arabic script, which is simply a phonetic alphabet of 28 letters.
The way I produced my sample text was switching my keyboard to Arabic from US English, then carefully typing a few words at a time. The first sentence says, IIRC, “Sample Arabic Text”. I can’t remember what the second line says.
Incidentally, I have a tourist’s pocket guide for Arabic that I bought for a dollar, but languages aren’t my thing & I have a hard time picking stuff up.
In looking through the App Store, I’ve been able to find Arabic keyboards, but you’d need a system-level package.
The keyboard is not a problem. My fingers pretty much know where to go, and in any case I usually buy stickers with the Arabic letters on them that I attach to the appropriate keys on the laptop keyboard. My only problem now is the text direction. Thanks to you I found it in the basic text editor and the MAC e-mail program, so I can use Arabic there, but it looks like the iWork programs do not have it – pretty surprising and disappointing since I paid $50 extra for them. Oh well. All the more reason to do the Windows on a virtual machine thing.
What you typed is gibberish in Arabic, since all it did was put down the letters that are mapped to the keys you pressed. That is what I was referring to earlier. It does not translate when you switch to Arabic script, it just types the letters according to the keys they are mapped to.
I have never found that those tourist guides to languages are helpful unless you already have some familiarity with the language. For one thing you can never get an idea of accurate pronunciation from them, so even if you remember the phrase and use it correctly, no one is likely to understand you. In fact, I know a couple of Americans who have lived in Syria for several years, and who took instruction in Syrian dialect, yet their American accent is so thick, and their pronunciation so off that I often find myself “translating” their Arabic to something the people they are talking to can understand. The funny thing is that I m sure they understand Damascus dialect much better than I do, yet they have problems being understood while I have no problem with people understanding me. I guess the ideal thing would be for them to be the listeners and me to be the speaker.
Congrats.
Wow! That’s a very fascinating tool.
I’m at 30 minutes into the video now and must say it is convincing. Scoop is gone in a second when this comes out.
And more than 1.6 million views since last Thursday.
Microsoft will be around for a while. Business apps don’t yet run on Google. The security requirements prohibit that. People still use Word, Excel, etc. and therefore Microsoft continues to have a base for its operating system.
Nice demo, though. Cool stuff. Reminds me of the old alt newsgroups, where the replies came so quickly you hardly had to wait around.
I’m happy with my Windows XP netbook, the Vista Vaio is collecting dust most of the time.
Good luck with the Mac, BooMan.
thanks, b2.
Vista is crap. So far Windows 7 looks much better. I bought an XP netbook for traveling, and it worked out great. One of the selling points for me was that it came with XP, not Vista. I wouldn’t have bought it with Vista.
Don’t drop it. ;-
Google Wave is definitely the wave of the future.
As for your new Mac, you`ll love it I`m sure.
Anyone I know who has switched to Mac, has been extremely happy & wonder why they`d waited so long.
As for not dropping it, don`t drop a china plate, a baby, or a bomb, either.
I have heard of PC users drop theirs also. From a five story building.
I think that might be a plan for the old computer… 🙂
Ya liked that one, eh!
sad news for blues lovers everywhere, koko taylor passed today in chicago. here’s a utube of her first big hit: wang dang doodle, with the late, great little walter on harp:
rip koko.
l believe that’s sonny terry and brownie mcghee in the wings.
so long, so long…
Microsoft sucks.
As long as you don’t start proselytizing for macs on the front page, fine.
If you do? Nuclear option. I hate Macs so very, very much.
I just got a new MacBook, too, only NOT at a great price at all! Where did you manage to find a great price? It’s pretty hard to find good deals on Apple products.
Does this mean that you will finally get a Twitter account Booman? I have been dying to RT some of your bad ass logic and links.
Congrats on your Mac from a longtime Mac user (since the MacII era, circa 1980…
Would strongly advise that you pick up a copy of Diskwarrior from Alsoft Software. This software, widely praised, keeps your hard drive directory in pristine shape. The product is extremely easy to use.
Anytime you feel things are a bit sluggish or you start noticing flaky behavior, this software will put things right immediately.
Wish I could have contributed to the purchase, have done donations here in the past, but clients are very slow in paying (that should sound familiar to any self-employed business folk…)
Thanks for all you do, Boo.
Wes in Oregon