BlogDale

These Mac toys aren’t all that bad, really.  I’m finding a few niggles with the Mac Pro such as the cursor stuttering all over the place when an application is loading up - I’m finding it very very annoying, and am in the process of doing something about it.  Surely this Mac which cost over 10 times as much as my trusty old Windows PC should be able to cope with the same kinds of load that my butterfly mind can put on it (10 applications open, doing stuff in each simultaneously -  you know the kind of thing)? Anyway, moves are afoot to cure this.

I once vowed that I would never need an iPod, because the most useful thing about my iRiver is that it allows me to recrod straight into it.  You can’t do that with an iPod, so nar nar de nar nar.   The thing I rarely mention is that if I want to add an external mic to the iRiver I have to amplify the signal from the mic, which means another piece of kit (Behringer amplifier) that has to plug into the mains, so there goes my roving reporter capability.  I tried a mic with it’s own (alleged) power supply but it didn’t work.  So I’m left to using the barely-adequate internal mic on the iRiver, or sticking to recording things in reach of a power socket.

So, now I’m becoming a Macboy I tend to read some of their fansites.  Sometimes it’s gut-wrenchingly cringeworthy, the level of simpering loyalty that people have for their computer (it’s a MACHINE, FGS) and it’s creators, but I’ve found some useful stuff (no cure for mouse stutter yet though except the Mac equivalent of a ctrl-alt-del).  This is my favourite so far - a Podcasting Studio for the iPod.  Oops, checking again reveals that this isn’t a Mac Fanzine site, but Podcasting News.  This might just see me buying an iPod, but really I wanted one of those nifty iTouch jobbies.  Bet it doesn’t work with one of those.

Please don’t tell on me. I bought a mac.

<whisper> OK Steve, you were right.  I do like it. </whisper> (Steve knows how hard it was for me to say that.  In public, as well).

Yes, I know, one of those “plastic toys” (I got round that, mine’s aluminium). After a lot of thought and anguish about how I’d need to transfer all my Windoze expertise and Stuff (lots of Stuff) across to a Mac, and how there would be a huge learning curve, etc., etc., my thirst for adventure exceeded my reluctance and I made the jump. Don’t get me wrong, I still have the PC running right by me - Just In Case, you understand - and I have taken out insurance against hitting technological brick walls such as You Can’t Do That on a Mac. Umm..the insurance is that this Mac runs Parallels so I can run Windows on it (and Linux, w00t) all at the same time. Scary stuff. I’m still gathering confidence to run Bootcamp so that I can run Windows DirectX 3D games on this baby (Parallels won’t do it - yet) but when that’s done I shall retire the old PC to the children’s room.

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