Last week I upgraded my PC computer. Since my games machine often doubles as my work machine, it normally being the most powerful computer I own, I had to migrate my work stuff to the new machine this week. Back in the bad old days, I used to dread this. I would needed to have locate a large number of disks and activation codes and installed my software onto the new computer. I would have had to burn CDs, DVDs or used an external hard-drive to shift my data. There would have been a lot of fumbling as I tried to locate various essential items, failed and had to find a workaround. One of the great appeals of Apple’s Macintosh machines is the ease of migrating to a new one. Once upon a time this was done with firewire cables and … [Read more...]
MacBook Solutions
As some of you may recall I have been having problems with my MacBook Pro, to the point where I was just about ready to give up on it. It has been crashing more and more often recently and this is not something you want in a work machine. I had installed a new SSD but the machine refused to boot after awhile so I stuck the old hard drive back in. There were still random crashes but at least it worked, most of the time. Sometimes programs would not work as they were supposed to. Sometimes the whole machine would simply freeze and all I could do was lean on the power button until it reset. I was, to say the least, unhappy. One reason I have always liked Apple machines is, to quote the slogan, they just work. Apparently not this MacBook, not … [Read more...]
The Tech Roundup
It’s a big week in tech for me. Asus and Acer have just announced their new ultrabooks, Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) is due any day now and, perhaps, most importantly Literature & Latte have (sort of) announced a release date for Scrivener for Windows. First up, the ultrabooks. I have long lusted after some version of the MacBook Air. It seems to be just about the perfect size for a travelling laptop to me. Somehow I can never quite make myself pull the trigger though. £1000 is a lot of money and to tell the truth I have been less than impressed with what I have seen of Lion. Heretical as it sounds to many people I actually prefer both Windows 7 and Ubuntu. I have been living in hope that Intel’s Ultrabook initiative would … [Read more...]
Apple Sales Growth and Guardian Spin
Over at the Guardian tech blog Charles Arthur points out that over the past five years Apple has enjoyed growth of up to 27% while Windows PC manufacturers have seen sales slump. Sounds impressive, doesn't it? Surely it's worthy of serious investigation! There must be something that Windows PC manufacturers could learn here. And yet the same article points out that Apple's overall market share has grown from something like 3.35% worldwide to a mighty 4%. That sounds a lot less impressive, doesn't it? Apple are a great brand and they make very nice machines but 4% market share is not striking any sort of blow against the Windows behemoth. Using those 27% growth statistics to flog the Windows beast relies on a simple jedi math trick. Here it … [Read more...]
