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Despite the many years of Windows-Only use, I have realized that now the Macintosh OS is much better than the Windows system. The reason is because the Mac OS is just simply more elegant and looks so much better Windows is just average while, Mac OS looks like are on the machine.  In addition once you start using the mac and get used to it, the mac is much faster to get things done because of the simplicity. Another advantage is that the Mac OS is built on Unix and because of that, it’s security is vastly superior to Windows and it does not have any viruses to wreck your system. Finally, Mac OS has a lot of great programs built in and makes it much easier to get started faster without any extra work.

I know this article is short but those are all of the basic reasons on why Mac OS is superior, and the simplicity and saftey make the mac a much better environment. Also, Apple makes a limited number of systems and because of that, there are not nearly as many compatibility as Windows. The only downside of the Mac is the larger price tag, that goes with buying a Mac but, I believe it is totally worth it!

After the latest round of notebook updates, Apple has made the Macbooks a lot more powerful and could be a good option for the majority of people who want a macbook and allows them to save a lot of money. The Macbook Pro has a few advantages but, now that the Macbook has the multi touch interface, alluminum case, and the backlit keyboard which were originally only availible on the Macbook Pro.

The features that are only avalible on the Macbook Pro are the built-in express card slot. This is needed only if you need to add additional USB or Firewire slots with an Express Card or a memory card reader that you would have to buy seperatly.  Another feature is the larger screen Macbooks only come with 13 inch screens but, Macbook Pros boast a 15.4 inch and 17 inch screens so if you need a bigger screen, then you may want to opt for the Macbook Pro. The Macbook Pro also has faster processor options the Macbook can get as powerful as a 2.4 GHZ processor while, the Macbook Pro can go as high as 2.8 GHZ. The Pro also has an extra graphics card that the user can togle to if they want higher performance and want to sacrifice 1 hour of battery life.  Finally, the Pro has a Firewire port which is used many by video producers to capture video from a camera.

The Macbook Pro’s extra features make it $400 more than the high-end Macbook and has a few extra feature and the Macbook would be a great laptop for the average user. However people who might want to consider the pro are people doing high-end video or photo editing or anything graphically demanding the pro is probably the option for them. Also, if you need Firewire or Express Card the Macbook Pro is for you! Otherwise, save your money  and get the macbook!

When I got my Macbook Pro, it was the first time I have used a Mac that was my own, and one that I had an administrator account and full access. I loved all the fun things built into the mac that Windows does not come with and the simplicity and elegance is a major improvement over Windows XP.  When I booted up for the first time, I setup the machine and then logged in I was already ready to use within the first 5 minutes. Another really nice thing, is there is no start menu of applications, instead,  you can either put applications on the dock for quick access or they are in the finder under Applications listed alphabetically. Installing Applications is extremely easy too, all you need top do is download the .dmg and then when you open it drag the Applications Folder and it is installed. Another awesome feature of the mac, is it comes with all the drivers set and the hardware is all setup. One thing that my mac did that was a very nice surprise for me is that it came with a built-in PDF reader and Flash Player which usually has to be installed manually. This is nice because although I could install the applications on my own,  it is much easier to just open the computer and get right to work!

Macs also come with some really cool software out of the box that are great  fun and can be used productivly too. Macs come with imovie, video editing, iWeb for web design, iPhoto, a great photo management applications, ical, and photobooth which take pictres ands has a lot of really cool effects. These are nice not just for casual use but, it can also be used for semi-professionals.

All-in-all with all the great features built-in make it much more apparent why people choose the mac over Windows. With everything built-in it makes it much more easy to just boot up the computer and then get right to the work that you need to get done. The Mac OS has elegance, power and speed making Windows look like a thing of the past. These bonus features built in to the OS, paired with it’s elegance and power makes Mac OS worth the major price difference, I reccomend considering a mac when it is time to buy a new computer.

Two weeks ago, you might have noticed that I did not write a Friday post for that week, the reason is that I had just gotten my new Macbook Pro and was busy migrating to it from my old Dell to the Mac and was unfortuantly not able to write a post. I got the newly-updated Macbook Pro, and after using it for two weeks, think it is the best computer that I have used in my entire life.

The Macbook Pro has a gorgeous 15.4 inch screen that is both bright and glossy and make watching video or look at pictures an extremely enjoyable experience. The keyboard is extremely comfortable, and easy to use although, it does lack a home and end key which is nice for when I need to get directly to the top or bottom of a website. Another really nice feature, is that the keyboard has a LED backlight and because of that if there is not enough light then, the backlight will go on allowing you to see the keyboard and get your work done. The built-in super drive makes optical media a simple solution even though it sounds very crunchy and sounds horrible when the drive starts up. The speakers are extremely high quality and equally important they can be amplified to extremely loud volumes. One of the biggest new features is the multi-touch, which has gotten rave reviews both positive and negative over the lack of buttons. I think it works extremely well without the button and allows the users to customize their trackpad to the way they like it. Although the gestures are cool, I have not incorporated them in my daily life mainly because I don’t use the trackpad built-in to any of my laptops but, also because I have not gotten a chance to learn them all yet because there are so many and I do not see them as much of a time saver. Another thing the Macbook Pro has over the Macbook is the firewire port and an express card slot. These are important mainly to professionals who need firewire for cameras and express card to expand their computer, the average user probably is better saving money with a Macbook unless they need faster graphics, express card or Firewire. Another amazing feature is a hardware battery meter which can be used whether the computer is on or off to determine what the battery charge is, previously this was on the bottom of the laptop but, it is now in the much more convenient location on the side of the laptop.

As far computing goes, the Macbook Pro runs a 2.4 GHZ duel core processor which makes computing very fast and also has the option to be upgraded as high as 2.8 GHZ. The Macbook pro comes with 2 GB of the new, faster DDR3 RAM and has been tested to utilize as much as 6 GB of RAM. The other feature the Macbook Pro has over the Macbook is it has two graphics cards and allows the users to toggle between the two cards for the option of better graphical performance or better battery life. The switch can be made simply by selecting option and then logging out and logging back in.

Overall the Macbook Pro and the Macbook, which is really the same computer with a slightly less-powerful processor and smaller screen are both extremely elegant and powerful laptops. I only have two complaints, first is that all Mac notebooks do not have memory card readers which is something that I think every computer needs since, more and more devices use memory cards and a memory card reader is something that every computer should have. My only other complaint is that the new line of Mac laptops use a proprietary display port that require users to buy an adapter just to use a secondary monitor which is plain ridiculous for a computer at that price! Even though I veyr rarley use a secondary display I always like having the option and choice to use it.

I plan to continue coverage of my major switch expirences not only for the remainder of Apple Week but, also throughout the future of my blog.

It seems that when ever Apple so much as updates it’s products or it’s CEO, Steve Jobs, looks a little sick, they make front page news. Apple is the subject of a wide variety of rumor sites and speculation. Everything Apple does ends up being a big deal and why doesn’t Microsoft’s Product announcements or any other company get as much attention when they put out their new products. I believe that there are several reasons that this occurs and this is also why people are willing to pay more for their products.

The primary reason is that they have a “cult” leader, Steve Jobs, that makes product announcements exciting and makes them something people will remember years in the future. He also makes his keynotes by adding his unique style in it and adding humor when necessary.

The next reason Apple has the following it does and why people are willing to pay the extra money for the mac is because Apple products have become a fashion statement and is cool to have them. Apple also has the best advertising campaigns around and by making their products appear to be the best around and by putting their commercials to catchy songs as they usually do, which makes the song get stuck in the viewer’s head and has them thinking of the product all day.

Even though a lot of Apple’s products are not the first of it’s kind, Apple makes it’s products unique and make the consumers want to have the best even if it really isn’t. For example, before Apple released the iPods, MP3 players existed from many other companies but, Apple made their iPod be simple and elegant and the iPod ended up getting a 75% market share in the Mp3 player market. Same with the iPhone, there have been smartphones since the 1990’s but, when Apple released theirs they made it such a big deal that it was able to gain a 25% market share in it’s first year.

Finally, Apple computers cost more than a Dell or HP computer yet many people choose the mac why? It is because Apple’s operating system is more advanced than Windows, is more secure and provides much more simplicty. Mac OS has been a major improvement in my computing life and is probably the best computer choice I have ever made. Apple could put a product that hardly works on the market but, it will still sell because the Apple brand is so powerful.

I have decided that every once-in-a-while, I will do an entire week’s worth of blog posts about a single area of interest. I hope that these theme weeks will allow me to share everything I can about certain topics and allow all my topics to combined under the one encompassing theme. I will not be doing a single theme every week but, I will do it when I have a bunch of topics I want to put together.

I recently got a brand new Macbook Pro and this is my very first mac! I decided that because this is a big change that I would dedicate the next blog posts for this copming week to cover all sorts of Apple topics from software, to an actual review of my Macbook Pro and much more. I hope to express and share my new expirences with everyone and help others making the switch to the Mac.  I hope everyone enjoys Mac week and all the other theme weeks in the future. I will also have a special category for all the theme weeks so that you can read the whole week’s worth of articles with ease.

As I memtioned on my post on Moday, I mentioned that I will provide everyone with a list of services that allow you to get the services that Mobileme provides for $99/year for either free or much less. Another benifit of my list will be that these services do what  they are supposed to and syncronization is somewhat more reliable. So here is my list to save you money instead of getting Mobileme.

1. Web Storage- Adrive gives their users 50 GB of web storage for free! That is a big step-up from paying for 20 GB!
2. Email- Gmail, setup IMAP for all your devices, and you have mail that works just like Mobileme but is free and has more features and more storage space! (7 GB instead of 5 GB)
3. Contacts- Gmail contacts is a great contacts manager and covers the contacts  element of MobileMe
4. Calendar- Google Calendar is another great service provided by Google and if you set it up on your devices you can sync it to all your devices as well if not better than MobileMe.
5. Photo Gallery- Sharing pictures is really a no-brainer, Flickr is the defacto photo sharing site and because of that I am recommending that as a replacement of MobileMe’s photo sharing feature.
6. Website- There are a vast list of free services for making your own website for free, I reccommend Google Sites because it is great for the inexperienced web developers.

I have just listed servics that you can get for free instead of having to shell out $99 every year! I think this is a much better option for people to get Exchange-like services for everyday life.  I know that I went very pro-Google but, that is because I uses Google serivces everyday and use that for personal information and know how easy it is!

A few months ago,  Apple had relaunched it’s .Mac service as a MobileMe and has graciously christened it “Exchange for the rest of us”. The idea is getting enterprise-like Exchange features without going through the work and expense of setting it up and managing it! I signed-up for a trial account and would like to post my thoughts about it and to help anyone considering to sign-up for this service to determine whether or not they would really want to get it. First off, I would like to say anyone who knows me well or has read my copious amounts of Apple-related blogs, knows me as a Bona Fide Apple Fanboy and this review will totally go against that  although, this is not intentional, I am writing this post to  save people from signing up for a service that they might regret spending their money on. With that said, I will go ahead and write my thoughts on Apple’s Mobile Me Service.

I would like to list the service you would get if you decide to sign-up for Mobile Me:

1. Web Storage- You get 20 GB of storage which is good for backing up files and sharing media or hosting a website. However, you can sign up for Amazon S3 account and pay just $3/Month or $0.15 per Gigabyte and you can expand that and not get cut off at 20 GB making it a much more useful service.
2. Mail- You get a 5 GB email account with the username of your choice @me.com. The exchange part of this service is that the email pushes to all your devices like your iPhone, iPod Touch, computer mail client, and webmail. I will write further on this “Push” service and it’s reliability.
3. Address Book- You also have a Push address book where you can add contacts from anywhere and it “Instantly” synchronizes with all your devices.
4. Calendar- It also synchronizes your events calendar with all your devices as well “instantly”.
5. Photo Gallery-  Share your photos online once again, you could get free flickr or if you want unlimited picture uploads, get Flickr Pro for $25/Years!
6. Iweb- A service that allows Mac users to use iWeb of the iLife Suite and publish websites with ease. Once again, using a higher quality web service like my amazing host 1and1 which is a much more professional host and allows the developer to do virtually anything with plans starting for only $3/month.

In concept, MobileMe is a great concept cloud computing solution however, the “Push” services are some what unreliable and have given early adopters issues. I also have tried to use their web applications and they are extremely slow in comparison to Google’s apps, which are FREE, and is ridiculous in my opinion to pay for web apps which I live in daily that are slow and lagging. I also think that to be a  complete web suite it needs a task list application like Remember the Milk with sync capabilities that actually works. If a service doesn’t work 99.9% of the time, then it is not worth paying the service fee. I do believe that in a few months, Apple will finally kick out all the bugs and make it a good Cloud Computing service but, I think that most of it’s services can be obtained for either free or for a smaller fee. In fact, I will write a blog post later this week on how to save the $99/Year from MobileMe and I expect a cut of the savings!  So, check Gdovin.net everyday this week to find that post. Until then, reconsider getting Mobileme it is not worth the price especially since I will be writing a post about how to get the services for much less in a few days!

Many people have fallen for Apple’s iPod Touch which is the iPhone without the phone. It gives people the option to have all the features the iPod Touch has to offer without having to get an AT&T contract or going through the process of canceling your current cell phone plan. The only thing the iphone has that the iPod Touch doesn’t is 3G Internet, phone capability, and a fully plastic case.  Personally, I had wanted to get an iPod Touch as a replacement Media player until I realized that my Nokia N800 Internet Tablet can actually do almost everything the iPod Touch does and more for less money.

The fact is the N800 isn’t a iPod Touch, it doesn’t have the sleek UI or design but it has a lot more options and  is way more open. The Nokia N800 starts around $200 and comes with a 2 GB internal memory card and 2 GBs of RAM. The N800 also has an additional SD card slot easily accessable and great for transfering files and storing media files.  Plus, application on the iPod Touch must be acquired through the official Apps Store and have to be approved by Apple before going on the market. The applications for Maemo can be acquired either through repositories and installed through there or they can be downloaded as a .deb, install, or source code file from any website and installed on your device. Of course they aren’t guaranteed to work but, you will just have to go through some trial and error testing. Then for storage you can go to Newegg, Amazon or any other retailer and buy a SD memory card and simply fill it with your media files and what ever other data you would like to have on your device. I was able to find a 16 GB SDHC card for $30 on Newegg and that combind with the cost of my N800 makes it $230 while an iPod Touch of that capacity is $299.

Also realize, that with the N800 you can do almost anything you want with your N800 as far as installing software and lets you do what you want with it. I was also considering comparing this to the iPhone but the fact is, that the N800 does not have a cell phone or 3G Internet although it does have Voice Over IP like Skype and Gizmo that lets you make calls to landlines over the Internet for a small fee.  But it still is relying on Wifi being available so it is still not able to compete. All-in-all before spending on a iPod Touch think about the N800 as an option it could do everything the iPod Touch does and can be used for almost anything you can imagine.

Today, Apple unveiled their newly designed notebook line at a Townhall Meeting at the Apple Campus in Cupertino, California. First thing Steve Jobs introduced Apple COO, Tim Cook, and as always Cook flaunted Apple’s growing market share and what it is better than Windows. Afterward,  Johnathan Ive, Head of Apple’s Design group, disucssed their goal of a case made out of one block of alluminum and how this process not only makes production easier and cheaper but it actually makes the case stronger and more durable! Then , Steve Jobs came back on stage and announced the switch to much faster Nvidea Graphics chips which will boost the graphics performance to 55% faster than the current Macbook Pros and general performance increases to about 86%. The new Macbooks will include a glass trackbad that will allow the user to put buttons on their trackpad and is 30% bigger than the current trackpads.  The new trackpads also have new gestures you can use to get the most out of your Mac.

New Products:

Macbook Pro 2.4 GHZ Intel Core Two Duo, 15 Inch LED Backlit screen, 2 GB DDR 3 Memory, 250 GB Hard drive and Slot-load superdrive for $1,999

Macbook Pro 2.53 GHZ Intel Core Two Duo, 15 Inch LED Backlit screen, 4 GB of DDR 3 Memory, more powerful graphics card, 128 GB Solid state drive for $500, option to upgrade to 2.8 GHZ for $300 base price: $2499

17 inch Macbook pro upgraded as well!

Macbook Air: Nvidea graphics card (four times faster graphics), 1.6 GHZ processor, 2 GB of Ram 120 GB drive for $1799

Macbook Air solid state- Normal Macbook Air plus: 1.86 GHZ procesor, and 128 GB SSD drive for $2499 (Much more affordable)

Both Macbok Airs will be release in November

24 inch Cinema display: Built in USB, Magsafe power adaptor, and display cable design for macbooks! Will be release in November!

Macbook $1299 13.3 inch display, 2 GHZ duel core processor, 2 GB DDR 3 RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, slot load superdrive.

Macbook $1599 13.3 inch display, 2.4 GHZ, 250 GB Hard drive,  2 GB of RAM, Slot load superdrive!

The old white Macbook is still availible for $999at it’s current specs!

These new macbooks make them even more irrisistable and I personally think can really hurt Windows’ market share and if Apple keeps the invovation going, which I’m sure they will eventually have a larger market share than Windows!