Ode to the Macintosh...

I got my first macintosh in 1989 or 1990 and it was love at first sight..MIT, where I was a PhD student was at the time a macintosh and supercomputer only environment and I manage to convince my father I needed it for 'work' when truthfully I also needed it for music.....To this day, although I am pretty fluent in the various Windows OS's it is only the macintosh platform I have ever loved.....I tell people I am a mac diehard who sometimes has to use a windows computer...... I personally have believed that the OS from Cupertino is and always has been vastly superior to that from Redmond...And I wanted to give two experiences over the past few months that to me removed any possible doubt..

I recently upgrade my Studio's computer from XP to Windows 7..I had to reinstall everythign and reconfigure them to how I like them to work.. I did use the inappropriately named Easy Transfer from Microsoft... What a piece of crap.... someone from Redmond needs to see how apple's Migration Assistant works......you tell it where your old account is. connect a cable and it transfers everything..... applications, files, settings etc..... The move on the PC took me about two weeks to complete everything... if it was a mac that would have taken maybe five hours maximum.... Now if I do change my motherboard on my Windows computer I have to do the process all over again, even though I am not changing the OS on it......WTF!!!!!!!

Yesterday my main imac that I use for my internet, emailing, downloading, invoicing etc died...
I have learnt the hard way the importance of backup, so I am an avid user of Time Machine from Apple, which basically seemlessly takes snapshots of your computer every hour or so, so you can go back to any state the computer was in a few hours, days, weeks ago.....
I felt handicap today since I couldn't create invoices, print scripts etc, answer email as I usually do without my imac.
But I have a macbookpro which is my portable studio....It has only music software on it, and I like it that way....
Three features only avaiable on the macintosh allowed me in the space of one hour to get back my imac account to run on my macbook pro exactly as it did on the imac without touching the macbook pro music only hard drive.

1) Do the PC users know on the mac you can boot and work entirely off of an external hard drive? That is a huge deal. I can take my hard drive with me, to a different country, attach it to someone else's computer, boot from my hard drive and work exactly with all my applications, files etc as if I was home on my own macintosh...There is nothing like this on the PC world.....that I am aware of.. nothing......for this feature alone, I believe macintosh are superior to PC's.

2) TimeMachine...... After I booted my macbook pro from a backup I have of it on an external hard drive, I could then use Migration Assistant (which would be item 3), and tell Migration Assistant to use my timemachine backup of the imac, to create a new account on this external hard drive of my account on my Imac.... It did that in less than an hour...

So here am I, working on my macbook pro, from an external hard drive with all my settings, files, applications from my imac and working as I would have two days ago...

And when I want to work on my macbook pro as music only I just tell it to boot from its internal hard drive........and the macbook will be as it was....
Try any of that on a PC....

I swear my next studio computer, I will be back to fully macintosh.....it is just too superior an OS imho...

rsp

Yes I am still alive....although it has been over two years....

Since my last blog.....Just haven't been as motivated to blog....however something happened this a.m. that I just wanted to give my opinion on... I was watching Morning Joe on MSNBC(although Joe himself annoys the hell out of me) I otherwise like the show. The unfolding protests in Egypt was being covered and there was a sense of almost surprise that the typical normal anti-american components were not a part of this massive protest.....
I strongly believe all of that is due to one man, President Barack Obama, or as the dumb brunette from Alaska (who I use to find hot, now her stupidity has overcome all physical attraction I had for her) likes to say Obama, like if they went to school together.

I have marveled at how the Republicans have successfully launched one of the best smear campaigns in my lifetime, against him..... His ratings plummeted after the whole "Death Panels" crap....and 1/3 still believe he wasn't born in the USA... please....Yes I think maybe he should have publicly focused more on jobs as priority one, but he had political capital that he wanted to utilise for game changers like: health care, don't ask don't tell, the banking reform etc......Clearly I am on the outside looking in and I really think he did a damn great job with regards to the US domestic agendas... Lord knows it would be a different world if his administration didn't address the recession........

But for me where he has shined, where he has truly made his mark, is in the international arena.
I think I had said this in an earlier blog... what I admire most about him, is not his intellect which he has in pouring out of his ears....not his cool, calm no drama-obama disposition.....not his incredible articulation (although I really do miss GW for this, the new 'words', the perplexed knitted brows that only an idiot savant (minus the savant part in his case) could do)....but he is the first US President in my lifetime who realises 'We are the World' is just a song......he isn't set on US World domination as ALL his predecessors seem to have been hell bent on, including my previous favourite, Bill Clinton to some degree....and the neo-conservatives so hate him for it....."he goes around apologising for america, when there is nothing to apologise for'.
America is but one country, a very important country, but never the less, one in almost 200 countries of the world, and has no more rights than any other country.... He gets it... no one before him did....... and I think that's why the usual Anti-American element is missing from the Egyptian 'revolution'.

I love the man (no not in any gay manner :-)), but seriously, sometimes I think of what he means to the world and the tears well up.....I think this is one man who has in two years completely changed the world we live in.......
I just hope the American population give him a second four years.....

rsp

Mr. President......

Some people I have spoken to, weren't impressed with her performance and she herself said the cold affected her voice, but for me the point that finally brought me to tears and still does whenever I hear it is Aretha's performance at the Inauguration.
For me her tone, her vocal expression, her dynamics said it all.....400 years after slavery began, that the most powerful man in the world is a black man.....how could you not feel an almost infinite amount of unbridled exhiliration, pride, exhuberance and bliss?

For me, my greatest wish of Mr. President is America reverse almost a century of being the world's bully with two sets of rules.....

rsp

Israel should know better....

For a country of people who suffered so much less than 70 years ago, I have always been amazed at how ruthless and aggressive Israel has been.....they more than any other nation, should know what it is like to be beaten up by bullies, as they themselves were under the Nazis......They should remember how the country of Israel was 'created' since that time.

Someone pointed out to me a little under a year ago that when you read the old testament it is filled with stories of Israel being at war with one neighbour or another. Contrary to the account in the Bible, based on modern day events I find it hard to believe that Israel were not the aggressors in if not all, but most of those wars of the Bible.

I wish Iran would get a nuclear weapon if only as a deterrent for Israel to continue their tyrannical behaviour and disregard for the life and property of their neighbours.......

And of course the American main stream media still continue to paint Israel, just like the western movies did with the 'Cowboys' who also bullied and killed the Native Americans off of their own land, as the good guys........unbelievable.

rsp

For now I am speechless.......

I really didn't think Americans had it in them.... I humbly stand corrected.
Congrats to Democracy for choosing such an outstanding candidate to be the most powerful person in the world, who just so happens to be African-American.

Dr. MLK your dream took a gigantic leap towards reality.

rsp

There really is no nice or politically correct way to say this...

But Sarah Palin is really an airhead.
For those who don't' know my background. My mother was probably one of the brightest people I have ever known, and her university track record where I think she got the best student award if not a few times at least once, illustrates that fact. In my undergraduate year, I think the smartest person in my Physics classes happened to be a woman. I can give other examples, but my point is that I am not sexist. Just like they are very smart men and dumb men so too they are very smart women and dumb women.
I think the media is afraid to be too critical of her for fear that they be labeled sexist.
I think this same media was also afraid to criticize Obama in the beginning for fear of being labeled racist.
But after watching the ABC Charles Gibson and the CBS Katie Couric interviews, there is no nice way to say this.
The woman is a complete idiot.....I think George W finally has someone he can stand next to and look like a smart guy :-)..I can't beleive she may end up being a heartbeat away from being the most powerful person in the world.
rsp

America proud of you....

I would like to think that even if I wasn't born a black man, my belief in MLK's passage "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character" would be as strong and passionate as it has been to me since I was but a young child. America made a huge step towards that yesterday when as MSNBC put it, it is the first mostly white nation that has ever elected an African American to a position where he has at least a 50:50 chance to become the leader of that country.

It isn't that the Democrats have elected 'a black man' to lead their party, but such a well spoken, very qualified, articulate, bright visionary man, who happens as Willie Brown put it "to have a terrific tan".

I can't even try to describe how proud I am of Barack Obama in taking this very important step in making so much of a world believe "Yes We can". As a very close friend told me last night, America really is the land of opportunity for all its flaws.

Congrats to America, Congrats to Obama and congrats to people globally who believe passionately in that line from Martin Luther King.


P.S. can someone please tell the Clintons that that race is over :-)
rsp