Flip it and Reverse it

In the name of due diligence, after bagging on the Mac for all the ways it let me down, I should also consider this reverse question: what aspects of the Mac and OSX did I find unexpectedly useful or valuable. * *Printing*: The whole printing subsystem works surprisingly well under OSX. The dialogs are simple, […]

Is OSX really better than Windows?

I tried to believe, without really being convinced, believing that I’d be convinced eventually. Here I am, a year later, and I’m not really convinced, and I’m not sure that I can just take it on faith anymore. I think I came to the mac platform buying into some of the hype.. the stuff you […]

House hunting sucks

For the last 3 months or so, I’ve pretty much looked at craigslist everyday to find out about new apartments in the Mission/Noe Valley area. I guess our requirements are pretty specific, so there aren’t too many matches — maybe 1 place per week that looks interesting. Regardless, for every single one that is a […]

Lightroom Beta 3 for windows

So I downloaded beta 3 for Windows, and installed it on my work machine. In the readme I see: Lightroom Windows beta 3 is feature compatible with Mac beta 3. However, there are some exceptions: * No Web module * No Identity Plates * No Lights Out functionality * No automatic detection of cameras and […]

Total Cost of Ownership

A friend at work is currently building a PC, and yet another friend is in a similar position as I am, considering what kind of desktop to buy next. A question came to mind at lunch, which I posed to my friends: “Assuming you get your money’s worth, will a PC that costs you twice […]

Windows vs OSX continued…

As I continue to think about the future desktop purchase, I wondered if anyone has done a in-depth comparison of Windows vs OSX on the web. Well I found one “here”:http://www.xvsxp.com/ While interesting (their scores come out about even), the major flaw of this comparison (for me) is that they don’t consider the 3rd party […]

On buying a Desktop

I’m planning to buy a desktop in the near future. But what kind of desktop, I’m not very clear. The reasons for getting a desktop, however, are very clear: * I can’t live without the expandibility, especially in the storage dimension. * I do too many things that require fast disks and fast CPUs, which […]

Lightroom Beta 3 on a Intel Mac Mini

As an experiment, I uploaded some of my photos to work, and installed Lightroom Beta 3 on my Core Duo mac mini at work. The difference in performance is.. well.. depressing. As Lightroom doesn’t use CoreGraphics, it’s particularly dependent on CPU power, and the Core Duo just kicks the crap out of the G4 that […]

Muir woods

The extreme contrast between sun rays and dark forest were a bit much for my camera. I had to use Aperture’s shadow enhancement to give this shot a little more balance. I feel like it could use a bit more contrast as well, but I like it quite a bit as it is.