Apple Studio Display — I’m loving it!

I hit my 60th birthday earlier this year, and after over 45 years of staring at screens both at work and ‘play’, my already dodgy eyesight is not getting any better. When I returned to Prague in 2019, I bought a cheap Dell 24” monitor to sit alongside my work and personal laptops and used a hardware switch to flip between them. Back in the UK, I have been using a Dell P2719H 27” monitor which is a bit easier on my eyes, but still not ideal.

New Studio Display in my UK office set-up (photo from author)

                   

So, I’ve been looking at buying a new monitor for a while, and it has proved to be a really difficult decision. My needs appeared to be fairly simple, or so I thought:

• It needed to work in an exclusively Apple environment (no more Windows for me now I’ve retired!) with M1 Silicon
• I wanted a minimum of a 27” display with 4K resolution
• From a design perspective, it needed to look the part
• A few additional ports would be useful
• Good all-round display quality for photo-editing, writing and website design
• It needed to be delivered on my next trip to the UK — between June 26th and July 13th
• 
  

There were a few unknowns — did I like the idea of a curved monitor? Was a 34” screen overkill (and would it even fit on my desk?)? Would I keep the existing 27” Dell (which does have a portrait mode which I like for documents)?

I had a short list with 27–34” monitors from the usual suspects — Dell, Ben-Q, Samsung, LG and even Huawei. And the Studio Display from Apple. I watched dozens of YouTube videos and eventually ruled out the Huawei because even though I loved the design, I’d prefer to err on the safe side of data privacy. I also liked the Samsung M8 but decided I wanted a monitor, not an all singing, all dancing video box. My desk is quite constrained regarding worktop space, so I stopped looking beyond 27” and curved monitors. After watching more videos about the scaling issues with 4K and Apple, I was becoming more inclined to stay in the Dell stable and choose a U2719D UltraSharp 27 with 2560 x 1440 resolution. But there was a nagging doubt in my mind about whether I would regret not going for the outrageously expensive Studio Display and end up buying one in a year anyhow…

My trip to the UK was only going to last three weeks. Our local Apple store is in Leicester, and it looked like they had some base Studio Displays available for in-store collection, but by the time I got back to the UK, the cupboard was bare and would stay that way until August/September. A quick search indicated AO.com had the base model in stock for next-day delivery, so I bit the bullet and placed an order. AO.com came to my rescue when I wanted the 13” M1 MBP in a hurry last time I was. I knew they’d come up with the goods in the UK, and it was no more expensive than buying from Apple.

I was confident that the base model would be right for my needs. I use a Twelve South Curve Riser on my desk, so I figured I wouldn’t need the height adjustable stand; I’ve always been comfortable with the glossy screens on iMacs I’ve owned in the past, and I don’t have a monitor arm (or enough space on my current desk).

Despite watching various unboxing videos for the Studio Display, when it turned up on the doorstep the next day, I was taken aback at how big, and heavy the box was and was grateful I hadn’t decided to try and bring one home on the bus from Leicester! If you’ve watched any of the unboxing videos, you’ll know that this is an experience in its own right. A few minutes later, the display was on the stand and plugged directly into the 13” M1 MPB via the Thunderbolt port. I plugged my 2 SanDisk Extremes into the USB ports and my Quntis light bar into the third slot. Finally, I sorted out the power cable, booted up the laptop, and installed the Studio Display software update.

Quite simply, this is the best display I have ever used by a long way. Text is crystal clear even for my dodgy eyes. The speakers are so good that I’ve unplugged my old faithful Harmon Kardon Soundsticks II and now use the Studio Display speakers in conjunction with an original HomePod sat on the bookshelf behind me.

I’m not going to get involved in the discussion about the webcam. I like that there is one built in; quite frankly, it’s plenty good enough for my purposes. The first time I used it in anger was during a call with my financial advisor, where both myself and my fiancée could fit in the viewfinder without having to be sat on top of each other. Quite frankly, in these days of WFH, where many of my former colleagues had such poor internet connections that they turned their cameras off and often asked other participants to do the same thing, webcam quality is the least of my problems! It works, and it’s good enough.

I’ve been using a Twelve South Curve Riser as a monitor stand. It also serves to hide the Thunderbolt Hub and keep it cool. This proved a little too uncomfortable with the combined height of the Studio Display and the riser, but setting the monitor on the middle shelf fixed this problem perfectly. The hub now sits atop the monitor's base in the shelf space.

My big challenge is to figure out how to set up a dual display with the M1 13” MBP using both the Studio Display and the 27” Dell. I purchased the Hyper Dual 4K HDMI 10-in-1 USB-C Hub, but it arrived after I returned to Prague, so haven’t had a chance to set it up yet. The workaround has been to use the 27” Dell monitor on the M1 MacMini, and use universal control to make it look seamless, which works about 90% of the time, but needs a nudge from time to time. I suspect that the sleep settings were perhaps out of sync.

I also really, really need a bigger desk…and another Studio Display in my Prague office...

 

Setting Up a New Home Office away from Home

After 7 years together, with almost as many false starts as Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, I've moved into my girlfriend's house. No don't worry, the Apple Harvest isn't turning into a relationship diary or a place to air all our dirty washing. But as a freelancer, who may need to up shop at a moment's notice, this sort of move is a bit of a challenge, particularly when it coincides with a major new OS X release. It's also different from the type of move I've encountered in the past when I've been working abroad for months at a time.

Clearly, when I'm at home, everything I need to get me through the day is on tap. A dedicated office with superfast (120Mbps) broadband, 155 TV channels, supercharged WiFi coverage, a 1.5Tb iTunes library on my 3Tb iMac hybrid drive, an apparently unlimited quality of storage, via a plethora of external drives, and a wonderful local pub which is only 5 minutes walk away.

My partner, Mel, only lives about 10 miles away but I don't want to be to-ing and fro-ing all the time (especially as a non-driver) so I had to make some careful choices about what to take and what to leave, and indeed what extra kit I might need. I also needed to take into account a much slower broadband connection, shared between two teenage boys who appear to be permanently on-line at home, their mum and myself.

Because I need to be flexible regarding work opportunities, I opted for the MacBook Air over the iMac, and decided to bring the Belkin Thunderbolt hub along for the ride. I put all my music, TV shows and most of my films on a Seagate 1Tb Thunderbolt drive, mainly because I wasn't sure how well iMatch would work over a much slower network, and because that way it can come with me if I need to work away. (In fact it isn't a problem, and using Slink networking software I can access the iMac remotely.)

Although I find the 13inch MBA display fine for short periods of time, I have really got used to the 27inch iMac screen and the second 24inch extension monitor that sits on my desk at home. To  recreate this in a scaled down way I decided to buy an AOC USB powered 21inch LCD unit which was less than £100, and plugs into  two of the Belkin's USB 3 ports. My Mobee Magic Feet device plugs into the final USB port, so I can keep the Magic Keyboard, Magic Trackpad and a pair of Magic Mice charged, without constantly messing around with batteries. It also provides an additional 4 USB 2.0 ports just in case, one of which is used to charge my iPhone.

My TwelveSouth PlugBug World Charger snaps onto the MBA MagSafe and its USB port provides enough power to charge both an iPad (3rd gen.) and iPad Mini (1st gen.).

Having gone to all the trouble of sorting out my music library which is a little short of 30,000 tracks, I needed something a bit better than the MBA speakers. Initially I was going to use my Samsung SBR51 SoundBar, but whilst this is fine as a bluetooth speaker for iOS devices, I have never got it working properly with OS X as it cuts out every few minutes. No way was I unplugging my old trusty Logitech Z3 2.1 system from the iMac - so I looked around for something at a decent price (I was thinking no more than £80 or thereabouts). The JBL Creature III and Edifier Lifestyle E1100 were at the top of the list until I finally saw the Harman/Kardon SoundSticks III in the flesh. I'd heard so many positives about these speakers and as I could pick up a new pair for under £100 I decided to splash out. No regrets - they sound as awesome as they look.

Finally, I have an Airport Express box (2012 version with the power cable) which I've used to set up a wired connection to the ethernet port on the Belkin hub. Ultimately this will get replaced with a pair of PowerLine adapters connecting directly to the router.

Currently I'm aware of a few glitches. The USB monitor is connected via DisplayLink which currently doesn't play properly with Mavericks. It works, but there are a few glitches - most significantly some of Apple's own apps don't play nicely at all. Maps and iPhoto in particular only work properly when on the laptop display; on the AOC the main window won't generally render. DisplayLink insist it is an Apple issue so we'll have to wait to see how that unfolds.

This is what it all looks like now it's all set up and running (on my lovely new Piranha desk). Not bad for a home office away from home. And big thanks to Mel for letting me have the spare room!

I'm especially pleased that my previous purchasing choices have proved to be effective and that the extra outlay has been relatively small. But I guess ultimately the real test is going to be how much work I get done...!

Bulk Out Your MacBook Air Storage Without Adding Bulk

The biggest problem with the MacBook Air is the fact that you have to make a commitment to your selected configuration the moment that you order it. Once you've chosen your memory and storage allocations at the time of purchase you are lumbered with them. Especially memory - so the best advice is to max out the memory up front. Although you can't increase the on-board SSD storage you do at least have some other options.

The easiest and most flexible way to add storage to a MacBook Air is plug in an external hard drive. USB 2, USB 3 and Thunderbolt drives are now available in all sorts of sizes and colours, not to mention weights, depending on whether you want portable or desktop models.

There is also an increasing number of wireless drives now hitting the market - generally in much smaller capacities than wired drives, but at least there's one less cable to have to think about.

USB flashdrives and SD cards provide yet another option, again generally in relatively low capacities, but these have the downside of sticking out of the laptop and taking up valuable ports.

Over the years I've tried just about everything. Different options for different scenarios, but I've long wanted a simple, cost effective and permanent solution to increase the maximum 256GB SSD drive space on my 13" 2011 MBA. And now I've found one!

The PNY 128GB StorEDGE Expansion Module (a 64GB version also exists) is specially designed for any MacBook that sports an SD slot. It is a bit smaller than a normal SD card and has a black plastic thumbnail grip to help push and pull it in and out of the machine. Once it is in the slot all that you can see is this 2-3mm edge, so the card is, to all intent and purpose, flush with the laptop. So it can stay there - pretty much permanently - without getting in the way of anything.

StorEDGE 128GB MacBook Expansion Card

Performance is not going to be as fast as other storage media, but I copied a 30Gb iTunes library from the MBA onto the StorEDGE in under 20 minutes. But if it's performance you're after you're missing the point - this is designed as a write rarely, read frequently device. It's ideal for iTunes, iPhotos, and other media files, work archives, and the like.

I couldn't find a UK supplier sadly. It's available from the US Amazon store but they won't ship to the UK. I got mine through eBay - where it cost $149 with $22 P&P. There was an additional $40 to cover import duty, so the total cost was about £130. Having placed the order on Sunday, it arrived 9 days later, much earlier than anticipated.

[UPDATE: I've since found a UK supplier, SCAN, who have the StorEDGE 128GB in stock. They charge £95.50 including next day delivery]

It is quite a lot of money to splash out - if you or someone you know is going to the US it would be worth getting one out there. However, this is a great solution for extending a MacBook without extra wires or another box to put in your laptop bag. And bear in mind that the price difference between a 13" MBA with 128GB of storage and one with 256GB of storage is £180.

Finally, please note that this is a dedicated expansion card, designed for MacBooks and it won't fit in your camera. Do not confuse this with cheaper and lower capacity SD cards which are also available from PNY and many other manufacturers.

2011 - the Late Post

It's December 28th and the world has just about recovered from the excesses of Christmas and is preparing for the New Year festivities.  In some respects I'm looking forward to seeing the back of 2011, although all in all, it has been quite a good year for the Apple Harvest.

In March I got the call to return to Zurich, initially for about four and half months, but I ended up staying for eight months. That's a long time to be away from friends and family, but it has enabled me to get the Apple Harvest infrastructure to the state where I'm now really happy with it. An Airport Extreme, 3Tb Time Capsule and an additional Airport Express now work together to provide decent WiFi coverage throughout the house. The 2008 24inch 3.06GHz iMac has been upgraded with a new 1Tb hard disk and still acts as the main workhorse, running OS X Lion and Lion Server. The shiny new 13inch i7 MacBook Air is my run around of choice, but my first Mac, the 2007 15inch MacBook Pro still has a place in the office. The original iPad and iPhone 4 complete the hardware line up. Not intending to upgrade either of these yet - they work perfectly well as they are and they compliment the MacBook Air.

There are lots of new toys supporting the network now. I replaced the wired Apple keyboard on the iMac with Logitech K750 Wireless Solar Keyboard (for Mac), and Mobee Magic Chargers for the Magic Mouse and Apple Keyboard also help make the Apple Harvest a bit greener. I also got the Mobee Magic Numpad kit which lets me use the trackpad as a dedicated numeric keyboard - great from when I'm doing all my expenses, and after eight months there's a lot of number crunching that needs doing!

Finally on the infrastructure side there's the Moshi hub - a self powered Firewire and USB hub that lives under the iMac. Sadly it doesn't work with the MacBook Air because of the lack of a Firewire port on that machine, but I'm regularly scanning the internet for news of a Thunderbolt hub, and it looks like Belkin may be first to market with one which was first seen in September but there have been no official updates since then.

As usual, I seem to have acquired a bit of software over the year. The Mac App Store makes it so easy, and now that the initial problems have been resolved I use it in favour of direct purchase from the developers wherever possible. There is one notable exception and that is Alfred which just gets better and better. If you haven't heard of it go and checkout the website. I'll post more info about Alfred next time but no Mac user should be without it.

The worst thing about 2011 was that I did find it really difficult to post anywhere near as much as I wanted to. My output was half of what it was the previous year. I'm going to have a lot more time next year but in 2012 I'm going to try a new approach and write smaller posts more often. This isn't a New Year resolution and I'm not setting targets or goals. But I think it'll improve the overall quality of the blog and hopefully attract more people and more interaction. The overall aim of the blog won't change one iota. It's still going to be a blog for users and enthusiasts like myself, and it'll steer clear of rumours and bickering.

So, on that note - let me wish you all a very Happy and Prosperous New Year. Thanks for all your support over the past 12 months (and more!) and I hope I can repay you in 2012!!
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Scary Disk Upgrade for MacBook Pro

Six months away from home puts a lot of strain on a laptop, especially on it's disk capacity. Towards the end of my stay in Switzerland I was down to my last 15Gb of disk space of my original 160Gb drive in the MacBook Pro, and was regularly deleting and restoring content, especially movies and other large items. I decided that when I got home I'd look at getting a new bigger (and maybe faster) drive, and maybe even consider installing it myself.
So, about a week ago, I started my first upgrade project of 2011, and began my customary background research. There were three elements to be considered:

• Price of components
• Compatibility of drive
• Difficulty of performing the upgrade

Price - although I'd been working in the financial capital of Switzerland I didn't come home having made my fortune, and I still needed to watch the pennies. I had to weigh up the cost of the drive and any tools I might need and the cost of either doing the job myself or getting a specialist to do the job for me. I did have plenty of time on my hands, so that wasn't going to be a problem. I figured that it would cost somewhere between £100 and £150 to get a professional installation, but I could be without the laptop for up to a week. I'd also be restricted in the range of drives available. A quick search on Amazon suggested that I could probably get a decent replacement drive for about £50 plus a few extra pounds for the tools I would need.

Compatibility - I knew there would be some physical restrictions on the drive I could use bearing in mind the age of the MBP - late 2007, so I was going to rely on review comments from people who had successfully performed the task themselves. Again, Amazon is great as a research tool for this type of activity. I was hoping to upgrade to a 500Gb disk, preferably running at 7200 RPM, but would consider a slower drive if this was likely to be an issue

Difficulty of upgrading - I'd never opened up the MBP before, other than to install the extra memory I purchased when I first bought the machine, lifting it up to 4Gb. But this was child's play compared to delving around inside the case as required by this upgrade. There are plenty of videos and instructions on the internet, and I watched as many as possible and downloaded some instructions onto the GoodReader app on the iPad.

With these options considered and evaluated, I decided I could do the job myself and started the process in earnest. I selected a Seagate Momentus 7200.4 Laptop 2.5 inch Hard Disk Drive 500GB SATA 7200rpm 16MB (Internal) with G-Force Protection (ST9500420ASG) drive which had good reviews and had been proven to work fine in my model. This cost about £55 from Amazon. I knew from the videos that I'd need a specialist screwdriver that I didn't possess - a Torx 6, and I ended up buying a great little tool that included 9 bits which live in the lid of the screwdriver and fits in a pocket, or can be slipped into a small space in a suitcase (Silverline 633922 9 Piece Precision Screwdriver Set). I also needed a plastic/nylon spludger to ease things out of their natural surroundings inside the Mac, and I also invested in an anti-static wrist device, just in case. The whole lot came to under a tenner.

Eventually, all the bits and pieces arrived, with the disk being the last thing to show, and I was ready to go. I cleared the work surface, strapped on the anti-static doodah, arranged all my papers and watched the You Tube videos once again.

Things went fine to start off with. All the screws were easy to remove, and it was time to remove the keyboard. I knew this would be hard - primarily because it's the step in the process when you can cause the most damage. However, it was easy to pry the back part off and get to the cable connector on the motherboard which was also easy to unclip. But I really struggled to pry the front off (as I expected). Eventually I realised that there were still two screws holding the assembly in place, and once these were removed everything came off smoothly. I had bent the very front of the keyboard assembly slightly but not enough to cause any real damage. It would have been more prudent to have a check list of screws to remove and to have ticked these off as I took them out (and replaced them later) and I wouldn't have then made this mistake.

The next steps were really plain sailing, although there was a ribbon cable firmly glued to the existing hard drive which took some coaxing to remove, and before long I had the new drive in place, all the connectors plugged in and the whole box put back together again.

I had cloned the original disk before starting the operation, using Carbon Copy Cloner, and my intention was to boot up using the ExpressCard SSD as usual, format the new drive and then simply restore the contents of the cloned disk onto the new disk. I now understand why this was not such as good idea, and if I'd thought about it, I should never have expected it to work, and it would have saved me a lot of sweaty palms and palpitations. Worse still, it had me looking in the wrong direction in an attempt to resolve the problem.

When the MBP went into boot mode everything seemed OK, but I couldn't log onto my user account. I tried zapping the PRAM, and other diagnostic tricks on start-up but nothing worked. Eventually I booted up from the cloned USB disk which at least got me into the system and allowed me to get the new drive set-up. I figured with the new drive restored to the same state as the original everything would be OK - but I still couldn't log onto the system from the SSD. I could at least boot up from the new drive.

I decided to ditch the SSD for the time being and get the system fully functional on its own, which meant doing a software update as I was now booting into OS X 10.6.3. With the OS now running version 10.6.6 I nearly had a normal working system, but there were still a few software configuration issues which needed resolving.

This was the moment when I saw the light - the new disk had a slightly different name to the original! Once I had corrected this, most of those software configuration issues vanished. At nearly midnight I decided to call it a day and go back to it in the morning. I had now occurred to me that this may have been the reason that the SSD wasn't working properly, but I'd already reinstalled Snow Leopard on the SSD (at version 10.6.0).

First thing yesterday morning, I updated the SSD with OS X 10.6.6 and tried to boot from it. It worked perfectly.

If you have any technical ability at all and are considering this modification to an older MacBook Pro I seriously recommend that you do it. My specific configuration complicated the installation, but for a straight swap, things should be much simpler. I would, however, suggest that you invest in a disk caddy and format and set up the new drive before fitting it. It should take away some of the worry when you reboot after installation. You can pick one up for under a tenner, and you can always use it to store your old drive and use it as a media drive or backup device when you've successfully upgraded.

Niggles and Annoyances

I thought about starting this entry with an apology, or at least a warning, to the Apple faithful who blissfully believe that the company can do no wrong. But then I thought about the people that I hope read these posts, and decided that most of them are simple users like myself who realise that no software or hardware from any manufacturer is every completely without fault. It's just that some folk try harder than others to make the user experience better.

As a user from a technical background I may be more unforgiving in my expectations, or it may be that my expectations are higher. It may simply be that my demands are more excessive, as I spend a very significant part of my day (my life) on the machines I use.

There is no doubt in my mind, however, that my experiences with the Mac are considerably more positive than with all the other operating systems and hardware that I've used and abused over the years. I've not yet tried Windows 7, but something inside tells me suggests that it wouldn't really change anything.

All these factors make the little problems I occasionally suffer from all the more irritating and irksome (of course, having just turned 48, grumpy old man syndrome is also now kicking in).

Spotlight Failure

My current bugbear is Spotlight (OS X 10.6.2). Since the failure of the internal drive on my iMac I've rigged up a 750Mb Seagate FreeAgent Pro Firewire drive as the bootable partition. It works well enough, and although there is a speed lag on some things compared to a proper internal drive, I can live with it until I have enough spare cash and time to get a new internal drive installed. That, of course, is the downside of the iMac; if something internal dies, you have to take the whole machine into the repair shop. I wish that Apple would let us access the internal drive in the same way that we can get to the memory banks. But that's not the point of this whinge.

I don't really use Spotlight very often so I don't know when my current problem started but I'm guessing that it is related to the drive configuration. I've installed a number of new utility and productivity applications recently and I sometimes forget to refresh my application launcher, TigerLaunch. So when I want to launch one of these new tools, for example MacUpdate Desktop, I'd sometimes use Spotlight as the launcher. Only it doesn't seem to be able to find many of my applications. If I type in "MacUpdate", it locates and displays various versions of the MacUpdate-Desktop .dmg install files, but there's no sign of the application. Similar things happen for other applications. "Launch" locates the Applet Launcher but fails to find LaunchBar. Selecting the Show All also fails to reveal the LaunchBar or the MacUpdate Desktop application in the previous instance.

Because I use TigerLaunch or QuickSilver as my normal application launchers this isn't the end of the world. But the problem is that I now have less confidence in Spotlight and that bothers me a lot.

I have tried just about everything to resolve the issue - I've re-indexed, deleted plist files, and even run Spotless (which I couldn't find in Spotlight either!) - but it never makes a difference. I'd love to hear from anyone experiencing a similar problem, especially if you have a solution!

MacUpdate Desktop Failure

Ironically, one of the applications mentioned above was the catalyst for finding the Spotlight problem. MacUpdate Desktop 5 is a piece of software available from MacUpdate Promo which enables users to track and install software updates automatically. I have it installed on both the MacBook Pro and the iMac, and it is great for checking on those seldom used applications, or on lesser used machines. I have no problems on the MBP with the software, but on the iMac it only finds 34 applications despite there being over 300 individual applications installed.

I can't help thinking there is a correlation between this problem and the Spotlight problem. Perhaps the only course of action is to get that internal drive installed once and for all. Who knows, my on-going networking problem may even vanish as well, although I think that's pure wishful thinking.

These two problems are not show stopping issues, but it is frustrating to have a system that doesn't do some of the simple things in life properly. Especially for a perfekshonist like me!

Hackintosh and OS X 10.5.8

Typical really, you get everything sorted out on the Hackintosh and find that Apple have put out an update to OS X in the form of 10.5.8. My first reaction was "Do Nothing" ; often a safe bet (and one that is often ignored as an option in Process Improvement circles).

But I consider myself an early adopter so this wasn't really an option for me. I did a quick check on the myDellMini web site to see if others had boldly gone before and it seemed that they had and no major problems had been encountered...

I should have delved deeper but more on that later.

Having taken a backup (one with TimeMachine and one with Carbon Copy Cloner), and with one hand on my heart, and the other one behind my back with as many fingers crossed as possible I proceeded to install the update through the standard combi installation. I'd previously updated my other Macs and everything appeared to be working OK, and at least I knew what to expect - download, restart, and wait a few minutes.

Everything seemed fine. The Hackintosh booted OK, the Apple logo appeared and not long after the desktop appeared as I had left it. Except there was no wireless activity...

I ran the DellEFI 1.2a5 utility without changing any options, rebooted and WiFi access was restored. Everything was back to normal, I thought.

My new Kensington SlimBlade Trackball mouse arrived this morning and I went to look at the tutorial video on the Kensington web site. The video loaded but there was no sound. The sound function key combination key didn't work either, and the sound icon in the menu bar showed a great big gap where it should have been. ITunes also failed to play any songs. A quick panic attack and then back to the myDellMini web site.

This time I read the entries more carefully and found the solution in one of the forum pages - these guys are really switched on! I followed the sound advice (pun intended) and now everything really does seem to be back to normal. (I'm not going to repeat the info here for fear of getting something wrong - if you need help go to the source yourself!)

Hopefully this will be the last update to Leopard before Snow Leopard hits the market. Who knows whether that will work with these hybrids, but I feel sure that some brave souls will be trying it out at least, and I have no doubt that they'll publish their findings for us less technically endowed enthusiasts.

Until then, I thank them profusely for their hard work and efforts so far...

Apple Kit @ the Apple Harvest

This probably should have been my first blog entry as it sets the context for everything that is going to follow. But never mind, it's only a day late!

First a confession; I'm a relative newcomer into the world in which the Apple Harvest is set. Although I've secretly admired the Mac ever since it was first introduced into the orchard, I've been a PC user since they first became available in the UK back in the early 1980s. I left university (with a degree in Agricultural Science) and started life as a professional programmer - so my choice of platform was dictated by the demands of my employers and their clients.

Since then, my professional life has moved from pure software development, initially towards project management, then into software process improvement, and I now act as an independent management consultant, focusing on business and software process management, with a particular emphasis on organisational change management.

Two years ago I was working in Oslo in Norway, and dragging my relatively new Asus R1F tablet PC backwards and forwards. I was getting increasingly frustrated with the time it took to boot and to actually be able to do anything useful, not to mention the short battery life. I had a bit of disposable income at the time, so I decided to purchase a 15-inch MacBook Pro laptop, running at 2.4GHz, with a 150Gb disk and 4Gb of RAM. The time of purchase coincided with the release of Leopard. I became an instant convert.

Six months later I replaced my desktop (actually it was a permanently docked HP nx6325 laptop) with a 3.06GHz, 24-inch iMac,with 4Gb RAM and a 500Gb disk.

Earlier this year I replaced my Windows smart phone (which I've been using since the Orange SPV smart phone was first launched) with a 16Gb iPhone 3G, and somewhere along the line I ditched my Creative Zen-M 60Gb player for a 16Gb iPod Touch.

You could almost say that I'm now a fully reformed PC user, but unfortunately I still live in the real world, where my clients still demand PC compatibility, so I keep a copy of Parallels 4 with Windows XP for such situations. However, I do find I'm using it less and less, which is a blessing.

So there you have it. These are my credentials for writing about Apple kit in a public place. I may not win any awards for longevity in the Apple community, but I've certainly put my share of investment into my Apple kit and software over the past couple of years. And no doubt will continue to do so for the next few years...

In forthcoming blogs I'll tell you something about the software I use.