This isn’t a rant or something like that. Everybody who reads my blog knows that I switched to OS X sometime back. For the past few days I have been using Vista Ultimate on my macbook pro and now I am seriously considering that to switch to windows again.

Ofcourse the fact that Vista’s aero graphics run super smooth on my macbook pro is an added advantage. But just a shiny UI isn’t enough to persuade me. Some pressing reasons are as follows:

1. I feel that my Mac learning curve is far longer than Vista’s. Tiger does everything for me but I do not control the system. In Vista its more like I am running the show. Its not that Tiger cant be fully mastered, just that mastering Vista is a lot faster.

2. MS has really sharpened the interface and the general functionality of the system from XP. One can always say that Vista can still improve but the same can be said of Apple. If Tiger was really fantastic why would Apple introduce Leopard. Vista is a pleasure to use not just because its new but its beautiful to look at.

3. MS has provide excellent backwards compatibility in Vista. None of my previous software has had a problem working with Vista till now. And I like that. No more looking on the internet for mac solutions.

4. Tiger is more secure but Vista isnt bad either. On my XP laptop, I hardly faced a corrupt disk or crash due to a virus or something simply because I was alert. Vista makes my job easier with new functions such as UAC. Vista isnt immune but I doubt I would face a serious problem while using it.

5. Several people find the UAC annoying but I think its the best part of Vista. I had it disabled for some time but found that its better if I had kept it running so that atleast I know whats happening in my system.

6. The biggest advantage is that I can take full advantage of the Live Experience that Microsoft is trying to provide users.

I am sure people would disagree with me and thats why I want to know why would a windows user switch to Mac OS X and not Vista.

As you can guess, my macbook pro charger got busted. I have had this charger for approx 10 months. The pics are below.

      I don’t know whats the average life of a battery charger but for my previous IBM laptop, I had my charger replaced only once in 3 yrs which is pretty good. Anyways, so I went down to the Apple store and took a queue number and waited for my turn. Read the convo below,

Me: Hi

She: Hi, How can I help you

Me: I have a 15″ macbook pro and my charger got burnt or something like that. (Takes out the charger and hands it to her)

She: Hmm, is your laptop under warranty?

Me: Yea

She: Ok, let me check with my engineer and I will get back to you in 5 mins.(Takes the charger with her)

Comes back in a min

She: Ok, it will be replaced free. You can collect it in 3-5 working days. We will give you a call when its ready for collection

Me: What, dont you keep parts in your store. How am I supposed to not do any work for 5 days.

She: We do have parts in our store but we need to send the charger first to Apple and then only can we give you a replacement

Me: You already have the charger and you can see its badly damaged/burnt. Why does it need to be sent to Apple before I am given a new one. Cant you do it after I get a new one

She: Sorry sir, thats Apple’s policy

I tried to convince her to try to do something but nothing worked. Now can someone please tell me why does Apple have such a policy. Doesn’t all this imply, either wait or get a new one. I could have waited but its the end of semester and I have projects and presentations lined up and exams as well, how am I supposed to wait for so long. A new charger costs 148 singapore $. I do not know what to do.
I did give my charger to her to get it replaced and now I am waiting. Luckily I could borrow a friend’s charger for a day. So tomorrow I am again without one. Does US Apple stores also have the same policy or is it just Singapore. Please tell me..

The motivation of this post is actually a comment that I read on a blog. The comment was this

“I don’t like the fact that Macs treat me like idiots and try to guide me through everything. I enjoy the superior control that I have over windows”

I thought, well I don’t think so. By no means I am a super user of macs, but I do believe that part of the reason why the above comment was posted was because there aren’t enough problems with the mac and as such normal users do not need to go through OS internals to fix those things. However for me, fiddling with the computer, in a non-destructive way of course, is necessary. So here are some things/details you might not know about your mac.

1. Power where you want

Mac OSX lets users run and manage hundreds of tasks simultaneously. But afterall its your Mac and you decide what should run and what not right? Process Wizard allows you to assign processor priorities to specific applications on your Mac. Process Wizard doesnt show how much juice a particular application is sucking so launch Activity Monitor and see what application is doing what.

2. Dock Your Desktop

The Finder runs better when the desktop is uncluttered. To have a fast Finder and a faster mac, create a folder at the root level or anywhere else and drag it to your dock. Set this new folder as your default download location for browsers and email apps. If you want your folder to look like a faux desktop, click its Dock icon to open it, select View > As Icons, then open View > Show View Options and adjust it to your liking.

3. Ditch Duplicates

Open Font Book (/Applications) and select All Fonts. See all the black dots to the right of entries in the Font Pane? This means you have got duplicates of marked fonts. To rectify this choose Edit > Select All and then Edit > Resolve > Duplicates. This turns off extra versions of fonts.

4. Validate Yourself

Font Book can also examine fonts for potential problems. Select all fonts and then choose Edit > Validate Fonts. After validating any problematic font will appear with a check mark, yellow exclamation point or a red X icon. Check the box for any font you want to remove and click Remove Checked.

5. Ditch Dashboard
Dashboard can be quite a memory hog if you use a lot of widgets. Install DashQuit to view a running total of Dashboard’s RAM usage. You can also use DashQuit’s stop button to quit dashboard entirely.

6. Dont forget to flush

Font Book doesnt flush fonts out of any caches. Use FontNuke to clear cached fonts.

7. Disable the Dashboard using Terminal

Just type defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled - boolean NO
Press Return and follow the above command with killall Dock. To restore the dashboard use the same commands in the same order.

8. Pinpoint a Memory Hog

To see which app is guzzling your Mac’s performance, launch Terminal and type top and press return. You will see a list of all running processes and how much memory each is using. The important number is listed in the column labled RSIZE.

9. Check for free space on all your hard drives

Launch terminal and type df-h and press return.

10. Activate Safari’s hidden menu

Safari’s debug menu contains several helpful tools for power users including the ability to import bookmarks. However this menu is hidden by default. To unhide this menu, launch Terminal and type defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1 and press return. Restart Safari and the menu will appear on the far right. If you would ever want to hide it again, just use the same command except change 1 to 0

For all the fans of Mint stats, this is not a rant/angry post on Mint. Mint is a wonderful stats software which does its job as required. I have been using Mint ever since it was released and recently upgraded to 2.0 version. But there are certain things that sometimes annoy the hell out of me. I am pretty sure that most if not all do face some of these issues.

1. Mint Updates.

Since I have upgraded to Mint 2.0, the dashboard widget that I use has constantly been giving me a notification that updates are due. As of now, Mint is at 2.04. I really do not want to keep updating manually. Isnt there any other way that this could be automated or atleast the number of steps be decreased.
2. Updates of Plugins

Most people who use Mint extend its functionality using 3rd party plugins called peppers. The problem arise when pepper developers release updates to these peppers. Users need to download them again and manually upload and activate them. I find this process a bit old styled. Cant we have a central place from where updates can be pushed automatically.

3. Text size

Everybody knows this.

4. Installation

Everyone who has installed Mint knows that you need decent amount of information for installation. Is it possible to simplify the install process. I am sure if it can be done, many more people would be using Mint.

5. Price

This is a tricky issue. Though 30$ isnt too much but it isnt too less either. If there could be a free version with certain limitations, a lot of new users would try it out and subsequently purchase it as well.

I just hope that atleast some of the issues that I have outlined above are done away with in the future. Mint is an awesome application and it can only get better.

As of now I have started using the digg style wp admin. You can see a screenshot below. It isn’t fake. Its the REAL thing. The problem is I did not make this but someone else did and now I have forgotten the link. I do have the necessary files though. I cant put it for public download since it might create a copyright issue. Let me know if you need it, I can still email it to you with the necessary instructions. The style is simple and nice and totally resembles digg.

Click here to enlarge