Many of you are aware that I have been a Macintosh user since birth (my bio at http://nathantremmel.com shows the progression of my Mac life).  However, I am not sure how much longer this will last.

Apple’s next big cat, Lion (the next release of Mac OS X) is incorporating many of the features of the iOS platform (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad).  I think these iOS devices are solid devices, but I don’t want a 15″ version of them.  The motto on Apple’s site for Lion is “The power of Mac OS X. The magic of iPad.”  I feel as if it’s more like, “Let’s dumb down OS X to become a large iOS machine.  Lion includes a layout that shows all of your applications in little boxes exactly like the iOS devices.  You can make an application full screen as if it were the only thing running.  They have already implemented a Mac store to purchase applications from one single program.

I have always used Mac OS because I was born using it and have found it to be fairly simple to use.  However, it is getting too simple and that is taking away it’s appeal to me.  I own an iPhone, I know how simple it is to use.  But, it’s also locked down in too many ways.  I can see the reasoning behind this, but Apple is becoming a company that is far too locked down for it’s own good.  I’m all for ease of use, but ease of use via restrictions on what can be on the machine is too far.

What will keep me on the Mac?  The apps.  People who develop apps in Mac OS X strive to make them look good and function beautifully.  I don’t think I could move to an operating system that doesn’t have Skitch,  TextExpander, TextMate, 1Password (though already on Windows), Adium, and even Apple Mail.  There are competitors for all these applications on Windows and Linux, but they are just not the same.  It really is a case of form over function: the alternatives work, but they don’t work the same or as well as the applications listed above.

So that’s my dilemma.  Windows 7 is not as bad as many of the previous versions of Windows.  I’ve been using Boot Camp and another computer with Windows 7 and do not really have any complaints other than not having the applications listed above.  I have always been a Linux fan too, but I am not sure I could make a full transition because it is not as intuitive and can be too problematic to diagnose and resolve issues.

And what am I gonna do with all my handles that say macaddict in them?

So New media.  This sprung up in my mind because actor Robert Llewellyn, most famous for Red Dwarf and famous in my mind for hosting what was called Junkyard Wars in the U.S. and it’s official name from the U.K. Channel 4 is Scrapheap Challenge(still airing), was on an episode of Macbreak Weekly hosted by one of my favorite geeks Leo Laporte (TechTV’s The Screen Savers, Call for Help now creator of Twit.tv).

According to Llewellyn’s website, Youtube has become a place where he posts videos a lot.  This is truley a person who has his feet in both the old media and the new media.  But what the hell does “old” and “new” media mean?  Obviously it differentiates between television, newspapers, radios, and Youtube, blogs, and podcasts.  My question is why? Why should we label the media we watch/listen to as old and new?  To me it doesn’t make any sense.  As much as I would like to see it, New media is not going to replace old media anytime soon.  There are a lot of people that trust sources that have been around for over a decade.  And yes these sources know their stuff and can write well, but how well do they know there stuff?

I believe that a blogger can do a much better job with reporting on certain things.  Take technology.  Most news shows have no idea what they’re talking about when it comes to technology.  They like to throw around terms like “hackers” just to scare people and created Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD).

The problem with bloggers lies in neutrality.  Bloggers have issues staying out of the conversation because they are writing about what the love.  Take me writing about this for example.  I obviously have a bias being a blogger (though I only blog for the sake of blogging), but I support “old media.”  I listen to NPR.  I watch TV shows and sometimes even read a newspaper.

I don’t rely on these as my only sources of news.  I also have 178 RSS subscriptions in my RSS reader (creating 142 unread feeds from the past hour currently).  Some of these feeds are in fact from old media though.  Most of it is from new media.

Why do I still use the terms Old and New media even though I don’t like them?  It’s an easy way to distinguish between the online and offline news.  Though those worlds have collided in many senses, it still needs to be differentiated somehow.  I like everything equal, but this is not going to be one thing that is.

So yesterday the school and part of the state lost internet. When your connected 90% of your life, you become attached to the ability to surf the web at any time. So the rumor is an upgrade was occurring in South Burlington and someone pulled the wrong plug, and then a fiber line in Chicago was cut accidentally. It’s a very crazy set of events I think.

This lead me to think about what happens if we have all our assets on the internet in one form or another and this happens. I know the helpdesk and a lot of other people weren’t able to get any work done because we didn’t have the pipes for around 3 hours. Our ticketing system for requests is on an outside server, which means we couldn’t do any of those jobs. We couldn’t send email outside the college which meant if someone needed our help with an online course we could do nothing. Also, since many of our website servers are on campus or in the state, our school website and the student portal wasn’t accessible to the outside world. Sounds pretty bad for business right?

The goods news is this kind of thing could only have happened in Vermont. We have almost literally two lines in terms of internet entering and leaving the state so if they go down the whole state is pretty much doomed. As we become more wired though we expect less downtime, so any downtime at all frustrates us to the max. It really is an addiction, and we must avoid it.

Thanks to the wonderful people at the Champlain College computer helpdesk, the site is back!  One of the techs has hosting that he rents out for cheap.

Ignore the whole splitting blog and frontpage apart.  I’m just gonna write it all here.  All pictures will be on my flickr account (which will be pro).  I love WordPress 2.5

Today was also my last day of college freshman classes.  It’s been crazy how fast the year has flown by.

Geez, it seems like it’s been one thing after another on this server. I don’t wanna talk about it, I just wanna move to dreamhost.

What I really wanted to mention was the fact that the 8/9 edition of All Songs Considered used Skype to talk to one of their correspondents. Clearly, NPR gets mad props for using this ip telephony/voip/peer to peer technology. Of course, the broadcast had a small glitch, which they left in the podcast (I don’t know about the radio) which was amusing. It was funny cause I had realized that skype stopped working because I heard the tell-tale noises that all skype users know and love.

What I realized was that Skype is, indeed, a viable option for television and radio. Look, it has it’s issues, but so do satellite phones, and satellite video. Why are the major broadcasters still using satellite video feeds when foreign correspondents could take a laptop and a DV camera and have improved quality. I’m always surprised at the clarity of Skype when it’s configured correctly. It sounds better than a regular phone line already, and goes pretty much head to head with an ISDN line. For less money than an ISDN line.

I’m not saying that the big people should switch, but it could be used when an ISDN line isn’t possible, or if the broadcasters can’t afford ISDN, etc.

Beware kids, major broadcasting companies are starting to use off the shelf products. What’s next, everyone will realize that Mac is a much better operating system for home users?

OK so there’s this company that does a pretty nice program called Missing Sync, which adds a lot of nice features to Palm users (they have a version for Windows Mobile, too) on the Mac. My issue with them? THEY MAKE YOU PAY FOR +1 VERSIONS OF THEIR PRODUCTS. What’s worse? They “say” they have an upgrade price: It’s sooo minimal that it’s like paying for the product twice, or in my case, three times. It’s retailed at $39.99, and their upgrade price is $24.95. What kind of obscure discount is that?? It’s crap. It’s stupid. And I’m not paying for it.
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     Well, looks like I’ve got a few things to say. Some nerdy things, some otherwise.

     Well the first thing is: i’m done with high school foreva!

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     You know it’s funny, I’ve not even gotten the site back up on it’s feet and I’m posting the fun stuff. This post is partly a taste of what may become of the homepage of frayedwires: geek news, reviews, my opinons and cool software. Let’s jump into that.

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5/8/07 6:42pm: Oops, guess who deleted their whole website et all? Yeah, that’s right me. Luckily there was a daily backup from Midphase, so that saved my keister. Most of the site is back running, but all the places I’m doing upgrades are going to be updated ASAP.

I’m gonna clean up my server a little bit. Hopefully I don’t delete anything that’s required for the site to function properly.

I think most divisions of the site are either going to be run off wordpress or some sort of wiki depending on the needs of the pages. I’ll link to them on the sidebar when their ready.

All of that whilst I’m watching Battlestar Galactica. All the geeks watch it, so I figure I better get in the game. It’s pretty cool, CGI effects like Firefly(only the best Sci-Fi ever) and huge references to greek mythology.

Oh, and my plan for when I’m in college is for posts pertaining to it to have it’s own blog. And I’m still considering the whole front page is techie rest is personal bit.

–Nate

Little apps like Disco:
     It’s a CD burning app that smokes when you’re burnin’. It also responds to mouse movements as if it were smoke and you were moving your hand over the smoke: it moves. It’s such a neat app. For those of you who’ve actually heard of this before, I’ve not had a machine that could handle the smoke effects until now
     Now for a bit of information about the site. I’ve put up these google ads so I can get some moola (hopefully). So click those darn links, search over there on the left, and download firefox via the link all the way at the bottom of the page. Also, we are now running on WordPress 2.1. It’s pretty cool.
     Also, a quick random link: Twitter. Tell the world what your currently doing. Check out the bottom of the sidebar to get an example of what I’m doing right now