Eric Schwarz - 2002.07.22

Well, I returned from New York (I'm staying with relatives in Philadelphia for the week), and I have to say that the Macworld Expo was most disappointing.

It seems just my luck that the one Expo I decide to go to (and can get arranged), and Apple totally blows it....

I know it's been said before (it's been all over the Web), but I decided to add grumpiness from my iBook to the fast-growing amount of articles. First of all, I'm pissed off majorly about .mac, and I'm a little disappointed about the products that were introduced.

Jaguar

I was excited about Jaguar. It was supposed to be the end-all, be-all version of OS X (for now), and I couldn't wait to copy it to my drive. Unfortunately, the upgrade is not cheap (not like the $19 10.1 upgrade), nor do I feel it's worth it. I won't be using Quartz Extreme nor iChat (since my iTools account will be over with and my AIM screen name works just fine in Adium), nor will I use Sherlock 3. Inkwell is useless to me, as is Rendezvous (for now). I'm looking forward to the added options and little interface tweaks, but, oh well, OS 10.1.5 works quite nice for me right now. My iBook is plenty fast and does what I want. I fear I'm already dropping back into the low-end Mac spiral - oh well.

I asked the Apple representative about Jaguar, and he told me about all the "nice new features" as though I didn't already hear about them, and it took awhile for me to get him to tell me the price. He was too busy talking about how Jaguar could've been called OS XI because it was so great.

Overall, I might upgrade to Jaguar, but I think Apple should've got OS X right from the beginning, not all these damn pay-updates. Don't get me wrong - it's a fine piece of software, but some of the supposed "wow" features I don't care about.

.mac? How Microsoft....

Some questioned the name of .mac on the rumor sites last week. I didn't trust it at all. Although it's the same service, people hate .mac and love iTools. Simple as that.

I only use about 1 MB of my iDisk and use my mac.com email. So much for promoting Apple every time I click send. I'm gonna have to start using the hateful webmail from my school or work on setting up an email address on the other Mac site I write for, macweekly.com (sorry for the shameless plug).

I won't use iCal (at least over the Web), iChat, Virex, or any of that other overpriced stuff. I mean, to upload 100 MB over this crappy dialup we have that only gets 26.4k takes forever.

I'm looking to slowly phase out my use of iTools, but I'm not sure where I'll go. I'll be homeless in cyberspace.

iTools = good, .mac = evil

The Rest of the Expo

Well, MWNY was an experience. I spent about three hours there on Thursday and saw everything. I bought an iMic adapter for my iBook and got lots of flyers and information. I saw my first iPod, G4 tower, and eMac in person, and I realized how truly nice the Iomega folks are.

One nice point was that I got a free MacAddict T-shirt, and my little brother got to play in the games section (he's a gamer). I also got a few Jaguar posters with the somewhat cool "fuzzy X" being used for the Jaguar logo.

iTunes 3 isn't that important to me, but I'll probably upgrade anyway.

My Faith in Apple Is Dwindling

This was yet another nail in the coffin of my faith in Apple Computer, Inc. I remember when Yahoo started changing their policy about POP3 email access, so I switched over to iTools. I very rarely deal with Yahoo for anything anymore. After the little change with iTools, I find myself not wanting to deal with Apple as much anymore. The enthusiasm seems to be disappearing with every little thing.

I'm not saying I'm going to switch to Windows, nor am I going to slam the Mac platform. There are thousands, if not millions, of people who are on the "positive" side of the Mac, making it the greatest platform on the face of the earth.

One thing I'd like to point out is AOL. Although everyone slams AOL, I've been using their AIM service and have had very few problems, nor have I had any service changes. I'm not sure how their ISP abilities are, but their free services work quite nicely.

Hopefully Apple will not stay as cocky as they are (they're always advertising how they're #1 in certain areas) and realize that they're pissing off their user base.

Maybe the old slogan "Free email for life" will still hold true....

Eric Schwarz has been using Macs and other computers for a few years. His personal website - dealing with Macs (of course) - is at <http://schwarztech.macweekly.com/>. You can learn more about his current computer setup in Eric Schwarz's iBook.

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