http://www.myapplestuff.com Copyright ©2006 Chris Marshall

The European Perspective

by Chris Marshall, November 2006

After my September “Mad Mac Month” October has been a much cheaper month, not only in that I haven’t purchased any more stuff, but also because I have been busy setting it all up, so I haven’t been out much at all. I love all the preparation and planning, the organizing of the equipment and the environment, so it has to be said that I have had a great month J I also had a reality check, as my parents were over from the UK before they went back to Florida, so I had to tidy up and upgrade their Windows Notebooks L

The month didn’t start off well though, as my screen fell fowl of the demon called Parcel Force Worldwide. I won’t bore you with the story here, but I did blog about it at the time. Suffice to say that I had no control over using them, as I had vowed never to use them after they lost my PC when they shipped it to Spain 5 years ago. On the positive side, I love the screen, although the lack of the Mac Mini meant that initially I had to hook it up to the PowerBook. which was fine. Although in “Mirroring” mode, it gave me a 1” black margin around the whole of the screen, which was a little disappointing. In Dual Screen mode, it worked a treat with every pixel of the 23” screen working perfectly. 1-0 to eBay so far, as I can’t fault the screen, and I saved £200.

Next up was the iMac for my wife, which gave me a bit of a dilemma! It didn’t arrive until she had flown to the UK. So I was torn between waiting for her to come back so that she could enjoy the whole process of unpacking her first Mac and setting it all up. When she came back it was all set up and ready for her to use. What would you have done? It was a bit like being bought two ties by your wife at Christmas… whichever one you wear first, you know you will get the “What’s wrong with the other one?’ question! If you thought the delivery issues with the Screen were bad, you really wouldn’t believe what Apple and TNT managed to do with the iMac! Again I blogged about it here so if you want to read about truly poor service, go ahead and take a look L

When the screen arrived, I decided to video the opening process, not so much to capture the event, more to have some evidence in case it had got damaged in transit or wasn’t in the condition that the eBay seller had indicated. I have decided this is a really neat thing to do with high value items, as it doubles up as a record that you owned the item in case of a future insurance claim. So as the current trend is to share these experiences with everyone, I have posted the Screen video on my blog.

Again, the lack of the Mac Mini meant that my first experience with the LaCie drive wasn’t as anticipated i.e. stacked with the Mac Mini, but hooked up to the PowerBook it was excellent. The hub factor with the extra USB and FireWire ports are already proving invaluable.

The iMac has been truly awesome though. My wife loves it and has found the Mac OS extremely easy and intuitive to use. I had zero problems setting it up and transferring her data, but I did have a problem leaving it to her and going back to my “very slow” PowerBook G4, even with 2 GB RAM. She has even started her very first blog. It was pretty funny actually, as she posted some pictures of the iMac and straight away got a comment with a question about the Skype phone she has connected. Not sure she was that impressed that she was getting “techy” questions and she hasn’t been blogging much since!

Finally, the Mac Mini. I got a call from Apple to say that the delay was down to the shortage of 160GB hard drives. They said they had lots of the 120GB and 80GB in stock, so I cancelled the order and placed a new order for one with a 120GB hard drive. So far so good. They confirmed the order saying it would ship in three days and the supervisor at Apple rang me up to say he would try and ensure it was a priority order. The day before it was due to ship, I got an email saying the shipment date had slipped EIGHT days. Talk about feeling conned. In all seriousness, Apple has gone so far down in my perception of their customer service, that I have to say they now sit in my all time worst 5 companies ever!!

My ’Casts

These are all available via the iTunes Store Note the new name change from Apple J

Under Consideration

:MacBreak Video as I am just not getting anything that I am really that interested in watching.

: Life on line with Bob Parsons as I am just not getting round to listening to it at all.

Recently Deleted

:The Daily Nut. For one reason or another I got a couple of weeks behind with this, and realized that I just didn’t miss it. I worked out that it was one of those ‘casts that I sort of forced myself to keep up with, and that the vast majority of the content just wasn’t too my taste. I sort of liked it, but can’t say that I miss it at all.

: New York Times Book Review. This is an interesting one to delete as I have started to get some ideas on books to read through a couple of “neighbors” that I have hooked up with on my vox blog.

Just Added

: The President’s Weekly Radio Address. Extremely irreverent and funny, proving that “the truth hurts!!!”

; Podrunner. Having bought my wife a Nano and Nike + Sports kit I downloaded an album from the iTunes Store, but came across this ‘cast which is absolutely brilliant for running to.

Featured ‘Casts – Mark Kemode’s Film

This is a weekly segment in The Daily Mayo radio show on BBC Radio. Mark has a PhD in Horror Films (or something like that). Seriously – he has a PhD in watching films. What a great way to spend three years and of course now he spends all his life watching films! He has strong opinions on what a good film should be, but he is very unbiased and appreciates pretty much every genre of film.

European News

Not a lot to be honest. Apple came in with some strong numbers, up 27% year on year in Europe “broadly in line with the group as a whole” according to Pascal Cagni, head of Apple Europe.

It was good to hear iWoz reviewed and discussed by Steve himself on Simon Mayo’s program. I certainly will read this book at some stage in the future.

In recent months, I have tried to give you an insight into life here in Spain, and in particular the difference in culture and how that effects the technology scene here. Well this fact from the Confederation of Banks will give you a good idea of the differences with say the UK or UDA; 7 out of 10 Spanish men still sleep in their childhood bead at the age of 34. Woman leave home on average at 28, men at 30.

Like many people I enjoy a good game, I own a PSO and a PS2 and I don’t use them anywhere nearly enough, so I am not in the market for a PS3 a Wii or any new device. I know many that are though, so it seems that Sony is going to alienate a fair few people over in Europe, if the article on Gizmodo was true.

“Sony sure does know how to make friends. It emerged today that Sony fully intends to screw its most loyal European customers (you know, the crazy people who intend to import a PlayStation 3 before the official European launch) by using the "full scope of the law" to prevent such imports from happening. Sony says it's trying to "protect consumers" from the horrors of buying a game console that won't work with domestically released games and Blu-ray movies. Yeah, because the people who have the money to import a PS3 into Europe don't understand the consequences.”

Skype on the other hand seem to be courting the English with the offer that has been in the US for a while;

“Skype users who buy Skype Credit to pay for international and mobile calls will get six months free calls to UK landlines”

And my favourite little tit bit of news;

“large screens can offer gains of up to 65 per cent in productivity on a variety of specific office tasks, an Apple-sponsored study claims.”

So if the rumours of a 50” HD Cinema Screen are true, just think how much more productive we could all be J

Digital Media Solution

I have very little to say on this at the moment, as I am really just waiting for the Mac Mini to turn up. I have a question though. Does anyone know of a USB device that I can hook up to the Mac Mini that would allow me to use the Apple Remote from a different room? I am looking at an option where I have the Mac Mini in the study connected to the TV in the lounge (I have a cable running through the wall that allows me to do this), so it would be good to run a device from the Mac Mini into the lounge that would allow me to bring up Front Row on the TV,

If you can help please drop me an email. Thanks.

And Finally ………… what has iTunes done for me?

About Chris Marshall

Educated in the UK and USA, I have lived and worked in the UK, USA, and Spain. I currently live in Spain in a state of semi-retirement where I spend most of my time developing my skills on the Mac and understanding the significance and opportunities of the “Web 2.0” explosion.

I have recently started writing reviews and articles for macCompanion[1] and for The Mac ReviewCast[2].

From a “day job” perspective I don’t really have one at the moment. I am doing some PC training and support locally and have been advising a couple of small start-up businesses. When I do work, it is a business consultant[3] with an emphasis on small and start-up businesses and mentoring individuals. I am particular keen to help US organizations establish themselves in Europe. I am also keen to develop my writing skills.

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