The Best Ever

Dear Every Company Out There,
Please stop touting your newly released products as "the best ever". If you make it a practice of releasing less capable products as the years pass, you will quickly find yourself out of business. The very fact that you're releasing anything new says your shiny new product is "the best ever". Please stop telling us. If your products don't speak for themselves, you're doing something wrong.

I'm not sure where this practice started, but the first time I remember encountering it was sadly Steve Jobs. I say sadly because, in my not so humble opinion, this stain is the single trait in Steve's marvelous presentation skills that tarnished his otherwise pristine delivery. Sure, the first time he said it the expression was somewhat endearing. The second time, though, I remember thinking, "Did he just say that again?" Then he said it again, and again, and again, and again... and again.

So, if you're tempted to adopt this man's presentation proficiency, please discover the things he did so expertly and lay "the best ever" to rest with the best ever.

Sincerely,
Your friend who wants your advertising to be as fresh and new as your products

Web Development Platform

Yes, it's been three years since I posted. No, I'm not going to hash out the details why, 'cause who cares ;)

Recently a friend at work got his first Mac. It's been fun to bask in some of the "digital light" with a friend, sharing favorite things about the hardware, software, etc. But one of the things that I've loved so much about having my Macs is how easy it is to use as a Web development platform.

I started out early on coding HTML, but quickly grew tired of the staticicity (yes, I made that word up) of it and decided to get deeper into "smarter" code. I chose PHP because it was open source and from what I could tell, somewhat resembled the syntax of the C programming language, which was the only real programming exposure I'd had up to then. There was also the aspect of it not being ASP, which was a must for me, as a Mac fanatic. This was pre-OS X days, so the Mac was very different than it is today. But OS X was close behind my delving into web development. And it couldn't have come at a better time.

I got a hosting account at echoecho dot com and started playing with stuff there. But I was regularly not connected to the Web, as I took public transportation to and from work most days. It began to be a pain to have to push content to my website to test it, and being new to web development, I didn't really know my options. Well, somehow I stumbled across Server Logistics and their web hosting installers (Apache, MySQL, PHP) for the Mac. I believe at this point OS X was at version 10.2, which was, in my opinion, the first real commercially ready version of OS X. Well, I installed the packages, got things set up, and suddenly, I was able to test all my PHP code locally, on my laptop. Landmark? No. But for me it was just the breakthrough I needed.

I started doing all kinds of things with web-based code. And, to this day, I still prefer to type my documents in HTML, rather than Word or the like. No, my tool of choice is the mother lode of text editors, BBEdit. If you're looking for a powerful text editor and you are Mac-based, I'm not aware of a better tool. There are some cool tools out there that support collaboration really well, but I code alone most of the time, so that's never been an issue for me. I prefer the likes of Subversion these days, anyway.

So, back to the original point of this post. In Web development, there are three primary things to be concerned with: 1) design; 2) code; 3) hosting. That's maybe over-simplified, but those are the major components. Well, I think most people would agree that the majority of artistic types use Macs, rather than PCs. Despite the tools for design being nearly identical in function on both platforms, the Mac remains the artists' choice. So that aspect is covered. Next is the coding. I've heard that BBEdit has been touted as a reason for moving to the Mac. It's really that good (though I don't remember where I first heard that stated). Even if you're not a "hand coder", there are a plethora of tools out there to do the job on the Mac as well as Windows.

That brings us to the hosting. At this point I'm reminded of a shirt I saw years ago on a college campus. It said something to the effect of, "God made Linux to host Web servers". Mac OS X isn't Linux, but with it's BSD underpinnings, it's definitely a lot closer than Windows. Close enough that running Apache, MySQL, and PHP is fairly trivial, and the experience is much the same as it is on a Linux box.

Just yesterday I was trying to get a quick test website up and going at work. I had a virtual Windows machine up and going, decided to use that since it was already available. I installed a package called EasyPHP, which I've used in the past for doing local testing on a Windows machine. Well, local testing was great, but I couldn't "see" the website on any other computer on the network. the machine was pingable, so connection to it wasn't the problem. I don't know what you'd want to do with a web server except make it available to other machines on the network. It eventually baffled me, and I'm looking for another solution. I just wish Windows wasn't so darn hard to work with. We live in a Windows world, but I can't, for the life of me, figure out why.

Well, that's enough for today. This post turned into a novel. I hope to be back sooner than 2011.

My First Post

Well, here is my first blog post. My boss asked me to find out everything I could about blogs, so I figured I'd get in and set one up.

As I got to the part about what my blog would be called, I determined that the main thing I like to talk about online is Apple Computer and all its associated neato stuff. So this blog is meant to be primarily a discussion about the amazingly innovative and interesting things that Apple continues to bring to the marketplace.

I am the current owner of a 17" PowerBook G4, in addition to a couple other machines, the oldest of which is a Power Computing PowerTower Pro 225 (I loved that machine, a true workhorse).

Just this past weekend I had an experience confirming to me why my Mac is so cool. My father-in-law wanted me to show him how to email a digital photo from his new camera and new laptop computer. Running a Windows machine, I knew that it wouldn't be as easy as I could do it with iPhoto, but I helped him figure it out. After about 20 minutes (which included him writing the steps down to reproduce later), we finally had an email ready to send. Then, it took 10 minutes to send over the dial-up connection, since the photo was 1MB. In my mind I'm thinking, "Boy, this would be about 3 clicks on my Mac," but that was obviously not an option, and saying something would just frustrate him.

Well, it all goes back to how much you can do with a Mac, with the built-in software that comes with every system Apple sells. That kind of integration goes a long way towards making my life much more productive and enjoyable.