The scary but completely believable column by Dvorak in PC Mag comes as quite a shock. However, it makes absolute sense. Apple cannot sustain developing an operating system and compete with windows -- even with all the ipod money coming in. What a shame.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1923151,00.asp

I'm trying this new widget from Blogger. Seems quite good. Better than the one I was using. 

So finally something to cheer about the iMac. I burned a DVD from iTunes yesterday with all songs from Q4 2005 and the process was smooth and snappy! Maybe some of te things they say about iMac may actually be true!

So my iMac experience so far has been nothing but frustrating. I hope it gets better from now on. Here are some of the items that were suboptimal.

1. The wireless mouse Apple sold me with this iMac for a 100 dollars extra is a piece of junk. No vertical scorll, no back\forward button, no middle click -- hell almost no click at all. Impossible to use in any productive way. Feels like a 1st gen mouse I used in my youth.

2. iTunes copy and iPhoto copy to get all the ratings, keywords, etc. from the PC was a chore. Apple could have done a lot of people who are going to be switching a huge favor by publishing it clearly in a document on their website or in a help file. iPhoto wasn't such an issue but iTunes required some trickery. If you let iTunes organize your music and consolidate the library on the PC then you are OK but otherwise it is next to impossible.

3. Handling exceptional situations like if you choose restart and one of the programs running has exit confirmation (like firefox with multiple tabs open) the system just freezes. You have to plug the plug to bring it back to life.

4. The biggest disappointment is the way the much touted Front Row almost doesn't work. I was somehow able to trick it to play iTunes songs -- no such luck with iphoto. It says I have nothing in my library. I have 12000 photos.

5. Of course, I am one of those lucky guys that got stuck with a bad display as well. There are flickers and white lines specially when using Front Row. Good thing you cannot really use it too much.

6. Syncing with Yahoo was a pain. I copied over the NDIF format for addresses and all it copied over was names and number -- no Birthdays and other dates. Too bad I cannot really use the Address Book which is supposed to link so well with iPhoto.

7. There is no easy way to get the Yahoo Calendar into the iCal software. Another bummer for the iPhoto Calendar option.

8. Tried playing some old video files encoded in avi format and it wouldn't work. I downloaded some codecs and some software. No luck.

9. Citrix client works well but the audio is terrible and the screen sizing is a complete mess. Only works well if you move the dock to the right -- which actually isn't bad given how wide the damn screen is.

10. iPhoto froze to death and took the computer with it when I tried to import photos directly from an otherwise blazing fast external drive.

11. iPhoto Calendar crapped out with a system error when I was almost about done.

12. Everything is generally very slooooow...

13. I tried to use iWeb but it was so limiting -- it was just not worth considering unless you wanted to do everything via the .Mac subscription.

14. Oh the .Mac subscription. Apples touts all these great features about automatic backup, photo sharing, web hosting and all. Reality check: Apples sells a measly 1 gig of space for 100 bucks a months. I couldn't even fit word docs in that let alone 50 gigs of music and 20 gigs of photos and everything else. A high quality home video for an hour is about 10 gig. You can buy another 3 gig for another 100 bucks but what the hell will you do with it? Backup? Web hosting? Sharing and syncing? If you are in your 80s then it might work for you.

15. I downloaded remote desktop from Microsoft to connect to my Windows PC. Apparently, StuffitExpander (which is supposed to be included my Apple) was not able to open the downloaded file. Spotlight (another much touted feature) wasn't even able to find Stuffit Expander so either Spotlight is broken or there is no Stuffit Expander wasn't bundled.

16. I tried to use Quicken that supposed came bundled (Hasn't asked for money yet) and I just shuddered. Many many small windows opened all over the big screen demanding different things and I had no idea what to do. It was like a game more than a business application.

17, The damn thing has no volume. I have Bose speakers that blasted sound from the PC but on the iMac they barely squeak.

That's it for now. I've only spent a few hours on it so far so I haven't had enough time to spend fixing some of these problems that I mention. But the whole point of getting a Mac was that I wouldn't have to worry about 'fixing' anything.

It was like getting a Toyota but I've realized in the last few days it is more like a BMW.

I'm typing this in one of the widgets I downloaded for the mac. This thing is amazing. So simple and elegant. It is hard to understand why something so simple and useful would be so hard for windows to do for all these years. I guess not having competetion makes you that way.

So I am typing this on a brand spanking new iMac dual core. Petty cool. So, far I've been very comfortable with it. No major hiccup. The one big problem is that they short sold me on the mouse. The wireless mouse isn't the mighty mouse and doesn't have a vertical scroll. Killing me. I don't think I can survive without that being so used to it. I'll have to buy a wireless might mouse if they sell one. Let's see how that goes.

I predicted a long time ago that the only way to stop spam or at least reduce its current levels of 60% of all email is to make the sender pay a small fees. Seems like it finally going to happen. However, not exactly the way I said or the way I wanted. Seems like paid emails will get preferential treatment and they will be delivered straight to the inbox without going through spam filters. Great. That's just what I want. I want my inbox to be flooded with paid messages from all over the world. I may have to entirely give up email at that point.

I tried to open a text file that has about 20 lines of text in it and the computer is braying like mare in pain. The hard disks are spinning out of control. The processor is hot. I don't know what to do except just press the reset button -- which by the way isn't easy anymore and it is also controlled in some sense by the OS.
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My iMac was off loaded by the airline in Shanghai so it has been delayed and I have no idea where it is or when I will get it. I can't wait to switch. I just want to get my job done and it is become more and difficult every day.

Apple has shipped my new iMac 8 days earlier. Pretty cool. The machine is shipping from Shanghai so should probably be here by the end of this week.
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Cannot wait. My windows box is just not easily usable. The browser is fine but all else just sucks.