Showing posts with label apple. Show all posts
Showing posts with label apple. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

O Meo é maior que o teu (1).

A boa noticia é que, após quatro meses, já tenho TV e Net e Telefone. Mais propriamente adquiri o serviço Meo, o triple play da moda. Obrigado á CML e a PT por terem unido esforços e tirado o prédio onde moro da idade das trevas.

A oferta prometia, até porque as medições indicam que disponho dos 16 Mb de ligação, que seria o valor recomendado, mas na verdade apresenta algumas falhas. Nem todas elas relacionadas com o débito de rede. Não nos devemos esquecer que se trata de um produto algo novo no mercado e talvez daqui a uns tempos a qualidade melhore. Só podemos esperar.

Decidi fazer a minha própria critica ao produto uma vez que parece quase impossivel encontrar informação isenta e com algum espirito critico sobre o Meo, a menos que contem com um post ocasional de um empregado do Sapo, ou aquele flog do "omeumeo" que parece ter sido inventado pelo mesmo tipo do segredo vodafone, porque me parece algo..hummm fake. As minhas desculpas se de facto houver um blogger anónimo que avisa a "malta" para problemas com a facturação.

Para dourar a pilula incluo também alguns comentários sobre a qualidade do "networking stack" do Leopard porque dizem que um mal nunca vem só ;o)

- A oferta de canais disponiveis no serviço 30+10 (penso que é o base) é virtualmente igual aos de todos os outros operadores no mercado. Incluido no pacote vem, no entanto, um canal em HD sem qualquer programação de interesse mas que ainda assim vale a pena ver pela qualidade da imagem. Isto, claro, se tiverem uma TV com capacidade para tal.

- A qualidade do router é simpatica. Aparentemente o Leopard é que não gosta muito do wireless porque quando abro o Mail e o Safari em simultâneo, regra geral, perco a ligação. E a imagem da TV. Aborrecidito no minimo.

Pior mesmo é que qualquer site que eu tenha tentado visitar aquando do erro deixa de ficar acessivél, pois mesmo após reabrir o Safari, ou abrir um browser diferente, ou mesmo re-iniciar a maquina (old habits) continuo a receber uma página de "Resolution Successful"...Nota mental: Redefinir o conceito de "Success".

Para resolver a situação é preciso fazer uma limpeza ao cache do felino mais tosco da familia. Já agora, e antes que perguntem.... dscacheutil -flushcache

- Por defeito, ou seja, quando o técnico instalador sai da casa do cliente, a rede wireless faz broadcast do SSID apesar de contar apenas com WEP como medida de segurança. Para alterar estes "pormenores" basta abrir um browser, depois de autenticado na rede, e ir a http:\\home .Ou então http://ip-do-router/xslt?PAGE=J46&THISPAGE=J01&NEXTPAGE=J46 se gostarem de ver mais opções no menu. :o)


- A box com o disco rigido é barulhenta até quando está em stand-by o que me parece estranho, mas segundo o suporte técnico é assim mesmo. A segunda box já não é tão barulhenta, mas também não tem um disco lá dentro, não é?

- A funcionalidade de agendar a gravação de conteudos é desaproveitada porque, como se sabe, raramente a programação dos canais é mantida, pelo que o mais normal será perderem uns minutos do programa. De resto é algo inovador. Se bem que parece que me lembro de em tempos ter havido uns leitores de vhs que também faziam isso.

- A possibilidade de ver os incorrigiveis directa e gratuitamente na TV. Adorei! Parabéns! Se a resolução pudesse ser um pouco melhor ficava perfeito.

- O Video On Demand, apesar de me parecer uma boa ideia ainda não experimentei. Mas gostei de ver a possibilidade de alugar conteudos para adulto. Poderá evitar alguns constrangimentos aos mais timidos... ou "torrent impaired".

Adicionalmente, o Meo oferece um filme por mês para atrair os clientes a este serviço tipo videoclube. Mas, para já, a oferta pareceu-me fraca. Será uma questão de mentalidade, mas não vou experimentar um serviço (mesmo gratuito) se a oferta não me apela minimamente. Quem pensou esta estratégia de marketing espera, certamente, apelar á palavra mais querida do português médio (Grátis) não receando uma certa conotação com a má qualidade do conteudo disponibilizado.

Quanto a limitações técnicas incompreensiveis, até agora, só encontrei duas:
- Desbloquear conteudos para adultos de forma definitiva. Não dá.
Se estiverem a ver o Family Guy e a Megan (Ils son fous ces americains) decidir ter sexo na orelha para preservar a virgindade até ao casamento vão ter de imaginar a cena... a menos que tenham o comando á mão e se lembrem do código de desbloqueio. E mesmo que procedam ao desbloqueio, mas mudem de canal, terão de passar pelo mesmo noutra ocasião em que desejem ver conteudos igualmente chocantes.



Ah... se meter sangue e tripas por todo o lado não há problema. Sexo é que não. Mas isso são contas de outro rosario...

- Durante a gravação de um programa, a segunda box tem de estar sintonizada no canal que está a ser gravado. Esquisito. A box principal deveria poder tratar disso sozinha, não? Será o Windows CE a fazer essa gestão?
Mas giro mesmo é ver a mensagem de aviso que o software apresenta. Lamentavélmente não tenho um screen shot á mão, mas assim que tiver faço o update a este post. Se lerem o aviso ficam mais confusos do que se não o lerem e carregarem na opção que permite continuar a ver o canal...

Tirando isso, e como diriam os Garotos Podres, tudo bem.

1-Ok, este deve ser o pior titulo de um post de todos os tempos. Mas hei, fica como uma homenagem á MyBrand (aqueles do Allgarve e do logo da EDP que diziam ter sido roubado de algum lado) que fizeram aqui um optimo trabalho.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Yet another Mail.app bug

I don't like to repeat myself too much, but it seems that Leopards Mail.app fails at math.




Unless of course 4294967294 is the new zero.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Leopard Tech Talks

Last monday we've had the first Leopard Tech Talk in Lisbon, but much to my regret I didn't made it.

That's not at all unexpected since I'm having so many "shitty work days (tm)" but what's surprising me the most is that even with such a loyal and committed Mac fan base here, I haven't read a single post or e-mail about it.

Did anyone go? What was it like?

Thursday, November 22, 2007

out on safari and back again

And some people still ask me why I like Firefox better... You know, 75% of my visitors use Firefox. So should the rest of you.


Thursday, November 15, 2007

Half backed apple

Ok, so the portuguese version of Apple Store is up, some might say not a minute too soon, but not me.

I mean, either Apple entered the Web 2.0 bandwagon of "release soon, release often" or someone should get their ass kicked. What the hell is up with this 3 language web page?

Do you speek Spanporglish? I didn't bother looking any further. That was quite enough for me.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

+1

Tuesday Penantes switched.

I'm counting the number of "converts" I've brought into the light ... does anybody know how many I'll need so I get a free toy from Steve?

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Long time no see

I was forced to observe the shutdown day for over a week (not really, but i'll get back to that) because my Macbook died on me.

It's never a good experience to be away from your mac, but to deal with the Apple support around here one must be prepared for the worst.

From telling me that the customer service guy wouldn't reply my e-mails because he had personal problems (hey that's funny,i have a personal problem too! MY MAC IS BROKEN! what a coincidence) to taking some 20 phone calls to finally get some answers (I have witnesses. And they're still laughing) i've seen it all with these guys.

If we consider that a large part of Apple sales come from mac owners showing off the “superior hardware and the user experience a mac gets you” to their friends and coworkers (I myself am responsible for at least 4 switchers over the past 6 months), one should expect a better level of emphasis on customer satisfaction right?

Thankfully I still have my trusty Asus laptop that managed to deliver the daily fix of web surfing, and getting most of my work done so I really didn't had to be offline for so long. I was just too negative to write anything useful.

Anyway the XVI Jornadas de Informática an event hosted at UBI went by, and this year at least I heard something about what happened there. In Ruby in Portuguese website there are even some of the presentations given there available for download.

My humble 2 cents however would be to manage to get some more publicity before it happens.

While on the subject of great events happening in this little
fascist square of dirt by the sea, the fifth national encounter on Open Technologies will be happening in Lisbon on the 19th, and although the organization is hosted by Sybase and seems to be very professional and extremely interesting, my favorite Solaris Admin - slash -Farmer boy already managed to find a bug on the event page.

Also, today I'm going to my first Perl Mongers tech meeting and I'm hopping that I'll be able to learn something from those guys, 'cos the Perl I know wouldn't move the proverbial mountain.

Friday, March 16, 2007

30 (+10) reasons to switch

This is a post i thought i'd never write. It's not that i don't find the discussion fascinating, but that in my experience people (read: non geeks) seldomly need (or want) to change their OS.

Better yet, most people don't use an OS, they use a set of applications. But if the same applications are either cross platform or platform agnostic, then it might make sense to discuss the possibility of switching.

I'm doing it now because i saw a post earlier this week about reasons to change to Linux, and the whole thing got me going. I really don't think my opinion will make you change your mind, but it _does_ come from a someone who is a Windows specialist, a Mac fan-boy and a Linux geek (all me, at different times).

Oh, and this is my first post from TextMate!

10 reasons to use Windows
- It comes pre-installed with ~80% of the PCs sold worldwide;
- You don't know what a driver is (except if its behind a wheel) and couldn't care less;
- Most software is written for Windows, all new technology (Blue Ray; HDVD; DRM) is made for Windows;
- You can go to chat rooms, use file sharing software, visit google and read from Windows;
- You don't know how exciting it is for a script kiddie to see what files you have on your "My Documents" folder;
- You mostly play games, but don't have a games console;
- You don't know that there _are_ other OSs that you could use;
- You use your computer as an electric typewriter with a monitor. What is an OS anyway?;
- You can't afford a Mac, and Linux doesn't offer you the trust of a big corporation behind it;
- You are a VB, XBase, .Net and\ or a MSSQL pro;


10 reasons to use Linux or other *NIX OSs
- You are curious by nature;
- You know a little bit about computers, but want to know more;
- You are a programmer, a security or systems expert, or any other sort of Hacker (or want to be one);
- You can't afford a Mac, and Windows isn't configurable enough;
- You laugh at something like "rm -rf /usr/bin/laden" or you understand the sentence "thank @Divinity I had that shell script to change my MOTD with events from calendar.* or I would have missed LISP's birthday last wednesday";
- Somebody shown you what Beryl, XGL or E17 can do. And now everything else fades in comparison;
- You saw a video on youtube of a guy playing around on a touch screen and flipping windows with his thumbs;
- You believe in Open Source ideals;
- You are a security \ privacy junkie;
- You have DVDs from more that one region or you can't stand the idea behind DRM;


10 reasons to use Mac OSX
- You are a creative professional. (And i don't mean those of you who can write a 20 line telnet replacement);
- You are easily influenced by Apple's halo effect or Steve Jobs reality distortion field;
- You want a computer that just works. And looks good enough to turn heads;
- OSX is a UNIX on visual ecstasy (in-joke, i'll explain another day);
- You don't mind using a closed source OS that is based on Open Source and whose OSI model layer 7 (again, in-joke) can be replaced with FOSS variants;
- You would never replace a CPU, motherboard or graphics card on a laptop by yourself;
- It comes pre-installed with ~10% of the PCs sold worldwide, including your own;
- You are really good at Windows (an expert of sorts) but your antivirus spouts messages about Viruses and other threats that try to creep into your PC and you wonder how it's like on the other side;
- No matter how much you tweak Linux (or how much software you put on top of XP for that matter), it still doesn't feel as snappy or look like OSX;
- Your favorite band is putting out GarageBand files of their new album (I'm still excited about that, sorry);


10 reasons not to use a Computer
- you don't work with computers;
- you own a DVD player, a good Stereo, a Cell Phone and Cable TV;
- Your prefer to listen to CDs instead of ripping them;
- No one ever picked up a girl by formatting her hard drive;
- You don't know how people spend so much time writing and reading without touching a single sheet of paper;
- You where the one behind this. You will now pursue a new career;
- You where the one behind this. You will now pursue a new career;
- You like practicing sports that are incompatible with a flat ass;
- You don't own a portable media player apart from an old Walkman;
- Your fingers are too thick for such small keys;

Friday, February 23, 2007

my version of this week in tech

Like most geeks I spend much of my off (work) time trying out software solutions just for the sake of knowing how it works and evaluating my options.

So this week I got interested in streaming again. Apple as a good offer. You should check it out. Not only is Darwin Streaming Server free, it is also open source (well not _exactly_ open source, but you can get the source), and they offer you pre-compiled binaries for Linux and Windows.

ESR, one of my personal heroes seems to have fallen out of love for Red Hat and is currently trying to land a job with Ubuntu. Mark Shuttleworth, it has been rumored, was seen buying a one way ticket to the next space shuttle for tourists (tm). Probably no relation what so ever between these events.

Steve Balmer said that Vista's poor sales are a consequence of pirating, giving linux lovers and CTOs all around the world another reason to suspect Microsoft’s stance on security. I mean, if they can't protect their own software...

Of course that since that they're being so generous with their licensing this time, I'm sure the adoption rate will not reflect the sales figures.

Mono is now supporting native Visual Basic code in their new release.

Sarcasm mode on:
Well, Mono belongs to Novell, Novell seems to be 0wn3d by Microsoft so I'm not surprised.
Sarcasm mode off:
Really, this is great news for me and, I'm sure, to some other ex-VB addicts.

Finally, it seems that Terrasoft (Yelow Dog Linux, anyone?) is giving me another reason to buy a PS3.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

low battery

I'm writing this post on my "old" and trusty ASUS as my 7 month old macbook is in repair. Again.

The thing that gets me is why on earth would Apple Rep. in Portugal just 4 months ago stick me with a replacement battery that they now claim "now to be faulted".

I have some reservations as to believe that one laptop can have 2 bad batteries in less than a year, so I went out of my way to try and get the repair shop people (read: dumb-asses) to at least perform whatever tests Apple Inc. stipulates for cases like these.

I'm pretty sure that it ain't just looking at it!

Friday, January 12, 2007

oh yeah?

Well yes, i have to say something about the omnipresent iPhone.

To start with, i don't think it's all that great.

I mean, i was reading the macworld live feed when it was announced and my heart wouldn't stop pounding with the excitement as the feature set was announced... and that was why i chose not to blog about it until now.

I knew from previous experience that wheenever apple releases a new product, i get terribly excited, but as soon as i am able to make a clear-headed analysis i come to the conclusion that it ai't such a big thing at all.

For now i'll just say that it's a great new iPod. And it makes phone calls. It is not a great new device that will revolucionize the way people use the phone. Or the PDA.

Maybe when it gets to europe, Apple will realize that they will need something more to compete in the mobile phone market. There are already similar offering from other manufacturers.

And on the Blue Corner, we've had some recent announcements that didn't mean a thing to me.

Vista ? Don't think ill even touch it anytime soon (unless i get one of these).

Windows Home Server ? What?? Pay to have another brick at home?? Does it have the same power saving features as other Windows?

And what is it with that backup utility?

Seriously now. The idea isn't new but it is great. Have you heard of FreeNAS ? All you need is old cheap hardware and some googling!

Thursday, September 28, 2006

when the love is gone

I must say I thought that it would take longer, but actually i've fallen out of love for my mac.
I could say plenty about whats wrong with it, but, since it wont be talking dirt about me.. i'll just say that it hurts me when i need to use a computer and it doesn't work.

I mean, having the battery diying on me, I can take it. But turning on my PC (there... i've said it) and finding only thin multi-coloured vertical lines??? I don't even like abstract art!

Thursday, August 10, 2006

A Linux user’s experience with a Macbook

Well if many people found it strange that I, being an VB \ MS SQL professional programmer and MCSA was a devoted Linux hobbyist and advocate, then what would they say if they found that I was becoming an Apple fanboy now?

The word “Triple-Traitor” comes to mind, although I don’t think that’s even a word…

I bought a black Macbook two months ago because I just couldn’t resist its charm and because now, with the Intel processors, I actually had one less excuse not to use the best looking hardware in the market. I knew that thanks to Apple’s Boot Camp I could use Win XP without virtualization hassles if I needed (and I do, really).

Obviously my first reaction to actually owning a Mac was akin to a child left alone in a chocolate factory. Apple really invests in the “buying experience”. It’s hard to explain, but I could swear that the casing’s interior and the laptop itself smell like apples… and I didn’t even noticed that it didn’t include a mouse or any other “gifts”. It’s just the laptop, the installation DVDs, Apple Remote, a power supply and that’s it.

Once I got past the drooling, I started the rather simple and straightforward process of installing Windows XP with Boot Camp. The instructions on how to do it are all over the net, so I won’t go about it here.

One thing I noticed immediately when first logging on to XP, is that it seems to respond slowly, there’s a feeling of hiccups just in moving the mouse pointer that I assume are due to “only” having 512 MB of RAM and using shared video memory, since I’ve gorked a bit for similar user experience and couldn’t find any such complaints.

The other major catch is the keyboard. Not having a delete key, is easy to live with, but not being able to easily write symbols like “@ “and “€ “? Now THAT’S hard to explain.

Next came the “usual” process of fitting and tweaking XP to my personal taste and needs. That meant about 1 hour of modifying default settings, from visual effects to the size and functionalities of command.com. I’ve grown so accustomed to changing default settings that I almost don’t even notice just how many times I have to open regedit, reboot, or go into administrator mode to get everything just perfect. If anyone is interested in finding out what the process was, just ask.

Finally I got to spend some time on Mac OSX. I’d already done all the updates, so I was left to change the default font size, setting up a non-administrator account, turning dock hiding and zoom on, readjust the app selection on the dock to fit my user profile and change the default wallpaper. That was it, really. I could automagically connect to my Linux box, had access to my ISP and a neighbour’s Wireless network that I use just to check if wifi works Po) . And using Microsoft Remote Desktop Client from Mactopia, I even get easy access to my Windows 2003 DNS and DB Server.

As to bundled apps, Mac OSX is, all things considered, much like Ubuntu, or SuSE Linux. It comes with a good selection that allows you to be immediately “in business” but the best tools come from the community.
The iLife suit is sweet, very easy to use even if somewhat limited for advanced user other than myself (I’ve heard), FrontRow is great, and there is also a SQL DBMS in it too. But what really got me by surprise was Xcode, Automator, Script Editor and Ruby being installed by default. I am totally addicted! Honest!

All in all I’m very happy with my Macbook and I would defiantly recommend anyone, even sysadmins with a little patience and some time to spare that need or are considering a new laptop to buy this one.