Fifth Decade

I was just reading an interesting story in MacFormat magazine about the NHS. They’ve spent a load of dosh (they can’t do anything without spending a load of dosh, apparently) on bringing themselves into the online age with a couple of applications - Choose and Book, and the even more expensive Electronic Patient Record system.

Anyway, they’ve spent £5,600,000,000 to be exact. That’s £5.6 billion. Plus £64.5 million on top. Like a kind of tip…

The story unfolds on Page 8 of the April issue of the mag “Safari users failed by NHS” and describes how NHS online schemes are unavailable to thousands of Mac users because the NHS systems only support Microsoft Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers.

Health Minister Ben Bradshaw was queried in the House of Commons by the Conservative’s Stephen O’Brien about the £64.5 million Choose and Book appointments system and replied in a written answer using what can only be called Microsoft-speak:

Because of the number of browser versions available to internet users, priority has been given to certification of the application against the most popular browsers in the first instance.

Well, that is strange. I thought there was such a thing as Internet Standards? You know, rules like we have for driving - drive on the left, steering wheel on the right, accelerator on the right, clutch on the left and brake in the middle. Standards that when used mean that any manufacturer can build a car that works on the road, and that any driver can use without having to learn a new system.

On the internet there is a set standard, even a set of standards, and the best websites use what is known as “Standards compliant coding” which basically means they only have to design and code for one International Standard. It is then up to the browser writers to comply with those agreed standards. This saves a lot of money for developers.

I mean, why develop for many different systems when you could develop for just one global standard?

Ah, but that doesn’t help Microsoft sell their software does it, because when there are standards that anyone can use, there is no way to lock them in to having to buy Microsoft. Microsoft have a long history of sabotaging international standards, as we have just seen with the ISO voting process for Microsoft’s OOXML file format when there was already a perfectly adequate ISO standard with far wider acceptance in the Open Document Format (ODF).

That’s exactly what they have done with the internet. In order to force users to buy their Operating Systems they incorporated features into their browser that were sufficiently different to the agreed standards to make life difficult for those with different browsers. In fact, in many ways Internet Explorer does not read standards compliant websites awfully well at all - it’s a flawed browser on many levels, not least of which being security, something of a concern where our health records are concerned.

It’s the waste that gets me though. How on earth could the government spend £5.6 billion on any computer system at all? And then not have it fully working? That’s a lot of tax money. It’s a lot of free prescriptions. It’s a lot of patient beds, a lot of life-saving equipment. Oh, I forgot, it’s also a lot of profit for Microsoft and its supporters.

Well, at least we know what the NHS considers most important then.

Whoever broke this story certainly threw a real problem at Senator John McCain.

For Republicans, close association with lobbyists is normal business. In fact, that’s how Republicans do business. Just so long as the relationship isn’t too close with an individual (close association with a specific lobbying company is OK), isn’t too often, or too personal. In this case, the relationship (platonic or not) has been with a particular lobbyist, and even worse than that, with a pretty blonde lobbyist he seems to have spent rather a lot of time with.

I’m sure a lot of GOP members are relieved that at least it’s a change from the many homosexual scandals various Republicans have been involved with in the recent past. At least, they may be saying, if there is anything going on here, it isn’t what they charmingly refer to as “deviancy”.

The crux of this problem is it’s double edged nature. It’s negative for McCain if anyone thinks there was some funny business with this lady, and it’s negative because it brings into perspective just how much time politicians and lobbyists spend together. It’s even negative for people who believe it’s OK for politicians to be wined and dined, and to go on flights and trips with lobbyists - because they normally disguise such behaviour by not spending so much time with any one individual lobbyist, and this smacks of favouritism. Personally I think McCain is too honourable, but what influence do I have?

So, which camp is most likely to have got this story going? That’s the sixty four thousand dollar question. Obama is most against the close ties Washington politicians have with lobbyists - or so he says. Huckabee probably thinks some hanky panky went on and wants to air such rumours before McCain reaches an unassailable lead, which he shortly will. Clinton probably wouldn’t mind McCain attacking Obama, but is unlikely to want to draw attention to relationships with lobbyists or bring back memories of how her husband ended his Presidency.

So, my money’s on this story originating in the Obama camp. It hits all of his opponents at once, gets in the first shot against his probable main opponent, and does him no harm at all. In fact, it even releases, by transferring attention, some of the pressure on him for his wife’s gaffe when she said she was proud of her country “for the first time” just recently - something Americans seem to take rather badly.

If I were McCain, I’d be counter-punching Obama, but he’d better do it quick or the mud will stick. He’s spent so much time lately trying to prove how much of a conservative he really is, he seems to have taken his eye off the ball.

As for Hillary, she’d better get her website reorganised, the two main words that crop up on the first two pages are “Submit” followed by “Contribute” whereas Obama’s site cries out “Change,” “Believe” and “One Million People” which makes it a lot more powerful. McCain’s is more like Hillary’s, proclaiming “Ready to Lead” which is perhaps too subtle for most folks, sounds like he wants to be given something, rather than to give something.

No wonder Obama is hoovering up the youth vote. And by that, I mean all those under 50… the internet generation. His opponents are both looking rather out of touch, if you ask me. I still don’t think he will make the best President, but I do believe he is running the best campaign right now.

Only time will tell what happens next.

I first tried a Mac in, oh, about 1986. I hated it. Tiny little box with a screen in it, and the salesman sat me in front of it and tried to persuade me of its (expensive) merits by opening practically the only software they had for it - a Paint program. I wasn’t impressed. I wanted something to run a spreadsheet, not draw dumb pictures. From that moment on I thought all Macs were pretentious pieces of garbage for rich idiots who wanted to draw pictures all day long. How times change.

Almost two decades later, and I hadn’t looked at a Mac but I had slagged them off a few times on computer forums and so on. That was when my PC worked of course, didn’t have the anti-virus scanner working, wasn’t updating its virus definition files, or showing me the Blue Screen Of Death.

Now, one of the guys I hung out with worked for IBM. We used to go for a beer a couple of Fridays a month with some other computer guys to chew the fat. My friend’s girlfriend was very much into Macs, but she was studying a graphics course so I just thought, “Of course she’s got a Mac. She wants to make pretty pictures!”

But it wasn’t quite like that - her course was half graphics, half accounting. Huh? Accounting? On a Mac? That was a new idea I couldn’t get my head around to begin with.

After a while, my friend admitted he played around on his girlfriend’s Mac - because he could just get on and do his home stuff without worrying about things not working or needing new drivers or having conflicts or crashing. He said that both he and his girlfriend had completely different user accounts, with everything completely separate. He had his files and programs, she had hers. He ran Unix applications in the Terminal, she ran graphics files on the old Mac OS, called OS9.

Now remember, this guy worked on PCs all day long to keep them in working order. And yet he kept on going on about how reliable and user friendly the Mac was. Sure, he had a PC too, it was provided for him by his work. But when he went out and ordered a Mac mini - with his own money - I started to rethink things very carefully.

If everything was like he said, maybe I should buy one of these little wonders too. He assured me they were completely different now, and even Microsoft Office worked on it. They even had IBM chips inside, and connected to all the same things PCs could.

So I bought a Mac mini. It was the best decision I ever made buying a computer. Since then I’ve gone on to buy nine Macs in total for myself, my family, and my office. What I’m trying to say is, I’ve got a lot of experience from a PC user’s point of view about choosing a Mac - but I’m not you, so this is a guide, not a recommendation.

Mac mini
The first Mac for many people, and certainly the one with the lowest ticket price, is the Mac mini. Like all Macs, they look great but in addition it’s just so small. It fits anywhere, and runs very quietly. Compared to my previous PC, it’s silent. Perfect for the lounge. And it has been trouble free.

Mac minis do not come with a separate graphics card so share some of the standard system RAM. This means the largest screen they can power would be a 23″ Apple Display, although I have heard they could power a Dell or other model 24″ screen. The latest Mac minis are pretty nice right now, particularly the Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz model.

iMac
The new aluminium iMacs have a glossy screen which many people cannot bear, others seem not to worry about it. Personally I hate reflections on the screen and had a look at the new iMac in a variety of lighting situations at a number of locations (three Apple resellers and the Bluewater Apple Retail store) before excluding it for being too glossy. Not for nothing do the TV ads show the new glossy screened iMac from side on only! Any other view would put many people right off.

Talking of TV though, getting rid of screen reflections has been like hunting for the Holy Grail for most manufacturers for decades - there have even been products developed to counteract the reflections, so why the fashion has returned as an “advantage” is quite beyond me.

If you find the shiny screen doesn’t irritate the hell out of you, which iMac should you get? I bought a Refurbished 24″ white iMac (last model) from the Apple Online store and got a sizable discount, but these seem to be in short supply right now. It does have a large screen, but the size is very useful and not too big for a normal desk, especially since the computer is in the screen and there’s no beige box to have to work out how to hide.

The screen on the older iMac is non-reflective, and the size allows me to work on a full page on one side of the screen, and have my reference pages open on the right and just drag and drop pictures, charts, and even lumps of text straight from one to the other, not even needing to use cut and paste. Just seeing the two pages next to each other is a huge advantage.

When it comes to the new aluminium iMacs, there is a significant difference in quality between the 20″ and the 24″ models. Mainly, the 24″ model uses better components than the 20″ model, whose screen is actually of lower spec than its white plastic predecessor! Of course, with the glossy screen the reflections are larger the bigger the area they can reflect from…

Power Mac / Mac Pro
Unfortunately there isn’t a mid range Mac without an in-built screen, so if you don’t like the new iMac and can’t get an old iMac you have to go for either the Mac mini or a Mac Pro which is, err, B I G !!!

We use the current Mac Pro’s almost identical predecessor, a G5 PPC 2.0 GHz double processor powered Power Mac, in the office as a file and database server and it is very under-utilised, seldom using more than 30% of processor capacity.

It’s massive though. Not for on top of a desk. Solid sculpture, beautiful design. The metal case is thick, solid, sculpted anodised metal that weighs a ton. From an engineering point of view, it’s art. It feels nice to touch. Inside it’s as beautiful as outside, and very well designed and put together. Putting in new RAM is dead easy. In the new ones, even changing a Hard Disk drive is easy. We have two Hard Disks in ours, set up in a RAID configuration so that if one disk fails, the other is a mirror image with no data is lost.

When the new Mac Operating System, OS X 10.5 Leopard has had all the bugs ironed out, we’ll probably use its new Time Machine backup system for data security and change the RAID configuration to allow for faster read/write speeds to boost performance even more.

Laptops
Not everyone wants a desktop Mac though, and Mac laptops have become more and more popular this year, taking 17% of the laptop market and making Apple into the third biggest computer manufacturer after Dell and HP.

Power Book/MacBook Pro
Before Macs went from PPC chips to Intel, I bought a Power Book as I needed some portability for international travel. It is another piece of scuplted Aluminium beauty that is wonderfully rewarding in so many ways, not least of which being the tactile satisfaction of just using it. When light levels fall, the screen dims and the aluminium keys automatically light up so you can still see which keys to press, a big help for my aging eyes.

Closing the lid automatically sleeps the computer, opening it gives you an almost instant restart. Amazing. My girlfriend’s HP notebook would crash if you did this. To be fair, it was running Windows 98 though.

My old model Power Book is completely at home doing everything I have asked of it though - basically it is a portable version of a G4 iMac with equivalent specification. I run mine with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, plus a 19″ standalone monitor, so have a portable desktop. The two fingered scroll pad is fantastic. So intuitive. So unlike a PC. And the new MacBook Pro is much, much better.

MacBook
When the HP finally gave up the ghost (not only had all the key labels vanished from the keyboard so hitting the correct letter was often guesswork, eventually the keys stopped working too, it would never run without crashing and a host of other minor irritants) I got my girlfriend a MacBook. Bad mistake. Not because of the computer - but because I didn’t consult with her, I deprived her of the fun of choosing.

But the MacBook itself is pretty fast, it’s the Black 2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo version with the 13.3 inch screen. This is a bit small for most eyes, but unfortunately the MacBook is not available with a larger screen. You have to go up to the MacBook Pro for that which has either a 15″ or a 17″ display.

For most purposes, the MacBook is fantastic and fun, but it doesn’t have a separate graphics card, so for big movie making work it probably struggles a bit. For general office work though, it is fine and connecting to an external monitor is definitely a good idea.

Making your Mac faster.
In all cases, max out your RAM wherever you can - but don’t buy it from Apple unless you are getting a Mac mini which is remarkably compact and difficult to access. One supplier that has a great website for helping you identify which RAM you need and its cost is Crucial. 2 Gb will have your Mac flying, although 1 Gb is really sufficient if you aren’t running Windows and OS X simultaneously on the same computer. Yes, both Parallels and VMWare alow this, not to mention Apple’s own Boot Camp - now replaced as part of the Leopard OS.

Whichever Mac you get, you won’t be disappointed. Do make sure the one you get is sufficient for your needs though, just like choosing any computer.

Have fun! But remember all those folks still on PC who have to fight their PC constantly, rather than have it work with them to get things out rather than just put effort in.

On a Mac, things just work.

A lot has been written about Microsoft and it’s stranglehold over desktop and office systems, and rightly so as that company has shown they do not use their monopoly power ethically. They claim to be innovators, but their latest Operating System, Microsoft Vista, is no more than a copy of Apple’s OS X - it even looks the same. But enough of that. We all know about that monopoly. But are there any others?

Many people complain about the growing prevalence of the iPod/iTunes mix, but that is far less pervasive IMO with far more media providers, and no hardware or software lockins. When someone brings out a competing product that is more stylish and easier to use, Apple will not be able to force consumers not to buy it as Microsoft can with Windows and Office.

The other monopoly in computing though is one not often written about, but one that is nonetheless becoming problematic for consumers, particularly European ones.

I am talking here about Adobe/Macromedia.

Their stranglehold over the graphics market (particularly web design) is awesome. When the two companies merged recently I was amazed the US competition authorities didn’t complain about the reduction in competition this would cause. The result has predictably been to create a monster that is abusing its monopoly power with hugely exorbitant prices for its software.

One good example of this is their newly launched CS3 product. The price in Europe is nearly twice that of the identical US product when measured in USD terms. It’s also about twice the price of the Macromedia Dreamweaver/Fireworks bundle I bought a few years ago.

In former times, pre-merger, the top applications for web design were Macromedia Dreamweaver and Adobe’s GoLive! which wasn’t quite as good, but at least the competition between them kept prices down.

Since the merger in Dec 2005, Adobe has had a free rein to raise prices because there is nobody to undercut them anymore. There may be other editors out there, but none with the market penetration of Adobe’s package. It is widely expected that eventually Dreamweaver will have totally replaced GoLive! to the detriment of consumer choice as well. And that means prices will go up. Again.

One sure sign of being a near-monopoly is when you try to hide the fact by deflecting attention from your own business to that of others - hopefully onto others who are monopolists. Adobe’s boss, Bruce Chizen: “Microsoft is a $50 billion monopolist who’s in the software business. I take them very seriously.” Maybe he’s trying to emulate them?