You Know What Really Grinds My Gears? (Part Deux)
People who refer to a Mac, or a collection of Macs as just ‘Mac’. I mean.. that’s not even grammatically correct.
Let me elaborate for those who seem a little confused here. I just read a comment in which the author had written: “Mac blows”. What they should have written is: “Macs blow”.
The problem here is ignorance. Either that, or just being uneducated. People don’t seem to understand that ‘Mac’ is short for ‘Macintosh’ and is used to refer to a singular product, not the company name or a collective noun. They believe that ‘Mac’ (in their understanding) is the Operating System. They’re half way there in that belief, the actual name is ‘Mac OS X’. It doesn’t work on it’s own. ‘Mac’ is the hardware, ‘Mac OS’ is the Operating System name, ‘X’ is the version (in this case, X is the Roman numeral for 10). I’ll accept that ‘Mac OS X’ can be a mouthful, and I accept that many people, including Apple shorten it down to just ‘OS X’. But you need to remember that if you drop the ‘X’ in an effort to refer to all versions collectively, you can’t just say ‘OS’… You’d have to use ‘Mac OS’.
I digress…
Anyway, you wouldn’t say “Book is boring” would you? No, you’d say “Books are boring”. Because ‘book’ is not a collective noun like ’sheep’ or ‘fish’. If someone wrote “Sheep blows”, one would notice a problem. Is the author referring to a particular sheep?
So take note now. When you refer to a Mac, don’t forget that it is a single entity. If you want to refer to more than one, or the entire range as a whole, you can just add the ’s’ like you do with other nouns to create the plural. Like this: “I am referring to many Macs”.
If I hear anymore “Mac is gay”, “X or Y doesn’t work on Mac”, “Mac doesn’t support X or Y”, I’ll be a little annoyed. Be more specific, “OS X doesn’t support X or Y”, “Macs are gay”, “X or Y doesn’t work on OS X”. Those are correct methods of your slander.
You Know What Really Grinds My Gears?
Internet buzz words. And the latest in fact: ‘The Cloud’.
There is no ‘Cloud’.
Google and Apple are two of the most prominent users of this term, I find. Apple keep using it in conjunction with their MobileMe service and Google use it with just about all their services. No data is kept in ‘The Cloud’, no web applications live in ‘The Cloud’.
They’re on servers. On the floor. In buildings. In countries. Connected via cables running through the ground. Not in the sky in fluffy, white water vapour collections.
Stupid buzz words.
Live, From iPod Touch!
Testing, testing, 123! Coming to you live from the iPod touch! Just trying out the new wordpress app! Seems to work very well, easy blogging on the go.
Dual Displays and the Tale of the Dead Cinema Display
I’ve used dual displays in the past, but never really got anything out of them because they were pretty small, 17″ and 15″ inch to be precise. Also because they were different sizes, it was difficult to come to a compromise for positioning and arrangement so that dragging windows or moving the mouse between them was smooth and unhindered.
Also I never bought both monitors with intention of using them together in a dual setup, i just thought I’d give it a try.
Anyway, recently, my beloved 23″ Cinema Display died after a power cut, (reminder to buy surge protector -_- ). The kick in the balls came when I found out it was just days out of warranty (reminder to buy Apple Care -_- ). Apple wouldn’t service it without a hefty charge, so I took it to a local Apple Authorised Service Provider to see if they could help. They booked it in, and sent it off to their repair department with no promise that it would be repairable. About a week later, I had a phone call explaining that it was going to cost somewhere in the region of £415 to repair the display because the main unit (read: everything) needed replacing. I didn’t speak to them directly, and this was left as voice mail on my phone. I meant to contact them to tell them that I would just buy a new display and to scrap that one, but forgot.
About 5 days later I had another phone call and this time I was available to speak directly to the person handling my case. I explained to him that for £415 I could almost buy a brand new display from Apple, or even get a brand new display cheaper elsewhere. It just wasn’t an economically sensible thing to do. I also explained to him the warranty issue, and he told me I could probably get an extension on the warranty if I phoned Apple and explained the situation to them. So I did. Apple weren’t exactly what I would call empathic or helpful and basically told me they couldn’t do anything unless I told AT Computers to phone Apple and prove the date it broke…
Things didn’t look good. I phoned AT Computers anyway, and told them exactly what Apple told me, and the guy said he’d do it. He’d ring Apple and give them all the details. So I left it with him in the hope I could get an extension. Sure enough a few days later, I got a ring back from AT Computers telling me that Apple had issued an extension on the warranty and that a new Cinema display was on its way to the local store for me to pick up. I was elated. There was only one problem.
During the time when I was under the impression that the Cinema Display was dead, gone and not coming back, I went ahead and bought a new Samsung SyncMaster 245B+. It’s a lovely 24″ widescreen display that cost about 2/3rds the price of the Apple display and it’s an inch bigger but it uses the same resolution (1920×1200) as the 23″ Apple Display.
So I was now faced with a choice. Send back the Samsung display and get my money back, or keep it and set up a dual display situation again and see how it goes.
Well I chose the latter option and set them up on my desk side by side. I remembered one of the other reasons why dual displays didn’t work for me in the past: not enough desk space. Well luckily this time, my desk is big enough to accommodate both displays, even if I did have to move my Mac Pro to the floor.
With both displays using the same resolution, and the one only being an inch bigger (it’s hardly noticeable, they both look about the same size) I can definitely say that this dual setup is awesome. Twice as much desktop space allows me to have just as many windows open as I usually do, but spread them nicely and not have so much clutter, improving my work flow. Especially when I’m developing, I have around 20 windows open including all the ones open in Xcode, iTunes, Adium, Mail, Terminal, the iPhone Simulator, Documentation browser, etc.
The main problem I had was getting the colour and brightness to match on both displays. I’m still not perfectly happy with the colour configuration, but I think it’s as close as I can get them. The Samsung display has a warmer colour temperature than the Cinema Display, meaning it has a more yellow tint, whereas the Apple one has a more blue tint. It’s not so noticeable now that I’ve adjusted the settings, but I don’t think I’ll ever get it truly right unless I invest in one of those monitor calibrators. I think they’re expensive.
Another gripe is that when running a fullscreen OpenGL application (such as a game), it restricts mouse to the OpenGL app only, and the second screen goes blank. I imagine there’s a particular driver one requires to extend OpenGL apps across monitors. No biggie. I don’t think it’d be a good idea anyway, since the centre of the game (where your character, or your cross-hair would be positioned) would be split in half by the borders of the displays themselves.
Finally, I’m still not sure which display I want to use as my primary. I’m trial-ing the Samsung as the primary for the time being, since it has that extra inch. But I still feel the Cinema Display has a sharper display, and more correct colour gamut. So we’ll see.
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