BergenDog's Profile

  • Jan 25, 2007
  • 18
  • 0

Latest comments made by: BergenDog

  • This years Keynote was all about the Mac, even if it was never mentioned. Apple is taking the "Mac" - a computer - and distributing the pieces throughout the home in appropriate ways. Your "monitor" is now any TV in the house with Apple TV connected. Your giant terabyte disc array is plugged in to your wireless router and both are sitting in a closet somewhere so you don't have to hear exhaust fans. Your input device is either your iPhone or a similiar touch-device. The Mac is not is not dead, it is morphing in to the computer of the 21st century. Gone are the days of the "computer room". It is now everywhere , even in your pocket.
    BergenDog had this to say on Jan 25, 2007 Posts: 18
    iPhone and the Mac's Slow Slog Towards iDeath
  • Why couldn't you use the built-in iSight of the iMac to interpret ASL (American Sign Language) as input? It's proven to be very effective at communicating with machines (they can pick up the changes rather well), and most importantly is a universal language. Also, using your hands and fingers to select, drag, drop, etc... would be pretty basic, the Desktop part of the OS will just have to change a bit in order to reduce ambiguity.
    BergenDog had this to say on Nov 07, 2005 Posts: 18
    What Is The Next Data Input Device?
  • BergenDog try selecting ‘this window only” under veiw options. That way your pics get big but in all other windows the icons stay the same size Thanks Chris. But, actually what I need is similiar to what James said in the article, of being able to modify the view for This and All of This' subfolders. This particular image directory is in fact a deep directory structure. I guess I can do this manually. And as long as I'm posting again: how about the ability to make some pictures not show up in the Library of iPhoto. This weekend I had parents visiting and in showing them the latest vacation pictures I almost showed them some p0rn ;)
    BergenDog had this to say on Oct 10, 2005 Posts: 18
    How Could OS X Be Improved?
  • Oh! I thought of another one: The icons in Finder. The icons that are a preview of an image should be differently scaled than that of folders and other things. To illustrate: I have a folder with a bunch of pictures, but the thumbnail view is so teeeeny I can't really tell what they are. So, I increase the icon size - cool. But for the love of God, EVERY icon is now huge, meaning my folders, my Pages files, everything is ginormous now. I just want to quickly scan through a huge set of images!
    BergenDog had this to say on Oct 10, 2005 Posts: 18
    How Could OS X Be Improved?
  • When something goes wrong, OS X needs to handle it better (or allow you to). For example, I was recently ripping every CD I own into iTunes. Some of these CD's were from the major bargain bin, and 10-15 years old. My Mini had major problems with them (maybe format has changed slightly?). Anyway, because it was caught in an endless loop of reading, it was consuming 100% of the CPU. I don't have an Apple keyboard, so I don't have the Eject button ( and I should not be expected to remember all of them). I can't drag the CD to the Dock because just selecting the CD with the mouse takes 5 minutes before the OS does it. You want me to drag like that? So, there is a disk utility (now I know the name and location, but at the time I did not, am new to Mac). Tried to do a Spotlight search, but that never gets enough CPU time to actually run. So it's bad enough this happens once, but it happened like 6 or 7 times. One of the major contributors to "Ease of Use" is that in case something DOES go wrong, there is a very simple way to get out of the process. Ok, so that's the setup, here are the requests: Spotlight searches should get 1st priority in CPU. Also applications should be searched first, unless I somehow say otherwise. When I type in "Fireworks", don't give me all of the settings files before the executable. Highlighting the CD/DVD/Device and pressing Backspace (or something) should force eject the thing - maybe a confirmation if it's busy. Make Cut work, just like Copy and Paste do. Copying a 10 GB file and then having to go back and delete it from the original is annoying. SOLITARE!!! I couldn't agree more. I miss the stupidity of it so much. That's about it for my list. I love the OS, it just needs some tweaks. Sean
    BergenDog had this to say on Oct 10, 2005 Posts: 18
    How Could OS X Be Improved?
  • I enjoy Safari except sometimes it seems a bit slow. Though I'm not sure if this is Safari, an error on a page, or my Mac Mini which I'm sure is underpowered being a G4 (though I do have 1GB of RAM). But, getting control over the address bar sometimes takes a second or two, and what drives me crazy more than anything are frames. Let me explain: It seems some people out there are still using Frames for sites. I'm am no HTML guru, but if there is an Ad frame starting at the top right, but all the pages content is frame 2 (centered), me pressing the Down arrow should scroll the content frame, being the only one I care about. Yet some sites I have to click in dead area in the content frame or else I'm relegated to using the mouse to scroll. Oh, the other thing that annoys me about Safari is the character insertion point. In GMail when I start typing in someone's email address, it gives me a popup of matched choices. Usually I just hit a few letters and then press DOWN and Enter to select that one. At work (with IE on Windows) it selects the name, and moves the cursor to the end of the address. In Safari, it selects the name and puts the cursor where I stopped typing. Bwah? Now I have to manually go to the end of the name or else I am typing into the middle of an email address. Other than those couple of things, I really enjoy Safari though. Nothing a few updates can't fix, I hope. There is something to be said about such a basic piece of software written by the same people that do your OS. The integration just seems so much better. --Sean
    BergenDog had this to say on Oct 05, 2005 Posts: 18
    Is it time to ditch Safari?
  • Remember a few months ago when for some reason on Sony's website it was mentioned that it runs OS X? Hmm... rather than re-invent the wheel, wouldn't it be better to do a Sony PS3 / Apple OSX box? Leverage all of the PS game industry and mindshare, not to mention distribution and marketing efforts. But the OS, as well as running your HDTV, DVD playback, TiVO type stuff, Music library, Photos, etc.... is all run by Apple. Bluetooth, Airport, DVI out... all in the shape of a Mac Mini.
    BergenDog had this to say on Oct 03, 2005 Posts: 18
    The Xbox 360, the PS3 and . . . Apple?
  • I converted my XP box to a Linux file server, just so I could use the 200 GB of hard drive space. What an incredibly frustrating experience. Downloaded the RedHat distrubtion. 3 ISO images. XP has no idea what to do with an ISO. Bwah?? Fine, download a program that will write them to CD, but then realize that it can't write it to a DVD, have to dig around in the closet to find CD-R's. Ok, fine. The actual install went fine, the setup detected everything and got everything going. Started it up... no network. No network card. Ahh, I have a wireless card which RedHat just doesn't know anything about. Buy a new NetGear card which claims Linux support on the box. Get home and install it, and their "support" is the source code that I have to install, yet since I was making a file server I didn't install gcc and the like. Grrr, install all that crap, compile the driver and put it in the kernel directory. Try to load it up... hangs the computer. Wonderful. Eventually found a generic driver that worked, and then found that RedHat doesn't support NTFS drives. For the love of God... Found a way to do that, figured out Samba, and now... I haven't turned the machine on in a week. What a waste of time. My "file server" is more hassle than it's worth. The default GUI - Gnome - has come a long way. Unfortunately, it's about 2 steps above a command line. What a piece of crap. To do anything you have to go to the Terminal window - which is buried in sub-menus. To other options available via the X interface are barely informative and incredibly un-useful. This OS is not even close to being ready for anyone other than a system admin pro. I've been a C/C++ for 10+ years, and I was stumbling around like Ray Charles in a Fun House. What a pain in the ass, and what a disappointment. I was actually hoping for a quiet OS that sits in the background and just accepts files and gives them to me when I want. Is that so much to ask?
    BergenDog had this to say on Aug 12, 2005 Posts: 18
    A Mac User Tries Linux Part 1
  • Certainly it's best for Microsoft if you buy Office and Windows. It's better for Apple if you buy OSX and iLife. But, if someone only buys Office and iLife, then both companies at least get *something*. If the world moved to Transitive's perspective, than Operating System companies would compete with Operating System companies, and Application companies would compete with Application companies that offered similiar functionality. That's not such a bad thing. Individual markets and applications would become more fairly competitive, with innovation, stability, usability, and security becoming the driving forces, not "a boatload of cash from our other applications". As much as I love the fact the hardware and software on my PowerBook works seemlessly together, I think it's in everyone's interest (including the companies themselves) to split Hardware from OS, and OS from Application. Sean
    BergenDog had this to say on Aug 11, 2005 Posts: 18
    Transitive's Rosetta: Get Your Software Buffet Style?
  • And don't forget that with his Apple notebook, Jeff Goldbloom wrote a virus in about 20 seconds and uploaded it to the Alien mothership to save the day. Amazing that they work on a TCP/IP network, and apparently had Bluetooth since he had to be inside the mothership in order to upload it. Maybe it's not just Middle America who is backward, it's Earth. Aliens apparently all run Mac OS.
    BergenDog had this to say on Aug 10, 2005 Posts: 18
    Do Macs exist?
  • I finally got to the Apple Store yesterday, and after trying to find an open computer with a Mighty Mouse attached for 20 minutes, I was finally able to bully some old lady out of the way and play. It was comfy, the left-right buttons were very good, and the trackball was very cool. My only complaint was that it kind of felt cheap. The classic one-button mouse seemed more... substantial? Not sure how to even express it, but it seemed like it was carved out of a single piece of plastic, as opposed to a hollow piece of plastic with stuff inside. To be fair, my one-button is a bluetooth, and so the batteries add the weight that make it feel more solid. But I can't help thinking that somehow my palm picked up on the difference in thickness of the mouse shell. I liked it a lot, but am going to try to hold off for a wireless one before I buy. I'd give it 3 out of 5 stars. Good job, with room for improvement.
    BergenDog had this to say on Aug 10, 2005 Posts: 18
    Mighty Mouse: Excrement Now Comes in White
  • It's not so much the "look" as it is the "feel", though. Yes, I can make my buttons and windows look like anything I want. However, the functionality that is built into every application (i.e. the Spotlight search) is very OS X. They didn't invent searching, and they didn't invent putting a text box into an application. What they did do, however, was put the ability to do computer-wide and target intelligent searches, and put it in every application. The fact that they even made it LOOK the same is just arrogant.
    BergenDog had this to say on Aug 08, 2005 Posts: 18
    Vista=Copy of OS X
  • So the stable and base features that we already have are in Beta 1 and won't be out for at least another year. By that time we'll have yet another FULL OS Release, not just patches. So Microsoft is saying "Give us 1 year and we can give you what they already have now". Fine, I'll take that. We also get stability and security for free, where they can't even pay for it. Now we just need to use this year to get as many as possible over to Mac. Shine bright, little iPod halo.... Oh, and the Opera browser was the first one I saw with Tabs, and that was 7 or 8 years ago. I don't think Apple invented that. Sean
    BergenDog had this to say on Aug 08, 2005 Posts: 18
    Vista=Copy of OS X
  • Thanks Dave, I visit a lot of the sites you mentioned as well. What I was thinking of would be very targetted, however, to people who have already switched or are thinking about switching from Windows to Mac. There are lots of little things that one has to get used to, terminology and symbols ( the apple key is also called the command key, the UP arrow symbol is actually the shift button, etc...) that people who are very used to Mac's may not even be aware of. Plus, answering in a very straight-foward way things like "Can I move all my Outlook info to Mac?" "Can I Remote Connect to my Windows machine at Work?" "What is a .sit file? What is a .dmg file?" And the like... The best I've found so far is Mactips.org, which is great, but again I think a site that specifically addresses the hurdles a Windows user has to overcome during the Switch would be valuable. Sean
    BergenDog had this to say on Aug 04, 2005 Posts: 18
    Should The Mac Zealots Just Shut Up?
  • I agree, and as a recent Switcher I can attest that it took a lot of guts. Still does, as there are a decided lack of real-life people I can go to and ask questions. For example, about 4 days into Mac-life, I was shutting down for the night and the FileVault cleanup started going on. Fine. After 3 hours it was still going on. There was no way to stop it, and eventually I just forced the shutdown of the computer. Next day, all of my settings (bookmarks, Dock apps, Keychain) were reset and seemingly unrecoverable. Cry. Not the end of the world, sure, but annoying, and I had no idea how to stop this from happening again. I am a programmer, and am surrounded by Linux and Windows people. I know a lot about computers, but still use the people around me as resources. With Mac I have to randomly find websites and ask questions. Now, people have been very helpful and friendly so far, I must admit. That's the best thing you can do. But there also should be more of an appropriate place to go. A Switcher's resource site. Hmm... That's a good idea Sean, you should start that. Would anyone be willing to help contribute things to a site like that? I'd pay for the site and administer it, but would need experts to contribute tips and advice. Email me if you're interested.... Sean
    BergenDog had this to say on Aug 04, 2005 Posts: 18
    Should The Mac Zealots Just Shut Up?