Mandaris Moore

I've had this laptop since 2009. It was a gift that was given to me by my wife and mother and I've been using pretty consistently since than.

All my personal projects.

Every experiment and pretty much most of my writing has happened on this laptop and a lot of my identity revolves around how I use this.

But the sad reality is that time is marching on without us.

Applications both commercial and open source are no longer supported.

If that wasn't enough, I've had the following problems.

• The speakers have been blown out
• Excesive heating when plugged in
  
• The trackpad is starting to not work

Still, I'm not going to give up on my laptop. I want to continue using it until we are parted.

So in that spirit, I'm going to use my laptop to create as much stuff as i caan before the end of the year.

When I got on my computer this morning, I saw the dialog that I wouldn't be able to update the Safari Preview that I've been using as my default browser.

I'm not too surprised as WWDC is next week and my Mid-2010 iMac cannot run Mojave and certainly won't be able to run whatever else is coming down the pipe.

I had just hoped that I would have more time to enjoy the new features since I can't get it running on my laptop.

For me, this is a causes a wedge between me and Apple.

Other browsers, such as Firefox¹, allow you to have access to newer builds regardless of what OS you are running.

With the release of Mohave, I no longer have a desktop computer that can run the latest version of the operating system. Part of me is sad because of the feeling of missing out and that I'm unable to afford a new computer.

Another part of me is relieved in the knowledge that I don't have to worry about my current software not being able to run, having to wait for 3rd to bring support the OS, or further fractioning of what I can and (increasingly) can not do.

After Intuit’s announcement that they would only be supporting Quicken Essentials in Lion, other mac developers were happy to ease the troubled mind of users with various options that were designed to take advantage of some of the features of the new OS. Since the last review of iFinance, Synium Software, the maker of Chronories and MacFamilyTree, have been working hard to make version 3.3 a release that can standup in comparison with the other options.

The first improved feature that you will notice is the stock tracker graph which shows the value of a stock over time and allows you mouse over to see the value of a specific day. Unfortunately, the interface is still rather simple as adding your own personal investments is a multi part process of first adding the stock, clicking on the transactions button, pressing the "+" button, putting in your information (purchase date, quantity, cost) and finally clicking around the different textfields hoping your information was saved.

One feature that the release boast is the ability to add more media to a particular transaction. This is great if you want to add a two part receipt, warranty, picture of you standing next to your new purchase or whatever. The problem is that when you click on the media button for that particular transaction, the one window interface becomes even more crowded as it splits the transaction panel in two.

Ultimately, I have to say that this release maintains the 2 1/2 mouse rating it was given originally based off of the continued frustration with getting information into the application and overall user experience.

I consider myself a reasonable person who loves mac products. I've been using mac since the summer of 2004, when I had an internship at Apple Computer Inc. It was one of the greatest work experience of my life and I wish I had done more to pursue a career working there (but that's a whole 'nother topic). The thing is that I've used all the OS's since then and every time a new one comes out I go through a series of steps.

1. Initial excitement that my favorite OS is getting an update that should make it even better!
2. A splash of cold water as I notice that a lot of the updates are under the hood (Core) and all the big ticket items are basically eye candy that I don't see myself or anyone else using day to day (dashboard).
3. Last minute concern that I haven't backed my computer up in… um… a while..
4. Excitement that I'm installing the latest and greatest!
5. Admiration that by and large the performance of the OS is better on the same hardware¹.
6. Nit pick at little changes to the user interface (what's with the ugly font and background with the notes in Mail? You can choose to colors blue or grey. What color and shape do you want your folders? That last one is a trick question.) and what not.
7. Fall in love all over again. With all the software that developers are able to make with the new OS, why would you want to go back? Learn to live with it or learn to tweak it (How? It's a secret²).
8. Go to work every day wishing that I could work on a mac.

So what's the deal with lion

I actually really liked lion when I first got it. Although at first glance it looks like someone has been sucking more and more color out of it, you can tell that a lot detail went into how things looked. Mail.app has really gotten a good shining and I was pleasantly surprised/creeped out to see how safari was smart enough to see that I was logging into my old yahoo account and then set it up in mail with only a couple button clicks. The key thing about the whole process is that it's really smooth and -for the most part- you wouldn't know that a whole lot of things have changed and if you ask me a couple months from now I probably wouldn't want to go back.

But...

As with most changes, there are somethings that I don't like about lion.

1. Where are the scrollbars?
   I know I'm not the only one out there who misses them. I was concerned about this since they demoed it during the WWDC keynote. I understand that they are supposed to flash when you first load the page or some kind of change happens, but I think that disappearing scrollbars are pointless when I'm using it at home on my iMac. In fact, I feel that they work against the user in some circumstances. For example, when I'm in Mail.app and I'm looking at the list of messages, I shouldn't have to look at the number of message at the top to figure out that I should scroll down to get more. When you do enable the scrollbars, they have a tendency to look kinda bland. I like to imagine them as grey tear drops that are sad that they have to be there.

2. As natural as a gesture
   I understand that this point and the last could probably be a non-issue if I only had a magic trackpad or used the new OS with a laptop like they did with WWDC keynote demo. But, I don't have one. I have a 4+ button mouse that I use instead of the magic mouse that used to hurt my hand after an hour or so (great reason to enjoy more family time). I know I could probably get used to it if I wanted to, but this is my family's home computer. My wife and I have to work all day and use our windows boxes. This is not a strong argument, "Hey baby, I know that you've had a long day at work typing and whatnot and you want to use the machine that helped pay for to relax and check on that book of faces and electronic mail thing the kids are all into, but do you mind re-wiring your brain to make up down and down up because I don't want to go into preferences to change it back to what you are accustomed to".

3. Rum-rum-resume
   It is at this point that I feel a lot of people might disagree with me. I wish the resume feature of the OS was a little better fined tuned. As in, I wish I could turn it off. What? You love the fact that you can start exactly where you left off in a program? You know what? So do I! Does my wife like seeing all the safari windows that I had up when I was on there last³? Do I like waiting an extra couple minutes while all the applications that I had open before I restarted the machine start back up and restore themselves to their previous state all at once? No. Some would argue that I could simply hold down the option button when I close a program to stop this behavior and that it does help in a lot of ways. I don't dispute this, but I do feel that there should be more control over this. If you have a faster machine (like something with a solid state drive), then you wouldn't have a problem with this. But it is a reminder to me that OS didn't have this feature before because of the overhead associated with it. I know that a year or so from now it will be a non-issue.

4. The witches brew
   This last part is purely a geek pet peeve for me, because this doesn't affect anyone other than developers. I use a couple of software packages to create this site and play with my pipe dream of being a cocoa programmer. One of the tools that I use is homebrew. Homebrew is a package manager that downloads the source code of other software (ex. MySQL, Node.js), compiles them and install them in a way that doesn't cause your system to fall to pieces. The problem is that the new OS uses a different default compiler and has changed the permissions on some of the folders. I could change the compiler back, but I didn't want to mess around with it too much. The machine that I have lion installed on is my family computer and I don't want my wife to kill me when I need to re-install for the third time to fix something that I didn't understand fully. It probably already fixed...

The conclusion

Overall, I really like lion and I look forward to seeing what developers can do with the new technology going forward. Does it have some faults? Yes, but with any healthy relationship you have to understand that OS change over time.