Thursday, April 21, 2011
Home computer is no longer a simple box- APPLE
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
In the midst of US budget trouble, Libyan revolution and other FarEast upheavals, this family was having severe computer pains.
While it is hard to imagine life without technology (I mean IT), I’d really rather be free of it. The last few weeks we have been overwhelmed by multitasking computer decisions.
To explain, we have a HP Windovs Vista laptop, powered by Verizon DSL broadband, and the wireless accommodated by a Linksys (Cisco) router. Add to it an old Apple iBook, which depends on the Windovs machine for its WiFi wireless connection. We lost that connection, after return from a trip, and the problem had to be tracked.
The Internet Service Provide (ISP), good old Earthlink, legitimately refused to deal with the WiFi, pointing at Linksys and Verizon. After two hour-long bouts with Linksys in Manila and heavy software downloads, it was determined that a new M10 router was needed (I bought it next day).
Next day Verizon, also in Manila spent two hours on repairing its Ethernet DSL feed, also offering a new DSL/router combination to reduce the complexity. By the way , both the Linksys and Verizon technicians spoke perfect accent-free English (not a first in my experience with Philippine techs), and upon my hesitant questioning, the experts, all college graduates, told stories of having learned English in kindergarten, and speaking better English than their native Tagalog at their graduations. This is not unusual, the Philippines has supplied hospital nurses and physicians not only for the US but also for other parts of the world for decades, and since internet have expanded their exports with offshore phone help policy. This is how a country low on mineral resources and high op population density can build its export trade and build a decent GDP. Cuba has done it, since in the Communist influence years (remember Angola in the 1960s), with MDs combined with ideology. Ireland did it with for a while, with its telecommunications service centers, and India is a huge offshore IT service center vendor. US has to produce exports with technology, since we have an insurmountably high per capita labor cost. The party-politics motivated wishful conservatives who want to build jobs by firing government workers and teachers have lost their reasoning facilities; and even T. Boone Pickens, the capitalist who wants to cut energy imports with generating natural gas and windmill-generated renewables has opponents (hydraulic fracturing of gas is dirty). But I digress.
Having had trouble with Verizon wideband upstate, I thanked for their joint DSL/router offer , and installed the M10 Linksys. As expected, the Apple attempted telephone fixes did not produce WiFi; we bought a new MacBook, and it works.
At this time let’s talk of Apple assistance. Obviously, at the beginning of our lost WiFi reception troubles my first contact was with Apple phone support, in Texas, and they labored mightily to repair. Eventually the phone support gave up , and booked time for me at the Genius Bar, in Soho Apple Store, on Prince Street. Arriving there I was astonished to find a glass-walled light filled former post office with long tables. It had young receptionists in blue Apple shirts with iphones, who verified the appointment and sent me to wait at a bench before a bar with 20 technicians behind it, also blue-dressed. This office is quite a contrast to the old, time-honored Tekserve, the authorized dealer on 23rd Street and 6th Ave, with its long-haired hippies, for years the best trusted Apple resource. When called to the bar I met an affable six-year Apple veteran who looked about 20, and when I told the tech that the Apple AirPort – a network listing – did not recognize my connection, he tinkered. and it did. Alas, upon return home my network could not be tagged. It was at this point that the Apple telephone support first suggested that my AirPort card might be damaged, that it was no longer supplied by Apple, and a replacement MacBook might be called for. I had enough, and next day we took the 14th St bus to Ninth Ave, the other Apple palace in NYC, brought a MacBook home and it worked. Not without seething on my part – how did Steve Jobs the ruler of Apple choose to withdraw the replacement part support for the popular 2004 iBookG4 in just six years? Obviously, a marketing decision, to sell more iron.
In comparison, the great Microsoft Windows 95 desktops/laptops, fully supported 1995-2002, still continue to function throughout the country, because school budgets do not allow replacing. Both Windows and Macs came up in 1980s, the latter being more user –friendly because of the mouse and GUI (graphic use interface), but while Steven Jobs ran a vertically integrated OS, with only Apple software permitted for all operations, Bill Gates deliberately installed horizontal integration, with all manufacturers having access to Windows logic, so that support software and hardware packages from all sides could enhance the Windows operating systems. Hence Windows 95 still lives, while iBookG4 is doomed.
Wally Dobelis and the T&V staff wish Happy Holidays, Passover and Easter, to all of our readers
In the midst of US budget trouble, Libyan revolution and other FarEast upheavals, this family was having severe computer pains.
While it is hard to imagine life without technology (I mean IT), I’d really rather be free of it. The last few weeks we have been overwhelmed by multitasking computer decisions.
To explain, we have a HP Windovs Vista laptop, powered by Verizon DSL broadband, and the wireless accommodated by a Linksys (Cisco) router. Add to it an old Apple iBook, which depends on the Windovs machine for its WiFi wireless connection. We lost that connection, after return from a trip, and the problem had to be tracked.
The Internet Service Provide (ISP), good old Earthlink, legitimately refused to deal with the WiFi, pointing at Linksys and Verizon. After two hour-long bouts with Linksys in Manila and heavy software downloads, it was determined that a new M10 router was needed (I bought it next day).
Next day Verizon, also in Manila spent two hours on repairing its Ethernet DSL feed, also offering a new DSL/router combination to reduce the complexity. By the way , both the Linksys and Verizon technicians spoke perfect accent-free English (not a first in my experience with Philippine techs), and upon my hesitant questioning, the experts, all college graduates, told stories of having learned English in kindergarten, and speaking better English than their native Tagalog at their graduations. This is not unusual, the Philippines has supplied hospital nurses and physicians not only for the US but also for other parts of the world for decades, and since internet have expanded their exports with offshore phone help policy. This is how a country low on mineral resources and high op population density can build its export trade and build a decent GDP. Cuba has done it, since in the Communist influence years (remember Angola in the 1960s), with MDs combined with ideology. Ireland did it with for a while, with its telecommunications service centers, and India is a huge offshore IT service center vendor. US has to produce exports with technology, since we have an insurmountably high per capita labor cost. The party-politics motivated wishful conservatives who want to build jobs by firing government workers and teachers have lost their reasoning facilities; and even T. Boone Pickens, the capitalist who wants to cut energy imports with generating natural gas and windmill-generated renewables has opponents (hydraulic fracturing of gas is dirty). But I digress.
Having had trouble with Verizon wideband upstate, I thanked for their joint DSL/router offer , and installed the M10 Linksys. As expected, the Apple attempted telephone fixes did not produce WiFi; we bought a new MacBook, and it works.
At this time let’s talk of Apple assistance. Obviously, at the beginning of our lost WiFi reception troubles my first contact was with Apple phone support, in Texas, and they labored mightily to repair. Eventually the phone support gave up , and booked time for me at the Genius Bar, in Soho Apple Store, on Prince Street. Arriving there I was astonished to find a glass-walled light filled former post office with long tables. It had young receptionists in blue Apple shirts with iphones, who verified the appointment and sent me to wait at a bench before a bar with 20 technicians behind it, also blue-dressed. This office is quite a contrast to the old, time-honored Tekserve, the authorized dealer on 23rd Street and 6th Ave, with its long-haired hippies, for years the best trusted Apple resource. When called to the bar I met an affable six-year Apple veteran who looked about 20, and when I told the tech that the Apple AirPort – a network listing – did not recognize my connection, he tinkered. and it did. Alas, upon return home my network could not be tagged. It was at this point that the Apple telephone support first suggested that my AirPort card might be damaged, that it was no longer supplied by Apple, and a replacement MacBook might be called for. I had enough, and next day we took the 14th St bus to Ninth Ave, the other Apple palace in NYC, brought a MacBook home and it worked. Not without seething on my part – how did Steve Jobs the ruler of Apple choose to withdraw the replacement part support for the popular 2004 iBookG4 in just six years? Obviously, a marketing decision, to sell more iron.
In comparison, the great Microsoft Windows 95 desktops/laptops, fully supported 1995-2002, still continue to function throughout the country, because school budgets do not allow replacing. Both Windows and Macs came up in 1980s, the latter being more user –friendly because of the mouse and GUI (graphic use interface), but while Steven Jobs ran a vertically integrated OS, with only Apple software permitted for all operations, Bill Gates deliberately installed horizontal integration, with all manufacturers having access to Windows logic, so that support software and hardware packages from all sides could enhance the Windows operating systems. Hence Windows 95 still lives, while iBookG4 is doomed.
Wally Dobelis and the T&V staff wish Happy Holidays, Passover and Easter, to all of our readers
Labels: APPLE, GUI, Jobs, Microsoft
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 6:55 AM 
