Apple Insults Developers at WWDC

My news feed today was full of news about Apple’s WWDC. And it is no surprise. However, I am getting more and more concerned about Apple’s leadership. Reading Bloomberg, I felt that Apple is focused on Google rather than making existing and new customers happy. Users and developers are just a tool to beat Google. But it should have been clear for Apple executives that their customers fill Apple’s pockets for good products, not Google. I guess, Apple clearly belongs to the group of companies that work to try to charge more. I thought this is my opinion that might be wrong.

But later I read another article on Barron’s that appeared to be more disturbing to me. According to Barron’s, Tim Cook dropped this phrase of the day in front of a crowd of loyal Apple developers:

Only Apple could make such amazing hardware, software and services.

I guess, in Apple’s opinion, no one in the audience at WWDC (those who grow Apple’s ecosystem) is capable of making software better than Apple does. Unless they are employed by Apple. Let consumers decide what is amazing and what is not. Okay, this is about the insult. The injury (kind of)? Used MacBooks flooded the market. Yesterday’s treasure is today’s trash. I wonder how much an average Apple customer spends to get comparable functionality available on other platforms.

All above is my opinion as a user of Apple products.

Double Standards

There are some things that raise your eyebrows. If you hear news here and there and do not relate them, they are just news. But when you relate them, this is a different story. Like this one.

This summer-fall Apple was trying to convince the government to spend more on research and development projects saying that many great things came out of defense projects (I guess, they liked Siri). Let me say it this way. Apple asks the government to spend more money on research and development hoping to get some benefits. A few weeks later Apple, Google, and Cisco (yes, no fight there, full agreement) tries to press the government for a 1 trillion tax holiday (or roughly $3.3K per capita). What is wrong in this picture? The companies want to get benefits from the government spending on research and they do not want to pay for this. Guess, who is going to pay for this? You, taxpayer.

How about spending your own money on research? Should I mention that Apple, if it were a hedge fund, would be the largest one? Apple has more money to spend than the US government. And this is a company (along with others though) that asks the government to spend on research and $1T tax holiday???

Disclaimer: I am not one of the Occupiers.

Finding My Way on Mac, SyncToy

I have not been posting anything recently as I was going through a change. After working 8+ years at one company, I joined today another company to continue to create great things. But the change did not end there. At the new place I got a Mac. I have been a “die hard” Windows user and developer since early 1995 knowing many Windows internals and was exposed to a Mac (v 8.6 or so) in 2001 briefly to test my application. This particular change I guess is long overdue since many of my former colleagues jumped on the Apple bandwagon. I was one of long standing skeptics. Nonetheless, I am embracing the challenge and want to make my environment as much productive as I used to have it on Windows. It includes so many different things – getting fingers hitting right buttons and combinations, getting used to the trackpad (I used a mouse even with a laptop – I just find it more efficient!), and tools. Thanks to a former colleague of mine, who happens to be my opposite in terms of OS preferences and is a “die hard” Mac fan, recommended me a link and another link.

But I still want to do things I used to do where shortcuts do not quite help. I’m talking about tools. For example, I use FAR Manager to copy and move files around, view files, FTP and so on. I know Mac OS is not designed with this kind of freedom, but still this tool is more productive to do many things.

The next tool is Entourage. I do not get it why Microsoft does not allow to run a rule in Entourage against already received messages and in Outlook does. Am I missing something?

The next tool is Remote Desktop Connection. I know there is an option to have a VNC session. Need to explore more.

The next tool is SyncToy. This is a kind of my first Mac gotchas. It does work, in some cases.  If you need to synchronize files between Windows and Mac, you can follow these steps.

1. Open “System Preferences”.
2. Open “Sharing”.
3. Turn on “File Sharing”.
4. In options select “Share files and folders using SMB (Windows).
5. Pick shared folders.
6. Pick and account you plan to use. (Mac may need to store your password, which poses some security risks, even the password is encrypted).
7. Select users and their access permissions (You cannot get rid of ‘Everyone’, but you can give them ‘No access’).
8. On your Windows computer in the Explorer type something like \\ipaddress\shared-folder-name. When asked to enter credentials, enter ipaddress\username and the password you specified as the password.
9. Now you can map that folder as a network drive and you should be ready to use the SyncToy.

I did find a problem that SyncToy fails to synchronize an Entourage script if you chose to synchronize your home directory. I do not have an explanation for that yet.