Solo Journal

(Source: Apple)

People say you have to have a lot of passion for what you’re doing and it’s totally true. And the reason is because it’s so hard that if you don’t, any rational person would give up. It’s really hard. And you have to do it over a sustained period of time. So if you don’t love it, if you’re not having fun doing it, you don’t really love it, you’re going to give up. And that’s what happens to most people, actually. If you really look at the ones that ended up being “successful” in the eyes of the society and the ones that didn’t, often times it’s the ones [who] were successful loved what they did, so they could persevere when it got really tough. And the ones that didn’t love it quit because they’re sane, right? Who would want to put up with this stuff if you don’t love it? So it’s a lot of hard work and it’s a lot of worrying constantly and if you don’t love it, you’re going to fail.

That’s a quote from Steve Jobs.  And I remember it because it rings so true.  There are many things that I am passionate about and the reason why I don’t give up is because I love doing it.

Many years from now people will ask what were you doing when you heard of Steve Jobs’s passing.  For me, I found it out via an SMS while doing the thing I love (running), through a device that was Steve Jobs’s creation (the iPhone), around the area where I work in a job that I wouldn’t be working in if it were not for Steve Jobs.

The last part is no exaggeration.   I was introduced to computers in the summer of 1980.  I took up a BASIC programming course in college and it allowed me to have some computer time.  From the moment I began typing in the rudimentary computer code, I fell in love.  I begged my mother to get me a personal computer.  She was coy and non-committal but eventually I was rewarded with an Apple IIe clone.  I think it was even branded as “Chico.” Ok, it wasn’t really an actual Apple computer, but it was damn close!

When I got the news of his passing, shivers went up my spine and I felt my hair stand on its end.  I felt I lost a family member and a good friend.  I felt both mournful and devastated by the loss and it was weird feeling so devastated for someone who you aren’t really on personal terms with.  But it was because he touched and changed my life.  I followed his career from the time the Apple II came out, the infamous 1984 commercial, the launch of the Macintosh (I remember tinkering around with one in my brother’s house), his ouster from Apple, his eventual return to the company he founded.  Not only was he able to bring a company back to life from the brink of death, he brought out amazing products that redefined the genre.  There were no touchscreen phones until the iPhone came out.   Tablets were a dead product until the iPad came out.  Now I use his devices to read news, to track my running, to keep in touch with friends, to see where I’ve been and where I can go.  That’s life-changing.

He is, without a doubt, a visionary.  We get so very few in history. And we should be so blessed to have one in our lifetimes.  A candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long.  He has burned bright indeed.  I just wish the candle burned longer.

RIP Steve Jobs.

Here’s something I discovered.  If you want to have your USB flash drive useable in both Mac and Windows, you have to format it as a MS-DOS drive with the Master Boot Record option checked.  The last point is critical.  Macs apparently defaults to GUID Partition Table (GPT) but Windows can’t read it unless the drive is created with Master Boot Record checked.

Here’s how to do it:

• Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
• Select the drive, then go to the partition section.
• Select the format as MS-DOS (FAT) (it will make this FAT32).
• Select the number of partitions (I have always selected one) in the drop-down box.
• Click on the Options button at the bottom of the partition diagram.
• Select the Master Boot Record option.

I did a clean install of my Macbook Pro yesterday.  And surprisingly it wasn’t as painful as I thought.  With all my prior OS upgrades (Tiger to Leopard, then Leopard to Snow Leopard), this is the first time I did a clean install.

What surprised me was that I didn’t have to scour around, looking for the installation disks of all my applications.  All I needed to do was use Apple’s Migration Assistant.

First thing I did was to make sure my Time Machine backup was up-to-date.  I double-checked to make sure all my critical files were in the external drive.  I did not want to lose my precious pictures, and I had over 100GB of photographs stored in my laptop.

I already had the disk image of Snow Leopard installed in an external drive. If you want to know how that is done, read this.  I do this because I tend to lose installer disks and don’t want to go around rummaging through my desk drawers.  So I connected the external drive, rebooted and pressed the “Option” key to bring up the boot drive options, then selected the drive with Snow Leopard.    After the language options, I clicked on the Continue tab and selected Utilities > Disk Utility to reformat my drive.  There was no hesitation—-I knew I had everything backed up.

The clean install of Snow Leopard took about 30 minutes.  After that I ran Software Update to make sure Snow Leopard is updated to 10.6.2.

Then I launched Migration Assistant and it gave me the option to select what files to migrate.

I didn’t choose all my the directories.  I just wanted my documents, my downloaded files, my music, my movies, and, of course, my pictures.  Fortunately I had stored each of these in separate directories.  The only problem with Migration Assistant is that I couldn’t choose which Applications to re-install.  It was all or nothing.

Then, all I had to do was wait until everything was migrated from my Time Machine backup to my Macbook Pro.  I let it run overnight and when I woke up, everything was done.  I checked all my files and launched a couple of applications.  All checked out ok.

(P.S.  The photo above is not mine.  Creative Commons license requires me to give attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/roadsidepictures/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

To those who are severely criticizing the iPad for its lack of multi-tasking, comparing it to netbooks and laptops, I suggest watching the keynote and then reading this article from Daring Fireball.

Used to be that to drive a car, you, the driver, needed to operate a clutch pedal and gear shifter and manually change gears for the transmission as you accelerated and decelerated. Then came the automatic transmission. With an automatic, the transmission is entirely abstracted away. The clutch is gone. To go faster, you just press harder on the gas pedal.

That’s where Apple is taking computing. A car with an automatic transmission still shifts gears; the driver just doesn’t need to know about it. A computer running iPhone OS still has a hierarchical file system; the user just never sees it.

That’s not to say there aren’t trade-offs involved. Car enthusiasts (and genuine experts like race car drivers) still drive cars with manual transmissions. They offer more control; they’re more efficient. But the vast majority of cars sold today are automatics. So too it’ll be with computers. Eventually, the vast majority will be like the iPad in terms of the degree to which the underlying computer is abstracted away. Manual computers, like the Mac and Windows PCs, will slowly shift from the standard to the niche, something of interest only to experts and enthusiasts and developers.

I don’t think the iPad was meant to be a netbook.  Or even a laptop.  It’s an entirely new category.

I am at a “wait-and-see” mode for the iPad.  It looks like a gorgeous, stylish product.  Using it in a public place is sure to elicit head turns and salivating glances.  But I am reserving judgement until I get my hands on a display item.

Read more …