At various points in my life I've made some BIG decisions. One was to propose to my now wife. The other was to have a Dog. And when we didn't kill the dog, to have children. Other BIG decisions, though lower on the Richter scale of BIG, still meant a big change that altered my routine, way of thinking, even life. One of these was the change from Canon to Nikon. It is fitting that as this blog calls itself "fotografic" I should have at least ONE big decision that is photo related.. But wait, there's more!!! Another big decison in around 2001 was from film to digital. And again in 2015, from digital to film! But probably the most important BIG decision (after my wife, the dog and kids) was moving from Windows to Apple. That was a biggie... I mean I was CIO at my contruction company for many years, growing up from a 9600k modem connection in 1994 to VSats and Lotus Notes and Cisco routers and whatnot. Windows at the time was my life, and I spent as much time tinkering with the innards of my personal laptop as much as actually using it to do things. Updates, defrags and compacts, shutdown-restarts ad infinitum, blue screens of death, format and re-instals.. The endless software updates (from windows 3.1, windows NT, 98, 2000 and .. oh.. I forget) and incompatibilities that came with every major release..
So one day after a bit of research (Apple users looked so relaxed!) I decided to make the switch. The fact that my Dell imploded due to some rather dodgy video card did help the decision along.. 1 year guarantees my foot!
So I went out and bought a shiny new iMac and the world was a wonderful new place to be in. Routines were completely irrelevant now! I could simply DO stuff on my computer (I was about to say PC... but now it's a MAC) and all that time spent upgrading and whatnot was saved..
Or so I thought. The change came in 2008. Since then I'm onto my second Mac, now a Macbook pro, a zillion times faster than the iMac, with 5 times as much ram and hard disk space.. But I seem to be spending more and more time.. upgrading.. and updating.. and cleaning (though thankfully no long defrags into the night). Apple has become just as bad as Windows ever was, and I am now spending more time under the hood than behind the wheel. Which is unfortunate because while I knew what was going on with Windows I have absolutely none when it comes to Apple. It just works.. or at least it's supposed to.
Maybe I exaggerate when I say it's as bad as Windows. I mean it's not like I have constant virus warnings or peripherals that refuse to work. Most of that goes quite well. It's in the little things that SHOULD work but don't. As this is a fotografic (sic) blog, let's talk about my photography. I have close to 60K pictures in my Lightroom library. I have an iPhone, which is purported to be the best mobile phone on the planet. And the two have decided they don't know each other anymore. It's like a relationship gone sour. And this is a problem because Apple sold me a phone which has 16gb.. except it only has 12. And that means that after they've installed their Bloatware, and I've installed all my bloatware on it, there is scarcely any space for pictures! And when I want to download them.. I CAN'T! Solution?! Well, I one involved in IT.. I can always find a work-around.. but that implies more time playing under the hood, and less time deleting the 90% crap pictures I took and concentrating on the few decent images that I made. And printing them out. And framing them. And getting all warm and gushy when people notice them and say how spectacular they are.. Yes, I know I'm dreaming, but it's what you do when you own a Mac.
So does this mean that I made the wrong decision when I forsook Win for Mac? Or Nikon for Canon? Or my dog for kids?! :-)
Of course not. It's just the realisation that big changes are not the panacea that they are made out to be, or marketed as. Certainly apple has made many things easier, but it brings it's own frustrations. And the more I bump up against the walls of the closed garden that is Apple's way of making it's products, the more I become frustrated by their arbitrary decisions on how I must use their products, as well as the momentary glitches that mar their earlier rise to popularity.
Apple has become obsessed with it's own beauty and, much like Narcissus staring at himself in the pond, it simplifies it's products to the point of no return, objects for the mere purpose of being beautiful, and not longer about satisfying our ever increasing need for personal expression, for working with our tools in ways that we want and not necessarily in the way that GOD (aka Steve) intended. Where will it all end? Where does a great company like Apple go once it's reached it's zenith? Well we're either about to colonise Mars, or they will go down. I can only hope that some humble pie will force them to turn off the reality distortion field that Steve installed and start thinking wholistically about their products, and acting proactively with their customers.
Rant over.
