The preordered iPhone arrives, and it was configured for her line initially. At the time i switched the first one over to her line, the AT&T rep told me all I would need to do was to bring the new iPhone in and swap the SIM cards out. Needless to say, that didn’t work. I returned to the store, and 2.5 hours later left with my brick of an iPhone and a few phone numbers. I get home and instantly get on the phone to Apple support, who were understanding of my issue but sent me over to AT&T support. 3 hours later, and about 4 phone technicians later, all I had to show for my trouble was a brick and a promise of a resolution within 3 days. At this point, I had sold the old 3G phone, so I was without a line. I escalated up to the office of the president, and was placed in touch with a contact there. This contact went ahead and confirmed all of the numbers from the phone and SIM card (and let me just say, those numbers on the micro-SIMs are evil) and started me down the path of activation again, starting at Apple. The Apple support rep went through some motions and again I found myself speaking with AT&T. 2 more hours pass and finally, an idea. Swap the SIM cards, activate Beth’s SIM card (again) in my phone, then switch the cards back. This proved to be the action that got things working for me, after losing a day of no phone service.

This leads me up to today. Everything is working fine with the phone, so I called the Executive support rep back to let her know. She credited my account for a month of service and also waived the activation fees on both phones, which made the pain a little more bearable. Prior to this, we decided that this would be the last iPhone purchase we make, and when the contracts come up for renewal, we’ll evaluate the plans out in the wild and see if there is something more fitting.

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
I’m running Ubuntu 9.10 both at home and at work, and so far it’s been a pretty decent experience. I’ve had some trouble with networking on the work machine, but found the fixes over at the Ubuntu Forums. I have to admit I hardly go there any more as it just seems overwhelmed with a lot of newcomers’ questions. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s just not something I want to wade through, so generally I wander over, search, and then leave. I may get back into being more active, but I’m just not sure yet.

endperform.org future
I’m still trying to figure out where to go with the site. Part of me wants to move the blog elsewhere and do something else with the frontpage, part of me wants to whip up a podcast, and a third part of me wants to just leave things as they are. I’m torn, but I’ll figure out where it’s going to go soon.

Fluid is free, and is available at fluidapp.com.

As the Apple Ripens…
Snow Leopard is performing quite well on my Macbook. The upgrade process itself took about an hour, and after that it’s been smooth sailing. The only issue I had was due to my own fault. I moved some applications from their default locations, so when the upgrade occurred, I ended up with two copies of some programs (I like keeping things somewhat organized). Performance-wise, there is a definite difference between Leopard and Snow Leopard. Finder is much more responsive, startup and shutdown are a lot quicker, and overall the OS is running fine.

iTunes and iPhone OS 3.1 are out as of yesterday and I’ve performed upgrades to these latest versions. So far, so good, but I haven’t used them enough to really dig deep into them and see what happens.

The Macbooks weren’t my first brush with Apple computers, or OS X even. Back in 2001, I bought one of the cool iMacs that had recently come out. You know, the big ole CRT models. It had a whopping 450mHz G4(?) processor and 512MB of RAM, if I remember right. At any rate, it was my first attempt at switching, and unfortunately it failed. At the time, there wasn’t a lot of decent software that I knew of out for the Mac, and the 10.0 of Mac OS was sluggish to say the least. Long story short, I eventually decommissioned the machine and put it in a corner and went back to Windows and Linux.

That wasn’t the end of the line for the Mac, though. It’s true, I lived with my parents for a while after getting out of school and working in the real world. My dad had asked about a computer, and I knew I had the Mac sitting in a corner. He basically wanted something to play with and try to learn about computers with. The Mac was perfect for that, and since I knew he wasn’t gonna get a virus (I put OS 9 back on it), it meant little-to-no work for me. I sat it on his desk downstairs, ran a network cable to it and got it set up. I loaded some games on it, and showed him a few game websites and he was set. The smile on his face is something I still think back on and remember. He absolultely loved the idea that he could get on and play Bingo at any time he wanted. He also found a few other sites, and I had bought him a CD filled with a few more Mac games. Eventually I showed him some the word processor and spreadsheet apps, and I can remember nights of him organizing things and typing things up. Sadly, he passed in 2006, and with it went the Mac. My mom is not a computer person at all, so I came and picked it back up. Last I knew of it, I gave it to my friend Eric back in PA.

I’ve completed my initial migration from my desktop to the Macbook, as far as daily tasks go. I’m syncing my iPhone on the Mac, I do all of my browsing and such on the Mac and I’ve got some developer tools installed now. My email is all on Gmail now, so I didn’t have anything to attempt to migrate as far as that goes. There are still a couple of things I’m looking for as far as apps go, but all in all I’ve been finding the apps I need. Curious as to what I’m using? Check out the list below:

Adium – Multi-protocol chat client based on libpurple
VLC Media Player – Plays just about anything
Growl – System notification system
iStats Menu – System stats in the menubar.
Tweetdeck – Twitter client
iLife ’09 – Specifically iPhoto for photo management.
Safari – Web browsing. Trying this instead of Firefox.

I’m still searching for a decent code editor. Currently I’m checking out TextMate on the recommendation of a friend. The built-in DVD player works well, and there’s really not much else I had to install. Customization, now that’s where the fun begins. The only interface customization I’ve done is changed the wallpaper, modified what’s on the dock, and changed the look to Graphite. There are a lot of other things out there, I just haven’t gotten a chance to take a look yet. I’ll probably wait for a while, since the release of Snow Leopard may mean updates for some of the software and techniques I’d currently be able to find.

On the hardware end, I’ve gotten used to the keyboard on the Mac. Occasionally I’ll miss a key or two, but that’s to be expected. The key response is nice and just feels good to use. The screen is nice and bright with LED backlighting, and honestly I can’t say that I miss the 17″ screen my old Dell had. The construction of the machine feels nice and solid, which it should for being a unibody. Everything else seems to be fine. My only real complaint is the proprietary external video connector I need to get in order to hook up to my monitor. I’ll end up getting one, but it just would have been nice to have a standard connection.

I’ll be starting a list shortly of the software that I use on a daily basis.

I’ll also admit I was drawn by the shiny factor. The darn machines are just pretty, and definitely well made. My Inspiron 1720 is well made, too, but the latest Inspirons have a very plastic, almost brittle feel to it. I know this because we ordered one before getting Beth her Macbook. At any rate, the pretty wasn’t the only factor, but you have to admit they are pretty darn slick looking machines. Now that I have it in my hands (I started this post on my Dell), I can say I’ve made the right decision. The aluminum unibody Mac feels solid, as do the keys. It’s a neat machine. Yeah, I know. But it costs at least a grand to get into Macs. That may be true, but I’ve seen Macs last a long time. The only real thing I gave up was my 17″ screen size. My Macbook is more powerful than the Dell it replaces, so that’s no big deal. The only thing I need to do is to upgrade it to 4GB of RAM then I’m set. The smaller screen size isn’t as bad as I thought it would be, and the weight difference is significant.

So, to review. Why Mac?

- The OS kicks ass. Pretty, functional and works like a charm, out of the box

- The longevity factor of the machine itself.

- The quality of the product

- No Windows.

This doesn’t mean I’m done in the Linux community, or that I don’t like Linux any more. I’m just going to start using the best tools for the job, and of late at home it’s a combination of native Windows, virtual Linux. Who knows, I might end up changing my mind again next week, but time will tell.