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Comment On The Term “Fanboy”

Sun, 21 Oct 2007 16:19:04 +0200

As usual, it’s been a while since I’ve written an article but on this occasion I just feel the need to vent a degree of general frustration at the world. I’m not certain what has happened over the past few years but I’ve noticed that it’s impossible to hold discussions with people on message forums or blog comments without being accused of being a “fanboy”, “fanboi”, or whatever puerile spelling the author wishes to use that day. The Internet has never been a particularly open place for discussion since people come with their own positions and they can be incredibly vocal about subjects, particularly when they are technology related, but lately it seems that you can’t voice an opinion on a subject without being accused of being some form of closed-minded fool who can’t think. What ever happened to debate?

Needless to say Wikipedia has a definition of the term which currently appears as follows:

Fanboy is a term used to describe an individual (usually male; the feminine version fangirl may be used for females) who is utterly devoted to a single fannish subject, or to a single point of view within that subject, often to the point where it is considered an obsession. Fanboys remain loyal to their particular obsession, disregarding any factors (often including logic) that differ from their point of view.

It’s a fair enough definition and I can safely say that in the years that I’ve been using forums and other forms of message boards on the Internet, and the World Wide Web in particular, I’ve run into more than a few people whom the definition applied to. It’s not this that I have a problem with. My issue is that as soon as you voice an opinion on a topic you get instantly accused of being a fanboy and therefore unable to reason - on the first comment. The impression given is that people are becoming increasingly closed-minded by immediately seeing anyone with an alternative opinion as being a “fanboy” and therefore all discussion is ended and nothing that the other person can say will make a difference. I always saw the Internet as a place to exchange information but this increasingly closed mentality prevents such exchange.

So, please, can we go back to debating subjects again before declaring anyone as being a “fanboy”?

Remember to Backup, Kids

Sat, 8 Sep 2007 15:06:58 +0200

I’m quite certain that over the years hard drive technology and reliability has increased so that hardware failure is pretty rare. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that your drive will last forever so if your drive is outside of its warranty period (preferably even if it is not) then I can highly recommend performing a regular backup just in case the worst happens. Thankfully I think that we’re mostly OK as my wife’s old PowerBook G4’s hard drive just looks like it has died. The system has been making some strange noises over the past few weeks and we had assumed that this was something to do with the power supply since that broke recently and needed to be replaced. In this case it turned out not to be the cause of the problem and the Mac has now taken to displaying a icon on-screen that alternates between a small folder with the Mac Finder icon (the Happy Mac, I think it’s called) and one with a question mark on it. Since I can’t hear the hard drive at all I believe that this means the the hard drive has completely died such that the laptop can’t find the operating system when trying to boot. Attempts to diagnose the problem further with TechTool Deluxe has failed since it can’t detect the hard drive. I believe, however, that this tells me all that I need to know. So, off to the repair shop we go...

In the meantime, make sure you’re backing up your drive regularly. Currently I have ours set to backup to a network disk attached to the Airport Extreme wireless router in the apartment each weekend and monthly using the .mac Backup software. Given the problems hit today I’m also now really looking forwards to the release of Mac OS X 10.5 in October for the Time Machine backup software that should automate this process even better.

Linking 123-Reg.co.uk to iWeb Site

Sun, 2 Sep 2007 14:21:04 +0200

When iLife ’08 was released back in August this year one of the new features touted for the iWeb application was its ability to use custom domains. The original iWeb required the user to use a web site with wonderfully memorable addresses like http://web.mac.com/joeblogs/mysite. Anyone with any sense, of course, would wish to use a name like http://www.mysite.com and so the addition of support for custom domains is most welcome and is one of the main reasons why I have now switched to running my site with iWeb and .mac.

The problem with the implementation of this service is that Apple doesn’t sell domains and doesn’t actually help much with the setup. In this respect the user has to try and work out how to direct requests for pages using your newly purchased domain to the pages stored on .mac and that means playing about with the delights of DNS. Apple does provide the instructions that your domain’s “cname record points to web.mac.com.” but this rather terse instruction doesn’t help the novice user much and in fact didn’t work for me when attempting to setup my domain, kelmon.net to point to my iWeb site. The problem here is that the setup of my domain’s DNS settings by my domain provider, 123-reg.co.uk is a bit more complex and the default settings, if left unmodified after the cname record has been set to point to .mac prevent the redirect from working correctly. Thankfully a solution was found on the Apple Discussion boards.

If you are having problems linking a domain provided by 123-reg.co.uk then please see the following post from user musicus1812 that gives complete step-by-step instructions on how this can be achieved:

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=5195253

I’m still having a problem getting http://kelmon.net to point to my site (http://www.kelmon.net works great) but I’m hoping that issue can be overcome pretty quickly.

New iMac Keyboard - Great Keyboard, Amazing Delivery

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 14:45:17 +0200

Back on the 7th August Apple unveiled the “new” iMac (quotation marks used since it does look a lot like the old model, although that’s not necessarily a bad thing). The new iMac looks pretty good but since I’m not a desktop computer person I really wasn’t that interested in it. However, the iMac was accompanied by a new keyboard and this I was something that was much more attractive, even beyond its looks.

One of the reasons why I like laptops so much these days is that I like to type on their keyboards. The short travel of the keys gives the process a better feel for me and so the prospect of a keyboard similar to the generally well received MacBook was appealing. It has to be said that in practice the keys do feel strange to type on with the obvious gap between the keys when compared to the “conventional” keyboard used on the MacBook Pro laptop that I use, although I’m quite sure that I’ll get used to it. The addition of keys to control iTunes is much appreciated and I understand that the Exposé key will perform the different Exposé effects depending on whether a modifier key is held down (see http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20070823074256442). However, in conjunction with the great feel of the key action my favourite aspect of the keyboard is that it’s so thin. While it helps to make the keyboard look great the thinness of it means that I don’t need to angle my wrists from the desk so much to get my hands over the keys and I’m sure that this is much better for me. However, I suspect that the impact that this will have depends much on how you type.

My peeves with the keyboard remain the same as when it was launched and I’ve had to add a couple new grumbles that implies an attack of form over function. My original (and continuing) annoyance is that the Bluetooth wireless version of the keyboard has been crippled to not include a full numeric keypad, which is a deal-breaker for me. The reason given does make sense (wireless users like to rest the keyboard on their lap so a smaller form factor is more comfortable) but I’d wish that they’d give the option since it is clear in comments on forums that a full-sized wireless version would sell as well (heck, I’d like to make some use of the Bluetooth function of this laptop). New grumbles include the position of the Fn (Function) modifier key (it’s off in the middle of the keyboard rather than in the usual bottom-left position for laptops) and the bizarrely inset USB 2.0 ports. I never noticed it in the pictures of the keyboard but the USB 2.0 ports are recessed about ¾-inch from the left and right sides and this makes plugging in devices that don’t have a “standard” USB plug can be tricky or even impossible to attach without using an extension cable (one is included but could already be used by the keyboard to attach itself to the computer).

Oddly, one of the best aspects of the keyboard wasn’t the keyboard itself but the frankly stunning delivery time. Ordered from the UK Apple Store on Thursday evening at around 5.30pm CET it arrived at my office in Brussels before 11am on Friday morning. That’s around 16-hours. Honestly, I never saw that coming and I’m massively impressed.

New Life, New Work

Sun, 12 Aug 2007 17:58:21 +0200

OK, so the title of the post would be better described as new iLife and new iWork. Last week Apple finally released updates to their iLife and iWork suites of digital media and productivity software that was expected to have been released back in January. Given the year moniker once again but identified with '08 it looks like Apple have given themselves at least 18-months before they need to worry about releasing successors. However, I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here since the '08 versions are new and, amazingly, I've got both versions after having to visit a local reseller following the demise of the power adapter for the old PowerBook G4. I'll be posting a picture from that soon since it looks like the thing burnt through and that can't be a good thing.

Since I've only just installed the software this isn't going to be a review or even a preview. Suffice to say I'm pretty impressed with what I've seen so far but that it's likely going to take a while for me to pass judgement. I've been using iLife software now since I got my G4 over 4-years ago so I'm familiar enough with that to be able to give it a good going over probably quite quickly, although I have found that the software that makes up the suite tends to be surprisingly deep so I'm sure there'll be things that I won't find until later. Meantime, iWork '08 will be the first instance of this suite that I will have tried apart from giving Pages a test in an Apple Store once so it's going to take me some time to get to grips with that I am sure. Of interest on the subject of getting to grips with iWork, this is the first software title that I've bought in a while that came with a printed manual. OK, it's not a big manual but it's bigger than anything that I got with Microsoft Office (Mac or PC) and makes for a nice change since I really miss flicking through a manual rather than wrestling with online help. Perhaps this implies that iWork is trickier to get to grips with but I'll wait and see on that one.

Of interest to this site is that I'm going to try and give iWeb a serious try this time. Currently I'm paying around £20 per month for hosting (too much, I know, but I needed the Java support initially) but since I already have a .mac subscription I'm interested to see if the new iWeb can produce a web site that both looks good (this one still looks rubbish and I never seem to have the time to do anything about it), loads well, and is easy to maintain. Since the new iWeb also supports personal domains on .mac it means that I might be able to move Kelmon.net and Kelmon.com to a .mac web site and therefore save myself the £20 a month, which is definitely a wife-friendly move (not least because I didn't get prior approval for the iLife and iWork purchases...). I'm basically going to duplicate articles between the .mac version and here and see what I think and I'll hopefully start that process later today.