¶ My First Mac

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My first Mac was technically not my own. It was my parents', but it belonged to the family. The year was 1990. I was 5 years old. The Macintosh Classic was its name. It sported a 9-inch grayscale screen at 512 x 342 pixels, a 40 MB hard drive, and 1.44 MB diskette drive. It was the first Mac to cost less than $1,000.

Yeah, baby.

I was enamored with it. It seemed light years ahead of the black screen and green text IBMs my school had. I could play Wheel of Fortune on it. By far my favorite thing to do was to open AppleWorks and make a new drawing document and begin using a digital canvas to create a city with that big clunky mouse. Then I'd select this tool that looked like a tornado to send pixels flying!1

That little Mac was the beginning of my love for technology. When my folks upgraded to a Power Macintosh 7100 a few years later, the Internet was also just gaining traction with the public. My folks were always early adopters, and so we of course had the Internet.2 I remember adding USB to the Power Mac, upgrading the processor to a G3 processor from Sonnet, and how lightning fast it felt when we switched out the 14.4k modem for a 28.8k.

We got a full decade out of that machine with all the upgrades, and it likely could have gone more.

Then came the eMac I got for college. This was truly my first Mac. I quickly found out that a 50-pound behemoth was not ideal at college in 2003. This was my first experience with OS X. I hopped on the bus with 10.2 Jaguar, and 10.3 Panther was released just a couple months later. Safari was at version 1.0, and I haven't changed my default browser since. I used the eMac my freshman year, then it went to my parents to replace the old Power Mac.

My sophomore year I went with the 14-inch iBook G4. I used this through most of college and wrote many papers on it.

My senior year I treated myself to the black MacBook while I still had an education discount. That thing was lovely. I still kind of miss it, as it just looked fantastic. I would love for Apple to make a black space gray MacBook Air.

A few years later I got the first unibody MacBook Pro, 15-inch. This felt like a dream computer. It had real horsepower and was the fastest & thinnest computer I had used yet.

And, just about a year ago, I went to the MacBook Air. The Air is just plain fantastic. It's fast, it's battery lasts ages, and it is light. When you want to close up and go, you can do just that.

The Mac has been a significant part of my life for the past 23 years. It sparked the curiosity of a young boy and challenged me to learn more throughout the years. And these days it is integral to my way of life, not only in how I accomplish my own goals, but also to how I am able to provide for my family. Right now, I simply could not do what I do without the Mac.

Happy 30th birthday, Mac. Here's to many more.

  1. And they were pretty big pixels when you think about it! ↩

  2. "You’ve got mail!" ↩

Twitterrific 5.6 Glides with Streaming

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I've had the privilege to be testing Twitterrific 5.6 for iOS for the past few weeks, and it is a fantastic update. This big feature with this release is support for Twitter's streaming API.

Once you've enabled streaming in the app's settings, tweets will come in as they are posted in real-time while you are on Wi-Fi. Twitterrific will intelligently switch back to manual refresh when you drop to a cellular connection.

Streaming is one of those features that has been a long time coming for Twitterific. Streaming makes the Twitterrific experience that much more frictionless and delightful. In my opinion, the lack of streaming was pretty much the final piece of friction left in Twitterrific, and now it really feels feature complete.

Another great feature, though one I admit I have not used often, is list management. For the extremely organized among us, this is a great addition.

You will love Twitterrific 5.6, which is available as a free update to existing users, and available to new folks for $2.99 99¢ on the App Store.

Update: Changed pricing to reflect limited time 99¢ sale.

¶ The Nest Acquisition

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A few weeks after moving into our first house last summer, my wife and I bought a Nest thermostat and installed it. It…didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped. In fact, it wasn't working right at all.

I had done my homework, too. I had checked and re-checked Nest's compatibility guide, and I even called in to their support, talked to a rep for a bit, and he even had me email him a picture of our current sucky thermostat and the wiring, and gave the green light that Nest was 100% compatible. So I made the order on Amazon and 48 hours later UPS dropped the box off at my front door.

It was super easy to install, but it just wasn't operating correctly. Another call to Nest, a few more pictures of the wiring, and two levels of support later, I had a workaround solution of putting certain wires into differnt terminals on the Nest, and the support rep told me Nest was going to set up a certified tech to come out on their dime and make sure it works right.

Two days later a guy from a local company that was Nest certified came out, and started testing the Nest and my HVAC system. Everything should have been working, so he investigated deeper. Turns out there was a fault in the wiring between the HVAC system and the Nest. The tech pulled out the bad wiring and ran brand new wiring through my basement's suspended ceiling and up the main floor wall.

This was not a problem with the Nest thermostat at all, but Nest footed the bill to make sure it worked. I never found out how much the job costs, but Nest paid it all. I have to imagine it was either close to, or surpassed the $250 I spent on the Nest.

This is right up there in my top 3 best customer support experiences ever. It solidified my love for Nest as a product and as a company.

Fast forward to three days ago when Nest founder Tony Fadell announced Google's acquisition of Nest. When I read it, my heart sank a little. I used to love Google, and for some things, I still think they do an exceptionally great job. But Google got a little weird when their romance with Apple took a turn. Their "don't be evil" moniker started to feel hypocritical in some aspects.

Then Google+ happened, and they became so obsessed with promoting their new social network that they became downright creepy about all the data they have on each person that uses Google services.

So here I have a service that I used to love that went mad with power, and a product/service that I love that just sold out.

Rock, meet hard place.

I have friends seriously considering ripping their Nest off their wall over the news. Let's face it, Google doesn't have the greatest reputation anymore, at least with nerds.

Will I be removing my Nest Thermostat? Not yet. It did cross my mind, though. As silly as it is when folks snark that Google now has the ability to know when you are home, when you're not, what temp you prefer, and the movements you make you're asleep — well, it sounds silly, but I can also see that totally being a reality.

I'm just not ready to give up my Nest yet, especially since there isn't a comparable product to replace it yet. But I'll be keeping an eye on it, since it isn't all that impossible that it may be keeping an eye on me. 1

  1. Funny side story: I named my Nest HAL when I installed it. Seems a little apt, now. ↩

(Pre-)Introducing Publish by Day One→

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I love Day One, and this new Publish tool that is coming soon to the iOS app looks awesome. It's rare that I want to share something that I have written in Day One, but for the handful of times I have wanted to do just that, I had wished there was something elegant, beautiful, and easy to do so.

I can't wait for this to go live.