As a Mac user and a BlackBerry fan life has been pretty rough when it comes to syncing.

Why not get an iPhone you ask? Well first, there was no iPhone when I got my BlackBerry and also the only GSM provider where I live (Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada) is Rogers and their coverage sucks compared with SaskTel (currently a CDMA carrier, but in 2010 they will be changing to UMTS or 3G)

I have the BlackBerry 8830 World Edition phone and really like it. I mostly use it for email and texting. I also have an iPod Touch so I get the best of both worlds.

So back to syncing, right now Missing Sync For BlackBerry is the only reliable option to sync with your BlackBerry. However it doesn’t allow you to add or update BlackBerry software.

I’ve tried using the BlackBerry Desktop on Windows using Parallels on the Mac, but when you plug in the device it doesn’t connect and the annoying Windows “dong” sound repeats incessantly.

This will change soon as RIM has announced that they will be releasing BlackBerry Desktop for the Mac in September! Finally, at long last. Hopefully it works.

UPDATE…Engadget has the review.

Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, died today at the age of 50.

“Thriller” was the first cassette I owned. “Black or White”, “Man In The Mirror” and “Heal The World” were three of my more recent favorites.

Jackson lead a life of extraordinary privilege but paid dearly for it.

Cardiac Arrest is not something that just happens, even though it appears that way. A lifetime of stress, prescription drugs and multiple surgeries was obviously too much. His body was worn out.

Michael is at peace now. Thanks for all the moves, music and memories.

I’m visiting my parents house. After going out for lunch, I’ve been home for about a 1/2 hour now and already two robo-calls. One from a credit card company and another from some department store. I cancelled my land line over three years ago and phone solicitation was the main reason I got rid of it. It’s painful being at someone’s house who still has a land line, because half the calls are simply bullshit. Last night my mom took a call from the local newspaper wanting to know if she would subscribe. Mom told them she already got the paper. Don’t they have a list?

I just have my BlackBerry now and would never bother with a land line. Too expensive and too many robo-calls. You know it’s a solicitation when there’s a slight pause after you say hello and the computer either connects you to the call center or the recording starts up. Usually that gives you ample time to hang up. The only calls I get now are from my own bank trying to up-sell me on some insurance for my credit card or crap like that. I finally gave in and got the insurance, but they still phone. Apparently there are different levels of coverage and I was just at the first stage. But there isn’t much that can be done. The bank has to have your phone number. However I wish they would phone only if all my money is suddenly gone, or they are depositing money because I won some contest.

Land lines are important so 911 can trace the call if you can’t speak or are otherwise incapacitated, but that’s about their only advantage. I suppose the quality is better then some cell signals, but only marginally.

But the phone solicitation is a deal breaker. If I want to do business with you, I will call you. Or find your web site. As for trying to sell me some shit over the phone, fuck off.

UPDATE…It’s not just the phone. The doorbell rang a couple of minutes ago, causing the Pomeranian to go ape. Is it the cops? Or the fire department…NO…it’s a couple of young guys with clip boards and badges from some company I’ve never heard of trying to tell me they will install some system (not sure what kind of system) into the house for free and that it’s very important and have I heard of them. No I haven’t. I ask them to leave a brochure and at that point the turn around and walk away. What kind of bullshit scam is this? FUCK OFF, Get off my lawn!

UPDATE 2…So the local paper just called again, asking mom if she wanted to subscribe…again. So she politely told them that someone had phoned two days ago and that we already get the paper. That’s my mom. So polite. Courteous. I would have told them to screw off. Right before the newspaper called there was another robo-call, this time it said “This is your pilot speaking, you’ve won a trip to…”

We have to get back to the days like in the movie “Secondhand Lions” with Michael Cain and Robert Duvall or “Grand Torino” with Clint Eastwood, where you sit on the front step with shotgun and anyone who comes by peddling bullshit had better be able to run fast.

Corner Gas Comic Book Store

My episode of Corner Gas is on You Tube. Hank and Brent run into their look-a-likes at the Comic Book Store. I’m the Hank look-a-like. Check it out.

I’m a Mac.

Apple posted revenue of $8.16 billion and a net quarterly profit of $1.21 billion. These results compare to net quarterly profit of $1.05 billion in the year-ago quarter.

Thats an increase of $0.16 Billion. The best March quarter revenue and earnings in history.

I’m a PC.

Microsoft Corp. announced revenue of $13.65 billion for the third quarter ended March 31, 2009, a 6% decline from the same period of the prior year. Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $4.44 billion, $2.98 billion and $0.33 per share, which represented an increase of 3% and declines of 32% and 30%, respectively, when compared with the prior year period.

That’s revenue decline of 6% and a decrease in net income of 32%.

Don’t worry PC, Windows 7 is just around the corner.

Microsoft released it’s Third Quarter results and its Net Earnings are down 32%.

After Apple’s incredible results yesterday, maybe Steve Ballmer will shut up about Apple. Then again, maybe this is why he won’t shut up about Apple. Microsoft is clearly getting hammered in the mobile phone space by BlackBerry and Apple. In the consumer desktop space, it’s losing market share to Apple. It’s getting walloped online by Google. They do the best with software for business, and when business goes bad these are the results you get.

Apple Q2 2009 results are out. They are impressive.

Gross margin was 36.4 percent, up from 32.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 46 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Apple sold 2.22 million Macintosh® computers during the quarter, representing a three percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 11.01 million iPods during the quarter, representing three percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone units sold were 3.79 million representing 123 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter.

Only a 3% decline in unit sales from last year is amazing, considering the economic environment. Mac Pro sales were weaker year over year due to the economy. (I just bought a new Mac Pro, so for me it’s a big increase from last year!) The iPod Touch more than doubled year over year. Combine that with the iPhone and you have an enormous platform. It also appears unlikely that Apple is going into the Netbook space. Questions about that possibility were answered by pointing out that the iPhone and iPod Touch are great portable computers, but they continue to follow the space.

As for Steve Jobs return they, “look forward to Steve returning to Apple at the end of June.”

So my new Mac Pro has arrived…

Last month I wrote about the reasons for going with the Mac Pro over the new iMac.

The best way to describe my new Quad-core Mac Pro is that it thinks as fast as I can. Okay, maybe not as fast as a human brain, but it’s still very speedy. I like working with lots of programs open at once. I’ll be uploading photos to Flickr, while downloading video from iTunes, writing an email and re-encoding a video file. Doing all this at once will bog many machines down, but not the new Mac Pro. I have yet to see it slow down. The only limiting factor is the speed of the internet (which has nothing to do with my computer). Otherwise it handles everything I can throw at it. Thanks to multi-threading my 4 processors appear as 8 to the software and I have yet to max out more than one or two at a time. Often tasks are spread out over the 8 cores evenly, with 10 to 20% usage.

I went with 8 GB of RAM and that certainly helps with my problem of having a lot of programs open at once. But the funny thing is, I feel less of a need to have many programs open at once because they don’t take very long to open. One icon bounce in the dock and BAM, it’s ready to go. I hated how long it took programs to load on the old iMac, which led me to leave stuff open all the time and consequently slow the machine down even more by having a lot of programs open.

The other thing that really helps with overall speed is to have a lot of empty space on your hard drive. If you’re down to 10-15% free space, you’re going to start running into big problems with slowdown. I have all four hard drive bays filled with two 1 TB and two 500 GB drives.

I reformatted my old iMac with a new install of Leopard and don’t have nearly the number of programs running on it, because it’s going to be my dad’s computer and he doesn’t need all those apps. Since doing that, the iMac now boots up super fast and is very snappy. Interesting that Macs, just like Windows, do seem to slow down as you install more apps and have more stuff running in the background. Not really a surprise, but something to think about if you’re noticing your machine slowing down. Might want to consider a fresh install, after backing up your data of course.

Back in December 2007 I had upgraded to Leopard on the iMac and had problems with GarageBand crashing on initializing. I never did solve the problem and even the new GarageBand does not load on my new Mac Pro. Just hangs during the load and crashes. The Apple forums are filled with posts about GarageBand crashing on startup. I suspect it has to do with my Pro Tools install. If I have a clean install of Leopard and iLife 09, GarageBand loads no problem, but as soon as I import my user data and settings it crashes. I would much rather have all my preferences and data from my old Mac, than have GarageBand work. I could start from scratch, but that would take a whole weekend to sort out. As someone pointed out, you can try going through all your Application Support files and MIDI files, but I’ve already wasted enough time with that. It’s not worth it. So I won’t be using GarageBand.

Aside from GarageBand not working, I am very happy with the Mac Pro and am glad I decided to spend the extra money and get something with some more horsepower than the iMac. I would recommend the Quad-Core to anyone like me who does more with their computer than the average soccer mom or student. The 8-Core is really only for people who are using high-end 3D software or if you need to render HD video, or if you have money burning a hole in your pocket.

Here are some benchmarks and reviews for the 2009 Mac Pros…

Macworld
MacRumors
Engadget

F.E.A.R. 2 Glitch PS3

Playing F.E.A.R. 2 and came across this glitch.

The debate has raged for years. Does Apple need a mid-range tower for those power users who want more than just an iMac (which is built with the same mobile chips used in the MacBook Pros) but don’t quite need the more expensive Mac Pro?

This was my dilemma as my current computer, the first Intel iMac (2.0 GHz Intel Core Duo) was starting to show it’s three year age. (for example, rapidly clicking through my RAW photos in iPhoto would immediately hail the spinning beach ball and a several second delay)

With the latest Apple re-fresh of it’s iMac, Mini and Pro line I was hoping for a quad-core iMac based on Intel’s Nehalem processors with LED screen and the ability to add more than 4GB of RAM. This didn’t quite happen. I assume Intel’s mobile Nehalem won’t be out until summer so look for a fall re-fresh of the iMac line. Apple does now let you upgrade to 8GB of RAM in the new iMac’s, however because of space limitations, there are only two slots for RAM so you have to use pricey 4GB sticks to get up to 8GB. This will add $1000 to the price ($1200 here in Canada) bringing the price of the top-of-the-line iMac to a whopping $3799 (CAD)! That’s more than the new 2.66GHz Quad-Core Mac Pros! Because the Mac Pro has more slots for RAM you can use 2GB sticks and get yourself up to 8GB of RAM for $250 US ($300 CAD). Of course, you have to keep in mind, the Mac Pro doesn’t come with a monitor or iSight camera so you have to price those into the equation, so the Pro’s are more expensive (about $1000 more depending on the monitor you buy and other options), but I calculated that if I keep the Mac Pro for an extra year (based on keeping iMac for 3 years and Mac Pro for 4 years) the cost per year is exactly the same.

There’s no question that the Mac Pro is a little more than I need. I’m not a pro photographer or video editor, but I am a pro-sumer or power user as they say, so I find the iMac a bit limiting.

So I took the plunge and ordered my first Mac Pro…

2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
8GB DDR3 RAM
ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB

I also picked up a Samsung SyncMaster 24″ LCD Monitor. I would have gone with the beautiful Apple 24 inch LED Cinema Display, but it’s $1000 CAD price tag is a bit much. Apple seriously needs to lower it’s monitor prices. You can get a 42 inch HD TV for that price. For $600 or $700, I’d consider an Apple monitor, but not $1000.

I will review the new Mac Pro when it arrives. I ordered on Friday so it should arrive at the end of March.

Gervais + Elmo = Hilarity on ‘Sesame Street’

Very funny…

Former president George W. Bush is coming to a city near me. His first speech since leaving office will be March 17th in Calgary, Alberta.

I won’t be going.

Christian Bale apologizes for his outburst to Kevin & Bean on KROQ.

Well said.

I missed downloading the January 20th broadcast of the NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams. Now, I can only get the January 21st edition because their RSS feed only includes the current broadcast. No archive at all. I tried going to the site, but there’s nothing. Only yesterdays news, not two days ago. I even tried putting in the 20th date overtop of the 21st in the convoluted URL but the server told me I didn’t have permission to do that.

I can understand NBC not wanting to have hundreds of episodes of old Nightly News episodes clogging their servers, but come on. The most important Nightly News since the election and you only have 24 hours to watch it? Get a grip. I demand better. Unless you’d rather me just get ALL my news somewhere else, preferably with an RSS feed that has more then yesterdays entry.

As I just told Twitter,

Just pre-ordered U2’s new album, “No Line On The Horizon – Deluxe Edition” from iTunes. The single “Get On Your Boots rocks!”

…and

By the way, Paul David Hewson (Bono), David Howell Evans (Edge), Adam Charles Clayton and Lawrence Joseph “Larry” Mullen, Jr. still have it!

I agree with Sick Boy’s theory of life from Trainspotting…

SICK BOY
It’s certainly a phenomenon in all walks of life.

RENTON
What do you mean?

SICK BOY
Well, at one time, you’ve got it, and then you lose it, and it’s gone for ever. All walks of life: George Best, for example, had it and lost it, or David Bowie, or Lou Reed -

RENTON
Some of his solo stuff’s not bad.

SICK BOY
No, it’s not bad, but it’s not great either, is it? And in your heart you kind of know that although it sounds all right, it’s actually just shite.

RENTON
So who else?

SICK BOY
Charlie Nicholas, David Niven, Malcolm McLaren, Elvis Presley. -

RENTON
OK, OK, so what’s the point you’re trying to make?

Sick Boy rests the gun down.

SICK BOY
All I’m trying to do is help you understand that The Name of the Rose is merely a blip on an otherwise uninterrupted downward trajectory.

RENTON
What about The Untouchables?

SICK BOY
I don’t rate that at all.

RENTON
Despite the Academy award?

SICK BOY
That means fuck all. The sympathy vote.

RENTON
Right. So we all get old and then we can’t hack it any more. Is that it?

SICK BOY
Yeah.

RENTON
That’s your theory?

SICK BOY
Yeah, Beautifully fucking illustrated.

Steve Jobs is taking a leave of absence from Apple, citing health reasons. I hope he is okay. He seems like a very resilient man.

The Apple stock price is going to drop a lot tomorrow. Hang on.

Hope you are having a great holiday. Just pondering something that may or may not be connected.

The Detroit Lions are now the first NFL team to go 0-16 on the year. Not one win. I wonder what that feels like. Not good I assume. The only other winless NFL season was Tampa Bay in 1976, they went 0-14. That’s two less losses because the season was shorter back then.

I bet there are a lot of auto workers in Detroit who watch NFL. I wonder if the troubles of the auto industry are rubbing off on their football team. Logically, I know that’s not possible, but I can’t stop wondering about it. Everyone in that city must be hurting because of the economy, and now a winless football team. Seems bitterly poetic.

I wonder if you could study the rise of a communities economy and the success of their local sports teams. Last year, our provincial CFL football team, The Saskatchewan Roughriders won the Grey Cup (that’s our Super Bowl). 2007 was also a very big year for Saskatchewan economically. We got a new government, made tones of money from oil and other natural resources. Our film industry had a great year, housing and construction soared, business was great. Did that good feeling rub off on our football team?

Does the mass consciousness of a community have an impact on it’s athletes?

The things I think about, with a little time off.

Last week might have been my last Meet The Press. I’ve watched the show for years, with Tim Russert as host. I was very sad when he passed away earlier this year.

Tom Brokaw took over for Tim until last week when it was announced that David Gregory will be taking over as moderator. His Dickepedia page is here.

I think Chuck Todd should have been given the job.

David Gregory is too much of a talking head. Good at reading the TelePrompTer, but not as good at standing up to thugs in Washington. Watch for his follow-up questions. He may ask one tough question and he may even follow it up and insist on an answer a second time, but he doesn’t have the balls to ask a third time. Tim would ask three times. David will settle for the first answer. As we’ve seen the past eight years, the first answer, or even the second one just isn’t good enough.

To paraphrase Lloyd Bentson

Mr. Gregory, I served with Tim Russert: I knew Tim Russert; Tim Russert was a friend of mine. David, you’re no Tim Russert.

Maybe Mr. Gregory knows that. But he’ll have to earn his way into my Sunday morning routine.

I’m sleeping much better now that Barack Obama has been elected the next president. We don’t have to worry about Sarah Palin “keeping an eye on Putin” in case he “rears his head” over there in Russia, which you can see from Alaska by the way.

It’s satisfying to note that the election unfolded the way I said it would right here on this blog.

Interesting NYT article on Obama having to give up his BlackBerry and email.

We now have to focus on feeling better about the economy and our security, economic and physical. Both are one and the same, I suppose.

Winter is closing in here on the Canadian Prairies, the bit of snow we’ve got so far has melted, but it’s getting really dark. It doesn’t get light until 8am now and it’s dark by 6pm. This will get worse until the Winter Solstice and the days start getting longer. I’m not a fan of winter. I hate the lack of light, have less energy and if it gets really cold for too long, very depressing. I posted about it this past February.

I should move to California, but living there has it’s own problems.

Now that the election is over, time to get back to Christmas shopping and with any luck a short, warm winter.

Apple has released their Q4 results. Some things really stuck out for me.

a) Apple is now the 3rd biggest cell phone provider by revenue (not units). Number one is Nokia followed by Samsung. 6.9 million iPhone units were sold.

b) Apple beat RIM (BlackBerry) in revenue for the first time. That’s a big milestone, considering BlackBerry has been around for many years, and the iPhone only a year and a half.

c) 21% growth in Mac unit sales, even an 8% unit growth in iPod sales.

The iPod growth is incredible, considering how saturated the market should be. Doesn’t everybody already have one?

I point to Apple’s results because I don’t believe the sky is falling. Business continues. Companies have value. The stock market won’t go to zero. On the other hand, Yahoo revenue fell by 64% to $54-million. They are laying off 10% of their workforce, about 1,400 people.

Is the glass half full, or half empty? It depends on what you focus on.