Loudmouthman

I finally bit the bullet , laid out the cash and committed the finances. I bought an Apple Mac.

Its been less than a week since it arrived and I felt it was time to blog a little about  the experiences.  Its not like I am new to the apple mac range, since  I tend to recommend my clients purchase a Mac if they are serious about presentation or giving the impression of design and quality.

There is something about owning a Apple Mac which informs others that you have a commitment to something. Its all about that Brand thing again.

Lets be honest here, there is not much I can do on a Mac that I cannot achieve on a PC running Windows and Ubuntu so why is it really that much different ?  Allow me to use a hackneyed example.

You can buy a Jaguar XJS or you can but a Ford Mondeo. In both carsd  you can achieve the same results in  terms of actions. You can get in , head to a destination, park up and arrive, Job done. So whats the point ? The point is you are going to enjoy the journey in the Jaguar. There is going to be  a feeling of design and care which has gone into the production of the jaguar that makes you, the owner ,feel like its there for you.  Your going to enjoy the journey and your going to look forward to using it time and time again.

Of course like the Jaguar the Mac comes with a whole new way of thinking and doing. There are  just so many different ways to get things done that I am still learning, or rather unlearning. I switched on the mac and it found and joined my network, my printers and my network drives. I attached my phone and grabbed the images into iPhoto and then edited movies in iMovie and uploaded them to my network attached storage and things just worked. Im not worrying about antivirus this or spyware that or printer driver CD the next thing. Im not looking at battery life in terms of minutes but in terms of hours ( 4 so far ) and Im not facing the occasional spinning , hanging , waiting for the next window to open because I have  opened more than 4 applications at once.

Also its based around a Unix type operating system so  I have my needs met for the remote management and shell access that I get on Ubuntu. The webcam and flash player work as well, no problems not something to be said for an experience in the other operating systems.

F5 does not refresh . DOH on 12seconds.tv

I am sold now, I am not going back I dont have time in my life to buy more Windows boxes or apt-get do-it-alloveragain more Ubuntu installs. Im just having too much fun getting things done.

I am not the most organised of individuals. I have yet to master  a process for managing, organising and storing my photos. I am constantly on the edge of playing it safe by copying files multiple times to various locations. Enough is enough however and I realise that I was getting inundated with copies of files, I cant see where they are and I just cant work out what they are to me and where.

A while back I had installed ACDSee Photo Manager and Photo Editor on the recommendation of Connie Benson, whose persistent community Blogging of her experiences with ACDSee products lead me to purchase the software. Like many other purchases though this one had been languishing in my start menu for several months. It was time to bring it back up into the recent programs list and have a look to see if it could solve my photo hording dilema.

The first task I had set for ACDSee was to find the duplicate images between several directories and machines then  delete the unwanted sets. This was a far easier task  for the application since its Tools->Find Duplicates function allows you to locate  the duplicate images between two or more lists or within the same list. It then gives you the choices to remove duplicates from the first or the second list.  One hour, 3200 Images and 1.7Gb of data later and I had streamlined down my folders and directories into one folder.  Huge Success !

The more I play with the features in ACDSee Photo manager and ACDSee Photo Editor the more impressed I become with the pounds per feature ratio of their products. This is the third time that these products have dug me out of a hole of my own creation.

Now that Photos are becoming an important part of the SoMe feature set its damned handy to have tools that make the management of that media easier.

Now if only I could get it for the Mac !

Thanks for reading.