macmerc

Aug 9 2010

The pursuit of Mac Awesomeness

I’ve been thinking of doing quick-and-dirty videos to accompany the stories here at MacMerc for quite a while but the first video is always the toughest. I finally got my inspiration as I was sitting in the local @Starbucks trying to post a story using their free wifi. It was taking me far too long to upload a simple story. Far, far, far too long. This was not going to work.

I looked across the street and noticed my local Mac dealer, Mac Station, and thought, “I bet they have better wifi… I wonder if they’d let me blog from their store.” I assumed they’d want to get something out of the deal—not just let some guy leach wifi and not buy anything. That’s when I came up with the idea to offer to do those nearly-daily videos I wanted to do, but do them from their store. I help get the word out about the awesome store and their fun, knowledgeable staff and in return I get a base to blog from and a gentle nudge to get something compelling done every day.

So here it is, the first video1 . The first video is always the toughest.

No Flash? No problem—click here!»

Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed and follow @RickMacMerc and @MacMerc on Twitter. Me and the staff here at Mac Station have a lot of great ideas we’re going to share with you, but if you know of any Mac/iPod/iPhone/iPad awesomeness you want us to feature, post a comment or send me a Submission of Awesomeness and I’ll give it a look.

Thanks for reading this far, as a reward, you get to watch a video of me rescuing a kitten from my car engine»
  1. and, no, this doesn’t take the place of MacMercTV [↩]

This also happened today…

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By RickMacMerc • Featured, macmerc, MacMerc.TV, Mini Video, Site News • 3 • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Jul 31 2010

iOS 4.0 on the 3G iPhone is not awesome, but this video is

As you may know, there has been a shift in focus here at MacMerc from reporting every bit of Apple news to focusing more on what is awesome and amazing about what we, as users, can achieve with these devices. I’m trying to steer away from the scandals and the failures that inevitably come up to spotlight the clever and the remarkable. As I like to say, it’s my ongoing pursuit of Mac awesomeness.

I’m going to seeming to break from that with the story, but I’d like to argue that this is still awesomeness. The video embedded below is a brilliant parody by Adam Burtle. Here’s his story:

As a generally happy Apple customer, I bought two 2G iPhones on the first day they hit the market (one for myself and one for my romantic partner at the time). When the 3G came out, I bought that model too.

The first iPhone captivated the world because the interface was so well done, so snappy, so interactive; it was like nothing before it. Of course it was, it was an Apple product. That, right there, is why I buy Apple products. And I didn’t even mind that it was missing “copy and paste,” MMS, ringtones, etc — because I knew Apple would eventually get to these through software updates. And eventually they did. Unfortunately they kept coming out with new phones. With faster processors. And they wrote all their software updates for these phones, with little attention to deprecated models. I don’t really use third party software on my phones, I honestly don’t even use ringtones. I just use my phone for SMS, web, maps, and occasionally as an actual phone, so the 3G model was more than I ever needed.

Except over time, it’s fulfilled my needs less and less. And it’s not because my needs have grown. It’s not because I’ve installed a bunch of laggy software. It’s because Apple’s firmware has become bloated, with respect to the processing power of the 3G iPhone. I just installed iOS 4 two weeks ago, and at this point, I’d be happy to roll back to the first firmware I ever had, just to have that original speed again; forget about the copy and paste, I don’t need it that badly.

So, tongue firmly in cheek, I decided to compare my phone to the first iPhone commercial that Apple ran. That commercial lasted twenty-eight seconds. How long will my phone take for the same tasks?

Adam’s story is similar to my own and his video is pure awesomeness in how it understands my pain. Evidently, Apple is looking into the problem. If they hold a press conference to talk about it, I hope the open the proceedings with Adam’s video. icon wink iOS 4.0 on the 3G iPhone is not awesome, but this video is

By RickMacMerc • iOS, iPhone • 1 • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Jun 24 2010

Where did that post go?

I’ve had a few people ask about where some of the older posts from the original incarnation of MacMerc have gone. They’re all here… somewhere. Everything that was on the old site in the way of articles, reviews and news posts has been transferred over, but the links to where they once were may no longer work… in fact they probably won’t work.

I’m in the process of tracking down someone who knows the ways of htaccess and might be willing to help me set up a more efficient redirect but, in the meantime, if you can’t find a post from old MacMerc on new MacMerc, comment below and I will do my best to track it down.

Better yet, if you post a comment with the old link, I’ll track down where that post went and make sure the link redirects.

What can I help you find?

By RickMacMerc • Featured, macmerc • 2 • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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