August 2nd Sunday Blog

Today I decided to write a blog on Sunday. I usually skip writing blogs on Sunday, it’s like a day off for blogs for me. I feel like this day I can take off from writing blogs, as I just want to relax and get ready for next week. I should use make the blog writing a part of my relaxation activities.

I decided to update my Microsoft Word on my Mac before I started typing my blog in Word. I skipped updating the software in the past as I felt it would be too time consuming and I just wanted to finish writing the blog. However today being a Sunday, I wanted to make sure my softwares are up to date. I like having my softwares up to date. It feels to good to have the latest and greatest software even though there may not be much difference, it has always been a habit to stay on top of the update game for me. I have noticed though during the past few months I have been lagging behind when it comes to being up to date on my softwares, playing around with new software, etc. Especially on my iphone I have not updated my applications. Also I haven’t synced my iphone to my new Mac yet! This is very rare that I do not do this, does this mean I am over the joy that I received from these activities or have I just gotten lazier. I think it is a combination of both.

For the first time in years, I have not yet installed Microsoft Windows on my Mac. I generally install it right away after getting a new Mac, but this time I have just not gotten to it yet. I generally only use Windows to play games and use some software that are only available on the windows platform. I liked playing the latest 3D games, I used to enjoy looking at the luscious graphics that my latest and greatest hardware would crunch out. Experiencing rich 3D games was a very stimulating experience. I like stimulating experiences like most people. Things have to be super stimulating for me to keep paying attention. I like virtual stimulation to a certain extent. I prefer going to Universal Studios to Disneyland. The virtual stimulation at Universal is definitely more interesting and engaging than Mickey mouse at Disneyland. The only thing I would like at Disney Land are some of the rides like Space Mountain which I haven’t tried yet, and hence curious about them.

Getting back to my word update. Something crazy happened after I installed the update. Word gave message telling me to renter my serial number. This was not good. I now had to perform research and fix this damn problem, which was killing my motivation to write a blog. Anyway I finally fixed the problem and got word running with the latest updates, I felt so good that I was able to fix this problem as it would have a big hinderance to write blogs on my home PC.

In the process of fixing this update problem, I tried apple’s pages software from the iWork 09 suite. This software is similar or Microsoft Word, except made my apple. I was impressed that the word count on the software works in real-time unlike Microsoft word 2008 which has a few seconds lag or it waits till you type all your words before it shows the count. Another feature I liked is the Full-Screen feature in iWork that gives you a white page with a black ground, hence cutting out all the distractions and helps you focus on your writing. It also shows the word count in the bottom of the screen, that’s the only information it shows along with the page no. info. I love the way apple has implemented this part of the software by giving me this blank page on top of a black ground with only page no. and word count info. which is all that I need. I am really impressed with this way of typing documents. Apple has managed to give you the simplicity of notepad but has implemented it a very polished sense. Implementations like this make me like Apple even more. I wish I had noticed this software before so that I could have experienced this cool way of typing documents. What would be killer is if apple had the blog template in pages, then I could type my blog in here and just click update, which would then update it to blogger. There would be no need to copy, log into blogger and then paste it. Microsoft Word 2007 on windows has the blog option but the word processors on Mac don’t have this option yet. I am hoping they implement more blogging tools into the word processors on Mac.

Another thing I found in iWork is that is does not have auto-save! I find this hard to comprehend. Apple creates software with some really cool features but then they forget to include simple features like auto-save. It makes me wonder what the developers were thinking when they were developing this software. Smart people can be some dumb sometimes. Features like these cannot be overlooked. I am sure it was not so hard for them to implement that, the freaking development time probably did not bother to include the feature in this version and just conveniently saved it for the next version of the software.

The other bad parts of the software that I disliked is the lack of the synonyms option on the right click menu. I find this feature handy while using word. Once apple implements these features in Pages it will be a lot better product. It makes me want to be the product tester for apple where I could tell them to make sure to include these simple and necessary features.

Overall I still like apple products and their operating system over PC and windows. My satisfaction with apple’s products has been higher than my satisfaction with any other products on the market. Sometimes I wish apple made more than computers and software. I wish they designed everything from toothbrushes to MiniVans. On many occasions when I came across certain products, I would think I wonder how apple would have designed this.