I have both PC and Mac. Like most people, I have issues with both - but I refuse to get into that now. Just recently I purchased a Macbook Air because I wanted something to use pretty much exclusively for writing. They're tiny, light, and work great to take wherever you fancy, though to be honest I still do most of my typing on the couch. It's still an improvement from my 17" MB Pro, because it's too big and klunky (and hot!) to comfortably type on the couch let alone in the park or wherever.
In the process of purchasing the MBA, I also decided to purchase a .mac account which boasts something like 10gbs of ftp space on apple's iDisk technology (snicker). It's essentially a place that is supposed to sync with apple programs like iPhoto and iTunes, supposedly, and it also serves as a mail server (I still use my silly hotmail accounts from the 90s). This iDisk is pretty genius in theory, because it's supposed to be seamlessly integrated into your Finder. This, ladies and gentlemen, is utter bullshit.
The first thing I tried to do with my iDisk is to use it for file sharing. This proved to be a major mistake, because apple's iDisk tends to hang for a long, long, long time when pushing large files to the iDisk (and by large, I mean over 500MBs... pshaw!). That's bad enough! A regular Godaddy ftp works like a charm, but apple's POS (POS = Piece of Shiznit!) iDisk is a huge miss. What's with the file copying 100% then completely freezing up the Finder for (wait for it) TWELVE HOURS! Annoying.
Next, I tried move my itune library to the idisk. Terrible idea, ladies and gentlemen. First, I was pushing from the PC, and the iDisk doesn't work like a normal FTP, so if you're trying to access the iDisk from a PC, then you have to either download an app to do this (which never worked for me), log in via a web browser (which appears to be the best solution, though it doesn't have a progress bar, so uploads could be hanging and you'd have no way of knowing), or mapping the network to a drive. I mapped the network to a drive. It sucked, but 36 hours later I was able to push around 3.6 gigs of music to the server. That's about 10 hours a gig. What year is this? I'm sorry, is this iNetZeroDisk?
Next, I tried to "link" the iDisk iTunes library to my local iTunes client by importing the library xml. Piece of cake, right? Sure, it worked, but why did it take 3 hours for it to load and analyze 3.6 gigs of music? Seriously, 3.6 gigs is NOT that ridiculous. Beyond that, it didn't actually have to DOWNLOAD the entire 3.6, because that was the entire point of having it being externalized to the iDisk! The xml was supposed to "reference" the links to each mp3, right? Shit, why can't you have an app that can index an entire mp3 library in seconds whether it is local or otherwise? Oh wait! There is one called sk jukebox and you can download it for pc here http://kilroysdesign.com/sk/? It's amazing, but I digress!
Importing a CD to iDisk. I put in the latest release from Mudhoney (yes I'm old, and yes I'm just as shocked as you that they're still releasing albums! They're like the Perry Como of Grunge! And you can quote me on that!), and each track seems to import at a crawl. In fact, the import just completed, and I started the import about an hour ago or so. People, I'm on a broadband connection! I get there will be buffer times between mp3s, but so far the lag time has been laughable. Also, I get the difference between bottle necked upload speeds versus generous download speeds.
In apple's defense, they're apparently rolling something out this July called MobileMe that is supposed to be a major upgrade to the crappy iDisk garbage people have been struggling with for years. Let's hope it works better than the iSuck, I mean, iDisk. I'll be back to tell you my experience with it in July! If they don't iron out the kinks, I think I'll be canceling my .mac account very, very soon!
As an aside, Mudhoney's earlier stuff still rocks! If you have Superfuzz Big Muff or Here Comes Sickness in your collection, dust those bitches off and give them a listen. You'll love it... again.
In the process of purchasing the MBA, I also decided to purchase a .mac account which boasts something like 10gbs of ftp space on apple's iDisk technology (snicker). It's essentially a place that is supposed to sync with apple programs like iPhoto and iTunes, supposedly, and it also serves as a mail server (I still use my silly hotmail accounts from the 90s). This iDisk is pretty genius in theory, because it's supposed to be seamlessly integrated into your Finder. This, ladies and gentlemen, is utter bullshit.
The first thing I tried to do with my iDisk is to use it for file sharing. This proved to be a major mistake, because apple's iDisk tends to hang for a long, long, long time when pushing large files to the iDisk (and by large, I mean over 500MBs... pshaw!). That's bad enough! A regular Godaddy ftp works like a charm, but apple's POS (POS = Piece of Shiznit!) iDisk is a huge miss. What's with the file copying 100% then completely freezing up the Finder for (wait for it) TWELVE HOURS! Annoying.
Next, I tried move my itune library to the idisk. Terrible idea, ladies and gentlemen. First, I was pushing from the PC, and the iDisk doesn't work like a normal FTP, so if you're trying to access the iDisk from a PC, then you have to either download an app to do this (which never worked for me), log in via a web browser (which appears to be the best solution, though it doesn't have a progress bar, so uploads could be hanging and you'd have no way of knowing), or mapping the network to a drive. I mapped the network to a drive. It sucked, but 36 hours later I was able to push around 3.6 gigs of music to the server. That's about 10 hours a gig. What year is this? I'm sorry, is this iNetZeroDisk?
Next, I tried to "link" the iDisk iTunes library to my local iTunes client by importing the library xml. Piece of cake, right? Sure, it worked, but why did it take 3 hours for it to load and analyze 3.6 gigs of music? Seriously, 3.6 gigs is NOT that ridiculous. Beyond that, it didn't actually have to DOWNLOAD the entire 3.6, because that was the entire point of having it being externalized to the iDisk! The xml was supposed to "reference" the links to each mp3, right? Shit, why can't you have an app that can index an entire mp3 library in seconds whether it is local or otherwise? Oh wait! There is one called sk jukebox and you can download it for pc here http://kilroysdesign.com/sk/? It's amazing, but I digress!
Importing a CD to iDisk. I put in the latest release from Mudhoney (yes I'm old, and yes I'm just as shocked as you that they're still releasing albums! They're like the Perry Como of Grunge! And you can quote me on that!), and each track seems to import at a crawl. In fact, the import just completed, and I started the import about an hour ago or so. People, I'm on a broadband connection! I get there will be buffer times between mp3s, but so far the lag time has been laughable. Also, I get the difference between bottle necked upload speeds versus generous download speeds.
In apple's defense, they're apparently rolling something out this July called MobileMe that is supposed to be a major upgrade to the crappy iDisk garbage people have been struggling with for years. Let's hope it works better than the iSuck, I mean, iDisk. I'll be back to tell you my experience with it in July! If they don't iron out the kinks, I think I'll be canceling my .mac account very, very soon!
As an aside, Mudhoney's earlier stuff still rocks! If you have Superfuzz Big Muff or Here Comes Sickness in your collection, dust those bitches off and give them a listen. You'll love it... again.
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Anyhow, thanks for the dropbox link. I'll have to check it out - sounds great!