Articles by by David Alison
I bought my first Mac almost 24 years ago when DOS ruled the world. I didn't keep it too long though. I was just kicking off my career as a software engineer and needed to go with PCs. I bought my 2nd Mac in February of 2008. I didn't expect that I would find myself using the machine as much as I have. It's not that I hate Windows (well, I pretty much hate Vista but XP is a fine OS), it's just that I find myself constantly playing with this machine. I'll share with you here my experiences of making the move from Windows to Macintosh. I still have a foot in both worlds, hence the name of my section.
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I generally like to put up blog posts that talk about cool things I’ve discovered on my Mac, or problems I’ve overcome and how I did that. This time it’s about a pet peeve…
After finding that my MacBook Pro’s battery required service and would no longer hold a charge I made an appointment with the Genius Bar at my local Apple store in Reston, VA. After a short wait Vilma (the Genius) called me up…
I’ve gotten a lot of e-mail lately asking why I haven’t been updating my blog. Frankly it’s because of two reasons: my business has kept me busier than a one-armed wall-paper hanger and …
The UPS truck pulled up yesterday and delivered my family upgrade pack to Snow Leopard . Though I’m a software developer I really stick to the web side of things and have not participated in any of the developer versions of Snow Leopard. As a result, I’ve only done…
I was chatting with some friends yesterday, some folks I hadn’t seen in a while. As they were getting ready to leave Donna looked over at my MacBook, propped open and sitting…
I was sitting on the couch the other day and relaxing when my wife yelled to me from the other room: David! My Mac’s not working! I love those highly specific descriptions of a problem. I asked for a little more clarity. I’m trying to watch a video and it’s…
One of my favorite–yet least mentioned–free utilities is Growl , a universal notification service for Mac that lets applications notify you of events. Now instead of each application deciding on how they want to present notifications for things like new mail, incoming tweets, etc. you can control it in a single…
I’ve now been using Ruby on Rails for a little over a year and have found it to be a fantastic environment to build web based applications. The last year has not been without some serious pain and learning curves and while I…
When I blog about applications that I’ve found I generally wrap up my posts with an open invitation to readers: Got any you like? Many folks have been generous and shared links and applications that …
The best part about writing a blog where I talk about Macs? People give me some great tips in the comments and yesterday’s post on apps for making users more productive was no exception. While I love the shortcuts available on my Mac I…
Many people are obsessed with speed and I happily include myself in that category, at least with respect to the performance I get from my computer. Whether it’s a faster processor, more memory, a quicker graphics card or a new high-speed hard…
I’ve become quite attached to Twitter lately, as several of my blog posts will attest. I use it for a wide range of things; a source of news (technical and non-technical), to chat with friends and share things I find of interest, to ask and answer questions on…
Last night I was doing some research and went to pull up the Ruby On Rails site . Unfortunately when I did I could not connect. My DNS server wasn’t resolving it properly. Assuming it was Verizon’s problem I embarked on a long and ultimately fruitless attempt to find out …
My wife and I were going through our morning routine, eating breakfast and reading the newspaper when suddenly she said “I can’t believe Apple!”. We share many core beliefs—especially on politics—so I usually give her a nod, offer…
