Mac Tip #1: Get RAM

Part of the series.
(Series created on August 13, 2011, and applied retroactively…)

Two years ago, I’ve said something similar about my XP machine (emachines H3070). But now that I’m getting , I’ll say it about Macs too: get more RAM!

I recently got this used Mac mini Intel Core Duo 1.66GHz (early 2006). It’s a low end machine but it’s much better than the Mac mini G4 I was buying from somebody else. One thing, though, is that with 1 GB of RAM, the G4 felt snappier than the Core Duo did with 512 MB of RAM. I just maxed the Core Duo’s RAM to 2 GB and it now feels snappier than the G4 did, for the brief amount of time I had it.

Of course, for casual uses, differences in speed aren’t that noticeable, which is the main point of my previous post on coming back to Mac. But, in this case, the difference between the same Mac mini Intel Core Duo with 512 MB of RAM and the same machine with 2 GB is quite noticeable, even in casual use.

I bought the RAM through NCIX, one of the better known online retailers of PC equipment in Canada. Two Kingston-branded 1 GB PC2-5300 SO-DIMMs for 48.17$, shipping included. It cost me as much for a single 1 GB PC-2700 DIMM (also Kingston-branded), locally (without shipping). This might have been one of the most trouble-free online buying experiences I’ve ever had.

For one thing, NCIX accepts Interac Online. Interac is the main system for debit cards in Canada and it’s accepted in almost any “brick and mortar” business. Despite having lived in the US where “flash cards” debit cards with credit card numbers are common, I still prefer Interac over flash cards.  It’s the first time I’ve used Interac Online and I wish all businesses accepted it.

Then, the whole order was well-documented, with a clear description of the step-by-step process. Too often, online retailers rely on the one confirmation message “we received your payment and we should ship your item soon.” One part of that documentation came from my bank, because I’ve used Interac Online. Contrary to Paypal, the operation happens directly.

The item was shipped rather promptly. It could have been faster but that wasn’t an issue. And it arrived quickly, over air, through Purolator. That part cost me about 3$, which is very good for prompt shipment of such a low-cost item (“super saver” shipping usually applies only to more costly orders). The items were properly packaged, with recycled paper.

All in all, I’ve had a very good experience with NCIX.

Then, there was the matter of installing the RAM. My experience with doing this on the Mac mini G4 was rather painless, in part because the box had already been opened. But the Mac mini Intel Core Duo is also much more difficult to upgrade because the SO-DIMMs are hidden under the chassis.

In both cases, I used the Method Shop tutorial on Mac mini RAM upgrade. These instructions are quite good overall. I wish there had been pictures of the four screws which need to be taken off, but it’s mostly a matter of making sure I had the right one. Contrary to  what this tutorial implies, I didn’t have any issue taking these screws out and in, even though my screwdriver (the same I’d use for glasses or sax screws) isn’t magnetized.

One thing I did find difficult, though, was plugging back the tiny black cable by the computer’s (PRAM?) battery. Sounds silly but it was actually pretty difficult.

Inserting the top SO-DIMM was also a bit difficult but it’s mostly because I wasn’t clear on how angled it had to be. At the same time, those SO-DIMMs were much easier to secure in than most DIMMs I’ve installed in the past, including the one on the Mac mini G4.

I had a short moment of panic when I tested the mini while it was still “naked.” When I powered it on, I got a screen with a missing folder. I turned the mini off, played with the chassis a bit, and heard a “click.” Turns out the connection to the hard drive hadn’t been made. Because of the episode with the infamous tiny black cable, I worried that it might have been an issue with a cable I hadn’t noticed.

Putting the computer back together was actually easier than with the G4. No idea why, but it worked right away.

So, for less than 50$, I have greatly improved performance on this Mac mini. And it’s such a neat machine (small, quiet, practical) that this RAM installation marks the end of a rather successful process of getting Back in Mac.

Before installing the RAM, I’ve transferred a number of things from a previous Mac OS X machine (had saved everything on an old iPod) and from my XP machine. That machine now sleeps under my desk. I can VNC to it if I need to, and it still holds my ca. 100 GB iTunes Music library. But once I buy a 1 TB 7200 RPM external hard drive, it probably won’t be that useful.

Back in Mac: Low End Edition

Part of the series.
(Series created on August 13, 2011, and applied retroactively…)

Today, I’m buying an old Mac mini G4 1.25GHz. Yes, a low end computer from 2005. It’ll be great to be back in Mac after spending most of my computer life on XP for three years.

This mini is slower than my XP desktop (emachines H3070). But that doesn’t really matter for what I want to do.

There’s something to be said about computers being “fast enough.” Gamers and engineers may not grok this concept, since they always want more. But there’s a point at which computers don’t really need to be faster, for some categories of uses.

Car analogies are often made, in computer discussions, and this case seems fairly obvious. Some cars are still designed to “push the envelope,” in terms of performance. Yet most cars, including some relatively inexpensive ones, are already fast enough to run on highways beyond the speed limits in North America. Even in Europe, most drivers don’t tend to push their cars to the limit. Something vaguely similar happens with computers, though there are major differences. For instance, the difference in cost between fast driving and normal driving is a factor with cars while it isn’t so much of a factor with computers. With computers, the need for cooling and battery power (on laptops) do matter but, even if they were completely solved, there’s a limit to the power needed for casual computer use.

This isn’t contradicting Moore’s Law directly. Chips do increase exponentially in speed-to-cost ratio. But the effects aren’t felt the same way through all uses of computers, especially if we think about casual use of desktop and laptop “personal computers.” Computer chips in other devices (from handheld devices to cars or DVD players) benefit from Moore’s Law, but these are not what we usually mean by “computer,” in daily use.
The common way to put it is something like “you don’t need a fast machine to do email and word processing.”

The main reason I needed a Mac is that I’ll be using iMovie to do simple video editing. Video editing does push the limits of a slow computer and I’ll notice those limits very readily. But it’ll still work, and that’s quite interesting to think about, in terms of the history of personal computing. A Mac mini G4 is a slug, in comparison with even the current Mac mini Core 2 Duo. But it’s fast enough for even some tasks which, in historical terms, have been processor-intensive.

None of this is meant to say that the “need for speed” among computer users is completely manufactured. As computers become more powerful, some applications of computing technologies which were nearly impossible at slower speeds become easy to do. In fact, there certainly are things which we don’t even imagine becoming which will be easy to do in the future, thanks to improvements in computer chip performance. Those who play processor-intensive games always want faster machines and they certainly feel the “need for speed.” But, it seems to me, the quest for raw speed isn’t the core of personal computing, anymore.

This all reminds me of the Material Culture course I was teaching in the Fall: the Social Construction of Technology, Actor-Network Theory, the Social Shaping of Technology, etc.

So, a low end computer makes sense.

While iMovie is the main reason I decided to get a Mac at this point, I’ve been longing for Macs for three years. There were times during which I was able to use somebody else’s Mac for extended periods of time but this Mac mini G4 will be the first Mac to which I’ll have full-time access since late 2005, when my iBook G3 died.

As before, I’m happy to be “back in Mac.” I could handle life on XP, but it never felt that comfortable and I haven’t been able to adapt my workflow to the way the Windows world works. I could (and probably should) have worked on Linux, but I’m not sure it would have made my life complete either.

Some things I’m happy to go back to:

  • OmniOutliner
  • GarageBand
  • Keynote
  • Quicksilver
  • Nisus Thesaurus
  • Dictionary
  • Preview
  • Terminal
  • TextEdit
  • BibDesk
  • iCal
  • Address Book
  • Mail
  • TAMS Analyzer
  • iChat

Now I need to install some RAM in this puppy.

Back in Mac: GTD Edition

Part of the series.
(Series created on August 13, 2011, and applied retroactively…)

Catherine got a MacBook (Combo Drive) last week. Though it’s her computer, I’ve been using it pretty extensively in the past few days. And it’s changing my life for the better.

Long story short. My iBook (Dual USB) from 2001 went kaput in December 2005. In a hurry to get a new computer and being a bit short on cash, I ended up a few weeks later with a refurbished eMachines desktop running XP. Though my original dissatisfaction with the machine probably had to do with the lack of RAM, I still thought fondly of my Mac OS X days and was longing for the day I could use a Mac again. Now that I can, I know why I missed Mac OS X so much.

At this point, I come to think that those people who love XP machines are those who like to play fast-paced games and/or to pirate software. I love computers for other reasons so these don’t apply to me.

Contrary to what is said in the Justin Long and John Hodgman ads, I tend to see Mac OS X as a way to get things done.

Yes, Getting Things Done is the title of a best-selling book by David Allen and has become a buzzphrase in recent years. I was indirectly influenced by some ideas from the book but I prefer to use my own methods of time-management. Still, I can easily associate the Mac with GTD the concept, if not GTD the book (which I haven’t had the time to read).

This past weekend, I read a “Final Assessment” on a Mac OS X application called iGTD. It’s a rather straightforward tool for managing tasks. Kind of a “to-do list on steroids.”

I tried iGTD for a few minutes last night. Neat app and it might end up being useful. I’ll give it more thought as time goes on but as I need to switch between different computers, I don’t think it’ll become my ultimate solution.

Trying iGTD was also a chance for me to try QuickSilver again, after all this time spent on an XP machine. I really like QS and I can really see how it fits in the GTD frame. It’s a convenient way to accomplish a large number of tasks very efficiently. It’s not the fact that it saves you a few seconds at a time which matters. It’s the fact that it makes it easy to not think about what you want to accomplish. Kind of what the QuickSilver people call “Wei Wu Wei – Act Without Doing.” QS is really a Mac OS X thing. It only works on Macs and it really fits in the Mac-based methodology for computer use.

Another example of Mac OS X apps to get things done: OmniOutliner. This is probably the single app which I most missed on XP. Sure, there are outliners on XP. But none of them made my workflow as smooth as OO did. I tried NetManage EccoPro and eventually abandoned it. EccoPro is very powerful and it was an ok replacement for the actual outlining functions but the fact that it hasn’t been developed in ages means that it lacks the kind of features which really make things go smoothly.  In other words, EccoPro is not that compatible with the Mac way of just doing things.

Things are so easy in my OO workflow! For instance, while preparing for courses, I would use OO to take rough notes while reading course material. (Actually, I took many of these notes on a PalmOS device to transfer to OO. That part was never so seamless and I tried everything to improve it but it was a vain attempt. Transferring from Palm to EccoPro is a bit simpler.) In OO, transforming raw notes into course outlines was extremely easy and efficient. I could then easily transform those outlines into printable lesson plans and slides using LaTeX, Keynote, PowerPoint, or RTF. All told, I could transform rough notes into course material in less than 10 minutes without thinking much about what I was doing. Made everything so easy that it really took me a while to adapt my workflow to XP. In fact, I can’t say I ever did. Sure, XP people will say that I could in fact do the same thing thing on XP, that I’m just an Apple fanboy. The fact that the PalmOS integration with OS X wasn’t so smooth seems to prove that point. But the key point here is not about my ability to do things. It’s about the flow part of workflow. Every method I used on XP to accomplish the same tasks eventually worked and I became quite good at them. I probably ended up spending just a few minutes more on any of these tasks. But nothing was really smooth. I could never be mindless about the process. I constantly had to make sure everything was working.

As it turns out OO also fits in the GTD frame. In fact, the first time I heard of GTD was probably on the OO user mailing-list. Some people there wanted the ultimate GTD solution based on OO. OO didn’t have a lot of GTD-savvy features but it seems that it could fit in the GTD methodology overall.

One step further, I think Mac OS X as a whole fits in the GTD frame.

But I probably will never jump on the GTD bandwagon. AFAICT, GTD is mostly based on sorting tasks and tracking them. Again, “to-do list on steroids.” But, contrary to my mother and to my wife, I’m usually no good with to-do lists. I keep accumulating stuff in them and end up more frustrating. Centralized systems work better for me so I do a lot on Gmail. Those who don’t know me extremely well certainly think that I’m completely disorganized. But I’ve found ways to organize myself through apparent chaos. In short, I’m messy and I’m proud of it. But I do respond to the very concept of “just getting things done already” which seems to be associated with GTD-friendly applications. In this case: iGTD, QS, OO, and… Mac OS X.

It sure is good to be back in Mac!