andrewdotcoza

This blog is moving permanently to http://www.andrew.co.za.

All links that start with http://blog.andrew.co.za will redirect automatically, starting at some point in the next 24 hours. This includes the RSS feed.

If you are using the old Feedburner feed, please update your RSS reader to point at http://www.andrew.co.za/feed/. If you are not using the Feedburner feed, you do not need to take any action.

kthxbai

I have officially changed the URL of this site from the long-winded http://andrewdotmac.blogspot.com to the far snappier http://apple.andrew.co.za.

Please update all your bookmarks accordingly.

The old URL will redirect to this page automatically.

Although I haven’t mentioned it in my regular blog, I bought my first Apple Mac in March 2007. It has been one of the most rewarding purchases that I have ever made, and my MacBook is certainly the finest piece of technology that I have ever owned.

Effusive? Yes! I have been working in the computer industry full time since November 1993. Every few months I would encounter a Mac user that would listen to whatever complicated PC trials I was going through at the time. Then they used to smile smugly and say, “Get a Mac.”

Their self-satisfied condescension used to irritate me. Now I am one of them. Really, get a Mac!

This blog, however, is my pulpit for preaching to the choir. My circle of Mac owning friends is increasing, and I have lived with OS X as my primary computing platform for over a year. Along the way, I have learned a great deal and encountered numerous tricks that make my Mac experience even better. I’m now beginning to find that I know things that are useful to other Mac owners, even those who have used their Apple products for longer than I have.

I have decided to establish an online repository of the things I learn, as I learn them. I will be including software reviews, configuration tricks and general comments about the Apple products that I experience. The products I own, my MacBook and my Apple TV, will obviously receive the most coverage. Your comments, and your questions, will be most welcome.

There are challenges unique to keeping a Mac in South Africa. We have no local iTunes store, we have idiosyncratic broadband services, Apple products are not always as freely available as we might like them to be, and we cannot just run down to a US based electronics store to buy that elusive cable, adaptor, or gadget. Primarily, therefore, I would like this blog to serve the South African Apple community. If you are not from South Africa, you are still most welcome and I would be delighted to hear from you.

If you feel that you want to contribute in a more extensive way by, for example, writing an article about an Apple related topic or loaning me a new Apple product for review, please let me know. This effort is all about sharing information and your collaboration will help to make it successful!

Apple, Mac, Apple TV and any other product names mentioned in this blog remain the trademarks of their respective owners. This will usually be Apple Corporation. I don’t sell Macs, at this stage, and provide no Apple specific products or services on a professional basis. I do software development most of the time, so you would be welcome to contact me about that.

I hope that you will find this initiative enjoyable, and that it helps you to get the most out of your Apple product. My Mac has changed my life, but making the switch is only the first step of a long and rewarding journey. Mayhap we shall walk it together.

I’ve just set up a blogger custom domain for this blog. With immediate effect, therefore, the official URL will become http://blog.andrew.co.za, which is more logical and elegant than the old http://andrewdotcoza.blogspot.com.

The old address will redirect you to the new one for the foreseeable future, but it would be nice of you to update your bookmarks and links.

The process of switching over was not as easy and things usually are with Blogger. I had to update DNS records with Hetzner, the company that hosts my domain. It was survivable for a computer guy, but I would not want to go through the experience as a muggle.

If anyone wants to do the same thing and needs some help, feel free to ask.

Today I migrated all of the entries from my old blog at LiveJournal over to this Blogger account.

To do so, I used a cunning little tool called lj2blogger. You can read a bit about it here and download it from here. Be warned, though, it does require the Microsoft .NET Framework.

The migration went very well, although some formatting got a little bit messed up. I’ll clean that up bit by bit as and when I get time. On the other hand, I might not.

Those of you who use RSS feeds might find that the order of the articles is a little bit strange for a while. That is because Blogger feeds the most recently edited articles rather than the most recently dated articles.

So, why Blogger? Blogger is completely free, and does not require me to upgrade my account in order to use advanced features like LiveJournal and WordPress. Blogger is also simple and it works well. I was reminded of the baroque complexity of LiveJournal when working with my old blog earlier this evening. Finally, Blogger is a Google product. I like Google and, perhaps foolishly, I trust them. They are not Evil.

Some people I know tried to “beat the beta” and migrated to WordPress when they realised that Blogger was undergoing changes. WordPress is very nice. It offers some features that I would like and has historically embraced new technologies before Blogger has. Nevertheless, my experience of the conversion to New Blogger has been very pleasant. Everything went smoothly and I have had no problems with the new system, even when it was in beta.

The point is that selecting a technology platform always constitutes taking a bet. Sometimes you will be ahead and sometimes behind but, as time passes, you have to hope that your selection will give you the best average performance. That is what made me bet on Blogger.