Apple's Leopard and Time Machine

I use both Macs and PCs every day.

I've recently started using the new Apple Mac OS X version 10.5 called Leopard. One of the great features in this version is Time Machine which is a simple way of backing up all of your work, emails, documents, settings, everything!

It is so easy to use that there is no excuse for not doing it. Surveys have shown that most computer users know they should backup but very few actually do it and even fewer do it regularly. Time Machine will be a saviour for these people.

If you already make a conscious effort to backup then you probably wouldn't 'accidentally' delete anything in the first place almost making your backup redundant - but good on you for doing it anyway.

Time Machine does everything automatically and it is so easy to restore lost files that I wonder if we will see a new culture of careless users who depend on Time Machine so much that they use it every day and build it in to their workflow. Sounds a bit dangerous to me.

So far my experience with Leopard has been good. It seems faster and has features that will be useful. The upgrade process from Tiger was straightforward - so straightforward in fact that one colleague described the whole experience as underwhelming because it just worked and he was up and running without having to tweak anything.

I haven't tried upgrading to Vista on any PCs nor have I used Vista for anything more than a hour or two but I'm willing to guess that the Vista upgrade process wouldn't be quite so easy.

P.S. Yes, I prefer my Mac.

technorati tags:apple, mac, leopard, time, machine, vista

Delusions of ...

Alexander Pichushkin murdered a lot of people, so many that he became known as "the chessboard killer". You can read part of his story here.

He says he was like God in that he decided whether the victim should live or die.

He was nothing like God.

He didn't give the victims life in the first place. He merely exercised the power we all possess to take someone's life. He is nothing.

Some people might say he was doing the world a favour by removing some of the detritus. That is not his decision to make. He should not be glorified in any way. His acts should not be publicised. He should be quietly put away and forgotten about.

technorati tags:chessboard, killer, delusions, God

SLOW DOWN!!!

I deal with clients and their clients everyday in a customer support role.

We have a web-based system that allows simple communication to achieve a goal (I'll leave it at that).

Part of the communication requires people to read and respond to emails. Some of these emails are only a few lines long with a line near the end that says 'Do not reply to this email'

Guess what happens.

Is our life so hectic now that we can't take the time to read a short email that is actually vital to what we are trying to achieve? Is there so much repetition in our life that many things are beginning to look the same and we think we are looking at one thing but don't realise we are looking at something different.

We get asked to make our systems even simpler. There is only so far one can go without talking the respondent through the process on the phone or in person.

The more we keep treating people like idiots the more they will behave like idiots. At some point I can no longer live your life for you - you have to live it yourself and accept everything that brings with it.

Is there a race going on between the enlightened ones and those that want to keep us all dumbed-down?

technorati tags:speed, life, look, listen, learn

Thought for the day (and for life)

Blame no one
Expect nothing
Do something