This is a Mac post so it may bore you… but I just have to post it. Besides, I need to take a break from posting about our country going down the tubes!

I don’t know if I have many Mac readers that read this blog but just in case they do.

I get tired of people whining about OS X. You know who you are. I read it everywhere all over the Mac and Apple blogs and forums. Apple needs to fix this, Apple needs to fix that. Blah blah. I was pushed over the edge today when I was reading someone complaining about the Finder in OS X. Here’s a good one for you, maybe you’d like to go back to the Finder in OS 9? Yeah, that would be a good idea… Or not! Have you forgotten how wretched it really was (yes a “few” people actually still think it was better, but I don’t know how that’s possible). For anyone who actually does think that the OS 9 Finder might have been better, I have an old iMac running OS 9 I’d love for you to use. The Finder is HORRIBLE! Unfit for use! OS 9’s Finder might have been better than the Finder in OS x 10.0, 10.1 or 10.2, but for the last 3 versions of OS X the Finder has been far superior to any other file manager out there.

Yes, I am aware of Pathfinder, and even used it for the 30 day trial period and the fact of the matter is, Finder is superior! And please don’t even try to bring Windows Explorer into this (it’s utterly unusable after using the Finder! Trust me, I know. I have Windows still)

Some people love to say that Apple should re-write the Finder because very little has changed since the OS X Finder first came out and it is extremely outdated.

Let me explain why this is utterly ridiculous in pictures:

Finder in OS X, 10.1 (Puma)

(image from GuidebookGallery.com)

Finder is OS X, 10.5 (Leopard)

So you Apple using whiners, we have the best file manager on the planet so please get over yourselves.

You may now go on about your business.

YES! My MacBook Pro is maxed out on RAM, and currently has the biggest hard drive one can put in a laptop! It really is amazing. I bought 4 gigs of RAM for $88.00. That’s like dirt cheap… does anyone remember so many moons ago (say like 4 years) when 4 gigs of RAM was something akin to $400.00? Yeah… it’s amazing. And it’s not like my computer was slow or anything, but going from 2 gigs to 4 gigs is just an amazing difference.

I was also running out of hard drive space, so I order the Western Digital 320 Scorpio. $129.00. Amazing… I moved a bunch of stuff of my external drives and back onto my laptop hard drive (like all my photos) and still have 85 gigs free! I’m elated!

I cannot tell you how ecstatic I am about this. It’s like a dream come true! Thank you 10.5.3!!!

I have been looking for a way to sync my local address book with gmail EFFECTIVELY for over a year. And suddenly Apple and Google just give it to me! This is beyond joy, this is… is… is… I can’t even find the words to describe it.

And it works just fine. Of course I had so many things out of order in my Gmail address book that I had to do some organizing after I performed the first sync, but now, my iPhone, OS X Address Book, and Gmail address book are blissfully in sync! Now, wherever I go, as long as I have internet access my contacts are with me! Yeah yeah, I can see you all yawning… But you’ll get over it

For those who don’t care about geeky stuff, !

From MacNN.com

For those who have Macs, and/or who care…

Please note if this were named like a Windows Service Pack, this would be SP3. XP has been out since 2001, and they just now made it to SP3. I feel sorry for you Windows sufferers. Good old MS just has a hard time getting the updates out!

Being the geek that I am, I have tried out Firefox 3 beta 4 on both the Mac platform and the windows platform.

This version of the Firefox browser does seem very fast. Especially on OS X, specifically the launch time on OS X. Firefox used to take up to 3 times longer to launch than Safari (my browser of choice on the Mac), and then Firefox just felt… heavier (I guess that’s how you put it). Sometimes it would hang for a second while loading a webpage etc. Beta 4’s launch time on the Mac now seems to rival Safari, and it feels snappier and lighter. Not to mention the Mac version of FF beta 4 now looks like a Mac application. I always hated how UGLY Firefox looked next to the rest of my Mac applications.

The windows version of beta 4 seems fine as well, though ugly as anything, but so are all Windows applications so it’s not really Mozilla’s fault.

Here’s the screen shots:

Mac Version (see how purty?):

Windows Version (see how uuugly?):

So I have now had my first Apple computer go in for a warranty repair. To be sure, we have dealt with one or two warranty issues on Apple computers at work, but I’ve never had a personal computer warranty repair so I’m in new territory.

I feel fairly well prepared for this though because 1). I plug in my Leopard Time Machine backup drive at least once a day so even if they maliciously wipe out all the data on my 160 gb hard drive while “repairing” the broken laptop, they can do me no harm, my data is secure. 2). All my email is IMAP so I plug my server, username, and password into the mail client of the computer I want to use and I’m off and running with all my mail and folder structure, flag status, read and unread status all just like on my laptop. 3). Just for this occasion I went for a 60 day trial of a dotmac account so all my notes, bookmarks, to-dos, calendars, etc. will sync with dotmac, and when I get my laptop back, I sync it all back up to my laptop and away I go.

So my MacBook Pro… It was still operational to be sure, but the screen had started to develop this annoying, random flicker (so much for Apple’s new backlit LED stuff, my old powerbook display worked pretty good without all this LED backlit stuff but anyway).

It’s supposed to be back in 7 days, but I’m already missing my good friend. But it’s okay, I’m using Rachel’s laptop until my good and trusty Laptop returns unto me. And she gets to use the clunky old G3 iMac… slow as can be (were we actually able to use 500 MHz processors at one time?), but at least she can access a web browser, email, and instant messaging, you know, the essentials of life in 2008…