Anniversary Today

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On September 10, 2006 I launched ImageFiction. And I am not home today... nowhere near my images. So... so... since Apple managed to lose my original, first-ever, post... (See Rotten Apple Explained over there on the right)... I thought you might like, as much as I liked, "Heavy On Metal". Y'know, I'm still reeeeeely proud of this. Happy anniversary to me.. Tah-Dah!

WHY THIS BLOG IS A MESS!

It's said that Steve Jobs has a life view that goes, "I'll like you until I don't." And as Adobe knows, it is not good to have Steve fall out of like with you.

Well, sometimes, and they aren't often, I find my like for Apple is not unconditional.

This blog is a mess right now. If you scroll backward you will quickly notice that hundreds of postings are now missing. Why? I subscribed to a .Mac and for my money received a website service. You can find what is left of it by CLICKING HERE!

And you will see that you can page through scores of empty URLs. All of the graphics have been trashed by Apple!

Yes, they warned me that they would no longer allow postings to that site when they arbitrarily notified users that they were ending the service. BUT... they also wrote that posted graphics would remain. And then after about a year of supporting those postings, WUMP! They dumped all of the graphics.

And mostly all of the postings on this blogspot prior to a few months ago were linked from those postings on hompage.mac.com/byrneprintmaker. And without those links, all of those graphics here on ImageFiction, were extinguished.

Do I have backups? Sure. But... to replace the broken links, I shall have to tediously go to each of the previous postings, figure out what the linked graphics were named, Find them among my old files. And then reload them... one at a time. It will take countless hours.

I'll try slowly to replace some of my favorites, but I fear that visitors to this blog will not graze page, after back page, to find the few that I repost. Nope, unless I do them all, or develop some alternative system... all of that work is gone with the Apple.

And so, in spite of the many things that Apple has done to make me like them... I am falling out of like. Sigh.....

And I guess the moral here is, if you can't trust Apple to protect a service that they charge you for... How much faith should you put in any of the "cloud" services which promise to store your valuable backups?

To see what I've fixed look at the ROTTEN APPLE - REPAIRED POSTS FROM THE PAST link on the right hand column. I will try to slowly add my favorites over there.

Maybe -Don't Buy The Apple Magic Mouse!

Okay.... you can read my rant below. The $%^%$ Magic Mouse I bought a month ago was maddening. Today is Black Friday (I'm writing this the day after I posed this original posting). You will note that Flo suggested I take the thing back before throwing it against the wall, stomping up and down upon its carcass, then setting fire to the remaining pieces.

Black Friday is NOT a good time to go to the Apple Store. It couldn't be returned without talking to a genius. I had to wait 90 minutes since both a salesman and a manager failed to find a computer which would recognize my mouse (not their fault really ...you can imagine how many mice are in a store). As always, they were very courteous and supportive and put my name on the genius schedule.

After the wait (I browsed the bustling mall), the genius listened to my story, explained that neither he nor his friends had comparable problem with the Magic Mouse, and offered to replace it. Actually, that was the only offer. I accepted - with the understanding that if the replacement failed to work correctly it could be returned either for credit or for some other company's mouse. They also noted that the price had been reduced on the Magic Mouse, re. the Holiday sale, so they gave me a $9 rebate along with the replacement (sale price $60).

Okay, I'm home now... the thing's hooked up and I'm going to give this new thing a try. So far so good. BTW, I bought my first Magic Mouse on the first day it was in stock at the Mac store. I did not do that on purpose, actually the old Mighty Mouse had gone down and I went to the store to replace. it. However, maybe that first batch had a bug or two?

Soooo.... go ahead... read the rant below. And I shall post something next week as a comment on whether all is forgiven. K?



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GRUMBLE! My mouse broke. So I bought the Apple Magic Mouse. Yeah... it's magic if what you want is to reach into the hat and come out with a snake instead of a rabbit. AAARGH!

(1) It is pretty
(2) It fits the hand well
(3) It is a piece of crap!

The "buttons" simply cannot be controlled. You right click, it left clicks. Whimsically. There's no order to it. I have reprogrammed this junky bluetooth thing a bunch of times. And of course the definition of madness is repeating the same action in hopes of different results. Well, it has driven me mad.

Moreover the programable options are stupidly limited compared to virtually every third party mouse on the market. How could this have happened? Worse yet, the speed ... when set at max ... tracks more slowly than a muskrat tethered to a fifty kilo dumbbell! If you can imagine a software design flaw... the Apple people have beaten you to it and incorporated it into this pretty (and expensive) paperweight.

I am going to have to buy a new mouse and flush away this fraudulently impersonator. Don't buy it. Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't!!!!!!!!