The Mac App Store is Killing Demo’s

With all of these app stores are we about to see the end of the demo?
I am of the mindset that I need to evaluate software before I buy it. On windows this is not a problem as I can download a 30 day trial and then either delete it or buy it after I see if the application is going to work for what I need. This is especially important when evaluating software for business purposes. On the Mac I can no longer find Demo’s and am reduced to a paragraph and 5 screenshots to evaluate a purchase. This is simply not enough for me. Let’s take a look at Hype as an example.

While $24.99USD is not that much money I can say that I wouldn’t pay more than $4 for anything I couldn’t actually touch first. Hype expects this. As stated Hype is graphics engine for creating HTML 5 animations without having to learn canvas. A much needed piece of software in this early HTML 5 time. Now I am sure that Hype does what it is supposed to do and does it well. Wouldn’t it be better if instead of just shelling out $25 bucks to find out we could test drive the software or heck even have a 30 day return policy? I think so. As of right now if you shelled out the $25 bucks and didn’t like Hype the only thing you could do is refuse payment on your credit card. There is no return policy, There is no customer service for the App Store. So in order to accommodate this some application devs are forced to create a Light version.

I find that if a light version is available I never go back and get the full version. I either delete the light version or I use the light version and work around it’s limitations. So this is a disappointment for me and the developer for me because I don’t get the full experience that I should and for the developer because they never get my money for their hard work. I don’t mean to cheat the dev’s out of their money but I won’t waste my own time searching for another version of a program that works for me that I have for free.

I hope Apple listens and gives us either a demo download or a way to return software we don’t want.

What are your thoughts.

Admitting it, is the first step on the road to recovery!

You may say to yourself one day, “I seek help elevating my electronic promiscuity, so I paid astronomical dollars for a product as an idiotic higher echelon of retarded dimwits member.”

Fear not my friend, there are those of us willing to help.  But first, we need to break down your statement to better understand the complexity of your issues and to be able to give you the help you are so desperately crying out for!

“I seek help elevating my electronic promiscuity” – The solitary reason you buy Apple products is because everyone else has one, right?  You don’t want to seem “uncool” so you “just have to” buy one too.  Failure to do so will decrease your chances of being viewed as cool, which, when dealing with gadgets, seriously lowers your potential promiscuity.  This is known as an “iSheep” syndrome.

“I paid astronomical dollars” – $499 for the cheapest model, but did you stop at that?  Of course not.  You *need* that 32GB model, I mean after all, where are you going to store you movies, right?  You know, the ones you more than likely already own on DVD or Blu-Ray and enjoy watching through that 35″+ wide screen TV with sweet surround sound setup, but are about to forget all that to watch them on your beautiful 9.7″ LED with audio heard through the Built-in speaker.  Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of books that you, as an avid reader who somehow sidestepped purchasing a Kindle, are going to now purchase for your new device.  But, as said avid reader, at least you don’t have to toss out all your physical books, right?  I mean, you can’t toss what you didn’t purchase.  We call this the “iPad” syndrome.

“idiotic higher echelon of retarded dimwits” – The definition of insanity is sometimes thought of as “repeating the same process and expecting different results.”  Well, based on my observations, I can safely redefine the definition to state “when consumers buy first generation Apple products.”  The observations, you may wonder?  Simply put:  Apple releases a product and a consumer buys it.  One year later, Apple releases a second generation of the product with one or two more features, and the same consumer rushes out to purchase it.  Repeat a year later for the third generation.  It is with this third generation that the Apple product finally reaches that I would say is the “complete product” – yet the consumer isn’t asking why these mundane and basic features were left out in the first two generations, oh no.  They are to busy with their “shiny new innovative” toy to even stop and ponder the common sense questions.  This issue is collectively called the “iHerd” disorder.

An iSheep, buying an iPad to remain in the iHerd!  You, my friend, are a true and through, Apple fanboy!  But fret not, we have the cure!  Merely submit to us ten* payments starting with the forgettable amount of $0.99 and doubling every payment.  Before long, your disease will be gone and the light will have shown you the way!

*Some treatments may require twenty “doses” to be 100% effective, if you are in doubt, please do not take any chances!

This post was made by Inacurate a friend of mine I met on twitter. He is a great Nokia enthusiast and leader of the iSheep resistance.
Check out his blog here. His twitter profile reads: I am me. Learn to love me because I do everything in my power to always be right or hate me because you can’t see the effort and think I am arrogant.

Snow Leopard – The Journey to Find the Directory Utility

Today I was immersed in Snow Leopard,

I would like to start off by saying I am very pleased with the speed improvement in this system. Finder itself looks to have gotten a great speed boost and most of the core apps I tried launched within 2 bounces. Today, I spent the whole day with the new operating system Installing, Troubleshooting, and using it.

I had two Mac Pro’s one new and one from about a year ago, both needing to be upgraded to Snow Leopard and both needing to be bound to our windows network. The upgrade on both machines went smooth but on one machine I had to migrate the users data back onto it from a clone I made before the upgrade procedure. Migration couldn’t have been easier it even transfered the CS3 design premium. I then found out that the migration assistant also cause a few of the migrated apps to stop working. Klondike, IMovie, and Illustrator had all quit working. But that was not a big deal to fix, I simply removed their preferences and they launched. My next step however, proved to be more difficult than expected. I had to bind the computers to our Windows domain so that the users could access all of our internal resources.

Normally, I just open the utilities folder, open the Directoy Utility and Setup the Active Directory Portion. Viola! Done. Well… not that easy this time.

In Apple’s defense it is a ton easier and more logical the way they have it now but it sure did cause me about 5 minutes of grief as I tried to search spotlight for directory… yeah there where a ton of results I even downloaded Pacifist and tried to install the Directory Utility that way. But alas I could never get it to work. So I went to the second machine and it wasn’t on it either. So now I knew there wasn’t something wrong with my install as these where two separate installs. So then I started digging through the new features page at Apple.com and saw the new ICal integration. So I opened ICal and Ahoy… there is a connect to an exchange server option.. whoohoo I thought. So I went through the motions setting this up and it sure did pull in the calendar of the user and even associated Mail to their username. But alas there was still no connection to log-in users to the domain. So my next step lead me to the system preferences and Accounts tab. and finally at the bottom right of the login options screen I found an item that said “Network Account Server” so I clicked it and there was my directory utility. Finally I Found it, plugged in the info and then it worked like normal.

I will try to post some pics tomorrow, I am sorry I don’t have them tonight I just thought it would be best to get this info out there just in case there was a user going through the same problems as me.

Thanks for reading
David Bates

Apple’s Response to the FCC

Have you read Apple’s response to the FCC’s Letter? Is there any part you feel was wrongly explained? Read the response here