It Really Does Matter

Here’s  a topic that I needed to revisit months ago. The main reason that I was reluctant to give up my Palm Treo for a more an iPhone or Android was Pocket Quicken. I was disappointed when Intuit pulled the license from Landware, and I mentioned I was thinking about switching to something else. I looked for a substitute on my Android phone and found none, and I have no desire to use a cloud service like Mint. Well, for almost a year now, I have been happily using iBank.

iBank isn’t perfect, but it does have some features that are a great help to me and my growing family. Although it needs some polish, the envelope budgeting feature is very helpful. If too much is spent in one category, we have to find the money somewhere. Oh, and it has an iPhone version that will sync with the Mac. It is great for keeping up with transactions on the go and then putting them into the computer when I get home.   I still have the ability to download transactions, and the import window is easier to use than Quicken’s.

I am hoping that they will add iCloud support, though.  I would love to be able to enter stuff on the iPhone and have it just show up on the computer.  I would also like to be able to see my budget on the iPhone app.  Currently, the app shows me what I’ve spent that month but not what’s left in the budget.

While some may prefer cloud solutions, I still like having the ability to keep my own record and check it against the bank statement. So, I will always want to have an app like iBank that can also be used on a mobile device. I am glad that iBank picks up what Intuit abandoned with Quicken.

As Cnet commemorated the fourth anniversary of the iPhone, I bought one.  Cnet reminded me why I didn’t want an iPhone when it first came out.  It was hideously expensive even with a contract, and it wasn’t 3G.  At the time, I didn’t want something that was all touch screen.  Having the iPod and my cell phone together just meant that the device would be guzzling batteries.  It just didn’t seem worth it to me.  Besides, I had Pocket Quicken on my Treo, and I didn’t want to give it up.

Fast forward to 2010.  I bought a Motorola Droid (and reviewed it here and here).  As you can see from my reviews, I was quite impressed with it.  The iPhone wasn’t available for Verizon, and I still wasn’t that interested anyway.  As for Pocket Quicken, in what I would consider to be one of the worst software decisions ever, Intuit terminated Landware’s license for Pocket Quicken.  I have since switched to iBank on my Mac.  I was ready for a more modern smartphone.

So, why did I switch to the iPhone?  The first reason is that the performance of my Droid has deteriorated as I have updated it.  It has slowed to a crawl.   The sales rep at Verizon said that this was happening to a lot of Android phones that were sold in the last year.  Some features that I really liked have been taken away with updates to the operating system.  For example, I have a Vonage phone that e-mails me my voice mail.  I used to be able to open the voice mails within the e-mail program, but now I can’t.  On the iPhone, however, I can.  The e-mail program started giving me notifications of new e-mails when there were none.  That got old!

The iPhone just seems to work so much better.  It is fast and responsive, and even the touch screen responds better.  I’m much better with a touch screen than I used to be, so I don’t mind not having a physical keyboard.  The apps that I have tried in both flavors seem to be much better on iPhone.  Facebook allows me to see who “likes” a given status.  The barcode reader app seems to have less trouble reading the bar codes.  I’m having a lot of fun with this.

It has long seemed to me that the days of print newspapers are numbered. Besides, many newspapers are putting out at least part of their content online for free. I’ve wondered how long that can last as the people who spend their time writing news stories have to make a living somehow. Last week, I got an e-mail that the New York Times is now going to be offering paid digital subscriptions.

There are some newspapers that I’d be willing to pay money to access. The New York Times is not one of them. Really, though, I think their main problem is with the way they are offering subscriptions. You get the web site access no matter what you buy, but if you want to use the iPad app, you have to pay an extra $5/month. At that price, you can’t use it on a smartphone unless you pay another $15/month on top of that. What were they smoking when they came up with this business model? Then again, I wonder if the problem is really caused by Apple’s in-app purchase rules.

On the iPad, one can easily just use the browser and pay $15/month for web and smartphone. Hey, NY Times, if you want to offer digital subscriptions, then just charge one price for access to the same content. Oh well, I think I’ll save my money for a subscription to a good Catholic publication.

Although I mentioned giving up the iPad 2 for Lent, I didn’t give up iOS4.  In fact, I installed it on Ash Wednesday.  So far, it is working great.  Safari really is a lot faster.  The home sharing feature also appears to work well.  At first, I couldn’t find it, and here is a Macworld article on how to set it up.  One thing that the article mentions but may be missed is that you’l need to go into the settings of iPad, go to iPod, and enter your Apple ID and password.  Once you do that, you’ll see the option to use a library from a computer on your network in the upper left-hand corner of the program.

Enjoy!

Last weekend, Yana and I took a trip to Lexington, Kentucky to be at a party for a friend.  It’s kind of ironic that I’d go there just after taking the test to become licensed there (which I passed, by the way), but I digress.  After the party, we went to the mall.  There I found what has to be the best Apple store that I’ve ever seen.  I got to play with quite a lot of stuff there.

Since I’ve been on Verizon, I hadn’t really been interested in the iPhone 4.  Now, with its availability, it may be an option some time in the future.  The retina display really is a sight to see.  The ones in the store have service on them, so I got to send my wife an e-mail from one of them just for fun.  After that, I played with a MacBook Air.  It is a lightning fast device since it has a solid-state drive.  It will be a while before I’m in the market for a laptop, so we’ll see how it evolves.

The best thing, of course, is the 27-inch iMac.  I will be getting one of those before too long (after Lion is released).  The display is beautiful, and it’s lightning fast.  I’ve been doing some high-definition video since getting married, and I want something that will allow me to preserve it in high-definition.

I was not impressed with the Magic Trackpad.  Maybe it is because I’m just not a big fan of trackpads.  It is too hard for me to have precise control. I tried it with Indesign on the demo unit, and it was a little difficult to place an object just where I wanted it.

The new Magic Mouse is something that I have played with off and on, and I have mixed feelings about it.  I currently have the old version of the Magic Mouse.  The new one does not have a scroll wheel that can get clogged up and quit working, but it also lacks the squeeze buttons that I use to call up Expose.  The gesture concept isn’t the best for me because I tend not to memorize stuff, and I hope that Apple won’t get to a point that learning the gestures is necessary to use Mac OS.

It’s hard to believe that, just ten years ago, I would have called the Mac a “Macintrash” computer.  Now, I find that it is faster, handles multitasking better, and is so much less of a headache to maintain.  Let’s just hope that the absence of Steve Jobs doesn’t hurt their creativity.  They need to keep it up.

Does anyone know how to get EWTN radio in a city that doesn’t have the broadcast without using XM or Sirius? I tried the listening link on EWTN’s page, and it doesn’t work on my Mac.  I have the Flip4Mac plugin and everything, and it still doesn’t work.  I have the same problem with Ave Maria Radio. I don’t know why these guys use Windows-specific technology.

I got rid of Sirius and am contemplating canceling XM.  I called and canceled my Sirius radio over a year ago, and it turns out that six months later they started charging me again.  They claimed that they sent me an e-mailing telling me that the account was on hold, but I have no memory of it.  Keep this in mind if you wish to sign up for Sirius.  If this is the way that they do business, I don’t want them.  Also, if they offer you an option to keep the account suspended so that you don’t have to pay reactivation fees, don’t take it!  This is their way of starting charges again.  I’ve noticed on some web boards that they have done these things to other people.

I just have to post because I’m finding some humor in the fact that my post that says I will delete any spam comments is getting spam comments.  Of course, they are being thrown in the spam bucket and later deleted.

For some reason, I’ve been wanting to try Twitter for some time.  I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to do with it, but I seem to have long been known to try something first and then find a use for it later.  I am finding that this might be an easy way to send out my blog posts as well as other article I like.  I haven’t yet decided if I want to let it update my Facebook status as there are some things that I may tweet that I don’t really want as a status.  I’ll probably mix in a few things about what I’m doing in between.  I’ll post more about how I like it once I have played with it more.  One thing I notice is that it seems to be down a lot.  Hopefully, that’s  just a temporary issue.

When I bought my first Palm, the Tungsten T, in 2003, probably my favorite app for the thing was Pocket Quicken.  I could buy something with a debit card, record the transaction, and have it go into Quicken as soon as I did a HotSync.  As I’ve said before, it’s the one thing that I really, really miss on my Droid.

Well, now I know one reason why it isn’t available for the Droid.  In what has to be one of the most disappointing moves I’ve ever seen, Intuit terminated its license to Landware to make and sell the product.  For a long time, Quicken was the software that worked better than anything else, especially on Windows.  The Mac version works, but it’s really clunky.  I’ve heard many, many complaints about Quicken Essentials for Mac, and I have to wonder why Intuit thought they’d get away with releasing that in the state that it is in at its price.

I am now looking to replace Quicken.  I will most likely replace it with the first good Mac product to provide an Android mobile version, especially if it syncs over the air.  If anyone knows of such a product, please do let me know.

E-mail and comment spam is something that I’ve never really understood.  How do people really earn money from posting and e-mailing offers to people who usually don’t want them?  Ok, I guess someone is doing business with them, or it would be a waste of effort.

Apparently, some companies are paying people to go through and enter CAPTCHA codes.  I just don’t get how this is worth someone’s time and resources.  A CAPTCHA code is something to keep automated processes from entering spam messages and comments.  The very presence of the code should tell people that these unsolicited offers are not wanted there.  Who makes money by targeting offers to people who do not want them?  Companies like Facebook and Google make at least part of their money by trying to produce targeted ads.  In other words, they use information to find out what people might be interested in.

My site uses CAPTCHA on my e-mail link, and all comments on my blog have to be approved before they will appear.  I also utilize spam filters in both my e-mail and the blog.  If you are a spammer, don’t even bother to post here.  Even if you get past my filters, I will delete your e-mail and never post your comment.  Even if I wanted your product, I would never buy from someone who uses these tactics.  I wish I could just allow comments to instantly post.  However, even if I let the spam post and deleted it later, there’s a possibility that it will get to a search engine and help their ranking.  I want to take no chance of letting a spammer do that.