Yesterday, while having lunch in my hangar at Wickenburg, I checked ÜberTwitter to see what was going on in TwitterLand. Along the way, I followed a link shared by @BWJones to a blog post by Rick LePage.

Rick LePage was the editor-in-chief of MacWeek magazine, a weekly tabloid-sized publication that covered all things Macintosh. Back in the 1990s, not long after I began my writing career, I wrote occasionally for MacWEEK. Not only did the magazine pay well, but it was highly respected. Writing for MacWEEK likely helped my writing career get off the ground — although I never really pursued magazine writing, preferring to author books instead.

So there I was, munching a bacon cheese burger and tater tots while sitting on the back seat of my golf cart at the airport, reading Rick’s blog post on my BlackBerry Storm. One thing I hate about the Storm is its Web browser. I don’t surf on the Storm. I’d lose my mind. But this blog post really sucked me in. It explained what was going on at MacWEEK when Apple was in its “state of confusion” before Steve Jobs came back. It admitted that MacWEEK had gone beyond reporting and had been trying to push its own agenda to sway user opinion on what Apple was doing. (I can’t help but think about FoxNews and its political slant here.) I was so sucked in that I forgot I was reading microscopic print on a cell phone.

And then that cell phone rang. I was called into action doing something else. I put the phone away, cleaned up my lunch mess, and got back to work.

But I didn’t forget the blog post. It had impressed me that much. I figured I was only halfway finished with it and I wanted to read it to the end. I can’t tell you how seldom that happens these days.

So this morning, I looked it up and finished reading it. I discovered that I’d nearly finished. But the best was at the end, in the last paragraph. It started with these sentences that really hit home for me:

I don’t think Apple is a better or worse company than most others. I still love the stuff they turn out, and would much rather be pushing a Mac than a Windows box. But, for all of you who think that the Mac—or Apple, or the iPhone—is a Cause, and that somehow Apple cares about you, wake up.

It was as if Rick had written this based on what was in my mind.

I like most Apple products, and have bought many of them. I prefer a Mac over a Windows PC — to me, there’s no comparison worth making. I own numerous Mac computers, including a desktop Mac and three laptops.

But I’m not a blind follower to everything Apple. I’m not a member of the Apple cult. I make my product decisions based on design and functionality, not logo. I don’t hang on Apple rumors. I don’t push Apple products to my friends and family members. I don’t surf the Web looking for all things Apple. And I certainly don’t get into bullshit platform wars in forums and blog comments. Hell, I have a life beyond the computer I chose to get work done.

I don’t like all Apple products — I still can’t see the real point of an AppleTV and prefer my BlackBerry over an iPhone. (I don’t want to surf the Web and run countless pointless applications on my phone.) My days of buying in and adopting early ended not long after I bought a Newton.

I realized years ago — probably around the time iTunes made its debut — that Apple is not putting the customer first. As Rick points out in his piece, Apple is a company with the need to make a profit and stockholders (like me, I might add) who want to see it succeed. Apple has a huge cult-like following — there must be something hypnotic about Steve Jobs at a keynote intoning, “Isn’t this incredible?” — and it’s cashing in on it. More power to ‘em!

The sentences I quoted above should be a reality check for everyone. Apple is not a cause. It’s a corporation. Its goal isn’t to make you feel good or solve all your problems. Its goal is to get you to buy its products so it can make a big, fat profit.

Wake up, folks. Look beyond the logo and pretty white packaging and think about what you’re buying. If you still want to evangelize the “Apple cause” — well, it’s your life.

And now lets see how many people completely misunderstand the point of this post and come to Apple’s rescue in Comments.

If I had to choose between writing blog posts and writing 400+ page books about using computers, I’d take the blog posts any day. They’re shorter — I can knock one off in an hour or less — so I get immediate gratification. They’re also about a wide range of topics I choose to write about, so they can be a lot of fun to write. I can include color photos and other illustrations that don’t require me to set up a computer screen just so and snap a picture. Best of all, I can archive them here in my blog with almost 2,000 others, building a living journal of what’s going on on my life. You don’t know how much I love reading blog posts from the past five years of blogging just to remember what was on my mind back then.

But I’m not blogging much this week. I’m writing something else: a 648-page revision to my Mac OS X Visual QuickStart Guide to cover the features of Snow Leopard.

I’m working my proverbial butt off on this book. 648 pages is a lot of pages. And, as usual, I’m not just writing it but also laying it out, page by page, using InDesign CS4. So I’m sitting in front of my 24″ iMac and my new 13″ MacBook Pro, both of which are set up on the dining table in my camper, typing, mousing, screen-snapping, and Photoshopping my way through the project. I have 4 of the book’s 25 chapters left to churn out — roughly 120 pages. My editors (production and copy) are keeping up with me nicely, so we’re turning around finished chapters at an amazing rate. Even my indexer is hard at work with the first 18 chapters properly numbered and ready to index.

A lot of people think I fly for a living. I don’t. This is what I do for a living. I write books about how to use computers.

Of course, when you do something for a living, that means you get paid to do it. I get advances on the books I write and when they sell a bunch of copies, I get quarterly royalty checks. That’s how I pay my bills and, when my helicopter business isn’t busy enough to pay its bills, my writing work pays its bills, too.

I don’t get paid to blog. And I don’t have blogging deadlines. And my blog will never become a bestseller, featured in the Apple store and on Amazon.com. (Yes, it’s true that the first edition of my Mac OS Visual QuickStart Guide, which covered Mac OS 8, got all the way up to #41 in rank on Amazon.com.) So I set my priorities accordingly and my priorities tell me to get this book off my plate so they’ll send me more money and I can get to work on the two books lined up right behind it.

Yes, you read that right: this is the first of three books I have to revise this summer. The other two, which I’m not at liberty to discuss right now, are also more than 400 pages. Each.

But I thought I’d take a moment to list the blog posts I didn’t write this week:

• Where I was when Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon. I was almost eight years old and my mother kept me and my six-year-old sister up to watch the activities on television. It was late and I was tired. It was boring. But my mother said that we were watching history. All I can remember is wondering what was taking so long for them to come out and why there was so much beeping in the sound.
• Miscellaneous Political Things. I’m thinking about Sarah Palin, who isn’t a quitter or a dead fish, but gave up mid-term, likely to pursue book and television deals while she’s still hot. I pray she doesn’t try running for president. I’d hate to get a real count of the number of Americans stupid enough to vote for someone who doesn’t know Africa is a continent and thinks living in a state between Canada and Russia gives her foreign policy experience. I’m thinking of Mark Sanford, the South Carolina governor who disappeared off the face of the earth for 5 days without telling anyone where he was going, leaving his state unmanaged so he could pursue an extra-marital affair. I’m thinking of that same guy giving Clinton grief for being serviced by an intern in his office, insisting Clinton resign and now not resigning himself. I’m wondering whether his name will appear beside the word hypocrite in dictionaries or Wikipedia. I’m thinking of the guy who owes him a good dinner (or maybe an all-expense paid trip to Argentina), John Ensign, the Nevada senator who, under threat of blackmail, revealed that he’d had an affair with a member of his staff (no pun intended). A member of a Christian Ministry that calls itself the Promise Keepers, he evidently didn’t think his marriage vows were a promise worth keeping. And I’m thinking of a wise Latina, Sonia Sottomayor, allowing herself to be submitted to the indignity of cross-examination by members of the Republican party trying to make her look hot-headed and unprofessional. They failed because, after all, she is a wise Latina indeed.
• Blessed by Arizona Highways (Again). My phone started ringing this week with more calls for Flying M Air’s Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure. Someone had written in a blog comment that I was listed on page 29 of “AZ Magazine.” Turns out, the listing is in Arizona HIghways magazine, the same publication that did a 10-page story on my company’s excursions in the May 2009 issue. This time, I’m listed as the “Best Way to See Arizona in a Week” in the August 2009 issue. While I’m thrilled to be getting the additional press, I’m also a bit worried — I didn’t bring enough marketing material with me to send out the info packets that are being requested daily.
• My New Old Mechanic. That would be a brief post about how glad I am that my original R44 helicopter mechanic has left the company he worked for to go solo. His boss wouldn’t let him fix my helicopter because of insurance issues and I wound up with a long line of inferior mechanics. Until recently, of course, when I started getting my annual done up here in Washington state. But now I can use my old mechanic for my 100-hour inspections each winter and feel good about the quality of maintenance.
• An Orchard Party with Three Helicopters. That would be an account of the party my friend Jim and I attended near Othello, WA the other day. I was invited by another cherry pilot I’d met on my blog and was meeting her for the first time. Jim came along. We both flew — in two helicopters. We had great Mexican food, met really nice people, and gave 12 lucky raffle winners helicopter rides around the orchards. We were promised artwork from the kids (hopefully like this piece I received last week after giving a grower’s kids a ride) so maybe I’ll blog about it then.
• The Evolution of Twitter. This would cover my observations of two Twitter accounts I maintain, how I maintain them, and what the results are. I’m pretty sure I’ll write this one sometime this month.
• On Skeptics. Why I’m a skeptic and how it makes me look at the world. I haven’t thought this one out much yet, so I might still write it. I know it needs to be written.

These are only a few topics I didn’t get a chance to write about. And if you know me, you know I’d write a lot more than I’ve written here. But when I get this book done, I have about a week before I need to start the next one. Maybe I’ll churn out some fresh and interesting content then.

Or maybe I’ll get out of this camper and away from my computer and enjoy the area while I’m here.

Last week, I finally broke down and ordered a new MacBook Pro. I’d been wanting a computer like the 13″ MacBook for a while, but what I really wanted was a Mac netbook. When Apple unveiled the 13″ MacBook Pro at the Apple Worldwide Developer’s Conference earlier this month, I finally stopped denying the truth: that there would be no Mac netbook in my immediate future. Instead, I saw the new 13″ MacBook Pro as a reward for my patience. Not only did it have more features than the MacBook I’d been looking at, but it would cost less money.

Apple also announced some new features in Snow Leopard. While I’m not prepared (because of NDA stuff) to write publicly about Snow Leopard, I am in the middle of a revision to my Mac OS Visual QuickStart Guide for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. One of the hurdles I was facing was not being able to show and discuss features of Mac OS X that work on the new MacBooks. About two years ago, I bought a 15-inch MacBook Pro to use as my “test mule” for writing about Leopard. That computer simply doesn’t have the bells and whistles of the newer models I need to write about.

It looked as if I’d have to buy a new MacBook Pro so I could write about it for my book.

This is both good and bad:

• Good because having to buy a new computer for work means I can deduct the cost of it from my taxes. (I use my computers for all of my various business endeavors — I don’t play games on my computers. If I’m not working, I’m out having fun somewhere or sleeping.) And let’s face it: it’s always nice to have a computer with the latest technology.
• Bad because having to buy a new computer means having to come up with the money to pay for it. Just because I can deduct it as a business expense doesn’t mean it’s free. (So many people don’t understand this simple fact: you still have to pay for business expenses; it’s just like being able to buy them at a discount equal to your tax bracket percentage.) In this case, the final price tag came to just under $2K. Ouch.

It’s also bad because I never seem able to buy a new computer and just enjoy it like a normal person.

Most folks buy a computer, open the box, fire it up, and start exploring. I, on the other hand, buy a computer, open the box, fire it up, erase the hard disk, and install beta operating system software on it. I then get to spend several weeks exploring the minutiae of the operating system’s elements, including every single window and dialog that might appear to the average user. I take screen shots of everything I see and write about it in an unbelievable level of detail.

So right now, as I type this, I’m waiting for the Developer Preview of Snow Leopard to install on my brand new, just-out-of-the-box 13″ MacBook Pro’s freshly erased hard disk. I’ll put some sample files on it, set it down on my workspace table beside my 24-inch iMac, get them talking to each other via AirPort network, and start exploring the current topic I’m writing about, which is the Dashboard and Widgets. I’ll put my old 15-inch MacBook Pro away in its case and set it atop the Dell laptop I’ve also brought along with me this summer to revise another book for another publisher.

When I get back to Arizona, if I’m not too busy doing other things, I’ll use the discs that came with the 13″ MacBook Pro to restore it to its factory hard drive configuration. Then maybe — just maybe — I’ll put it back in the box and have a reopening, trying my best to pretend it’s brand new again.

I’m a devoted Mac user and have been since I got my first Mac back in 1989. I’ve written dozens of books and hundreds of articles about Mac OS and applications that run on Macintosh computers. I currently own six Macs, including two Mac laptops, a 24″ iMac, and a Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh. I have four iPods. I even own Apple stock.

But I don’t have an iPhone.

People ask me why I don’t have an iPhone. The answer is very simple: AT&T.

I won’t switch to AT&T. I’ve used them in the past and their service frankly sucks. I don’t like talking to India when I have a billing or technical support problem. I don’t like the fact that if they screw up your bill, you can’t get it fixed and they put a black mark on your credit report. For as little as $26 they claim you owe them.

AT&T’s Voice/Text Coverage

 

Verizon Voice/Text Coverage

And if personal opinions regarding AT&T’s service aren’t enough, then let’s look at its service area. It simply doesn’t cover the areas I need coverage in. Like at my house — AT&T’s coverage is spotty. Or at our place on Howard Mesa — AT&T won’t work there at all. And other places I’ve been to.

Don’t believe me? Look at these two coverage maps, keeping in mind that I live in a small town on the edge of nowhere in Arizona. AT&T’s service in my town is through a “partner” — it doesn’t even have regular service here.

I need a cell phone that works everywhere I go. I go a lot of places in the west and I go a lot of places where there simply aren’t any cities. AT&T is a city cell phone provider.

Apple partnered with AT&T for the iPhone. While I believe this was a mistake, AT&T probably doesn’t think so. Right after the iPhone’s introduction, many users dropped their carriers (no pun intended) to switch to AT&T so they could buy iPhones. If Apple had gone with Verizon, it probably would have killed AT&T’s mobile business. It seems to me that the iPhone is the only reason someone might want to use AT&T.

I invested in a Palm Treo 700p with Verizon a month before the iPhone came out. I knew it was going to AT&T and I knew I couldn’t have one. So I invested in the Palm with a 2-year plan, just so I wouldn’t be tempted to do something stupid. I didn’t regret it at all. Although my Treo didn’t look slick, like an iPhone, it did things that an iPhone couldn’t do — like act as a Bluetooth modem to get my laptops on the Internet when I’m hanging around an off-the-grid cabin on top of an Arizona mesa. Or on a cruise ship off the coast of Alaska. Sure, an iPhone can connect to a WiFi network, but what if no network is available? Can it get a laptop on the ‘Net? My Treo could.

Last month, I stepped up to a Blackberry Storm. The darn thing sure looks a lot like an iPhone. It even works a lot like an iPhone. Yes, I know there aren’t as many apps, but do I really need all that crap on my phone?

And guess what? Even though they told me it wouldn’t work, I can still use the phone’s Bluetooth connection to get my laptops on the ‘Net when there’s no WiFi network around. I can still sync flawlessly with my Mac’s Address Book, iCal Calendar, and other data applications. I have voice dialing, better Bluetooth support, MP3 player capabilities, a built-in GPS that works with the mapping application, and more features than I know what to do with.

So while I admit that I did look longingly at iPhones when I was a Treo user, I no longer feel as if I’m missing out. I have what I need in a cell phone — including the most important thing: coverage — and more to explore in a slick, user-friendly package.

Choosing a cell phone should be a logical decision; not an emotional one. Logic told me to stick with Verizon and choose the Treo and then the Storm.

Please don’t think I’m knocking the iPhone. I’m not. I’m just saying that it isn’t the only solution for an Apple user. Some things are more important than having a cool-looking, popular phone. Service and features are right at the top of my list. AT&T and the iPhone simply won’t deliver the service and features I need.

Years ago, I bought a 12″ PowerBook. I was attracted to its small size and great power. Back when it was first released, you may remember, it was considered a tiny marvel. While other people flocked to the 17″ PowerBook, I wanted sheer portability and the 12″ was my dream laptop.

Time marches on. A G4 processor operating with 640 MB of RAM isn’t anyone’s dream machine anymore. Hell, when I tried to install Leopard on it last year, it was so slow I had to rebuild the hard disk with Tiger on it.

And I think that’s when I fell out of love with it.

You see, in the meantime, I’d bought a 15″ MacBook Pro. Not one of the new ones — this one is about two years old now. I’d bought it as a test mule — a computer to run software on while I write about the software. But when I finished my Leopard book in September 2007, I began using the MacBook Pro more and more. And when I couldn’t get Leopard to run on the 12″, I realized that it was silly to use an old laptop when I had a newer one. The 12″ wound up on the shelf.

But this morning I pulled it out and dusted it off and fired it up. I let it update Microsoft Office 2004 and various Apple software. I updated my ecto database to pull in all the blog entries I’d written over the past year. And I started writing this.

The sad part about this PowerBook is that the battery is so toasted that it won’t hold a charge for more than 20 minutes of operations. So as a portable computer for use in coffee shops, etc., it fails miserably. But plug it in and sit at the kitchen table and it does everything it’s supposed to.

I want a netbook. I’m sorely tempted by the Dell Mini 9. A buddy of mine says he can transform it into a Hackintosh for me. But I’m also hoping that Apple comes out with their own netbook. If they price it reasonably — and I’m talking about well under $1,000 — I’ll be the first on line to buy one.

And frankly, I don’t give a damn about the so-called “Apple Tax.” Dan Miller of Macworld.com was right in his article, “The Microsoft Discount.” He could be speaking for me when he says:

But for the benefit of my Windows-using friends, I will say for the record: I don’t use a Mac because it’s cool. I use it because it works better for me. I use it because it doesn’t stink.

I’ve got a hopped-up Windows laptop that’s way faster than this little old PowerBook. But when it came time to do a little blogging this morning, I left it gathering dust on the shelf.

It’s no secret that Apple will soon — well, hopefully sometime in 2009, anyway — release an update to Mac OS X. It should be numbered 10.6 and it’s definitely called Snow Leopard. But that’s all I can say about it. I’m under nondisclosure and I take this stuff very seriously.

I’m working on a revision to my Mac OS X Visual QuickStart Guide. I just rather belatedly realized that this is the first VQS I’ve worked on in over a year and a half. The last was Leopard (10.5), which was released the same day Leopard hit the Apple stores. I think it was late October 2007. I clearly remember working on it while I traveled. I even blogged about it here, here, here, and here.

I don’t just write VQSes. I also do layout. I write and lay out in InDesign. This year, it’s a real breeze. Not only do I have all the real estate on my 24″ iMac monitor, but I also have another 24″ of real estate on the Samsung sitting next to it.

As I work, I find myself repeating the same keystrokes and mouse drags I performed all those months ago. The shortcuts and techniques have all come back to me — my hands fly over the keyboard and mouse without consulting my brain — and miraculously, they get it right. I even reprogrammed Photoshop actions using the same keystrokes I used for the last VQS project.

Is it any wonder I can completely revise typical page, with new screenshots and added page references, in less than 30 minutes?

The page reference addition is something I’m pretty excited about. Because InDesign has always lacked a good cross-referencing feature, I had to manually reference everything. As a result, I kept it simple and stuck to chapter references. For example, “I tell you more about disks and volumes in Chapter 6.” But when InDesign CS4 was released, it had one feature that made it worth the upgrade for me: cross-referencing. I think that by referencing exact pages in the book, rather than making vague references to chapter numbers, I’m making the book far more valuable as a reference tool than ever before.

At this point, two chapters are done. I’ve got 24 more to go. I’m sure you’ll read more about my progress here.

You’ll have to wait until Snow Leopard hits the shelves to read more about it.

The other night, I watched Welcome to Macintosh, a new documentary by filmmakers Robert Baca and Josh RIzzo.

Here’s the review I just entered on Netflix, where I gave it 3 out of 5 stars:

I’m one of the “Mac faithful” and have been for years. I found this documentary mildly interesting — especially parts discussing trivia, such as how startup tones came about. In general, however, I found it to be a rather amateurish production, with far too much time spent on various collections of old Macs. The cutaway scenes with Mac models decorating the landscape was reminiscent of the “How It’s Made” television series and rather silly. I would like to have seen more interviews with Mac users, movers, and shakers, as well as some of those old Macs running some of the software from the early days.

This movie will appeal to any Mac fan interested in Apple’s history. But Apple haters will hate this movie; it comes across as real Apple “fanboy” material.

You can read another take on the movie from its premier on the Unofficial Apple Weblog: “TUAW On Scene: from the premiere of Welcome to Macintosh.”

I’m not going to Macworld Expo this year. I used to go regularly and didn’t miss a show for about 10 years. Then I started skipping them. It just didn’t seem worth the time and expense. I went last year but am skipping this year.

I always watch the Apple keynote presentation, though. For a while, it was available as a live Webcast. Since then, it’s been available a day or two afterwards as a streamed QuickTime movie. That’s good enough for me.

Evidently, it isn’t good enough for some people. When I finally tracked down the date and time for this year’s Keynote address on the Macworld Expo Web site, I also stumbled upon some information for attendees wishing to see the presentation live. Here’s part of the instructions:

FOR PLATINUM PASS ATTENDEES:
As a Platinum Pass attendee, you have priority seating to view the Keynote in the main presentation room, based on availability. You may queue up on line any time beginning Monday evening, along 4th Street adjacent to the Moscone Center. We urge you to make every effort to be on line by 7:00am Tuesday morning to ensure your place in the queue, as we cannot guarantee seating late arrivals. Show management staff and security will be present to assist with any questions.

I should probably mention here that the folks who have “platinum passes” spent $1,695 to get them — if they bought them before December 1. If they waited, they paid $1,895.

I don’t know about you, but the thought of waiting on line in San Francisco overnight in January after paying nearly $2K for “priority seating” seems a little extreme. What kind of person would do this?

Now there’s a lot of hoopla over the fact that Steve Jobs is not doing this year’s keynote address. There’s even a bunch of whiners who claim they’re going to give Phil Schiller, who is doing the presentation, the cold (and silent) shoulder with each announcement. (These could be the same people who are willing to wait in line overnight to see a trade show keynote address.) So although I don’t expect a bunch of people to be standing out in the cold tonight on 4th Street (or Howard Street for the people who don’t have “platinum” passes), I do wonder how many people stood on line overnight in the past. Anyone have this info? Use the comments link or form for this post to share it.

Here’s a sad example of the mentality of some Mac users. The “Silent Keynote Campaign at Macworld Expo” is one way some people think they can send a message to Apple about how “mad” they are about Apple dropping out of future Macworld Expo. In reality, all they’re doing is exposing themselves as whining fanboys (or fangirls, perhaps).

If you’re attending the Macworld Expo keynote on Tuesday, Jan. 6, you can send a message to Apple by remaining silent during the 2009 keynote. While Phil Schiller is on the stage, let there be no applause, no whistling… just utter and complete silence.

Boo hoo. Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks this campaign is stupid and childish.

Get a grip, folks. This isn’t the end of the world.

I’m as big an Apple supporter as the next guy — probably even bigger, since I’ve been using them and writing about them since 1989. I have to admit that although the announcement saddens me because it marks the end of an era, it’s not going to have a major impact on how I buy and use computers and software.

I get better attention and support in an Apple store than I ever got in the Apple “booth” at Macworld Expo — and half the time I had a Press badge on at the show. Indeed, an Apple Store is like having a Macworld Expo Apple booth with attentive staff available almost every day of the year. And I’d rather see Apple cut back on its trade show budget than cut back on employees or development costs. Wouldn’t you?

As for the silent treatment aimed at Phil Schiller, that’s not only rude, but it’s inconsiderate and unbelievably childish. And think of the message that sends to the rest of the computing world about Apple users.

Related Posts:

• On the Edge, Looking In
• A Trip to Macworld Expo in San Francsico
• Macworld Expo, My History

As I type this, I’ve set the wheels in motion for my iMac’s internal hard disk to be reformatted and a fresh installation to be installed on its clean surface. This is a “clean install,” in the real sense of the phrase, and I expect it to take most of the Christmas holidays to get things back up and running in a way that I can be productive again.

This may seem drastic, but drastic times call for drastic solutions. My computer has been plagued with problems for the past two months — since my return from points north after this summer’s galavanting — and I simply cannot tolerate it anymore. I not only get kernel panics several times a week, but I also get what I call “blue screen restarts” (screen turns blue and computer restarts itself for no apparent reason), frozen mouse pointers, and unresponsive applications. I’m losing unsaved work — although less than you’d think because I’ve actually come to expect problems and save often.

I’ve run every diagnostic tool I have on the hard disk, booting from the CD/DVD drive whenever possible. Disk Utility says the hard disk is fine, but it finds all kinds of problems with permissions, which it just can’t fix. Drive Genius won’t even check the permissions, but it finds an error with my preferences file and gives up scanning. Permissions are definitely screwed up because my document permissions include permissions for (unknown).

Did I mention that it’s just over a year old now?

I know the cure for the problem — reformat and reinstall. So that’s what I’m doing.

Oddly enough, I used to do this regularly back in the old days, before the operating system got so darn complex and my hard disk filled up with music and video files. Each time a new version of Mac OS came out, I’d install it by reformatting my hard disk and putting the software on a clean disk. Then I’d reinstall all my applications and copy back the documents I needed on my hard disk. It took about a half a day to get the job done and the computer worked flawlessly afterwards.

But nowadays, things aren’t that simple. Reformatting a hard disk and reinstalling everything from scratch is a real pain in the ass. Before I could even think of doing it, I started by making three backup copies of what was important on the disk: the Time Machine backup I always have, a disk image of my entire hard disk, and a copy of my home folder. All this had to wait until I got an external hard disk large and fast enough to make the extra two backups. I bought it yesterday: a 1TB Western Digital FireWire/USB drive.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d own a 1 TB hard disk. The amazing thing: it only cost $200. So storage is no longer an issue here.

At least not for the next few months.

Right now, my iMac is still verifying the installation DVD. I can still change my mind. But the thought of dealing with daily blue screen is too frustrating for words. So I’ll do the drastic thing and fix my problem.

And next week, I’ll pump my iMac up to 4 GB of RAM. If that doesn’t make it happy, nothing will.

Related Articles:

• Computer Retirement
• The High Cost of Writing Tech Books
• Can YOUR Mouse Last 18 Years?

After sweating out the morning, waiting to hear detailed news about Apple’s new products, I finally got my hands on the specs for the product I’ve been waiting for: MacBook Air. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s the product I’ve been waiting for after all.

Wait. Let’s start again. The above is what I wrote on Tuesday, before I laid hands on the MacBook Air. Now that I’ve fondled its sleek aluminum body and hefted its airy lightness, this article may have a different ending.

It’s Friday morning and I’ve been to Macworld Expo and back. And, at the show, I got a chance to look at Apple’s new entry into the sub-notebook field: the MacBook Air.

First, let’s talk specs.

Yes, it’s [currently] the world’s thinnest notebook, at about 3/4 inch tall. That’s thin. It’s about half the thickness of my obese 12″ PowerBook. (How did I carry that fat thing around for so many years?)

Other dimensions — for those of you who like all the numbers:
Width: 12.8 inches
Depth: 8.94 inches

Since my old 12″ PowerBook is sitting on my desk, let’s measure it up for comparison:
Width: 10.8 inches (estimated; I don’t have high tech measuring tools here)
Depth: 8.5 inches

The screen is a generous 13.3 inches measured diagonally. The PowerBook’s (for comparison) is about 12.25 inches.

It certainly is light, weighing in at only 3 pounds. That fat little 12″ PowerBook weighs a whopping 4 pounds and 11 ounces.

These are the numbers. And they are what disappointed me when I first went through them. Although thinner and lighter, the MacBook Air’s dimensions are also considerably larger than the computer I was hoping to replace with it. Because although “thin is in” and all that jazz, it’s overall size that can determine how truly portable a computer is.

Look at it this way: would the Moleskin people be selling so many of those little black books if they were the same size as the composition book you used in elementary school?

But I got to see the Air in person and touch it and hold it in my hands. And you know something? In real life it looks smaller than I expected it to. And the lightness feels lighter.

My overall impression was very positive. I felt myself wanting one of them, for reasons I couldn’t quite understand.

How does Apple do that? With smoke and mirrors? Hypnosis? Or it it simply the lighting in their Macworld Expo booth?

Now let’s look at what’s crammed in there.

There’s a lot packed into that slim case:

• 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
• 2 GB RAM
• 80 GB ATA hard disk
• AirPort Extreme (IEEE 802.11a/b/g compatible)
• Bluetooth 2.1
• iSight Camera
• one speaker
• Audio Out port
• USB 2.0 port
• Micro-DVI port
• 13.3″ (diagonally measured) monitor
• full-sized keyboard

There are some options — processor and hard disk come to mind — but that’s basically it.

Isn’t something missing?

Yes. It’s the optical drive. Just as Apple led the pack in the phasing out of the “floppy” drive when it released the original iMac all those years ago, it’s removed the optical drive from the MacBook Air.

This is a tough nut to swallow. Apple has built a $99 external SuperDrive that will only work with the MacBook Air, that I believe most people will buy. But Apple has also created “new technology” that enables you to access the CD/DVD mounted on another computer to install software, etc. (This is something I already do in a limited way, since the optical drives on both my 12″ PowerMac and 15″ MacBook Pro are dead; the MacBook is covered under warranty and is making its way back to Apple as I type this.) But what do you do if your Air is the only computer around and you didn’t bring along an external disc drive? Like when you’re on a plane for four hours and the movie is something you can’t bear to watch?

You’re SOOL.

Personally, I think the exclusion of this vital piece of hardware is a big mistake. And it’s what may prevent me from investing in a MacBook Air to replace my 12″ PowerBook.

What was I expecting?

Well, since I don’t read much on rumor sites, I wasn’t expecting anything in particular. I was expecting a “sub-notebook.” To me, that means something smaller than the usual notebook. It doesn’t necessarily mean thinner.

What I wanted, however, was a real replacement for my 12″ PowerBook: a modern version of the same machine that had modern processing power, a decent sized hard disk, wireless, and the all-important optical drive. And I know I’m not alone in that wish.

You see, I believe that the 12″ PowerBook is the best notebook computer Apple has ever made. Perfectly sized for travel, able to display at 1024×768 resolution, all necessary ports, wireless access, optical drive. What else could you ask for? I wish Apple would have brought that up to date by thinning it up a little — hell, it’s only an inch and a half tall! — and lightening it up a bit.

This is what I wanted. This is what a lot of people wanted. But this isn’t what Apple delivered in the MacBook Air.

But Don’t Listen to Me

If you’re in the market for a laptop computer, do check out the MacBook Air. For you, it might be a dream come true.

One thing’s for certain: It certainly will generate a lot of computer envy among your friends.

Next week, I’ll be heading to Macworld Expo in San Francisco, mostly to do a presentation at the Peachpit Press booth.

For a 10-year period starting in 1992, I went to every Macworld: San Francisco, Boston (and then New York), and even the little-known Toronto shows in the mid 1990s. I was part of the Macworld Expo Conference Faculty and did a presentation in the Conference hall. One year, I did a solo panel and was on two other panels, too.

Those were the good old days of Macworld, when the speaker lounge was hopping with lots of friendly Mac “experts” and the attendees really did want to hear what we had to say about using Macs or specific applications. Everything was new and cool and even a writer who writes about something as ho-hum as operating systems and productivity applications for “end users” could put together a dynamic, interesting presentation in a room that was filled to standing room only.

Things change. Changes in show management and theme a bunch of years ago have left me feeling a little out of it. As Apple’s market share shrunk, only the Mac faithful and the Mac core user base — designers — came to Macworld in significant numbers. Productivity software and topics were out; design software and topics were in. I’m not a designer and I had little of value to share with conference attendees. I couldn’t come up with good ideas for conference sessions, so I just dropped out of the conference faculty.

Then, after a while, I just stopped coming to Macworld Expo. It didn’t seem worth the bother. I’d settled into a routine, writing revisions of a relatively large collection of books — mostly Visual QuickStart Guides — and that kept me busy. I didn’t need to go to the show to see what was new.

Instead, I’d tune into the live Webcast of the keynote address and learn about all the new products and features as Steve announced them while sitting at my desk, working on a book or another project.

Then Apple stopped doing the live Webcasts. I’d visit the Home page of Apple’s Web site after Steve’s gig and learn about the new stuff there. A while later, I’d download the Webcast and watch the show.

Things change. Apple’s introduction of innovative new products — starting with the original Bondi blue iMac all those years ago and the iPod much more recently — has gotten the Mac faithful excited about using Apple products again. Tiger was great; Leopard is pretty darn good, too. The ability of Intel-based Macs to run Windows effectively — either booted to Windows or while Mac OS X is running, as is possible with Parallels desktop — has gotten the attention of Windows users who are pretty unimpressed with the long-awaited Vista operating system. (Can you blame them?) Now Macs can run their Windows software. People are switching from Windows PCs to Macs. The Mac market share is growing.

This is great news for me. Although I write about Windows topics, I much prefer working with and writing about Macs. And with more Mac users comes more Mac-compatible products. In fact, there are more than a few software products that I use daily — TextWrangler, Scrivener, ecto 3 (in beta), EvoCam, iShowU, and Time Palette come to mind — that are only available for Mac OS. This not only gives me more great software to to choose from, but it gives me more Mac software to write about.

And that’s a good thing. Back in the early 90s, there were still lots of new computer users, people who needed step-by-step instructions for using software like Microsoft Word and Excel. Nowadays, these programs are old hat. Kids use them in school, for heaven’s sake! They don’t need books. And many of my old productivity titles are starting a slow spiral down to the backlist, never to be revised again.

So I’m going to Macworld. And I’m speaking at the Peachpit booth (on Wednesday, January 16, at 2 PM) about my new Leopard book and the cool things I’ve done with Leopard and Mac OS X.

But I’ll also be looking around at what’s new and exciting, ready to grab on to something different, something that’ll drag me deeper into the Mac community again.

It’s good to be a Mac user.

I bought a MacBook Pro at least eight months ago, when I was working on my Leopard book for Peachpit Press. I needed a computer with an Intel processor — none of my computers had one at the time — so I could write about Boot Camp and other Intel-specific topics. I went with a “Pro” instead of a regular MacBook because it offered some feature I needed that the MacBook did not. (Right now, I can’t remember what that was.) But I admit that I also prefer the metal case. (I think Apple’s plastic casing looks cheesy.)

How I Used My Laptops

The MacBook Pro was purchased as a “test mule” — a computer used specifically to test and write about software. As such, I kept it very clean, installing only the software I needed to write about. There was virtually no personalization. Heck, even the desktop picture was a plain white screen so I could get clean screenshots of windows and menus.

For computing on the road, I used my 12″ PowerBook G4. I loved its small package, which made it easy to throw in a backpack or piece of luggage. I took it everywhere. I even had a DC adapter for it that enabled me to get power from a car’s cigarette lighter/power port or the DC port in my camper. That was a good thing because the computer’s battery was the first to go. Even the replacement didn’t last long.

Over time, the PowerBook started getting really beat up. Dents and dings, scratches and dirt. One of its rubber feet fell off. Twice. Alex the Bird pulled off the F5 key and I could only get it partially reattached — it was like that for over a year, until a friendly Genius fixed it for me. My CD-ROM drive went on a trip to Alaska after burning one last disc of photos. Oddly enough, it still reads DVDs but wants nothing to do with CDs. Just spins them and spits them out.

But I continued to use it. It did the job — well, most of it — and I was willing to work around the little problems it had.

My PowerBook’s Fall from Grace

When Leopard came out, I was thrilled with the idea of Back to My Mac. The PowerBook met the minimum requirements for Leopard — barely. So I installed it.

Mistake. The poor old computer simply wasn’t up to the challenge of running Apple’s latest operating system. After a month of watching spinning beach balls and being able to type faster than the computer could take the characters, I finally downgraded it back to Tiger.

But I think its experience with Leopard has scarred it. It doesn’t seem quite as fast as it used to be.

Or perhaps that’s just because I’ve been using a brand new iMac at my desk for the past two months and the old G4 is simply no match for any of my equipment these days.

My MacBook Pro Steps into a New Role

Today, I decided to step into the MacBook Pro for mobile computing. The battery is still healthy and it reads and writes both CDs and DVDs. It can also run Leopard without any problems. So this morning, I installed most of the software I need to use while on the road. I’ll add a few more items later today. And I’m composing this blog post in ecto on the MacBook Pro, just to feel it out. (The PowerBook will return to duty as the kitchen table blogging/surfing machine tomorrow.)

I can still use the MacBook Pro for a test mule. I’ll simply set up a new account and use that to run software for screenshots or screencasting. Fast user switching makes it easy. And the computer has plenty of power to run the software I need to create the screenshots and movies.

Computers on the Auction Block

Will I sell the G4? Probably not. It really is beat up. And it’ll probably make its permanent home in our camping shed up at Howard Mesa someday. After all, it still works and it’s still able to connect to the Internet via my Treo when I’m off the grid. It’s not like I’m crunching video up there. Just blogging, e-mail, and doing some surfing, mostly for weather or phone numbers. And writing the occasional article for Informit.

I did recently sell my old dual G5 on eBay. It fetched about three times what I thought it would. I’m a very happy camper. And I assume the buyer is, too. After all, he hasn’t complained.

I do have one more computer I’d like to sell: a Strawberry iMac. I’m going to try to prep it for eBay this weekend. Once that’s gone, I’ll be down to just four computers: a 24″ iMac (my most recent purchase, used entirely for production work), the 15″ MacBook Pro, the 12″ PowerBook, and a Dell laptop (I can never remember the model). With the iMac running Parallels, I don’t even start up the Dell these days, although I’m likely to use it for my annual Quicken revision when the time comes.

Don’t get me wrong — it isn’t as if I want four computers. I don’t. But I do need certain computers to get my work done efficiently and effectively. The PowerBook has always been the equivalent of a “home” computer for me. Now the MacBook Pro will be doing double-duty.

New Apple Products in My Future?

I do see occasional glimpses of a new computer in my future: the rumored Apple sub-notebook. If it’s a viable replacement for the 12″ PowerBook — with a decent-sized monitor, full-size keyboard, wireless (including Bluetooth) built in, and CD/DVD drive — it’ll be exactly what I want.

But will it be? Apple hasn’t been creating products that meet my particular needs lately:

• The iPhone is beautiful and cool but its close ties to AT&T and limited capabilities make my Treo a better solution for me.
• The iPod Touch is similarly cool, but doesn’t offer enough “wow” factor to make me want to replace my original 30GB iPod Video (now known as the “classic”).
• I still don’t understand the purpose of AppleTV, although I suspect Apple intended it to do what the iPod does for the iTunes store — get people to buy content. But with video content providers like television networks pulling out of the Apple store, it’s becoming less attractive as time goes by. Of course, I don’t watch much television, so I’m probably not the right person to be evaluating a device like this.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m still a big fan of Apple. You wouldn’t see me looking at a Zune or buying another Dell. But I’m not so much of a fan that I’m blinded by the Apple logo. I still think before I buy — now more than ever. A product has to completely meet my needs — whether they’re real or imagined — before I buy it. Otherwise I’d rather wait until a better product comes along.

Right now, I’m anxious to see the next Apple computer. I’m hoping it’ll put my G4 into full retirement mode.

Yesterday, as I completed the revisions to Chapter 10, I reached the halfway point in my revision for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide.

No, the book isn’t 20 chapters long. It’s 27 plus an appendix. I’ve revised 14 chapters. I’m not revising in order. I’m revising in the order I think it might be safe to revise in. Some features are still in flux and if I revise based on what I see, I’ll likely have to revise again.

And no, I can’t tell you what I think might be in flux. I’m under non-disclosure and I take that stuff pretty seriously. That’s also why you won’t find Leopard screenshots here (yet). And why I haven’t written any articles about the new features (yet).

This is a Deep Revision

I’ve settled into a pace of about one revised chapter per day. That might seem like a lot. It is, especially since I’m doing what I call a deep revision.

I not only write my Visual QuickStart Guides, but I also do layout for them. This is called packaging — the author provides final files to the publisher, who then (after editing, of course) sends them on to the printer.

I currently use InDesign CS3 for all my layout needs. But that’s not what I was using when I wrote the first edition of this book, which covered Mac OS 8, back in 1997. (I still remember that book’s release at Macworld Expo in Boston. Peachpit sold out on the first day of the show, but UPS was on strike and we couldn’t get any more books in.) In 1997, I was using PageMaker. And that’s what I used to create the original book files.

A revision is a revision. That means you start with something and modify it to bring it up to date. So each year, I’d start with the previous year’s file and modify text, replace screenshots, and make various other changes to bring the content and file up to date.

Every time I switched to a new version of my layout software — PageMaker became InDesign 2 which became InDesign CS which became InDesign CS3 — I can’t justify the expense of updating my software for every release — I’d simply convert the file to the new version at the beginning of the revision process.

Over the years, this led to inconsistently set up files. Sure, the differences were minor, but they were there. And it bugged me that there were tiny differences in the style definitions and that some text included indexing codes from a failed experiment with the indexing feature and that the Zapf Dingbats font applied to bullets wasn’t working right in all files. And that in some chapters, each page was a different InDesign “story” and in others, the stories would go on for several pages.

So this year I decided to clean up the files by recreating them all. I built a brand new template in InDesign CS3, adding the staggered tabs that many other VQS books include but mine never had. I took full advantage of InDesign’s nested style feature to automate bullet and reference formatting. I made my styles intelligent and highly functional.

Then I got an InDesign plugin that enabled me to export the individual stories in a single chapter file as one big story in plain old text. I do this for each chapter. I make sure the text has smart quotes and paste it into my template. I then manually reapply all the styles as I go through the text and edit it to bring it up to date.

Along the way, I reorganized much of the content to remove 2 chapters, add 5 chapters, and move a bunch of content around.

A deep revision.

Other Revisions

Contrast this with the last book revision I did. That was for another publisher which doesn’t allow author packaging. Instead, the book is submitted as a series of Microsoft Word files.

I start with the previous year’s “final” files. I turn on the revision feature so all my changes are marked — supposedly for the benefit of the copy editor, so she doesn’t re-edit the whole thing — and go at it. The result is a mess that only gets messier as the book goes through the editing process. In the end, it’s all cleaned up, laid out and sent to me as proofs so I can make any final corrections to it.

If the software I’m revising the book for hasn’t changed much, this can be incredibly quick — I can sometimes turn out 3-4 chapters in a day, with plenty of time for my morning coffee, blog entry, e-mail processing, and even a little Web surfing. My record was 2 weeks for the entire 400+ page book.

Time Is Not on my Side

But for a deep revision, things go much more slowly. If I’m lucky, I can turn out a chapter a day. That’s a complete 20-40 page chapter, laid out with dozens of screenshots — I’m averaging about 80 per chapter right now — and captions and even a few callouts.

I just did the math. If I can keep up a chapter a day as my production rate, I should have the whole thing done by September 20. Right?

Well, unfortunately, I don’t have the next 13 days to work on this book. Next Friday, I’m flying my helicopter at the Mohave County Fair, giving rides for the whole weekend. On Monday, I fly directly to Page for two separate flying gigs over Lake Powell. I should be back by Thursday afternoon. Then the Saturday right after that, I’m hosting a photographer/writer and pilot from Australia who are preparing a coffee table book about Robinson Helicopters, featuring about 20 operators all over the world. (Can you imagine that they picked me?) When they leave, I have a few days before I head back up to Lake Powell, Monument Valley, and Shiprock with the helicopter for a group of Russian photographers for a big photo excursion.

What does this tell me?

It’s 6:26 AM on a Friday morning. I’d better get to work.

I’ve been writing computer how-to books since 1992. Right now I’m working on a revision of my Mac OS book for Leopard. It’ll be my 70th title.

A lot of people think that I get all the hardware and software I need to write for free. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have to buy most of the hardware I write about. Although I do get much of the software I write about for free, I don’t get the software I need to do my work. So while I might get Office 2007 right from Microsoft and Quicken 2008 right from Intuit (thanks, guys!), I don’t get Photoshop and InDesign from Adobe — and those two very expensive software packages are what I need to lay out and prepare images for my books.

My Past (and Current) Computers

I’m a Mac user and have had numerous Macs since the first one I bought in 1989. Let’s see if I can come up with a complete list.

First, the production machines, which I use to do all my work. These are machines I’ve customized so they look and work just the way I wanted them to. Each of them lasted 2-4 years.

• Mac IIcx – this system cost me $8K including a color monitor and laser printer. It had 1MB RAM.
• PowerMac 7100/66
• PowerMac 8500/167?
• PowerMac G3 (beige; can’t remember speed)
• Power Mac G4/866
• Power Mac Dual G5/1.8 – my current production machine

The 8500 and G4 became servers when they were retired from production duty; indeed, the 8500 ran 8 Web sites, a mail server, and an FTP server until 2005. I also had 2 SE/30s (not listed) way back in the beginning that I used as BBS servers. And, believe it or not, I still have them.

Then there are the laptops. I’ll admit that the first laptop I “owned” was provided by one of my clients to help me do my training job for them. I had it for about 3 years. By then I was hooked and needed my own laptop. A laptop normally lasts me about 4 years.

• PowerBook 180
• PowerBook 520c
• iBook SE (clamshell) – gave it to my neighbor’s kids
• PowerBook G4 (12″) – current laptop; I love this machine

Next, the test mules. These are the machines I bought to run the software I was writing about on. This is where you’ll find a mixture of Macs and PCs, since I do write about PC software (Word, Excel, Quicken, etc.).They’re kept in factory-installed condition — in fact, I commonly reformat and reinstall operating system software on the Macs. (Doing that is a HUGE hassle on the PCs.)

In the old days, I used to use my old production computer as my Mac test mule. But as technology evolved, those older machines didn’t have the hardware features I needed to write about. So I wound up buying new computers for the task and keeping them at least 4 years. Lately I’ve realized that laptops make excellent test mules because of their portability (duh), so I’ve switched to those.

First, the Macs:

• Strawberry iMac (G3) – in my garage; I need to unload this thing
• eMac (G4) – is now a server for Internet streaming at the local radio station. (Yes, the same radio station where they’re doing their accounting with an 18-year-old Mac.)
• MacBook Pro (15″) – current test mule; had thoughts of using it to replace the 12″ PowerBook but I like the PowerBook’s size better for taking it on the road.

Then the PCs:

• Gateway – can’t remember model; it ran Windows 95, which was brand new at the time
• Dell Dimension 944r? – I gave this to the local library; it runs XP so why not?
• Dell Latitude (laptop) – my current test mule. But I think that if Parallels or Boot Camp work out well, I might get rid of it while it still has decent resale value.

Other Hardware

The other hardware list is long and frankly not very interesting.

The list includes the usual collection of monitors (including 2 of the ill-fated 17-in Apple displays). I didn’t replace a monitor when I got a new computer — the Dell Dimension, for example, used the Gateway’s monitor and I’m still using the 20″ Sony monitor, which I think I first connected to my G3 all those years ago, every day. (And yes, I am ready for something bigger now that my close eyesight is starting to fail.)

It also includes printers — five laser printers (four of which are still at work in my house — don’t ask) and a collection of junky dot matrix and later inkjet and “photo printing” printers. I’m sold on laser printers and won’t get conned into buying anything else unless a better technology comes along. Oddly enough, I do very little printing these days, since all of my manuscripts are now submitted electronically. I don’t see my work in print until the edits come back for review.

I’ve had at least 3 scanners, including a SCSI scanner that cost a whopping $1,000. I now use a junky little Canon scanner which is far better and far cheaper than that first one.

I’ve had to buy numerous AirPort products, including four base stations (two of which I still own) and one AirPort Express. (I got a second one as a gift from Apple for making several appearances at Apple Stores.) I also have two iSight cameras, one of which powers my WebCam.

Speaking of cameras, I’ve also had to buy digital cameras, starting with the QuickTake. I’ve had five of them over the years, each better than the one before it. (My current Canon PowerShot has just died after less than 2 years of life so I’ll probably have to get another one soon.) And digital video cameras — I’ve had three. Why do I need cameras? Have you ever read any of my Mac OS X books? I need to cover how to use Mac OS X with these devices.

And that’s also why I have three iPods, starting with the original 5GB model and ending (so far) with a sleek little black video iPod.

In the weird department is the Newton Message Pad (call me a sucker; I deserve it) and Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (which sits in my living room, providing stereo sound and a digital picture frame when hooked up to one of my iPods).

My husband just told me to mention the huge plastic storage bin of cables. That’s where I was able to pull out a vintage 1989 ADB mouse for my friend Jo. I had a bunch of SCSI cables in there, too, but after trying unsuccessfully to give them to an Apple store, I just tossed them into a trash can in the mall. (Those cables cost $25-$50 each when new!) The cable bin is also where you’ll find various microphones and speakers, Zip drives, Jaz drives, and the cartridges that go with them. It’s an antique computer peripheral bin and if anyone needs any of that kind of stuff, Comment below and let me know. Most of it can go for the cost of postage.

Do the Math

That’s about it for the hardware. Do some math. I’m willing to bet that I’ve spent well over $75,000 on computer equipment over the years. In fact, I bet it’s close to $100K. But this is the cost of doing what I do. It’s part of my business expenses.

And yes, I can write it off on my taxes, but I still have to pay for it. A write off is nothing more than a rebate for me. It reduces my total tax liability, but not by the amount I paid — just by my tax rate applied to the amount I paid. For example, if I paid $100 for a piece of hardware and am in a 30% tax bracket, I’m only getting $30 off on my taxes. So the item still cost me $70. It’s nice to be able to write this stuff off, but it doesn’t mean I get it for free.

I’m Not Complaining

Not really. It’s great to be able to work with state of the art hardware. Who could complain about that?

But it would be nice if I got to work with it for free. I don’t mind paying for the stuff that I want to keep and use daily — like my production machines, which I really work hard over the years. But the equipment that I need just to write a few pages of a book — like an iSight camera or the latest AirPort base station — is tough to cough up the dough for. And let’s face it: how many iPods does a person really need? (If your answer is zero, you’ve probably never had an iPod.)

Recently, Apple very graciously agreed to loan me the new AirPort base station so I could write about the new AirPort Disk feature in my Leopard book. I’m looking forward to getting it and giving it a try. But I’m also looking forward to sending it back when I’m finished and not having to see it on my American Express bill. The AirPort Disk feature looks good, but I simply don’t need it.

(When I get my next production machine in October — probably a 24″ iMac — the dual G5 will be wiped clean and set up as a file server, perhaps with an inexpensive 17″ flatscreen monitor attached. I envision it sitting in my living room near the Twentieth Anniversary Mac, displaying a constant slideshow of photos when guests are around. A true digital picture frame with 120 GB of storage space and an AirPort card ready to accept all the files I want to back up via Time Machine.)

Meanwhile, the big names — and you know who I’m talking about — get everything they want any time they want it for free. In fact, Apple and other hardware/software developers call them and offer it up! It’s the reason why many of these guys have come across as real Apple fanboys. How can you be objective when you know that the first negative thing you say in the pages of the New York Times or Wall Street Journal may stop the next phone call from Apple? And the whole time, these guys are pulling in the big bucks and can actually afford to buy any hardware they want.

Am I jealous? Bitter? What do you think?

But because I pay for it all, I can stay objective. While I really do like what Apple develops and sells, I’m not afraid to mention the shortcomings in a product. (For example, I still can’t figure out why people are buying Apple TVs. At least the Newton I bought was kind of cool.) I can’t ruin my chances of getting the latest gadget — iPhone, Apple TV, etc. — for free because I wouldn’t get it for free anyway.

The Point?

The point of all this is that writing computer how-to books can be a costly endeavor. But I think it’s worth it.