Apple-Orange

Don’t get the wrong idea, it’s a very good IDE. It’s not quite there yet for scala 2.8. I’m back to regular text editor and terminal now.

Every time there is a new product in the market usually a hype is created and everybody will be talking about buying it for a few weeks (or even months). In fact many people will be buying those new products even though their current gadget is still working. This creates some problems such as:

1. Creation of e-waste
2. Increased production of carbon emission

Of course there are other problems such as debts, etc. In this series of blog posts, I’ll explain a few things that we can do and some examples to avoid unnecessary gadget purchases.

Firstly let’s talk about laptops and desktops. This is something that people buy every 3-4 years. In some cases, 5-7 years. My current laptop is a 2008 model Macbook aluminium. My secondary machine is a 2004 Toshiba Satellite laptop that runs on Ubuntu/Windows XP, but I don’t use it that often. When my Toshiba laptop is acting up in 2008, I knew that I needed to replace it soon. Here are the things that I think about when I’m buying a new computer:

1. What am I going to use it for?
2. How long am I planning to use it for?
3. Do I need to carry it everywhere?
4. When I buy this one, can I use my old computer for something else, or should I recycle it?
5. Is my new laptop environmentally friendly? Does it contain any harmful toxic? Is it energy efficient?

Granted, not many people think about number 4 and 5. Quite a lot of people think about number 1, 2, and 3. I have also seen people who asked me “Which Mac should I buy?” without thinking about what they’re going to use it for (and just to be one of the “cool Mac guys”) (Many of them ended up buying a high end Macbook Pro or iMacs). Most people that I know use computers for these main things: Web browsing, email, chatting, social networking, typing, number crunching, spreadsheets, music, and watching video. You can take my word for this: those stuff does not need Intel core i7 with 8GB of RAM.

On the other hand, a portion of my blog readers may be programmers, video editors, musicians, professional photographers, or system administrators. I will not say anything about their requirements, some of them need a computer that needs to be tailored to their needs. For example photographers will want to use a big, good screen. Whereas video editors will want to buy the best graphic card available on the market.

So what did I had in mind when buying this laptop? I was thinking:

1. I’m going to use it (apart from the stuff aforementioned) to run Eclipse, Xcode, and other software development tools.

2. I’m planning to use it for at least 5 years. 

3. I need to carry it to uni everyday.

4. I can use my old computer as a secondary machine by installing linux. I can experiment with different linux flavours without stopping my workflow.

So that’s when I ended up buying a Macbook. It also has a bonus: it is free from harmful substances and it runs with only 15 Watts of power – less than a quarter of a light bulb and less than 1/10 of a normal desktop computer. I knew one day I’m going to upgrade my 160GB hard drive and 2GB of RAM (and I did, I just didn’t need it then). To this date, I have no regret buying this – a great machine that will hopefully serve me for at least 3 more years.

Remember, think about those things before you buy a computer. You only have one earth. You don’t want to see this kind of thing. One more thing – if your 2 year old laptop is acting up, it’s probably the software, not the hardware. Linux and Windows 7 seems to be some viable better operating system for non-Mac guys.

Stay tuned – I’ll discuss how I avoid myself buying an iPad (for now), and why I bought my other gadgets.

Many people that I know are afraid to update their software. Be it their mobile phone OS, desktop OS, or even their application softwares. For example, someone I know did not want to update his Skype because he’s afraid that it’ll make his computer slow and lose his skip contact details. Other famous example is many of my friends choose to stick with Windows XP even though they know that their machine is vista capable (and therefore Windows 7 capable). Some of my friends even choose to stick with Vista even though it’s highly inferior to Windows 7! Apple users are not exception in this case, some friends that I know choose to stick with Leopard or Tiger until they buy a new machine. Some people choose not to update their iOS in their iPhones and iPod touches (unless iTunes annoys them by asking it many times). 

I’ve been thinking, what is the reason to this? Is it the price? Is it that they don’t know there’s a software update? Is it the difficulty of installing the software? Is it the doubt whether the updated software is better? Is it the fear that the new software will cripple their machine? 

I think the answer is some bits of all of the above.

First of all, generally software updates (big ones) do tend to make your computer go slower. When they say “Windows 7 needs a minimum of 1GB of RAM” or “Mac OS X Snow Leopard needs an intel processor”, that won’t really make your machine as fast as before even if you have the required hardware. I’m actually very surprised that new operating system updates since 2008 has actually make my machines faster (i.e. Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Windows 7). This hasn’t always been the case. Some people told me upgrading from XP to Vista made their computer slower, some also told me upgrading from Tiger to Leopard made their computer slower. I believe them. Sadly the latest iOS 4 update made iPod touch 2G and iPhone 3G slower, even though it’s a 2010 software update.

Second of all, people are afraid to pay for software updates. Here’s the deal, you bought a cheeseburger from Mac Donalds, you ate half of it, and Mac Donalds said to you: “Hey, I have a new version of this cheeseburger! If you want, you can swap yours for only $1!”. When they say this, the new cheeseburger usually cost only $2. Of course not many people would swap their cheeseburgers, they’d finish their cheeseburger and buy the new one next time! That’s what people are thinking: I’ll upgrade to Windows 7 when I buy my next laptop, I’ll upgrade to Snow Leopard when I got a new MacBook, I’ll upgrade to the new Firefox, Skype, Microsoft Office when I got a new laptop. This is true not only for home users, but also business users! Business users’ motto is usually: “If it didn’t break, they it doesn’t need to be fixed”. That’s probably why 75% of businesses are still using Windows XP at the time of this writing. Some place that I know stick with IE6 for as long as they can. Surprisingly, recent software updates has got lower price tag that it ever has. Notably Apple offered Snow Leopard for only $39 in Australia, that’s even lower than buying a new Leopard OS. In this case the cheeseburger metaphor is not quite true anymore. Apple also offered iOS 4 update for free, although once again that last one wasn’t a really great update for older iPhone users.

Thirdly, some people are scared of the process of software update. This is more true in OS than application softwares such as browsers and photo editors. Most people are afraid that upgrading the software will somehow erase their data such as bookmarks, contacts, settings, photos, videos, folders, or even the whole hard drive if you’re upgrading an OS. Some developers made this very very easy. Take Google Chrome for example, it automatically update the browser without users even noticing it (at least in the Mac version). They kept all the bookmarks intact, that’s very neat. I haven’t upgraded photo editing softwares such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, or Aperture (because I’m not that big of a photo editor), so I can’t really comment on that. Presumably the right thing to do is to keep the photos right where they were, or at least give a warning if the update will move the photos around. Upgrading an OS is much more difficult than this. I remember upgrading my Ubuntu, the thing about this is if you’re two versions behind, you’d have to upgrade it twice (to the version behind, then to the current version) (at least when I tried it a few years ago). Which is quite a lot of work! So I decided to clean install it, but then I lost all my settings, softwares that I downloaded, GNOME theme, etc. I also remember when I upgraded my Leopard to Snow Leopard and my girlfriend’s Tiger to Snow Leopard. Surprisingly both of them was very easy and seamless. I could get both computers up and running in about 2 hours without losing any data (note that this is not a clean install). Sadly, Microsoft didn’t do the same thing with Windows XP. Maybe, just maybe, if they made upgrading from Win XP to Win 7 easier, more people will try to upgrade. But again, there’s this fear that Win 7 will cripple their computer. Most of the time only geeks bother with difficult software update. Other normal people (by normal I mean has never opened a computer, never install a Linux OS, or never tried to use Wiimote to control their mouse) would only want to install simple and easy upgrades such as browser updates or Windows Live Messenger updates.

Software updates, in general, has a very bad reputation. Many this caused this, mostly because in the past people failed to update their software, lost their data, paid an unworthy price for it, it crippled their machine, etc. As a software developer, I am deeply worried about this. Software updates are meant to be good thing, it meant to make the program runs more efficiently, adds more functionality, improve the user interface, and so on. One last thing to note: I think people are more likely to update their software if it’s not a big software. I haven’t got the actual statistics, but what I’m seeing is people update their apps on their iPhone rather quicker than other software, they also update their Windows Live Messenger or Firefox a little bit quicker as well. Let’s hope that in the future people can do software updates without worrying about anything.