March 2019
HOW I DON’T WORK!
— Or –
Anything to Avoid Updating Anything!
I suppose I was willing to do just about anything to avoid updating to Mojave, the latest OS on my Apple MacBooK Pro. The reminder on my laptop has popped up on the screen, once a day, for at least the last three months. But, truth to tell, the laptop that I received for Christmas 2014 was beginning to heat up, and not from the speed of my typing or from the topic of my composition.
Processing time was thereby becoming noticeably s - l - o -w - e - r. In addition, the mirror-finished screen is so glaring that even when wearing dimmer goggles, I got headaches after an hour of working on the laptop. I also am in need of more memory. And who cannot use more memory!
I was pleased to take note that I did not wear out the keyboard (or even any lettering) on the Apple, the way I did on the previous Dell and HP laptops; so there is something to be said for the superior quality of Apple keyboards. I was not pleased to learn that the CD slot is not available on any new Apple laptop. I therefore pragmatically decided to forego a CD/DVD reader (which I mainly use for workout music). Dear Husband has set me up with the pancake-shaped HOTT portable CD player and Bongo Mini-Speakers.
It appears that these items are selling like hotcakes to millions of people fed up with the intrusions of iTunes updates (don’t get me started on the intrusiveness of the iTunes update reminders on my digital devices). As Apple sheds weight on its computers, the Users are packing pounds in their duffel bags with external devices to play, of all things, Classic Tunes on vintage CDs!
Initially, I was excited to learn of the Apple Trade-In Program which evidently is geared more for the Planet than for my Pocket. I was informed that my model would yield me all of $165.
An insult, if you ask me. But Apple didn’t ask me. The trade-in price was derived Online, and I gave Online its share of non-profane insults.
Early this afternoon I completed my purchase of the latest model of the MacBook Pro — in Space-Gray. The graphite-gray color reminds me just a touch of the old 1950s Underwood typewriter I typed on as a child.
The Apple Store is a large stone’s throw away from my domicile. The pick-up was fairly fast (in this case, a little too fast). It’s the assembly that takes time. Some assembly is always required, but at least in the olden days, the Adult was told what tools would be necessary, or else Christmas morning became very long for parent and child.
Having the right tool for the job is always so vital to success! The people at Apple, however, only think in 1s and 0s, and not in the master mechanics of work. Think 0.5% body fat thin is also in! For that very reason, I rejected the Apple Air. I don’t like lugging a digital keyboard all over the place, but I do want some heft. The newest MacBook Pro looked perfect, and it feels very solid. It’s not a digital wafer.
Apple has obviously gone with a minimalist approach with data exchange for this latest model of the MacBook Pro. In their infinite wisdom, the lovely people at Apple do not inform the purchaser that a new plug is necessary instead of the conventional USB plug. Furthermore, the new plug is the only one that will work for any data transfer, as far as any plug goes. I daresay the Power Plug has gone! The Plug-Hub has arrived! Now less than $30 on the Jungle Selling Platform. And, yes, they're all in it together - the whole digital lot of them.
I am starkly reminded of the sneaky predatory-proprietary gimmicks of Mr. Gates and his sales approach for Microsoft. Apple has always veered more toward the proprietary end of the sales-scheme scale. When, however, proprietary veers into predatory, ominous feelings can arise within the Consumer. Not that I feel at all claustrophobic about Apple-World — but — I sense the core of Apple is beginning to decompose into the tentacle tactics of IBM, the Corporation where Mr. Gates cut his teeth on how-to-back-the-customer into only Your Corner.
Tomorrow I shall begin the laborious process of transferring the files from Old Apple to New Apple. Finding the appropriate wire will be the hardest part of the undertaking. This connection has been cleverly (haha) dubbed by Apple-World “Thunderbolt 3”.
I am not an avoidant-personality, but I avoided Thunderbolts 1 and 2 the same way I avoided upgrading the Operating System on the MacBook Pro!
13 February 2023 Update
The Monterey Mess
Life was good. I didn’t realize how good it was — until I made a very a-typical decision to upgrade my OS from Mojave — to Monterey.
Maybe I wanted to leave the desert and go to the coast. It’s been how many years (7??) since I endured the endless drive from the soothing Sierra Nevada foothills to the road ruts of the Left Coast.
I suppose there are no legitimate excuses for consciously committing a foolhardy act. I’d wanted to go with the New Year flow, and, so, I consented to load Monterey OS onto my laptop — four days ago.
There aren’t enough words to describe the parade of horribles that ensued within hours of this macabre OS affixing itself to the Apple product in my life.
The disappearance of things that worked, and the emergence of things that didn’t work: there’s a brief start to state how Apple, Inc. has decided to force-shove a future microprocessor at the Consumer. This heavy-handed way of doing business almost makes Mr. Gates look benevolent and . . . charitable!
Doing too much business with the Chi-comms has resulted in an Apple Corporation that deals with the free individual in America like Chairman Mao with his Chinese human beings. Soon, very soon, we will all be sent to re-education camps to learn how the world cannot survive without Apple in charge.
Apple is becoming more and more fascist. We might blame the widow Jobs, or chinless Tim peddling Chinesium, or the entire Silicon Valley blob of snobs. I blame the consumers who bowed to this cadre of digital snoops for more than two decades. The last decade in particular has been loathsome. The tech-titans are a less-than-one-generation wealth-generator; they act as if they invented commerce, and are re-inventing — or, re-imagining — capitalism.
My Dear Husband and dear Webmaster spent the past day and half, returning my laptop to a sane configuration, akin to its former state. I’ve got my L’AUBE files back, after Hubby informed me that placing them into a folder entitled DOCUMENTS was not a wise choice.
The really personal files I put into DOCUMENTS as well. Those bits of intimate bits are now in a folder labeled PRIVATE. And the whole shebang has been sent to the cloud, a step I’d adamantly refused to take. Fear of intrusion has been completely wiped out and replaced by fear of deletion.
And I’ve got my Brave browser back, as well as the fonts&typefaces that I adore, and the darkness of the print on an empty Pages page that permits me to see the letters. We’re working on retrieving those Bookmarks for two separate browsers. It’s a 2-front war.
What I do not have back, and will never get back, because I probably never had it to begin with — is the opinion that Apple, Inc. is cutting-edge, intuitive, the choice for imaginative minds and creative spirits.
This corporation currently operates on the cheap, patching together vast holes in software that used to work just fine. The whiz-bang cutesy-puke programmers create more problems than they solve, and I think it’s on purpose.
The urgent, utterly and cravenly dire economic need for these globalists to flood America with illegal immigrants, along with the legal ones, that source of cheap labor is not the “issue” with a company that got rich from bilking Americans during a time when the youths of this country were struggling to find a way to get through college, and get a job.
The “issue” is the insatiable amount of greed and lust for power that have taken control of marginally moral people in an economic sector that treats humanity as the ultimate replaceable unit. Heartless and soulless, these empty suits must laugh at their i-heart products, and at their smarmy image campaigns that try to convince consumers They Care.
In reality, these moral cretins can’t hold a candle to the dignity and patriotism of the Robber Barons who built America in the 19th century.
Those captains of industry steered their ships toward an America that fought the wars to save democracy in the 20th century. All these corrupt ghouls have given to this century is the wanton and willful destruction of their own nation, and the propping up of evil empires that wish to destroy that nation.
While the sons and daughters of the Elites in Congress feed off of the parasitic piles of cash-for-access and influence peddling, the sons and daughters of the patriots, We the Peons, get to try to figure out a way to forge another day in the paradise of tekkie-collusion to give Americans fewer and fewer choices about just about anything.
The day will come when the brand name Apple will be synonymous with rotten to the core.
New ways of computing and vastly improved commodities are gonna come along in an America that only appears to have lost its moorings. The old Tech-Titans, who pitched their images, and their super-duper transcendent wares, as soooooo cool, so concerned about Society, so in touch with communicating to the commoners and to the cosmos:
Those venal haughty hypocrites will be left in the digital dust, to be known only as the old tired, bitter men of Silicon Valley.
Recessions breed new technologies and new products for those technologies.
Let the capitalistic creating begin!
