Thursday, January 15, 2009

Luddite



Here in this day of blogs and Twitters and feeds and flash drives (no idea what that has to do with anything but I kind of blew out all my web-speak early there), I would like to think that we can still rely on each other as humans to help each other out in our times of need. There's been a few nagging issues I have been dealing with recently and I hope someone, anyone can help me.

1. I can't use my Macbook. Seriously, user intuition my ass. I have had a Macbook for two months now. So far, I can look at the internet and play songs on iTunes. And I found the calculator. That's it. I don't understand it. Everyone tells me it's so simple and user friendly. Apparently all those years of non-user friendly PCs have rewired my brain to the point where I cannot compute very simple, basic things. I have DVDs that I burned on a PC. Now when I try to import the DVDs (.AVI files) to my computer, nothing. Try to watch them? Nothing. I don't know where anything goes once I download it. I have to keep some programs open because once I close them, they disappear and it takes me half an hour to find them. I did change the wallpaper. I can't even bookmark pages. I'm not this stupid, am I? I'm moderately computer literate. My Macbook makes me think that they made these laptops with rounded edges so I don't stick the corner of it into my eye accidentally. I'm down to using my Blackberry for all communications because the Macbook has won and I have surrendered and now it just sits there with a tiny throbbing white light that taunts me and reminds me about how it's smarter than me.

2. I want the Night Court theme song as my ringtone. I used to work for a company that made and sold ringtones (I've had a lot of jobs, folks) but now that I don't have that hookup, I am at a loss as to how to do something like make the theme from Night Court my default ringtone. I'm sure it's totally something you can do on a Macbook in two seconds. Unless you're as inept as me.

3. How do you get wireless internet service if you don't have a landline, cable or a wireless card from a cell provider? I think b***54 has caught onto me and turns his/her router off whenever it's not in use. I need the internet since Safari is the only Mac program I even remotely understand.

4. Does anyone know how well a Jailbroken/unlocked iPhone works on T-Mobile with their Blackberry unlimited data/3G plan? It will be a cold day in cell phone hell when I give AT&T another dime of my money. Provided I have the 2.1 or earlier software, is it true that I would have to re-unlock the phone after each update or each time I added an app?

Phew! That's enough for now. All this hunting and pecking that I have done to post this entry based on my crayon-on-construction paper notes has really worn me out. I'm going to go fire up my Model-T and call it a day.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/avidivx.html:

"Probably the easiest way to play AVI and DivX files on Mac OS X is to download and install the freeware player VLC Media Player for OS X. VLC is also often referred to by its original name, VideoLAN Client."

Alternately, you could use a client like OJOsoft video converter (http://www.ojosoft.com/) to convert your AVIs to MOVs.

If I were you, I'd set up a dual boot Windows-for-Mac/Mac system, where you can have all of both worlds whenever you choose; consult your IT friends or Mac store.

Ultimately, though, in the same way that the Kindle is primarily not an "electronic text reader" but rather first a wireless portal for marketing and driving the purchase of impulse content and only secondarily a device for consuming in a highly Amazon-limited manner that Amazon-purchased content, Mac's largely closed proprietary universe is primarily designed to cultivate, husband, and harvest the ready herd of Mac devotees who have no problem living their lives essentially as proprietarily-bound biological extensions of the Macworld systems matrix.

OTOH, all the cool kids use Macs, so there's that.

Anonymous said...

Don't say I never did anything for you (and thanks a lot for getting this stuck in my head all day!)

http://www.televisiontunes.com/Night_Court.html

nerver said...

I made the transition from PC to Mac too. It was weird at first but I love it now. If you want, we can totally meet up with our Macs and go over stuff. I promise I don't even know how to speak in tech terms so it'll be all layman's. - merritt

ps. i realize i'm late in reading this, so if you've not hit up the Mac peeps. and i have an expert for anything i can't answer. :)