Psystar made a huge splash on the interwebs yesterday by introducing the OpenMac (later renamed “Open Computer” when they realized how badly that would piss off Apple.) The Open is essentially a white box Intel-based computer that can run unmodified OS X Leopard kernels, and can even be ordered with Leopard preinstalled. The computer’s specs match a high-end MacPro pretty closely, but with a base price of $399 (sans OS). Wow! Even with the OS installed (another $155) it’s cheaper than the base Mac mini.

They also sell a higher end machine, the OpenPro, which can be configured with up to 8GB of RAM and 2.6GHz Core2 Quad processors. That one starts at $999, but can go all the way to $2,169 if you check all the boxes. That’s still a far cry from a similarly equipped MacPro.

I think this is a great idea; Apple has a huge untapped market that will not buy or even try the Mac OS because it’s always tied to Apple’s hardware, which in some comparisons appears overpriced. Actually, if you compare apples to apples (pun intended) Apple hardware isn’t that much more expensive than comparable high-end WinTel gear. But the problem is that Apple’s hardware lineup has a huge hole in it that Apple should’ve filled long ago; there is a staggering price difference between the iMac and the MacPro that could be filled with a mid-priced machine with no monitor and a wider range of upgrade options. As it is you’ve got the iMac — which is a great machine, don’t get me wrong — but many PC heads bristle at the thought of an integrated monitor, and they bristle at the thought of the limited upgrade options of the mini. The next option would naturally be the MacPro, but the base price for one is a staggering $2,799. You would think a natural middle ground would be to build a mini-tower, powered like the iMac but sporting three or four PCI slots for upgrades, and room for two or three hard drives and maybe a couple of optical drives. It really wouldn’t be that difficult to pull off, but it would definitely cut into the MacPro sales figures. And the iMac. And the mini. But who cares? They’d be selling computers to people who would otherwise not even consider a Mac.

So, the natural progression here is for a third party to step in and build what Apple will not. That’s where Psystar comes in. And it looks like they have what could be a winner, but their entry starts the race with a huge millstone around it’s neck; Apple’s end user licensing agreement (EULA). Apple’s EULA specifically prohibits running Apple’s OS on anything but Apple’s hardware; you must agree to the EULA before the OS can be installed. That’s a big catch, and considering Steve Jobs’ view on Mac clones, not one that will change anytime soon. So I’m absolutely certain that Psystar has been kept busy with Apple’s legal team for the last 24 hours. Very busy.

I tried to find out what I could about the company, and there really isn’t much out there via a Google search other than what has been published after their Open Computer announcement. Not sure if it’s a new outfit or what. Yesterday the company listed their address as 10645 SW 112th St, Miami, FL, which looks an awful lot like a residential area in Google Maps. But today there is a new address; 10481 NW 28th St, Miami, FL; if you look up that address up in Google Maps, it looks more like light industrial/office. Not sure if that change is comforting or not.

Today’s news says that indeed, Psystar has been dealing with Apple Legal, and they intend to fight. Not sure how far that will go, but it sounds like they are going to proceed with selling computers and the OS package. And they’re being feisty about the upcoming legal battle, citing antitrust violations built into that EULA and charging that Apple marks up their hardware 80 percent. I don’t know how far they’ll get with arguments like that, but I do know they’ve got one heck of an uphill battle ahead of them.

I’m not sure if it was a good idea or not, but last night I went ahead & ordered an Open Computer for work — base machine with Leopard installed for $588 (of the boss’ money!) shipped. We’re in need of updating a few Macs in Prepress anyway, and I figure even if this doesn’t work out, we also need to replace some older PC’s, so I can install Windows on the box and use it elsewhere on the network. And the copy of Leopard won’t go to waste either; I can install that on one of the Macs. $155 is about $30 high for Leopard, but $399 is pretty cheap for a WinTel box spec’d like the Open. So if nothing else, it ought to prove to be a fun experiment.

Now the big question is, will my machine ever ship. And if it ships, how long before I hear from Apple Legal. Time will tell, and I’ll keep posting updates.

My Mom, bless her soul, was a true packrat. She saved everything. Maybe it was that she grew up during the Great Depression (if so, what’s my excuse?)… No matter; I’m grateful for some of the things she saved and was able to pass along to me. One of them is a packet of stuff from my time in Romper Room.

Romper, bomper, stomper boo.
Tell me, tell me, tell me, do.
Magic mirror, tell me today.
Have all my friends had fun at play?

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This stuff is a true Dutch delicacy, and a rare one here in the States. I’d never heard of them before my introduction to Dutch ways after meeting my wife’s family. They look like the standard candy sprinkles you might find on a doughnut or a cake or whatever, but they certainly don’t taste the same. They’re called “hagelslag” or “muisjes”, the latter referring to their resemblance to little mice. To me they look more like mouse turds; that coupled with the way muisjes is pronounced (sounded like my-sheets to me) made me laugh out loud! Guess you had to be there.

The way to eat hagelslag is pretty straightforward; butter some toast, sprinkle it on & enjoy. Oh, one other thing; you’ve also got to lick the stragglers off your plate, Queen Beatrix has even approved this method.

We’re fortunate to have close relatives living in Holland, so we’re able to get resupplied semi-regularly. I haven’t found any local sources for buying hagelslag, but there are some online retailers that sell it.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m spoiled by the Mac OS, and making a screenshot on the Mac is just one of many places where the Mac shines and the PC… um… doesn’t. For just about forever on the Mac, to take a screenshot of what’s in front of you, all you’d need to do is hit Shift-Command-3; you hear a little camera click noise, and you get a file on your desktop. Neat. And. Tidy.

To get just a shot of a selected area, it’s Shift-Command-4; the cursor turns into a target shape that you can drag over the area you want to get a shot of, you hear the camera click, and you get the nifty .png file on your desktop. To get just a window is a little less intuitive, but once you know the trick it’s still dead easy — Shift-Command-4, then tap the Spacebar; the cursor turns into a little camera and any window your mouse hovers over is highlighted. If you can see the edge of a window that’s obscured by another window, you get a shot of the window you clicked on.

In the current flavor of OS X the file you get is a .png named “Picture 1.png”, which can be emailed to just about any computer user on the planet and they can open it. The little .png files that end up on your desktop can be opened in Preview and saved out in a different file format if you like, or placed in or copied & pasted into or imported into most any application you like for more flexibility. Or you can just rename it and save it somewhere on your drive for future reference.

And then there’s Windows. In my new role at work, I’m spending a lot more time in Windows XP (I even have an XP machine on my desk! Gasp!), and I’m learning some of the stuff I can do in my sleep on the Mac isn’t so easy on the PC. Getting a decent screenshot in Windows… it’s a little more involved. First you hit the Print Screen button, which copies the contents of your screen to your clipboard. Of course there’s no feedback whatsoever to tell you that anything has happened when you hit that button, but… Since you really can’t do anything with it sitting on your clipboard you first have to open a graphics or desktop publishing program, then paste the clipboard into and save it to a file from there.

Copying the current window to the clipboard is even less intuitive than the Mac; press Alt-PrintScreen (Alt-PrtSc) on the keyboard, then jump through the same hoops as before.

I was on the phone with a tech support guy earlier today — on the PC — and needed to send him screenshots of three windows. That’s what spurred the inquiry into figuring out what it takes to get a shot of just a window, because with just the PrintScreen-paste-save trick I ended up with three 2.5MB files. I ended up bringing them over to the Mac, opening them in Photoshop (Preview would work also), cropping them down and saving out to jpeg format. Bleah. Took way too long. And that was after trying to crop the images down in Paint before saving them. It all helps me understand why Windows users tend to just click and send anything with little regard to file sizes; it’s just too much hassle to do anything about it.

You know, looking back at this post, it looks like I’m comparing apples to apples from a UI standpoint; the shortcuts for getting a snapshot of a desktop or a window aren’t terribly intuitive for the new user either way. Windows seems less intuitive for me, probably because I’ve spent most of my working life in front of a Mac. But I think there’s more to it than that; first, when you take a screenshot on a Mac, you get audible feedback — the camera click — then you get a file, which can be dealt with on its own. If you really want to bring that photo into a separate app, you can, but you don’t have to.

And on Windows, the button to use is Print Screen, or PrintScreen, or PrtScrn, or whatever manglish the keyboard manufacturer could come up with. But I don’t want to print the screen; I want a screenshot of it! That’s about as far from intuitive as you can get. Sure there are other 3rd party apps available to make it easier (none of which I found today were free) but Apple proves that you don’t have to hunt something down to do a job like that. Heck, Apple even gives every OS X user a copy of Grab that gives you even more options for taking snapshots. For free.

Ok, I’m done complaining. But even through all the complaining I can still be thankful; thankful that I have a PC on my desk to make me appreciate the Mac all the more. And thankful more that I still have a Mac on my desk!

So today is March 31. It’s supposed to be springtime, and it’s supposed to be nice outside. But instead we wake up to a couple of inches of fresh snow on the ground, and more to come throughout the day. Expecting about 6 inches total.

And I think I figured out who is to blame: It’s those durned treehuggers who pushed the stupid EarthHour thing last Saturday. It must’ve worked a lot better than they thought!

Here’s a great site — Common Errors in English — with an accompanying book by the same title. It is great; covers all of the biggies that drive me up a wall, like the oh-so common I/me gaffe, there/they’re/their, it/it’s, and a lot/alot more!

But the thing that really made me sit up and pay attention is that they included the MAC/Mac thing that so very many people screw up and drives me so very crazy.

So very helpful. Definitely something I will use and recommend.

He is risen!
He is risen indeed!

Following the statement about Christ’s crucifixion, death and burial, the Apostle’s Creed says that he then descended into Hell. This is all that is said about the day between Black Friday and Resurrection Sunday. But some churches and some variations of the Apostle’s Creed don’t include that line at all, leaving us to wonder what Jesus was up to on the day in between.

The cynic might say he did nothing. After all, he was dead.

For the Evangelical Christian, this line raises questions. For us, Hell is the place of eternal punishment for those who reject God’s forgiveness, so why did Jesus go there? The Catholic Church Catechism says that the second day was spent “in the realm of the dead prior to his resurrection… … that Jesus, like all men, experienced death and in his soul joined the others in the realm of the dead. But he descended there as Savior, proclaiming the Good News to the spirits imprisoned there.”

Early teachings refer to hell — Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek — as the abode of the dead where they await the Redeemer. According to the Catechism, that is the case for all who die, righteous and unrighteous alike. Jesus descended into hell to free the righteous; not to deliver the damned nor to destroy the place of punishment that is reserved for them.

Other teachings say that Jesus went to the place of the dead to give those who died before the Messiah appeared a chance to believe in Jesus as the Christ and redeemer of their sins.

I don’t know what the truth of the matter is. It’s likely one of those things that God intentionally left vague in the scriptures because it makes no significant difference to our salvation. It was Saturday, the traditional Jewish Sabbath, so my guess is that cynic is partly right; Jesus took the day off for a well deserved Sabbath rest.

Today is Good Friday. Not sure why it’s called “Good”, as it’s marks the day that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was brutally tortured and killed. The day that he suffered in our stead. The Creator of the Universe had humbled himself and took on flesh, lived a sinless life among sinful people, and died the horrible death that we — not he — deserve.

Black Friday is more like it. Black as the sky at noon on that horrible day. Matthew 27:45-47

When his blood had been spilled and he had breathed his last, the soldiers stuck a spear in his side to make sure he was dead. When he was pulled down from the cross, a disciple named Joseph from Arimathea placed Jesus’ body in his own tomb, and a large stone was placed in front of the tomb. The hypocrites, afraid of funny business, talked Pilate into placing guards at the tomb. Matthew 27:57-66.

They thought that would be the end of this Jesus thing, but they thought wrong. It’s Friday. But Sunday’s coming!

Dodge has officially revealed the 2009 Challenger, and dang is it hot. The only thing it’s missing is that lovely Mopar purple paint job that reminds me so much of the Mopar musclecars from the ’60’s.

To remedy that, we now have Photoshop and the Replace Color… function.

Now idn’t dat purty? I likes it.

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