I didn't really plan it this way, but I've experienced a whirlwind of technology upgrades in the past couple of weeks. Two Saturdays ago, I upgraded my HP laptop to the just released Xubuntu 12.04 and last week, I acquired a second hand MacBook Pro running the latest Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion".
Two weeks ago, I had no idea either upgrade was in my near future, but I do tend to take things as they come. My aging G5 iMac and G4 Powerbook are both running outdated versions of Mac OS X and aren't capable of upgrading past version 10.5, I'd pretty much written off the idea of moving up until I had enough spare change to invest in one of the newer (well, not that new since they've been around since 2005 or so) Intel-based Macs.
Upgrades for Linux distributions come so frequently and are usually such a pain to install, that I had decided to wait until support for the version I was running (11.10) had ended. Besides, I had just installed Xubuntu 11.10 when it came out last fall and had just gotten everything where I was happy with it. In my previous experience, upgrading a Linux distribution meant erasing the hard drive and starting over from scratch. This is something I was in no hurry to do.
One thing I've grown quite accustomed to with any Linux distro I've used is the frequent software update notifications. When I was checking my e-mail before going to bed one recent Friday night, I was not at all surprised when one popped up on the menu bar. What I wasn't prepared for was the large button waiting for me when I opened the dialog box, inviting me to click it and upgrade my OS. I was reluctant at first, but eventually, like Alice with the cake that said "eat me" and the bottle that said "drink me," I let curiosity get the better of me and I clicked it.
After clicking through a seemingly endless dialog boxes designed to make absotively, posilutely sure I wanted to go through with the upgrade, the download began and I went to bed. I figured when I woke up in the morning the whole process would be done or I would have to click a couple more 'okay' buttons to make the installation happen.
As it turned out, the latter scenario was more nearly correct, but I had to wait a little longer for the download to finish since it had stopped when the computer went into sleep mode shortly after I did the night before. It took about two hours for the download and the subsequent installation to finish, but once the computer restarted itself, booting into Xutbuntu 10.4, it was almost like nothing had changed. All my settings and accounts were intact, just like I'd left them, but the operating system and most of the software applications had been upgraded to the newest versions available. It was, by far, the smoothest OS upgrade I had experienced on any platform.
The second of my back-to-back upgrades came just a week later when I sold a pair of old military sunglasses on eBay for almost enough to cover the cost of a newer Mac. Although I have always kept a desktop Mac as my primary computer ever since graduate school more than 20 years ago, I have in recent years begun using my laptops almost exclusively with the iMac acting mainly as a print server and disc burning station.
After reading a news report speculating that Apple was on the verge of discontinuing the 17-inch MacBook Pro because of low demand, I decided to price them on eBay and compare them with the 15-inch models. I was amazed to discover that the price difference on used models in the two screen sizes was almost negligible. That was good news for me because while I find my PowerBook's 15-inch screen adequate, I prefer the more spacious 17-inch screen on my iMac. It didn't take me long to find a good deal on a 17-inch model, which could effectively replace both the iMac and the PowerBook as my primary computer.
But getting used to Lion, as the latest version of Mac OS X is nicknamed, took a little effort. There are a lot of subtle differences that made navigation--at least at first--a little difficult, not the least of which is the lack of arrows on the scroll bars!
Really! No arrows? It seems that Apple, in its infinite wisdom, decided we didn't need them anymore. This seems like the same mindset that for years kept Mac users stuck with a single mouse button and a ctrl-click to mimic a right click. Instead, they've given us a two-fingered mouse gesture on the track pad that will achieve the precise scrolling formerly offered by the arrows. As with single-button mice, there is also the option of a third-party mouse with a scroll wheel.
If that weren't enough, the very act of scrolling was made more difficult by reversing its direction, meaning you have to scroll 'down' in order to go 'up' to the top of the screen and vice versa. Okay, I know Apple's marketing slogan a few years ago was "Think Different" but that doesn't mean you have to think stupid. Fortunately, this little feature, along with the elimination of desktop icons to represented mounted hard drives, flash drives, optical discs, and network drives, were easily remedied by making a few clicks in the System Preferences.
Either way, it's nice having new toys.
