Vancouver View Magazine Article by Buzz Bishop – May 2007

Rebecca’s dad brought home her family’s first PC in 1989.

“We played Spacewars and basked in the orange glow of the monitor,” she remembers.

Over the next 18 years as she moved from MS-DOS to Windows3.1 to Windows 95 to Windows 98 to Windows XP she learned all things Microsoft. Have a problem with your PC? Rebecca claims she can solve it “with my hands tied behind my back.”

Then came a day this March when her Microsoft made world crumbled – she bought a MacBook after much goading from her friends and colleagues.

“Attending various social media conferences around Vancouver I’m always the outcast either being a) the only one with a notepad and paper, or b) the only one who doesn’t have a Mac laptop or a Mac at home,“ says Rebecca, better known online as Miss 604, a popular Vancouver blogger and podcaster.

Even her husband, John, is a member of the Mac Nation. As a child, when asked to draw an apple in class, he would draw the Apple logo, not the fruit. So perhaps the question isn’t why did Rebecca make the iSwitch, but how did she hold out for so long?

I mean, John’s family has a first edition Macintosh with all the signatures of every Apple employee on the inside!

“Yes, you could say I married into Mac,” she finally admits.

So there it is, sitting on her kitchen table. A glistening white MacBook. Crisp and clean and ready to play. And it’s totally comfortable in the kitchen. The MacBook travels well, unlike the big beast of a PC, or “Frankenbox” as Rebecca calls it, dominating her home’s office furniture. Her PC is “an ugly beige tower pieced together with miscellaneous parts that sounds like a harbour plane taking off when it boots up.”

And that description of the ol’ PC rings true with a lot of us.

Business Week Magazine reported last year that close to half a million new Mac owners were expected through sales at Apple retail stores alone. Add in those who buy units second hand, online or through authorized resellers and you’ve got a population surge that is making some noise.

But the iSwitch isn’t always smooth. It’s like learning a new language, it takes time and practice.

Even for a pro like Rebecca, the changes were still hard to deal with. “Being somewhat of a control freak and knowing FAR too much about Windows systems I really didn’t have too much fun during the adjustment period, which lasted about a week.”

“I’ve been used to having a certain file management system – iPhoto has completely turned this upside down and although I should be feeling free of my shackles, it just annoys me. ‘It’s photo management, not file management,’ says my husband.”

But in the end, the ease of use wins out.

“When things are this simple they just blow my mind,” she remarks. “Not to mention everything is just so sleek.”

Yes, the sex appeal of the Mac is very seductive. It’s the cool, good looking person in the bar that must be too good for you, has to be too good for you, but when you get over the intimidation and walk over and finally say “Hello”, you’re pleasantly surprised how friendly and down to earth they are.

Rebecca took the plunge, introduced herself to the Mac and now lives by a new mantra:

“You can do everything on a Mac that you can do on a PC, it’s just easier and looks better.”

“It’s just that “easier” part that I’m still adjusting to.”

You catch Rebecca’s new Mac-made blogs at Miss604.com

He’s at it again! DaveO takes his Canucks Outsider podcast live and streaming again for tonight’s game.

TODAY May 1, 2007 from 7:15p.m. Pacific until the end of the game for a live Canucks Outsider Videocast during Game 4 of the Canucks / Anahem Ducks series!

During the video cast we’d love to hear from you as follows:

* IRC: #canucks-outsider on irc.freenode.net

* ustream chat: ustream.tv/canucksoutsider (requires Java)

* skype to northvandave

John and I will be present tonight so log on to the live chat and stream to interact with us while we all cheer on our Canucks.

*Update: The stream went well, too bad the game didn’t end in our favour. Dan Lilly actually caught some of the excitement at GM Place before the puck dropped – ahhh less desperate times… we’ll get’em in game 5 though right?…. Right?

A few of my photos from the live stream tonight are up on my Flickr.

Yesterday after signing into my personalized Google homepage I noticed the Google logo to the left of the search bar changed to “iGoogle”. Now I think this pertains to the Firefox iGoogle plugin but could it also have something to do with the new themes being offered.

Today we’re releasing six themes for the personalized homepage that try to solve these challenges: a city, a teahouse (super cute — this one is my favorite), a winter scene, a sky, a beach and a bus stop [Google Blog]

I really hadn’t noticed this new feature until yesterday although if I poke around the net there’s even a digg from 2005 talking about iGoogle. Regardless, I just selected the lovely “Beach” theme and discovered the following as well.

All of our themes are dynamic: they change with your own local time of day, current weather conditions or season. If you add the beach theme, for example (changes with time of day), it will ask you for your Zip code and adjust itself to match your local sunrise and sunset times. [Google Blog]

It’s a cute idea and it does spice up your Google homepage, but I’m not super excited about it. I suppose I’ll have to track the sun on my beach scape theme today and see how it grows on me.

The air is crisp and warm, the view of the mountains is spectacular, and I just rolled out of bed on the right side. I start my new job this morning and I’m hoping this momentum continues throughout the day (given the dismal end to the evening last night).

Tanya, Me, Jenny – Taken with Tanya’s Camera

We were in Surrey yesterday for my nephew’s birthday followed by the hockey game, it also gave me a chance to prep something for tomorrow’s WTS – “What the Surrey” post. If you missed it last week, this is a new weekly feature on Miss604.com filled with trivia, history, pictures and hopefully some good times. So tune in tomorrow to make your guess at the weekly question and if you are interested in sponsoring WTS so that there can be fabulous prizes to be won, just drop me a line via the Contact Form.

There was also much discussion yesterday about Crackbook and it wasn’t long after our visit that Tanya had posted a photo (above), tagged with Jenny’s name and mine, up on her profile page.

I must admit though, the only group in which I’m even somewhat active on Facebook is the Bourton T Sheep Fan Club.

Bourton, or Bourty as he is known to his friends, was born and raised in Bourton-on-the-water, England. He immigrated to Canada after being adopted by Jenny Miles and Tanya Todd in March of 2007. So far he has traveled from England, to Wales, Toronto, Vancouver, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Mexico. He loves to travel and is a world class party animal. Stay tuned for updated pics and adventures.

Bourty really gets around, but make sure wherever Bourty goes, whomever he’s with, you snap a photo and post it to the group for all to share – and may the Facebook mayhem continue.

Right now John and I are sharing his digital camera. Anything we take on our cell phones is easily Bluetooth-ed to our respective computers but any photos taken on the same camera can prove to be an issue. When it up to my computer I don’t really want all his 20 pictures, I just want my 5. The problem is, iPhoto wants to just import everything, I cannot choose what I want to import, as I could easily do with my Windows PC.

So before I start cursing at iPhoto – is there any way you can pick and chose the items you want to import off your digital camera instead of always doing an “import all”??

Update: Thanks to John Biehler, I have now discovered the beauty and freedom of Image Capture. Soon enough I’ll learn my lesson – Macs aren’t dumb and they know what they’re doing, I just don’t know everything about them… yet 😛