Last year, when my school decided that every student needed a laptop of their own, many students bought Macbooks, or they stuck with the familiar and bought Dells. Both laptops were recommended though, but this year, the Macbooks no longer have a spot on the recommended laptops list. This change comes from a lot of work in the computer department of my school, when they need to call in Apple to buy new parts or fix unfamiliar things. They don’t like having to fix and order parts for the Macbooks, and although the problems are mostly the student’s faults, it still has to be done. While I don’t agree with the change, as I bought the laptop from Apple myself and not from the school’s online Apple store and have kept my Macbook in good condition, the change is still going to happen.

Now, I love Apple, so I hope this post comes of some help. One of the reasons that the Macbooks are no longer being recommended (and not even supported) next year is because they say Apple hasn’t been to good with support. While I don’t think believe this to be true, something needs to be changed either way. I have a good feeling the school won’t change their mind, but if Apple does a few things, maybe they can keep support of other schools. Now, the things that need to be done:

Get Things Done Quicker: The school is partly to blame for this, but I’ve noticed it takes way too long to get things fixed. I don’t have any specific examples, but it just takes way too long.

Be A Bit Nicer: When comparing computer companies, such as Dell and Apple, people always say that Dell has great support. While this may be true, as I haven’t gotten to test this myself, I imagine part of it is because Apple either is really nice about it, or refuses to do anything at all. It could depend on whether you have a nice Apple Genius (I had the same one twice, he’s a great guy), if you have had problems before (There is something called the rule of threes with Apple support, which says that if something major happens three times, whether it be different things, Apple just gives you a new one), or if your issue isn’t widespread. When discoloration started appearing on the white Macbooks, Apple ignored it, until enough people complained about it. Same way with the Random Shutdowns that were occuring. If you had an unheard of issue, Apple would simply refuse to help. Also, things also happen to break as soon as your warranty runs out, but that’s true with everything expensive.

Focus On Organizations: While some people may not be happy with this, Apple needs to focus more on organizations such as school or companies. If the support is done as a whole at those places, then it is more important then one person. If they don’t do a good job at a large organization, they could lose a lot of sales.

I doubt Apple, or anyone really important at Apple, will ever read this, but I feel it had to be said. I was annoyed when my school said they would stop recommending Apple laptops, and I’m sure Apple won’t be to happy with it either.

If you have any good or bad stories about Apple support, sound off in the comments.

A while back, I wrote a post about my favorite dashboard widgets. Since then, my needs have changed quite a bit, and I have some new favorites (and some old). So, here they are:

10. Other Tips - Dashboard kickstart, which opens dashboard on login, and dashboard developer mode, which can put widgets on the desktop. Another way to do this is dragging the widget from the bottom, hitting f12, then dropping it. (Taken from my old post, I still use these)

9. People/Business - I featured this one last time, but I still use it a lot. Pretty self-explanatory, helps me find businesses and people close to me whenever I need them. I use this on the family computer, and on the laptop which I bring everywhere too.

8. Weather - Another repeat, I used this one last time. Another self-explanatory one, tells me what I need to know and fast.

7. Flip Clock - Since my sister moved to California for her new job, I need to know what time it is there, and in a nice way. I originally used it for my time zone, but thought it was useless because it was already in the menubar. Another nice widget that does its purpose quickly and beautifully.

6. iSheer - This widget uploads to imageshack.us instantly, and gives you a link to the uploaded image in your clipboard. This means you can just drag it in, wait a couple seconds, and paste it to your friend or somewhere else.

5. Dictionary - When I read and write posts, I often come upon words that I don’t understand, or don’t understand completely but still want to use. I just plug it into the widget and find the definition and history. By going to the thesaurus tab, I can quickly see what alternative words I can use.

4. Transmit Widget - I have a dump folder on my website, and I often upload things to there, but have to open up Transmit first. After looking back on the Transmit site, I came upon this, and loved it. It makes uploading and sharing non-image files really easy.

3. iStat Nano - I used to use iStat Pro, but this new update to iStat nano is really nice. It’s an improvement over the old interface, and looks really nice while giving me the information I want to see. It also has this nice rollover effect, some when you roll over the widget with your mouse, it shows you the screen to give you more detailed information.

2. Junior Mint - I use Mint to track my stats now, and I really love it. I knew of Junior Mint before I got Mint, so I knew to use it. I love seeing how many hits and visits I get a month, day, and in the last hour, every time I refresh Dashboard.

1. Stickies - I never thought I would use this widget, but it’s exactly what I’ve needed for a long time. I have two widgets: To-Do, and To Blog, where I quickly store and delete things I have come across and need to do or blog about. I love being able to edit it easily, and it’s simplicity is its best bonus.

What Dashboard widget is your favorite? Sound off in the comments.

Yesterday, the Shiira Project released a new version of their browser called Shiira. This new version is 2.0, and is a large improvement over the old version, and the 2.0 betas. It is a nice browser, and although a bit unstable, is still really handy and really nicely designed. To show what I like about Shiira 2.0, I decided to make a list of things I like about it, and the things I don’t.

What I Like
Full-screen Mode: My favorite part of Shiira is the ability to have the browser take up the whole window with a handy navigation panel at the bottom. It is an improvement on such abilities on Windows, and looks really nice. I used it to present a website for school once, and it worked great. Click here for a screenshot.

Heads-Up-Display: Another thing I love is how the history and bookmarks are in a Heads-Up-Display, which makes it really easy to view. It also separates it from the real browser, which makes viewing history a lot easier then in Safari (I hate how you have to hope you don’t move your mouse out of the menu when looking in your history in Safari, it’s challenging). Click here for a screenshot.

PageDock: The PageDock, which is located at the bottom of the screen, is basically the tab bar in Safari souped up. It shows a preview of the page, the name, allows you to close a tab and add a new one really easily. Click here for a screenshot.

Tab Exposé: As I was writing up this review, I saw a little button that I never clicked before. When I did, I was pretty amazed. Like Exposé, which shows all the windows on your desktop smaller, next to eachother, and dims the background to make it easier to focus on the foreground, Tab Exposé shows all the pages in the browser in the same way that Expose does. Click here for a screenshot.

What I Don’t Like
Importing Bookmarks: I tried to import my bookmarks from Safari, by using the bookmarks bar from Safari, and dragging them to Shiira’s bookmarks bar. But, as you probably imagine, that didn’t work. I don’t see a way to do it, and it doesn’t include a menu option to import bookmarks.
Edit: Okay, I figured it out. If you enable Safari bookmarks in the prefences, go to the shelf, and drag them into the folder Bookmarks Bar (with the icon). Then, move one of those around, or do something within the folder Bookmarks Bar, and it should refresh itself. If it does that, it works.
Edit 2: Nevermind, when I quit and restarted, it cleared the bookmarks bar. It seems to not be writing the preferences.

Can’t Change Download Folder: This will probably get fixed in the next release, but while there is an option to change the download folder, but it isn’t enabled. This means that it always downloads to the Desktop, which bugs me, because I use this tip from Deskpopp (I did it already, but they already wrote about it, so I’ll just link to them). I hope they change this soon.

Overall Bugginess: This is always in this browser, and if it wasn’t buggy, much more people would use it. This occurred in the betas, and although people would think it would be fixed by the final release of 2.0, it wasn’t. It crashes a lot, some things don’t work. I may submit bug reports eventually, and I encourage you to submit bug reports too.

Beauty
Besides all that, isn’t it just beautiful?

Even though it’s a great browser, and has been making progress, I’m sticking with Safari. I’m used to it, and I just like how it works. I can’t judge for you though, so download it yourself, and sound off in the comments on what you think. Anyway, I hoped you like this (my first!) review.

PS: If anyone was wondering why the GUI looks different, I’m using this theme, with Shapeshifter.

Yesterday, while looking in the staff section of MacApper, I found the blog of Joseph, and was pretty happy that I came upon it. It’s a cool blog, with a nice theme, and it linked me to something really cool. The thing that I found was Random Shapes.

Before I explain what it is, I’ll give a little back story: I was also looking at blogs of some teens with large numbers of readers, such as Glenn Wolsey and Paul Stamatiou, and found that they were in a blogging network called 9rules. I was interested in it, but I figured that my blog wasn’t up there to join it, even though it would help me get readers. So, I stopped looking, and went to MacApper to check out what their new post was. I look in the staff section, and that’s where I found Joseph’s blog.

Back to Random Shapes. Random Shapes is another blogging network, like 9rules, but has one major difference. That difference is the blogging network is for teens. Joseph, like myself, is a young teen blogger, but he has a bit more following, because he has more links to his blog (like MacApper, where I found it). I figured that it would be a good thing to try and make it in, because it wouldn’t be as hard as 9rules, but may still be hard.

But, if any Random Shapes people are reading this, I would love to say that I really want to join, and that a blogging network for teens is both a great idea and a great thing.

If I make it in, I’ll be sure to edit this post.

I wrote something about MacApper yesterday, on a tone that wasn’t too nice. But, today, MacApper is doing something a lot better. They are having a Switcher’s Giveaway, and you can win a ton of new apps. The apps are listed in the post, and some are amazing. I have some already, because I bought the Macheist Bundle, but they’re really nice. The catch is you have to email them telling your switching story. I’m going to be preparing mine, and it’ll only get better if more people send in their tales. Send in your emails by 11:59PM EDT on Monday, April 30th.

Check it out!

Recently (meaning today), MacApper wrote an exclusive review of the yet to be released app Coda, made by Panic. Without going into the details of the app, although it is really cool, I feel that MacApper shouldn’t have written the review. First, they shouldn’t have the app at all, it was sent in from an anonymous beta tester. Second, they wanted to get more readers as they are new, and also wanted to have a nice exclusive review. They did get dugg, so that helps, but that means more people have seen the screenshots and have heard about the review. Panic emailed the writer of the post, Miles Evans, to remove the screenshots, but they were mirrored because someone at Digg kept them saved. This means that what Panic tried to do, hide the leak, failed. Another thing is that Panic is approaching its 10 year anniversary on Monday, which is when the app was supposed to be released.

All my feelings on this: Although Miles says he thought it was okay, he should of removed it completely, even though people probably saved it. He also knew it was unreleased, so shouldn’t of wrote about it, and certainly taken screenshots. Although he says Panic isn’t angry, I bet they are annoyed. But, one thing I learned is that Miles is good at making excuses.

PS: Happy 10th Anniversary, Panic!

I’ve decided that I’m going to be a lot more secretive and private than I have been. That means that all those times I put too much info on websites is going to end. I have taken some measures already, such as making my whois information private (I once got a peice of mail about my website, it was creepy), and removing age, state, and other contact info from everywhere I can.

I have been too lenient on it, and although there has been warnings and suggestions to do something like this, I figure it’s a good idea. My name will always be public, and one important piece of contact info is my username on many websites, is able to be found.

Anyway, it’ll be fun being anonymous.

I got a new theme, because fixing the over one’s bugs constantly really annoyed me. This theme is called foliage, and I modded in a bunch of ways. I’m not completely done, but all I need to do is get the Flickr Badge plugin all the way at the bottom to work right.

Anyway, I hope you like this.

I also bought the Lumix, so it should come soon.

I don’t have my nice Sony camera that I love(d) anymore. I had a Black Sony DSC-T50, which although pricier than other cameras, I loved the touchscreen and overall style. Because I don’t have that anymore, I have been trying to find a replacement camera, one that’s cheaper, but not too bad that the shots are low quality. I came across this post, and I was pretty amazed. It comes in Black, has similar capabilities, and is cheaper. It has some things that I really like, such as better image-stabilization and long exposure abilities (I’ve always wanted to light paint), but it doesn’t have that same look, and has a big lens that doesn’t zoom much further than the Sony did.

I need a camera, I know that, but I have come here for help. I am wondering if I should save up to buy the Sony again, here are the specs, or should I buy the Lumix, here are the specs, sooner? I don’t really get what all the options mean, I just know the Sony is better in everything except one ISO option and the ability to take a really long exposure. I could always do that with my sister’s old SLR that I’m using.

So, I’ve decided to embed some external poll inside here, so people can vote without having to leave comments. If you have any information on the cameras or further suggestions or insight, please comment. Thanks.

[poll=2]