Apple, welcome to the mainstream

If you'd asked me ten years or so ago what I thought about Apple computers, my response might have been along the lines of "Hmm, they're the computers that people use for desktop publishing and graphic design - people more interested in pretty colours than practical things."

Around the same time, the company that I was working for had developed a new e-commerce website and faced the challenging proposition of ensuring the HTML and CSS styling would not look bad on a range of browsers.  As I wasn't directly involved in that particular project the main issue that I can recall hearing about was that some content didn't look right on MacBook laptops.  Sure enough the CEO of the company was using that particular setup - I'm guessing that less than two percent of the site's potential customers were in the same situation.

Fast forward to the present day and I find myself typing this blog entry on an Apple laptop, listening to music from an Apple phone, procrastinating further after watching a movie via an Apple TV, wondering whether I should ask my housemate to get her own keyboard so that I can make use of my Mac Mini, which might prompt me to clear some space on the desk for the speaker system for the iPad.

Then there's the day job where I am a little envious of the other people in my office receiving shiny new Apple kit, while my team stays on our Linux desktop setup.

Time to focus

I did a tally up a week or so ago and realised that I am part way through reading at least eight books.

It hasn't stopped me from buying more books, but it might be worth allowing more time to finish them.  Luckily BBC IPlayer is misbehaving on my PC, so I should be spending less time watching shows on my computer.

Every time the application is restarted the list of videos downloaded or coming soon shows up as being empty.  Deleting the content from the repository on my hard drive and effectively starting over seems to be the only way to get it to function again.

e-book digital download more expensive than paperback

On two recent occasions when I have been looking to purchase a new book online, I have noticed that the Kindle edition has been more expensive than the equivalent paperback edition.

I felt sure it must be far cheaper to produce the digital download than the physical paper book.

It turns out that value added tax applies on ebooks that does not apply on the physical version.