Tag: imac

When did you get your first computer?

When did you get your first computer? by kOoLiNuSkOoLiNuS (/home/kOoLiNuS)

Do you have a child? How soon and in what forms did you let him/her play with smartphones and tablets?

When did you get your first computer?

When did you get your first computer? by kOoLiNuSkOoLiNuS (/home/kOoLiNuS)

Do you have a child? How soon and in what forms did you let him/her play with smartphones and tablets?

I got my first computer in 1980 when I was 14 years old. I had begged my father for a computer for my birthday, and he bought me a brand new Commodore VIC-20. It was one of the most popular machines of its time. I loved that thing and spent many hours learning BASIC and programming my games. My grades dropped because I was so focused on using that computer. My father had to take the computer away until my grades improved.

When the first child got a computer when they were just a few years old, it was an old Windows PC running Windows 98. I installed a few simple games allowing them to make things happen. When they were older, I bought an iMac for the entire family to use.

But their very first personal computer was my old iPad two which I presented on their 11th birthday, followed by an iPhone when they started high school.

My nephews are much younger than my kids and started using these devices much sooner; elementary school. I think that was a mistake. They can’t function without them. Going out to dinner, I see my sister-in-law struggle to keep them focused on the meal or even just casual conversation.

Treasures!

These are the things I treasure. My iPad allows me to create the newspaper of my choosing. It's also a mobile photography studio. I can use apps like Adobe Lightroom Mobile and Photogene to edit my photos while sitting in a cafe after a long photo walk. My iPhone is my mobile office. As a consultant, apps like Freshbooks and Tempo allow me to conduct business from anywhere.

My Moleskine note book keeps me sane. While writing apps like Byword are useful I find putting mechanical pencil to the Moleskine helps me clarify my thoughts.

The iMac is where I set to do the bulk of my photo editing and blogging. Of course, I need music. Streaming trance music over my Harmon Kardon bluetooth headphones calms the jumble in my mind and helps me focus on the task at hand.

Treasures. All of them.

Anyone else having OS X 10.9 issues?

I’m not having a good experience with Mavericks on my 2008 iMac. I think the upgrade messed up my keychain in some way. Mail, Contacts and Calendar (my Google account) no longer sync — I’m constantly prompted to enter passwords over and over again. Removing the account and adding them back doesn't resolve the issue. Since my contacts and calendar are hosted by Google I don’t have access to them locally.

Facebook, Twitter, Flickr integration are also not working. I've removed them from the "Internet Accounts" panel in System Settings but the system won't let me add them back.

The iCloud Keychain won’t activate at all. I get an error message that my Mac failed to contact the iCloud server. Sigh!

What's annoying is that everything works fine from my wife's 2013 MacBook Air. I don't have any problems using any of the new features from my account on that MacBook.

In the mean time, I have switched to using AirMail and I may also switch my contact over to Cobook. AirMail takes a while to start-up but once it gets going it does a great job. I especially like that I can attach documents directly from cloud services like Dropbox and Google Drive. Cobook also has an iOS version. I like that close integration.

Anyone else having OS X 10.9 issues?