Last week, my wife and I took the leap and cancelled the video service portion of our FiOs service. We had many reasons for doing this, the main reason being to cut our monthly costs. We are planning on relying on Netflix, Hulu, various network websites, over the air tv, and iTunes for our entertainment needs. In our living room we have an Apple TV, Xbox 360, iMac, internet connected Blu-ray player, and a crappy antenna all connected to our TV. So far it has been an adventure, I’d like to take a minute to briefly share a few thoughts on our experience so far.
One of the biggest hassles has been figuring out what programming is available where, when it is available, and for how long it is available. Luckily I had a handy list of the programs that we had set up to record on our DVR. I went though this list and searched Netflix, Hulu, various network websites, and iTunes to see where our favorite shows were available. Of the 25 shows I researched, 23 are available on iTunes, 15 are available on the airing network’s site, Hulu has an unpredictable jumble of random episodes for some shows, clips for others, and nothing at all for a few. Netflix had no current seasons of these shows available but 13 of the shows do have past seasons available. Looks like using the iMac on the big screen tv will likely be the most useful viewing tool, or air playing from the iPad to the Apple TV in some cases.
So, this has been a learning process for us so far. The biggest thing we miss is the simplicity of turning on the DVR and selecting from a list of recorded shows. I would love to see something like this, even if it would just have links to the website you could watch the show. This may be a fun project for me if I can’t find anything to accomplish this. I have plenty more to write about this experience so look for more posts coming soon with some tips for others looking to cut the cord.
When I first heard that there was going to be an authorized biography of Steve Jobs coming out this year I was a little interested but skeptical that it would be as harshly honest as the unauthorized Jobs biography I read years ago (iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business). I’ll admit that in the midst of the hysteria and nostalgia after the recent death of his Steveness, my interest was heightened. I was especially interested in seeing if someone could write an authorized biography of the man without getting ensnared in his famous “reality distortion field”.
It took me two weeks, but I finally finished the book and was surprised by some of the impressions it left me with. I thought I’d share a few of them here.
Just because you can be a jerk doesn’t mean you should be one. To anyone who knows much of the history of the technology industry and Apple it comes as no surprise that Steve was a grade-A douchebag much of the time. I felt that the book did an average job exploring this but at times it seemed to excuse it as just part of the package. While the feeling you’re left with from the author is that Steve’s personality flaws helped make him successful, I personally was left wondering how much more successful he would have been if he had just a little more tact and grace and a little less prickliness.
Never underestimate the appeal of simplicity. Steve Jobs never invented anything but was instead successful in refining what already existed. Sorry for stating the obvious here, but that is an incredible fact to focus on. Apple has become an insanely successful business based not on specs but on experience. As you may have figured from the title of this blog, I like simplicity and enjoy making things simpler. I passionately feel that those of us in the tech industry owe it to the rest of the world to go the extra mile to not make great technology but make great technology easy to use. None of this was a new concept to me from reading this book but it just allowed for a very interesting meditation on the appeal of simplicity, not just in technology. This, and the adoption of the Intel processor, is what attracted me to the Mac OS. As much as I enjoy getting lost in technology, I enjoy technology that just works even more.
Priorities are important. I don’t want to come off as judging Steve Jobs for his decisions in life, but I was somewhat horrified to learn how bad of a father he could be. Of course it is easy for me to say that from the perspective of being the father of a two year old, I know I’ll make mistakes over time with my son, but knowing how I feel toward my wife and son I couldn’t fathom not putting them first no matter how important my job was. Reading about this aspect of Steve’s life really made an impact on me. Hopefully, I have plenty of time left on this earth but I would feel like a complete failure if I died and had to rely on a book written about me to let my kids know what I was up to while they were growing up and I wasn’t around.
All in all, it was a very entertaining and informative book. It was fun to see what Steve’s side of the story was in many of the legends that have been spun about him. At times it can be a very emotional book, it’s hard to read about his family and not think of the loss they’ve suffered. I’m glad I took the time to read it, and I’m glad I got to live in the same world as Steve Jobs for almost 27 years.
Years ago, back when I still used Windows at home, I used Microsoft Money to manage my family’s finances. Even though I may have become someone of an Apple bigot in the years to follow I readily admit that Money remains my favorite financial management tool ever.
When I switched to the Mac, I started using a nice piece of software that I got to watch grow up from infancy called Cha-Ching by Midnight Apps. Cha-Ching was buggy and unreliable at times, but overall it was a good effort. I eventually lost interest in it though because I wanted something I could use from a browser so I didn’t have to be at the computer with Cha-Ching installed to manage my money. Years earlier I was able to do this with the online component of Microsoft Money, now I have been doing it via Google Docs.
The spreadsheets I’ve used in Google Docs have come a long way during the past few years. I continually simplified the process down to what now only takes me a few minutes a week to update and check in on (however, I can never seem to go more than a day without updating it because I’m obsessed with keeping it up to date). I even used Google Forms for Google Spreadsheets when they came out to make a front end to the sheet my wife and I use to track our main spending account. I feel like I’m missing something though. This should be easier.
I always come back to Mint.com and try to figure out a way to use that beautiful and simple web app (now with a beautiful iPad app to match) to track my finances but it never seems to fit my needs. Mint will connect to your various accounts (not just checking & savings, but many other loan, credit, and investment accounts as well) and give you a great financial dashboard, but I can’t seem to fit it into my system the way my spreadsheets do. My main gripe with Mint is that I can’t see what my real available balance is. I wan’t to see at a glance what I really have available to spend in my accounts, not just what the actual balance currently is.
With the spreadsheets I use now, I can always get an idea of how much I have available to spend in my accounts because they account for upcoming bills that will either be manually or automatically paid out of my accounts. Mint just shows me what I’ve done so far. I guess Mint is designed for people with more money than myself, maybe people who have no concern about how much they spend?
Anyway, because I’m determined to make my personal financial management as simple as possible I’m going to give Mint.com a shot and see if I can make it a week using Mint, and not my spreadsheets to track our family spending. I’ll report back on whether it makes things simpler or just stresses me out not having the granular level of forecasting that I’m able to do with spreadsheets now.
I’d also like to hear if anyone else out there has any suggestions or if you have found a way to accomplish what I’ve described with Mint.
Thanks,
Just noticed it’s been a long time since I last updated this blog. This has been due mostly to my new job that I started about six months ago doing IT for a condo associaiton financing company just outside of downtown Tampa. I’ve been loving the new job, so much so that I really haven’t had the time to devote to writing about my geek life. I hope to see that change now though and will aim for now to at least write one post a week on this blog.
A lot has changed in the time since my last post. I’m running OS X Lion now with Win 8 in bootcamp, iOS 5 has come out, the new iPhone has come out, and there’s been some possibly exciting news about new video on demand features for FiOs customers on the Xbox 360. I’ve also been having a blast finding great iOS apps for my 2 1/2 year old on the iPad and iPhone. These are the things I like to geek out about, rant about, and read about. This is the type of content you can look forward to reading about in the future on this site.
Stay Tuned
