A multi-screen life

I had to take a picture of this, since multi-tasking like this contributes to all poor statistics about Millennials' attention spans and reliance on all of their screens and the media.

iOS7: Your personal assistant?

After downloading iOS7 last night, I've been browsing around to see what kind of updates were made. Obviously, the overall look is different, the camera is better and there are changes across multiple applications. 

But after checking out the notification center, I kind of feel offended that Apple thinks your phone needs to play the role of a secretary. It writes to you, in complete sentences, about the weather and any other reminders you have programmed. Crazy! 

7 keyboard shortcuts I wish I knew earlier

Four years of owning a Macbook in college has taught me a lot about computers, but not everything there is to know. Here's a quick list of seven things I've discovered recently that could be of use to your everyday life!

1. If you select text and click Command + K, you can link to something online or an email address.

2. The button under delete is a nice little vertical divider when you click shift. (|)

3. If you click option + E and then another letter afterward, the letter will have the Spanish accent mark on it. Same thing to get ñ- option n, n.

4. You know those F5 and F6 buttons on your computer? They control the keyboard backlighting.

5. When you highlight a section of text and click the arrows under shift, it moves the highlight forward or back. This sounds pretty obvious, but is cool in action

6. The dash (-) next to 0 is a normal dash, and an underscore when you click shift. But if you click OPTION dash, it's a thicker dash! (–)

7. This one isn't really a keyboard shortcut, but just a nice thing to know if you ever make a bibliography. If you highlight a section of text, right click and click Paragraph --> Special, you can add an automatic hanging indent. It saves you a ton of time from doing it one-by-one!

How Apple dictates the world...and why it stinks to be an early adopter

This break, the battery on my Macbook Pro of 3 1/2 years died. Not only would it not hold a charge, but it would not even turn on when plugged into a power source - so it was time for a new computer. When I went to the Apple store, I was presented with two options - a MacBook Pro computer like I have now, or a MacBook Pro with a high definition retina screen that is lightweight and "cool." After a lot of discussion with the Apple salesman, it was clear at the time that the Retina screen would be the better option. Not only was high definition and lighter to carry around, but it launched applications faster and had a quicker operating system than the other MacBook Pro.

This purchase cycle, I was very cynical and not in the mood to pay $2,000 for a computer - so plenty of questions came up. I often sighed at the answers because now that I have gone through this so much, every choice was explained by Apple trying to make more profits or control technology in the US. Here were three differences that automatically made me upset, but that I didn't have a ton of other choices on:

• The retina screen computers (and MacBook airs) have no disc drive. They say it's because "society is moving away from CDs." While this is true, Apple is forcing CDs out by not letting you use them. If you don't even have the option to put a CD or DVD in your computer, they think you're going to buy it from iTunes. 
• There is less gigabyte space on the newer computers because they're trying to make them more portable, so the salesman encourages you to "store big files on an external hard drive" and "keep your computer running fast." The point of computers and their size used to be to hold everything you need, but now - they're just encouraging us to buy more devices and have more things for the same operation. So none of my photos from the past 7 years are on my computer and I'll have to watch file space very carefully. 
• None of the cords- the computer charger, dongle to hook up to projectors, etc are compatible with the MacBook Pro with retina, so you have to buy all new supplies. So not only are my 2 chargers defunct with the new computer, but I have to buy an HDMI cord to hook up my screen to a projector. Another way Apple is trying to make HDMI necessary and get some money on all new devices. 

After jumping through hurdles, the cost and functionality still led to buying the Retina. They make the wait on a regular computer so frustrating with the spinning disc system that they don't leave you a choice. But shortly after getting it and setting everything up, I learned another lesson:

Being an early adopter stinks.

No external applications (Microsoft Word, Twitter, Firefox, Adobe, Photoshop, InDesign, etc) can be seen clearly on the high definition screen because they haven't made themselves compatible for it yet. FOR REAL. So when I opened up Microsoft Word, the screen was grainy and blurry. And when I asked the Apple technician, she said "Well they don't have an update yet so there's nothing you can do about it."

So not only is Apple trying to get you to use their proprietary applications, but they made it virtually impossible for you to use the other ones "until those companies come out with updates." Overall, I probably should have waited for these bugs to be fixed before getting the computer, but no one at Apple even mentions these issues when you buy the product. I had to search intensely to find a way to make Microsoft Office clear, or even see these listed as an issue by product reviewers. 

And the Apple customer service was absolutely horrible this entire time. They don't acknowledge these as flaws, they just talk about how Safari is a great solution. It's not a solution, it's the only choice.

The conclusion here- Apple is trying to run the world more than we already know, so unless you are SUPER loyal to them, hold off. Or you'll be as frustrated as I am and searching for updates, writing this blog post at the Apple Store at Northbrook Court and anti-high definition screen computers.