Apple //e with Apple Disk II 5.25-inch floppy drives and green screen Apple Monochrome Monitor
From January 1983 to November 1993, Apple sold the Apple //e personal computer. It was wildly popular with consumers, educators, and even business professionals. Over the Apple //e’s service life, it saw no less than three major revisions – the original //e, the //e Enhanced, and the //e Platinum – and four motherboard upgrades.
For me, it was my first introduction the world of computing and set me on a course to be a life-long Apple fan and IT professional. My parents bought me a second-hand Apple //e in the late 1980s as an upgrade to my first computer, the V-Tech Laser 128, an Apple // clone.
After letting mine go, I still had a soft spot in my heart for the //e. And, while I no longer had my Apple //e, I remained a fan of that early computer and continued to count myself as a member of Team Apple // Forever.
Now, years later, though the magic of the worldwide garage sale website that is eBay, I officially belong to the Apple //e owner’s club again. I am so excited to have one of these popular computers once more that I posted an unboxing and walkthrough video on YouTube.
This year, I am thankful for everyone who reads my blog. I do appreciate it.
I am also thankful for the many things that I have, including my family and our health. And, for the COVID-19 vaccine.
If you still haven’t gotten you vaccine, please consider getting it. If you have already been vaccinated, consider getting your booster shot. It’s safe and it’s free. Help protect yourself, your family and friends, and coworkers.
A couple of recent segments on Relay FM’s Connected podcast titled Roast My Menu Bar and Roast My Dock had gotten me thinking about a weird way that I like to use Spotlight Search.
“Spotlight can help you quickly find apps, documents, and other files on your Mac. With Siri Suggestions, you can also get the latest news, sports scores, weather conditions, and more. Spotlight can even perform calculations and conversions for you.”
Spotlight was added to Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger back in 2005. Back then, I was not a heavy user of of the tool. I would occasionally use it when I misfiled a document and wanted to quickly try and search for it.
Oddly, the tool that I did end up using, a lot, was a feature of Palm’s Web OS called Universal Search (Web OS 1.x), and its successor feature, Just Type (Web OS 2.x and 3.x). With Web OS, you would just start typing what you were looking for and the Palm Pre would look it up for you.
Web OS 2.x and 3.x Just Type search bar on a Palm Pre, Source: WebOSNation
Web OS Just Type search results, Source: WebOSNation
When I moved from the Palm Pre to the iPhone 4S with iOS 5 in 2011, the Universal Search muscle memory transferred over to Spotlight Search.
While Mac OS X Spotlight and Web OS Universal Search were meant to search for all sorts of things, both on the device and across the Internet, I fell into a pattern of using both technologies as a quick way to launch applications. First on my Web OS Palm Pre and then on my Macs with Spotlight.
On the Mac, Spotlight had gone from being a skinny search box in the upper right of the screen to a fully centered search tool that lives at the center of the Mac’s display. As the types of content that Spotlight could search, the search results became longer and longer. But for me, Searchlight would be considered an application launcher first and foremost as a quick way to launch applications without having to take my hands of the keyboard.
Spotlight Search in macOS Big Sur 11.x
In recent versions of Mac OS, now known as macOS, I found myself fighting with Spotlight Search for some system apps, like Snapshot, which also has an alias of ‘grab’. (The ‘grab’ alias also works in Microsoft Windows 10 and 11.) I’d want to quickly ‘grab’ a screen capture, pop open Spotlight with the keyboard shortcut Command + Space and type in grab. Rather than getting the Screenshot.app, Spotlight would often put a reference to something ont the web as the fist hit in the list. In past versions of Mac OS, applications would show up first in the list, but that wasn’t always the case in late version of macOS 10.x and Big Sur (11.x).
Spotlight Settings: Uncheck to declutter search results
In a recent fit of the machine is working against me rather than helping me, I opened the the Big Sur Settings app, clicked on the Spotlight preferences control panel and unchecked everything in the list except Applications and System Preferences. I may turn on the option to search for definitions in the Dictionary app, but for now, that option remains off.
So roast my Spotlight usage and preference settings. But for me, this is one time where I chose to customize my Mac to work for me rather than against me.
On this Memorial Day 2021, let us set aside politics and be thankful for those women and men who service in the United States Armed Forces and, really, all those who protect the citizens of our country. Especially keep in mind those who have given the ultimate sacrifice to protect our way of life.
“We at the CDC also have the ability to do that today, but we are working on a more specific diagnostic,” Messonnier said, indicating that the agency was seeking a more sophisticated test.
“We had a conversation with [Stephen Lindstrom] and [Julie M. Villanueva] and asked, specifically: ‘Lots of members are asking if we can drop N3 and just keep N1 and N2,’ ” recalled Kelly Wroblewski, director of infectious diseases for the professional association, based in Silver Spring, Md.
“And their response at that point was: ‘FDA isn’t going to go for that.’ Both of them were like, it’s a non-starter.’’
Government officials later told The Post that the FDA would have considered proposals to remove N3.
Some CDC scientists also were questioning among themselves the need for N3.
“Why are we trying so hard? . . . We know there’s a problem with it,” one of them recalled asking.
Instead of dropping N3, the CDC set about trying to manufacture a new batch of reagents in hopes of eradicating possible contamination that had caused the false positives.
What I find most interesting about this article is CDC’s insistence on keeping the N3 test as part of the testing protocol to see if a patient is COVID-19 positive or not. As I kept reading the article, I was thinking about my own blind spots and biases when working on complicated information technology solutions. Can IT’s insistence to have a complex solution, such as a PowerShell script, C# code, or a SQL stored procedure, cause a CDC-style 46 day delay in testing when a more streamlined WHO-style solution is readily available? Can technologists, like the scientists in Willman’s article, get caught up in the “we are going to solve this” tide? When we get swept up in a fast moving production issue, do we have the wherewithal to take a step back and decided that “good enough” is indeed good enough to solve the issue? Or do we take extra time to take a deep dive into the issue to develop an overly complex solution?
As information technology professionals, we all need evaluate our unique production environments. What tools are available to us? How much time is available to diagnose the problem and identify a most probable cause? How much time will it take to test and evaluate the performance of the fix? Often times, there is no one size fits all solution. The key takeaway from this article for IT professionals is to be mindful the problem we are trying to solve and to balance “good enough” verses “perfection” when developing technology solutions.
This year’s Thanksgiving will be different from any other that we have had in the past. During this difficult period, it is important to take a few moments to remember what is really important and to be thankful for what we have.
Thank you to everyone who reads my blog. I appreciate it.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving! Stay safe. Wear a mask. Together, we will get through this!
I had to laugh when I watched Apple’s new promotional video ‘Working-From-Home Thing’ featuring the likable Underdogs office team.
Apple’s Underdogs – Working from home
You see, I needed a distraction from the shenanigans on social media, on cable news, and in newspapers. Apple’s satirical commercial highlights both the challenges we are all facing while trying to work at home while showcasing their products that help make collaborative work easier. With a run time of over six minutes, the video does feel a little long when compared to 2019’s Underdogs commercial. The scene where one of the Underdogs needs to talk to an IT person hits a little too close to home.
If you want to see what Apple products can do in action, enjoy Apple’s video production values, or simply just relate to trying to work from home when you are used to working in an office, you should watch this short.
