So here's the scoop. I bought my first "home computer" back in the mid nineties and a computer tech at the time, who was a friend, lets just call him "Tim" for the sake of this article...Actually, his name was really Tim so, nevermind, the cat is out of the bag.
"Tim", a PC repairman, recommended I get a Mac for a couple reasons:
1. based on the fact that Macs had an operating system that ran native to the hardware. I didn't know what any of that meant at the time but he explained that Windows ran on top of another OS called DOS, which I had heard of, and was using at work, but had no idea whatsoever what it was.
2. He was recommending a Mac because Apple had just released a new computer which was
both a TV and a computer in one, called a Macintosh TV! Wahooo! a two-in-one TV I could deal with, I knew how to work a TV...mostly. A VCR, no, TV, yes.I ran down to Computer City on Charleston and Decatur here in Vegas, and picked one up. I think that Computer City is now a gigantic PTs Pub now. Anyway, the rest is history - I would own a laptop 190cs which had an ACTUAL color screen! AMAZING! But it had nothing else - you had to buy a special dock if you wanted to actually accomplish anything productive with it, I sent it back. After the Powerbook 190cs, I then bought a Powerbook 1400 laptop
Powerbook 1400 Rest in Peace -
May God Have Mercy on your soul for I would not.
This 1400 piece died and then caused me to go Office Space on it in front of a dumpster across from UNLV, reducing it to 1400 pieces. I then bitterly purchased a G3 laptop which was better but eventually died but is still safe in my closet, with repair parts that I purchased on ebay about 3 years ago. I believe this G3 laptop is the proverbial "GTO" in the garage that I hope to put a new "engine" in but in reality is just an annoyance to my wife.
Anyways, after the GTO, I then bought a Dual G5 tower which has been the best Mac I have ever owned...knock on silicon...In fact, I am writing this little gripe on that G5 right now! aMAzing. Now, I have convinced my wife to become a Mac user and have purchased a new iMac for her - making us an ALL MAC home for the first time in our nearly 7 years of marriage. I then recommended that my church buy an iMac for video projection, they agreed, things were going swimmingly.
Here is where the love-fest for Apple all goes sour. It seems that Apple has pulled a fast one on all of us. They have completely removed the universally loved and accepted, DVI ports for monitors from ALL their systems and have replaced them with a new little piece of crapnology called Mini DisplayPort. That is a long annoying name which I shall truncate to the word "Tim". Wait...I've used that one somewhere here before, lets call that crapnology "MDP" which, amazingly, stands for Mini DisplayPort.
SO! MDP is supposedly "smaller" and "sleeker" and is able to transmit HD signals much more effeciently blah blah blah according to Apple. (The blah blah blah was actually me) At any rate. What Apple doesn't tell us is that #1 you have to buy new monitors because the sweet 22" Samsung you JUST BOUGHT is ridiculously incompatible. Your BRAND NEW monitor has DVI inputs on the back. Macs have NO DVI outputs only the MDP which means you need to buy monitors that have MDP inputs for them to work happily with your new Mac. LIAR! you say! Yes, true, but not about this subject my son. You see, Apple tells you to buy an adapter for $20 that supposedly makes your new Mac play nice with your new monitor...NO! It does not. Another secret of Steve Jobama's is this MDP crapnology is actually forced upon us because of its ability to limit piracy! YES! correctomundo! Mini Displayport crapnology has DRC firmware built into it which allows it to detect an HDCP (High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection) Device. If it detects either correctly or erroneously, a device that is not up to what it deems "HDCP Compliant" it will black the image and you will get NOTHING my friend. NOTHING! on your screen because the image from YOUR computer going to YOUR display device has been BLOCKED by the firmware built into MDP crapnology.
Infuriating? yes! Frustrating? Even more so! No one said ANYTHING about potential compatibility issues and now I've bought one iMac and recommended the purchase of another and I am skay-rood. So annoying. The adapters don't work, many HDCP compliant devices don't work and even some new MDP monitors are not working! My recommendation - STAY AWAY FROM BUYING MACS FOR THE NEXT 6-8 MONTHS! Let this crapnology settle in, give some genius engineers time to figure out how to communicate to and from this port and allow new devices and adapters to hit the market. This will save you lots of headaches, believe me! I remember this happening once before when Apple suddenly removed ALL serial ports (remember those? if you're a PC person, you're still using those!) only to replace them with USB and Firewire. At the time, I wasn't a techie nerd, I was just a regular nerd, so I had no idea this was coming and no one at Apple gave a warning that ALL of our serial devices would need adapters to work. Change is fine, it just sucks when it is secretly forced on us like some Obama/Bush Bank Bailout.
Ok...I got it out of my system...now I am going to get back to that GTO in the garage...no seriously, I am going to work on that real soon...2-3 days. You'll see.
