Windows 2 Apples

As I look at my beautiful white Mac and dictate using the virtual Vista machine running under VMware, I find myself wondering why I enjoy my Mac so much. There are many things to recommend the Macintosh. Most dear to my heart is that it is a so-called “all in one computer”.

From the very beginning, I’ve been attracted to machines that would qualify as all in one computer. My first computer was a Commodore Pet, one of the first if not the first such personal computers. It shipped with a monochrome display, keyboard and tape drive all enclosed in an attractive metal enclosure.

My favorite all in one computer was the 3020 manufactured by Compaq. I still have the machine in a secure corner of my garage. Unfortunately, it no longer boots. I fondly remember the day I un-boxed it and marveled at the beautiful 12 inch color display and fabulous audio system. I immediately became a Stevie Ray Vaughan fan as I watched and listened to his video of “Couldn’t Stand The Weather”.

I still believe it had the best audio system I’ve ever heard on any computer. When it died I purchased another all in one from Gateway designed with the unfortunate shotgun look to the front panel that was so popular back then. Although not particularly esthetically pleasing, it to had an excellent sound system and was a favored computer until it died.

I have concluded the primary appeal of the Macintosh is the all in one form factor rather than the “Apple Experience”. There are several applications on the Macintosh that haven’t been faithfully replicated on any Windows machine and will ensure I continue using my Mac daily until an equivalent suite of applications is available for the Windows platform.

The primary application that I would find difficult to do without is GarageBand. And as I have recently discovered there is an excellent Windows program with the look, feel and much of the functionality of GarageBand. It is Mixcraft produced by Acoustica and ships with an impressive library of sounds, effects, loops as well as the ability to import and play my favorite import GarageBand AIF files. The user interface and program design make it easy to transition from GarageBand. I am impressed.

Microsoft claims it is on a mission to acquire technologies and companies and if they have not begun development of a competitor for GarageBand perhaps they should take a peek at Mixcraft. Buy and bundle Mixcraft with Vista and throw in a dozen or so impressive effects and transitions to Windows Movie Maker along with an auto upload to YouTube or your Zune podcast and Microsoft has both feet in the Apple only door.

On balance, I find that there are far more Windows applications, accessories and online services simply not available for the Macintosh, making the Apple solution incomplete and lacking. Although there are many very clever and impressive little applications designed to fill in the gaps in the Apple operating system, most of these add ons are shipped as part of the Windows operating system or are available in more mature Windows incarnations.

I find that even running in a virtual environment on my Macintosh, Vista is much more responsive than on my low end Vista laptop. So I find myself looking around now for a new Vista PC that has the horsepower, memory and storage I need to get the most from the operating system. Perhaps the most attractive new all in one offering is the “One Gateway” machine scheduled to ship in mid November.

This surprises even me, given, I had begun to assume my next purchase would be either a high end Apple laptop or a second iMac with more hard drive storage, larger display and fresh new aluminum case. But, I find myself drooling a bit looking at the pictures and reading the specifications of the Gateway offering.

Quite frankly, I’m also concerned about reports of condensation on the inside of the screens of the new iMacs. Waiting for droplets of water to evaporate from inside my shiny new Macintosh screen is not something I would easily deal with. I have also discovered Apple Care support and service has nothing special to offer over what I experience when trying to resolve issues with Microsoft based products.

To top things off, I realized one of the reasons my Macintosh shames my Windows machines in starting so promptly is because it’s not loading layer after layer of antivirus software and downloading the daily updates to their databases. I believe I only know two people using antivirus software on their Macintosh computer and have to wonder if this will continue to be the accepted norm as Apple gains market share. If, or more accurately when, the Mac becomes a juicy target for the bad guys the fast boot may become a fond memory.

As it is, I have no idea whether my Macintosh has been compromised. I’m one of the many trusting Macintosh users who has not felt the need to install antivirus software. I do hope I will not live to regret my acceptance of Apples’ claim their OS is essentially immune to the nasty little viruses and Trojans we have grown accustomed to in the Microsoft world.

Until I find a satisfactory new an all in one Windows based computer, I will continue to spend most of my time working at my Macintosh. However, I suspect those days are numbered.

Dictated using Vista speech engine running in VMware on an Intel iMac.

Recorded using XP Windows, Mixcraft and M-Audio interface.

Link to screen shot of MixCraft as this podcast is recorded.

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Link to video of Vista speech running on an iMac using VMware.

I had originally intended to review a recent unhappy experience with the Apple support team, however, VMware Fusion and Vista Business arrived and I have been happily distracted.

Installation, of VMware Fusion, was painless requiring very little intervention which was impressive given I was fully expecting it to convert my Macintosh to the proverbial magic carpet ride. I had read this was the year of virtual machine software and companies. Now, I can understand the excitement and media buzz.

Before installing Vista Business, I decided to experiment by installing Ubuntu linux. This required I select Linux as the operating system and the linux distribution I was installing. Of course, Ubuntu is listed among those recognized by VMware Fusion. The install simply required that I insert the CD and specify the drive where my virtual machine files would reside and opt into a few recommended setting.

After reading the VMware promotional copy, I was unsure whether I would be forced to initially install virtual machines on my Macintosh hard drive and was very relieved to see that it immediately accepted my external fire wire as the destination for my virtual linux “box”.

Within very short time, I was booting to a virtual Ubuntu machine on my western digital external firewire drive. Ubuntu greeted me with a request to install 120 security updates and I was pleasantly surprised at how snappy the system responded and how quickly the updates were downloaded and installed.

The folks at VMware highly recommend users install VMware Fusion Tools to enhance performance and the ease with which they are able to shift between virtual machines and the Macintosh desktop. This turned out to be a bit more of a challenge than I anticipated, finally, requiring that I go to the Ubuntu web site where I found an easy to follow list of required Linux command line entries.

Once VMware Tools were installed, I immediately detected improvement in performance and shifting between Desktop and the Macintosh desktop required I only move the mouse to the desired target. I was able to use all of the tested Linux applications,however, I unable to get my USB audio adapters to work reliably.

Initially, I was using the VXI audio interface shipped with the iListen software. The audio playback through the headset was distorted with crackling sounds and breaks in the audio stream. I attempted to use several other USB audio interfaces including one manufactured by M-Audio with no improvement in audio playback. I was really never very successful in recording audio from any mike other than the built in mike and volume was extremely low.

At this point, I was getting a bit nervous considering that I had made these purchases and invested this time so that I could install Vista and use the Vista speech engine to dictate while setting at my Mac. As it turns out, my fears were unfounded and I was happy to discover after installing Vista Business it immediately recognize all of my USB audio adapters.

Installing the Vista Business operating system was as easy if not easier than the initial installation of linux. I simply had to enter my name, and optional password and of course the product code number. All other entries were left at the defaults offered by the VMware install wizard. After making these entries I left the machine and took a nice long walk with my Creative Labs MP3 player.

As with the linux install, I had specified my external firewire drive as the target for the new Vista virtual machine. After returning from my walk the new virtual Vista Business installation was sitting on my fire wire drive. Now two machines were listed in my virtual machine library. After selecting the Vista entry, I was greeted with the familiar Vista logon screen and noticed that the VMware tools had been installed without any intervention from me. Bravo!

I was amazed at how responsive Vista was. As Vista was initializing I had used the VMware fusion virtual machine menu to assign my USB Telex audio interface to the virtual Vista machine. I immediately activated Vista speech recognition and was pleased to see the Telex audio interface recognized and respond flawlessly during the speech recognition audio setup.

I spent approximately 20 to 30 minutes going through the Vista speech recognition tutorial, which not only reviews the basics of Vista speech control commands, but also serves as a brief training session allowing Vista to accommodate to your voice.

I was extremely pleased to find that after this very short training period the system responded to my commands without fail and the speech to text conversion was almost as accurate as what I experience using my well trained Naturally Speaking Dragon software installed on my XP computer.

I was unable to use the built in a iSight camera without installing boot camp so I tried using an old Creative Labs WebCam model 4000. Vista dutifully informed me a driver was needed and searched the web until it located the Creative Labs web site and downloaded the required drivers and accessory software. The camera worked, however, the picture update rate was very slow.

I deleted the Creative Labs drivers and inserted my Microsoft VX 6000 install disk. I was immediately informed there was a conflict with the current version of Vista and again Windows reached out through the Internet to download current drivers and application software. After the install, the camera worked beautifully. The quality of the picture seems better running in my virtual Vista machine than it does on my Vista laptop machine.

So far the only application I have not been able to run is Windows Movie Maker. When launched, I am informed that the video card in my machine does not support this application. I believe VMware is developing enhanced video drivers but as of this date none are available for Vista. I was disappointed to discover that my firewire Sony video camcorder is not recognized by Vista running under VMware Fusion. Happily, it works beautifully in OS X and on my other XP and Vista machines.

I’m extremely pleased with Fusion and the amazing performance of the Vista speech engine on my iMac. After dictating, I simply save my text to a shared folder on my Macintosh and load into either Microsoft Word or Pages.

Although the initial rollout of Vista was certainly not the WOW experience promised by Microsoft, the magic of virtualization combined with Vista and it’s marvelous speech engine definitely provides a genuine WOW experience. I will continue experimenting with Vista applications running within the VMware Fusion environment and update in our next podcasts and blog.

Remember, changes is forever always with us and tomorrow a new adventure.

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Today more feedback on the Vista speech recognition engine, plans to install VMware Fusion, creating screen casts and of course the Apple iPhone debacle.

After considerable testing of the Vista speech engine, I am more convinced than ever that it is the least expensive tool of choice for those unable to their keyboard or mouse. It’s unfortunate the botched Microsoft demonstrations of this technology have sullied its reputation. We are producing video podcast reviews of iListen, Vista and Naturally Speaking Dragon. The video podcasts will be available on the Windows 2 Apples site, YouTube and Viddler.

In order to produce the video reviews we need to be able to capture activity on our computer screens as we are using the various programs. In the Windows world, I have a number of different programs to choose from but will be using my favorite screen capture program, WebcamMax. Not only does WebcamMax allow me to capture live motion on the screen and take snapshots but it has a very impressive set of special effects and overlays that may be used to enhance your snapshots or videos.

Alison Sheridan of the NosillaCast and Tim Verpoorten of the Mac Review Cast recommended that I try iShowU to record the iListen demo. So far I am impressed with iShowU. Although the program ships without the special effects I’ve grown to love in WebcamMax, it seems to be well suited for creating quality screen captures. Both programs are inexpensive with WebcamMax costing $29 and iShowU $20.

Yesterday was an eye opener. In the middle of sending an e-mail, I received a notice from Apple indicating iLife needed to be updated and, as a compliant user, I Okayed the request and watched as apparently every iLife program in the suite was updated with impressively large files. Once the update was completed, Apple surprised me with a prompt to reboot my Macintosh. The reboot was needed to re-flash or update the BIOS. In all the many years I’ve been using Microsoft-based computers I can’t remember ever having the BIOS re-flashed by Microsoft. I believe once or twice we replaced the BIOS in older machines to allow a larger drives to be added but recall no downloaded changes issued by Microsoft.

I sat back and looked at my shiny white iMac; sucked in a deep breath, crossed my fingers and hoped that once it reawakened all of those little third-party apps I’ve been adding, would still be on my machine and that my Mac would not turn into an expensive doorstop. Of course, I knew that these were largely unfounded fears but ones that I would never have entertained without the recent publicity over the bricking of hacked iPhones. As my Macintosh reawakened from its brain surgery it squealed sending a chill down my spine. To my great relief all appeared normal on my desktop.

In an earlier podcast, I contrasted Apples method of protecting software to that of Microsoft. Apple’s software is secured by limiting installation of its OS to machines manufactured by Apple, while Microsoft conjures up Machiavellian schemes to lock its software running on systems assembled by everyone and his brother. I hope the current furor over Apple’s very aggressive approach to locking down the iPhone opens the eyes of Apple enthusiasts to the reality that Apple is in fact a business focused on making a healthy profit. The Apple fan base has certainly contributed to its ability to survive and thrive but it seems clear Apple is looking well beyond its base of Apple fanboy and fangirls to grow.

For many years Microsoft has defended itself against claims of operating as a monopoly and I suspect if Apple continues to capture a larger share of the computer market and essentially define the portable media market, it will become the new poster boy for technology monopolies. It seems clear, Apple intends to use its dominant presence in the handheld technology sector to forge ahead with sales showing little remorse for early adopters and fans hurt in the process.

Perhaps we are passing though an age of innocence when companies such as Apple were seen as benevolent benefactors rather than stellar examples of American capitalism. The gloves are off and Apple is now clearly a very aggressive competitor with a penchant for excellence in design as well as dogmatic control over the way its consumers are allowed to use their products.

Video Demo of Vista Speech Technology

Demo Of Vista Show Numbers Feature “Kool”

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