Penzi

mikethemartian said:

Is USB really a resilient interface? I recently worked a contract where test stations in production would often start reporting errors in the middle of the tests because some of the equipment was connected using USB and it would intermittently disconnect. This is compared to HPIB/GPIB which is old, bulky and slow but extremely robust.

I have found that USB (and HDMI) are far too flaky in mission critical work, and so I just try to defer to Thunderbolt and DP for as many needs as can be filled by those pieces of tech, despite the increased costs. My peace of mind and smooth workflow are worth it to me. So much so that I try to avoid USB and HDMI even for more regular avenues of life… excepting TVs and consoles, of course.

As usual, Satechi “designs for Mac” and leaves out Thunderbolt. This is not for me. So why do I post? In case somebody is in doubt of whether it is for them. 

I’m torn. I definitely prefer the portable size of the mini, however I would hate to lose the screen tech of my M4 iPP. If the next mini adds the screen tech of my iPP, I’ll replace it immediately. 

You do seem to have tech I’d love to find sufficient! I also consider my smartphone to be a necessary evil but through the luck of my techsinister vibes, it has decided that sharing notifications with me is a roll of the dice, that mostly comes up snake eyes for callers. I haven’t tried to fix it; the inverse problem would be a nightmare scenario for me.

My next Mac will finally be a return to the desktop fold; I’ll keep my 16” MBPro for travel/backup use. I couldn’t be happier! Except there’s a worried niggle that thinks I might just trade that laptop in for another one… I’ve got about a year before I need to worry about it so I’ll probably change my decision daily in the interim.

As to a laser cutter, having worked in a machine shop for much of my life, it’s certainly an entertaining home addition! I’ll probably go for a 3D printer, though.

Pema said:

sidrictheviking said:

Pema said:

That's brilliant. Now we need to round up roster of users from Antartica and Upper Mongolia who actually use the Apple equivalent of Office. In my entire time in IT and as a Uni Phd student I have yet to see anyone using other than Word, Excel, Powerpoint. 

Greetings from Mongolian Antarctica!
As a regular (and long-time) user of both Pages and Keynote I’m surprised to read your post. I’ve used Word and PowerPoint over the decades but moved to Pages and Keynote exclusively many years ago. Bring free certainly helped. However, the main reason is ease of use. I work almost exclusively from an iPad and find Keynote, in particular, to be intuitive and very user friendly. When I need to work with Office documents I simply import them into the Apple equivalent and work with them there. When necessary, I export them back to their Office versions and it’s a painless exercise. 

Sadly, as I live in the EU (Ireland), I won’t have access to these new feature until April. I am very much looking forward to using Image Playground for Keynote, as I regularly spend far too long finding appropriate images for my presentations. From what I’ve seen so far, I should be able to create suitable ones in seconds for each slide. I don’t need photorealistic, just clear and relevant. 

😎🇮🇪☘️ 

The Irishman who came in from the Cold. 

Kidding aside as an academic I rely on Word exclusively namely for its vast library of add-ons and ties to various components. Couldn't do without them. So far as Excel is concerned I use the functionality of VBA - underpinning of Excel - at least two to three times a week. 

Powerpoint I am less concerned about. 

I fully realise that Pages, Numbers and Keynote are free. But they just lack the real world functionality. 

That said, I would never use any other hardware than a Mac. 

I wrote my Masters thesis, and all papers for the degree, on Pages (the old version, which was more functional than the replacement designed to work on iPads, but may now be good again) in 2012. I regularly use OpenOffice. I begrudgingly use MS Office but Excel beats the pants off of Numbers in my use…