A couple months ago I bought a Mac Mini out of total frustration of the time it took to maintain, boot up, debug and protect my Windows machines. I thought it would be a steep learning curve and I could write a long blog on that frustrating process and some useful tips and tricks. Sadly, from the blog's perspective, and happily, from my personal perspective, that's simply not the case. 

The Mac Mini is a little box, about the size of fat, small, square frisbee, makes no noise, is cold to the touch, boots in about one minute and has a small selection of ports to attach devices. In my case I have an HDMI-attached monitor and the keyboard and mouse are bluetooth. The mouse is a Magic Mouse, and that alone is worth the price of admission. I spend most of my time in a web browser and the Magic Mouse makes scrolling, zoom and previous page navigation so much easier.

The defining change in going Mac is the lack of interaction that Windows constantly presents. Applications install with one drag. System updates take one click, and so far have not required a re-boot and do not interfere with normal operation. Installing the printer took zero of anything. It takes a little getting used to. Actually, very little, after I realized that Apple takes a minimalistic approach to asking for anything. Quite the refreshing change. 

I've loaded a few applications, my beloved Google Chrome browser, DVD converter and Skype being at the top of the list. Most everything else I use comes with it, such as iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie. Haven't felt the need for any anti-bad-guy stuff, although I'll be researching that in the coming months.

And perhaps best of all, no bloatware. No 30-day trials of anything. Annoying the customer doesn't appear to be in Apple's DNA. 

Thank you.

Tablets are all the rage these days.  Seems like a year ago (it was) that the pundits were predicting the market failure of the iPad.  It was just an oversized iPod Touch, wasn't anything more than an interesting toy, and certainly wasn't going to be of interest to corporate types.  How could they be so wrong?  Every other tablet introduced crashed and burned.  They missed the biggest selling feature this time, staring right at them, that wasn't there before.

It wasn't scary.

Take the average person and put them in front of a computer.  Most are scared to death and refuse to touch the keyboard in fear that they might break something.  Put an iPad in their hands and seconds later they're tapping and sliding and laughing.  Most will play for several minutes, ignoring guests and its rightful owner, as they discover this and that cool feature.  I've seen construction workers waiting to take their turn and grandma's sliding pictures with their pinkies.  And smiling all the while.

Why such a difference?  Computers and iPads both have processors, memory, an operating system and icons.  Under the covers, they are basically the same.  But we humans fear complex things and proceed with caution, using our basic survival skills that serve us well, day in and day out.

The typical computer is a big machine and goes through several minutes of whirling and clicking before it's ready to use.  It has a mouse that moves a pointer and two buttons that do different things in different situations.   It has a keyboard with somewhere around one hundred keys, many of which have multiple purposes elicited by holding shift, alt, ctrl, fn or a small four-part flag.  It most likely has a dozen or more lights and a dozen or so ports of different shapes and sizes.  You need to patch, you need A/V, you need anti-this and anti-that.  And most of all, you need to be frightened.

Contrast that with the iPad, which is just shy the size of a piece of 8.5 by 11 inch paper and weighs in at 1.5 pounds, turns on instantly, has four buttons each which you can figure out in less than a second each and the same connector you use on your iPhone and iPods.  You turn, it turns.  You touch, it reacts.  Can't open it up, don't need anti-anything and has a nice "upgrade all" feature.  You bring yours, I'll bring mine.  Let's do coffee and a game.  And not be scared.

That's my belief in what is driving consumers and business people to adopt tablets at a record pace.  You can't employ the typical fear, uncertainty and doubt to slow this down.

We're not scared anymore.

In a previous blog I mentioned the free Wireshark utility, which has been my number one debugging tool for several years.  Being able to see everything coming into and out of a PC, and having enough network background to glean the important details, has served well.  During a recent problem I needed to debug a web application that only ran using encrypted (https/ssl) communications.  Wireshark was able to show me what was happening with session setups and encryption exchanges, but all the application data was just a garble of meaningless characters.  Enter Fiddler, a free tool provided by Microsoft.

I began my career in Information Technology back at Wright State University in 1974.  I didn't know anything about computers when I started, but a friend that was at WSU at the time showed me some programs and I was attracted by the logic, their math-like quality and the promise of avoiding a bunch of annoying liberal arts classes.  But little in my college experiences prepared me for how much emotions play in the technology field, either good or bad.  I've collected a few of those experiences in this article to share with you.  And if you're ever needing an ice-breaker when in the land of techies, just ask then about their most hair-raising experience.  You're sure to hear an earful and get the conversation going.

This article describes a concise and effective method to communicate a project, a requirement or even an organization's purpose to multiple audiences, each listening for their part of the message.  It does this by linking the work being done to the value being delivered through its expected outcome or outcomes.

Does anyone know if there is an official standard (e.g. FIPS, ANSI, W3C. etc.) for what an application or directory service must provide in the way of password standards (e.g. length, composition, revocation, duration, etc.)?  I'm looking for something that I can use in RFPs to vendors to get them all on the same page.

The final installment of this four-part blog contains some utilities that most home users will never need, but I find them indispensable.  With the exception of WinDirStat, these toys take a reasonable amount of technical knowledge to use, although they are unlikely to cause your PC any problems if you want to give them a whirl.  If nothing else, it's interesting to run Wireshark and Process Monitor to see the sheer volume of what's going on inside your PC.  It's a much busier beast than you probably think.