Anyone else here in the post-PC era?

Hi Taz,Finally found some time to look into Repligo and ezPDF - they appear to be Android apps, and I have a desktop PC. If you find any PC tools that do the same thing please let me know.--Percy

My Mac/PC experience begins in 1995. Prior to that I only had experience with mainframes, minicomputers and workstations.Our family had PCs, my sister's family had Macs. Our kids were roughly the same age. Her kids couldn't get the best games for anywhere from 6 months to a year or more after the PC, and sometimes never. They switched to PCs. The kids were happy.The PC's were hell. The PCs I bought and maintained for our family (always a total of 4) had continuous software and hardware problems. My sister had similar experiences, but it was tougher for them because they didn't have anyone in the family familiar with computers.When my wife's last PC laptop failed (she had had 2 laptops (one an HP and one Dell) and the motherboard failed twice on each) we bought her a Mac desktop. In 4 years there has not been a single problem, aside from occasional minor things requiring only a reboot. The next year we bought a Mac laptop. In 3 years there has not been a single problem, and unlike PC laptops, when you open the lid it is up and running and connected to the WiFi in less than 2 seconds.My sister also switched back to Macs. All the problems went away.For those for whom software availability is not an issue, my experience is consistent with Macs being a far, far better home computer than a PC.--Percy

Hi Dwise1,I think you're still misinterpreting what was meant by the post-PC era. It's mostly not about computers in the workplace. The post-PC era will take place in people's personal lives where computers are used for fun and entertainment.I don't think there's going to be anything like a post-PC era in workplaces in the near term, but even so there has been a significant impact because of the amount of communication and organization that can be done with a smart phone or tablet by people on the go. Staying organized and in close touch with home base or customers while traveling used to require a laptop, but no more.--Percy

A screenful of moving video divided into 500 little windows may not be as challenging as it seems. What if it were 500 different videos? That I would find amazing, but it would have nothing to do with Mac's or PC's. It would require quite an amazing disk drive.What I'm guessing is going on is that because all the video players are in roughly the same spot of the video that each frame has to be read from the disk media only once for all 500 players. The disk itself will have a cache of recently fetched sectors, and so will the driver.--Percy

Yes, you're right, I completely missed the point, but only because I've never heard the argument that only Macs can display many simultaneous video windows.--Percy

I guess I'm still straddling the post PC era, but I have a Mac question. I have a 2-year old MacBook running 10.5.8. I read the details about the new Safari, and it has a few features I would like to have, but it only runs under Lion. In order to get to Lion I have to first upgrade to Snow Leopard.Lion can be downloaded, but Snow Leopard cannot, at least from Apple. I don't mind buying Snow Leopard from Apple, but they don't carry it in the Apple store anymore, and so I have to have it shipped.I don't really want to wait, and I notice there are various websites and YouTube videos describing how to get Snow Leopard for free. I don't care about the free part, I care about the "wait for it come via snail-mail part".Has anyone reading this ever downloaded a free Snow Leopard? If so, did everything go okay, both during the installation and after? What are the downsides? Are the instructions reasonably easy to follow for a non-Mac person?--Percy

If it's possible to skip from 10.5.8 to Lion I didn't come across that information on the Internet. I went down to the local Apple store to buy Snow Leopard but was told they don't stock it in stores anymore, and that I did have to go through Snow Leopard.--Percy

I do recall seeing mentions of skipping versions when I was Googling about, but nothing specific regarding Lion. If it really isn't possible to skip directly to Lion it may be because the way you install Lion is the same way you install an app on a tablet, and in order to do that you need Snow Leopard. The genius in the Apple store showed me what to do once I got to Snow Leopard, and basically he brought up the app store.When I tried to download Lion directly to my 10.5.8 laptop I was informed I needed Snow Leopard.--Percy

I've upgraded to Lion on my MacBook and everything is working except the built-in camera. The MacBook now thinks it has no camera. There's no camera in the System Preferences under "Hardware" (if there ever was one, I don't remember). Skype and all the other camera-dependent applications report that there is no camera.I looked up the problem on Google and found several threads indicating that this is a common problem after a Lion upgrade, but while there were a few suggestions, there were none that worked reliably. Any suggestions for what I should do or try next?Secondary question: In 10.5.8 in Safari I was able to drag-n-drop a link to a tab. This no longer works for existing tabs in Safari 5.1 in Lion. It does work if you want a new tab.--Percy

I was going to update tonight - what kind of problem did you run into?--Percy

Until today, all iPad's began life with an umbilical to iTunes.If you don't already have iTunes 5 it makes you upgrade first. When it finishes installing it calls itself iTunes 10. I started the upgrade, my iTunes status window now says: Gee, I wonder if anyone else is trying to upgrade tonight? --Percy

Probably what Crash said is sufficient, but here's more detail anyway.Bring up iTunes on your Mac Mini.Plug the USB end of your iPad's cord into the Mac Mini.iTunes should automatically recognize the iPad and alert you that there's a 5.0 upgrade available.Click that you want to upgrade. If your iTunes isn't new enough it will tell you.iTunes will start to download the upgrade, looks like it takes several hours.When the download of the upgrade is complete it should automatically begin the install to the iPad. I haven't gotten to this stage yet, but I've heard reports that it takes an hour or two.--Percy

I may be screwed, I may be okay, don't know yet.I left my iPad in the iTunes mind meld state and went to bed last night with 4 hours of download time left. I came down this morning and the iPad page in iTunes was blank, the iPad was off.I turned the iPad on and it took me through a few setup pages of IOS 5. Evidently the install went fine.When it asked if I wanted to sync with iCloud I said yes. After entering my account ID and password it displayed the legal agreement and I clicked Agree. It then informed me that there was nothing in the iCloud for me.I then disconnected/reconnected with iTunes. It said I could restore from backup, but that failed.So I felt I had no choice but to bring up the iPad as a new iPad, which I did. It's like a baby again.But I got to the next page in iTunes and clicked on Sync, and it started syncing. I think I'm okay because the status window is advancing through all my apps one at a time.It just finished and I'm only mostly okay. All my apps were restored, but none of my books, I lost all my organization of apps into folders (they're all presented flat across 5 pages), my cool background is gone, and my settings have been reset to the defaults.I have one more iPad to go, but now I'm a little leery.--Percy

When I looked up the books I used to have at the iBooks store it let me download them without charge. So I have all my books back now.When I looked up my audiobooks, though, no such luck. You're right, they're still in iTunes, but I'm not in any hurry to listen to any of them again.It's taken me a couple hours, but my iPad is now in the same state it was yesterday, but with IOS 5. Why did I want IOS 5 again? There was a good reason, right?--Percy

My guess is that it didn't upgrade, but you can find the version under Settings -> General, then scan down to the line that says "Version".--Percy