Pearl of Wisdom

I bought a BlackBerry Pearl last month. Despite a few shortcomings I really like the phone. The keyboard works reasonably well, the screen is bright and pretty, it makes a decent music player, and it's a fine phone. Unfortunately it's useless as a modem for my Mac. RIM has some bug in the bluetooth stack that leaves it in a bad way after one connection. I would gladly use it via USB, but sadly that's not supported. My wife's Dash works great as a modem, so that's my crutch for now.

Making the Switch

Apple makes some great products. But there's a down side to all that ease-of-use; it makes you dumb. At least that's the effect it had on me. I remember spending hours (days even) tweaking all the details in Linux. After I bought my first Mac in 2003 all that slowed and eventually stopped. I never thought of myself as a conformist .. Quite the opposite. But I have conformed to Mac OS with little fuss. Of course having access to a UNIX prompt helps.