Apple Mac AirBook with M2 chip and Ventura OS. My thoughts 1 month on

 It is now a month since I wrote about my using the Apple AirBook with the M2 Chip in - I should have said that it has 256 GB of storage as it is now known and 8GB of Memory and cost £1,249:00 to buy. 

A month ago I was just getting used to it, yet even then the conclusion was that I loved it and  I thought it was really worth paying the extra for it.  So do I still think the same way. 

Now having had the chance to use it every day, it still is nicer to use than any Windows Laptop that I have used and now I am have un-windowed myself I actually prefer the keyboard settings and the design of it. Yes I am still not quite as instinctive as I was with a windows keyboard, then I have been using one of those for years and this is just a month of daily use.  

I wrote that I liked the touch pad and it was very responsive and easy to use, I still do, but I use a mouse which is connected via bluetooth (which was easy to do) as I like the feel and control of the mouse that I have.

I have found the display a lot better and I am able to continue to work for longer than I was ever able to do with other hardware that I have used in the past.  This is both a good thing and a bad thing, good in that it means that you can get more things done, bad in that as we all know it is good to/important to take breaks away from the screen regularly.

The M2 chip is a delight speed wise and the storage is more than enough, checking I still have over 200GBs left of useable space.  I say useable space, because as with all Operating System they use up some of the space to work, here the OS and system data are taking up about 24 GB combined. 

Battery use is very good and you can make it better by adjusting things.  I have not noticed any real difference when I using just on Battery or on mains apart from the usual powering down to save on battery is less than on mains  which is expected.

Ventura as an operating system still impresses me with its niceness, I know some will think it is a silly thing to say, but it is nice to use.  I still find myself having to look at wear things go, that is okay as it means I am learning.  I really love the Calendar and the weather applications,  both are easy to use and the weather application is very accurate now that I have set to where I live. 

I did find it frustrating at first to be able use applications not found in the application store as there was always a warning about them.  As I use them all the time this is no longer the case.  Deleting applications is still something I don't like having to go through the hoops to do and Windows is far is easy to do.  In-fairness it has only been a month and in time I'll possibly not have this problem.

During the month I changed my Android mobile telephone for a new one and while to process of using bluetooth is the same, it seems to have slowed down after this when downloading photographs to the AirBook. I don't know if this is the fault of the telephone or what,  I kind of think that if I had gone for an iPhone I wouldn't have had this problem.

I am still using Safari, the built in browser as my main browser and still wish I could have Ublock and Facebook purity able to use as I really like these things.  I have now had a chance to see the difference between the Edge browser which comes pre-installed with Windows and this and while you are able to use Ublock and Facebook Purity,  Safari is in my opinion a better browser within an operating system.  I have gone for other browsers as a back up, without transferring all the sensitive passwords across as you shouldn't for security reasons,  I hardly use them as for everything that annoys me about Safari I do really like it.

In the month that has passed I have had one major slip in that I lost, probably deleted, something I was working on and couldn't recover it as stupidly I had not done a back up.  That has been the only thing that has gone wrong.

So

One month into using a Windows Laptop I would have changed most of it by now.  One month on using the system I have now, I have changed nothing apart from adding my office application and making adjustment that I need as far as display settings.  

If you are on a very tight budget and don't use a laptop as your main item for communication and work related things and social media then a Windows Laptop is probably the best solution for you.  The thing to remember is that Windows Laptops are cheap and their second hand value means that you are unlikely to get more than 10% of what you pay for it back.  If you are okay with that then go with that. 

I do believe however that even with the extra cost involved and you can get monthly payment schemes if you need to do so, that the Apple MacBook Air is the better option.  You can go even higher and get the MacBook Pro version, yet for most users I think the difference between the two may not be worthwhile.  Apple products are well know for having a good resell value and that is another reason why I am suggesting getting one.

Taking all things into account I have liked my first month of using things I find it hard not to use the word love, because that really is the word that sums it up.  

Would I recommend one to another, most certainly without hesitation.  I will update this in another couple of months when I have had 3 months use of it to see if I still feel the same.

Safari internet browser - a personal review

 Safari is the internet browser that come pre-installed on Apple operating systems including the latest version Ventura.  

It is not unusual for operating systems to come with an internet browser, Windows for example used to come with Internet Explorer, which many of us probably used first of if we used windows and now comes with Edge.  I know that various Linux operating systems come with Firefox pre-installed.  There are a lot of benefits to having one pre-installed as it means that we can quickly go on line either to change our browser choice or for other things we want to do.  

I do not know the history of internet browsers on other systems only that as far as I am aware, Firefox was the first to offer an alternative to Internet Explorer as I chose to use it as my browser and I remember the excitement of having a different browser to use.  Since the choice of browsers has grown, with Google Chrome and Chrome based browser now dominating this area and more recently browsers like Brave and now DuckDuckgo offer a greater deal of privacy (we are told) than other browsers do. 

I first came across Safari when it was available on Windows and I really liked it then and would have continued to use if it had not been taken off that Operating System. So that was the last time I used it and since then Firefox has mainly been my browser of choice until Brave. 

What I dislike about Safari is that I can not as yet use Facebook Purity or Ublock Origin for twitter trending and on some sites there is more adverts than page to view.  With the latter there may be a way of stopping those, but I have not found it yet.  These are the only real negatives that I can think of.

What I like is that it is fast and pages load quickly.  You can bookmark easily and can ask it to remember passwords and it reminds you if you have used the same password on different sites. You can clear your history if you want to, but it will remember your history and date it which comes in handy if you've visited a site and can't remember what it is called as I could not the other day.  You can open it in a Private window if you wish to do so, say for a payment transaction. There is also a very helpful Help if that makes sense.  

Safari comes with the now expected, open where you left off or at the home page which you can set either with a web page of choice or the Safari Start Page, which I like as all your favourites sites are there and I find this useful.  As with many other browsers the Start Page is customisable  to suit you. 

There is the usual choice of search engines to use, Safari by default uses DuckDuckgo (on Ventura) which is as good as any, but sometimes I like to use Google as that is perhaps the best. 

You can have as many or as few tabs open as you want at one time.  Unless I am switching when copying and pasting I only have one open and in honesty we can only really read one web page at a time. 

While I do have another browser installed, I hardly ever use it, because I really like Safari for all of the minor complaints I have about it, it does a great job and really that is all I ask of any browser.  For all of the reasons I have stated here I would recommend using it as your default browser and yes I do really like it.

Having checked I know that Safari is available across all hardware that has IOS installed, like iPhones and iPads. 

On choosing a new Mobile telephone or Cell Phone as it is also known as

 I have recently treated myself to a new Laptop, a Macbook Air M2 which I really love and is proving to be for me the best that I have had.  This made me think of getting an iPhone so I could link the two together and because our present mobile phones were over two years old, I thought why not get two and replace them both.  I knew that the iPhone would not be cheap, as my Laptop was not cheap so I looked on the official Apple web site at all the models and after comparing them all, The iPhone SE 64GB at £449:00 seemed to be the best suited for our needs and it was getting very good reviews everywhere I looked.  However that would mean for two of them it would mean a total of nearly £1,000 or exactly £898:00 which was just £101:00 less than an AirBook with the M1 chip and that is a lot of money to spend on something that you carry around and that is before you consider the additional costs of Data usage or just sim card usage. So I decided as much I would love to be able to justify the spend could I really do so? 

LOOK AT YOUR TELEPHONE BILL

I wonder if you like me just accept your telephone bill each month and pay what is due?  I looked at it and realised that I had done a monthly payment plan for our two telephones along with the sim plan in 2019 about the same time when we changed our broadband. What this meant was, when I looked at the price of our telephone now we had paid out over the time more than the telephone is actually worth! It was quite a shock to realise that.  

LOOK AT THE THE TARRIF VERSES THE COST OF PAYING FOR THE TELEPHONE OUT RIGHT

You may well be in for quite a shock when you do this and you need to look at all the Tariff plans cost per month particularly if they include data and over what period that package is. 

Having done this, you might concluded it is better for you to pay for the phone outright and then get a SIM only deal which I found out does work out cheaper (or did for me). Ask yourself do I really need any data or do I just need to use my telephone for calls and texting while I am out.  If you have unlimited broadband at home, you can connect you phone to the internet should you need to do so at no extra cost as I do. 

LOOK AT WHAT YOU REALLY NEED YOUR TELEPHONE TO DO AND IS THERE ANOTHER ALTERNATIVE THAT WILL DO THE SAME THING CHEAPER

All mobile telephones will connect to the internet and all will make telephone calls and will let you text message, all have a camera of sorts on them and various applications for video and games it you need and you can download other things if you really need to use them as well. 

If you really want to stick with Apple then you have a limited range to chose from.  Even here if you check you might get an older model like the iPhone 12 which still works and can be updated you just need to check.  I would only say one thing, get them from an officially recognised Apple Approved retailer so if anything does go wrong then you have a direct point of contact. 

If however, you are not stuck on getting an iPhone then there is a vast range of companies that do mobile telephones using the Android system, which you may be more familiar with if you have a mobile already. With so much choice, they can vary in quality so that is something be aware of.  The most well know in this sector are possibly Google and Samsung as well as others like Sony who are also known to many people. These I found out are most often pushed on websites suggestions about the best mobile telephones.  Some sites are honest enough to state, that they may be paid if you take up their suggestions others I have found are not so up front with this information.  

With regard to the best sites and the review sites, it is worth remembering that these are only recommendations based on the reviewer's own preferences and may not be suitable for what you want.  

SHOPPING ON LINE MIGHT NOT BE THE CHEAPEST WAY

People think that shopping on line is often the cheapest way of getting things and sometimes it is. When getting a new mobile it might not be so as there might be hidden costs involved, like postage for example and what happens if there is a fault with the item, will you have to bear the cost of returning the item.  

If some thing is at a price that seems too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true.

GO TO YOU LOCAL TELECOM SHOP OR MOBILE TELEPHONE SHOP WHERE YOU HAVE BEEN BEFORE

If you have been a customer of a local Telecom Shop and still are with your present contract it is worth while going to the shop, because what they have on line might not be the only mobile telephones they have.  It is only natural that they want you have the latest items and this will be prominent on their website,  there is nothing wrong with that as many people want names they know and the latest version. 

When we first went to our local shop I discovered 3 telephones that were not on their web site and weren't given pride of place on display.  One I thought was very good and to me the specifications weren't that much different to the iPhone although it was just £119:00 which meant two of them would still be less than what we paid for one iPhone.  Rather than rushing in and getting them then and there we came home and looked on line to see if we could find any information about the maker of the phone and mostly what we found out was that it a good company and their phones were considered to be generally of good quality. 

When we returned to the shop a few days later, we said to the person who served us that we wanted to buy the telephone and would like 2 of them. After he had checked on the stock, he returned and said I don't have two of the 64GB phones in, but they sent us 128GB by mistake in black which since you are buying two of them you can have at the same price as the 64GB phone, which we were only too pleased to do. And agreed to continue with our SIM only plan, which meant that our monthly outing has reduced as a direct result. 

So the lesson here is by going to your local shop you not only get to see the phone, but you might get lucky as we did and get a real bargain !

Your local shop, should be able to transfer your data and settings for you free of charge, if they want to charge you, then if you have the internet at home you can do it quite easily by following the instructions for your new phone set up on line.  While they did one telephone for us, I was able to the other telephone and I am not that technically minded and I found it easy to do so without a hitch. 

TO SUM UP

1) Check your contract is it coming close to the end or has it ended and you've not been told

2) Go to the settings on your telephone and see what model it is and when it was made, it might be older than you think 

3) See how much you have paid out for your telephone, is it more than its present value, hint it probably is.

4) Really think about what you need from your phone, do you just need to take photographs, text message and make telephone calls.  Do you really need mobile internet or do you use the internet mainly at home?

5) Fix a price that you want to and are able to pay for a new telephone if you were able to pay for it right out. Would the price of a monthly plan exceed that price even if it was just for a SIM only plan. 

6) Do some research on line remembering that the big names are not the only ones to look at as there might be other brands that do what you want at a far cheaper price.

7) Go and see a range of mobile telephones in your local telephone shop and yes ask questions. Remember the person you are asking the questions may have a personal preference or may be on a commission or have a target to reach.  

8) Don't rush into buying things as you might regret doing so if you do.

9) REMEMBER IT IS REALLY A PERSONAL MATTER OF CHOICE - YOUR CHOICE AND AS IT WILL BE YOU USING THE TELEPHONE NOT ANOTHER.

Our son had been saying to us for the last few years that we were silly paying monthly for our mobiles and that we could save money by buying the phone and going SIM only and I really that was a bad idea, now I see he was correct. By really looking around you can find a telephone that will do the same job, everything you want and cheaper without a lack in quality than the big brands.  This is the lesson we have learnt and I hope that may be one person will look at this and think I could do the same. 

As a foot note to this, we showed our son the telephone and he said we had made a good choice for the price of the telephone and what we wanted from one and we should keep the old telephone as it still works as a back up which were are doing - so that is an extra tip for you.

APPLE VENTURA 13.2.1OS Personal thoughts on it

I have now been using Ventura for about 3 weeks now. The version I have installed is numbered 13.2.1 as I have already had updates, firstly from the pervious Monterey which was installed on my MacBook Air  when I purchased it and really didn't get a chance to see what that was like.  

As far as I am aware Apple Macs of all types come with a version of the Apple Operating System already installed and the newer the hardware then the newer the system installed will be. The same with Windows PCs or other types of hardware makers will have their own Operating Systems on them. There are many reasons for this and this is not the blog to go into details about the whys and wherefores, this is the case. 

Perhaps the first thing you notice about Ventura is how different is to Windows, which takes some getting used to at first, then it all makes sense and I have found it didn't take long to get used to.  If you are using Windows 11 then you will be quite familiar with the "dock" which is where your most used applications are placed for easy access.  You can add or takes things away as required. As you open things to use they will appear on there and if you use them regularly, like for example Libre Office as I do it is a good idea to leave them there.  Only Finder, Launch Pad, System Settings and Bin can not be removed from the dock and there is no why you should really want to do so as they are very useful things to have such quick access to.  

Another big difference to windows is that rather than having to date, wireless, battery and power options along the bottom, these are at the top of the screen and are hidden if you use an application in full screen mode.  I like this as it means that you don't accidentally change a setting while doing other things as I have done so in the past. You can easily access these things should you need to do so, by moving the cursor to the top and it will drop down slightly so you can see them.  If you need to bookmark a page quickly you can also do so, by moving the cursor to the lefthand side where a panel will open with your bookmarks in and it that way, so you have two ways of doing so. 

 Setting up my printer was easy and while it was a bit more of a problem to find out how to connect with Bluetooth, once I found out how to do so it was okay and now using it, it is far quicker than the connection I had on Windows.  Connecting the wireless was also very easy and I had no problems at all doing so. 

Ventura does come with what I suppose we could call an office type application, it is not all in one place and called very different things.  Pages is similar, to Word and you can use it as such as it also comes with many different templates,  there is also Keynote and Freeform, which from what I can gather are similar to things in Microsoft Office, which I have never used apart from when doing a course many years ago, so can't really make a judgement on them.  If you really need to use Microsoft Office then it is available in the application store (AppStore) or you can get it directly from Microsoft or through the official Apple website.  I only use Libre Office and while it is not official recognised by Apple it works works well and I am certain will be soon (or I hope so). 

On the subject of Applications,  I hate the word Apps as it is lazy,  Apple is very security conscious and so they have to be approved by them to be added to the Application (App)Store, so they don't contain any nasty surprises.  You can down load things from outside the store as I have, you will be reminded that they've not been approved and asked if you really want to do so.  The only time I have found this to be a problem is when I used UMark watermarking software which I had done so on Windows as a free version, it stopped working after the trial version ended and tried to force me into buying the Professional version which I didn't want as I don't use it that often enough to warrant the cost. 

I would suggest that if you are used to using Windows as I am that it is worth investing in book guide and the one I would recommend is Teach yourself Visually MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, by Guy Hart-Davis.  I have the 6th Addition which while slightly out of date as it was publish before Ventura was out, it still is invaluable as there isn't a great deal of difference in the Operating Systems that make it redundant.  WH Smiths also have The macOS Ventura Manual 2023 in stock, or did and I also got that for reference.  

CONCLUSION

In the time that I have used Ventura,  I have found it to be great,  I  love it and the more I use it, the more I understand it and the better it becomes.  I really think that those behind it have thought about the people who will use it not what they think that people will use it for.  The inbuilt help is great as is the online help from Apple, by far the best that I have ever seen before.  I actually like the extra layers of security that are built in.  While I can use alternative browsers, I am using Safari most of the time, because it is that good and in my experience far better than most other browsers.  Generally, I have found it relaxing to use with very few frustrations and even the system updates (which I have experienced one of) are quick.  Personally I have been able to fault it on anything that does or that I have tried to do with it.  

I can not say what it would be like on other hardware, in fact I do not know if it is available on other hardware.  On the Mac hardware which it comes from it is a perfect match.  

One final thought don't try to turn Ventura into Windows, because you are used to using Windows, as I did at first, forget Windows and just enjoy Ventura as Ventura.