Macs Cannot Do...

Much as I love my Macs, there are certain things that the Macs just cannot do. As a Mac evangelist, I do tell people that I preach to about the sad fact. This is more like a list in case I need it. I don't do false advertisement.

• Can You See What I See? - Scholastics published many I Spy games for both Macs and Windows. The latest in the series, not necessarily from Scholastics, so far is available for Windoze only. Although my Son already has a few hidden object games, the I Spy series is still his favorite, especially in CYSWIS Seymour plays a bigger role. Or so it seems.
• Platypus 2 - I played Platypus 2 on a Windoze machine and really like all the extra weapons and the three-player mode. On the Mac with the original Platypus, I can get only so far so I hope that with three players against the computer, I may get further.
• Citrix - One option to connect to the office is to go to some web site and connect via a Citrix connection. Unfortunately, you need more than the Citrix client to work. Whatever behind the scene requires ActiveX and the site specifically declares that it does not support Macs. I verified by installing a Citrix client on my Mac and failed utterly. Oh well, might as well keep work and fun separated.
• Hap Hazard - My Son play many games at miniclips.com but some games, such as Hap Hazard, does not work on the Mac. Windoze with Internet Explorer only, supposedly. I even tried to use it on my lowly Win XP PC but there too it failed to run. Whatever. Luckily, so far Son has not asked about it any more.
• Cantonese data entry - The built-in Chinese keyboard method works fine, but I can only use its pinyin method. You need to know Mandarin in order to use pinyin. I know the Cantonese dialect better than Mandarin so this does not help me. On Windoze, I used to use UnionWay for Chinese data entry and it does support Cantonese. Lately I have almost no need for writing Chinese so, while it would be nice to be able to write with Cantonese sound, no major loss there.
  

On a good note, I distinctly recall Cartoon Network's videos of recently aired shows used to be unavailable to Macheads but I just checked and it worked fine. Maybe someone at CN realized that there is a sizable Mac audience out there to cater to.

Also, I used to wish Vietnamese keyboard method on the Mac could have more option. On my old PowerBook G4, there is only one choice, but I see that with Leopard, on the Wife's laptop, there are many choices, including VNI, with the diacritical marks at keys 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. It has been a while, but I think it's sắc, huyền, hỏi, ngã, nặng.

So, if you can live without certain Windoze apps or web sites, make the switch and enjoy computing without all that baggage Windoze brings!

185 - Citrix and Kids

I love Citrix. Working in an environment supporting different networks and having to have different network accounts, with Citrix I can go into all those other networks with the proper accounts to do my job. In the ideal world, one network account can access the entire corporate network, but one side effects of all those mergers the firm had is that some networks are accessible only to accounts in those networks. For the casual user, Citrix provides a lightweight connection to the corporate network from outside. You may have your home drive and a few essential apps like email or office suite, which suffices most of the time. On days that I work from home, I usually have one Citrix connection to do data transfer when needed. I have the choice of using some Terminal Service connection but there are only 2 TS sessions per server so sometimes they get used up. Citrix is the better way to go most of the time.

I recently noticed a colleague, JB in the Citrix Admin group, using a white board as a writing surface. Or to catch peanut shells. What a waste of a good asset. He knew about my drawing skill as I gave him a Qaptain Qwerty qalendar this year. I offered to trade him something for the white board. He was reluctant at first, but then another colleague somehow convinced him to at least loan it to me.

It makes a big difference to have a board right then and there when the idea strikes. I made 184 - Text Twirl using a hand board then added text via Comic Life and Photoshop. The outcome is good but it did take a few hours. With JB's board on my desk, I was able to complete the drawing in minutes. JB himself thought it is a pretty good approximation of his appearance. The ponytail is his trademark.

Ever since I started using Citrix I had wanted to make a pun with Citrix and the Trix commercial. FYI, ica is the extension for Citrix files. Double-click on such files and you are prompted to log into the other network, all while still running apps with your native login.