On the advice of a friend, I switched my default search engine on my iPhone’s Safari browser from Google to Yahoo!. I must say that I’m impressed. What I like most is that it is properly formatted and designed to be used on a mobile device, and specifically the iPhone. Search results are clear, readable, and formatted for easy clicking. The Google search results page still looks like the desktop version (even though it is a mobile version). That means its a little messy, busy and overall not optimized for mobile searching.

I then realized that I had become so dependent on Google that I never even bothered trying other search engines out in literally years. What I’ve found is that Yahoo! and yes, even Bing, have some nice features that Google lacks. For example, using Bing’s image search doesn’t present you with hundreds of thousands of pages, its just one page that you keep scrolling down. As you scroll more images get loaded up. I don’t know why they didn’t make their text search the same way, as I rather like this idea.

Perhaps Google has been resting on its laurels focusing on many other things than search these days (e.g. Android, Chrome, etc.) and has forgotten that they need to start introducing easier and more efficient ways to do search on their flagship service. I’m sure they’ve improved things on the back-end such as performance, search algorithms, etc. but the interface has been virtually unchanged for ages now and well… its starting to show.

The hard drive of my MacBook died on me Saturday. After numerous attempts at fixing the drive, I had to acknowledge the fact that it was a physical problem with the drive that prevented it from working. Luckily I didn’t have much of anything important saved on the drive as its not my primary computer. I had also been meaning to upgrade the hard drive to something with a larger capacity because I kept getting low-space warnings, something I was thinking even the day before it died.

I was overly impressed with my reaction to this ‘problem’, or should I say, my lack thereof. Had this been a PC laptop running Windows, I would have probably been stomping down Main Street in my bath robe cursing Microsoft for causing me so much grief. So why is this any different? Why the chillaxed reaction? Am I getting calmer as I age? Do I recognize there are more important things in life that need my attention? Uhmm… ok… maybe. But seriously, if this was a Windows PC, I don’t think my reaction would have been similar.

I can’t help but wonder if I’ve been brain-washed by Apple to the point where I believe they can do no wrong? After all, I wanted to upgrade my hard drive. Is this a ‘feature’ perhaps? After scouring the spec sheets and feature lists, I didn’t find anything similar to  ”Hard drive fails in anticipation of upgrading, making your purchase decision that much easier.” It seems that Apple can do no wrong. Even product limitations are often spun as features. And we buy into it. And buy into it with a lot of money.

I’m exaggerating of course. What I did realize was that the upgrade process in general wouldn’t be a big deal. Mac OS X installation is a breeze. Restoring backups of software, docs, etc. is a breeze with Time Machine (I will note that I didn’t back up this laptop, again, cause I never really kept anything of much important on it, but had I, this process would have been even easier). Even the physical process of removing and installing a new drive is dead easy and un-intimidating even to the squeamish.

In the days of Yore when I ran on Windows PC’s, this process would be absolutely painful. It was time intensive, wouldn’t always work and was just a general headache. What’s worse, is it would generally be self-inflicted as I would purposely format my drive every 6-8 months when the machine started to run sluggishly. If it wasn’t self-inflicted and it was due to hardware/software error, it was not a good scene. And when you finally got Windows installed, you’d still spend the better part of the day on the dozens of separate Windows updates that were waiting for you. Sure, there are a bunch of Software Updates waiting for you after a Mac OS X install, but the list is significantly shorter.

Apple makes mistakes; Apple products aren’t perfect; Apple products break – just like their PC counterparts. But boy - when something goes wrong, I’d rather it be on a Mac.