Naperville in the fall

Online Buying from other people (Reverb.com, eBay, Facebook, etc.) Don’t be an idiot

I had an amplifier listed for my shop, on Reverb.com, a site dedicated to selling musical instrument gear. It was a like new Mesa Boogie amp, with additional warranty still left. These amps sell for $1549 brand new, and are American-made amps. A gentleman (I’m using that term loosely) badgered us on price, offering more […]

Dear Apple: if you don’t care as much about Mac hardware……

Stop worrying about how thin and light it is. I would like to return to the days where I could actually upgrade the RAM in a laptop, even change out the drive (hard drive, SSD, whatever storage medium was in there). Now there’s such a race to make these things “Internet appliances” and not actual […]

The weird undercurrent of cheap gear in music

There are a number of products out there considered to be “great bang for the buck” pieces of gear these days. The BOSS Katana is a digital amp that’s taken the guitar world by storm, mainly because it’s a $225-$500 amp series that actually sounds good, and yes, can be gigged with. For what I […]

Why the iPhone is the worst invention ever.

Think of a piece of technology, and much of the time you can also think of a drawback. Sometimes it’s significant, sometimes it’s minor. For example, the car. Sure, it’s fun to drive, it gets us from point A to point B. But it pollutes. It can be the catalyst of much destruction. It’s expensive. […]

The Problem with Facebook

Here’s what I struggle with on Facebook. I have 194 friends, from different generations, different walks of life, different religious and political backgrounds/preferences. With occasional exception, I don’t have issues or arguments with people. I don’t always agree, but it remains pretty cool. What I do get sucked into are debates with friends of friends. […]

A change in workflow

I’ve been working at a place that does not have a Mac as a workstation, and relies heavily on cloud services for day to day operation. At home, my Mac hasn’t left it’s stand in weeks. Instead, I’ve been relying heavily upon my 8+ and my iPad Pro (the latter of which I was going […]

Getting tired of Apple’s pricing

I just bought an iPhone 8 Plus, 256GB. $950, Plus $150 for AppleCare, so $1100. For a phone. That’s okay though, I use it a ton, for both work and home. It’s also my point and shoot camera. My MacBook is nearly 4 years old though, and while it still does what I need for […]

Eventide H9 Review

UPDATE The iOS app works fine on iOS v.11.0, just not on the v.11.1 Beta. So it’s completely understandable that it’s not ready for 11.1 yet. ————————- I was talking to a customer a week or so ago, and as is often the case with gear heads like him and I, we went down the […]

The benefits and drawbacks of online reviews

Nearly every site that sells anything has a product review area. That’s not really what I’m talking about here, though that can be an issue too. Crowd-sourced Review Sites No, what I’m referring to are sites like Yelp or Google reviews, where a customer (presumably; as far as I can tell there’s no way to […]