I resisted getting an iPad when they first came out, because I figured the second edition would be much better. The lack of a camera was a particular drawback, since this is such a perfect form factor for video conferencing. As Apple gets more and more controlling and arrogant (App Store policies, newspaper subscriptions,…), I wasn’t sure I wanted to go down that road.

But the iPad 2 convinced me. It is better in enough areas to convince me to get one. Not one, but TWO cameras. I was ready. They would soon become available in Europe (although about $220 more expensive than one bought in the US), but I figured I could pick one up during a trip to California this week.

Sadly, no.

I saw the news reports of low stocks in stores, and inquired about my chances on twitter. They were not encouraging. Apparently, to score one of these things, I should go to an Apple retail store at 5:00 am and wait in line until the store opened at 10:00 (maybe 9:00) to get one of the few devices dribbling out. Or check out a long list of inventory web sites at other retailers, followed by phone calls to plan out a strategy.

I don’t think so. Yes, I want one, but not THAT badly. For awhile, I will have to content myself reading what colleagues say about this phenomenon. I would not put it past Apple to be orchestrating this scarcity to increase the buzz, and I don’t want to encourage that kind of behavior. I might still get one, but not until I can avoid going to fanatical lengths to get one.

Chip architectures were also popular points of discussion. At one point, I was able to sound reasonably informed about RISC architectures, multithreading and other stuff that seems pretty arcane to me now. Even then in the early 1990s, it all seemed a waste. Why so much attention to chips and operating systems? That should be far too low a level for most people to be worried about. It’s like spending hours discussing the type of nails and bricks used to build a house, while ignoring the room layout, window placement or paint color. I would think that applications and what end users see would be far more important than the details of the innards of the machines they run on.

Now, most people don’t worry about chips too much, unless you really like that sort of thing (and I am oh so glad that there are people who do, so I don’t have to). But we still seem obsessed with operating systems. Either because they are ho-hum (Windows Vista), might be less ho-hum (Windows 7), supposedly just work (MacOS X — although I disagree), or just sound really cool (Google ChromeOS).

Google has unleashed a flood of commentary and speculation by saying that it is thinking about a new PC operating system built around the Chrome browser. I will let my colleagues debate what this really means. But this all makes me a little sad. I thought that obsessing about an OS in 1993 was depressing; why are we still doing it in 2009? Next, I fear we will re-open the big-endian/little-endian compiler debate. Isn’t it much more important what we do with these operating systems? I was impressed with the thinking behind Google Wave because it shows what can be done with the clever technology under the hood. The thought of having another OS that gets in the way of what I want to do grinds down my soul like a bad third grade teacher.

I realize that operating systems and even chips are important. They make it possible to do the cool things that we can imagine. But sewers, roads, electrical grids and payment systems are important too without too much of the population having to pay too much attention to them. I will pay my share of what it costs to keep them going, but please don’t make me think about them; I have other things to do. That is how I want to think about operating systems; get out of the way and let me think about something really useful, and where I can make a difference, however small.

I am as impressed as most people are with the overall design and beauty of the Apple products. Usability is definitely suffering, however, as they get more complex and intertwined. Last week, my wife’s iBook G4 died. Apple seems to think that is a normal thing for three year computers to do, because there aren’t really many viable repair options available. By the time we replace the hard disk, and the keyboard (which has been wonky for about a year), we would have almost paid for a new machine. So that’s what we did: A brand spanking new 13 inch Macbook.

When trying to revive the old machine to get the data off, I reinstalled the OS. Now it starts fine, but when I try to start any applications, they just bounce on the dock a few times and nothing happens. No error message. Nothing to indicate that an app failing to appear is out of the ordinary. Just a little happy bouncing icon. That kind of behaviour drives me crazy. As often as not, when something goes wrong on the Mac, there is no information about what happened and no apparent place to go to fix it. On Windows machines there are all kinds of places to tweak and probe. I never know which one to use, which drives me crazy in a different way, but at least I can find a place to start fiddling. What can I do with an icon that bounces happily away, but little else?

I moved the iTunes over from a backup, and all seemed to go well. I had to re-authorize the machine to play the tunes I had bought from the iTunes Store. Slightly irritating, but I can live with that. Now about half the songs we bought pop up the authorization message (and refuse to accept the authorization), and half work fine. No idea why. We bought them all exactly the same way.

I also moved all our photos over from a backup disk. But do you think that there is a way to get iPhoto to recognize all of the libraries and albums from the other machine? Not that I could find after quite a bit of searching. It imported them all just fine, but lost all of the organization, metadata and slideshows built up over the years.

The new machine has a nifty built-in camera. Except that iChat says that this machine is not equipped with a camera. But it is. I am sure there is someplace to turn it on, but I haven’t found it yet.

We wanted to use the nifty iChat interface. But the descriptions on how to get it working are incredibly opaque. the steps involved to connect to someone else are in no way obvious. Something called Bonjour keeps popping up, but I have yet to figure out what it is or how it will help me, after about 30 minutes of looking, the limits of my patience.

I still have to figure out how to convert old AppleWorks files into a format that Office for Mac can read. I would have thought that would be a standard filter, but I’ll have to go looking for it.

I appreciate the design of the box, and the slick look of the operating system. I am also sure that I will figure out all of this stuff eventually. Please don’t offer technical solutions, as remote support is frustrating for both sides. I am also sure that Windows can be just as frustrating. I honestly really like the Mac in many ways and don’t feel that strongly about operating systems anyway. But I expected more from a system that is so praised for its usability. I have always secretly wanted to be a Mac user, so I write this diatribe with disappointment. I am sure that it is a viable alternative to Windows as a corporate desktop machine, but only because it is equally frustrating, albeit in different ways.

I have stopped muttering about how Macs are so much easier to use while trying to figure out why some obvious function isn’t working. It’s better for my mixed marriage.