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Apple or Crapple?
By Brandon Montes

Apple, the people who make those ipod thingies, also make computers. This particular article was written on one such machine-a G4 iBook, bought October of last year. I love it. It's everything I could want in a laptop: sexy, durable, lightweight and oh so easy to use. That said, the piece of shit died on me a few weeks ago.
My iBook started freezing up every few minutes, I tried reinstalling the operating system. The iBook wouldn't have it. After three failed attempts I took her to the emergency room, that is, the Apple Store in the Galleria.
One of Apple's new gimmicks is the Genius Bar. It's a hokey name for genuinely cool concept. Rather than sitting on the phone with some Indian fellow while trying to troubleshoot a problem, Mac users can head down to their local apple store where a flesh-and-blood person will help solve the problem. But I recommend making an online appointment ahead of time, unless you want to wait around the store for an hour or two.
Leif and Chris P, the guys who helped me out, were great. They ran some diagnostics and decided a faulty third-party memory module was the likely culprit. Guess that's what I get for using the chintziest module I could find. Chris even told me where to pick up quality memory on the cheap, rather that feeding me some bullshit about buying the overpriced Apple brand stuff. Thanks Chris.
I left relieved I didn't need to send the iBook off for repairs. Confident in their advice and pressed for time, I decided to reinstall the OS myself once I got home. Unfortunately when I tried a fresh install, sans said memory, it froze yet again. Motherfucker. Mildly annoyed I made an online appointment to drop it off that same night.
My baby went out on Thursday. The following Monday, bright and early, I woke up to a missed call from Chris. My iBook was waiting for me. Is that a kick-ass turn around or what? That afternoon I had my old Mac back with a new logic board and hard drive.

In more important Macintosh related news: Steve Jobs, Apple's co-founder and CEO, recently gave his annual keynote address at the company's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). He confirmed rumors that hell had frozen over, and starting mid-2006 they would begin switching from IBM's PowerPC microprocessors to Intel made chips (apple.com/quicktime/qtv/wwdc05/).
What? Why? Well, IBM has let Apple down in both quantity and quality over the past few years. Their PowerPC G5 processor has yet to reach promised speeds of 3Ghz, nor has a mobile version been produced. And with two out of three next-generation videogame consoles using PowerPC chips, IBM has little incentive to push development. Combined, Nintendo and Microsoft are expected to need four to five times Apple's volume. Game consoles typically use the same processor their entire lifespan, this means they can send less on R&D while guaranteeing higher chip sales.
Intel, on the other hand, controls over 80% of the x86 market. And the x86 platform accounts for basically every non-Macintosh personal computer on the planet. This makes them a pretty solid bet as far as business partners go. "…Intel's technology will help us create the best personal computers for the next ten years," said Jobs during the WWDC.
It's the OS X operating system that really makes a Mac. But how does an operating system run on a platform it wasn't built for? Well it turns out that OS X was secretly designed to run on x86 processors from the beginning.
Here's a quick history lesson: In the mid-80s Jobs left Apple to start NeXT Computers. In 1989 NeXT released NeXTSTEP -a kick-ass operating system based on Unix. NeXTSTEP later became OPENSTEP when it was ported to non-NeXT hardware, including x86 PC's.
In 1997 Apple re-acquired Steve Jobs along with NeXT. OPENSTEP was used to create Mac OS X. The prototype build of OS X was called Rhapsody. Two versions of this strange lovechild where designed, one for PowerPC, the other for x86. And although the finished version of OS X didn't officially support x86 chips, Jobs made sure that it could if it had too, "Just in case."

Deelicious

by Tish Ochoa

Natalie Dee is just a normal girl living in Columbus, Ohio. But over the past several years, her website natalieedee.com has attracted an audience of thousands. Natalie is a web based artist, and like Craigslist and Myspace, she's become quite popular in that internet kind of way. I first heard of Natalie a few years ago when a friend emailed me a drawing of hers. Now nearly everyone I know reads Natalie. Not only does she put up a new drawing every single day, she also writes a pretty amusing advice column and offers a selection of merchandise that features her unusual brand of humor. Just in case you've been living under a rock (a rock with no internet access), here is a little preview of what makes Natalie tick.

Tish: When did you start drawing? Have your drawings always had a similar aesthetic as they do now? Or did using photoshop to create them change
your work a lot.

Natalie: I started drawing when I was really really young, and took a lot of art classes starting when I was around 7. I think the style I draw in now began to makes itself apparent 10 or 11 years ago, after I got into comic books, and started realizing that the kind of art my teachers taught wasn't really the kind of art I was interested in doing. You can only have someone stand behind you and have them tell you how THEY want you to draw the barn so many times before you don't want to draw the barn at all, you know?

I don't think Photoshop has changed my drawing style too much, aside from just being able to erase stuff without having to start over from scratch. I really don't use the program to the full extent of its capabilities, to say the least. I just draw on a Wacom tab, like I would on a piece of paper.

Tish: Where do you feel you fit into the art world? Do you consider your place on the net only, or do you ever exhibit your paintings publicly? Is it an aspiration to show your artwork in that way?

Natalie: I kind of divorced myself from the art world a long time ago. There is a definite kind of person who rolls with art scenes, and I've never really got along with those kind of people. A little too much pretense, a little too much snottiness and attitude, and hardly anyone has anything to back up all the artifice.

I've shown paintings at shows before, but I don't think I will be pursuing those avenues in the future. I haven't been working on large format works in a long time, because I get bored with them. I identify more with illustrators than any other group, and have been working more on that kind of stuff for the past couple years.

Tish: Who are your favorite artists?

As far as fine art, I really like Jeff Koons and Ray Johnson.
Comics-wise, I'm into Evan Dorkin and Pete Bagge. Internet comics-wise, the only one I ever look at (aside from checking on my site, my husband's site, and the site we run together) is Achewood. Pretty good stuff.

Tish: Are you into the whole blog thing? I know there are a few sites I visit on a daily basis. Anyone out there that you read regularly?

Natalie: Not really. Ever since the whole blog thing started, these bloggers think that they can go and shit up the whole internet. I mean, how many blogs do you click on and see the same 10 recycled links to news stories, and the same predictable complainers, before you just quit? Whine whine whine, complain complain complain, link the new iPod, link the Threadless sale, check Boing Boing and repost all their links, repeat. I'm not going to lie, though. I do check The Sneeze regularly. Steve, the guy who runs it, is really nice, and his blog is funny and interesting and never the same thing as everyone else's blog.

Tish: Do you spend a lot of time on the internet in general?

Natalie: Kind of. I am tied to my computer most of the day, doing interviews like this one, checking e-mails, processing orders and whatnot. Plus I do all my art on the computer, so I tend to keep the internet open at the same time I am doing pictures, just to make sure I don't stay on task TOO much. I don't get on the Instant Chatterbox, though, or post on message boards or anything, but I work on the internet, so I can't get too far from it.

Tish: What is a day in the life of nataliedee like?

Natalie: I get up at around 10, do e-mails while I have breakfast... Three times a week we pack orders in the early afternoon, and on alternate days we go to the post office in the early afternoon. Then I go out to lunch, come home, and work on stuff for the afternoon and evening. I'll work on drawings, or on Married to the Sea stuff, or I will go into my sewing room and sew or I'll just chill out. That's pretty much it. Not too interesting.

Tish: It's pretty awesome that you put a new drawing up every single day. Do you make 1 drawing a day usually? Or is it the kind of thing where you might get inspired and make a whole lot of them at once?

I always do them in batches. I'll draw 3-5 in a sitting a few times a week. Usually one drawing will give me another idea for a different drawing, and other times I will already have a list of ideas. I just sit down and do it, and get a nice backlog. That way, I don't have to update every single day, I can update for a month at a time and just let it take care of itself that way.

Tish: Your Ask Natalie column cracks me up. When did you start doing that? What's the strangest question you've been asked?

I started doing Ask Natalie back in 2024. I did it on a fairly regular basis on my site until 2024, when I started doing it weekly for the Columbus Alive. I left due to contractual disputes after the paper was sold to the main newspaper in town, and since then I have been taking a little time off from it, letting good questions accumulate so I can get it back the way it used to be. When I was just writing it when I felt like it, I was more able to pick and choose and make sure I always had new, different, and interesting questions. Having to do the column every week meant slimmer pickins, and I got a little burnt out answering dumb boyfriend questions all the time. I'll probably bring it back in the spring.

The strangest question I ever get is MY BOYFRIEND DISRESPECTS ME AND TREATS ME LIKE I AM A STUPID CHILD. WHAT SHOULD I DO?? It is strange because you would think that anyone with two brain cells to rub together would know the answer to that. But they don't, and I think that is a huge problem. Maybe guys would stop treating girls badly if girls stopped letting guys treat them badly. Maybe if any guys had to face repercussions for being a dick, they would quit being dicks. Just a hunch.

Tish: marriedtothesea.com is your new collaboration site with your husband Drew (of toothpastefordinner.com). Is that an idea you guys have been kicking around a while? Is it difficult to work together, or is it pretty easy?

Natalie: Nah, ideas don't tend to get kicked around too much in our household. Most ideas either get acted on pretty much immediately, or immediately get dismissed. We made a few of the comics and realized they were totally hilarious, and thought we would put them up. So we did. We don't really "work together" on the site. We both just do the comics on our own, and pile them together under the Married to the Sea umbrella.

Tish: I think the coolest part of the new site is that it is mainly text based, but your individual styles are still all over it. Do you guys take turns doing the daily update or do you work on each comic together?

Natalie: We just work on the comics on our own, and put them up in no particular order. I think you can tell who does which ones, though, since we have different styles. This comic lets us do a lot of things we wouldn't necessarily do on our own respective sites, though.

Tish: When you are making new drawings, are you creating for an audience or do you mainly just draw stuff that cracks you up?

Natalie: I just draw what I think is funny, and my audience creates itself. Its a lot easier to just please yourself rather than trying to figure out the formula for the one joke that is going to make everyone laugh. That's when your comics get totally boring.

Tish: Have you ever been to Texas? What is the coolest place you've ever traveled to?

I have been to Texas, but only once, and it was just overnight in some Holiday Inn in Abiline when we were driving home from vacation a year and a half ago. Texas is pretty big, huh? It takes a long time to drive across. We drove across Canada a few years ago, and that was pretty awesome. It was interesting. A lot of Canada is empty, and something about that appeals to