Today was a jaw dropping day. Apple released 2 new powerbooks and a whole suite of new and updated software. One of the new powerbooks is a 12″ like my iBook, but it has a better processor and a few more bells and whistles. Major droolage, but I’m still thrilled with my iBook. No regrets about getting it. The 17″ is just a plain desktop replacement. It’s awesome. I’d probably get that over an iMac and it will probably eat the PowerMac’s lunch.

The Keynote software had an incredible presentation. It is basically everything that PowerPoint isn’t and should be. Finally, we can make presentations that don’t require a hot cup of coffee in front of you to stay awake. I’ve been to a seminar on information display and I know that this would definitely help communicate your message. Even Steve Jobs says he uses it!

The iLife stuff was cool too. It integrates the pieces together: audio, video, photo, and delivery. I really hope that the new iPhoto will actually work a little better, my current iPhoto library is a little messed up. It won’t import new photos, since I imported some photos with some bad names.

Hope some more Window users will take a look at the Mac. It’s pretty cool and I’m really happy about my purchase. Also, my favorite quote from the Macworld opening keynote was “Open Source, we think it’s great!”. Cool company.

Apple has released the newest version of it’s OS to 10.2.3. This would be Jaguar, take 4. This version has finally fixed a printer problem I had and resolved a strange kernel panic that was a part of it. It also updated OpenGL to 1.4 which has improved the graphics even more. Last week, I was playing Warcraft on my ibook and it was really bad. Slow and stuttery. This was due to an HP printer driver problem and who knows what else. I reconsidered giving my PC to my parents, perhaps I would keep my gaming rig. However, I just popped Warcraft 3 in this morning and it ran really well. I’ll try it on dual monitors after work today, but it looks like I can still hook my parents up with my PC. I’ll miss this 1.2 Ghz Athlon behemoth, but I figure they’ll be able to use it more than I do. Actually, I leave it off most of the time because it is just so damn loud. My fault I guess, since I built it.

My ibook is pretty sweet. It runs really well and is incredibly reliable. Plus it is just fun to look at. All the icons look really good. Well, the thing that I really like are the Radio streams available in iTunes. While I would really love some political radio streams, I’ve found a winner – NPR 24 hours a day! Yes, I can listen to people talking intelligently and calmly all day long. There’s a station KCRW out in California that streams their NPR content all day long. It’s nice, since I don’t drive to and from work anymore, I can still get my NPR fix.

My Apple iBook has arrived today. Let a new era in personal computing begin. There are a lot of nice things about this iBook. I think the most obvious one is that it is all white. Finally, I’m one of the good guys! Second is that there is a tremendous amount of attention to detail with this machine. From the backlit apple, the visual instructionions, the light on the power cord, the box it came in, it all comes down to the little things that make you really appreciate it all. Third is that I love it’s small size and efficiency. This is a Japanese person’s computer. All efficiency. Fourth is that the graphics are just amazing There is so much eye-candy here my eyes are loving it. I really like how Macs enforce a strong sense of UI style, it makes using the programs easier. A few programs break the UI, but not as many as Windows, where it seems everyone is reinventing the wheel.

Apple’s slogan for OSX is that “It Just Works” and to a large degree that is true. It did most of the work for me in finding my wireless network after I installed the card. I didn’t have to load any drivers and my only configuration really was to choose the wireless network I wanted to be a part of (I don’t use the default name of the network). Getting the printer on the print server was pretty easy. It was a little more work, because D-Link doesn’t support MacOS natively. However, I just found the IP address and queue name my router uses and it worked. Cool.

I’ve installed Microsoft Office and the developer tools. Those should be fun to play with in the next few days. Yahoo Messenger works pretty much the same. Unfortunately, this version of IE is semi-crippled. Movable Type doesn’t seem to want to do its Javascript button things. I’ll have to make the urls by hand so click on them for my sake.

There’s been a lot of crazy things going on in the world lately. I’ll prepare my rant this weekend.

In this transition period between my old job and my new one, I thought it would be good to go ahead and start tranferring my important files and contact info to a new computer. Although I have a nice computer I build about a year ago (Athlon 1.2Ghz), I wanted to get a laptop. I’ll be very mobile with my new job and I don’t see myself carrying around a desktop in my car. So to that end, I’ve been searching for the right computer.

If you’ve been reading my blog, then you know that I’ve been drooling over the new powerbooks from Apple. These things are awesome. I’ve got the funds to buy one of these, but I’ve decided not to buy a powerbook. Instead, I ordered an iBook from MacWarehouse. These people were cool and they gave me some great deals. I realized talking to this lady that doing deals over the phone or in person is so much better than doing it by fax or online. When you talk to a person, you get a lot more information and can rapidly react to information of all sorts. The lady knew I was considering AppleCare, but I told her I was going to hold off on it. She dropped the price from $249 t0 $209, explained Apple’s standard warranty, and then said that if I bought it now I wouldn’t have to register it or mail off anything. I told her, “You had me at $209.” She replied, “You complete me.”

This was a much better experience than an online transaction. I think I’ll have to write something later about personal interaction versus computer interaction.

Click more to read my reasoning for the ibook.
(more…)