I profess my love once again.
June 08, 2009
Sometimes, I fucking love Apple. Today is one of those days. I read all about their WWDC keynote, and while they didn't talk about anything that totally blew my mind, it still made me feel good inside.
[WARNING: Possible pro-Apple propaganda ahead. Read at your own risk. And buy a Mac.]
Ignoring all the iPhone talk (owning one is still just a pipe dream for me right now), the upgrade of the MacBook line is nice. I've currently got a 1st generation MacBook (not Pro) that's running OS X 10.5, and it suits me wonderfully. I put more RAM in it once, and I'm thinking about getting a bigger hard drive, but other than that, I've got no issues AT ALL with this 3 year old laptop. (And it's been dropped a few times and I've definitely been known to sweat on it during the humid NYC summer. Neither causing issues.) But here Apple goes and updates the line again for the 3rd or 4th or 5th time since I got mine. The ones introduced today put mine to shame. Sure, I want a new shiny one, but I don't need one. And while this fact might piss some people off, it makes me really really happy. See, if I love my computer now, just think how ecstatic I'll be when I do finally upgrade to a new one?!
Also, in a similar vein, Apple's next version of OS X (10.6 Snow Leopard) is wonderfully practical. Instead of cramming in a ton of new features, they decided to iron out all the kinks in the current version and make it way faster and better and more stable. This suits me just fine, since I do not have any major issues with OS X. (And from reading the press copy today, it seems like most/all of my minor issues have been taken care of.) But they didn't stop there. I'm only part way down the Snow Leopard Enhancements and Refinements page, and already I've seen enough new little bits of awesome thrown in to drive me to write this post. Like the new MacBooks, I don't need to upgrade at all, since 10.5 works just great for me. But unlike the MacBooks, Apple has priced the upgrade from 10.5 to 10.6 at just $29.00! The last piece of software I bought was a recipe program (MacGourmet, because there just aren't any good free recipe programs for OS X) and it cost more than that when I bought it, I think. Of course I'll buy the 10.6 upgrade, Apple!
Finally, I'm really sorry to have written such a fan-boy post, but I just absolutely love when the world works how I want it to work. And Apple, for the most part, does just that.
Posts
June 9, 2009 at 9:16 AM
I know the feeling. I have a 12 Inch Powerbook G4 That is almost five years old. Sure its not going to be able to run Snow Leopard, and I need to drop about 50 bucks for some more ram, but it still works like a charm.
The new laptops do make me giddy like schoolgirl however.
And I am pissed at ATT about the tethering and MMS.
But who knows. I need a job so I can buy a shiny new Laptop.
June 9, 2009 at 12:42 PM
The 29 bucks would probably be worth it just to have enhanced 3 finger gestures and the four finger gesture on mine. Maybe I can get my institute to pay for the upgrade.
Also split-panel terminal could be useful. Otherwise those updates all seem sort of silly. I want an improved automount system. And the ability to resize a window from any edge. And the screen dimming range extended to lower settings. And the keyboard to be replaced with a multitouch screen so that when I switch input languages it displays a whole different keyboard. I mainly just want that last one.
June 9, 2009 at 1:03 PM
The split-pane terminal is what really pushed me over the edge to write this post. (I've gotten so used to making panes in Vim that when I'm not in Vim I miss it.) So that, The Quicktime quick trimming, and the trackpad improvements (I do hope they work on my MacBook) are what I'm most looking forward to. Sure, some of the other refinements are sort of silly (Text substitution in Mail and Textedit? Meh.) but I honestly believe a lot of them truly are refinements that will subtly improve OS X.
The VoiceOver and other accessibility stuff also gives me a warm fuzzy feeling even though I probably won't be using any of it.