There was a moment this evening when I wanted to get down on my hands and knees and beg. I was ready to pay any penalty to get out of our current contract. I was ready to see if I could find any takers on eBay for my mint TAM. I was ready to do anything my wife wanted, for the opportunity to replace my Palm TX with an iPhone. Sure, the iPhone would replace my cell phone and iPod too, but they didn’t cost me three hours of my life this evening (and that’s not counting the wear and [...]
Apple
Macbook envy
This little guy (and I do mean little) is the first Mac portable that’s wet my appetite since the 12″ PowerBook. My wife suspects the lack of an optical drive could be a deal-breaker for some, but I rarely use mine. Has Dear Abby ever weighed in on how long you should to wait before you ask your spouse for another computer? The MacBook Air
Quiet <> good?
A week or so ago I told you about the iMac we took in. I’d described it as another one of the original Bondi Blue models, to go along with the other two we have already (one that works, and another that’s fried, but we keep for parts). Cheryl brought it home after getting in late that night and we put it on the only horizontal space available: the desk in Adam’s room. Adam woke the next morning with eyes wide enough to drive a small car through. We opened up the blinds in his room and my eyes got [...]
Saving my sanity
How’s this for a testimonial: “I’d sign over my next paycheck to these folks, if my wife didn’t have any say in it.” Fat Cat Software and their little app: iPhoto Library Manager saved my bacon this evening. My iMac did something to me that an Apple computer hasn’t done to me in years: it crashed. It’s been so long I didn’t know what to do. If I was at work, toiling away on the dark knight of personal computing, there’d be no question; I’d give the three-finger salute and be done with it. Well, maybe it wouldn’t be that [...]
Ho-hum
I’ve got nothing better to do than to catalog my Macs, so here we go. (I’m a little bored.) Mr. T (a Mac Plus) I bought this one new from the UF bookstore in the Fall of 1989, tricked out with two, count ‘em: TWO megabytes of RAM. Throw in an Imagewriter II and a 20 megabyte external hard drive, thanks to that ultra-fast, 2.1 MBps SCSI bus… and I was the envy of Hume Hall! (It was sad to hear the place was torn down a few years ago to make way for a new honors dorm.) Performa 577 [...]
Beware of the man with an iPhone
Here’s a story that comes to you courtesy of a blogging friend of mine: ATA Tries To Have You Arrested For Using Your iPhone In “Airplane Mode” Here’s a primer: two people who can’t get along bring down an airplane short of its destination. I wonder what I would have done, if I’d been the guy with the phone. Part of me thinks I’d just take the path of least resistance and put the thing away. Another part of me thinks I’d have ended up in the clink.
News Corp ready for ‘prickly’ chat with Apple – Macworld UK
Like I need another reason not to like News Corp. Now the awful Aussie and his minions want to get nasty with my favorite computer maker. According to an article in Macworld, News Corp is counting on a rough re-negotiation with Apple over selling their TV shows on iTunes. Peter Chernin, President of News Corp, courtesy of Macworld UK: “But let me say this, we’re the ones who should determine what the fair price for our product is, not Apple.” No offense, but Apple does have a little experience determining what price people will pay for certain things. You might [...]
Hummm…
I’m not a big Ed Burns fan, but I’ve enjoyed a few of his movies. As someone with a significant investment in home entertainment, and an Apple enthusiast, I’m intrigued by his upcoming movie… Ed Burns Talks to Us About ‘One Missed Call’, ‘Purple Violets’, and Digital Distribution – Cinematical: Purple Violets will possibly be the first film ever released exclusively on iTunes. Starting October 9th, the film will be available for four weeks on iTunes, and they’ll see how the numbers are after that.
iLife
My last copy of iPhoto dated way back to version four. (And yes, this is another Mac entry… it’s all I’ve got to talk about… I haven’t been doing anything else.) I haven’t fiddled with any of the other iLife apps, but the new version of iPhoto has really impressed me. There aren’t a lot more editing tools, but the ones I’ve used are better. In particular, the touch-up tool has worked wonders on some of my scans of older pictures. In the past I’ve opened images in Photoshop (Elements) and painstakingly touched up blemishes, scratches, and dust artifacts with [...]
.Mac web galleries
I’ve been playing with the new computer, and it’s pretty cool and all; but I was looking forward to playing with the new iLife apps just as much. Here’s a few quick albums I threw together, including some sentimental favorites from a trip to Sanibel Island (FL) ten years ago. http://gallery.mac.com/johnkauffman#gallery I’m just getting started, but I’d really like to find a simple way to embed individual web gallery images in a WordPress blog. Maybe I should save a little fun for next weekend.
