Latest iPhone Ad?

New Mac Ads

It looks like they're back on form - Surprise was my fave, but Top of the Line isn't bad either (I bet if you talked to that guy long enough he'd tell you he worked in technology....).

And Snow Leopard is out Friday don't forget. A whole new operating system for 30 bucks - I'll be calling into the store on the way home from work I think...

iPhone Here, Celebrate with iBeer

The iPhone turned up on Thursday (some 10 days earlier than AT&T predicted), so I've had a weekend of playing with it now. Of course, it would be better if the battery life was better, but I think with a few minor modifications, I can survive. The trouble is it's just so pretty that you want to keep playing with it all the time, which I don't think helps.

Anyway, once I got all the things I really needed sorted out (300 on video, and a few choice tracks on the music side) I started messing around with a few of the apps you can download (Bejewelled and Texas Holdem are the current favorite games, and I got the expected response from the wife when I started waving around my light saber), but the winner so far has to be below - enjoy.

Dear Steve

You know what I really want from your new service, that's meant to keep the mobile and not so mobile life in order? I want a way to keep all my music files in synch across my home and work machines. Trying to remember and then copy up to .Mac the individual music files that I bought (from iTunes I might add) on one computer or the other, then download and import, is slowly driving me crazy. And that's before I even get into the "is it on my computers hard drive, or on the connected external hard drive" conversation - you need to work out a suitable Apple easy and it works solution for that too so I don't get duplicate tracks, and can easily "checkout" files from my main library so they're on my hard disk when I hit the road.

Baby steps first - how about just keeping track of the music I bought on iTunes and allowing me to download it again at some point in the future if it's not already on my machine? Amazon let me do this with books I bought for my Kindle. And the copyright protection still exists - the files still need to be ran on the machines I've authorized, so it's not like I can do something naughty with it. Please Steve. You normally answer my (gadget inspired) prayers. Don't let me down now.

Delicious Library 2.0 Arrives

Finally, after months and months of waiting, it's finally here (along with the latest version of OS X which makes everything speed up, despite the big DVD collection).

Lots of fun stuff, so just download and use it (and if you don't own a Mac, nows the perfect opportunity to dive in).

One of the new things is the ability to create html from your collection, so I've uploaded my DVD collection here. It takes a little while to load (another I really should dive back into coding so I can just modify it for a multiple page view), but that's my own fault coz I've got too many DVD's. No laughing - I realize some of them may have shown a little lack of judgement at the time.

MacWorld unleashes Air to the world.....

So the Keynote finally happened, and the result was the thinnest notebook in the world. It's actually so thin I think I might be scared to snap it if I owned one, but given the case is all aluminium, it's probably a lot sturdier than it looks. So, highlights are all wireless, touchscreen, backlit keyboard, LED screen, the usual fast Intel processor and the option of a solid state hard drive (which is way too expensive for most people to tick, but no doubt it's already ticked on Mr Batty's order sheet). Videos and many more pics and details can be found here.

Also on the list today was the update to the iPhone software that had been leaked a few weeks ago, as well as a similar update for the iPod Touch (but will cost you an extra 20 bucks on the none phone version). Mail on the Touch now seems like a pretty cool idea if you ask me.

Two things that are probably most likely on my list (well one I get for free anyway) was an update to AppleTV, and the new Time Capsule

The Apple TV gets a few much needed updates to take away the need for a computer to run it, along with buying from the box itself (the new rentals and actual purchases) along with HD Movies (something I was waiting for before I did any more movie purchases from iTunes. They also brought the price down by 70 bucks, which is always nice.

Time Capsule looks the most likely to be on my purchase list - I was contemplating buying a 1TB drive to plug into the new desktop at home (and stop me from filling up the hard drive with all my movie backups), and upgrading your wireless networking performance is always a good thing. Time Capsule combines both - a wireless N base station, with a 500GB or 1TB hard drive stuffed in the bottom. This also allows wireless backup using Time Machine, which solves the laptop problem of keep having to plug in a hard drive every time you wanted to do a backup. I guess technically you could get a 1TB network storage drive, and then a wireless N router and plug them together and save a couple of bucks, but looking at the prices recently, I don't think you'll save that much, plus it'll never look that pretty.

So, that was pretty much it - I'm still hoping for one day version 3 of AppleTV which is actually a Mac Mini with a Blue Ray (or HD if that ended up winning the "war") disk, combined with Tivo on there - that would really make me happy. And why doesn't Steve do his "One More Thing" anymore - is that just occasionally? My heart always sinks when they roll in the singer....

Update - here's a video - turns out the gestures are on the trackpad, not the screen like I orginally thought, but they still look cool...

MacWorld Keynote Tomorrow

And as a public service, here's a quick (and by no means exhaustive) list of a couple of live blogs if you're not actually out there watching Steve (possibly) change the world.

Engadget

Gizmodo

MacRumors

CrunchGear

Time will be 9 Pacific, 12 Eastern, and most importantly for me, 10 Mountain. That means 5 in the UK 8-)

I do like how this show always is kind enough to time itself a month before my (sometimes non-existent) bonus check arrives. It gives me hope for balance in the world. Or something like that.

New Computer Ordered

It must be the week for it - after last weeks just in time arrival of a new work laptop (Dell D630 if you care), the wife and I decided to do the joint Christmas pressie to ourselves of a new iMac. Our current one was an old (5 years I think) iMac with the metal "neck" - still working as well as the day we got it, but lacking any more disk space, or the processing power to keep up with our ever increasing need to make videos, store loads of music, and view billions of pictures. Although all the apps on there still work, the whole thing was just getting too slow, and on the video side especially, it was making some things unusable. I also realized (when my brother bought a iPod Touch the other week when he was here) that it doesn't even have a USB 2.0 port, which meant no synch up for him from the Mac.

So, we splashed out a little (although I'm quietly confident I could easily spend a years salary in an Apple store and come out happy), and went with the 24 inch version, complete with extra memory and a slightly larger hard drive. It should arrive either at the end of this week, or the beginning of next, as for some reason I went with the cheapskate delivery option. Now of course I'm pining for an immediate delivery, but because they've already prepared it for shipment, it's too late to change it. We made the buy on "Black Friday" so we got an extra $110 off the list price, which combined with the wife's work discount, meant we got a bit of a deal.

So - plans for when it arrives - lots, but getting everything off the old one and onto the new one is first, followed closely by lots of messing around with Leopard (the old one would have died under the strain of a new operating system). I have a grand plan of encoding a lot of my DVD's as well, so that I can push them up through my Apple TV to prevent me from searching through the ever expanding DV collection, but that may take a little while (although hopefully not the 14 hours per DVD of the old machine). And of course, some video editing of some of the existing stuff I've got in digital format, including the eventual post of all the wedding stuff we got taped (only 2.5 years since that should have been done...).

Plenty to look forward to (for me anyway) - now I just have to prey the Fedex gods are nice to me...

New Mac Ads

And they're still funny - I guess they didn't blow all the ad budget on the iPhone and new iPods after all.

New iMacs

They're pretty.......

Also, new iLife 08 (despite Leopard not being released yet), new .Mac functionality (and more space), new iWork with a spreadsheet app now included and other bits and bobs along the way.

TUAW has loads of coverage of it all as you'd expect but here's the link to the iMac details if you're lazy.

Oh, and the official ad is here - when it looks this good, you don't really need to do anything...

Parallels for Mac Ads

Harmony in the world (or something like that). Maybe I'm still a little in shock (and happy) that Microsoft actually stepped up to the plate and made everyones XBox360 warranty magically last for 3 years instead of the original 3 months/12 months). It means I get my $140 back - now if they could only get the delivery process to be a little quicker ;-)

MacBook Pro Updated

They're oh so pretty. And now even faster (who thought Apple moving to the Intel platform was a bad idea?).

So, performance boosts, more memory, bigger hard-drives, faster graphics card and slimmer and lighter to boot. Now if only I could work out how to afford one of these things (and justify it in my head that it's worth it, despite having a work laptop and an iMac in the house).

Techie details are here if you're interested in that sort of thing.

New Mac Ads

I'm obviously more suited to being a PC these days, but I dream of Mac...