Apple doesn’t impress me much with all these product releases. Why did they wait to release the video iPod and the new iMacs? Why not announce them when the Nano was announced?
And for that matter, why wasn’t all of this announced at the Paris Expo in September? Not ready? Who cares? You can’t get a Nano now; not a black 4GB one anyway. Now Apple is releasing more new products on the 19th (probably probably professional grade, which means new PowerBooks). I just don’t get it; I mean, how many times can they go to the well?
They do it because there are thousands of people with a shiny new Nanos and they will be placing orders for the new iPod. It’s nuts. I’m not paying $2.39 to watch the latest episode of Lost. Ever hear of BitTorrent? It’s free and no DRM…
Apple is a design master and it would appear that they know their marketing pretty well too. What would be nice is if people could think for themselves and actually consider the difference between a need and a want. There really is a difference.
midbach tech
Nice day yesterday so I headed out around 2PM for my usual afternoon walkabout. I ended on the steps at the Art Gallery. Nothing but teenagers milling about. All living out some sort of soap opera that certainly seemed very dramtic. Well, to them anyway.
The longer I sat there, the more they came. One girl was in hysterics, throwing CDs, screaming and then crying on her girlfriends lap. Another girl was totally wrecked. Like meth or something. She looked about 16 and it looked like it wasn’t her first time on whatever she was flying on. Pretty hard core for someone that age.
Then in the evening, I’m in bed and I can hear this girl screaming. Not an “I’m 16, I’ve had 2 beers and I’m on the loose downtown! PARTY!!” (which is common) but more intense. The sounds weren’t moving either; it seemed as though she were very close by.
Finally after 15 minutes of this, I got up and looked out the window. 2 cops, an ambulance and a large crowd of people staring at the freak show. And she’s still screaming… They finally sedated her (or whatever) but the question bears asking; how high do you need to be?
midbach stupid people
I’ve been thinking about taking a course, starting next month. Introduction to Python Programming is being offed at UBC starting next month.
I’m thinking it would be a good idea but I really wish work had an education program of some sort given that work is 75% of the reason that I want to take it. I did a little Python at Schemasoft and it’s not too bad. It’s right in the middle of object oriented and scripting and the syntax is pretty easy.
I just wonder if it’s what I really want to do. I recall not enjoying programming when I was in school and I’d hate to shell out $500 for something I’m never going to follow through on. If work paid, I’d take it, suck it up and get on with it but when I’m footing the bill there might be other things I’d rather do.
I’m much more partial to web stuff though I realize it’s a stretch to call it programming. I put the page on http://sevenapril.ca/ together in a couple of hours and loved every minute of it. It’s a simple link page but it was fun and easy to throw together.
I look at some of the Web 2.0 stuff like Ruby and AJAX and wonder if I should go down that road instead even if it has nothing to do with my current job. Ruby seems to be the flavour of the moment but it is compelling.
Speaking of Web 2.0, Chris Pirillio has come up with a new meta seach called gada.be. It seems to work quite well. The interesting thing is that your query is returned as the subdomain of gada.be. So a search for ‘foo’ returns the URL as http://foo.gada.be/ Interesting.
That’s the sorta stuff I’d like to be learning…
midbach life, tech
What a dreary weekend… every single day is grey and various stages of wet. My weekend has gone well for the most part; the aforementioned haircut incident, followed by some light napping.
Sunday I went to Macstation and picked up this little gem. It’s a great compromise between a full on case and a slip cover. Not bad for $50. Being back in Yaletown reminded me of how much I enjoyed working at Schemasoft. Well, the first half anyway before I came under the thumb of that bitch. Still there were a couple of people that I was fairly close to and that was nice. Oh well… I just wish I could have squeaked out a year. Truthfully, Atimi was more fun and good folks too.
Monday was a write-off. I ventured out for a cup of coffee and returned to play my dusty xBox for the afternoon. Perfect day for it too; grey, cool and wet so why leave?
Monday Tuesday, back to work. It’s going well I guess. There’s a new guy starting so I imagine he will either validate my feelings or validate my retardation. Time will tell…
Good folks around there but I guess it’s too much to ask for them to start developing mac software…
midbach life
I’m really loving my PowerBook; I just couldn’t be happier with it and I really don’t care what Apple annouces next week, because I’m a happy camper.
I did get me to thinking though… My P4 2.6GHz Windows box is coming up to almost 2 years old and it’s fine. More than fine, it does everything I ask of it. The only thing I have done is add a DVD burner and another half-gig of RAM would be nice but hardly required. Now I’m not a huge power user but for what I do, it has power to spare. If I were a Photoshop nut or a hardcore gamer, maybe I would feel differently.
If I hadn’t wanted to move to a laptop, there would have been no need to upgrade at all. I mean how fast does Outlook need to open? Here’s an idea, leave it open all the time. A half-gig of RAM is $60 which is a hell of a lot less than a new box.
It makes me wonder about the state of the PC industry. I don’t see Vista causing everyone to run out and upgrade when it finally appears in 2006; I know a lot of people who hate XP and are still on 2000 because it works for them. Microsoft has stripped almost everything out of Vista except for the eye candy and that eye candy is going to really require some cycles to run in all its glory.
The hardcore will get it right away and I’ll be interested to see how it works out but I doubt that I’ll be upgrading.
I read somewhere that laptops made up 53% of all sales so far in 2005 and I can see why. PowerBook or not, it’s amazing to be mobile with everything that comprises your computer life sitting in your bag. Since my iPod is ‘in the shop’ I’ve been taking my mac to work and it’s great. Everything I have is right there with me.
I guess what I’m thinking is that If I already had a decent laptop, would I be looking to upgrade? Probably not. My second PC was 4 times faster than the one it replaced and it was a very welcome speed increase. My third PC was also 4 times faster than the second but the speed increase wasn’t as noticable; once you’re into the 1.5 to 2GHz range you’re pretty much seeing it all. Maybe the dual cores will help the situation but I’ll let someone else find out for me…
midbach tech
