A waste of bits and bandwidth

[tag]TUAW[/tag] is reporting that [tag]Vancouver[/tag] might finally be getting an [tag]Apple Store[/tag]. This isn’t the first time they’ve spread rumours and gotten me all excited. The last location they claimed was for the Apple Store is a shiny Shoppers Drug Mart. It’s impressive and all but they don’t have Macs.

Still an official store would be cool I guess. I mean Toronto has three… Of course I visited both Apple stores in Tokyo and was left pretty unimpressed. “This is sorta like a store that only sells Apple stuff. So where is His Steveness?” I really was expecting mecca or failing that, a rack in the store with, oh I don’t know, how about a freakin’ t-shirt?

Touch wood that my trusty [tag]PowerBook[/tag] won’t need any more repairs but if it should, maybe I get a bit faster service than Macstation provided. “Hey, I have [tag]AppleCare[/tag]!”

Still, I’d be there on opening day so I could finally get one of their damn t-shirts. “Um, Spanky? I’ll be needing a day off. At some point. I don’t know when but pencil me in as tenative…

Apr 12, 2007

iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is. However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our [tag]Mac OS X[/tag] team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned.

While Leopard’s features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we’re sure we’ve made the right ones.

Well as someone who isn’t in the market for an [tag]iPhone[/tag], this really sucks. I have $150 burning a hole in my pocket that’s set aside for [tag]Leopard[/tag]. Better to get something stable but it’s pretty disappointing. Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with [tag]Tiger[/tag] but who isn’t itching for the latest and greatest?