I spent my evening setting up an original Blueberry-colored iBook “Clamshell” G3. You remember this machine, right? It was the very first iBook, introduced in 1999. It has a damn handle, for crying out loud. The photo above is of my machine, leaning up against a “Blue & White” PowerMac G3 I used to have.
Now, I love old tech. I really do. But tonight’s adventure in time travel had a purpose, believe it or not.
I used to be a notebook guy.
In college, I carried a Titanium PowerBook with everywhere I went. I upgraded to a MacBook Pro, which I used for years.
Now, I’m a desktop guy. We have a 24“ iMac at home, and at work, I use my 15” MacBook Pro in clamshell mode almost all the time. I had an older 23" Cinema Display at work, with an Apple Extended II keyboard and Magic Mouse1 hooked up as well.
In 2008 and 2009 I completed a Project 365 series. In a nutshell, I took a photo a day, every day for two years. The projects were draining and exhilarating, all at the same time.
In 2008, I retouched the photos as little as possible. This helped me really get to know my camera equipment, and rely on things like F-stops and correct light balances to get my photos the way I wanted them. I’m a better photographer for it.
One weekend four years ago, my best friend from high school was in town, visiting from Nashville, where he went to college. We had breakfast before I had to go into work at the Apple Store.
Our Apple Store in Memphis is in an outdoor mall that consists mostly of clothing stores. Since we wrapped up early, we decided to meander around the mall chatting before my shift. We ended up in J. Crew killing some time. As we wandered around the store, we came across a rack of clothes on clearance. As I was looking for a new lightweight jacket, I decided to sift through the rack, when I came across a medium, long-sleeved, zippered Ringspun jersey cotton jacket. The price was right, and we each bought one.
Back in January, I switched from the iPhone to 3GS to the Motorola Droid. In a lengthy piece titled “ Why I Switched to Android,” I outlined the reasons I chose the Droid.
None of that has really changed. Android is a great platform, and the Droid is a killer handset.
So why did I buy a Palm Pre Plus? Well, my 18-month old son smashed my phone and I needed a replacement. I decided to give Palm a shot at it, and so far, I’m pretty happy.
After Apple unveiled the iPad back in January, almost everyone I know asked me if I was going to buy one. My answer was usually a jumbled thought about not needing a third device.
Not wanting a device and not being excited about it are two different things. In the months leading up the its release, I was excited about it. More so, I was excited about seeing what app developers were going to do with extra screen size and power.
My work notebook was recently was upgraded to a 13-inch MacBook Pro. Here are my thoughts on the machine, in no particular order.
This notebook is the sturdiest I’ve ever used. The whole thing feels like one, solid chunk of awesome. Apple’s unibody construction makes the black MacBook I was using feel like a toy. Since there aren’t any seams on the top case, the edges and corners are very slick. The PowerBooks and MacBook Pros used to have rubber gasket around the edges which could chip and bend. Nothing like that here — the whole thing is one slab of metal.
Birdfeed - a new twitter application by Buzz Anderson (of PodWorks and more) and designed by Neven Mrgan - is now in the App Store for $4.99.
Five bucks is high for a Twitter client, but Birdfeed is simply gorgeous. It fits nicely between Tweetie’s simple layout and Twitterrific’s design-heavy approach.
As a 1.0 release, Birdfeed doesn’t have all the features that other (and older) Twitter clients offer, but the app does offer some features that others don’t, such as a local cache (for offline reading), timestamps in the feed to show you when you left off, and the ability to load more tweets once you hit the bottom of the screen. The developers are saying more features are on the way, but they adhere to the “Real Artists Ship” theory crafted by Steve Jobs when working on the original Macintosh.
For a long time, Twitterific was top dog on the Mac and on the iPhone when it came to Twitter clients - and rightfully so. It’s interface is clean and simple, putting regular tweets, replies and direct messages all in the same list. This simplicity is a much-appreciated design element, especially on the iPhone’s touch screen. The Iconfactory (the makers of Twitterific and some other great apps) did one thing that was ingenious - they offered a free, ad-supported version, and a “premium” version without the ads. This model worked for them on the Mac, and they elegantly brought it to the App Store before most others had figured it out.