My new Mac has been purchased

Tonight was a big night.

My current primary personal computer is a 1.25GHz 15" PowerBook G4, with 2GB of RAM and an 80GB hard drive. I bought this at the end of 2003 shortly after this model was announced. When it came out, this computer was the first 15" aluminum PowerBook, a model that was long anticipated and which shipped much later than the 12" and 17" aluminum PowerBooks that came before it.

This computer has served me well for the past five years, though it's been augmented in recent years by my work laptop- a 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro- and my wife's laptop, a 1.83GHz Core Duo (not a Core 2 Duo) white MacBook.

Over the past year or so, my 15" aluminum has really started to show its age, most dramatically in regard to Flash-based web video, which often does not play reliably (particularly larger, higher definition video), and H.264 video clips shot using my Kodak Zi6, which essentially don't play back at all on this unit.

I've been content to use my 15" PB less and less, since I've got the MacBook Pro at work and my wife's MacBook on the sofa at home. Documents in the cloud make shuffling back and forth between computers less of a chore than it used to be. I was hoping to keep this routine up for a while longer, but the reality is that the cloud doesn't do personal media storage very well, and Apple's new iLife '09 has some extremely impressive features that make me want to use it with my personal photographs and videos... and to do that, I really need to bite the bullet and upgrade the hardware that supports my personal media libraries.

I've been almost ready to do this for a while. Shortly after the unibody aluminum MacBooks were released toward the end of last year, I went to an Apple store and tried to purchase one, only to discover that I couldn't walk out with a custom-configured unit (I wanted to bump the RAM and hard drive size up to the max). On the ride home that night, with my need for instant gratification doused, I decided to cool it for a while- particularly since there were rumors at the time that the new glass trackpads weren't working properly, and who knew what other first-generation gremlins were lurking beneath the hood. I resigned myself to hold off on purchasing a new computer until the first round of updates- however trivial- came out for the MacBook.

Weeks went by and I began to consider the iMac. Why try to replace my current unit with another portable that could do everything but with compromises, my thinking went. My 15" PB sits on my desk at home and never moves. I've got my work laptop and my wife's laptop to use as needed. So if my goal is to replace the computer on my desk at home with something more suited to media, why not go for an iMac, which would get me a much bigger screen and more hard drive space- at roughly the same cost? I'd still have the others to fall back on for portability. And besides, a little voice said- you can always get an Air if you really need to go portable. Heh. And I smiled.

This line of thinking lasted for a while, and then I went back and forth over subsequent weeks, and even considered the new 15" unibody aluminum MacBook Pro for a while, because- damnit- I deserve a bigger screen than the 13" for my media tasks, and the MacBook lacks a FireWire port, which would suck for me because I have several FireWire drives that are an important (but not absolutely critical) part of my workflow. The 15" seemed like the ideal compromise.

Until today, when I felt a bolt of inspiration, made a decision, sat on it for a few hours, and then made my purchase.

The white MacBook.

The lowest-end Mac, save for the Mini.

The value holdover, so easily passed over in comparison to the shiny new unibody MacBooks.

Surely I'd never consider something like that.

Except that... a few weeks ago, Apple quietly upgraded it. They replaced the integrated Intel graphics chip with the same NVIDIA GeForce 9400M chip used on the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros (which is supposedly five times faster than the Intel chip previously used). They upgraded the front-side bus to 1066MHz. And they kept the magical FireWire port.

So there you have it. It's not sexy. It's not a powerhouse. But it's brand new, highly evolved, and more than powerful enough for iLife and the multimedia web. 2GHz Core 2 Duo processor. 4GB RAM. 320GB hard drive. FireWire port.

$1399.

This is going to give me everything I want for now, with a nice head-start toward funding the next Mac...

The new white MacBook is a unique value in Apple's lineup and I think it will earn a place in the classic Mac hall of fame. I don't think it's going to be around much longer, but as long as it's here, it's a great deal.

"West Bank Story"

"West Bank Story" won the Academy Award for short film (live action) last night, and I love the fact that I was able to pick it up on iTunes for two bucks. It's a great short film.

It's good enough that I'd like to share it with other people, and it would be cool if I could pre-buy, say, five "copies" of it through iTunes and post a code on my blog that would give a free download to the first five people that used the code. Better yet, iTunes could offer volume discounts to people who purchased multiple copies of a given song or movie to encourage bloggers to promote them.

The upside for bloggers would be that, once the practice took off, people would begin searching blogs for free copies of music or movies they're looking for, and drive traffic to blogs that otherwise would not receive attention.

The Japanese iTunes Music Store

Good article here.

I've tried to buy songs from the Japanese store and have experienced this frustration myself.

More on the iPhone

David Pogue has a nice FAQ here.

Is the iPhone really as expensive as it seems?

An interesting counterpoint here.

Duuuuuuuude.....

In the days following Apple's iPhone announcement, my enthusiasm for the device has faced challenges from considerations about the real-world limitations it's likely to face, such as limited battery life, lack of Microsoft Office document support, no support for adding third party applications, slow data speeds on Cingular's EDGE network, etc.

But I just watched this straigtforward video demo, and my enthusiasm has ratcheted right back up. This is the best video demo I've seen so far- the camera angle does a good job of showing the iPhone's size, which actually looks to be smaller than I had initially thought.

Enjoy.

Segway of Phones

Apple did it.

Steve Jobs' introduction today of Apple's new iPhone actually lived up to the hype and expectations.

It won't be out until June and who knows how the reality of using the iPhone will stack up against Steve's audience-captivating demo, but man, the iPhone looks every bit as cool as even the most ambitious Apple fans were hoping it would be.

There's something very Segway-ish about the iPhone's new Multi-touch interface. Watching the demos on Apple's site (check out all of the demos sprinkled throughout the iPhone section), I get the impression that the combination of advanced hardware and software on this device will actually allow for a completely new type of user experience- much like the Segway's combo of hardware and software created an experience on wheels that was previously impossible due to physics.

Time will tell if Apple can do for phones what they've done for computers and music. But today's announcement was every bit as exciting as anyone looking for The Next Big Thing could have hoped for.

Wow.