derek derek derek

My memory arrived.  SATA enclosure tomorrow for my old 500GB internal SATA from my G5.

Mmm....candy.

You know you’ve been looking at code too long when you’re reading a forum post on a computer hardware site and read the word "glib" in your head as “gee-libe”. ::sigh::

R2-D2 DVD Projector and Webcam - I bet you didn't realize that a Jedi's lightsaber also served as a handy VoIP phone!

I use a Logitech MX Revolution, which is an absolutely fantastic mouse.  The frictionless scroll wheel is reason alone to choose it, but Logitech for some strange reason can’t write an OS X driver to save their lives. Their version for 10.4 and lower used a third party hack to allow programmability of the buttons.  For Leopard, Apple tightened up these hacks a bit, so Logitech had to do something, and instead of writing proper drivers, they updated Logitech Control Center to work with their own Input Manager (read: hack) to allow button programmability.  This hack causes all sorts of problems, things that you would never attribute to your mouse.  Textmate CLI not working, subversion not being able to perform diffs between specific revisions, random crashes, etc.

Since I got my new iMac last week, I decided I would finally give a third party mouse management app a try so I did not have to suffer the corruption that is LCC.  Derek Allard and I had a brief discussion about what apps were out there, and it turns out neither of us had tried any of them.  Being keyboarders at heart, we’re both multi-button mouse people wanting to maximize the productivity we can have for those moments we have to have one hand on the mouse.  He went with USB Overdrive, and I ControllerMate.

I highly recommend ControllerMate, but don’t bother trying it until you have a solid 30 minutes to an hour.  It’s interface, resembling more of a UI one might use to modify the skills and attributes of a character in a complex video game, is entirely unlike anything you’ve used before.  After you discover how everything is connected, though, the power you are enabled with becomes immediately apparent.  I have one combination of mouse buttons that will type a phrase for me, and then position the cursor caret within the phrase where I need to make an adjustment, for a commonly used message I type when moving posts in the ExpressionEngine discussion forum.  Wicked cool.  Oh, and if my hand’s not on the mouse, I have a keyboard trigger that will do the same thing, using Many Tricks’ Butler app.

Ok, so the nature of my work often makes me feel like I’m multitasking more than any computer could, but let me just say that if I were a fake James Bond villain, I’d share a name with a character from the first Austin Powers: "Random Task".  It often seems like I never get more than five minutes with something before another thing jumps in to take precedence.

It’s like conversing with a ten year old girl about her day at school.  Branching segues and an hour later you’re finally back to the original story where Sally was trying to copy off of your paper.

The Problem with FaceBook - "A handful of VCs have created the illusion of an actual market by funding apps companies and then doing deals with each other -- passing cash back and forth among to make it look as if money is being made." - Fake Steve Jobs

Backups made?  Check.  External drive loaded with installers for all of my apps?  Check.  Desk cleared off?  Check.  Giddy as all get out?  Check.

Referenced article

"Today Apple has unveiled a refresh to its iMac line desktop computers adding faster CPU and GPU options. But if you ask me what makes this iMac refresh interesting is the way it is being received, or more so, not received among the Apple faithful that litters the Internet."

I don’t have any sources to substantiate my extremely generalized statements, nor do I understand subject-verb plural agreement.

"Maybe it’s because this refresh isn’t very glamorous with only faster processors and graphics options."

I think those weird Apple users only buy things for form factor, so I’m comfortable dismissively waving my hand past significant hardware changes.

"I ask where are the Mac faithful across the Web not dropping everything they’re doing to go pick up this updated iMac and post the unboxings on Flickr."

Nevermind that this machine was just announced and starts shipping today, and looks the same externally as the 2007 iMacs, why aren’t people posting pictures of the new iMacs in their homes?

"Nor are the Apple message boards and social media sites like Digg and Reddit being overtaken with news and interpretation of Apple’s latest duds."

It’s only number 4 of all current Digg traffic on all topics, including non-tech Diggs, and there are only pages and pages of single Diggs from thousands of people’s personal sites, but I needed to write a sentence that I could end with the word "duds".  Buuuurn, I’m so cheeky!

"In contrast there is a lot of buzz about a video posted to Gizmodo that shows a customer turning on a Psystar Open Computer running the Mac OS."

In my third unsubstantiated generalized claim, I will point to something that you can only find on Digg if you search for it.

"The obvious question raised is: Has Apple lost its luster? I would definitely say no, but I would still suggest that people are becoming less receptive to Apple’s new releases."

Apple sales continue to grow at rates overtaking any other PC three to one, so by "less receptive" I mean that it’s starting to no longer be shocking to have such a great computer in a sleek form factor, people just expect it.

"Another question to be considered is: Has Apple run out of ideas?"

My editor said that the article had to ask two questions.

"Prior new hardware releases from Apple always included one feature or another that managed to knock the socks off the technology communities.  It was only a couple months ago that a simple MacBook refresh shocked the world by included a multi-touch trackpad, but today we see a iMac refresh with no shock or awe."

How dare Apple simply improve on their machines.  Their customers should be outraged!

"Of course, if Apple were to have done something crazy like include Blu-ray in the new iMac refresh, sure, the Web would have gone a little bonkers,"

I’m finally going to tell you why I wrote this article.  I needed an excuse to whine that Apple didn’t give me a Blu-ray Superdrive.

"but I think the time has finally come when the average Apple release isn’t treated like the second coming of Jesus by the Apple faithful--it’s simply a new Apple product."

Well, rats.  Without Apple giving me flashy headlines, I might actually have to perform some journalism instead of writing fact-free op-eds.

As I’ve been waiting for many months for the iMac refresh, I didn’t hesitate for a second in ordering Apple’s latest offering.  My PowerMac desktop is aging, though it has been an incredible workhorse.  Never in my life outside of Apple have I ever owned a computer that five years later still met my speed and productivity needs.  But it uses much more wattage than I would care for, and since I’m not doing video processing work anymore, I don’t have need for a PowerMac.  The hardware being used in the iMacs following Apple’s switch to Intel has just been fantastic, and the latest round is no exception.  I took the opportunity to also upgrade to the new, flat 802.11n Airport Extreme Base Station, replacing my equally old AEBS (orb/pyramid style 802.11g).  So here’s what I’m looking forward to in a few short days:

(24” iMac 3.06Ghz Core 2 Duo)
2GB memory (upgrading to 4GB after receipt)
6MB shared L2 cache at full processor speed
1066MHz frontside bus
500GB SATA hard drive
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS w/512MB memory
And everything else you’d expect with an iMac.

Apple hasn’t updated the Support docs yet to include this new line released just today (since when, btw, does Apple refresh hardware on a Monday?), so I don’t know if this is a Penryn processor and notebook memory, or a desktop processor and memory.  I was expecting the former, but the latter is what’s being rumored since the speed and bus specs don’t match up with the mobile processor.  If anyone knows, drop me an email and I’ll update this entry (and go ahead and order my extra RAM!)

Update: Reports confirm this is not just a Penryn, but an almost-Montevina.  Woot!

New iMacs Today! - Woot! (Thanks, Les)