Andy’s World

Today Apple unleashed a slew of new information to the public. The highly rumored and anticipated aluminum iMac was finally delivered. iLife, iWork, and .Mac updates came as well.

Once again, they can’t cease to amaze me. The design and quality of their products is unbelievable.

Here are some highlights:

• All new aluminum iMacs (Slimmer and faster)
• New slim aluminum keyboards
• iLife ‘08
• iWork ‘08
• .Mac Web Galleries and 10GB storage now
• Faster Mac Minis

I arrived at the Tigard Apple store at around three o’clock. I anticipated a line with an alarming amount of anxious future iPhone owners. I approached the store to find that there was a surprisingly small line. I quickly entered the line to save my spot and an iPhone. After a brief head count, I found I was the 61st person in line. Knowing Apple, they for sure have more than 61 iPhones and even if everyone bought two, their inventory could take it. Three hours to go.

A meal helped to pass the time - especially the people walking by in the mall and asking “What is this line for?” Many stores in the mall also brought free samples of their products. Starbucks provided free coffee and pastry to all Mac fans. I had many conversations with like minded people around me. The subject of our exchanges might surprise you, but yes we discussed the iPhone. One individual was using his MacBook Pro to read articles about iPhone launches on the east coast. A look at MacWorld’s blog revealed a headline that read “Rob Griffiths: Waiting in Portland, OR”. We were shocked to learn that a writer for MacWorld was in fact a few people away from us. Pretty cool.

Time kept passing faster. Almost an hour until launch. I stood up to stretch my legs and saw the black tarp covering the Apple store windows start to shake. Then simultaneously, the blinds were taken down to reveal the iPhone transformed store with two life sized displays on either side. One had a one hour countdown. Everyone grew more excited. Retail employees continuously came out to talk and get the line waiters pumped up. Again, very cool.

Soon the iPhone display read just about ten minutes. Then five, then two. Yes, there was a ten second countdown - you can’t live without a ten second countdown to an event. The front stanchion was removed and the first twenty fans were lead into the store to pickup their piece of Apple wonder. I was in the third group of twenty. An employee asked my what I wanted, and I gladly replied “Two eight gigabyte iPhones please”. One of them was for my uncle, I’m not that rich. The Mac specialist quickly brought back two small black boxes with an iPhone pictured on each. He rung up the sale with a portable cashier to avoid waiting in line for the traditional cash register - also very cool. A swipe of the card and a funny looking digital signature later, I was walking out of the store with two phones in hand. Awesome. I thanked the other employees who were monitoring the smaller line as I left. What a ‘cool’ experience. Apple certainly deleivered - and I haven’t even opened the packaging yet.

Pictures:

Along with the WWDC 2007 today, Apple unveiled a new site to go along with the look and feel of Leopard.

I’ve gotta say, it looks amazing. It has just the right amount of AJAX-ness and clean corners.  Many Leopard features were talked about today as well. Can’t wait for the iPhone as well. We’ll see!

Well, Thursday was technically my last day of school before I graduate. It’s an amazing feeling. I am definitely ready for college.

I’m headed up to Oregon end of this month, which is coincidentally the day the iPhone comes out. I will be waiting outside of the Oregon retail store for it. The cool thing is, there is no sales tax up there - yes, awesome. Can’t wait. This summer is going to be the best one yet.

Peace.

Seriously, I mean I’m here to explore all areas of computers, not spend an entire year learning how to make a program that computes the wage of a worker in Java.

Today, Apple announced that their upcoming OS X 10.5 “Leopard” will be delayed at least until October of this year. Apple explains that the iPhone is culprit and the “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 Mac OS X team.”

Also news today is Leopard’s change to the GUI seen in the latest pre-release 9A410. It’s less “brushed metal” and more of a ‘gradient grey’.

“The Negotiation” was definitely a great way for The Office to come back after weeks of no new material. Michael was his usual self and Dwight especially brought the laughs. Plus the episode was forty minutes so you can’t beat that.

On to site maintenance - I moved it to GoDaddy hosting. It’s much faster than what my home connection could serve. Well, there isn’t much else to say. I’m working on a new layout. I’ll probably never stick with one design for too long - haha.

Spring break came and went. It was amazing while it lasted. Now it’s on to the last days of high school. Wish me luck.

Today Apple released their 8 core Mac Pro to go nicely along with that nice new CS3 package Adobe is soon shipping. You can still get the quad cores - the extra four will cost $1498. Also, the price on their Cinema Displays dropped $100 and $200 for the thirty inch. What the drop hints at is anyones guess.

On a different note, I think I may be moving my site to a web host instead of hosting it myself from home. My bandwidth just doesn’t match what larger companies can offer. My current upload speed with Road Runner Cable is a joke - 45 KBps. The download is fantastic though - 750 KBps. Yes, those are kilo bytes, not bits. Anyway, I’ll try to make the switch as easy as possible. I’ll let you know.

Recently, Apple released an update to their current Boot Camp beta. The new version 1.2 supports Vista. As soon as I read this news, I couldn’t keep Boot Camp off of my Mac Mini any more. I fired up the download, burned my driver disc and before I knew it, Vista was on my Mac. I have to say, it runs amazingly well. I am surprised at how well the integrated graphics run Aero. I just wish I had a bigger hard drive now. It also bothers me a little how much Vista eats up RAM. Right after boot, it’s already taking almost 500MB. That’s ridiculous, I don’t even have the sidebar running or any programs.

Also a few days ago, a neighbor gave me literally a handful of USB thumb drives. I got 10 of them in all with each holding 256 MB. That was pretty cool. I’m working on making a new home page for my site.