It's Christmas in January. That's right, it's Macworld Expo and Steve's keynote is in eight hours!

Of course, they're not webcasting it this time (well, they're timeshifting the webcast 9 hours) so I'll have to rely on the rumor sites for the play-by-play, but it's always a cool day to be a Mac enthusiast.

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80 gigs doesn't store what it used to. Now that I'm finally getting around to building a real home network, workflow and backup system, I'm trying to find better backup mechanisms than going to Fry's and getting Maxtor's latest X00 gigabyte firewire drive.

Turning to tape backup, I came across a shareware tool that claims to allow you to use your DV or Digital-8 camcorder to backup 10-16 gigs on a DV tape. I hadn't considered using my camcorder as a digital tape drive, but now I'm gonna check if Dantz makes a driver to let me use my camera as a backup device with Retrospect. Further updates to follow.

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Mountain View's Computer History Museum has a wonderful collection of computer lore, including a small game room of some of the earliest coin-op video games.

If you're thinking about donating your 'precious antique computer' to them though, be aware that there are many devices they will no longer accept as donations.

Considering how often museums receive donations of dubious authenticity, I wonder if I should bother donating something of my own:

(click to enlarge)

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Have you fallen victim to the White Van Speaker Scam? I did, when I was 16 years old. It looks like I'm not alone.

Then again, the speakers turned out to be good quality, and were less expensive than comparable speakers at Circuit City, so is it really a scam, or just a pressured sale?

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Though Steve Jobs was adament that PDAs weren't Apple's forte when he axed the Newton group just weeks before they spun off, there are now signs that the winds may have changed at Infinite Loop.

Following the success of the iPod, the slow PDA-ification of the product (adding contacts, memos, and calendar functions via iSync), and the potential for a rich-media player on the horizon, convergence seems to be leading Apple to a destination Steve didn't anticipate five years ago.

Consider Palm's announcement that their forthcoming Palm 6.0 OS won't come with Mac integration, and that since the PDA race narrowed to Palm and PocketPC, innovation has slowed drastically in the PDA realm, focused mostly on the wireless aspects of these devices.

As PDAs move down both wireless and rich multimedia paths, they come closer and closer to Apple's core competencies, and an 'everything handheld' with iPod, video, wireless (wi-fi and/or cell), and PIM integration could be exactly the kind of product Steve Jobs loves: a product that completely redefines an already established market.

There's been a lot of speculation in recent months about all of the above, fueled by Apple job postings for people proficient in mobile video delivery systems, as well as rumors of an 'iBox' mega-TiVo that would serve as the 'new digital hub', of which a rich-media device would be a natural spoke.

New promise comes today in the form of a survey being passed around by Stone Multimedia asking for opinions as to why the Newton failed, and gauging interest in a revised Newton. There's also a related discussion at MacRumors. This might seem like idle research, except that the company responsible for Newton's branding and marketing a decade ago was also called "Stone." Sadly I can't find that company's full name, so I can't verify that they're the same, but it's intriguing nonetheless.

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A lot of tech blogs are linking to news of Toshiba's new 400GB hard disk drive.

So what?

Maybe living in internet time has jaded me, but back in 1995 I got a 1 gig drive for $700 and frankly I thought it was the shiznit. A few years later drives bloomed so large that I could take the 'the' and 'zni' out of my former opinion, because 1 gig was suddenly very old hat.

Since then, and well before, hard drive sizes have followed Moore's Curve (not Moore's Law, since that has to do with transistors on a microchip, but the curve is the same). Hard drive capacities at a given price point double every 12 months.

It's been true since I got my 5meg (yeah, meg) serial drive for my Mac 128K in 1985, and it was true until over two years ago, when 200 gig drives were mainstream.

Some time in the last two years, however, Moore seems to be slacking off, and what's more, nobody seems to be talking about it. So why the buzz over a 400 gig, 7200rpm drive? There are already plenty of 7200rpm drives out there (heck, there are 10,000rpm drives at Fry's), and 400 megs is just incremental over the 300gig drives on sale all over the place.

<whine>Where's my terabyte drive?</whine>

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A woman in Memphis killed her boyfriend by striking him with her iPod 40-80 times after he admitted to erasing the 2000 songs on teh device. Apparently he accused her of downloading music off the net illegally for months and the only copy of her tracks was on the iPod.

Of course, if she'd been buying her tracks off of the iTunes Music Store, she might be similarly mad because she'd have spent $2000 on the music, and Apple won't let you re-download.

Lessons to be learned:

• Don't kill people.
• Don't steal music.
• Backup early and often.

(yes, it's a spoof)

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So, on to other topics (phew!) I'm really excited that Rachel's put the finishing touches on Phoenix Feather Photos. For the past several weeks, Rachel has been taking pictures for the new site, and she's putting them together into albums on the site.

Snuggle

I'm really impressed at her eye for framing shots, and her use of depth of field. I'm looking at getting a new digital camera, and I only hope I can get half as good with it as she is with hers.

Right now there are two albums up: Winter Yellows, and Simply Berkeley.

Rachel's also working on a few other albums at the moment, and is trying to gather some more candids of the hummingbird in our backyard, and of neon-lit churches, wherever they glow.

To keep folks up to date (everyone wants to be a little sticky nowadays), Rachel's also set up an RSS feed for Phoenixfeather.

For the curious, right now she's using an Olympus Camedia C730 with 10x optical zoom, but we're both looking forward to the new Nikon D70 digital SLR.

No matter what she uses to take pics, Rachel really has a knack for capturing the shots I can't even see when I'm standing in front of them, and I hope you enjoy her work as much as I do.

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Searching for the perfect Photoshop experience, I've found a peripheral to lust after. Designed for power gamers, the Nostromo SpeedPad n52 offers a smattering of 14 custom-programmable keys, a scrollwheel, an 8-way gamepad, a fire button and a thumbswitch.

There's nothing in the site that gives any hint that these might be useful for anything other than hardcore gaming, but to my mind the equipment that hardcore gamers use is usually more than up to the task of more mundane applications like Photoshop and BBEdit.

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Following up on yesterday's post about possible forthcoming iPods, I point you to SpyMac's blurb about the transition from unsubstantiated rumor to unsubstantiated fact, where professional publications erroneously state that Apple 'has announced' products that may or may not even exist.

This reminds me of the early days of the Newton, some ten years ago, when someone would post a self-declared wishful prediction of a new Newton device on the newsgroup comp.sys.newton.misc and it would get rewritten on a Newton rumor site and it would get picked up by a trade magazine with 'industry insiders say' tacked on to the front, then the first guy would run to the newsgroup and say "look! MacWeek says there's a new Newton coming out, and it's exactly what I was predicting! Woohoo!"

Still, kernels of truth and all... I'm sure there will be some new low-cost iPod announced next week, and it's quite possible there will be a mini iPod, though I'm not certain that that smaller necessarily means cheaper. Doesn't usually work that way in the consumer electronic world.

Update: And now, of course, there's the requisite Slashdot article talking about how the mini iPod rumors have more certainty now, because a mainstream paper is reporting it as fact.

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Brighthand talks about speculation of a new Apple handheld possibly to be announced at next week's Macworld Expo.

Now naturally I would wish that the rumor is true and this turns out to be the long-awaited iPad, but I'd be happy enough if it turns out to be mini iPods, based on Hitachi's 1-inch, 2- and 4-gigabyte drives. Toshiba's new 0.85" microdrive might be used in later models, but probably won't be ready in time for this quarter, or possibly even this year.

While I'd love for Apple to come out with an iPad, it'd be harder for me to justify buying one right now than it would be for me to get a smaller (cheaper?) 4-gig iPod for Reaver.

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I love my workplace. It's so... intimate.

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BargainPDA reports on a forthcoming Bluetooth Stowaway keyboard in the works from Think Outside.

While I think that's very cool, and I love the idea of not only typing wirelessly to my PDA, but even typing to my PDA while the PDA is secured away in my bag or pocket, I'm keen to know if the're using standard Bluetooth peripheral protocols. Specifically, I'm hooking up my old Lombard Powerbook to my TV as a sort of dedicated music/web/??? terminal, with the laptop tucked away with the other components. I'd been thinking about getting an Apple bluetooth keyboard and mouse to control it, but it would be so much nicer to have this convenient folding keyboard that would be even less obtrusive when not in use.

Just thinking about being anywhere within 30 feet of the computer, opening the keyboard, typing a song name and hearing it over the stereo. Also thinking about how it could be a nice peripheral for ambient computing (as oposed to just ambient displays).

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So my whole group moved offices last week to new digs, and now we're about four blocks away from the rest of campus. Needing to go to the other campus today, I opted to check out one of the company Segways to make the trip.

The Segway's cool, and too easy. Your speed has nothing to do with your skill, which is dangerous when you go too fast and have a problem.

Let's just say that the Segway is fine, and the grass stains will probably wash out of my jeans...

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Weekend before last, my Mom flew up from LA to visit. Rachel and I made house for her and I picked her up at the airport on Saturday. This was the day after the Prius was officially released (though I've been on the wait list for two weeks already), and so we took the chance to go to the dealership for a test drive.

The Prius is a pretty car. I've been putting off all test driving for weeks because until that Thursday I didn't have a valid interim license (different story, DMV is evil, doom doom doom, all that stuff). They had one on the lot, in a powder blue with the beige interior. It's roomy, pretty, different in the way that the New Beetle was different, but with more function behind its form. We saw the tiny engine and the bigger liftback.

We took it for a test drive.

First off, it has more power than my Civic EX. Yes, the EX has 124hp compared to the Prius's 110, but in the low ranges the torque of the electric motor has my VTEC beat. Maybe it's because my car's nearly 7 years old, or just because it needs an oil change, but I don't think it could make 0-60 in 10.9 seconds.

Second off, the car is nice. The seats feel more like suede than fabric, and the interior really looks like it was built for people. There's almost nothing within reach that isn't either open space, a control, or a storage compartment. the dashboard is disturbingly deep, but the windshield has better visibility than anything else I've driven and though the split-rear-window has been disparagingly compared to the ill-fated Aztek, it more closely resembles the liftback of a Mercedes C320. Visibility is a little low in the back, but it's above the horizon and the increased forward and side visibility afforded by the design makes up for it. We took it on the freeway and brought it up to a quiet 75mph with no problem at all. I've read the top speed is about 103mph, and considering that I've only broken that with my Civic maybe four times in the last seven years I don't think it's a big problem.

What can I say that you can't read in all the reviews? We saw another one at the lot, since the dealership got two. The second was in the red, and it was stunning enough for me to switch my order from the black to the red. That car was being driven off the lot as we were leaving, purchased by someone willing to spend $2,000 above sticker to jump to the head of the three month waiting list. No honor among thieves. Err, car salesmen, that is.

Leaving the dealership Mom, Rachel and I went to Steven's Creek to check out Subarus, since they're my other interest and it makes sense to drive both in quick succession for comparison's sake.

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I ought to spend more time at ThinkGeek. I went there today to buy a C.H.I.M.P. for my cube, but got floored by seeing that they sell a watch based on the same idea as a clock I designed for a ubiquitous interface project three years ago at Cal.

At $450 it's more than I want to spend on something that bangs around on my wrist, but I'm satisfying my geek urges by buying this nifty Pocket WiFi Finder. Now if it could only tell the difference between closed and open networks...

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How to set up a VT-100 terminal with OS X. At first glance, I thought 'doesn't the Terminal app emulate VT-100?' Well, yes, it does, but this link tells you how to take that old physical terminal, you know, the one with the green or amber screen, 80 cols and 24 rows of text display, and hook it to your OS X mac, where it acts as a command-line console, for whatever you want to use a CLI for (Pine, grep queries, running display of search referrers, whatever your fancy).

Since it uses a null modem and regular serial cables, it's easy to put it in another room, so it could also be a text-based email station in the kitchen, an iTunes remote, or what have you. So geeky. I want to see pics of this in action.

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So now I have an iSight and nobody to talk to. what's a boy to do, but set up a webcam?

Quelle retro

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There's been a lot of speculation about Mac OS X 10.3, 'Panther' that Steve jobs will be demoing on Monday at the WWDC keynote speech. even though the update isn't due to come out until September, it's being unveiled to get developers on the bandwagon to support 10.3 features on launch day.

One of the features with the biggest potential for impact is 'multiple GUI logins' which basically means that more than one user can be logged in at once. The conventional wisdom has been that this would let Bob stay logged in while Jane logs in to work on her paper as Bob is temporarily away, so each user doesn't have to shut down everything they're doing just so someone else can access their files and use the computer. I think this could be a lot bigger, though.

Ever since the iMac came out with two headphone jacks on the front of the computer, it's been clear that Apple realized that educational computers are shared computers. The ability to log in to a computer has been tremendously important in educational environments, because students can take their workspaces with them.

but what I haven't seen mentioned is the possibility for simultaneously shared computers. Pop in a second video card, plug in another keyboard and a second mouse, and suddenly you have the usefulness of two computers where before you had one. And when you only need one, you have one computer with two screens!

True, there's the obvious argument that this could cost Apple sales, but I really wonder how many two-mac homes there are right now. It seems to me that the ability to buy one computer that the kids and parents could use at the same time would be a strong reason to buy Mac over PC, and when you only have a 3% market share, coming out with a feature that could lure a fraction of the remaining 97% is worth losing a fraction of the 3%.

Now that assignments are required to be typewritten at earlier and earlier ages, two or more kids having to share one computer at home is turning into a big problem. Wouldn't it be nice if the mantras on the value of sharing weren't halted by the digital divide?

And wouldn't it be nice if Apple came out with a 2lb thin client wireless tablet so you could use your computer anywhere around the house, even as your wife does the same?

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Handspring has posted a sneak preview of the Treo 600, a palm-based phone with a keyboard, color screen, color camera, and SD slot in a small package (and no flip cover!)

I'm realizing more and more that my Sidekick isn't very good at being a phone, though it rocks on email and instant messaging. I've got to figure out what my long term plan is: getting a phone and using the new data-only option for my sidekick? Ditching my email dependence and dropping the sidekick altogether? or maybe a different hybrid, like this Treo.

Luckily, the Treo 600 doesn't come out until this Fall, so I've got plenty of time to mull it over.

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I have a certain fondness for keyboards. Starting when I learned to touch-type on a fully manual typewriter in the 7th grade, I've migrated to all kinds of keyboards, with different looks and feels, strokes and weights.

I've always found both my writing style and general computing attitude to be greatly affected by the keyboard I'm using. In this regard (and only this regard) I secretly identify with Greg Kinnear's typewriter-afficianado character in You've Got Mail.

I've probably owned more than a dozen keyboards since I learned to type, from the clickitty IBM PC keyboards to the membrane keyboard of the Odyssey II, to the tiny keyboard of my Duo 210 to the Stowaway folding keyboard for my Palm V to my Sidekick's thumb 'keyboard', just to name a few. Okay, make that two dozen.

Atop the highest pedestal in this tactile pantheon sits my Apple Extended Keyboard II, which I got in 1989, along with my Mac SE/30. I called it a 'deck,' massive yet graceful, seeming more suited to the bridge of the Enterprise (1701-D) than on a simple 1980s desktop ("Hello computer!"). (Here's a great photo of Apple keyboards and mice through the ages. The AEK II is the big one on the top left.)

The keys had a soft stroke, and bespoke quiet power when pressed. Even stroking my hand across the full sweep of the 105 keys (I remember that there were 105 keys) gave more a sense of art than doing the same over the 88 keys of a grand piano.

Truly a thing of beauty.

Okay, back to the point, and the present day. For the last six months I've been living off my powerbook, using its decent keyboard while away from my desk, and jacking in to the orphaned keyboard and mouse that came with my now stilled G4 Quicksilver desktop. A decent combination. Well, as the avid reader knows, I sold my desktop machine last week, and the buyer opted for the keyboard and mouse as well. No problem. I'd just buy another.

For the last two weeks, since pulling the keyboard for the eBay photos, I've been using my backup Happy Hacking Keyboard, a tool which, while admirable for its efficiency, compactness, and lack of a caps-lock key, is ultimately cramped and uninspiring. Pair that with a Wacom as my primary pointing device on a desk so cluttered to not have room for it, and my writing was quite literally cramped.

With my eBay money firmly in my paypal account, I've been doing a little spending. I intended to replace my keyboard with another just like it, but it turns out they don't sell the black keyboard separately, only the white model. I wasn't sure how I felt about this inversion, but I went ahead and bought it anyhow, and I don't know how much is in my head and how much in the keys, but it feels more like that vaunted Extended Keyboard II than any board I've had the pleasure of keystroking since. (108 keys. Tee-hee!)

Suddenly writing is a pleasure again. Heck, I've already written 590 words on a new keyboard (on a new keyboard)!

This is a preface to say that, like the new owner of a Strat, I'm learning my instrument, finding our shared voice, but so far she truly sounds sweet.

If you think I'm a freak now, just wait until my new mouse and speakers arrive. Hey, at least it's not an iGesture Pad. God those things look cool.

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The recent launch of Apple's Music Store is clear evidence of their continuing focus on media acquisition and management. The iApps (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD) and iPod all focus on integrating media into Apple owners' daily lifestyle. Could Apple do for TV portability what it's done for music portability?

Business 2.0 thinks maybe. I feel the same way.

Apple and TiVo have been working together heavily on streaming media over the last six months, TiVo's Home Media Option is the first 'entertainment appliance' to take advantage of Rendezvous, Apple's implementation of a simplified network discovery and sharing protocol. TiVo 'gets it' as far as Apple technology goes. To use media sharing of music and photos from a Windows box to a TiVo requires a 16 megabyte application specifically for organizing music into playlists and photos into albums that can be shared over the network to the TiVo. The Mac download is a 288k control panel that just creates a bridge from the TiVo to the user's iTunes and iPhoto library, whether iTunes or iPhoto are running or not.

The Apple/TiVo relationship has brought Apple content onto the TiVo, and an Apple acquisition of TiVo could push data the other way as well. A couple weeks ago Apple unveiled new iPods in 10, 15, and 30 gigabytes. 30 gigabytes is enough storage for 20 days of uninterrupted, unrepeated music. Perhaps a bit excessive. On the other hand, 30 gigs is enough to store 120 hours of high-quality video compressed for an iPod-sized screen (320x240) using a realtime compressing codec (it could be smaller in MPEG-4, but it wouldn't be able to compress video on-the-fly). An iPod with an on-board MPEG2 decoder could synch small-screen versions of TiVo shows on to your iPod for watching anywhere. Perhaps full-screen files could also be saved for display on a regular TV via an S-Video port (after all, the line-out sound port is already there).

Would it make sense for TiVo to be bought by Apple? It probably makes more sense than the Apple/Universal Music rumors, since technology is what Apple's all about, not the creation of content or the managing of artists, and TiVo follows that line completely. Personally, I don't know whether the buyout would happen, and what that could mean for TiVo's existing partners, Sony, Phillips, and Toshiba, but the current ties between the companies give me hope for a Video iPod.

It makes a certain sense: Video is the next logical step in the iPod's evolution, and nobody has nailed the scheduling, acquisition, and presentation of video broadcasts like TiVo has. A strategic partnership here could really go a long way.

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For the second time in two weeks, the AC power adapter for my G4 titanium powerbook has burnt out. I've read stories about people having problems with the adapter dropping out, to come back if they unplug and replug, or sleep and wake from sleep, but the first one was just dead. The second one I actually watched die. I've had the adapter for two weeks now, and I saw it futzing out intermittently today, until a half hour ago when I saw and heard a bright spark just in from the joint where the adapter attaches to the grounded power cord that goes to the wall. The acrid 'computers gone bad' smell manifested itself, and the thing's done for.

Argh, and I have several projects to work on and finish tonight, with no power to do so.

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I keep hearing the same numbers all over the net about the Apple Music Store. 99 cents a track, $10 an album, 200,000 songs in their library, and 275,000 songs were purchased in the first 16 hours of operation.

I thought of a couple more interesting numbers...

First, about the new iPods. 10, 15, and 30 gigabytes. That's a lot of space. With the 30 gig iPod, that's 21 days of solid music with no repeats.

7,500 songs in your pocket they say. $499. Pricey for a music player, but not out of this world.

Nobody ever mentions that at $1 a track, it would cost you $7,500 to fill up your 30 gig iPod. If you opt for the economy $299 10 gig iPod, it'll only cost a paltry $2,500 to fill it.

Of course it costs more if you actually bought CDs at $15 each and are ripping them to MP3.

On the other side of the equation, the massive 200,000 song library, ostensibly representing the crown jewels of the big five record labels, fits nicely on one third of a single Xserve RAID box.

So, looked at with a hand on the cynical stick, you can put 7,500 songs in your pocket... for the cost of half a Honda, or you could fit the whole collection in to 1U (3 inches) of rack space for half the cost of a typical San Francisco house (or a couple beautiful homes in Pittsburgh).

It reminds me of the pre-CD era Adobe Font Folio that service bureaus could buy for $30,000 and they'd throw the hard drive in for free! I wonder if they'll have a deal where where when you buy more than $3,000 at the Apple Music Store you get a free iPod to put the music in?

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Bored at your job, checking returned USB floppy drive? Make a Floppy Disk Drive RAID. This one really puts the 'I' in redundant array of inexpensive disks.

He made a 'stripe' array, which increases speed (but not too much, sunce he's still running it over USB. I'd like to see someone make a 'mirror' array, where you could, at any time, pop out one of the floppies and still have all the data intact, then pop a blank disk in, wait a few seconds, and pop another disk out at random, until all the original disks were gone. It'd make a great classroom demonstration.

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Looks like you can now buy replacement iPod batteries along with installation instruction. Just the thing for a year-old iPod with waning battery capacity.

Very cool. Damn them for making a $50 product that may be a viable alternative to purchasing one of the new iPods to be released in a week.

Now that this nut has been cracked though, I suppose it's only a matter of time before someone comes out with higher-capacity batteries, possibly with a new backplate, so a 10-gig iPod could have a 30-hour battery that's slightly thicker, with a 20-gig iPod's backplate to accomodate the additional thickness. Triple battery life would be far more useful to me than double the song capacity...

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Vanilla Coke, Powerbook, not a good combo. I think everything's working. Will report in later.

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What with TiVo's added features in Series2 boxes, including scheduling from the web, and music streaming from my mac with Rendezvous, I was getting really close to buying a series 2 box, buying lifetime service, and selling my existing box with lifetime service.

Now I don't have to. Today my TiVo, ever proactive, let me know that they're doing what they said they never would: let you move lifetime service to a new box.

Of course there are conditions, and they stress that this is a one-time-only deal, but now I can buy an 80-hour Series2 TiVo before March 10th, and transfer the lifetime service (which, incidentally would otherwise cost $250 otherwise and next month will cost $300) from my 30-hour Sony TiVo to the new box.

Now the only question is what to do with my existing cherished TiVo.

Anyhow, I just wrote this up for my friends who I know have TiVo with lifetime service, and might be itching for a new box. If you have any questions, give TiVo a call at 1-877-806-0883.

I love my TiVo.

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Here's a weird request. I've nearly exhausted my campus connections on this one, so I'm turning to you, oh diligent reader: I have a data cartridge with some stuff I wrote quite a while ago. Ten years ago, in fact. Now I can't find a drive that will read it.

Ten years ago I'd just started my intenship at MacWEEK magazine, and during the more boring parts I wrote, and saved it onto what I thought would be the most long-lived media of the time: A 650mb 5.25" Magneto-Optical cartridge.

It was state of the art, and was supposed to last upwards of 100 years without losing data. The problem of course is that the media is far more permanent than the drives that wrote to it.

Now, barely 10% of the way through the media's life, I can't find a drive that can read it. I just want to pull a file or two off that are personally important to me, and I can't find a way to do it.

The drive that wrote it was either a Pinnacle Micro or an Alphatronix 5.25" MO drive. Does anyone have one, or know anyone who might? If anyone can help me with this, I'll definitely make it worth your while.

Thanks in advance...

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Got back late last night. Still working on the game descriptions, so I'm turning it in a day late for one grade lower, alas.

Apple speedbumped their desktop powermacs today, while lowering the prices, but more notably they also came out with a new 20" Cinema Display for $1299. the thing has a resolution of 1680x1050 and looks beautiful. Some day. Oh, and they slashed the price of the 23" display to $1999. Beautiful stuff

More later, class now.

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Today's moment of zen, 2 minutes old, was watching a businessman playing with one of the new 12" titanium powerbooks, as he checked his stocks, made a trade, and confided to me that he made enough in the market today to pay for the powerbook he was clearly lusting after.

Yes, I'm at Macworld Expo this afternoon. Very, very cool toys, and I'm glad to say that if I had to decide today, I'd still get the giga15tibook.

Okay, enough sitting on the floor of the Apple booth. Back to the jungle I go! Today's quest: great sound editing software. Reason and ProTools are high on my list.

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So today is my last day of classes for the semester. I still have a final on Monday, and a final presentation the day after, but as far as class goes, I have my last session of Communication Design Fundamentals in a little over an hour, and that's it.

I'm sure it's partly the snow, partly the fact that I'm coming off an all-nighter, after coming off 4 hours of sleep (6am-10am) on Tuesday night (Wednesday morning), and partly having far more exciting stuff to do than time to do it, but it's literally incredible to me that the semester's essentially over. Incredible, as in not credible, as in I understand the concept, yet cannot give credit to the prospect of its validity. Sure, I still have work to turn in in three of my classes, one of which I haven't started yet, and sure I have a final that could snap me like a tiny twig of logic, but I'm not the only one. A lot of people are in a daze, looking vaguely like they should be passing their yearbooks around for people to sign, but they forgot to make yearbooks in the first place.

Okay, enough with that. Time to enumerate stuff:

There's snow on the ground and lots of it. I checked Weather.com at 4am and saw Pennsylvania covered in dark white (heh, 'dark white' makes sense if you look at a precipitation map). I looked out the window and saw the world covered in softness. Don't worry Ali, I got your snowscaped graveyard picture. I just need to get home to download it. I forgot to bring the cable. The snow's about 5 inches deep; just enough to change a road from a right to a privilege. The forecast is pretty clear for the next week, but the temperature will sway from 36 to 8, so I don't see much of this stuff clearing away before I take off. I hope my car likes its snowbank.

My powerbook came last Tuesday (wow, two days seems so much longer when you were conscious for 49 of the intervening 53 hours), and I've barely had time to give it its due, much less revel in it here. Fittingly enough, I'm typing on it now in the UC center, its frosted silver mirrors the suddenly winterized world just outside the double-paned glass. I haven't had time to install enough apps or docs on it to feel comfortable giving it dominion over my digital well-being, but somewhere between Tuesday and Thursday I'll be loading it up with my 20gig mp3 dowry, 4gig photo tome, and assorted other data vaults. The thing is truly freaking beautiful. I don't know what more I could want in a machine. I can't reasonably ask for faster than a 1Ghz G4, and the screen constantly seems bigger and brighter than this svelte machine should be able to house. Internal wireless is also a dream come true. Joy.

When I brought the box up from the FedEx guy Tuesday morning, I gently patted my newly-old powerbook, telling it that it would always have a place with me. I have an affinity for my portable machines. In contrast, I'm planning on selling my Quicksilver G4 tower, its noise and continuing depreciation outweighing the little unique utility not duplicated by my sibling powerbooks.

I should have treated my sidekick so well. Nestled in my pocket yesterday, it decided to make a plea for attention, no doubt feeling neglected and threatened by the new baby. It decided to deactivate every other vertical line of pixels, and dim several of the others. Cajoling, rebooting, and eventually slapping it briskly (think baby's first breath, not crying toddler over the knee) to kick'start the display, but to no avail. The true irony (if one can extend anthropomorphosis this far) is that the temper tantrum is backfiring: T-Mobile is sending ad advance-replacement my way this morning, and it'll be here early next week, so the sidekick that wouldn't shape up will now ship out, replaced by a new doe-eyed machine that's never known a world without the G4PB. Now I just have to make sure the powerbook doesn't get jealous. Oh, and a name for the new powerbook? I'm leaning towards 'Sendai.'

What else can I tell you? For the first time in memory I have both of my Congresses of Vienna blocked out for a Gaskell's Ball that's still over two weeks away. Not bad for a country boy. Now I just have to make sure I can still dance.

The Great Blogger Diet hasn't been forgotten or abandoned. On the contrary, there's quite a tale to tell on that front; one that might just rival this post in length, and may even rise to the level of the mythic laundry story, so you'll understand that I want to take my time with it. Some time this weekend. (I just want to add how cool it is that searching for that url was so easy

It's amazing how everything's quieter in the snow. It's like hanging tapestries on the walls, all over the world. Busses driving by no longer chug, but shoosh, and traffic moves slow enough that you don't have to look both ways, just walk with the traffic, going at a downstream angle, just like how they told you to escape a running river.

The air is so quiet, and everyone looks like a student. It feels like a weekend on campus, which is just like a weekday on campus, with authority figures removed.

But I still have a few miles to go before I sleep, and more upon my next waking, so I'll cut this short (even though it's anything but). I could write all day, but I need to turn it to more scholastic ends at the moment.

And yea though I had to trudge through powder to get to a packed damp bus early this morn, I do still so love the snow.

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So this morning, on the first day of the Christmas buying season, Apple let me know that my Christmas present to myself was shipped out from Taiwan this morning (err, evening, their time).

My Gigahertz Powerbook G4 with Superdrive is on its way and should be here around Tuesday. Too cool... Now I just have to console my three-year-old powerbook that it won't be left behind.

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Workload is at its peak over in these parts. With four real weeks of class left before the end of the semester, I'm working on four final projects simultaneously, along with regular assignments in three classes. Hence the quiet.

Which is a real shame because I have so much to blog about! Well, e-commerce-wise, my Sidekick (Danger, Hiptop, what have you) is arriving tomorrow and also, after waiting (not so) patiently for three months (and three years) I ordered a Titanium Powerbook from Apple today. I knew the model refresh was coming, and there was a lot of speculation on what would be included, from a price drop, to internal bluetooth, to gigahertz processors to internal superdrives to new video cards. Well, I woke up this morning and read that Apple delivered on all of the above except for the internal bluetooth, arguably the smallest of the mentioned features, and so I sprung like a cat to the student developer site and placed my order, saving $500 from what I would have had to pay only a day earlier and getting a much, much better machine in the bargain. I even boosted the RAM from 512 megs to a gigabyte for $40.

Mind you, it's not shipping for 3 to 4 weeks, but I don't mind the wait.

Okay, so I'm having one of those complexes where I have some really interesting content to post (palazzo and logmusic, for those who know) but I feel like I have to do them justice before posting. It's such a quandry.

But more than anything I need sleep. Three hours last night and three the night before, and I have class in 8 hours, so I hope to get at least six-and-a-half hours of rest right now. Can you blame me?

Okay, so much cool stuff to share.. Gonna burst... I finally figured out that the way to regain inspiration was to bend, ever so slightly, my educational endevours to leverage my web initiatives, and vice-versa.

I'll be sane again tomorrow, really. Now I'm going to sleep.

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On one hand, I'm stressed because I didn't get to sleep until 4am, and had to get up at 7:15am for class this morning. I have work due in three classes that I need to get done by the end of the day (Communication Design Fundamentals, Computer Music, and HCI Methods) along with 7 hours of class. Ugh. I just want today to be both over and done with. Actually, I'm pretty excited about the Computer Music project. It's my final project for the class (an interim report is due today), and as soon as I foist off today's shackle, I'll talk about it on here. It's only fitting: in a roundabout way, you're all a part of it.

Helping me get through the day (in addition to the anticipation of new powerbooks tomorrow) is this which, at this moment, is here.

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So as I've been mentioning, the air's been getting colder, and along with that, it's been getting drier and windier. No biggie, a fine chance to enjoy my wool overcoat while thinking that soon I should shop for a good winter jacket. I'm thinking along the lines of REI, except the nearest store is 5 hours away, but that kind of thing. Something lightweight but good down to 0 degrees. You know, leveraging the space-age fabrics we invented over the last 30 years instead of making jetpacks and helicars.

But I digress...

What I meant to post about was the effect this weather is having on my music listening. No, no. This isn't some monotribe about listening to "Winter Kills" on endless repeat or anything. It's all about the static.

So I use my iPod all the time, putting it in my pocket, with a ling headphone cord stretching from there to the in-ear Sony earbuds I use. These headphones are great. They block a lot of external noise, have great fidelity, and with three different sized sets of plugs to choose from, they don't hurt your (err, my) ears with prolonged use. The in-ear part is all rubber, and the only but of metal is on the outside, where it doesn't touch the skin at all.

Herein lies the problem...

It seems that with the dry, cold wind whipping along the headphone cord between pocket and ear, it builds up quite an electrical charge (and I'm sure the 5400rpm drive inside the iPod probably isn't helping much either). Something about the way the headphones are made seems to necessitate that the charge is not balanced between the two earbuds. so the charge builds up until, after about seven seconds, click-ow! a tiny spark leaps around from the metal bit on the earbud, questing for something grounded, until it finds my ear, two millimeters away.

Both ears...

...at the same time...

...every seven seconds.

It only happens when I'm walking outside in the cold and wind, and the clicks are just annoying enough to be annoying, but not tear-it-out-of-my-ear-and-kill-it annoying. Personally, I'm just wondering how this kind of thing makes it past testing.

So now it looks like I'll have to turn to an alternate set of headphones, depending on the weather, or tape tinfoil from the earbud to my ear, so that the current flows cleanly, instead of arcing periodically.

In effect, I need to ground myself for listening to electric music...

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So by now you've all hopefully remembered to set your clocks back an hour. For me personally, the change was a subtle reminder of how ubiquitous computing is marching ever-forward. I've just counted, and I have fifteen timepieces in my life. Of those, four automatically changed time to adjust for the end of Daylight Savings.

I was a little surprised by some. Here's how they fared:

• Yahoo Watch - No update. Hardly a surprise; it's a dumbtech watch that barely knows what the day and month are, much less day of the week or time zone.
• Desktop Mac - Updated right on time. I came home at 1:30am (the, err, second 1:30am) and it was right on the ball.
• Powerbook - Same as desktop mac.
• iPod - Nope. It knows about timezones (thanks to the 1.2 update, which also gave it a clock and calendar) but it required me to go into settings and change my time zone from 'Eastern (EDT)' to 'Eastern'. It might have done it automatically if I'd sync'ed it with my mac. I won't know 'till April.
• Elph s100 Camera - Not only did it not know the time changed, but it thought I was still in California! Funny how little I pay attention to the datestamping functionality of my digicam.
• Camcorder - At 12:50am I checked it (just now) and it thought it was 10:50pm. I would have been a little confused if not for the fact that I had checked the elph moments before and it showed 9:47pm. So I thought, 'Neat! It thinks I'm in California still, but at least it did the time change!' Then I realized no: I simply had never set the time forward back in April. Now, writing this down, I realize I have it backwards: The Elph hadn't been reset since before April. The camcorder wasn't even purchased until after April. Anyhow, they're both just smart enough that they should know better, but don't.
• Car Stereo - As smart as it is, it doesn't know a thing about calendar dates, and seeing as how it doesn't get its time signal from a radio station, it knows nothing about daylight savings.
• Zen Alarm Clock - The thing's analog for crissake. And that's why I love it.
• Zeit Atomic Clock - The one item in my house that is expressly created to handle daylight savings time correctly, and it messes it up. A bit about this clock: It reads the longwave time signal broadcast from Colorado, and syncs itself to that signal all the time, so it's the most difinitive timepiece I own. Nevertheless, for the past two years, it adjusts itself for daylight savings time two weeks before it's supposed to, without explanation, or even corroboration by other Zeit clock owners. This month it fell back two weeks early, a not-so-subtle reminder of the impending shift, but fixed itself a few days later. Now, at its moment of truth, it ticks blithly on in defiance of the end of daylight savings. I have little choice but to wait for it to figure out on its own what's what.
• Bose Alarm Clock - Doesn't know about dates.
• Cellphone - As smart as my Nokia purports to be, and as hopeful I was when I activated the 'auto-adjust clock' feature on it, the thing is as dumb as a digital rock. No joy.
• Microwave Oven - Another example of dumbtech. I trust the thing to work as a countdown timer for food, but that's about it.
• Kitchen Wall Clock - Analog dumbtech.
• Digital Cable Box - Smart. I'd expected that, but considering that the phone line umbilical is currently cut, I wouldn't have been surprised if it didn't get the message for a day or so.
• TiVo - Ditto above, though I actually figured it wouldn't update the clock until it made its daily call, which it's been unable to for the last week, thanks to me and my non-payment of my Verizon bill. I should've known better though: A device with Linux at its core is smart enough to know about daylight savings, and adjust on its own.

As for my body, I put a little effort into trying to even out my sleep schedule. It's now 1:15am local time, and I'm going to sleep. Considering that I usually go to sleep around 3:15am, I'm compensating an extra hour, turning in an hour earlier than my biology expects.

I hope everyone else's weekend was good. I've got a few bits to write up in the morning, probably before most of you even wake up from your Monday Bonus Hour of sleep.

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A nice article on the Digital Resource Management movement, specifically, Apple's counterstance.

I don't believe that Apple protects its users' right to burn CDs because it trusts that the user won't, but because people like Apple better for not acting as a tool of law enforcement.

I heart Apple.

PS: I had a dream this morning about looking up my powerbook purchase online, finding that it had been assembled, it was a 900Mhz G4 Powerbook, with a slimline superdrive. Soon, my precious...

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I'm in lust. I look online every day, searching for a sign. I flit from site to site, thinking "could this be the day?" I'm just waiting for the moment when I'll take the plunge, and make the commitment.

The object of my affection? The New Powerbook G4.

Most likely it won't be substantially different from the current model, in 667Mhz and 800Mhz versions. There will probably be a speed bump up to 966Mhz or even 1Ghz, maybe a little more hard drive space, a peppier video card, and other small enhancements. Just maybe there will be a superdrive, and a higher resolution screen. The back to school promotions on the current models ran out last week, and other signs, like Apple's pulling of refurbished models from the Apple Store, point to a release in the next week or two.

The students around here are about 1/3 mac, and they're virtually all TiBooks. The ratio's greater than 50:50 amongst the teachers. They're sooo sexy (the laptops, that is).

So now I check the rumor boards each morning, hoping for the sneak-peek, or authoritative-sounding rumor report. October's a good month for Apple product releases, and now that I've decided it's time for me to get the new 'book, I can't wait for it to emerge.

<inigo>I hate waiting...</inigo>

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Anyone who says it's a pipedream for Apple to make a tablet PC for under $1000 should take a look at the $599 ProGear. Granted, they're selling off excess inventory, but given the specs (10.2" LCD screen, 6gig 2.5" hard disk, etc) I think a company with sufficient volume could still make and sell these for under $1000.

The real trick is to make it useful enough to justify the cost, but not so useful as to cannibalize other CPU sales.

The quest for the perfect second computer continues...

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Invention of the day: Have you seen the Thinkpads with integrated keyboard lights over the display, to illuminate the keys during dark meetings or lectures? The light in and of itself is pretty distracting, especially when they tend to illuminate your hands more than anything else.

The latest in LED technology is ultraviolet LEDs. Now wouldn't it be cool if one of these was integrated into a powerbook screen, just above the display, pointong down to the keyboard, and the inks used for the keyboard keys were slightly flourescent? You could have a Tron-esque keyboard, without lighting up anything else...

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This proof of concept device is exactly the kind of direction I've been hoping that personal electronics would take: shifting from the consumption of media (tapes, CDs, books, etc.) to the creation of it (cameras, small writing devices, microphones).

In a nutshell, this device is constantly recording the sound around you, via a microphone at your waist and one in your ear and, upon recognizing a preprogrammed keyword or phrase, like "nice to meet you" or "I'll have to remember that", will store a predetermined portion of that buffer for you, for further retrieval.

They give the 'cocktail party' example of remembering the names of people you met (which I think would only be useful if there was also an integrated camera) but I could see countless uses in a classroom environement or social environment; anywhere you might hear something you want to remember, but weren't prepared for.

With the proper software, this could also be a very useful tool for people with ADD, giving them the ability to, with a simple voice or button-driven command, get a playback of the last 30 seconds of conversation, if their mind wandered. In fact, for some ADD people, the ability to run a constant, lower volume stream of the conversation, delayed 5-30 seconds from 'realtime' could help them keep their mind in the conversation, even as it wanders, with the first pass being a 'screening pass' and the second enabling them to turn their focus on the conversation.

The device also has a clock and GPS, so with each saved annotation would be the time and exact place where the conversation took place.

There aren't any commercial production plans yet, but this kind of technology could easily be added to existing consumer devices, such as cellphones or HD MP3 players, given the proper firmware and some hardware tweaks.

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Two kvetches this morning. First, and most minor: Why does Mac OS X's Software Update suggest that I download a 20 meg update for iDVD, considering that my mac knows it doesn't have a Superdrive and, thanks to Apple's policies, there's no way to upgrade my mac to have a superdrive, nor is iDVD compatible with any third-party DVD-R drive? In short, they want me to upgrade software they know my machine will never be able to use.

Second: Fuck Vanguard Air. I bought Ammy's return ticket a few weeks ago, to fly her from Pittsburgh to San Francisco, and this morning Vanguard announces that they've gone bankrupt, are suspending all flights as of 1am today, and will not be refunding fares to current ticketholders.

Oh but they've made arrangements for discounted travel via Frontier Air and National Air ('discount' meaning they're waiving short-notice penalties, letting you buy their 21-day fares for immediate travel). This despite the fact that I already paid once for the ticket, and that neither airline even has operations in Pittsburgh..

Now the cheapest fare is $290 and involves two plane changes, all on different carriers. Blar.

Blar blar blar blar. Luckily, I have a plan.

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For those who really want that 7-hour advance notice, here's what's going down tomorrow:

• iPod for Windows: Certain
• OS X 10.2: Certain release date, probably early August. $19.95 upgrade price.
• 17" LCD iMac: Most likely an announcement and a late Aug/Early Sept. release
• 20gig iPod: Same release date as the 17" iMac, but possibly not announced at MWNY.
• iPad: Patience... Wait for MWSF.
• Also... 'Switch' kudos, 3rd-party kudos (Halo?), QT 6 overview, small tweaks, LCD price drops...

Here's hoping for surprises!

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Here's my semi-annual prediction list for Macworld Expo. Have at you!

• Two-button mouse - Apple designed two-button optical mouse standard on new macs. Possibly a new design that makes the left button larger than the right, so that 'center clickers' still get their expected behavior.

  why? Apple itself has been pushing contextual menus for several years. Now most applications for Mac OS X support control-click functionality and most users use it every day. Since most Mac users use Windows or Unix computers at least occasionally, they are familiar with two-button mice. As stubborn as Apple has been on this issue, there is less and less reason to shun a two-button mouse simply because it came from the Wintel side. Probability: could be

• Bluetooth Mouse and Keyboard - Using the recently developed and tested Bluetooth drivers for OS X, and a possible motherboard-level bluetooth chip and antenna, bluetooth keyboard and mouse could be a new standard to go along with Apple's move towards incremental mobility enhancements like the current space-efficient keyboard and LCD displays.

  why? Apple has taken steps on their site to position Bluetooth as an embraced technology. While unsuitable for high-speed applications like iPods, video editing, or displays, bluetooth would help apple's mission of the wireless computer. With an LCD monitor. the only cable might now be the thick AVI cable from the G4 tower to the display. Batteries could be an issue, and a small powered docking tray for mouse and keyboard might be a solution. Probability: Someone? Yes. Apple? Maybe... Bluetooth solutions at Expo are virtually certain. With Apple's pushing of the thumb-sized USB Bluetooth Nubbin, other vendors are likely to reveal solutions even if Apple isn't ready to yet. Think Wacom...

• 20 gig iPod - iPods will now come in three sizes: 5, 10, and 20 gig. Prices for the 5 and 10 gig iPods will drop by $50 to $349 and $449 respectively, while the 20 gig will sell for $549.

  why? Toshiba, the only supplier of the 1.8" hard drives Apple uses for the iPods, came out with a 20 gig drive last January. While it has identical power consumption as the 10 gig, it has an extra platter, making it 8mm high instead of the 5 and 10 gig's 5mm. Along with price point marketing issues, this is why the 20 gig didn't come out earlier. The 10 gig was basically a part replacement, with some possible software mods. The technical requirements for the 10 gig are virtually the same as the 5 gig. The 20 gig will either need a case that is 1-3mm thicker, or Apple will need to rearrange the iPod's interior. Initially, the iPod was created with stock parts from several vendors, with no custom ASICs, lowering startup costs and time to market. Now that the iPod is established, the engineering and testing effort for an ASIC may be justified, and such a chip would clear us space inside the iPod; more than enough for the 20 gig drive. Probability: It will happen at some point. call it 50/50 for an announcement or release next week.

• iPod for Windows - At one point envisioned as a separate hardware product, an iPod for the Windows market would now have identical hardware as a Mac iPod, and would probably be sold in the same box, with a multi-platform install CD and manual. No iTunes for Windows, but a slick utility solely to create playlists and import music onto the iPod, without any playing ability on the Windows side.

  why? As often as Apple has failed in the consumer electronics arena (AppleCD, Newton, Pippin, QuickTake, etc.), they have a huge hit with the iPod, despite the product's mac-only limitation. Without this limitation, the iPod is the best of breed for the portable MP3 market. Balanced between having a product which has brought more people to the Mac platform, and one with a respectable market penetration and profit center of its own, the logical compromise is to provide enough Windows functionality to open up the potential iPod audience to those with any computer, while still providing a premium experience to those with Macs. If done correctly, Apple could create a Windows experience which would inform them of the added capability available to Mac users, helping with Apple's current job 1: Switch. Probability: Virtually certain.

• 17" LCD iMac - In addition to the successful 15" iMac, a 17" 1280x1024 screen would bring in a lot of people currently being driven to large, noisy G4 towers with empty slots, just to get a decent-sized screen.

  why? Good question. Though the iMac enclosure is smaller and less expensive than the G4 tower, such a machine could easily cannibalize the G4 tower market. Prices for the 17" iMac would have to be high enough to retain the profit margin of the G4. Personally, such a machine would be my ideal, as it would be for a lot of people. I'd love to see this happen, but I'd worry about it sharing the same fate as the G4 Cube: A very appealing machine, but with a cannibalization tariff so high as to make a machine perceived as overpriced, however cool it may be. Probability: 60%. I'd have said 40%, if not for all the buzzing over at apple, yanking press credentials of the rumor sites.

• OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) - not a release, but a full walkthrough and a release date around August 10th.

  why? Beta testing went really well, and Apple would love to get some all-important Operating System buzz in the media in time to have an impact on the educational buying season, Apple's second largest after the holiday season. Probability: Certain.

• Switch Hoopla - Look for at least one, and possibly all, of the stars of the Switch commercials to be presented on stage, along with a couple new ones.

  why? Jobs loves to show off his media campaigns, and he hasn't had a chance to talk about this one in front of a big audience. It's a gimmie. Probability: 80%.

• Superdrives Everywhere - Look for Superdrives to be standard on all G4 tower machines and G4 Powerbooks. Also expect Superdrives on all but the entry-level LCD iMac and iBook, which will keep their CD-RW and CD-ROM respectively. The eMac and CRT iMac will remain the same.

  why? Superdrives are coming down in price, and it's a point of difference between Apple and the Windows world. It positions Apple to take better advantage of the shift from VCRs to DVD and, considering Apple's refusal to let users upgrade just their optical drive to an iDVD-compatible superdrive, it's a carefully planned solution to promote people to buy new machines, while handing their old machines down to people aching for iPods, etc. ;-) This idea is further supported by Sony's recent release of a DVD-RAM/CD-RW equipped notebook computer (Sony is Apple's primary optical drive supplier), and the fact that last week's Apple Employee Promo featured eight current Mac models, only one of which contained a Superdrive. It looks like they're clearing inventory. Probability: 70%

• Price drop on 22" and 23" Cinema Displays - Look for the 22" to drop to $1799 and the 23" to $2599.

  why? If a 17" iMac is released, the step up to the G4 tower can't be as steep. Customers looking for more than an iMac will feel that they need a bigger screen, and $2500 for a display is a huge obstacle. At $1799, it starts becoming a realistic, though extravagant, option. Current promos give a $500 rebate when you buy a G4 tower and a 22" display, so a price drop from a current $1999 to a perpetual $1799 isn't unrealistic. Of course the 23" would have to come down too, though the $2599 figure is a little more arbitrary, and would fluctuate based on Apple market research that I don't have access to. Probability: 80%.

• iPad - the super-cool pen and tablet-based Mac.

  why? Inkwell, along with the fact that several other hardware and OS manufacturers are heading down this path, makes this a clear stop on the Apple path. Probability: Zero at this Expo. January's another story though...

Well there you go! That's my story and I'm sticking to it. We'll see what happens on Wednesday the 17th!

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So A friend of mine at Yahoo has a friend at Danger, Inc. and she's arranged for me to go there this afternoon and play with a Danger Hiptop!

The Hiptop (Hip-top) is the next potential 'ideal merging of phone and PDA.' Built from the ground up around wireless data transfer and phone capabilities, it doesn't have to work around an established handheld form factor, or hardware that has wireless connectivity grafted on a grandfathered OS.

I'm really excited to see what this can do in person, since a few minutes with a Handspring Treo was enough to burst that bubble.

Originally slated for a January launch, Danger and T-Mobile (rebranded and expanded Voicestream) are (last I heard) doing final beta testing and are planning on a launch in late June or in July.

I'll probably know a lot more in a few hours, but I have no idea how closed-lipped they are, so I don't know how much I'll be able to share. Hopefully it won't matter and they'll release the product in the next few weeks.

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So Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference got underway this morning, and Steve outlined the forthcoming OS 10.2 called 'Jaguar.' This pisses me off incredibly, and makes me euphoric with joy.

First, the shit (the bad kind): Apple's including iChat, an Instant Message client that will work with AOL Instant Messenger's network. This pisses me off because as the interaction designer for Yahoo's Messenger for Mac, I think that picking one chat network and 'blessing' it with an Apple client is as bad a move as binding Internet Explorer into the Windows OS. I'm also pissed off because they didn't choose Yahoo to do it with. Fuck'em. We'll show them.

Second, the shit (the good kind): One technology being introduced in Jaguar is Inkwell, OS X's implementation of handwriting recognition. They've taken the Rosetta handwriting engine from Newton 2.0 and ported it to OS X, likely improving it along the way.

They mention that you'll need a digitizing tablet to use Inkwell, and there is flat out no way that they went through the engineering effort of porting Rosetta just to support text entry for people with Wacom tablets.

As far as I'm concerned (and I'm not usually so vehement about rumored products) I am absolutely certain that this means the iPad (all) is on its way, possibly in October, but more probably in January.

By releasing Inkwell into the OS months earlier, Apple is softening the ground and testing the waters for user acceptance of this handwriting recognition engine, and handwriting recognition in general. Once Inkwell has positive (or at least non-negative) buzz, the time is right to launch iPad, the killer hardware.

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I went to Fry's on Tuesday and made a couple purchases. This digital video kick, along with transferring all my CDs to mp3, is taking its toll on my G4's 36gig hard drive. Every four minutes of raw digital video takes a whopping gigabyte, so doing any significant video work gets hairy, and a couple days ago I experienced some strange errors which turned out to be because my disk was entirely full.

That won't be a problem again for a while now, though. I got me a 120 gigabyte drive for $245. That's enough for eight hours of raw digital video, 80 days of solid MP3s, or some combination thereof.

It wasn't so long ago that a single gigabyte drive cost $800. Heck, back when I was a kid a 5 meg Tecmar drive was $699 and a meg of RAM set you back $140.

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I so want to get behind this door. Well, at least beta testing will probably only take another month or two, and it'll work on Voicestream's network, hence Cingular's network, which is what I have now. Who'd've thought I'd find a phone I want more than my 8290...

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So hey, how about those Apple announcements yesterday?

Of course I feel a little let down. I mean sure, the iMac design is really cool and yes, if I didn't have a desktop I was really happy with I'd buy one, but frankly it didn't live up to the hype.

"To boldly go where no PC has gone before" - Where? The nightstand?

"Beyond the rumor sites. Way beyond." - The only thing the rumor sites agreed on over the last few months was that there would definitely be a flat-panel iMac, with a radical industrial design.

Okay, that said, the new iMac is very cool. I didn't expect them to move to the G4, and I certainly didn't expect them to include a Superdrive in the top model. Actually, no matter which feature was decided first, it likely drove the other one, since a G4 is required to do the MPEG-2 encoding in iDVD, and what good is a Superdrive without iDVD? Similarly, it seems silly to include a G4 processor and not offer as an option the only hardware option that requires one.

I wonder about the hinge arm. I'd have to see one, but I know that every desk lamp I've ever had with a spring-arm like that has broken or grown feeble. Of course, I have to tell myself it just looks like a desk lamp. One thing is clear though, this is a consumer and business computer, not a computer for the educational market. Apple is clearly using the iBook as their educational vehicle now. There's no way a school would buy this computer. I mean, you think *I'm* hard on my spring-arm lamps...

I'm also fine with the prices. Actually, the timing is perfect. My uncle got an iPod for Christmas and my dad and I spent several hours encoding a bunch of his CDs and uploading them because my uncle doesn't have a Mac. He's been anti-Apple for the last 18 years, ever since he bought 10 Apple Lisas for his office at $10,000 a pop, then Apple came out with the Mac for a quarter the price and abandoned the Lisa. He loves his iPod though. He loves his iPod so much that he's buying a Mac to use with it! I told him to hold off until after the keynote, and now he's going to get the model with the Superdrive. I might just win him back into the Apple camp yet.

Other thoughts on the Apple presentation:

• The 14.1" iBook - Barely a blip in Steve's presentation, this is clearly a concession to market needs, as opposed to Steve's vision. I get the impression Steve doesn't like this machine, even if it's what people want. Anyhow, they didn't mention that the extra 2 inches of screen space come at the cost of a significantly larger iBook (over an inch wider and nearly an inch deeper; only the thickness stays the same), and an extra pound of weight.
• The switch to OS X as default - It had to happen sooner or later. Just because most people I know are waiting for Photoshop to make the switch before they do is no reason to assume that new Mac