Tech

Say “hello” to iPhone

iPhone

This thing is beautiful. And revolutionary, too:

  1. The long-rumored widescreen iPod (awesome for movies) with CoverFlow
  2. A super-optimized, ultra-friendly cell phone (other smartphones don’t even come close)
  3. Full-featured web-browser (not a dumbed-down mobile version)

I watched the Macworld keynote today, and Steve Jobs went on about this thing for about an hour and a half- there is that much cool stuff in there. I don’t want one for myself for several reasons (8GB instead of my current 80, Cingular instead of my Verizon, and the fact that I almost never talk on the phone). But it’s an incredible example of Apple’s superb designs in both software and hardware.

Macworld

Tomorrow is the annual Macworld conference, which is always shrouded with tons of fanboy hype and nonstop rumors… But it’s usually anybody’s guess as to what is unveiled until Steve Jobs hits the stage, gives a long presentation, and then at the end smacks his forehead and says, “Oh, I forgot. There is one more thing…”

Most people talk of an Apple phone or an “iTV” portable media center – things which I couldn’t care less about. But I figure I’ll make my Macworld prediction now so that if I’m right, I can gloat 28 hours from now.

Apple is going to announce that OS X “Leopard” will officially be compatible with any x86 or x64 PC. For ages, you could only run Mac OS on a Mac (for a little while there were others, but Steve pulled the plug). I think that while there is virtually no hard evidence to support my theory, now would be the perfect time to do such a thing. Windows Vista will be out to consumers later this month, bearing a hefty $400 pricetag for the best version. Meanwhile, Apple has spent the past 5 years becoming the darling of consumer electronics, and it now has an excellent overall reputation, thanks to iPod + iTunes. Macs far less frowned upon, far less incompatible, and the iPod already has created a “halo effect” that entices those who have experienced the ease of Apple’s music solutions to switch their computer hardware to Apple, too.

In the next year, people are going to be weighing the need to spend hundreds upgrading to Windows Vista. I’ve used it extensively at work, and yes, it is very good, but it offers very few new features to the average user. OS X runs for about $130, and if Jobs & Co. were to release OS X to all PCs, they would gain considerable market share by stealing would-be Windows upgraders.

Yes, I have an ulterior motive for this post: really, I just want this for myself. My Dell E1405 would be a perfect OS X machine: the macBook is slightly underpowered and has its performance quirks, and the macBook pro is simply beyond my budget. There are ways to put OS X on a PC, but you have to violate the DMCA to do it, and there are known hardware incompatibilities with my hardware.
So it most likely will not happen, but just to play it safe and be able to brag about it tomorrow, that is my fanboy prediction.

A few more thoughts.

So, the coffee on CSU campus has always sucked. I generally steer clear of any coffeeshop that serves Allegro coffee, but for some reason, CSU Allegro is really… nutty.
When I was going to MHS, Gold Bar was really the perfect spot: good local coffee right between me and class. Now there’s nothing acceptable between me and school, so I’ve been going without (and avoiding the highly productive study sessions that coffeeshops yield for me).

But Rockwell Hall (the business college) just opened up its own coffee cart, which I’ve been saying they needed to do all semester.
And they don’t use the same old crap. It’s some local coffee brand. And it’s really good (or at least the first cup was).
This is the building where most of my classes will be.
This is the building where I work.
This is a very good thing.

[warning: meaningless nerdiness ahead. feel free to skip.]
I’ve been running Windows Vista again… the OS itself is stable, but right now the third-party drivers really suck. As in, I get the Blue Screen of Death on a wired ethernet connection, and if I want to use the wireless at CSU, I have to track down some beta software that works about 70% of the time. I got really frustrated with it again today, and booted back into Ubuntu Linux…
I swear. Ubuntu is like a breath of fresh air. It takes up a THIRD of the RAM that Vista does, boots twice as fast, and is way more stable. It helps that it’s fairly barebones, and you just add the components that you need. I guess computers are like cars: XP is the sedan that everyone drives- it works well for everyday tasks, breaks down once in a while, and is a good day-to-day vehicle. It’s not good for big demands, and forget cramming a lot of people in it.
Ubuntu is a Jeep. It’s light, versatile, and you can add or subtract parts to your fitting.
Vista is a blinged-out Escalade with chrome spinners. And horrible resource usage. And yes, it’s ridin’ dirty.

Sorry.

But seriously…. this thing has CRAZY resource usage. In Ubuntu today, I was able to convert a gigabyte of FLAC files to MP3. That’s a decode operation followed by an encode one. It only took 12 minutes.
And this is with really good SMP support built into the kernel, so it was chugging along, devoting the whole task to one core at 90% usage, while the other one happily processed my other tasks at the same time: playing MP3s, running about 4 tabs in Firefox, chatting in Gaim, and some more stuff, too. No noticeable speed impact whatsoever.
Oh, and did I mention that this whole time, I had over 60% of my RAM free? This thing is a beast when I get it away from Windows.
[/nerd rant]

I’m girl-crazy again. It sucks. I think I’d rather be single. Relationships get so lame when they get so crazy. Damn hormones.

I’ve listened to nothing but The Beatles for the last two days. It rocks. I have the complete collection now – every Beatles song officially released. In MP3 form, it weighs in at just under a gigabyte, so the money-wasting side of me is tempted to buy an iPod shuffle just for Beatles tunes.
(I won’t do that. I’m not that crazy.)
I’m realizing that in order of frequency, when it comes to Beatles songs, my favorites are most often written by George. Then Paul. I’m kind of wearing out on John- he gets annoying when he’s whiny (although there are many, many, many exceptions).

I really wish I could take a couple of weeks off and do nothing but drum on a good acoustic kit, as if it were practice for a profession. I desperately need people to jam with. Canned music is getting very, very old.