Cats in bags?

I have a friend whose wife decided to water her MacBook with Coca Cola last week. For some reason, the alimentary additive (neither the water nor the caffeine) didn’t entice her MacBook to grow into a MacBook Pro. Instead, they went off to the local Apple Store where they happily parted with some hard-earned cash to buy a lovely MacBook that mirrored their old one (sans the soda).

All of that is well and good until Tuesday morning rolls around, the Apple Store is offline for a bit, and then–lo and behold–new MacBooks with more of this and that than the one my friend purchased just a few days earlier!

Notice: this is not a psychiatric session so it really is a friend

and not a thinly veiled descriptions of my own actions

So–he is peeved. He is a true fanboy so thinks that Jobs screwed him out of the newest/best for his own good, but I just can’t go down that path. Yes, if he didn’t have a job he could troll the rumor sites and live according to Mac mythology and rearrange his desk to work with the new Photoshop’d images of non existant hardware that merely exist in more devout fanboys heads, but why? Couldn’t they have announced that a new one was coming? Couldn’t there have been a wink/wink, nudge/nudge at the store letting him know he might want to wait until Tuesday?

I am sure the older MacBooks will be reduced in price now, right? They have to get rid of the old ones. So, I hope he at least gets a credit for buying the older model 72 hours before the new one appeared.

Perhaps a town crier would be best?

“The MacBook is dead! Long live the MacBook!”

(the one with more HD, faster processor, and video memory, I mean)

MBAir for biz

My name is Brandon and I am a Mac hater (applause throughout crowd accompanied by most people murmuring, ‘Hi, Brandon’).

So, it will come as a shock to you that I not only attended Macworld, but ran back to my hotel to order a MacBook Air soon after the announcement. I was one of the first to receive my pretty little ‘computer’ in the mail and have been carrying it around for a couple of weeks now. A lot of people stop me in the airports to gander at my MBA and ask questions like ‘do you like it,’ or ‘can I touch it?’. That last one always creeps me out.

Of course–I also get people telling me about all the problems with it: no ports, can’t change the battery, no built-in cellular modem, and it is slow. I, of course, appreciate them telling me that I am a fool for buying a $1,799 paperweight, but. luckily for me, I don’t agree with them. Despite my rocky history with Apple, I really love this machine for a number of reasons. And–I do believe that one of the primary reasons is that it is made for someone who lives in airports just like I do.

I use a bluetooth mouse so my one USB port is not wasted with a wireless dongle or a corded mouse. I use a VerizonWirless UMB 150 USB Modem, but that fits in the port just fine. I actually don’t want built-in cellular because I want to use my USB Modem on more than one machine.

I never use a disk drive. I sometimes think that I will watch a DVD on an airplane, but I usually just work or watch podcasts on my iPod. So–I don’t miss it. The only time I have wanted to have a drive was when I installed Microsoft Office. So, I had to copy the install disk to a thumb drive.

Speaking of Microsoft–the support for Exchange in Office 2008 is something to write home about (or to post on a blog about). It actually works and works well. My biggest headache with Mac in the past has been that Word/Excel/Entourage was too much of a learning curve and just wasn’t close enough to my PC experience. Well, I only have positive things to say now.

And the multitouch keyboard–what can I say? I thought it was a gimmick that wouldn’t mean anything to me, but it has changed how I use the computer. I no longer have to reach for a mouse (except during presentations) because I love the ease of scrolling, right-clicking, window dragging, etc that I can now do with the multitouch pad.

Ok–I started by saying that I hated Mac and Apple and now I sound like a fanboy ready to get Newton’s muse inked onto my shoulder blade. Well, I do love the MacBook Air, but that is because it does what I need it to do. I am on an airplane almost weekly and the MBA is light, doesn’t take much space, has everything I need, and is fun to use. I am not completely over to the darkside, though, because my office computer is still a PC and there are several programs that I run not available on Mac yet.

For a road warrior–I think this machine cannot be beat. But, that doesn’t mean I am letting my PC go…….yet.