Mac Update.

I'm impressed. No, really.

Some of the little things amuse me highly - screen brightness adjusts to ambient lighting, including *dimming* when the ambient light drops - to prevent the screen being too glaring. Oh and the fact that there's a hidden magic sensor that illuminates the keyboard if it gets a bit dark. Cue ninja moves to make it come on and off.

Leopard is nice, smooth and just appears to work. In fact, the whole thing just appears to work. Okay, so I'm what some might call computer savvy, others might call me a bit of a geek (I'm not really, not any more), but so far, I've managed to drive this thing with no problems - including installing software and stuff - excluding reading the manual. 

iWork 08 - three pieces of software, of which 2 (Pages and Keynote) from the 3 are total M$ killers. I haven't tried Numbers yet, but I'm use Excel extensively, so that might be trickier to win me over.

Shinyness - oh yes, plenty of shiny.

I think I've been converted.

This post is brought to you by way of a shiny new computer. Note, I said "Computer" and not 'PC'. that's because this is a Mac. 

A friend once woke up after a party and exclaimed "oh my god! I slept next to a Mac! ". Which was all very hilarious to us at the time, well all of us except the Mac owner.

However, after itching for a few months, having seen the Steve Jobs Special Event presentation that introduced iLife and iWorks, then seeing the Leopard videos, I finally bit the bullet and bought myself a Mac laptop. Not one of those Mac Books, which look like they were designed by Fisher Price, a proper Mac Book Pro in all it's 15 inches of shiny glory.

Opening the box revealed incredibly minimalist packaging and very little faff factor. I had the thing up and running within minutes. I was disappointed to find out that the Apple Store had inserted a Leopard upgrade DVD, rather than installing it, especially as it meant that my first 35 minutes of Mac useage was spent doing an install. Shame on Apple for that.

Now that I'm actually using the thing, I have to say, it's really, really lovely. Leopard looks great and iWork is really rather good. Let's see how continued ownership changes these initial thoughts, but for now, the little glowing Apple symbol is my friend.

PS: Clanky, just shush ok? Thanks ;o)

Hi.Mac

I'm back. Kinda.

So yesterday I put down the deposit on an apartment here in Southern California. Move in date first week of October - hopefully that's in line with when the ship arrives with household stuff from NL.

In other news, I saw Steve job's give his "Special Event" keynote presentation for the new iMac [shiny] and iLife08 [slick]. I've never wanted for a Mac before, but now, it's rather tempting, just to see what it's all about. 

I can almost hear Clanky grinning from here!