Saturday, July 09, 2005
Buying a new iBook: to wait or not to wait?
I believe I've changed my mind about my next laptop yet again. I'm buying a Dell. I really love Windows, and as much as Dell advertises on television, I know that they just have to make good products. And then I'm going to buy a Mac mini, because what I really want is a desktop with a separate monitor. I just love that idea. Then I'll go to the Miami Dolphins games this fall and root for the New York Jets.
Alright, I'll drop the sarcasm before I take it any further, lest any nasty false rumors start spreading about me (because there aren't enough of those these days), and share that I may have once again leaned back the other direction in my ongoing internal iBook-PowerBook debate. I know, this has to be at least the fourth time I've officially changed my mind, and if that doesn't make me Mr. Wishy-Washy, I don't know what does. In defense, though, quite a few of you reading this have been this indecisive about your product purchases -- you just haven't been silly enough to do so in public.
The funny thing is, I'm not typically this hesitant these days. I happily used my Third Generation iPod for a few years, but when the new U2 iPod with color screen hit the market last week, I took one look at it, identified it as being exactly what I wanted, and ordered one immediately. So why the extended six month saga on my next laptop? Well, up to this point most of it has come down to the fact that I haven't been in a real hurry to get rid of my current PowerBook. Sure, it's only a 667 Mhz G4, and sure it's got a growing list of things wrong with it. But it's been just fast enough not to slow me down, and conveniently, none of the things that no longer work have directly impacted my workflow. So I've waited, stalled if you will, and casually evaluated my various options on an ongoing basis over the course of 2005, figuring that sooner or later I would eventually identify the right time to make the leap to something now.
The short version of the back-story, for those of you who haven't been around long enough to have endured it the first time around, is this: six months ago, I couldn't afford squattadoodle anyway, so I figured I'd wait another six months and then buy a G5 PowerBook when it reached the market. But three months ago I got antsy, and not wanting to sink two grand into yet another G4 PowerBook, flirted with the idea of moving to a G4 iBook. I ended up nixing the idea after realizing that, although none of the PowerBook's other features mattered to me, my workflow at the time would have been rather cramped by the smaller screen resolution of an iBook. Last month, after the Intel bombshell dropped and we all learned that 1) There was never going to be a G5 PowerBook, and 2) The Intel PowerBook was 12 to 24 months away, I figured I might as well go ahead and buy a new G4 PowerBook after all, making it my final PowerPC-based Mac. But I figured that an update to the PowerBook line was just around the corner, so I decided to wait for one more revision before taking the plunge.
But as it turns out, my workflow has changed just a bit. Now that I've finally hired a real webmaster for the iPod Garage, I'll rarely ever have to use DreamWeaver again, and when I go down the list of the software I depend on day-in day-out, it was Dreamweaver that was most responsible for my wanting to stick with a fifteen inch screen. And with that mostly out of the picture, everything else became negotiable. A few minutes of fussing with my FileMaker database (thankfully, I'm a better database designer than web designer), and the layouts that I'd originally for a 1280x854 screen now looked just spiffy in 1024x768. And that's pretty much the ballgame.
Which means, of course, at this point I might as well take a serious look at the 12 inch iBook after all. I mean, why not? There's quite a bit of attraction to a product that costs me a thousand dollars less, allows me to not have to carry around three extra inches of screen space that I no longer need, and isn't missing a single feature that I need. The point really got driven home earlier today. I don't keep a TV in office because I don't want the distraction, but today I wanted to watch certain portions of the Live 8 rebroadcast (since so little of it actually got broadcast the first time), so I grabbed my laptop and took it out to the living room with me. And the thing just felt big. Big to pick up, big to carry, big to try and balance on my lap. Maybe it was just the right situation at the right time, but it really make me long for a little 12 inch bugger. So much so that I almost ordered one.
And I would have...except for the fact that new iBook models are presumably just around the corner.
What's funny is that I weren't quite so plugged into the Mac scene, I would have no idea that there were new iBooks coming, and I would have gone ahead and ordered one, and then I would have gone on using it blissfully unaware that waiting a week or two would have netted me an upgraded revision. But knowing what I know, I can't seem to make myself pull the trigger. It's not that I don't know anything that you don't. In fact, I don't know anything, beyond the fact that the iBook line almost always gets upgraded every six months, and this time around it's been nine and counting. And of course, here in the post-inunction rumor landscape, we have the rumor sites reporting nothing beyond the above statistic I just quoted, because they've got nothing at all. I guess the fact that rogue Apple employees are now too scared to sell Apple's trade secrets to rumor site scum for fear of being identified, the rumor sites are no longer of any help when it comes to planning an Apple purchase. So be it. We never had any business having access to Apple's trade secrets anyway.
But here I am, ready for something faster right now, fully embracing the idea of something smaller, sitting here with my finger on the trigger for a new 12 inch iBook...and waiting for Apple to finally give us the next iBook.
Let's hope it happens before I change my mind again.
I believe I've changed my mind about my next laptop yet again. I'm buying a Dell. I really love Windows, and as much as Dell advertises on television, I know that they just have to make good products. And then I'm going to buy a Mac mini, because what I really want is a desktop with a separate monitor. I just love that idea. Then I'll go to the Miami Dolphins games this fall and root for the New York Jets.
Alright, I'll drop the sarcasm before I take it any further, lest any nasty false rumors start spreading about me (because there aren't enough of those these days), and share that I may have once again leaned back the other direction in my ongoing internal iBook-PowerBook debate. I know, this has to be at least the fourth time I've officially changed my mind, and if that doesn't make me Mr. Wishy-Washy, I don't know what does. In defense, though, quite a few of you reading this have been this indecisive about your product purchases -- you just haven't been silly enough to do so in public.
The funny thing is, I'm not typically this hesitant these days. I happily used my Third Generation iPod for a few years, but when the new U2 iPod with color screen hit the market last week, I took one look at it, identified it as being exactly what I wanted, and ordered one immediately. So why the extended six month saga on my next laptop? Well, up to this point most of it has come down to the fact that I haven't been in a real hurry to get rid of my current PowerBook. Sure, it's only a 667 Mhz G4, and sure it's got a growing list of things wrong with it. But it's been just fast enough not to slow me down, and conveniently, none of the things that no longer work have directly impacted my workflow. So I've waited, stalled if you will, and casually evaluated my various options on an ongoing basis over the course of 2005, figuring that sooner or later I would eventually identify the right time to make the leap to something now.
The short version of the back-story, for those of you who haven't been around long enough to have endured it the first time around, is this: six months ago, I couldn't afford squattadoodle anyway, so I figured I'd wait another six months and then buy a G5 PowerBook when it reached the market. But three months ago I got antsy, and not wanting to sink two grand into yet another G4 PowerBook, flirted with the idea of moving to a G4 iBook. I ended up nixing the idea after realizing that, although none of the PowerBook's other features mattered to me, my workflow at the time would have been rather cramped by the smaller screen resolution of an iBook. Last month, after the Intel bombshell dropped and we all learned that 1) There was never going to be a G5 PowerBook, and 2) The Intel PowerBook was 12 to 24 months away, I figured I might as well go ahead and buy a new G4 PowerBook after all, making it my final PowerPC-based Mac. But I figured that an update to the PowerBook line was just around the corner, so I decided to wait for one more revision before taking the plunge.
But as it turns out, my workflow has changed just a bit. Now that I've finally hired a real webmaster for the iPod Garage, I'll rarely ever have to use DreamWeaver again, and when I go down the list of the software I depend on day-in day-out, it was Dreamweaver that was most responsible for my wanting to stick with a fifteen inch screen. And with that mostly out of the picture, everything else became negotiable. A few minutes of fussing with my FileMaker database (thankfully, I'm a better database designer than web designer), and the layouts that I'd originally for a 1280x854 screen now looked just spiffy in 1024x768. And that's pretty much the ballgame.
Which means, of course, at this point I might as well take a serious look at the 12 inch iBook after all. I mean, why not? There's quite a bit of attraction to a product that costs me a thousand dollars less, allows me to not have to carry around three extra inches of screen space that I no longer need, and isn't missing a single feature that I need. The point really got driven home earlier today. I don't keep a TV in office because I don't want the distraction, but today I wanted to watch certain portions of the Live 8 rebroadcast (since so little of it actually got broadcast the first time), so I grabbed my laptop and took it out to the living room with me. And the thing just felt big. Big to pick up, big to carry, big to try and balance on my lap. Maybe it was just the right situation at the right time, but it really make me long for a little 12 inch bugger. So much so that I almost ordered one.
And I would have...except for the fact that new iBook models are presumably just around the corner.
What's funny is that I weren't quite so plugged into the Mac scene, I would have no idea that there were new iBooks coming, and I would have gone ahead and ordered one, and then I would have gone on using it blissfully unaware that waiting a week or two would have netted me an upgraded revision. But knowing what I know, I can't seem to make myself pull the trigger. It's not that I don't know anything that you don't. In fact, I don't know anything, beyond the fact that the iBook line almost always gets upgraded every six months, and this time around it's been nine and counting. And of course, here in the post-inunction rumor landscape, we have the rumor sites reporting nothing beyond the above statistic I just quoted, because they've got nothing at all. I guess the fact that rogue Apple employees are now too scared to sell Apple's trade secrets to rumor site scum for fear of being identified, the rumor sites are no longer of any help when it comes to planning an Apple purchase. So be it. We never had any business having access to Apple's trade secrets anyway.
But here I am, ready for something faster right now, fully embracing the idea of something smaller, sitting here with my finger on the trigger for a new 12 inch iBook...and waiting for Apple to finally give us the next iBook.
Let's hope it happens before I change my mind again.
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