Thursday, August 18, 2005
Waiting for the new iBook to show up
My new iBook is currrently in Jacksonville, a good two hundred miles from here, and despite the fact that it's 10:00 at night, Amazon somehow still seems to think that it's going to be delivered today. Yeah. I guess it's the price you pay for going after the best price instead of merely walking into an Apple Store and walking out with one. But since I'm not in any hurry, I'll just remind myself that I saved a good $160 by going through Amazon. It's just funny, though, how you can spend the better part of a year carefully planning a purchase, and then once you pull the trigger, you go nuts because you have to wait another three days for it to show up.
During my wait, I've realized that this is the first time since 1999 that I've bought a new Mac. That seems absurd, considering that in that time, I've ordered and set up more than three hundred of them for the school district, and assisted countless others in buying one of their own. It's not that I haven't thrown thousands of dollars into Apple's coffers in the mean time,on purchases ranging from software to iPods. Considering I've been a Mac user the whole time, it just seems odd how long it's been. I guess it's just one of those odd quirks.
I bought my aging PowerBook early last year, but it was quite the used product at the time. This time it's an iBook, but despite the seeming downward shift in the product matrix, it's very much an upgrade. Oddly enough, the last new Mac I bought back in '99 was also a twelve inch iBook, although the iBook of yesteryear, with its clamshell styling, MacOS 8.6 operating system, 300 Mhz processor, and 32 MB of RAM, doesn't faintly resemble today's iBook in terms of looks or user experience. The funny thing is, those were all fairly impressive stats at the time. Today the original iBook almost belongs in a museum. But then, come to think of it, despite being too underpowered for serious use, my old clamshell still sits on the far corner of my desk and runs Panther quite nicely. Living proof, I guess, that Macs age well.
I'm still not entirely sure I'm going to love every aspect of my new iBook, even though I've logged quite a few hours on an iBook of the same form factor, having grudgingly moved from a clamshell to a snow white G3 iBook later in my school system career to take advantage of the 1024 screen resolution which made school website design feasible. I say grudgingly because it's no secret that I liked the clamshell iBook's smooth, curved wrist wrests a whole lot better than that of the sharp lines introduced on either the white iBook or the G4 PowerBook. But because going back to a 300 Mhz laptop isn't exactly a feasible option, I've learned to my PowerBook's odd wrist angles, and I imagine I'll learn to love the same about my new iBook as well -- especially considering how much faster my new rig will be than my current one.
Finally, I think I'm really going to love having a little twelve inch bugger again. A fifteen inch screen has its advantages, but it's not as important to my workflow as it used to be, and it's a lot of extra machine to carry around if you're not going to take advantage of it. Having a laptop I can balance on one knee during use, and throw into a backpack during travel, is likely going to come in extremely handy over the next six months, during which I have more travel scheduled (both by plane and by car) than in probably the past five years combined.
Perhaps the oddest aspect of it all is that, in order to match the iPod, most new Macs are white in color these days. The iBook will be the first white-colored Mac I've ever owned, and yet now I have a black-and-red iPod to go with it. Hey, might as well mix it up.
Frankly, I can't wait to take my new toy for a spin. I think I'll take the money I saved by waiting for it to show up, and invest that money into an AirPort Express, which will likely come in equally handy during my upcoming travel. That, and I need a new laptop bag. I mean, there's not much point in owning a twelve inch laptop if you're going to continue carrying it around in a fifteen inch bag. If anyone wants to recommend a great bag for an iBook, feel free to holler at me. And if anyone is interested in buying an aging G4 Titanium PowerBook with a variety of issues, holler at me as well. I'm not entirely sure whether I'm going to sell it or keep it as a backup, but if someone out there can put it to good use, then I might consider parting with it. After all, I've still got my original iBook sitting around just in case. And no, it's not for sale.
My new iBook is currrently in Jacksonville, a good two hundred miles from here, and despite the fact that it's 10:00 at night, Amazon somehow still seems to think that it's going to be delivered today. Yeah. I guess it's the price you pay for going after the best price instead of merely walking into an Apple Store and walking out with one. But since I'm not in any hurry, I'll just remind myself that I saved a good $160 by going through Amazon. It's just funny, though, how you can spend the better part of a year carefully planning a purchase, and then once you pull the trigger, you go nuts because you have to wait another three days for it to show up.
During my wait, I've realized that this is the first time since 1999 that I've bought a new Mac. That seems absurd, considering that in that time, I've ordered and set up more than three hundred of them for the school district, and assisted countless others in buying one of their own. It's not that I haven't thrown thousands of dollars into Apple's coffers in the mean time,on purchases ranging from software to iPods. Considering I've been a Mac user the whole time, it just seems odd how long it's been. I guess it's just one of those odd quirks.
I bought my aging PowerBook early last year, but it was quite the used product at the time. This time it's an iBook, but despite the seeming downward shift in the product matrix, it's very much an upgrade. Oddly enough, the last new Mac I bought back in '99 was also a twelve inch iBook, although the iBook of yesteryear, with its clamshell styling, MacOS 8.6 operating system, 300 Mhz processor, and 32 MB of RAM, doesn't faintly resemble today's iBook in terms of looks or user experience. The funny thing is, those were all fairly impressive stats at the time. Today the original iBook almost belongs in a museum. But then, come to think of it, despite being too underpowered for serious use, my old clamshell still sits on the far corner of my desk and runs Panther quite nicely. Living proof, I guess, that Macs age well.
I'm still not entirely sure I'm going to love every aspect of my new iBook, even though I've logged quite a few hours on an iBook of the same form factor, having grudgingly moved from a clamshell to a snow white G3 iBook later in my school system career to take advantage of the 1024 screen resolution which made school website design feasible. I say grudgingly because it's no secret that I liked the clamshell iBook's smooth, curved wrist wrests a whole lot better than that of the sharp lines introduced on either the white iBook or the G4 PowerBook. But because going back to a 300 Mhz laptop isn't exactly a feasible option, I've learned to my PowerBook's odd wrist angles, and I imagine I'll learn to love the same about my new iBook as well -- especially considering how much faster my new rig will be than my current one.
Finally, I think I'm really going to love having a little twelve inch bugger again. A fifteen inch screen has its advantages, but it's not as important to my workflow as it used to be, and it's a lot of extra machine to carry around if you're not going to take advantage of it. Having a laptop I can balance on one knee during use, and throw into a backpack during travel, is likely going to come in extremely handy over the next six months, during which I have more travel scheduled (both by plane and by car) than in probably the past five years combined.
Perhaps the oddest aspect of it all is that, in order to match the iPod, most new Macs are white in color these days. The iBook will be the first white-colored Mac I've ever owned, and yet now I have a black-and-red iPod to go with it. Hey, might as well mix it up.
Frankly, I can't wait to take my new toy for a spin. I think I'll take the money I saved by waiting for it to show up, and invest that money into an AirPort Express, which will likely come in equally handy during my upcoming travel. That, and I need a new laptop bag. I mean, there's not much point in owning a twelve inch laptop if you're going to continue carrying it around in a fifteen inch bag. If anyone wants to recommend a great bag for an iBook, feel free to holler at me. And if anyone is interested in buying an aging G4 Titanium PowerBook with a variety of issues, holler at me as well. I'm not entirely sure whether I'm going to sell it or keep it as a backup, but if someone out there can put it to good use, then I might consider parting with it. After all, I've still got my original iBook sitting around just in case. And no, it's not for sale.
Comments:
Post a Comment
