Granted, this is a no-brainer. But I am currently in the thrall of one (day 3) and quite annoyed by it. I suspect that rhinoviruses are a conspiracy led by the tissue companies.
However, I did not get it as badly as my wife did when she had it last week. As much as this cold is bugging me, it's a lot tougher on a woman who is late in her second trimester. Pregnancy seems to supress the immune system enough that colds have a nastier impact while they last.
So I'll write more stuff in this journal in a few days once my head is out of the rhinovirus fog...
Wednesday, March 06, 2002
Tuesday, February 26, 2002
Another reason why the RIAA sucks...
In the news today, the RIAA is blaming music piracy for their decline in sales. My comment is below:
Bull$#!+
The reason their sales are down are myriad. First of all, most of the new music today sucks. Consumers are starting to realize that the process is broken, and that most music showing up nowadays is overpromoted derivative crap. There is no current overwhelming musical trend, the way grunge, for instance, was huge in the early '90s, or boy bands and barely post-pubescent girls were in the latter part of the decade. Most "artists" now are overproduced and overmanaged, and it shows in the diminished quality of the material. Consumers are finally waking up to it some.
The other huge factor in the decline of sales... Hmmm... Might it be... a recession? Perhaps?
When people have less money (or perceive that times are tougher), they will spend less on certain luxuries. CD's are a luxury. There is more competition for the diminished dollar, and so I refer you to the first part of my rant above. When the music sucks and people have less money to buy it with, they're going to pass up on music in favor of other pursuits.
What music there is is horribly overpriced. In the late '80s, before the shift to CD was complete, most vinyl albums still cost well under $10. CDs were newer technology, and so the price point got set higher - most people could tell there was a difference in quality and so they put up with the higher price. There's no excuse left now, though - it costs less to manufacture, store, and ship a CD in real dollars than it ever did to handle LPs. Factoring in inflation, there is no reason a CD should ever cost more than about $12 to the end purchaser. The only excuse is greed.
As for me, I bought five CD's last year (TMBG, a couple of Lyle Lovett discs, an old Hank Williams disc, and Springsteen's live album). My wife bought two (U2 and something else). I downloaded a couple of dozen songs - most of which I already owned on old vinyl and a couple of which were "pirated" singles. I also ripped all my CD's into iTunes, threw it on a server in the house, and now I can stream my jukebox to any room I want at home, which is neat.
Okay - I've fessed up. I have, among other things, a downloaded copy of Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn" (what can I say - she annoys me but I can't get that damned song out of my head!). Put the cuffs on. But seriously, I offer my tiny, relatively weak voice to the din in the vain hope that someday a record company exec will read this and have an epiphany:
If you (the RIAA and it's member companies) continue on your present path of being as consumer-unfriendly as possible, I will eventually be pirating all my music. Just to spite you. I can afford to buy it but I won't because you suck.
But if you do the Right Thing, lower prices (hell - just stop raising them!), stop putting out the same old drivel, and make it easy and inexpensive for me to buy music, I will buy a lot more of it. That small portion of your profits that can be attributed to me will go up. A lot.
Which is no big deal by itself, but I'm pretty sure that I'm far from the only person who feels this way.
Bull$#!+
The reason their sales are down are myriad. First of all, most of the new music today sucks. Consumers are starting to realize that the process is broken, and that most music showing up nowadays is overpromoted derivative crap. There is no current overwhelming musical trend, the way grunge, for instance, was huge in the early '90s, or boy bands and barely post-pubescent girls were in the latter part of the decade. Most "artists" now are overproduced and overmanaged, and it shows in the diminished quality of the material. Consumers are finally waking up to it some.
The other huge factor in the decline of sales... Hmmm... Might it be... a recession? Perhaps?
When people have less money (or perceive that times are tougher), they will spend less on certain luxuries. CD's are a luxury. There is more competition for the diminished dollar, and so I refer you to the first part of my rant above. When the music sucks and people have less money to buy it with, they're going to pass up on music in favor of other pursuits.
What music there is is horribly overpriced. In the late '80s, before the shift to CD was complete, most vinyl albums still cost well under $10. CDs were newer technology, and so the price point got set higher - most people could tell there was a difference in quality and so they put up with the higher price. There's no excuse left now, though - it costs less to manufacture, store, and ship a CD in real dollars than it ever did to handle LPs. Factoring in inflation, there is no reason a CD should ever cost more than about $12 to the end purchaser. The only excuse is greed.
As for me, I bought five CD's last year (TMBG, a couple of Lyle Lovett discs, an old Hank Williams disc, and Springsteen's live album). My wife bought two (U2 and something else). I downloaded a couple of dozen songs - most of which I already owned on old vinyl and a couple of which were "pirated" singles. I also ripped all my CD's into iTunes, threw it on a server in the house, and now I can stream my jukebox to any room I want at home, which is neat.
Okay - I've fessed up. I have, among other things, a downloaded copy of Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn" (what can I say - she annoys me but I can't get that damned song out of my head!). Put the cuffs on. But seriously, I offer my tiny, relatively weak voice to the din in the vain hope that someday a record company exec will read this and have an epiphany:
If you (the RIAA and it's member companies) continue on your present path of being as consumer-unfriendly as possible, I will eventually be pirating all my music. Just to spite you. I can afford to buy it but I won't because you suck.
But if you do the Right Thing, lower prices (hell - just stop raising them!), stop putting out the same old drivel, and make it easy and inexpensive for me to buy music, I will buy a lot more of it. That small portion of your profits that can be attributed to me will go up. A lot.
Which is no big deal by itself, but I'm pretty sure that I'm far from the only person who feels this way.
Olympic thoughts...
A couple of semi-random thoughts on the just-concluded Winter Olympics:
- My wife forced me to watch the womens' figure skating final. That said, Sarah Hughes's performance was absolutely spectacular. I have never seen a better figure skating program (not that I'm an expert). I'm still not convinced that you can call it a sport, but it was brilliant.
- My new favorite sport is curling. I can't tell how you play it, but it looks like a cross between shuffleboard, hockey, candlepin bowling, and janitorial work - so it must be fun. Plus, the players all look like they go out for a smoke and a beer between turns.
- My other new favorite sport is skeleton. Now I know where all the daredevils who used to belly flop down hills on their Flexible Flyers went. The bonus factor is that the women's winner had the wildest-colored hair I've ever seen in a major sports competition.
- My wife forced me to watch the womens' figure skating final. That said, Sarah Hughes's performance was absolutely spectacular. I have never seen a better figure skating program (not that I'm an expert). I'm still not convinced that you can call it a sport, but it was brilliant.
- My new favorite sport is curling. I can't tell how you play it, but it looks like a cross between shuffleboard, hockey, candlepin bowling, and janitorial work - so it must be fun. Plus, the players all look like they go out for a smoke and a beer between turns.
- My other new favorite sport is skeleton. Now I know where all the daredevils who used to belly flop down hills on their Flexible Flyers went. The bonus factor is that the women's winner had the wildest-colored hair I've ever seen in a major sports competition.
Wednesday, February 13, 2002
Goodbye, AT&T...
Yesterday I received my DirecTVDSL gateway box in the mail. My homenet has been running on AT&T Broadband's cable network since last April, when my DSL provider (XO) discontinued service as a result of Northpoint's shutting down. It was ironic, since I'd switched to XO when Flashcom went down before them.
Cable Internet service was fast - faster than my DSL is today or was before. But cable systems are designed for those who want to passively consume - not those who want to produce. Though what I produce may well be drivel, it's still not what AT&T has in mind.
Way back when, of course,, this wasn't a problem. AT&T Broadband in New England started out as Continental Cablevision HighwayOne - one of the first cable ISP companies. Their AUP essentially was "don't run a business off this, do no harm, and keep your systems secure". Then it became MediaOne, which after rollouts and system swaps in the Boston area wound up getting my town right around the same time TimeWarner decided to start rolling out RoadRunner internet service. Following this?
Anyhow, my town's TimeWarner became MediaOne which became At&T Broadband (but still using mediaone.net to identify this little backwater of the network). But between the reorg of the network that went along with @home's demise, and the forthcoming Comcast takeover, I can see the handwriting on the wall for cable's suck factor to increase exponentially.
So I went DSL shopping (Salem's always been good in that area), and settled on DirecTVDSL (the former Telocity). I ordered service on February 1st. Yesterday (the 12th), I got the gateway and took it home. 20 minutes later I had my network up and moved over - it would have been about 15 except I fatfingered the subnet mask when I reprogrammed my Netopia, and it took me a minute to realize it.
And to make things even better, not only does DirecTV have the kind of "lassez-faire" AUP that I remember from the Good Old Days, but they even tell you how to set up your own domain and cheerfully offer you an option on their customer pages to either point it at their pages (they offer the standard 10MB of free webspace) or point it at your STATIC IP! Woo-hoo!
So anyhow, I'm surfing and serving a little slower (I get about 800/160 ADSL, the speed tests are indicating), but I can feel the freedom in the air.
And Comcast won't be snarfing my packets once they Borg AT&T!
Cable Internet service was fast - faster than my DSL is today or was before. But cable systems are designed for those who want to passively consume - not those who want to produce. Though what I produce may well be drivel, it's still not what AT&T has in mind.
Way back when, of course,, this wasn't a problem. AT&T Broadband in New England started out as Continental Cablevision HighwayOne - one of the first cable ISP companies. Their AUP essentially was "don't run a business off this, do no harm, and keep your systems secure". Then it became MediaOne, which after rollouts and system swaps in the Boston area wound up getting my town right around the same time TimeWarner decided to start rolling out RoadRunner internet service. Following this?
Anyhow, my town's TimeWarner became MediaOne which became At&T Broadband (but still using mediaone.net to identify this little backwater of the network). But between the reorg of the network that went along with @home's demise, and the forthcoming Comcast takeover, I can see the handwriting on the wall for cable's suck factor to increase exponentially.
So I went DSL shopping (Salem's always been good in that area), and settled on DirecTVDSL (the former Telocity). I ordered service on February 1st. Yesterday (the 12th), I got the gateway and took it home. 20 minutes later I had my network up and moved over - it would have been about 15 except I fatfingered the subnet mask when I reprogrammed my Netopia, and it took me a minute to realize it.
And to make things even better, not only does DirecTV have the kind of "lassez-faire" AUP that I remember from the Good Old Days, but they even tell you how to set up your own domain and cheerfully offer you an option on their customer pages to either point it at their pages (they offer the standard 10MB of free webspace) or point it at your STATIC IP! Woo-hoo!
So anyhow, I'm surfing and serving a little slower (I get about 800/160 ADSL, the speed tests are indicating), but I can feel the freedom in the air.
And Comcast won't be snarfing my packets once they Borg AT&T!
Tuesday, February 12, 2002
No-brainer
I think it's time to cut a deal in the interests of national security. To heck with the Middle East (and especially the Saudis).
What we ought to do is cut deals with the Russians. Become their largest customer, and supply most of our imported oil needs through them. Everyone wins. The Russians get the hard currency needed to continue modernizing their economy, we get a stable trading partner and the resources we need, and the Saudis get screwed.
Also worth noting in such a deal is that a close trading relationship with the Russians helps reduce conflict by binding our economies closer together. Tom Friedman had an interesting point in his book "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" (a terrific read). He postulated that no country with a McDonald's had ever gone to war with another nation with a McDonald's (though this may have been broken in Kosovo, depending on if you count that as a war or not). Commerce binds nations together to a degree that politics cannot easily overcome.
What we ought to do is cut deals with the Russians. Become their largest customer, and supply most of our imported oil needs through them. Everyone wins. The Russians get the hard currency needed to continue modernizing their economy, we get a stable trading partner and the resources we need, and the Saudis get screwed.
Also worth noting in such a deal is that a close trading relationship with the Russians helps reduce conflict by binding our economies closer together. Tom Friedman had an interesting point in his book "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" (a terrific read). He postulated that no country with a McDonald's had ever gone to war with another nation with a McDonald's (though this may have been broken in Kosovo, depending on if you count that as a war or not). Commerce binds nations together to a degree that politics cannot easily overcome.
Monday, February 04, 2002
Feeling good today!
mentioned previously how I'm a wrestling fan. Well, I also like real sports, too - I ran track in high school, raced bicycles (road, not BMX - you know, wearing the funny outfits), I used to go rock climbing and I played a little rugby at college when we started up a club team. I golf and bowl (candlepins - the little ones) nowadays, along with a little bike riding. A lot of tech people aren't much for sports - I really enjoy them.
With that in mind, I also enjoy watching football and baseball - I like to go to games and I like them on TV, too. I root for the Red Sox (though I grew up in New York, I hate the friggin' Yankees), and I'm a Pats fan. I think frustration appeals to me - I still cheer for one New York team - the Rangers (who went over 50 years between Stanley Cups).
Accordingly, I have one thing to say about last night's events - Woo-hoo!
Sports are not the most important thing in the world, they're a nice diversion from reality and they can be fun to participate in. But there's a certain nice feeling that a community shares when their team is a winner - it's a competition between cities on a large and non-violent level and it feels good to finally be the winner. In olden days these battles would be fought with knights and catapults, now they're fought by football players. Yay Pats!
Now if only the new Sox owners can fire that idiot Duquette...
With that in mind, I also enjoy watching football and baseball - I like to go to games and I like them on TV, too. I root for the Red Sox (though I grew up in New York, I hate the friggin' Yankees), and I'm a Pats fan. I think frustration appeals to me - I still cheer for one New York team - the Rangers (who went over 50 years between Stanley Cups).
Accordingly, I have one thing to say about last night's events - Woo-hoo!
Sports are not the most important thing in the world, they're a nice diversion from reality and they can be fun to participate in. But there's a certain nice feeling that a community shares when their team is a winner - it's a competition between cities on a large and non-violent level and it feels good to finally be the winner. In olden days these battles would be fought with knights and catapults, now they're fought by football players. Yay Pats!
Now if only the new Sox owners can fire that idiot Duquette...
Go figure
The other day I was talking with a couple of my co-workers about how the perfect name for a dot-com nowadays would be "e-vulture.com". I decided to look it up.
It's been registered and is being held by domaincollecions.com - for sale to the highest bidder. I think that says a lot.
It's been registered and is being held by domaincollecions.com - for sale to the highest bidder. I think that says a lot.
Monday, January 28, 2002
Expounding on a recent poll comment I made
Yes, dang it - I am a wrestling fan. In it's own way, that's even geekier than being a sci-fi watcher (I'm 35 - for me, Trek ended with Classic, and I haven't seen a sci-fi film that was truly worthwhile since Buckaroo Banzai). I grew up watching Ric Flair, Superfly Jimmy Snuka, Andre the Giant, and Chief Jay Strongbow. Jesse Ventura. George (The Animal) Steele. I remember Rocky Johnson before his son out-famoused him (Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock). Wrestling was different back then. You had clear-cut villains, heroic babyfaces, no complex storylines beyond the personal feuds that each story was told by, and champions who held the belts for years.
I watched it on the New York independent stations (WWOR and WPIX) back when I was a kid, and I watched it some during high school. When I left for college in the mid-1980's, though, pro wrestling was one of the things I left behind me. I missed the "rock and wrestling" days, I only saw Captain Lou Albano when he cavorted with Cyndi Lauper on MTV (did she suck last year at the Boston Pops July 4th concert or what?), and I missed most of the whole Hulkamania phenomenon. I was also MIA (busy with trying to establish a career and with a relatively young marriage) when Ted Turner bought a promotion and transformed it into the WCW, then going out and buying all the WWF's biggest names away from them. I was on the sidelines when the "sport" started changing from the competition. I missed the debut of Stone Cold, "Attitude", and the rise of "tweeners" like Triple H.
In late 1999, I happened to channel-surf to Channel 38 (the local UPN affiliate) one Thursday night. Never could stand "Friends". By chance, this was just a few months after "SmackDown!" began airing on the network. I watched it, and it was fascinating. This wasn't the wrestling I remembered. The moves were a lot faster, the ringside pyro was brighter and louder, the soap-opera plots had gotten more histrionic, and battles were spilling out into the audience. The plot twist I tuned in for that first day was the "marriage" of the owner's daughter (Stephanie McMahon) to the aforementioned Triple H ("Hunter Hearst Helmsley", in real life a gym manager from Nashua named Paul Levesque), the biggest heel in the Federation. I kept watching through the relevation the next month that the marriage wasn't a trick by Hunter - it was actually an evil plot by Stephanie to wrest control of the WWF away from her dad, revealed when she turned on him at the pay-per-view that month. Okay, it was hokey trash, but I was hooked again.
Since then, I've seen the rise of new stars (Kurt Angle, a real 1996 Olympic gold medalist, is particularly amazing to watch), the return of old ones (Flair is back! Whooo!), storylines that have been fascinating, storylines that sucked (the whole WCW invasion), characters go from heel to face and back again at a dizzying clip, and I've even gone to their live show (a SmackDown! taping in Boston last July). My wife has become a fan. It turns out that some of my friends (all technology professionals of some sort or another) were closet wrestling fans, too - one even collects them on his Tivo so he doesn't have to miss a show.
Why do I, a upper-middle-class professional person in his mid 30's with a wife and a (soon to be) family watch this mindless trash? For exactly that reason. It's escapist fun, nothing that happens on the show means anything in real life, and the performers are out there pulling off amazing stunts and violent activities that would leave you and I in traction, but they are skilled enough performers to make it look far worse than the harm they actually do one another. I can turn off my brain, watch the show, and not worry about the logic behind any of it. In the world we live in today, it's especially nice to be able to have a world like this that I can spend a little time in - a place where the good guys eventually win, the bad guys generally get their comeuppance, and nobody gets hurt for real.
And what fault can one find with that?
I watched it on the New York independent stations (WWOR and WPIX) back when I was a kid, and I watched it some during high school. When I left for college in the mid-1980's, though, pro wrestling was one of the things I left behind me. I missed the "rock and wrestling" days, I only saw Captain Lou Albano when he cavorted with Cyndi Lauper on MTV (did she suck last year at the Boston Pops July 4th concert or what?), and I missed most of the whole Hulkamania phenomenon. I was also MIA (busy with trying to establish a career and with a relatively young marriage) when Ted Turner bought a promotion and transformed it into the WCW, then going out and buying all the WWF's biggest names away from them. I was on the sidelines when the "sport" started changing from the competition. I missed the debut of Stone Cold, "Attitude", and the rise of "tweeners" like Triple H.
In late 1999, I happened to channel-surf to Channel 38 (the local UPN affiliate) one Thursday night. Never could stand "Friends". By chance, this was just a few months after "SmackDown!" began airing on the network. I watched it, and it was fascinating. This wasn't the wrestling I remembered. The moves were a lot faster, the ringside pyro was brighter and louder, the soap-opera plots had gotten more histrionic, and battles were spilling out into the audience. The plot twist I tuned in for that first day was the "marriage" of the owner's daughter (Stephanie McMahon) to the aforementioned Triple H ("Hunter Hearst Helmsley", in real life a gym manager from Nashua named Paul Levesque), the biggest heel in the Federation. I kept watching through the relevation the next month that the marriage wasn't a trick by Hunter - it was actually an evil plot by Stephanie to wrest control of the WWF away from her dad, revealed when she turned on him at the pay-per-view that month. Okay, it was hokey trash, but I was hooked again.
Since then, I've seen the rise of new stars (Kurt Angle, a real 1996 Olympic gold medalist, is particularly amazing to watch), the return of old ones (Flair is back! Whooo!), storylines that have been fascinating, storylines that sucked (the whole WCW invasion), characters go from heel to face and back again at a dizzying clip, and I've even gone to their live show (a SmackDown! taping in Boston last July). My wife has become a fan. It turns out that some of my friends (all technology professionals of some sort or another) were closet wrestling fans, too - one even collects them on his Tivo so he doesn't have to miss a show.
Why do I, a upper-middle-class professional person in his mid 30's with a wife and a (soon to be) family watch this mindless trash? For exactly that reason. It's escapist fun, nothing that happens on the show means anything in real life, and the performers are out there pulling off amazing stunts and violent activities that would leave you and I in traction, but they are skilled enough performers to make it look far worse than the harm they actually do one another. I can turn off my brain, watch the show, and not worry about the logic behind any of it. In the world we live in today, it's especially nice to be able to have a world like this that I can spend a little time in - a place where the good guys eventually win, the bad guys generally get their comeuppance, and nobody gets hurt for real.
And what fault can one find with that?
Tuesday, January 15, 2002
Tech support ramblings...
Dell support sucks. Period. I've been trying to get a laptop at work fixed definitively for about two months now. We started with a laptop that had broken latches, a loose hinge, and PC Card slot doors that had fallen off. Our Top Gun Developer Guy is brilliant, but he abuses his machines horribly.
No problem - Dell is willing to fix things for free. Yay! So they send out a technician, after drop-shipping us a replacement screen (apparently it's not worth their while to just replace the latch. Whatever.). He shows up, replaces the screen, now the new screen doesn't work at all - all we see is backlighting.
This is not good. The tech calls Dell, and finds that now screen modules are backordered. So we go from a working, battered laptop to a dead laptop. Three weeks later, the replacement replacement arrives. The tech returns and installs it, all is now good. Right?
He forgot to take care of the PC Card doors, and he neglects to but the screwcovers on the new screen. It's also a little misaligned. So for the last three weeks I've been trying to get Dell back. So far no luck.
Dell's not the only company with issues, though. We have mainly bought Gateway systems over the last year or so (mainly because of Dell's ongoing support problems), and they were great until we bought a pair of Solo 9500 laptops. Both laptops have issues with random keyboard/mouse freezes when plugged into their docking stations. We bought these for Developer Guy and myself. When it happened to me, I could close the lid to sleep the laptop - I'd get the keyboard/mouse back when I then re-opened the lid to wake it.
Developer Guy can't do that - he uses Windows 2000 Server as the base OS on his laptop, which does not suspend. So we tried Gateway support with no success, tried the latest BIOS, brought the local SE in to help debug it, no luck. Finally, Developer Guy came up with a fix - he now uses a USB keyboard/mouse (with legacy support turned on in the BIOS), and that works for him. No PS/2 port splitting to deal with that way.
I, however, am determined to get this fixed right, so I spend oodles of time on the phone with the senior support folks. Finally, they make plans to have me send in the laptop/dock for testing. I grab a spare desktop PC, move my data over to the new one, and prepare for the promised contact for shipping materials and info...
Which never comes.
You know, it's real frustrating when tech support is this bad. Now I have to waste time chasing two vendors instead of one, and I'll be wasting more of the vendor's time trying to chase them than they would be wasting if they just did things Right to begin with.
Grumble.
No problem - Dell is willing to fix things for free. Yay! So they send out a technician, after drop-shipping us a replacement screen (apparently it's not worth their while to just replace the latch. Whatever.). He shows up, replaces the screen, now the new screen doesn't work at all - all we see is backlighting.
This is not good. The tech calls Dell, and finds that now screen modules are backordered. So we go from a working, battered laptop to a dead laptop. Three weeks later, the replacement replacement arrives. The tech returns and installs it, all is now good. Right?
He forgot to take care of the PC Card doors, and he neglects to but the screwcovers on the new screen. It's also a little misaligned. So for the last three weeks I've been trying to get Dell back. So far no luck.
Dell's not the only company with issues, though. We have mainly bought Gateway systems over the last year or so (mainly because of Dell's ongoing support problems), and they were great until we bought a pair of Solo 9500 laptops. Both laptops have issues with random keyboard/mouse freezes when plugged into their docking stations. We bought these for Developer Guy and myself. When it happened to me, I could close the lid to sleep the laptop - I'd get the keyboard/mouse back when I then re-opened the lid to wake it.
Developer Guy can't do that - he uses Windows 2000 Server as the base OS on his laptop, which does not suspend. So we tried Gateway support with no success, tried the latest BIOS, brought the local SE in to help debug it, no luck. Finally, Developer Guy came up with a fix - he now uses a USB keyboard/mouse (with legacy support turned on in the BIOS), and that works for him. No PS/2 port splitting to deal with that way.
I, however, am determined to get this fixed right, so I spend oodles of time on the phone with the senior support folks. Finally, they make plans to have me send in the laptop/dock for testing. I grab a spare desktop PC, move my data over to the new one, and prepare for the promised contact for shipping materials and info...
Which never comes.
You know, it's real frustrating when tech support is this bad. Now I have to waste time chasing two vendors instead of one, and I'll be wasting more of the vendor's time trying to chase them than they would be wasting if they just did things Right to begin with.
Grumble.
Monday, January 07, 2002
OK, now what?
The new iMac. I have no use for one. I already own 1 Mac (I have a TiBook 667) myself, and my wife has an iMac DV-450, which is fine for her. My TiBook is almost as fast as the new iMacs, it has a bigger screen, and unlike the iMac, it runs on batteries. I have a CD burner I use with it (I bought mine before they made the Combo drive standard), so I can do anything they can do with the lower two models - I just can't write DVD discs. Big deal, right?
Unfortunately, Apple excels at the "gotta have" factor. They make computers that you look at and just want. Regardless of needs. Regardless of reason. You just want them. So I'll probably start trying to sell my wife soon on the idea. It'll take me about a year, and they'll come out with something even cooler the day after I buy it.
Rats.
What I'd really like to see, though, is what Apple comes up with over the next month or so. Obviously, they didn't unveil the new Pro Macs for a reason. What that reason was, I really wonder about - and it makes me think even more about where the Pro systems are headed. For their own sake, they'd better follow thru with something worthwhile, and soon.
Unfortunately, Apple excels at the "gotta have" factor. They make computers that you look at and just want. Regardless of needs. Regardless of reason. You just want them. So I'll probably start trying to sell my wife soon on the idea. It'll take me about a year, and they'll come out with something even cooler the day after I buy it.
Rats.
What I'd really like to see, though, is what Apple comes up with over the next month or so. Obviously, they didn't unveil the new Pro Macs for a reason. What that reason was, I really wonder about - and it makes me think even more about where the Pro systems are headed. For their own sake, they'd better follow thru with something worthwhile, and soon.
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