Stray Dog Strut

I mentioned in the last post that my Mac died on me. Well it was a slow and painful death. Oh how I wept!

Okay, it didn’t actually get to the ‘dead’ stage before I sent it off for reincarnation. Suffice to say I discovered my hard drive was on its way out when my latest backup failed due to an ‘invalid root node’ error. Cue much cursing and biting of nails as I tried in vain to fix it before discovering it was a hardware problem after all.

Luckily my cover doesn’t run out until next month, so I sent the Mac off for repair. That was over three weeks ago and I got my Mac back yesterday afternoon. Now fitted out with a brand new hard drive and the shiny new coat of a “Snow Leopard” (Mac OS X 10.6), everything’s the way it should be.

Well, almost. Since all my files are still on a bootable external hard drive running Mac OS 10.4 “Tiger”, it’s moving day all over again. But it’s always nice to have a clean slate. Plus, i’m now in my element messing around with all the ‘new’ changes in Snow Leopard. I like Snow Leopard overall, though i’m not convinced by the new 3D dock. I’ve also had some teething problems with iTunes that i’ll mention in a follow up post.

I’ll do a proper review of Snow Leopard in the next few days, as well as covering some of the other changes i’ve been making.

Dreams do come true.

I’ve been neglecting my news reading lately so this one came as a bit of a shock this morning. Apple has finally unveiled it’s multi-touch tablet, the iPad. Oh my god!

While some are already criticising the iPad for what it isn’t – in some cases dismissing it as a glorified iPod – I think what Apple has come up with is truly unbelievable. We’re so spoiled these days with iPhones and Blackberrys that I think we forget just how far we’ve come in the last two or three decades. In my lifetime, portable music has meant lugging around a walkman, then a portable cd-player, briefly minidiscs, and now mp3 players. The iPhone/iPod changed everything and I think that sometimes we expect everything on a plate because of that. For me, the iPad is as close to a real life, reach out and touch me, sci-fi tablet as you can get, and this is just the first version, i’m sure it’ll only improve with time.

Personally, browsing the web, the iWork apps, showing photos, and reading ebooks are the features that sell it for me. Add to that the cheap pricing (hopefully the UK will get a similar deal) and it’s incredible. While many of the features have already debuted on the iPhone, on the tablet they’ll be so much more, and we shouldn’t forget how recent good multi-touch is.

I suggest everyone (even the Apple haters) take a look at the Keynote presentation (no subtitles, bad Apple, but there’s plenty of imagery and live demos). If you can swallow all the typical Mac fanboy gushing at the start and the sugary sales-speak, it’s worth it to watch the whole presentation. I’m blown away by how good the iWork apps are, especially Keynote (slideshows) and Numbers (spreadsheets).

I’m sure it won’t be perfect (what is?), but good job Apple for taking a serious stab at it. The future has arrived;-)

Uhh, so I already knew this, but my Mac OS X Tiger is apparently past it. Just browsing the Apple Store today and I discovered they’re not selling Mac OS X Leopard anymore since the release of Snow Leopard in August.

It hardly seems like yesterday, but they released “Leopard” back in 2007, shortly after I got my iMac with Tiger installed. I didn’t upgrade to Leopard as everything was all exciting and new (and still is: Tiger works like a charm) so it seems to have passed me by.

So an upgrade is on the cards soon I think. The good news is you can upgrade to Snow Leopard directly from Tiger, unfortunately if you go with the cheaper option and buy Snow Leopard on its own for £25 you’ll be in violation of Apple’s EULA which states it must be installed on a Mac already running Leopard. Instead, you have to get the Snow Leopard box set for £129 which includes the latest iLife suite. Still I think its very good value for money considering what Microsoft’s been charging over the years.

So, Snow Leopard on my Christmas wish list then?