Stray Dog Strut

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?

Just a quick one today. How do y’all manage your bookmarks?

I’m slowly suffocating under the weight of all the bookmarks I have in Safari – I actually have no idea how many there are – and then there’s all the ones from Firefox too *shudders* I’ve spent most of the morning trying to clear them all out and better organise my hierarchy, but since I like to categorise stuff I have folder within folder within folder…you get the picture.

Oh I went all modern and signed up to Delicious awhile ago now of course, but it’s not yet part of my bookmarking strategy. In fact, it’s filling up with bookmarks too so I desperately need to sync it with my desktop browsers. I’ve been taking Cocoalicious for a spin (a desktop client that lets you manage your Delicious bookmarks). It’s all right but the lack of any help had me scratching my head as to how you delete bookmarks – until I discovered you press backspace instead of delete, geez! It’s a bit simple though and doesn’t seem to do much else but hey it’s free. I know there’s other apps/plugins out there (Safarilicious etc) but until I get my bookmarks organised, there’s no point sticking them on Delicious.

I’m not all together convinced Delicious is for me anyway, I can’t really seem to get away from folders in favour of tags (it’s weird seeing stuff coming up under multiple tags in Cocoalicious). Still, maybe when I finally get through this lot i’ll give it a shot. A nice little tut I found just now suggests using symbols in the bookmarks bar. I’ve already replaced “Apple” with the Apple symbol as seen below, now I just need to get a bit more creative with the rest to squeeze more in..