I want a Mac. Badly. I am beginning to hate XP with a passion only usually reserved for rapists and mass murderers (to be fair, XP is murdering my productivity and creativity ) and having had a play with Vista (the purpose of which is to extract money from customers in return for a can of gloss varnish on XP), I am now ready to switch.....BUT..a few things are holding me back.
1) Leopard, iLife 07 - thats what, £120ish, of updated software that a mac bought in 3 months time will include that one bought now wont. Not a huge impact, but certainly an influence. Also - I don't really fancy getting a Mac and then a few weeks later installing a new OS on it. Granted, I'm sure it'd be easy - but I'd rather have more than 20 minutes experience under my belt first.
2) iWork 07 . I give astronomy talks in which I want the ability to take something like a 3500 x 768 pixel image and scroll it across the presentation. at the moment I can ALMOST do this in Powerpoint, but only up to about 1500 x 768 - theres a limit beyond which is just wont display. Now Keynote 3 doesn't help me here as it doesnt have animation in that sense - but with Core Animation and Keynote 4 (and some of the hints one can pull out of the keynotes that Steve has given ) I think it's safe to say that that is coming - only when that happens will I be ready to dump my PC laptop all together. I know - I know - it's such a silly little feature, but it's fundamental to the talks that I give, and alternate techniques such as large movies, multiple slides with transitions etc, just don't replicate it well enough.
3) Santa Rosa MBP. That's what I want. A bit more speed, a bit more power, hopefully a step up on the GFX, and hopefully a slightly higher res screen (I'd like to see 1680 x 1050 on a 15" - my current laptop is a 17" with 1920 x 1200 and it's a beautiful thing to use...it's just the OS gets in the way). The use of flash memory, LED screens, other new stuff...not too bothered by that really.
So - here's the plan. Buy a Blackbook refurb in a couple of weeks, it'll cost me £700, I'll have iLife 06, Tiger....get to know the platform better than the hours I've spent wiping drewl off the keyboards at the Regents St store - THEN I can play the waiting game, but be learning the platform, enjoying a new machine, getting used to it all, figure out the networking with my desktop machine at home and the setup at work, get happy with all my periphs on the mac platform and so on.
Once the next round of hardware refreshes are out, I can then Ebay the MB ( and frankly, looking at prices on Ebay right now, I can get every penny back, but even if I'm £100 down, that's £30 a month to learn the platform before spending >£1500...not bad ) and then buy the machine I really want to have, a 15" MBP. The reason I'd go for a Blackbook in 'phase 1' is that they really hold their value well on Ebay.
Can any of you wise sages of the Mac world see anything wrong with that cunning plan? Learn the world of Mac on the cheap (comparatively) - then dump the big cash for the Mac of my dreams. Perhaps it's just chronic impatience, but I want to wait for new hardwareand the new OS before switching, but damn it...I don't want to wait anymore!!
Doug
1) Leopard, iLife 07 - thats what, £120ish, of updated software that a mac bought in 3 months time will include that one bought now wont. Not a huge impact, but certainly an influence. Also - I don't really fancy getting a Mac and then a few weeks later installing a new OS on it. Granted, I'm sure it'd be easy - but I'd rather have more than 20 minutes experience under my belt first.
2) iWork 07 . I give astronomy talks in which I want the ability to take something like a 3500 x 768 pixel image and scroll it across the presentation. at the moment I can ALMOST do this in Powerpoint, but only up to about 1500 x 768 - theres a limit beyond which is just wont display. Now Keynote 3 doesn't help me here as it doesnt have animation in that sense - but with Core Animation and Keynote 4 (and some of the hints one can pull out of the keynotes that Steve has given ) I think it's safe to say that that is coming - only when that happens will I be ready to dump my PC laptop all together. I know - I know - it's such a silly little feature, but it's fundamental to the talks that I give, and alternate techniques such as large movies, multiple slides with transitions etc, just don't replicate it well enough.
3) Santa Rosa MBP. That's what I want. A bit more speed, a bit more power, hopefully a step up on the GFX, and hopefully a slightly higher res screen (I'd like to see 1680 x 1050 on a 15" - my current laptop is a 17" with 1920 x 1200 and it's a beautiful thing to use...it's just the OS gets in the way). The use of flash memory, LED screens, other new stuff...not too bothered by that really.
So - here's the plan. Buy a Blackbook refurb in a couple of weeks, it'll cost me £700, I'll have iLife 06, Tiger....get to know the platform better than the hours I've spent wiping drewl off the keyboards at the Regents St store - THEN I can play the waiting game, but be learning the platform, enjoying a new machine, getting used to it all, figure out the networking with my desktop machine at home and the setup at work, get happy with all my periphs on the mac platform and so on.
Once the next round of hardware refreshes are out, I can then Ebay the MB ( and frankly, looking at prices on Ebay right now, I can get every penny back, but even if I'm £100 down, that's £30 a month to learn the platform before spending >£1500...not bad ) and then buy the machine I really want to have, a 15" MBP. The reason I'd go for a Blackbook in 'phase 1' is that they really hold their value well on Ebay.
Can any of you wise sages of the Mac world see anything wrong with that cunning plan? Learn the world of Mac on the cheap (comparatively) - then dump the big cash for the Mac of my dreams. Perhaps it's just chronic impatience, but I want to wait for new hardwareand the new OS before switching, but damn it...I don't want to wait anymore!!
Doug
