Zorac's LiveJournal

On a scale of 0-10, how much do I want one of these?

That would be, oooh, at least a 12. I was literally drooling while I looked through the demos on the Apple website. iPhone rumours have been floating around for years, but the reality actually manages to top the hype (assuming that reality lives up to the demos). Obviously there are some unanswered questions (third party - and home-brew - application support being top of my list), but it has the potential to be the coolest gadget ever.

On the downside, it is quite pricey (not unsurprisingly, but cheaper and more featureful than getting separate 'phone + iPod + PDA), and not overly well-endowed in the storage department. Also, us Europeans have to wait until Q4 and there's no word as yet on network support.

Still, OMGWANTZ!

PS. AppleTV: Hmmmm. It is rather shiny, but the feature set is rather minimal. Big unanswered question: can it play video that comes from anywhere other than the iTunes store? If not, I certainly can't see myself wanting one...

Oh, shiny black MacBook, how do I perve on thee! I'm sorely tempted to go out and get one right now, but I already made the decision to wait for at least the second generation of any Intel-based macs (plus Leopard and iLife '07, if possible). Still, it is so pretty!

Meanwhile, I've been working my way back through my LJ history, tagging all my entries. I've got back nearly three years so far, but I keep inventing new tags, so I think this is going to be something like painting the Forth Rail Bridge.

Tired now. Time for bed.

When Apple bought NeXT, giving them what became Mac OS X, lots of talented engineers and the return of Steve Jobs, it was joked that NeXT had in fact bought Apple for minus $400 million.

Will today be remembered as the day when Pixar bought Disney for minus $50 billion?

A few random tales of shuffling iTunes:

1. Late one evening, a couple of weeks back, iTunes randomly played Paul McCartney's Another Day. Unfortunately, this triggered the part of my mind which goes "Ooh. I've heard that in a movie recently..." This sort of thing is always fatal as I of course want to know what that movie was, and I ain't gonna get to sleep until I've got the answer or managed to forget about the question. Thankfully, IMDb* came to the rescue - a bit of poking turned up the soundtrack search page which quickly gave me the answer: 50 First Dates.
2. I recently watched Charlie's Angels, and remember thinking that I should look up what one of the songs played over the end credits was. This morning, iTunes popped up All the Small Things by Blink 182, and once again I knew it was from a movie I'd seen recently, so I headed over to IMDb, thinking that I could check the Charlie's Angels soundtrack while I was there. Of course, the two questions proved to be each others' answers...
3. Later on, iTunes brought be part of the soundtrack from the final episode of Babylon 5 and I ended up turning off the shuffle feature to hear the final track as well. Those of you familiar with the show will know that the final episode is more of an epilogue than a finale, and that it appears to be deliberately written to reduce fans to gibbering wrecks - and just the music by itself can do that. Powerful stuff. Randomly, it seems that JMS has some B5 stuff up for auction on eBay - including the dalies and two director's cuts of Sleeping in Light. *WANTS SO MUCH*

* If you're not familiar with IMDb, then why not? It's easily one of the most useful sites on the 'net, with pretty much every bit of information about seemingly every movie ever made (and plenty of TV shows and some video games). Many a time and oft has it saved my sleep or sanity.

The rumors were true :)

OMGWANTZLEIKNOW!

If you need me, I'll be in the corner, drooling.

Well, after queueing in the freezing cold for about three hours, I finally made it into the new Apple Store on Regent Street in London. So much with the geeking ;-)

Needless to say, absolutely no chance of getting one of the lucky bags, but at least I did get a free T-shirt...

Dear Mr. Sainsbury,
I frequently purchase from your supermarkets small packets of minced beef with which to make my exciting cuisine. Alas, of late, said item appears to be all to often out of stock, reducing me to the lazy-man's option of a ready meal. On the subject of ready meals, You seem to be making more and more of them that are for two people. Isn't that defeating the object of the exercise? Not to mention discriminating against those of us with only one mouth to feed.
Yours Unimpressedly,
zorac

Dear Sandwich Vendors,
Lettuce belongs in salad, and even then requires a nice vinaigrette dressing. It is not nice in sandwiches. Please stop putting lettuce in virtually every sandwich you make, just for the hell of it. And don't tell me to pick it out if I don't like it - even if I do, that limp lettuce taste remains. And don't even get me started on lettuce in with burgers or other hot things...
Yours Frustratedly,
zorac

Dear Apple,
Panther has the best (and most useful) eye candy ever. You rock.
Yours Fanboyishly,
zorac

iTunes 4.1 - for Mac OS X and Windows XP/2000

Yup, that would be iTunes - and the iTunes Music Store - for Windows. MusicMatch, WinAmp et al: read it and weep. There are also updates and a bunch of new accessories for the iPod.

Cor blimey, it were fair parky this mornin'. It's bad enouigh trying to persuade oneself out of bed at quarter past seven in the morning without one's limbs being frozen off the moment one pokes them out from beneath the duvet.

My copy of wilwheaton's Dancing Barefoot finally arrived. Apparently I was one of the unfortunate people whose orders went astray. Anyway, I'll be pushing that onto my stack of Books To Read.

And finally, in another not to my cunning purchase timing, Apple have just revised the iPod with bigger disks. Ah, well. C'est la vie. etc. I would GIP, but the GI is on my PC at home so I can't P it.

Update: GIP! Oh, and they updated the iMac too. Must resist...