Cool Mac Gear

Setting the mood
Ah, how delightful! I'm sitting outside in the gravel yard of our rented apartment in Taos, typing this on the ole tangerine iBook. A fine vodka-enhanced glass of pink lemonade is within reach to my right, and Hobbes the Wonder Cat is lying at my feet as properly as any dog would do. If it weren't for the fact that I borrowed ten grand to get through the summer and still haven't cranked out the next bestseller -- or sold it -- I'd be some sort of freaking enlightened being. As it is, it takes considerable inner arm-wrestling (I won't say with whom or what) to maintain a sense of equilibrium. No, vodka does not help with that. The drink ("drank" in Texan) is a gift to myself for having figured out, all on my own, that the present moment is awfully damned nice, bestseller or no. What's more, whether I've finished this column or not, I'm going to sit myself down and watch a WWII documentary on PBS at 9 o'clock. The Internet can wait.

[Hmmpff. The Wonder Cat just shifted over to sprawling on the sidewalk, leaving me defenseless against buzzing hummingbirds and magpie poop. The only thing the damn cat is really good for is clomping around on my chest in the morning before I get out of bed. Actually, I should say he's good at that, since I really have no idea what purpose it serves. No, I do not get up and feed him then. This household is not run by its livestock!]

I suppose I'll have to say a few words about Macworld Expo. Okay, I did. (Kidding, just kidding!) First of all, where was a certain well-known Mac person? I really missed all those chatty updates from Javits. Then again, maybe he was mad at me and cut me off his PR list 'cause I whined at him a couple of weeks ago, in a weak moment (one thing you should never do). For all I know he was there -- the fact is, I was so busy, I never took the time to scan the bazillion links at MacSurfer. It was just that kind of week, after all.

The hubs are coming! The hubs are coming!
I got up at the crack of dawn to catch Steve's keynote and wrote everything up as it happened. Felt quite proud of myself, actually. The only problem was, the links were hardly dry when everyone else's news items knocked the whole series of blow-by-blows off the Applelinks front page. The whole mess flew right by MacSurfer, too, so only I and three guys in Minnesota know what a good job I did. Okay, it wasn't Minnesota. But one of them did email me and say thank you. Ah, well.

The big news from the keynote besides the party-pooping $99 per year charge for .Mac and the full-price Mac OS X upgrade for everyone who just did the company a favor by buying a new Mac was a whole slew of wondrous new Apple apps. There were so many, I can't even remember them all, but I assure you they are very cool. Apple is definitely thinking outside the box here, which makes Microsoft look about as contemporary (and friendly) as a squadron of Stukas. There is absolutely no doubt that Steve Jobs grasps what needs to be done to make life unliveable without that digital hub. I'm also convinced that he hasn't thought all that far beyond the "Wouldn't it be neat if we could do this?" stage on some of these things, but then I'm just a lowly out-of-step poohbah sitting in my yard enjoying the hell out of an obsolete iBook.

Take the matter of being able to synchronize your high-tech cell phone, Palm PDA, iPod, and all the computers you happen to own with the click of a button (I think). This is stupendous. I mean, it is, really. I just don't own any of those things, and neither do I have a calendar I need to publish. For that matter, if I'm in a strange city and want to go to a movie, I'll just pick up a newspaper to see what's showing before I'll find someplace to go online and use Sherlock 3. Yeah, I know, I'm no fun. I've never visited a strange city and gone to a movie, either, so what the hey. No wait, that's not true! I was in New York once and walked into a matinee. Can't remember what I saw, but the title was on the marquee, not a computer screen. See?

Bell? What bell?
My wife returns from the UK in a couple of weeks. She'll probably be overjoyed that I haven't finished that bestseller or figured out how to pay back the ten grand, so happy in fact that she'll likely scoop up the cat and flee somewhere where people don't sleep with anvils on their chests. I've kinda had that feeling lately myself (unless it was just Hobbes), so I'll understand if that's how it comes down. I was going to go ahead and install OS X on the iBook, the computer she uses most of the time, but now I'm not so sure. There might be some utility in the new OS as a distraction, however: "Look honey, the windows have shadows, isn't that great ?!" Hey, I think it is. And I'm not worried about that bestseller, either.

Sooner or later you'll be walking past a Borders window and there I'll be. By that time everyone will want a piece of me and I'll need all those gadgets and software. You'll want to subscribe to my online calendars, too, to find out when I'll be signing autographs. I might even show you how hip I am by using my synced cell phone to find a burger joint. A certain little debt? Chump change! And if you're really, really nice, I'll let you feel my hub. Sync, sync, y'all.

Until next time,

Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John H. Farr is available for weddings and bar mitzvahs. Grab him while he's still cheap.

The GRACK! Update mailing list is selling like hotcakes on eBay. To receive your own potentially valuable weekly notice of new column postings, just CLICK HERE and send a blank email.

July 15: "Weird Week in Store" July 8: "Beauty Treatment" July 1: "Quantum Warriors" June 24: "Wait, I'm Not Done Yet!" June 17: "Magnum Mysterium" June 10 "Six Weeks Before the Mast" June 3: "Hair, Skin, and Bare Feet" May 27: "I Went on a Trip to Mingus" May 20: "Creative Procrastination" May 13: "It's Ten O'clock!" May 6: "Sagebrush Saga" Apr. 29 "Universe of Lies" Apr. 22: "Earth Day All the Time" Apr. 15: "Oh, THOSE Taxes!" Apr. 8: "Turn Left at the Llamas" Apr. 1: "April Drool" Mar. 25: "Tuzas on the Curb" Mar. 18: "Holy Ghostbeak" Mar. 11: "Lord of the Turkeys" Mar. 4: "The Heart of the Matter" Feb. 25: "New Stuff: Browsers, Servers, etc." Feb. 18: "Mascot Lore & More" Feb. 11: "Killer Email & Wiccan PotLuck" Feb. 4: "Meanies, Guerillas, & Subscription Copycats" Jan. 28: "Full Moon Frenzy, w/ PowerMacs" Jan. 21: "iMacs & Webmaster Schadenfreude" Jan. 14: "Was It Only a Week Ago?" Jan. 7: "Useless Column" Dec. 31, '01: "I Want a Refund"

AUDIO CREDIT: embedded 44k file, European Birds -- Sounds and Sonograms.