Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

Friday Flowers

Sometimes the light is just right and sometimes I’m lucky enough to get the shot. Sometimes the light is just right for just one shot. This is one of those photos - the follow-up shot I took a fraction of a second later lacked the glorious filtering of the sun through the tree. (I encourage you to click on the thumbnail for a bigger version of this photo - it’s one of those photos that you miss the details and effect at this size.) This tree is one of the older trees just inside the wall. The trunk is twisted and gnarled, the major branches have been taken off, but it has fresh young branches growing from its trunk and it is blooming with all its might. It’s also a far paler pink than the other trees, more a blushing white than pink.

The other photo is a close-up of some of the blossoms from the same tree. I love how the soft sunlight filtered through the tree onto these flowers. The close-up was actually taken before the full tree photo - the sun was playing hide-and-seek with me that whole walk.

Work, laptop and technology fluff

I am waiting for the new work laptop to arrive. While the only problem was a bad hard drive, my Thinkpad was old enough that the IT group didn’t want to support it anymore. (Oh darn?) So they successfully retrieved my data and loaded it onto a brand new Thinkpad. Shucks, and I didn’t get them anything! I’m optimistic that this laptop might be lighter. Please let it be lighter!

So I’ve been without a computer most of the week but I was able to get work done anyway. Logging into Outlook web access every 30 seconds is a small price to pay for a new lighter, faster, cooler laptop. I’m really glad I did a full sweep of my mailbox recently. It would be really annoying to be going over my pitiful mailbox quota on top of everything else this week!

Speaking of work, WebEx is a very cool thing and appears to be working quite smoothly on my fabulous Mac. We’ve started using it for our bigger meetings instead of NetMeeting because NetMeeting just can’t handle gracefully the volume of users we need to stream simple presentations to. I think I’ll use the Mac for all future WebEx meetings too - it’s nice to be able to multitask and still see the presentation (much bigger screen here). It helps since, in the case of today’s presentation, I spent 2 or 3 weeks working with the project team on the presentation (and we did a full practice run-through Wednesday morning) and tend to zone out if I’m just staring at the presentation. Amazingly, it’s easier to pay attention if I can divert some of my focus to babbling here.

Apple & iPhone fluff

The date is getting closer… the iPhone approaches. A little over a month from now we’ll be able to order it if all goes well. Though I’m not usually an early adpopter, I’m hoping to have one in my hot little hands by the beginning of July at the latest. I can’t wait to play with it! Apple’s stock has been doing very well lately. I hope the iPhone release happens on time and drives it up even further. I’d love to see another stock split by the end of this year.

If you are amused by the Apple “I’m a Mac.” ads, the UK ads are also available on the UK section of Apple’s web site.

Also, Steve Jobs came published another missive - this time about what Apple is doing to become a greener company.

tags: apple, cherry blossoms, flowers, iphone, laptops, spring, technology, webex, work

The keynote at Macworld went well - AAPL is up $7+ today.

Apple Computer, Inc. is now Apple, Inc. which seems both insignificant and significant all at the same time. Remember when Apple changed from a color logo to a monochrome logo? Today’s name change is far more subtle but means far more. By dropping “Computer” they are admitting that their roots no longer account for their core business. It’s been a long and nail-biting wait, but I think it’s almost safe to say that Apple may have a stable future. I’ve always said that Apple isn’t going anywhere but now I’m almost convinced of this myself! Of course, I’m also a Red Sox fan, so I still worry even when things are going well. I wonder if Apple, Inc. finally paid off Apple Records sufficiently such that there will be no additional lawsuits. The last I heard was that Apple Records would appeal the May 2006 decision in the UK courts but that was months ago.

So, about that phone…

The iPhone has been announced! Let’s start with the important information, the size!

• Dimensions: 4.5 x 2.4 x 0.46 inches
• Screen size: 3.5 inches (diagonal)
• Screen resolution: 320 by 480 at 160 ppi
• Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Battery life: 5 hours of talk/video/browsing time or 16 hours of audio playback

My 3.5 year old 3rd gen 40gb iPod is 4 x 2.5 x 0.75 inches (approximately). My fairly new LG flip phone is 3.5 x 1.8 x 0.75 inches. And neither of them are nearly as cool as this iPhone! Size does matter, at the iPhone is a little bigger than I usually like my cell phones to be, but useful functionality will make up for needing to buy a new case! It’s a touch bigger (less than half an inch taller, the first dimension listed above) than the current video iPods and but the iPhone’s screen is considerably larger (3.5 inch cinema vs 2.5 inch).

That battery life doesn’t suck either!

That little screen… my first laptop, a Powerbook 165, only had a screen resolution of 640×400. Of course it was 4-bit grayscale and only had 128K (yes K, that’s smaller than MB and much much smaller than GB) of video memory.

But back to the iPhone. Other important details for us Mac heads:

• The iPhone won’t be available until June. Yes, June. Steve Jobs may be a god, but he’s a bloody tease too.
• It will debut on the Cingular network only - there’s a multi-year exclusivity contract in place.
• You’ll be able to buy them from the Apple Store and Cingular.
• There will be 2 sizes available, an 8GB model for - $599 and a 4GB model - $499. Expensive and a little small but the new Samsung BlackJack is $449 and other PDA/smart phones currently on the market run from $400 to $650 even with less functionality. (Base prices, before discounts from contracts, etc.)

A Thneed’s a Fine-Something-That-All-People-Need!
It’s a phone! It’s a camera! It’s an iPod! It’s a browser! It’s a WIDGET MACHINE!

Were you actually interested in the functionality? Yes, it runs widgets and a slim version of Safari! It also supports POP3 and IMAP mail. There’s a 2.0 megapixel camera built in as well as WiFi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth 2.0, Edge and Quad-band GSM. I can’t wait to try one of these out. Maps, weather, e-mail, music, not to mention all the classic cell phone features, only smarter!

Everything is done via touch-screen, no pesky stylus required. But do not fear! The qwerty touchpad is predictive which basically means that it will figure out what you’re trying to say rather than inputting your typos. From the various demos availalbe on Apple’s site, it looks like the rest of the interface will be as intuitive and slick as we’ve come to expect from Apple.

I’m really not one to combine my toys. I have resisted the combined cell phone + (camera, music player, video player, browser) for a long time. Call me a luddite, but I’d rather have 2 devices that work really well and do exactly what I want them to do. I don’t want to need to remember the magic key combination to make my cell phone convert into a waffle iron at some critical moment. That said, I think the iPhone may be the combo device that does it all well. Apple’s amazingly talent for intuitive design will save the world. Well, may save my world at least! …if only we didn’t have to wait until June…

tags: apple, iphone, macintosh, macworld, steve jobs, technology