Later today, Steve Jobs is giving some sort of key note at Apple's developer convention.
Just in time I say. There's a long story here.
About a week ago (you haven't heard this, because I've been very nose to the grindstone all week), a number of keys started coming off the keyboard. I deployed my usual "swap high traffic keys for low traffic keys" routine, but then the tab key went on the fritz, and a day later several keys (f, r, g, 4) gave up the ghost entirely.
External keyboards work, but I tend to be pretty mobile, and it turns out that I really do take my computer with me just about everywhere. So this keyboard problem was a bigger issue than it might seem.
If you've been reading tychoish for more than a few weeks, you've probably realized that I'm pretty close to getting a new computer. The old one is 3 years old, and I find myself butting up against its limitations more than I'd really care to. So I think at this point it's just a matter of time before I do the upgrade. I'm half waiting to see if Apple puts out a new machine at WWDC, but I kind of doubt that they will.
There's just not a lot of room for change in the laptops. I think there'll be something exciting: it's been a while since Apple's done something unexpected which is atypical, but I suspect it won't be with the laptops. There are other reasons why I think the laptops will stay as they are: the summer student promotion (which I'm so taking advantage of) and the fact that it's been 3 month since the last rev, and they typically rev every 6 months, and the fact that there aren't any new technologies that make any amount of marketing sense to include at this point. But that's not the point of unexpected, I guess.
In the mean time, I'm back to using a computer that was the computer I took with me to college that my mother has been using for the past couple of years. We finally upgraded it to Tiger and the funny thing is that it's running great. A bit slower than I'm used to, (I think, however, that's mostly ram) and it's not completely comfortable yet, but it's ok. After a week of fighting with a sick computer it's nice to have something that works.
And I've made another realization. This computer, is one of the 12 inch ibooks. It's tiny, and probably about as powerful as computers like the Asus EEE PC. And it has about 4 hours of battery life, which is kind of amazing. Seriously, Apple could start selling these exact machines today, and I doubt they could keep them in stock.
Anyway, I should be able to keep a pretty regular posting schedule up but if if I miss, lets blame it on the technology, shall we?
Onward and Upward!