Webthoughts

Happy New Year to everyone!

I just finished up over a week of vacation from work. Even though I didn't really have much relaxation time, it was still great to get some "away" time from work.

I spent most of my vacation concentrating on a two different activities: family activities and cleaning the house. What with several different family Christmas celebrations (one including some traveling) and getting the disaster of a house cleaned up for guests in time for our New Year's celebration, I just didn't have much time.

Don't get me wrong, though. I really enjoyed my time off. Family time is always important. As a country, we don't spend enough time as families anymore, so my time with my family is very precious.

Cleaning the house also game me the opportunity to get some things done around the house that I've been wanting to do for a long time, but just haven't had the opportunity to do.

So, really, my vacation was pretty productive.

As for the New Year, I really only have one resolution: I'm going to concentrate on slowing down when it comes to work. This doesn't mean that I'm not going to do the best job I possibly can while I'm there. What I mean is, I'm not going to let my job dictate what happens on my personal time as well. I'm really going to work on keeping work time and personal time separate. I know it's not possible to completely separate them, but I'm not going to let myself get as I was by the end of last year.

I hope all of you have a great year in 2006.

2:34 left in the first half.

I may end up eating these words, but I have maintained throughout the season that USC is not all that. The main reason for this? They have, at best, an average defense. And so far, it is really showing in this game. Vince Young is having a career game.

As much as it hurts to say: "Hook 'em Horns!"

Texas 41, USC 38.

USC's defense still lost the game for them. Vince Young had a huge role in that as well.

In all fairness, however, Texas' defense wasn't much better, especially in the second half. There were over 1,100 total offensive yards in this game! (USC had 574. Texas had 556.)

Texas' defense did stop USC on that key Fourth and Two play late in the fourth quarter. They also managed to keep Reggie Bush pretty well contained. Not so much with LenDale White though.

USC just couldn't stop Vince Young. And that was the difference in the game.

Congratulations to the University of Texas. I have maintained you were the best team in the country all year long and you guys backed it up tonight.

(And no, I'm not going to argue about the touchdown-that-wasn't in the second quarter. The fact is, the play was never reviewed, so it stood. Touchdown. No going back on it now.)

I'm watching Apple's delayed stream of the Macworld Keynote and have a few thoughts on some of the things mentioned. The first of these: the iPod Remote/FM Tuner.

This is a nifty device, and one that should address one of the major complaints about the iPod (no FM Tuner). But, I can't help but think it might be a little over-priced. Granted, I don't know anything about how much it costs Apple to produce one of these things, but it seems to me that the $29 price point, with other iPod accessories, would be more appropriate. But, I really don't know. It could be $49 is a great bargain.

I can't wait to see how big one of these things is. My guess is that it uses the same keypad as the iPod Shuffle.

Did Steve Jobs add the Aperture section of his keynote at the last minute to try to direct some attention away from Adobe's Lightroom?

I should point out that this is the first time I've ever had problems with the stream whereby I could see the video (fairly smooth too), but keep having audio dropouts.

iLife '06 looks like a good upgrade. Honestly, iMovie and iDVD don't really do it for me (believe it or not, I don't have a digital camcorder, so I really don't have a use for them). For me, the iLife suite is all about iPhoto and GarageBand.

iPhoto

• 250,000 Photos: That's a lot of photos. Who has that many photos? But, probably a welcome change.
  
• Editing: Nice improvements. Full-screen editing is nice. The one-click effects is also really nice. Adobe's probably paying some attention here.
  
• Books and Cards: The calendars and cards are nifty here. Same or better quality than the books? This could be popular if priced correctly.
  
• Photocasting: "Podcasting for Photos." An interesting idea, but I wonder just how much of a need there is for something like this--especially with the requirement of .Mac for publishing. This seems a little like a feature for the sake of a feature.
  
• I can't help but notice that iPhoto appears to have adopted a more iTunes-like interface. Please note that I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing.
  

I want this version. A great upgrade.

iMovie

• Annimated Themes: Pretty nifty stuff for a consumer-level video-editing program. Again, I don't do this, but it looks really neat! Very impressive.
  
• Export to iPod. This was probably a given.
  
• I can't help but notice that iMovie appears to have adopted a more iTunes-like interface.

iDVD

• Widescreen menus. Given.
  
• Magic iDVD. A time-saver. But, probably not a solution for everything.
  
• Support third-party DVD burners. It's about time.
  
• I can't help but notice...well...you get the picture.

GarageBand
Apple's really into the whole podcasting thing. Garageband now supports creation of podcasts. The software now has a bunch of little tweaks geared toward podcasters. I don't podcast. I don't really care. But, most of these will probably be pretty appreciated by those who do. Steve's little "podcast" was pretty humorous. His whole demo was pretty impressive.

Oh...by the way...no iTunes-like interface here.

iWeb

• Create websites. Appears to be template-based.
  
• Drag-and-drop of iLife media.
  
• Built-in blogging.
  
• 1-click publishing to .Mac. Does this work with external hosting providers?
  
• I'd be interested in looking at the code for iWeb-generated pages. Standards-compliant? Some of these pages look fairly complex. Perhaps I'm showing my ignorance here.
  
• Supports iPhoto photocasting.
  
• I'm impressed with how quickly Steve is building his sample website. We'll see how well that translates into actual use.
  
• Is there RSS support? Apparently yes (Steve mentioned creating RSS feeds when publishing. He also just demonstrated the RSS feed).
  
• Do you suppose future versions will allow more tweaking of the templates?
  

This is an initially impressive-looking applications. I look forward to playing with it. This and iPhoto make me willing to spend the $79 for this sweet and maybe even the $99 Family Pack for my wife (she's been talking about blogging, but doesn't like the tools she's tried).

I just looked at the clock and remembered I have to get up very early tomorrow morning, so I'm going to call it a night. I'll finish the rest of the keynote tomorrow.

During Roz Ho's little spiel, I couldn't help but wonder, does anyone on the Mac actually use Messenger? Really. I'm truly interested in this.

The new "five-year commitment" was great "rah-rah" fodder. But, really, did anyone think it was going away? The MacBU at Microsoft makes Microsoft money. It is very profitable. Why would it go away?

Heh. Paul Otellini (CEO of Intel) in a "bunny suit". That's kinda funny. Was that Steve's idea or Paul's?

Who really didn't think that Apple wasn't going to release something Intel-based at this Macworld?

So, the iMac is the first Mac with an Intel processor? Somewhat surprising, especially considering the resent revision to the line. I really thought that it would be the Mac Mini. I guess I was paying too much attention to the wild speculation going on.

iMac

• Steve claims 2-3x faster than the iMac G5. I'll believe that when I see it. I'm talking real-world benchmarks. Not Steve's marketing fluff shown during the keynote. Those numbers don't mean anything to most of the people in that room listening to Steve.
  
• He claims dual processors in the iMac. It's actually Intel's new Core Duo processor with dual cores. Not quite dual processors, but close.
  
• Same Price. Same basic specs. Same features. Fair enough. Fairly transparent to users.
  
• Steve acknowledges that Photoshop isn't the best performer under Rosetta. He really took some shots at Adobe during this portion of the Keynote.
  
• The new iMac ad is actually, I think, one of the best Apple ads in many years.

MacBook Pro

• "MacBook Pro"? What kind of name is that. Who came up with that. They need to be fired.
  
• 4-5x faster than the PowerBook G4. I'll believe that when I see it. I'm talking real-world benchmarks. Blah blah blah. I already did this spiel.
  
• The audience went nuts over the built-in iSight camera. Why? Has this been a popular request?
  
• Front Row and the Mac Remote control. Again, why? Why should this be on a portable? I don't mean to sound pessimistic, but this just doesn't make sense to me.
  
• The MagSafe power adapter is a cool idea. If it works well, this is a great feature. Whoever thought that up should be given a big raise.
  
• No Firewire 800. I don't really care about this, but I've heard several complaints about this.

All in all, it was a decent keynote. Not one of Steve's best, I don't think. But the Reality-Distorion Field was going in high gear.

It's great that Intel-based Macs are now available (ahead of schedule), but I can't help but wonder if this will be more of a burden if these machines were rushed, just so Steve could announce them at the keynote. I could be off base here and I certainly don't have any inside information, so take what I said here with a grain of salt. It's just an idea that popped into my head.

Besides the Intel-based Macs, the highlight of the keynote, for me, was the new iLife suite. I can't wait to get my hands on it to play around. The new iPhoto is something I definitely want and the iWeb application is something I'm interested in seeing if it's as good as it looked in the keynote.

I'm looking forward to the rest of this year, if nothing else!

According to TidBITS, the MacBook Pro supports 802.11a wireless. This is the wireless standard that Steve Jobs declared "dead" when he introduced Airport Extreme a few years back.

I would assume, of course, that this support is in addition to the already supported 802.11b and 802.11g standards that Mac's have supported for years.

Yay! After a lengthy break, Ron Moore is blogging again! I love hearing about the ins and outs of Battlestar Galactica and I really missed this blog when Ron went silent.

Of course, I can't really be too upset. I'd rather he keep working on the the show than work on the blog, if it came right down to it.