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While you wait for all the announcements at WWDC, enjoy this ...

It's A Fair Cop

Personally, I don't feel constrained by my gorgeous MacBook Air, but I think we'd all agree this video does make its point nicely ...

Dashboard Dashed

While I think Dashboard is an interesting idea and looks pretty, I don't like having to press a key to switch to it ... especially on my 24" iMac, where there's plenty of screen real estate.

What's more, I've never found any widgets that I consider remotely useful.

So, I was very pleased to read about DashQuit, which allows you to shut Dashboard down.

I'd really prefer a way to have Dashboard not even start up, but this will do for now.

The Best Of Both Worlds

This Palm emulator is just a proof of concept and there's no guarantee anything will come of it, but I hope it does ... at least until there are iPhone applications to replace all those I find useful on my Treo.

New Soul

In case you like the music that's being used to advertise the MacBook Air, here's a video of the entire song, "New Soul", by Yael Naim.

iBand

I installed the iAno on my iPod touch the other day and it's pretty impressive, even using multi-touch to allow the playing of chords.

Now, I discover that people are making real music using it, plus Pocket Guitar and some application for the Nintendo DS. Very clever.

Now, I'm Really Annoyed

It's bad enough that we here in the Antipodes don't have the option of purchasing current US television shows, nor even current episodes of ones that are showing here, but that are woefully behind the US schedule.

Well, according to this rumour over at The Register, Apple may soon announce a deal with the BBC to sell their content on the iTunes Music Store!

If true, the septics, most of whom won't even appreciate much of the content, will be able to get it, while we here in Australia still can't even get our own bloody shows!

Come on Steve, when are you going to show us a little love?!

Update: Apparently, the BBC shows have aleady turned up ... however, they seem to be available on the UK iTMS only. So, while I'm still a bit peeved, at least the yanks aren't getting what I'm not, in this case :-).

Yes ... I Am A Nerd

Before we go any further, I guess I should admit just how much of a geek I really am ...

All of my computers have been named after mathematicians: the Windows box is Gauss, the iMac is Mac Lane, the MacBook is Noether, my old PowerBook was Euler and my original iBook was Euclid.

Not being one to mess with tradition, I've christened the young, slim and clever MacBook Air "Tao", in honour of Terence Tao, who I mentioned yesterday.

I was tempted to balance out the sexes a little, by naming it Kovalevskaya, but I just couldn't handle the thought of having to ping such a long host name ... plus Terry was on my mind due to his lecture.

Maybe next time, Sofia.

He's Ba-aaack

Well, I've had almost a day now with the Air. It's definitely all that I hoped for.

The only minor issue I can see so far is that the hard disk is definitely noticeably slower, which is to be expected, since it runs at 4200rpm versus my "old" MacBook's 5400rpm.

So, the first time you start any app, it takes a few bounces before it's ready to work. However, once an app is in memory, I certainly don't notice any difference in performance compared to the MacBook.

As I was just saying to my mate Steve via e-mail, that shouldn't cause me much hassle, since generally the starting up of any of my mainstay apps will only occur very occasionally, because 95% of the time, the machine will be in use, or sleeping.

It will only be the odd occasion when a software update requires a reboot that will cause me to have to start them from scratch again.

I'm currently calibrating the battery, so I'll let you know whether the approximately 3.5 hours runtime I got yesterday turns into something slightly better or slightly worse in the long term.

For the time being, at least, I'm a very happy little Vegemite :-).

Now, I'm off to process more than a thousand entries that piled up in Google Reader in the last day, due to my complete neglect of my reading duties! I have a feeling I'll be pressing that "Mark As Read" button towards the end ...

Status ... Delivered!

So, please excuse me while I disappear for a while.

Normal service will resume shortly ...

Out For Delivery!

Yippee! I just checked the shipment status and, as of 0620, the Air is now on a truck, making its way to my door.

So, expect the posts to drop off sharply sometime later today :-).

Released From Customs

Yes, you read that right ... my MacBook Air's delivery status changed to "Released From Customs" at 11:23!

Hopefully, that means it will arrive at my door either later today or (more likely) sometime tomorrow.

Time to do some last minute planning on what software to install ...

Finally, Some Decent Air Unboxing Photos

Apple Insider snagged one of the very, very few MacBook Airs that have been available at retail outlets in the US.

They've created an excellent set of detailed photos of the unboxing, along with size comparisons.

I like this image of the Air sitting inside a PowerBook.

My apologies if you find any drool on your screen :-).

Yippee !!

I just received this e-mail ...

"Thank you for shopping the online Apple Store. Your order has shipped."

I doubt TNT couriers deliver on the weekend, so I expect my MacBook Air to arrive sometime on Monday. I'll be camping by the front door until then :-).

Update: The TNT consignment number now works, so it has become apparent that the package is coming from Shanghai. It could take a couple of days to arrive. That's OK; the anticipation will only heighten the excitement!

Airy Fairy Videos

Some lucky bastard has posted a video of them unboxing their new MacBook Air.

Unfortunately, they've disabled embedding, so I can't show it to you here; you'll need to go to the YouTube page.

In any case, here's another video that has assuaged any concerns I may have had regarding whether the Air might be too bulky for me to carry around all the time ...



Update:The aforementioned lucky person sent a copy of the video to TUAW, which is now embeddable, so here it is.

A Crate Load Of Apples

Someone has put an enormous amount of effort into this video, chronicling Apple's history, in the form of what seems like a couple of million advertisements.

Thanks to Appletell for the link.

MacBook "Paper"

I expect to receive my MacBook Air sometime this week and the anticipation is killing me!

While the reduced thickness and weight is its major draw for me, I think there's a point where one should say "stop" ... a point which the MacBook Paper seems to have sprinted right past :-).

I'm In Love!

I generally think Apple does excellent user interface design.

However, from the first five minutes with my first Mac, a number of years ago, one thing that has driven me nuts is that to resize a window you need to navigate your mouse into a small section of its bottom right hand corner.

Madness, I say!

Well, today I discovered Zooom. It's similar to a Windows app I posted about recently.

The way it works is that you hold a couple of modifier keys (which you can configure) while moving the mouse pointer. One set moves the window, while the other resizes.

In addition, holding either pair of modifiers and double clicking is the equivalent of clicking the green button at the top left of the window.

It cost me around AUD18, but my sanity is worth at least twice that! Of course, having coughed up my dough, it's almost guaranteed that I'll shortly discover a freeware equivalent :-). That's just how the universe works.

Edward Tufte On The iPhone

Edward Tufte, the guy who wrote the book ... well, quite a few, actually ... on the visual representation of information, has a couple of words to say about the iPhone.

There's an associated video but it's quite a large QuickTime movie, which will start to download immediately, so I haven't embedded it here. While it's well worth a look, if you do follow that link, wait a while before pressing the play button.

The crux of his message is that Apple got it mostly right, using the high resolution 160dpi screen to good effect and not filling it with "administrative clutter".

However, he does think that the widgets could have made better use of the resolution, rather than using very large fonts to display relatively little information.

I think that's probably directly related to the fact that they are widgets, but that's no real excuse.