Okay, I know — I'm a Mac Geek

I still love my iBook. It was the first laptop I ever owned and it was all good. I took it with me every where I went. I even took it on vacation to Cancun and the Dominican Republic so I could keep in touch with my business clients if an emergency came up. It also let me download the hundreds of images I took, so I didn't have to think about how many I was taking. Yet, I knew the relationship was doomed.

When I go the Mac Pro it had Tiger for its OS, but it wasn't too long before Leopard was released. I knew that I'd had to update the Mac Pro to Leopard eventually and when I did that I'd propably want the laptop to run Leopard as well. This was the death knell for my trusted iBook with it old Motorola chips. I'd have to replace the iBook with a new Intel chip MacBook to really get Leopard to work well.

And then Apple did something it never does for me — it released a new product in October instead of January at MacWorld. I buy my new hardware at the end of the year once I know what my business income looks like. This means I always buy something only to have a new version come out a few months later. Sure, I've grown to expect it, but it sucks to see all those fun, new Apples that I can't have.

So, when Apple released the new MacBooks this month, it felt like a gift from Steve Jobs. Thanks Steve! And to make it even better, we now have an Apple store in Maine, which meant I could just walk into the store and go home with it. No ordering it and then waiting for it to arrive. I had instant gratification.

I went with the MacBook Pro. I just need that Firewire port no mater what Steve says. The new LED screens are bright and sharp. The backlight keyboard is really helpful. The multi-touch glide pad is excellent — I don't think I even use a mouse. And it's fast. Running Adobe's Creative Suite 3 on the iBook was slow. Now, it screams almost as fast as me MacPro.

Farewell to my trusted iBook. It has served me well. It will stay around for a little while longer (always good to have a spare or add it to a rendering farm for 3D work).