I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting…over 3 years to finally buy one. Our finances are in order and the 4th generation iPhone is to be released next week and it is time to buy!
But in comes the corporate bad guy AT&T, changing the data plans, and not for the better. As of June 7, 2010 (next Monday), the data plans change from a $30 a month unlimited data to two plans. $15 a month buys you 200 megabytes and $25 buys you 2 gigabytes. To be able to tether your iPhone to your laptop will cost you another $20 on top of the data plan.
But! If you already own the $30 unlimited data plan, you will be grandfathered into the new scheme and get to keep that plan! So here is where my nefarious (you like that word Bekah?) came into play.
Our good friend Michelle let me borrow her 3GS that she was using as an iPod Touch (thanks again Michelle!!) to activate my new number to get in on the unlimited data plan. She is kind enough to let me borrow it until the new iPhones are ready to sell (hopefully next week). Then I’ll buy the new little bundle of awesomeness, give Michelle her iPod Touch back and all is good!
I’m already in awe of the power of Pandora. Type in “Van Halen” and poof! magically a radio station of like minded music starts streaming to your phone! This alone is worth getting an iPhone for! I’m sure I’ll be writing posts about my favorite apps and what not, so check back in and see what’s going on!
To be honest, I found Apple’s announcement of the iPad quite underwhelming. I mean, c’mon! The name alone conjures up ideas of feminine hygiene products, not the “magical” most advanced technology that has ever been created.
Don’t get me wrong…if someone gave me one of these suckers, I’d take it in a heart beat. I’d like to try out the book reader.
I think this is a great first step in a new direction of computing. I’d like to see 2nd and 3rd generations of the iPad, but for all that is good, please change the name!!
Technical details:
9.7-inch screen
LED-backlit, IPS display
“Multi-touch” touch-screen interface
Weighs 1.5 pounds
Half inch thick
Up to 10 hours of battery life, with one month standby
Some models support 3G Network
16, 32 or 64GB flash storage
Built-in speakers
Accelerometer
Compass
Price and Availability:
Available in 60 Days
Wi-Fi Only: $499 for the 16GB, $599 for the 32GB and $699 for the 64GB.
Wi-Fi with 3G: $629 for the 16GB, $729 for the 32GB and $829 for the 64GB.
Data plans for 3G-capable versions of the iPad are from AT&T and will cost $29.99 a month for unlimited usage, with a 250MB plan available for $14.99 a month.
Previously purchased iPhone and iPod Touch games and applications will all work on the company’s new iPad device.
I finally gave in to temptation and bought this media powerhouse. And I’m hooked!
I love video games and the PS3 delivers gaming in all its 1080p glory. A blue-ray DVD player is built directly into the system as well. But one of the features I’m most excited about is streaming all my digital media from my Power Mac to my television and surround sound.
Nullriver’s MediaLink is the link between my Mac and PS3. It does give me “iLife in my living room”!
Just wanted to share this picture. I use Adium X as my chat client on my Mac and just found this SF Giants Ducky Icon for it! Awesomeness!
If you are interested in Adium, it supports many different chat protocols, including Yahoo Messenger, Gtalk, Facebook, Myspace, AIM, MSN, Jabber and more! I’ve been using if for quite a while and love the way I can customize it!
Ever get that hankerin’ for a new toy? I’ve been feeling the urge for a new MacBook, but gracious, I just don’t have $1500 to throw around. Still, it is fun to jump on-line and do the internet equivalent of window shop. Here are some interesting facts I found.
A new MacBook and a new 20 inch iMac are just about the same price!
A lower end aluminum MacBook starts at $1299. To the left, you can see that it comes standard with 2 gigs of RAM and a 160GB hard drive. It’s actually not a bad deal. It’s portable and light, has built in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
The MacBook would make an awesome addition to my Mac family.
But then the greedy, Tim The Tool Man Taylor “more power” part of me takes over so I think it would be nice to have a brand new iMac. My brother in law has a 24 inch model and it is super sexy beautiful. I practically drool everytime I see it!
At first glance, the 20 inch iMac is actually cheaper than the 13 inch MacBook. But the oberservant observer will also note that the 20 inch iMac only comes with 1 gig of RAM and a 250GB hard drive. The graphics card is much beefier than the MacBook. Of course, you lose the mobility of a laptop.
Being the techno geek that I am, I of course, would have to upgrade if I were either one of these beautiful machines.
This is where the pricing really levels off. After upgrades, the two computers are just about $25 apart!
After upgrading the MacBook to 4 gigs of RAM and the hard drive to 250 gigs, the total cost is $1549. I guess that ain’t so bad. The only other two items I would like would be a Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter ($29) so I could connect a bigger monitor to it, and a notebook mouse so I could navigate the computer easier.
There is the obligatory RAM upgrade, to 4 gigs. Since the iMac is a desktop, I’d like to have a 500 gig hard drive too.
I hate Apple mice. I’d buy a nice Logitech or something.
So, if anyone has an extra $1500 they want to throw my way, feel free!
I blog about a wide variety of topics. I’ve been a little surprised that my most read entry is about Quicken and its alternatives for Mac users. (Read that entry here)
I was a little shocked that I’m the number two blog when a person googles Quicken alternatives! Check it out below…
Yeah, that is pretty sweet for a small time blogger like myself. I am also curious at the pressure to write another blog that will garner that many hits. I hate doing anything for popularity’s sake, and I’m not writing a follow up entry for that purpose.
I have stumbled upon some interesting Quicken for Mac news. It is concerning Intuit’s new product, entitled “Quicken Financial Life for Mac“. It supposed to be a redesigned Quicken that is specifically built with Mac users in mind.
I captured a bunch of screenshots and will post them here. But the best post I’ve found so far on this subject is from Apple Insider. Click right here to go to that article.
I also try to sign up to be a beta tester for the Quicken product, but alas, I was rejected! My “you are not cool enough to play with our software” letter is below:
So I don’t have any hands on experience to report. Hopefully Intuit will release a product that is as good as their windoze version. The screen caps from Apple Insider look promising. Below are the screen caps I took directly from Intuit’s website.
So you might have read about my ultimate nightmare of losing my entire 300 gigabyte iTunes library. I made a few phone calls today and got prices ranging from $500 to $2500 (plus the cost of a new hard drive) to recover all the data from my dead drive. My bank accounts just can’t take that type of hit at the moment, so I have resigned myself to building back my entire music library.
I do have to give props to Apple, as they are letting me download all of my purchased music and videos again. Unfortunately I have many, many, many more albums that I have acquired elsewhere. Those will be regained via Bit Torrent!
I got a great deal on a 1.5 terabyte Segate External Drive at Best Buy and will steadily rebuild my music library. I’m using Senuti to recover all the songs that are still on my iPod. The salt in the wound is that my iPod crashed about a week before my hard drive. I had my 30 gig iPod stuffed with music! After it crashed, I was lazy and didn’t put much music on it so that sucks!
I’ll probably be blogging on my situation from time to time. Wish me luck!
Anybody who knows me knows how much I love, love, love music. Over the years I’ve acquired a massive music library, filling a 300 gigabyte hard drive full of mp3s and concert videos. I moved everything onto an external drive a while back, just so all my beloved files would be safe.
Well, this weekend I had to move my computer desk so the carpet guys could lay some new carpet. I took everything apart carefully, storing all my cords and external drives (I have two) in a place where no damage could come to them.
The carpet guys came and went and I get back to the task of putting my computer back together. I plug in both my external drives and see that only one of them is turning on. I start to get very nervous. One drive is my backup drive for Leopard’s Time Machine, the other is my beloved iTunes Library hard drive.
Please God, please let the Time Machine drive be the one not working!!! PUH-LEASE!!
Well, either God is just laughing or He is crying with me as it is my iTunes Library drive that won’t turn on.
I’m a little resourceful. I go to a local computer store and buy a new external casing, hoping the controller board is just bad on the Maxtor casing it came in. I get everything installed….and power it up….and nothing….
CRAP!! So now I’m at a loss. Please, if anyone has any ideas, please let me know what to do! The drive won’t power on at all and I hear data recover costs an arm and a leg. Google searching hasn’t yielded any good results as of yet.
I have been known to pirate an album or two, but I’ve also legally bought an amazing amount of music. Will Apple let me re-download it?
So I got my wife the new iPhone 3G for her birthday. She’s on it all the time and she is always wanting more storage space, so I thought it’d be a great idea.
But what do I do with her “old” iPhone? We passed it down to my daughter to use as an iPod Touch. The first gen iPhone could still be used without a sim card, as long as you had the 2.02 version of software. It is a great gadget, and the wi-fi internet connection works great.
Today I was prompted to install the 2.1 update on Bekah’s iPod Touch (the 1st gen iPhone). I updated like a good boy and BAM! her iPod no worky! Said I had to install a valid sim card and activate the phone via iTunes! Boo!
I did a quick Google search on how to downgrade the phone back to the 2.02 software found promptly found out that Apple made sure you couldn’t downgrade. Thanks a bunch Steve!
Fortunately for me, I found this website on how to “jailbreak” the 2.1 software. Turns out us Mac users are a lucky bunch! This program does everything in one step, whereas windoze users have to jump through some major hoops to jailbreak their phones. I ran the software and POOF! the iPhone-turned-iPod Touch was working great! Yay for me!
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A lower end aluminum MacBook starts at $1299. To the left, you can see that it comes standard with 2 gigs of RAM and a 160GB hard drive. It’s actually not a bad deal. It’s portable and light, has built in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
ee it!
few phone calls today and got prices ranging from $500 to $2500 (plus the cost of a new hard drive) to recover all the data from my dead drive. My bank accounts just can’t take that type of hit at the moment, so I have resigned myself to building back my entire music library.
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