iMatt :: The Blog of Matt Clare

Had a great time at Pete’s stag party on the weekend. As this picture taken after we left le Biftheque proves, Pete was making the most of his last few days of single life.

It was also good to see Mr. Mike Stewart!

The annual Macworld conference in San Francisco was held today. As usual Steve Jobs gave his keynote and proved why he’s always been Apple’s best sales person. There were lots of new announcements, here’s my take on them.

Tiger: The new version of OS X, looks nice, but I’m not clamoring for it like I was Jaguar.

Keynote 2: Apple’s presentation software looks great! I used the last Keynote a for a few presentations this year, most notably all my WebCT presentations because of it’s graphing and video features. Looks like it’s only get better. May favourite feature is when you have your PowerBook plugged into the projector your screen has what’s projected, your notes, what’s next, etc. on it. Keynote 2 is part of the iWork packages which comes with Pages, a new version of AppleWorks – which was a horrible program!

iLife ’05: New version of iLife that has a version of iPhoto that can be more than just crop and fix red-eye.

iPod shuffle: The new tinny, affordable, flash-based iPod to take on all the imitators. It was bound to happen.

Last but not least, the Mac Mini. I’ve created a quick flash animation to explain how (I figure) Apple was finally able to make an affordable Mac:

It was about time Apple addressed the price premium of ‘switching’. You provide your own screen and keyboard and mouse (which we all have kicking around) and get this new tinny computer to power it all for around $500. You can expand the RAM and buy third party firewire drives to expand the storage or add a DVD burner (it comes with a CD burner). With the Motorola built G4 long since paid for its development Apple can easily offer something like this desktop with what appears to be iBook/PowerBook parts. A very smart idea.

This is clearly the "Switcher’s" computer that should have been out when the switch adds were running, but it will defiantly be the catalyst to the iPod halo affect over the whole product line. The text of the official site clearly targets PC users, above the fold it reads "And yes, Mac mini will take advantage of your two-button USB mouse with scroll-wheel and your favorite USB keyboard. Just plug them in." I read that, "Ditch your Dell and put this in it’s place".

Many people talk about having separate computer for eMail and web surfing to protect themselves from virus, we’ll here’s the real answer!

Grandmas, secretaries, and freshmen with Mac friends: meet your new computer.

P.S.: My prediction for the number one PC case modification of ’05 – putting a Mini Mac in it.

Be on the lookout for this Canoe.ca journalist!

Maybe the reason the article was a 404 error was the police got him!

– From Google News Canada [news.google.ca] at 9:10 EST.

We got a good 6cm plus of warm snow on Saturday, so I thought I’d head out with the new camera and take advantage of the beauty the snow adds to the ugly town. More here, mattclare.ca/winter

Just when you thought Ashton Kutcher was an OK guy after he campaigned for John Kerry, and gave his quote about Kerry’s plans to lower most people’s taxes and raise his singificantly. Well, it appears as though that Bush win has left that money in Ashton’s dangours hands. Ashton has purchased a International CXT. That’s International as the transport truck manufacturer.

The Sun (the UK one, not Toronto etc.) has the pictures: http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,4-2004541348,00.html

The International CXT is the world’s larget pickup. It’s like an International 18 wheeler hitting a hummer – but the resulting vehicle lost enough weight to no longer need a commercial drivers licence to operate it. The best part is because it’s just the same truck that delivers Pepsi to the local store, it probalby can’t handle off-road tasks any better that the 1/4 sized Land Rover Discovery.

How did I learn about this, as one not known to be up on celebrity gossip? Well I found out about the CXT and then Google ‘cxt own‘ to find out who the first idiot would be.