Wasted Continuum

It’s been a long day and I’m not feeling well. I woke up with a sore throat this morning. Actually the whole week has been hectic. Projects are piling up at work. When I get off work, I have Chinese New Year stuff to do. On top of that, I’ve been trying to repair my dying laptop. I still think there’s a hardware issue and it may go soon. That would really suck cause I just spent about $900 on getting new tires for my car. I can’t afford to replace my laptop right now. It’s been bugging me a lot. It’s hard on a geek to know that his laptop is dying and there’s nothing I can do about it. The fun part is that I do get to research new laptop options now. It definitely is not in my budget right now to get one.

I went to check out the MacBook Air today for the first time. It is gorgeous. It is hands-down the most stylish laptop out on the market right now. Pair it up with a Gelaskins and you’ll have every head turning when you’re sitting in a cafe with it. I have to decide if it’s too restricted with the single USB port and 80GB hard drive. The screen is beautiful and the multi-touch track pad works really well. It’s very tempting. However, the MacBook Pro has been heavily rumored to be updated in a few weeks. I think that will probably be a better time for me to make a purchase anyway.

I also checked out the new iPod Touch with the 32GB hard drive. It’s pretty much the exact same as the old ones except with more capacity. I just wanted to check out the new apps that they added to all the iPod Touches after MacWorld. I think I’ll pull the trigger on that one as soon as they drop the price. I can work with 32GB. 16GB is just unacceptable.

Apple has release a new color for their iPod Nano lineup. I’m guessing they’re pushing these out so that could be gifts for Valentine’s Day. They are available now.

The Apple store is down right now while the geniuses are hard at work preparing for black Friday. I wonder if they’ll actually have any good deals. Any good deals may actually be a ploy to make you buy the product before they release the new version at the MacWorld Expo. If they have the iPod Touch at a ridiculous price, I may have to get one.

Today, after work, I went to the local Apple store to see if they had the iPod Touch there. To my surprise, they actually had a few to demo. I think the supply that they had were sold out for the day. I decided to spend some time playing with it. I came to a few conclusions. The biggest surprise is how thin it is. It’s super thin and smaller than I thought. The music and movie functionality of it is amazing and fast. Flipping through your library has never been easier. The more I used it the crappier the click wheel feels. Safari was kind of slow though. It works really well, better than any other smart phone. I checked out my Flickr page on it and it looked great. I easily zoomed in on my pictures and they were still crisp and clear. The Flickr slideshow function didn’t work, but I really didn’t expect it to. It’s would be awesome to be able to get online on an iPod at hotspots. After I played with the Touch, I checked out the new nano and classic. I have to say that CoverFlow sucks butt on them. It’s slow and stuttery. The classic is also a lot thicker than the Touch. It’s still thinner than my iRiver though. I can see why Apple decided to go with flash memory on the Touch. It’s runs faster than the classic and the nano. Still, 16GB is so restrictive.

Apparently the iPod Touch has been showing up in stores across the US. People have been posting unboxing shots already. I think Mr. Jobs deliberately had his package design department put Corrine on the box art. He knew that she’s like Kryptonite to me. I need to check out Apple store tomorrow to see if I can get a look at this thing in person.

Steve Jobs gave another disappointing keynote today. The iPod Touch was announced. It’s everything I asked for except for the whole flash memory thing. What can I do with a mere 16GB? I’m going to have to do some number crunching to see if it’s feasible. I doubt it. Why have the last four Apple keynotes been so much of a let down. So much to think about.