EPKPhoto's Tidbits

So, a week and a half ago I received a lovely, little package in the mail.  It was a MacBook Air, Apple's newest, thinnest, and lightest notebook computer.  I can say, without a doubt, that this is the best laptop I have ever seen, used, or owned.  It is not the right laptop for everyone, but it fits my needs perfectly.  I have little need for extra USB ports or an optical drive while I'm away from my desk.  The combination of its beautiful, widescreen, LED-backlit display, its full-size keyboard, and its surprisingly light weight make this computer a pleasure to use and carry around.  Despite its thinness, the MacBook Air runs Mac OS X very well.  I am using the 1.8GHz processor + 80GB HDD configuration.  To be honest, most of my comparisons are against my old 1GHz 12-inch PowerBook G4, but for someone like me, who has a powerful quad-core Xeon Mac Pro as a desktop, the MacBook Air still does an excellent job of holding its own.  The computer runs Aperture quite well (I just installed Aperture 2 a couple days ago), which certainly says something given the requirements of that application.  This new laptop allows me to be more productive away from my desk without being too much of a burden to lug around.  Additionally, it is Apple's most environmentally friendly computer to date.  For that, it is worth my money.

I just posted a new gallery of photos I took last weekend. They are of a surprise birthday party we held for my Grandma. To say the least, she was both stunned and overjoyed to see so many of her old friends and family come together for the event. As I noted in my last post, I installed Leopard last weekend as well. I have been running Apple's new operating system on my laptop and desktop for the past week. My initial impressions are quite positive, though I do have a list of frustrations that will be worth sharing when I have a chance. Look for that in the next week or so.

My primary Macs are now running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. I performed a clean install on my PowerBook and an upgrade on my Mac Pro. I have to say I'm really digging the latest version of Apple's operating system. Sure, it has a few kinks here and there, and I'm still waiting on compatibility updates to a few applications, but overall this new cat is a success. Along with its heavily advertised new features, Apple made some significant improvements to the user experience that I think will make using the OS easier and more enjoyable for new users (which Apple seems to be getting a lot of lately). I'm trying to record my frustrations as I encounter them, so perhaps I'll have some suggestions for Apple in the near future.

Well, it's certainly the season of operating system upgrades for me. My Ubuntu upgrades are all set, Apple's new OS X Leopard was just released today, and Fedora 8 comes out in less than two weeks. My parents were kind enough to crash the Apple store earlier today when Leopard was released at 6pm. They picked up a couple T-shirts and a family pack of Leopard. If all goes well, I should be able to upgrade to the new OS this weekend (on my PowerBook at the very least). Here's to diving right in and being an early adopter!