Apple

iMac G5 Announced

Aple Expo Paris started today…and the keynote (given by Phil Schiller, Steve is still recovering from surgery) had some good stuff

The big item… the new iMac G5! Its a complete redesign of the iMac G4..and it looks pretty interesting. All the ‘guts’ of the computer have been moved into the display housing. So, you get a display that looks pretty much like the aluminum studio displays (a bit thicker, though) and all the goodies tucked neatly away.

Specs:

17″ or 20″ Widescreen.

1.6Ghz or 1.8Ghz G5 CPU

up to 2GB of RAM

GeForceFX5200 (64MB VRAM)

80 or 160GB HD Standard (Upgradeable to 250GB)

Combo or Superdrive

Airport Express Ready, Optional built in Bluetooth

Starting at $1299.

Can’t wait for the local Apple Stores to get them in to play with.

Also announced at Schillernote… 5 million songs sold through iTunes Music Store – Europe (not bad for 10 weeks). Since this is the first day of the expo. Look for a whole mess of product announcements from various Apple related companies….

Kael's Adventures

1st Birthday

Ok..so, technically, Kael’s first birthday isn’t until Tomorrow (the 16th), but we had his party yesterday…

And of course, he made a haul when it came to the goodies! When our lease is up, we’re going to have to move to a bigger apartment..not because we don’t like it where we are, or anything like that…but because Kael has got to much stuff!

He got a ton of Elmo stuff, more Little People, Clothes, Mega-Blocks, and pretty much anything a baby could want for his Birthday.

He finally got his first taste of cake.. we’ve been making him wait until his birthday to have any (Yes, I know..we’re such mean parents!). And compared to some of the 1st birthday babies I’ve seen eat in the last month.. he came out pretty clean (at least, his skin wasn’t dyed for 2 days like some babies). Of course..the big surprise, is that Kael made it a full year, with 2 parents who had no clue what they were doing when he showed up! If babies are like marriage, and the 1st year is the hardest..its all downhill from here!

After the last week…I think we’ll skip Kael’s birthday next year…its alot of work throwing a party for a 1 year old..

Video from the party is here . (Requires Quicktime (DUH!)) – Still working on getting all the still pictures into iPhoto so we can get them posted.. probably wait until we get some pictures from his ‘real’ birthday (and maybe his first haircut) on Monday/Tuesday before I upload those.

Just Stuff

Aliens Vs Predator

Thanks to the fine folks over at Starland I was able to attend a sneak peak of Aliens Vs Predator tonight.

Overall – A good movie. Although, I think this is going to be one of those movies that you either love, or hate… I don’t think there is going to be much of a middle ground.

Bad – way too SHORT!!!!!! The flick was nowhere near as long as I would have liked. Not a reason to not go though… I’m hoping the DVD release will have some extra footage

Good – Everything else… Good FX, Good Acting, Decent Story… I don’t remember much from the original AvP Comics.. I read them long ago… so I couldn’t tell you if the story in the movie is anywhere near the one from the Comics..and frankly.. I don’t think I’d care to much if it wasn’t. I like the story and how they worked both Aliens and Predators in…

Makes me want to add the Predator and Alien movies to my Netflix list… except.. I know that they’ll be on EVERYONE’s netflix list within the next week or so…

Favorite line from the movie: “Its like a condom. I’d rather have it, and not need it, then need it and not have it.” Soundtrack for the movie is available through the iTunes music store..and I think this is the first movie, that actually had that information in the credits…first I remember at any rate.

Oh yeah..the one trailer attached was for a movie called Taxi… it looks absolutely hilarious! Jimmy Fallon/Queen Latifah

Kael's Adventures

Walking

Kael has been cruising around while holding on to something for awhile now, with the occasional step by himself.

Yesterday and today, he really started taking off on his own. We caught some of it on tape, ran it through iMovie.. and its now up for public consumption. I suppose this means our relatively ‘calm’ days of Kael only being able to crawl from point A to point B (and everywhere else he decides to go) are gone…. On the plus side, since he can crawl much faster then he can walk (for now), he’s still more apt to crawl over, under, and through whatever gets in his way, then he is to walk around it.

Movie is here. if you don’t have QT, you won’t see anything.. click here to get it (free download from Apple)

Just Stuff

Episode III Title Officially Announced

Lucasfilm made the announcement at Comic-Con

There is an ‘official’ story about it on CNN . The official title is now: Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.

The logo is identical to that used for Episode VI (Return of the Jedi), which helps tie the prequel trilogy back into the original trilogy (which hits shelves on DVD in September!) Also revealed at Comic-con were drawings of Kashyyyk (Homeplanet of the Wookiees). Looks like Lucas is well into post-production for Episode III, which is scheduled to hit theaters in May of ’05. I wonder when tickets will go on sale?

Apple

100 Million Songs

The iTunes Music store has broken 100 million songs sold

it happened a little before 1:30 Eastern time last night/this morning. Apple’s got a list of winners here. The big winner is Kevin Britten of Hays, Kansas. He wins a 17″ Powerbook, a 40GB iPod, and a gift certificate for 10,000 songs to fill the iPod with! So, Congratulations to Kevin, you lucky bastard…

Oh yeah.. and Internet Exploder’s market share is starting to go down, its dropped 1% since the latest IE vulnerability was announced…

Just Stuff

King Arthur

We went to see this last night (we went to the last showing, since we took Kael with us)

And its a good movie… Keira is a hottie (of course) and definitely looked good in her half-naked warrior’s armor as Guinevere. Overall, I like it. Its a different take on the standard King Arthur tale. Its an attempt to look at the ‘real’ events that may have inspired the legend of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.

It does start a little slow, and the story is predictable in spots, but that’s to be expected when you’re telling/re-telling a story that almost everyone already knows. Since its only rated PG-13, even the love scene between Arthur and Guinevere is very tame (just head and shoulder shots for the most part.) Good movie, go see it. I’d give it 4 stars out of 5.

On a semi-related note, Keira states in this article that if she felt it was necessary, she would do a nude scene. Here’s hoping she decides its necessary in one of her next roles!

Apple

Tiger is on the loose!

On Monday, Apple gave developer’s a early preview of the next version of OSX

This one, code named ‘Tiger’ is not due for release until the first part of next year. Apple was laying down the smack talk from the beginning, with banners floating around the conference that had pictures of the OSX install DVD, and captions like “Introducing Longhorn” “Redmond: Start your photocopiers” and others also poking fun at M$ for copying so much of OSX into each successive version of Winbloze. While most of the new features in Tiger (there’s 150 in all) are covered by the developer’s NDA, people who know where to look can find copies of the developer’s preview online.

My favorite announced features are in Safari. There is going to be an RSS reader – which is cool because you don’t have to launch a separate news reader to catch up on all your favorite feeds. – This is why I really never got into the whole RSS thing… It didn’t make sense for me to open one app, read the ‘headlines’ if you will, and then have to open the site in my web browser anyway if I want to read the whole article. Now I can do it all from the same browser, and I think that’ll make it more popular (at least with me). The other new Safari feature, is ‘private browsing’ Safari now has a ‘private’ mode that doesn’t leave any site’s your visiting in your history so it covers your tracks….

The feature everyone is talking about is Dashboard. Most of the reaction is good. But, some people, including the creator of Konfabulator, are claiming that Apple stole the Dashboard idea from Konfabulator. These people are conveniently forgetting that Konfabulator itself is just a hack of the original Apple Desktop Accessories from Way back when (like 1984 or 85 IIRC)…. so, to all you ‘Apple is Evil, they stole from Konfabulator” people – GET OVER IT – Arlo didn’t write anything new… his “idea” was a re-hash of something Apple had over a decade ago!

Kael's Adventures

Swim Lessons!

Monday Kael started swim lessons

Granted..he’s not going to be an Olympic swimmer when he’s done with the 3 weeks of lessons..but, it does get him used to the water, and prevents him from being scared of it. The class he’s enrolled in is for kids from 6 months, to 3 years… which Janice and I both think is just to huge of an age grouping, especially since its strictly enforced.. so, if we keep taking Kael…by the time he’s 3, he’ll be really bored with the stuff they do in this class. Kael has fun.. his swim instructor is a woman, which of course, means that Kael starts showing off for her whenever she comes over to look and see how he’s doing..Which Janice was able to snap a picture of. The rest of them can be seen by looking at the Swim Lessons photo album from our homepage

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Apple

Busy Week so far for Apple

The update gnomes at Apple have been busy this week…. Airport Express, New G5s, a new version of iTunes…

Between what’s been announced this week, and the big music event in London next week (rumored to be the release of iTunes Music store for Europe). Steve isn’t going to have anything to talk about at WWDC except for Tiger (10.4)!

G5s are now dual processors across the board…with the top end being a liquid cooled Dual 2.5 Ghz system… Still can’t afford them..but damn.. I want one.. can’t wait to play with the 2.5s..and see how the liquid cooling was implemented..the picture about it on Apple’s website doesn’t really show where in the system it is (I would assume that its now inbetween the front fans and the CPUs..or its part of the heatsink assembly).. It also doesn’t mention if there is an extra pump to keep the liquid moving or not… oh well.. still an amazing update.

Airport Express is a wireless access point (802.11g) that fits in the palm of your hand. It provides wi-fi support for up to 10 users, sharing of a USB printer, can be used to extend your existing Airport network, oh yea.. it also has an analog and digital audio output so you can stream your iTunes music wirelessly to your home stereo…all for the low low price of only $129.00

iTunes 4.6 is going to be released sometime this week… from what I’ve read in Apple’s announcement of it, it primarily just adds support for AirTunes (the tech to wirelessly stream to the Airport Express), common sense also dictates that 4.6 would be the iTunes version that includes support for the iTMS Europe (If its really getting released next week).

if this is the pre-show announcements…. WWDC ought to either have some REALLY good surprises, or there will be no hardware announcements, and it will be all about Tiger.