Felice’s iMac
Felice told me she wanted an iMac.
She went to the Apple Store to exchange her sound ring. No, that’s not what
they call it. It’s an ON STAGE! But it’s round, it looks like a donut, I
call it a sound ring. It’s a portable speaker system for your iPod. Do you have
one of these? If you don’t, you’ve got to get one. Makes travel SO
different. You get into your room, you set up your system, you plug in your iPod
and suddenly YOU’RE HOME! Your music is WITH YOU! Now I recommend the
aforementioned JBL On Stage. But if you want to run your speakers on batteries you’ve got to get an Altec Lansing inMotion. And, if you’re rich, and you just want
portable sound in your house, you don’t want to travel with your speakers, buy
the Bose SoundDock. It’s the best-sounding of them all. But it’s the
biggest, and the most expensive.
Now we’ve taken Felice’s On Stage to Vail, but she uses it a lot at home.Â
When she takes a shower. Actually, she mostly keeps it hooked up to her
PowerBook. To provide better sound than that which emanates from the aluminum
notebook.
But suddenly, the thing crapped out. Which is how Felice found herself back
at the Apple Store. And that’s when she got a glimpse of the iMac and decided
I WANT ONE OF THOSE!
I couldn’t completely understand it. I thought her PowerBook was enough.Â
Did she really just want the iMac so she could send her PowerBook in for a
screen replacement, not wanting to be computer-less? The PowerBook had COME with white spots, a legendary problem two years ago, which Apple makes good on, but she never returned it…not wanting to be disconnected from cyberspace.
But then Felice dropped it. I thought it was a whim. A passing fancy.
Then I read this:
I’d been wanting to get an iSight. The only problem was WHO WAS I GOING TO
TALK TO? After reading this I immediately e-mailed Felice and told her we
should pop for these. But she wasn’t too excited. She didn’t quite get it.
But then her sister went to Japan. With her brother-in-law, who’s GOT an
iSight.
And Felice remembered me telling her about the NEW iMac, the one with the
iSight camera built in. She left me a message saying she’d ORDERED IT!
Wow, I can’t move that fast on taking a shit. I was impressed. And a little
depressed. Why didn’t she call me first? So I could tell her how to
customize it?
Then we went to Stephen’s. Stephen realized he had to look hip in the
studio. He’d gone to the Apple Store and purchased a Nano AND a video iPod.
Have you fucked with the video iPod? It’s like journeying into the future.Â
When you see the little movie come up, you’re mesmerized. Like you’re at the
New York World’s Fair.
And when you listen to the Nano…Â Not only is it deliciously small, it
sounds FANTASTIC!
But Stephen couldn’t get his iSight cameras to talk to each other. He wanted
help.
And it was then that we told him Felice was buying a new iMac. With an
iSight camera BUILT-IN!
But then Felice told Stephen she’d ordered a 17.
Stephen kicked back and said that was ridiculous. That you needed the 20.
But REBECCA had said to get the 17. Granted, Rebecca is twelve, but she had
a point, the dimensions are better. But Stephen wasn’t buying it, you HAD to
get the bigger screen.
On the way home Felice quizzed me. What did I think.
And I told her the rule of thumb was to buy as much screen real estate as you
could afford. With a 20" screen you could work on two pages side by side,
two programs at once, you wouldn’t need to cycle through windows.
And Felice was convinced. She called the Apple Store. Told them she wanted
a 20. But they had no 20’s. They’d just received her 17. She was going to
have to wait.
MEANWHILE, Stephen is freaking out. I informed him that his Nano and video
iPod were not FireWire-compatible. And that they wouldn’t work with EITHER of
the machines in his house.
So HE decided to buy an iMac. He called me every day about it.
But a person at the store convinced him to go with a loaded Mac Mini. Which
I told him had a G4 chip, but he already had the keyboard, mouse and flat
panel, he could save a thousand dollars.
Then AMY lost her iPod. And ordered a video iPod. When I told her it
wouldn’t work with HER computer she threatened to sell her Apple stock.
That’s Apple for you. The company that eliminated the floppy. That went all
USB. They don’t make backward-compatible machines, they just JET into the
future. Frustrating you, because you’ve got to buy ALL NEW PRODUCTS!
Turns out you can buy a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card. Which Amy can slide into the
slot of her PowerBook, solving the problem. But Stephen can’t do this, because
his TWELVE INCH PowerBook HAS no slot.
Confused yet?
Well, you shouldn’t be too confused. Last Friday the phone rang at the
shrink. Which is not supposed to happen, he’s supposed to turn the ringers down
when I’m there. And when he looked at his phone, I turned my head too. And
that’s when I saw it. His brand new iBook. He’d gotten it a couple of weeks
back, but I hadn’t noticed it. Used to seeing the Dell there, I’d stopped
looking. Turns out he LOVES it. And had just updated to 10.4.3 THAT DAY! You see
it’s not that difficult. And I showed him how to repair permissions, burning
five minutes of my own time, but you’ve got to take time out for religion.
ANYWAY, the Apple Store called. Felice’s iMac was in.
I met her in Century City. Told her to upgrade the RAM. To at least a gig.Â
She went for a gig and a half.
She popped for AppleCare. And got the free all-in-one from Epson. And
picked up the discounted version of Microsoft Office 2004. And got ten percent off
on the whole deal. As a result of her job.
And then I powered off to the Saab dealer. To pick up my car.
But that night, even though she said she was going to wait for me to set the
thing up, in my inBox was an e-mail, with the title "I Love You!", and a
picture of Felice in front of her computer. Taken with Photo Booth.
My mind is reeling. I spent all weekend in front of Felice’s computer. It’s
tough to come back to my old Mac.
First and foremost, it’s fast.
No, first and foremost, you’ve got to see the SCREEN! There’s no scrolling
to see webpages. They’re ALL THERE! Zinio, which delivers magazine
subscriptions to your computer? It works on a 20" iMac, you can see BOTH PAGES, SIDE BY SIDE!
Turns out Felice installed Microsoft Office by herself.
I HATE Microsoft. I prefer MacMail to Entourage. Since it’s
Spotlight-compliant and I can find any word in any e-mail INSTANTLY!
But there is one cool feature of Entourage. In the corner of the screen, and
Felice’s screen is big enough, is a tiny little window, that gives a preview
of each e-mail that comes in, when it comes in. I mean THAT’S COOL!
I upgraded all the software. Which is just a matter of repairing permissions
(power users do this), launching Software Update, then repairing permissions
again (once again, learn from power users).
Then I loaded RealPlayer and Windows Media Player. Flash and ShockWave come
pre-installed.
Then I put a FireWire cable between Felice’s PowerBook and the iMac, and
transferred first all her music, then all her files. That might have taken,
fifteen minutes?
Then…
Like I said. I couldn’t get away from the machine. Oh, at first it seems so
BIG, then you look at the 15" PowerBook next to it and it seems SO SMALL!
I’m checking everything out. And late last night, I picked up the remote
control.
If this doesn’t sell you…
Oh, it’s intuitive. The controls are similar to an iPod’s. You push Menu,
and then four options appear on the screen, and you scroll through Music,
Movies, Photos and DVDs. I clicked on Music.
In LARGE letters, the kind you can see across the room, I was presented with
easily-navigable menu choices. I mean I’m sitting there with the remote
control, I go through menus akin to the iPod, and suddenly we’re listening to the
Association. Which I could fast-forward through. And when I used the remote
to go to Movies, the music still played. It only stopped when I selected a
movie trailer.
I’m starting to realize, this is not coming through. It’s not translating.Â
It’s another case of HAVING TO BE THERE!
I mean I watched Steve Jobs demonstrate all this shit, but until I used it, I
didn’t GET IT!
Fuck with it in the store, you STILL won’t get it.
But when it’s in your house. And you’re holding the remote control. And it
all works seamlessly. You get a shiteating grin on your face a mile wide.
I’m gonna buy one of the new Power Macs. I’m a little pissed the screen
won’t have a built-in camera, not because I can’t afford to buy a separate unit,
but because I know in MONTHS, the screens WILL!
I feel like I’ve been living in the dark ages.
Video conferencing is here TODAY! For FREE!
Well, you’ve got to get the hardware.
I’m going to the Apple Store to buy my iSight. What’s your AIM name again?
P.S. The most fun was shooting pictures with the built-in camera. In case
you haven’t seen the demo, you click on Photo Booth, click to shoot, there’s a
countdown, the screen goes white, shining light on your face, and VOILA, a
picture is taken. THEN, you can use Preview or a host of other programs to fuck
with the pictures. Instantly creating all those effects pros employ in
magazines. Hell, some of the special effects are built right into Photo Booth! I
mean talk about making it easy. Are you still using a Windows machine?
http://www.apple.com/imac/frontrow.html
