This will offer me a much greater degree of freedom and flexibility in what I choose to do with the blog, so I hope you enjoy it as much as I know I will.

This WordPress link will not longer receive updates – all new entries will be at www.the-technologist.com,  so please make the necessary adjustments to any bookmarks you have made.  You will also be able to update all RSS feeds on the new site.

Thanks for reading and see you at the new location.  More changes to come in the new spot…gonna be sick.

-KF

I’m no finance expert, but this equates to around $3/share or 2.2% of the stock’s total value from what I’m reading – aka major, MAJOR amounts of cash lost. Check out the comment section on the post-itself for some claims on individual losses.

The larger point illustrated here is that blogs are more far-reaching and influential than most people can possibly imagine. I admire and respect sites like Engadget and Gizmodo because they have really pushed tech-blogging to the forefront of relevance. Their hook is that they post news within minutes of it breaking anywhere. The technology-obsessed have been flocking to these sites (guilty) for a few years now because they have legitimate sources that provide them with timely insider information critical to maintaining the readership that craves the latest news in the quickest timeframe.

This time, however, it appears to have backfired on Engadget. Apparently they were forwarded the below memo (presumably from a trustworthy informer inside Apple) that looked to be from Apple’s internal email update source:

From: Bullet News
Date: May 16, 2007 9:09 AM CDT
To: [redacted]
Subject: Mac OS X Leopard and iPhone Delayed

Mac OS X Leopard Delayed Until January
iPhone Delayed Until October

REGIONS: Asia-Pacific, Canada, Europe, Japan, Latin America, United States
GROUPS: AppleCare, Retail

Apple issued a press release today announcing that iPhone which was scheduled to ship in June, has been moved to October and the release date for Mac OS X Leopard has been moved to January next year. A beta version of Mac OS X Leopard will be given to developers at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).

In fact, they maintain that it was distributed internally at Apple, the verification of which being what prompted them to post without further validation from alternate sources. Sources from Apple have confirmed it to be a hoax and assured the public that both the iPhone and Leopard releases are still on-time.

So what does this mean? SEC investigation? Someone surely made some serious cash if they bought at the right now. Apple’s stock almost made a full recovery once the story was identified as bogus. A mole at Apple trying to bring it down from the inside? A clever internal tactic to expose a leak backfired on the notoriously tight-lipped Apple empire?

Who knows. What is truly astounding here – yet perfectly logical – is that hordes of investors and Wall Street mavens utilize sites like Engadget to gain timing advantages that seem miniscule but can equate to millions of dollars if they get a 30 second jump on everyone else as a result. That masses of people took the post at face value and sold instantly is a testament to the success of Engadget at establishing credibility.

But now…all sorts of questions about journalistic ethics and responsibility can be raised here. Justifiably so, but these are still blogs. This is not the New York Times, nor do they pretend to be. Engadget’s bread and butter is getting the story first. At what point do a bunch of tech-nerds who started an informational website for other tech-nerds need to adhere to the same stringent code of ethics that top-tier journalists do?

Call it growing pains for the blogosphere. This ain’t just cell-phones and laptops anymore. Hopefully this realization of increased responsibility does not usher in the type of scrutiny that will mandate a sacrifice of the raw, guerrilla-style reporting that makes these types of blogs so unique.

In the end, for me, the takeaway is still the raw number, though. Bottom line: I’m still giddy over the fact that one click of a mouse by someone far, far removed from the stock market caused a $4 billion fluctuation on Wall Street.

We have arrived.

According to CNET’s News.com:

The new consumer laptops, all of which are an inch thick and have a 13.3-inch display with 1280×800-pixel wide-screen resolution, are available in three models: white with the option of 2GHz or 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processors, or black with the faster processor.

All three models are equipped with 1GB of RAM that can be expanded to 2GB of RAM. They also have built-in iSight video cameras, AirPort Extreme wireless cards capable of 802.11n wireless networking, two USB 2.0 ports and one FireWire port.

The lower-end white MacBook, with a starting price of $1,099, comes with an 80GB hard drive; its 2.16GHz counterpart, which has a 120GB hard drive and a faster, double-layer support 8x SuperDrive DVD drive, costs $1,299. The black MacBook, identical to the faster white MacBook except for the color and a beefed-up 160GB hard drive, is priced at $1,499.

That’s it.

That’s it? No LED backlit screens?? No Santa Rosa???

Which begs the question: have we come to expect too much of Apple? Do we now drive ourselves into such a blog-fueled frenzy that Apple is constantly a victim of hype?

Most definitely, but it’s also exactly what they want to happen. The obsessive speculation equates to free publicity as people research Apple product cycles and development trends…and then analyze them ad nauseum. Whereas the PC industry is predictable and quick to update with the latest technologies (Santa Rosa is the perfect example) so as not to lose ground on each other, Apple plays a different game…

They rely on The Apple Mystique. Apparently it goes a long way because fanboy apologists and journalists alike still assume that Apple misses one update because they have something better up their sleeve down the road. No Santa Rosa in the new Macbook? They must be saving it for the imminent Macbook Pro update everyone is expecting during or just before Apple’s World Wide Developers’ Conference, starting on June 11th of this year.

Whether or not “down the road” ever actually comes to fruition and is worthwhile doesn’t seem to damage Apple’s credibility in the long run. They learn from their mistakes quickly (Motorola Rokr anyone?), and they do have an illustrious track record with the truly big announcements.

Once again, though, they truly understand the principles of marketing. Going back to the forthcoming Macbook Pro update, they realize they have now bridged the gap into the more casual computer-user arena with the Macbook, finally eating into the $1000 laptop range that Dell and Sony have been prospering in for quite some time now. This doesn’t sit well with the Apple die-hards in the same way officially dropping “Computer” from their name and pulling resources from Leopard development to ensure completion of the iPhone doesn’t.

Check the positive/negative ratings disparity of the Macrumors announcement yesterday if you want a sample of the malcontent.

But the reality is Apple can issue a run-of-the-mill update to the Macbooks without impacting perception among the general public because they are not the ones reading the blogs and they sure as hell don’t know what Santa Rosa is or means. “Faster processor? More RAM. My wife will love this!”

In fact, there have been grumblings lately that there really isn’t a whole lot of performance gain by stepping up to the more expensive Pro laptop models. CNET agreed there, awarding the Macbook its coveted Editor’s Choice award. Bigger screen, dedicated graphics card, holds more RAM…that’s about all you’re getting with the Macbook Pro. Worthwhile upgrades to professionals, but also clear evidence that Apple’s lack of an astounding design update to the Macbook Pro line since the G5 debut is deliberate. Their focus for the past year or so has clearly been to increase the perception of value in their entry-level line amongst the casual buyers in order to sustain appeal and put a system to market that is made for iLife (and its target audience).

But it’s the beasts that the web community wants – the machine that will reinforce Apple’s reputation as the slickest laptop maker around, providing a new round of bragging rights over the befuddled Windows camp. And they will undoubtedly get something worthy of all the saliva in the next Macbook Pro update.

I won’t speculate on what the update might include – that would make me a hypocrite. But I do believe the lack of Santa Rosa in the Macbook revision yesterday is a clear indicator that Apple is shifting back towards better separation of the Pro lines from their consumer counterparts.

Check the sidebar for the latest electronic artist feature. Mike Relm – sick ass turntablist and DVJ pioneer – gets the nod this week.

Just a quick note that previous featured artist updates will be retired as posts and appropriately tagged & archived.

Also – a new YouTube video awaits. Trying to put a new one up every day.  These aren’t acrhived as of yet, but I will probably throw up a page with archived links in the near future.

-KF

["A good friend of ours" = Noam Chomsky (one of the most outspoken critics of the current administration's foreign policy). See the full text of the interview that Zach de la Rocha refers to here.]

I know that we’re a few weeks removed from Coachella, so I’m a bit late on this one, but it’s really too relevant to simply let die down just because the concert is over.

Below are the print and video versions of a Hannity & Colmes episode on Fox News, in reaction to Rage‘s performance at Coachella. The focus is primarily on the speech from above, which was delivered during the song “Wake Up.” Well, just one fragment of one sentence of the speech, really.

(Print Transcript)

For a quick visual response to some of the comments about Rage’s lack of popularity, click here.

Here’s a thread on the Coachella message board reacting to that same Hannity & Colmes episode.

An interesting excerpt from that thread:

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Down Rodeo Did you like the way they framed the debate on that show? Let’s get Ann Coulter, who’s a Nazi, Ted Nugent, because he’s a rock star and also a redneck bigot, and a Democrat who basically agreed with the other conservatives. Wow, what a brilliant diversity of political opinion there. God, Fox News is leading this country straight to hell.

Watch Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism. It’s a fantastic documentary on how Fox News works, and one of the things it points out is how the conservative pundits are always forceful personalities, and the liberals are either weaselly little guys like Colmes, or centrist Dems who essentially agree with the GOP position. This piece on RATM is a textbook example of that formula.

I’ve seen Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism – I’d highly recommend it for anyone who hasn’t.

In response to criticisms of de la Rocha, I feel that the important distinction to be made in what he said is that “if the same laws were applied to U.S. Presidents as were applied to the Nazi’s after World War II,” we would be forced to prosecute our own presidents as war criminals because actions of theirs have led to death and destruction in same vein as what the Nazis wrought on Europe. The Fox News panel missed this, jumping right to the “tried, hung, and shot” part…

The idea here was to point out a double standard in international politics where Americans are justified because their actions are always in the interest of “preserving freedom and democracy” whereas actions with similar destructive consequences on the part of other nations would not be looked at in the same light by the international community.

It’s an extreme way of proving the point; something valid and logical can get lost in the anger of a band like Rage Against the Machine and mistaken for blind Bush-hating. The message in the song “Wake Up” concerns how dangerous this country becomes to itself and other nations when Americans blindly accept the actions and viewpoints of the President and the administration on the notion that their power gives them the appropriate degree of responsibility and forethought when choosing a course of action.

I think that the clip itself really speaks the loudest and clearest regarding the utter irrelevance of the opinions expressed.  The very first insinuation of “using hyperbole to prove a point” is the only thing resembling higher-level intellectual thought.  The rest is a pompous mess of dialogue, purported by people with inflated senses of self-importance, or simply no sense at all (Nugent – what is up with that look in his eyes?).

So instead of continuing to beat the long-dead horse of skewing Fox News, I’d like to focus a bit more on de la Rocha’s comments and how they reflect the general mood of the center and left-leaning public (ok ok, and the anarchists).

Right or wrong, the Bush Administration has made it extremely easy to question their motives since the invasion of Iraq. Sentiments like those in Rage‘s performance are simply a by-product of the Bush bravado – the gunslinger, shoot first and ask questions later approach to foreign policy that the neo-conservative core of Cheney and Rumsfeld have crafted, intending it to be the cornerstone of their “legacy.”

No matter what good intentions they may have had amidst the vindictive avarice, and no matter what favorable side-effects of the Iraq invasion materialize in the Middle East ten or twenty years down the road, Bush and all of his people did not succeed in sustaining an intelligent dialogue with the citizens of this country when making decisions that affected all of us.

In fact, one could make a very strong case that the Bush Administration has dealt a serious blow to American security worldwide by taking such an extremely unilateral approach to foreign policy during the past 6 years, and that we are much less safe both abroad as well as on our home soil as American citizens than we were before they took power.

I know that every administration is shady – it’s the nature of politics. I don’t know how the revisionists rewrote the books on Clinton so quickly, but he seems to walk on water between million dollar speaking engagements while Hillary is the frontrunner for the Democrat’s presidential nomination.

The difference is that the Bush Administration seems to think they could get away with flaunting their unprecedented authority over the judiciary and legistlative branches, stumbling through scandal after scandal. That post-September 11th blank check didn’t quite stretch as far as they thought.

What we can take away from 8 years of Bush, from Rage’s performance, and from reactions such as those found in the Fox News clip is the reiteration of one solitary fact: the true beauty of our country is the right of every citizen to open question those in power.

Furthermore, we should be able to do so without being attacked for a lack of patriotism or appreciation of core American values. I’m just another armchair general, calling it from the comfort of my own home, so I won’t pretend to know what it was like in Iraq. But I don’t think Rage should censor themselves simply because they have a similar lack of experience – because they can so easily be classified as millionaire entertainers living in a reality vacuum.

Most of the Presidents we have had fall into the same category of rich guys with a privileged life that have never seen the front line of any battle, yet they are the ones with the power to send hundreds of thousands of people over to fight for what they believe to be right. We better be sure there are as many checks and balances as we can afford as a society, whether through activism or commentary, to ensure that they are making the right decisions when hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake.

Do you suffer from:

I just wanted to draw attention to the updates that were made today in the “Permanent Fixtures” section on the sidebar:

About – standard fare – a little blurb on my overall vision for the blog

Bio & Contact Info – also pretty standard – just enough to info to justify my haphazard, erratic though-patterns

YouTube Random Clip – this is self-explanatory; there’s so much random shit on YouTube and I’d like to share every last mind-numbing one that I find worth those oh-so-precious 90 seconds of your life

What Would Tyler Durden Do? – a site not necessarily known for its journalistic poignancy – actually has a pretty succinct summary of the latest development(s) in a story involving the Travoltas (that’s John and Kelly) and their autistic son, Jett.

In a nutshell: Scientology refuses to acknowledge that autism is a real affliction, thus the Travoltas have used their extensive medical and scientific analytical ignorance prowess to determine that Jett in fact has a case of Kawasaki disease…

To elaborate, using a few quotations from the WebMD links provided above, the Travoltas insist that their child, who has a neurological disorder characterized as such…

Children with autism have trouble communicating. They have trouble understanding what other people think and feel. This makes it very hard for them to express themselves either with words or through gestures, facial expressions and touch.

An autistic child who is very sensitive may be greatly troubled — sometimes even pained — by sounds, touches, smells or sights that seem normal to others.

Autistic children may have repeated body movements such as rocking or hand flapping. They may have unusual responses to people, attachments to objects, resistance to change in their routines and/or aggressive or self-injurious behavior. At times they may seem not to notice people, objects or activities in their surroundings. Some children with autism also develop seizures, in some cases not until adolescence.

…actually has a disease with the below symptoms:

• Red, bloodshot eyes, usually without pus or discharge.
• A red body rash that varies in size, shape, and consistency. The rash rarely blisters and is usually most obvious in the torso or groin area.
• Red, swollen, cracked lips and a red (“strawberry”) tongue and lining of the mouth.
• Firm, swollen hands and feet with shiny red palms and soles. The skin begins to shed and peel between 1 and 3 weeks after the fever starts. Peeling starts beneath the fingernails and toenails and slowly spreads to the palms and soles.
• Swelling of lymph nodes in the neck.

I can see how easily they could get confused. It’s quite obvious that all of his outbursts, withdrawn behavior, and lack of reactions to emotions and body language are simply his manner of coping with the frustration of those pesky swollen lymph nodes. At least the watchful spirit of L. Ron Hubbard has managed to stave off every single physical symptom of the disease.

Furthermore, the Travoltas have determined that the root cause of this affliction is environmental toxins in their carpet. I really, really wish that I was making this up.

Hollywood, Interrupted has a extensive report on the Travolta’s neighbors, who have an autistic 4 year old and apparently are attempting to bring in social services to intervene.

And lastly, as if there was a lack of irony surrounding a religion with a name that etymologically means “knowing how to know” refuting every medical and scientific tenet accepted worldwide, Hollywood, Interrupted reported about a year ago that John Travolta’s brother – Joey Travolta – is a major autism activist!

Rarely do I use exclamation points, but I honestly couldn’t help it there.

The article details how the reports of Jett’s condition were independently verified and corroborated by 5 sources, as well as the Travoltas’ refusal to attend any of the autism awareness events sponsored by other prominent celebrities with autistic children.

In case you’re still in Scientology’s court at this point (Mr. Cruise…I’m honored…please tell John hello), check out the world’s premiere anti-Scientology site. This is one determined Norwegian, who has kept the site running (with a high-profile) despite repeated attempts by the “Church” to shut him down through any avenue possible.

But most importantly, please click here for any number of ways to contribute your time, effort, energy, and/or money to autism awareness.

It is only with your help that we can hunt down the vicious purveyor of disease named Kawasaki and his motorcyle riding ninja minions (what the hell) so he may be burned at the stake.

Ok, the Ferrari’s still get me. They’re niiiiiiiiiice.

But every once in a while, something comes along that reminds you what being truly rich really means. It could mean you own your own island. Or perhaps it means you have the largest house in the Hamptons.

There’s a Nas line from the song “Not Going Back” off his latest album that goes “Real millionaires spend $60 million on paintings.”

(or put their elbows through them)

So that must mean that real billionaires roll like this (click on thumbnails for full-size):

Total Cost: $220,000,000 ($100MM for the plane, $120MM for remodeling). Yes, that is a solid GOLD sink. I would honestly like to meet the guy that buys something for $100,000,000 and decides that it needs another $120,000,000 to be up to par.

FYI – I don’t see ONE plasma anywhere. Hell, that 103″ plasma from Panasonic is a meager $51,000.

At the end of the day, all of us thousandaires (at least until the rent check is cashed) can rest-assured that $220,000,000 still can’t buy you good taste.

The patent details one of the possible solutions for integrating tactile interface into ultraportables (e.g. the iPod Nano), which traditionally have LCD screens that are too small to be useful as touch screens. It also addresses the issue of smudging those gorgeous Apple displays, which is a big concern for many potential iPhone buyers.

Aside from all of the technical and design accolades one could heap on Apple for their recent success, they really seem to understand exactly what type of leaps in technology will generate buzz. Of course, half of generating buzz is in how it is presented, and Apple is extremely adept at dressing up evolutionary as revolutionary when positioning their design developments.

Though this particular concept could go either way depending on how much it differs from the iPhone’s multi-touch interface, they are obviously not content to rest on the laurels of the mega-hype surrounding the June release of their little-device-that-could, and how it is going to revolutionize the cell-phone industry…

The proposed design boils down to Apple placing the control surface on the back of the device but the user still looks face-on at the LCD screen and a cursor tracks the position of the user’s finger as it moves. Move your finger around a phantom scroll-wheel on the back, watch the device scroll through your songs on the front.

It appears the control mechanisms either appear light up on the back as the user-selected functionality dictates (a la the new Motorola KRZR music playing phones), or be etched on the back permanently. It doesn’t sound 100% intuitive – sort of like trimming your neckline in the mirror, but it is – once again – outside the box thinking.

What’s also interesting is the indication of phone functionality in the diagram. iPhone Nano? Who knows. Investment Banker analysts UBS were recently quoted as saying

“For the rest of calendar 2007, we expect new video iPods including a widescreen video iPod with multi-touch technology (likely flash), higher capacity nanos and shuffles and new Macs into the holidays.”

I’m not sure what the ratio is of patents actually turning into actual product releases, but it at least gives insight into how Apple is trying to deliver things to the consumer that they don’t even know they want yet.

Unfortunately for pretty much everyone, Apple does a phenomenal job of keeping a tight lid on upcoming product releases and their development cycles in general. Rampant speculation on the part of every Apple rumor-monger with a blog (guilty) fuels the Apple mystique and overall consumer interest in their product lines. It also keeps people buying up to the minute prior to a new product announcement because there is zero previous indication that said product is about to take a back seat to something bigger (smaller?) and better.

It’s just refreshing to see a company taking such a vested interest in the end-user experience – making it (or seemingly so in the public eye) their #1 priority over cost-cutting to increase profit-margins, banking on the public’s base-need as opposed to their desire to go-beyond.

From Apple’s financial earnings statement:

Apple shipped 1,517,000 Macintosh® computers and 10,549,000 iPods during the quarter, representing 36 percent growth in Macs and 24 percent growth in iPods over the year-ago quarter.

“The Mac is clearly gaining market share, with sales growing 36 percent—more than three times the industry growth rate,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’re very excited about the upcoming launch of iPhone in late June, and are also hard at work on some other amazing new products in our pipeline.”

“We are very pleased to report the most profitable March quarter in Apple’s history,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the third fiscal quarter of 2007, we expect revenue of about $5.1 billion and earnings per diluted share of about $.66.”

And with that, I think everyone’s eyebrows are finally raised at this point. And by everyone, I mean Michael Dell and all of his wannabes. And all of the people who have judged Apple solely on their market share numbers since Jobs left.

And Microsoft?

Sort of. Bill Gates had to have seen it coming for a while; he’s too smart to not pick up on that trajectory a bit earlier than his industry counterparts. But regardless of what happens in the OS and hardware wars, Gates still has his stake claimed in business software. The epic Microsoft vice-grip on that industry isn’t going anywhere. Probably ever.

(sidenote: does anyone find it bizarre that Bill Gates is probably the nicest guy on the planet yet his brainchild defines the term “corporate behemoth?”)

While the PC industry was busy figuring out more efficient ways to cannibalize itself, Steve Jobs was busy laughing from way outside the box…

Daniel Turner over at Technology Review has an extremely poignant article that speaks to this point.

It’s a bit dense, but he begins with a Steve Jobs saying he wanted Apple to be “an undisputed leader in industrial design.” This was uttered just before the release of the Apple II.

Everyone knows what happened after that. But Turner links that instant success to Apple’s commitment to design and their polar-opposite attitude from even the big gun PC manufacturers at the time:

Through much of 1982 and into early 1983, Jobs searched for a sympathetic design partner; he finally found one in Hartmut Esslinger of Frog Design. Together, the two companies developed the “Snow White” design language that was meant to give Apple’s products a coherent visual ­vocabulary, the appearance of being related.

Once Jobs left, this mantra left with him, as evidenced by Apple’s descent into a creative holding pattern in terms of design evolution while Jobs was absent.

Once he came back, he picked up right where he left off: outgunning everyone at the factory-level:

“Apple takes an amazing interest in material selection and how things are manufactured,” [Frog Design SVP Mark Rolston] says. “They continually ask what a manufacturer can do for them.” Frog Design’s experience with PC maker Packard Bell, he says, was much different, given the company’s emphasis on economy: “We had to ask what the factory already did and how we could accommodate it. We found out that their case came together at the last moment, so we made that part of our design decision and focused on snap-on faceplates.”

But Apple, Rolston says, “will change a whole factory’s process.” What’s more, he adds, the company keeps its eyes open for new manufacturing possibilities, no matter how obscure. One example is the “double-shot” method of combining layers of different or different-colored materials. Apple “saw that a manufacturer had a special process for this on a small scale,” Rolston says, and incorporated layered materials into its designs–for example, the clear plastic layered over colored materials in iPods and older iMacs. “[Apple] pushed them to do it on a much larger scale. Apple helped the manufacturers master the process and product.”

And from this seconding coming of Jobs came forth the iMac, the iPod, a host of stunning laptos, and soon – the iPhone.

Jobs undoubtedly benefited from sitting on the side lines for a while. See what everyone else is doing wrong, and then do it right. I think you have to add “maniacal” to the genius moniker Jobs has already earned to have such a singular vision and execute it to perfection.

The other big advantage that makes the lofty Snow White concept a distinct reality is that everything at Apple is done in-house. No outsourcing, no control issues. And no copycats because they also make the software. It would be like Microsoft, Dell, and Sony getting together and agreeing on everything.

On a smaller scale, admittedly, but there’s no denying that Jobs’ astronomical ambition is finally morphing into market-share-gobbling, year over year, revenue growth. They are currently impenetrable on Wall Street, bouncing back big after the announcement of Final Cut Studio 2, despite the much-maligned delay of OS X 10.5 (aka Leopard) to a September 2007 release (from an originally targeted June date).

Nevermind that the decision was made in favor of stealing resources from OS development to ensure the on-time release of the iPhone, which will likely be the the most wildly successful consumer electronic phenomenon since…well…the iPod.

History is repeating itself – a rare feat in such a volatile market. Not many companies can lay claim to just one decade/generation defining technologically revolutionary product release.

Apple could have its third in as many decades on its hand when the iPhone debuts (after the Apple II and the iPod).

The bottom-line is that Apple has managed to capture the imagination of consumers again, shattering perceptions of what people thought were possible with a computer for the 2nd time over. The ability to do so consistently ties back to design, and that has been what has set Apple apart visually as well as what facilitates their reputation for creating devices that are a perfect hybrid of engineering and functional superiority.

It was only natural that the emphasis on aesthetic appealed to creative professionals first. Through the stalwart support from the professional creative industries, and some ridiculously clever marketing, they have convinced the buying public that they exist one level above the rest of the crowd, hovering in a realm where “everything just works.”

Their recent TV campaigns (approaching Star Wars level of “you haven’t seen that???”) have all but solidified the notion that Macs are the ultimate machine for unlocking your hidden creative prowess while PC’s are utilitarian in their ubiquity, sharing the sluggish faults of Windows uniformly across all brands, each offering varying only in its shade of blah.

I’m not a Mac fanboy by any means. Really. But I certainly have become a believer, a member of the Cult of Jobs. I’m waiting to purchase a shiny new MacbookPro laptop as soon as the next revision hits. Ditching the Dell desktop.

Slowly but surely, millions of other people who just want to manage their personal life with ease and could care less about the new Excel formula bar in Office 2007 are following suit.

Hot damn, I hope that kool-aid tastes as good as it looks.