Monday, November 26, 2007
iMACCED
So I took the leap yesterday and went to the Mac Gallery.
It is a new—two month old—authorized MacSales and Service place in La Quinta. Twenty five miles away. Hey, better than Costa Mesa or some place over the pass.
Very nice.
I knew immediately that I would not want a 24 inch machine.
They are fucking huge.
I would get radiation burns if not actually sucked into the screen.
So the vanilla 20 inch it was.
But they didn't have any. Due in this afternoon. Or tomorrow.
Then I heard the kid say (everyone in their 20's is a kid) to the other guy (not a kid) that all he had were wirelesses.
My ears perked up.
I had not considered that.
I am working toward minimum cords so this was interesting. And they had them in stock.
Fifty dollars more.
Shit.
A drop in the bucket.
I bought one.
I also got a 3 to one hub for more wire hiding and a service contract on the Mac. AppleCare. Which is different. You get your own 'disc warrior' trouble shoot fix disc obviously to reduce the number of claims.
So home!
Unpack!
John helped with the boxes and seals.
What beautiful packaging. Always a MacPlus.
I set it up.
I turned it on.
It introduced me in Tiger.
I ran the new Leopard. A disc. I was a little afraid of this but nothing untoward happened.
This is such a simple ass machine.
It shook hands with my wireless immediately.
It has a program which sets up the email accounts automatically. All you need is the address and your password.
Bang. Flash.
The Leopard took an hour to load so I took a nap.
I missed the fireworks when it opened. Tahhh dahhhhh!
Then the business of hooking up the printer. Again. All presets loaded on for current printers. Great.
My iOmega said hello. That's the hard storage disc I bought a week before my old Mac crashed. Prescient. A God. Karmic.
What can I say? I lead an exemplary life and try to be a good boy.
The worry-wart in me was concerned about putting in the Quicken and Now-Up-To-Date (a calendar program that I really like as much as I abhor the Mac calendar.
Both loaded.
Both work.
Great!
I have uploaded my 7000 photos into iPhoto. Fast! Whiz! Bang! Whooooosh!
I set up the greatest new gadget on Leopard, Time Machine. It automatically backs up onto the storage disc and, what is more, you can use it to look at and restore (if you want) past versions. A fuckup backup.
Through all this Dave helped. Stood by on cell phone and finally even iChat which we set up so he could see my screen.
I didn't know you could do that. Show someone else your screen.
It is a little embarrassing like being seen in your underwear. Not really revealing but somehow a bit, well, open.
That is about it for now.
I am very very pleased.
I made a rudimentary screen saver slide show—my specialty. Why I have the 7000 photos.
I am teaching my email to separate out the junk mail.
I have had my usual AM dose of the NYTimes and Salon. Answered an email. And now the Blog!
Life is good.
Goddam the screen is big.
