Musings

Oct. 21, 2004

Where to start?

I'm 50 years old, married and have a 12 year old daughter. We live in Gainesville, Florida home of the University of Florida. My wife is a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit RN (very tough job) and I work out of home doing a variety of things from consulting to graphic design to some technical writing.

I'm a confirmed Mac Fanatic and have been for over a decade. I currently own 21 Macs. Most are older machines I don't use any more and a lot of those are vintage like an original 128 K Mac and a Black Mac TV. I have an entire office pretty much dedicated to all things Mac or Apple including my very own Mac Aquarium and it's occupant, my Beta Woz. I recently figured out that over this last decade I have owned 52 different Macs. My first was a Classic II and a Centris 650 (bought together). I have owned at one time or another pretty much every kind of Mac laptop from the PB 100 (which sucked) through Duos (210, 230, 270, 280c and 2300), a 170, 520, 540c, 2400, 2 different iBooks (but not a clamshell…yet), a G3 WallStreet, G4 Titanium, G4 12" Aluminum and my current 17" G4 PB.

We use 5 of these 21 Macs. I have all three varieties of the G4 iMac. I have an affinity for the all in one Macs mainly because of space but also because they are statement machines. My daughter has a 15" 700 MHz LCD iMac, my wife uses a 1 GHz 17" LCD iMac and I have the 20" LCD iMac which runs at 1.25 GHz. My house is completely wireless and includes an AirPort Express for streaming MP3 files through the home theatre system. I also have a 17" G4 PB which is my main machine right now with the 20" iMac used mostly for graphic/layout projects and a 12" iBook that I use when I wander to my porch to check email or surf the net when the weather permits.

I have been a member/officer of my local Macintosh User Group, MacPeople (www.macpeoplemug.org) for 10 years now. I am currently a Vice President of this MUG which has been in existence since 1985.

Now you know a little about me. Hopefully in the future you may know a little more about how I think but for my fist blog topic let's start with the new G5 iMac.

I have read a lot of different threads criticizing this computer and I just don't get it. Most of the complainers don't like the lower bezel even though it is needed to conceal the speakers. They seem to skip over the fact it is an incredible engineering feat to fit the computer as part of the LCD and still keep it from looking bulky and, by the way, it has a friggin' G5 inside!

I'll wait to the next generation (I made a mistake buying the original iMac which I regretted when new ones came out almost as I was unpackinng mine) for a new G5 iMac but let me say right now to Steve Jobs, Jon Ivie and the rest of the gang at Apple, well done! It's an effective crossover computer that the family can use but professionals will find affordable too and capable of easily handling most tasks outside video. I like the G5 towers a lot but space and cost is an issue.

That's it for now. I got real work to do.