Let me break this down by generation. The first generation, 1g, was analog cellphones. You know, those old gigantic things that had a battery that lasted 5 minutes. There were many different standards for analog cellphones, but they all worked on the same basic principle. They encoded your voice into an analog wave, and transmitted it using a very high powered radio to the cell tower that would receive it and connect you to the phone network. The reason the battery lasted for such a short time was because the radio used so much power. The analog network was really only capable of transmitting voice, just like the regular telephone network, but you could theoretically use dial-up technology to transmit data over it very slowly and unreliably.

The main difference between 1g and 2g was that it moved from being analog to digital. The radios used a lot less power, audio quality increased, and you could send data as well as voice over the network. 2g is just better than 1g in every way.

The thing about 2g is that there are many different digital standards that work differently and are not compatible. Some phone carriers chose to use one set of digital technologies, and others chose a different set. Most of the world chose to use GSM, GPRS, and EDGE as 2g standards. Companies like Verizon, Sprint, and a few others chose to use CDMA, and 1x. That is why AT&T phones work in Europe, but Verizon phones do not.

Another thing is that the 2g phones that use GSM, GPRS, and EDGE have SIM cards, while the CDMA and 1x phones typically do not. A SIM card is a little plastic card that holds all your account information. In Europe, where most phones are unlocked, you can take your SIM card and put it in any phone. That phone is now your phone. If someone calls your number that phone will ring. This gives you the ability to change phones at any time. You can also do cool stuff like let your friend borrow your phone to make a call on his own dime when his battery ran out.

In the US, many people use Verizon and Sprint, who do not have SIM cards in their phones. Even people who use AT&T or T-Mobile, who do use SIM cards, have phones that are locked. If a phone is locked, it will only work with one particular SIM card. So even though you can take your card out and put it in an unlocked phone to make a call, you can’t have someone else put their card in your phone. This is why people fight so strongly to get their phones unlocked. The one downside of having phones unlocked is that it suddenly becomes a really good idea to steal expensive phones. I think that is a small price to pay for the convenience, freedom, and power for the consumer.

So 3g is all the rage these days. 3g simply refers to the third generation of wireless technologies. That includes things like HSDPA and EV-DO. These are still digital wireless technologies, like 2g, but they are capable of very fast data transfers. They aren’t as fast as a wifi, but they are so fast you can watch youtube over them if the signal is strong. There are many things you can buy that allow laptops to connect to 3g networks, so they can get really fast data service if no wifi is available.

Verizon and Sprint use EV-DO, while AT&T and T-Mobile use HSDPA. When people talk about the iPhone using 3g, they are talking about HSDPA. Apple just says 3g, because it is a better term for marketing purposes than a complicated thing like HSDPA.

The one last thing to talk about is 4g. 4g is the future. 4g basically kicks all ass, on paper. Theoretically we will be able to get super fast data everywhere. People are talking about speeds of 100Mbits minimum. We will see in the future what the reality is, but there is one thing very interesting about 4g. It seems as if Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile have all chosen LTE as their 4g technology of choice. When the 4g comes, we may finally see all the major carriers in the US using the same technology and delivering compatible phones. With Verizon promising any phone, any app, 4g finally might fix our troubles.

For any of you people out there who are getting ready to comment, yes I know that technically UTMS( HSDPA) is 3.5g, and that EDGE is 2.75g, but the purpose of this was to help people attain a colloquial understanding of the terminology, not to be super precise and confuse them further.

I hope I succeeded in helping people understand the weird cellphone acronyms. I just see so much confusion online, I had to do something.

There is another side effect of this that isn’t immediately obvious. Existing open source applications that are licensed under the GPL, and other similar licenses, can not be legally ported to the iPhone. If you make modifications to a program under the GPL, you must open source your derivative code. The Apple agreement prevents you from doing this. Therefore, you can’t port emacs to the iPhone without violating either the GPL or the agreement with Apple.

In the wake of the recent court ruling upholding the Artistic License, we are more sure than ever that open source licenses are enforceable. Thus, the only chance we have of seeing many open source apps ported to the iPhone is if Apple makes a change, because the GPL isn’t going anywhere.

Luckily many open source projects are licensed under the BSD, MIT, or other similar licenses. Projects under these licenses can be ported to the iPhone because the derivative code does not need to be open sourced. This is why we are seeing iPhone applications that contain code from PuTTY, OpenSSH, OpenSSL, etc.

The thing is that Google Calendar provides iCal files and such. It is a very open system that just begs the rest of the calendar world to sync with it. There is no technological reason that the iPhone can’t synchronize with my Google Calendar directly on its own. The fact that it does not is an example of the kind of thing that only happens on closed platforms. This kind of feature would never be missing from an open platform. I can almost guarantee Android phones will do this. The iPhone needs to do it as well. I can understand it not working well with Google Apps, but not working with it at all is unacceptable.

For now, I need to find a practical solution to this problem. The first thing you might suggest to me is that I should visit my Google Calendar in the mobile Safari browser. This does indeed work, but not well. The user interface of the native iPhone calendar application is far superior to the mobile web interface of Google Calendar. Also, the web interface lacks a lot of functionality, namely the ability to set the phone to alert me about events. If the user interface isn’t good, it’s effectively no different than if the functionality did not exist in the first place.

Your next suggestion might be to get a Mobile Me account. Hah! Listen, I’m a Google Apps user. I’m already fully invested in it. I’m not about to pay for Mobile Me, which seems to not be doing so well. Even if Mobile Me worked, Google Apps is free and better. I think it’s pretty unreasonable to expect me to pay that kind of money just to synchronize my calendar. In fact, I think it is pretty unreasonable to expect me to pay any amount of money for this one feature. Any non-free solution is right out the door. Well, maybe I’ll pay a one-time fee of $5, but that’s it.

The restriction on spending money includes purchasing Microsoft Office or Outlook. If I had a copy of Outlook, I could syncrhonize it with my Google Calendar using any of a myriad of apps like this official one. Then iTunes would act as a go-between Outlook and the iPhone. It’s a chain with five pieces (Google, Calendar Sync, Outlook, iTunes, iPhone) for a process that really only requires two pieces (Google, iPhone), but it will work. The problem is that I don’t own Outlook or Office. Sure, I could pirate them or whatever, but that’s not going to happen. I need a legitimate and reliable solution, not some hack.

In the same vein as the Outlook solution, there are also programs out there like Spanning Sync. Spanning Sync takes Google Calendar and synchronizes it with iCal. iCal then works with iTunes, and then to the phone. It’s a little bit smoother operation than some others because Spanning Sync actually appears to be a really polished application. The problem is that it is Mac only. It would be cheaper to buy Outlook than for me to buy a Mac.

Jailbreaking the iPhone would probably solve the problem, but that’s not going to happen either. I pay a lot of money for this phone, and other than this one issue, I’m almost entirely satisified with it. I’m not going to risk screwing it all up. You can jailbreak at your own risk. I’m staying on the straight and narrow.

This morning I finally came across something that might be a possible solution. It’s called NuevaSync. What NuevaSync does is pretty clever. They have what I must believe to be a Microsoft Exchange server. They allow you to get a account on the server. They will then automatically synchronize your Google Calendar with their Exchange Server. You then connect to their Exchange server directly from the iPhone, and now you will have push synchronization with your calendar. This is even better than solutions like spanning sync, as updates will be pushed, rather than manually synchronized through iTunes. So why not use NuevaSync?

The first reason not to use NuevaSync is that it doesn’t appear to support Google Apps, only regular Google accounts. Too many people who try to integrate with Google, including Google themselves, forget about Google Apps users. Google Apps users are the hardcore Googlers. They should more features and functionality, and they should get it before non-apps Google users. It’s really a shame that so often everything is the other way around.

The second reason is that an iPhone can only connect to one Exchange account at a time. I’m already using my one account to synchronize with the Exchange server at work. Why not also use the work calendar you say? Because I don’t want my personal calendar on my employer’s server, that’s why. I think that’s a reasonable expectation, don’t you? Actually my company was recently acquired. My boss who used to be a partner is now an employee. He was using the work server for his personal calendar, but now he’s trying to get everything off of there. He has a Mac, though, so maybe Spanning Sync will work for him.

In the meantime, here I am with a Google Calendar and an iPhone 3g, and never the twain shall meet. This is a serious situation that needs to be rectified.

When you want to understand why I’m buying the iPhone, you have to understand my past phone experience. I’ve got the LG VX8600 from Verizon right now. My parents pay for it on a family plan. It’s the third phone I’ve owned, and the two phones I had before it were only really capable of making calls. This phone can actually do quite a bit, especially when it comes to playing music. However, it does all those things poorly. When I first got the phone, I played with all of the features extensively. After a few days, I went back to just using it to make calls, and not much else. I even had a Blackberry at my last job. I installed a bunch of fancy apps on it, but the only thing I ever really used was the company e-mail. Even an old Treo is better than any device I have ever had.

Since I’m a software engineer by profession, it’s really pretty sad that I have been completely out of the loop when it comes to mobile computing. The reason is that every device I have had has a crappy user interface. You could have a phone with all the features in the universe, completely open source, but if the UI sucks, it is useless. This is why mobile Safari has so much market share compared to the market share of the iPhone. Even though plenty of phones have browsers, people actually use the one on the iPhone. Many people have phones with music players built in, but they use a separate iPod. The bad user interface makes the feature worthless. I would argue that the iPhone actually has more features than any other phone based on the fact that other devices with more features have bad interfaces that make those features effectively nonexistent.

The biggest reason to get the iPhone is because it will reduce the number of devices I carry every day. Right now I carry a separate phone and iPod. I also don’t have a GPS. Now I can have all three of those, and more, in a single package. This is such an unbelievably huge benefit to the iPhone that is not emphasized nearly enough. Sure, there are other devices that encompass all these features, but like I said, if the UI is bad, the feature effectively doesn’t exist. The iPhone is a usable phone, usable portable media player, and usable GPS in one single device. Only having to carry one thing, instead of three, that alone is worth a lot more money than Apple is charging.

There is some competition for the iPhone that has good arguments going for it, but none of them win. The Nokia N95 is great, but it really can’t compete with the iPhone when it comes to media playing. I would still need an iPod if I got an N95. The Nokia N810 would be almost perfect, but it isn’t a phone. Put a 3G radio in it, and I’m sold. Android is looking like it might be the best for me, as I am a heavy user of Google Apps. However, that also doesn’t look like it will have adequate media playing capabilities. The Android phones have perfect Google integration, but nothing else. The iPhone wins on all other fronts, except it has relatively poor, but satisfactory, interaction with Google’s apps.

There is an issue with the providers. I really would much rather have Verizon than AT&T. But does it really matter that much? We’re complaining that we don’t have our choice of which of the evil carriers to go with. If there were a good carrier, I could see complaining, but there is not. Every carrier sucks. No matter what you do, you have to suffer with one of them. If it’s AT&T instead of Verizon getting your money, does it really mean anything? I live in NY, so I have decent coverage at my house and job. That’s really all that matters.

Lastly, the iPhone is the most popular platform. The most popular platform gets all the goodies. The app store will be loaded with everything we want that Apple allows. There will be a lot more software for iPhone than for any other mobile platform, I guarantee it. There will also be more accessories made for the iPhone, more web sites specifically designed to look good on iPhone, and the list goes on. The world will bend itself to accomodate iPhone users. Being an iPhone user will be a lot easier and lot more convenient than using anything else.

The iPhone isn’t perfect by any means, but what device is? Sure, we would all love it if it had a bigger removable battery, physical keyboard, wifi podcatcher, turn by turn GPS, etc. They are all valid criticisms, but on the same token, many people have unrealistically high expectations. If you only ever bought electronic devices when they were absolutely perfect in every way, people would mistake you for a Luddite.

The reason I’m buying the iPhone is that it has enough features that it crosses the line. Those features have a decent enough interface that I will actually use them, instead of just paying extra money for a device I only use to make calls. The popularity of the iPhone will gaurantee that there is a large amount of support for the device. It’s a huge step up from where I am now. It may not be perfect, but it’s the best I can get right now, and it will definitely be able to hold me over for two years. At that point in time, there will definitely be a far superior device to switch to. For now, the iPhone is the winner.

The reason I think I don’t stick with the social networks is that they require significant investment. When you read a blog, you are just taking. You don’t have to put anything into someone else’s blog to get something out. With a social network like Facebook or MySpace, you have to put work in for value to come out. If you lack the need or desire to make that investment, a social platform will not yield benefits to you, no matter how good it is.

When Twitter came along I largely ignored it. When I heard it described, I dismissed it as stupid. Apparently I didn’t learn my lesson with Dance Dance Revolution. I made a Twitter account, but I didn’t use it much. I have Jaiku and Pownce accounts too, but I didn’t use those either. I’m big on joining, but not actually using. When Twitter started to actually take over the web, I decided to sign into my account and give it an honest try. I followed some Internet celebrities and some other people I know. I also put my account out there, so GeekNights listeners and other fans would follow me, and I would follow them back.

My immediate impression was that Twitter was just a promotion platform. Other than the mindless twitters about eating or sleeping, most of the stuff I saw was people trying to get visits to their latest blog post or their new podcast episode. That’s well and good, but if that’s all that Twitter had to offer, I didn’t need to be a part of it. I also have too much pride to shamelessly promote my own material on Twitter.

Then I realized the next valuable aspect of Twitter is the role it plays as an idea dumping ground. During the course of my day sitting at a computer I will occasionaly have thoughts that try to escape, but have no place to go. It wouldn’t be something big enough to write a blog post. It wouldn’t be appropriate conversation with neighboring co-workers. It wouldn’t be relevant for any web forums I’m on. If I can’t find an online instant message buddy to appreciate it, then I’m stuck with it. Twitter solved this problem. When I have a need to express some small idea, I can always dump it to Twitter. No need to pick a random friend to harass on IM. Just toss it into the wild.

Just a week or so ago, I put the Adobe Air Linux beta on my laptop, and started to use Twhirl. What a difference proper client software makes. By using Twhirl, I have finally seen the core of Twitter. Twitter is the new IRC.

Back in the day, and some people even today, would hang out in IRC all day. They find a server, and they make a channel to hang out in. Everyone in the channel has something in common, usually relating to the channel topic, but discussion is not limited to the topic alone. You form a bond with the people in your channel(s), and you discuss many things with them. It is something special to have a room where people you are close to are available for instant communication at almost any time. IRC people always keep that chat window open somewhere while they work, and Twitter people do the same.

Of course, IRC has its problems. You might have to manage multiple channels. People might come in the channel you don’t want to hear from. If you leave the channel, you might miss something someone said. Twitter is the answer to all of these problems. It is one gigantic worldwide IRC channel where you only have to hear the people you want to hear. Everyone is using one IRC server, and you customize your own channel one person at a time. You can also view the complete history of Twitter at any time.

Even though I recognize this, Twitter still feels a bit dirty to me. I can’t explain it very well. There’s no logic behind it. There’s just a feeling I get with Twitter that it is somehow unclean. I feel the same way towards IRC, that somehow when I use it I am going into the dark, seedy part of the Internet. One cause of this I think is the lack of technological polish on IRC and Twitter. Pownce, which is much more polished, doesn’t feel unclean at all. I may not be able to completely explain these feelings I have, but I can certaintly use Twitter despite them.

Technologicaly speaking, Twitter may need some work, but psychologically I think it is doing everything right. It fulfills two basic needs of people who are hooked into the web. It gives tiny tidbits that fall out of people’s brains a place to live, and possibly grow. It also gives people a customized feed of info to feed off of without having to pull it in. We prefer the web to old media because it is pull rather than push, but Twitter gives back that tiny push feed to satisfy serendipity and novelty.

Despite early skepticism, I think I’ll be keeping my Twitter open for a bit. Follow me if you like. We’ll see how long this lasts.

In the olden days information traveled relatively slowly. If you wanted to learn the twist ending to some new Alfred Hitchcock movie without seeing it yourself, you would have had your work cut out for you. Nowadays, unless you are completely non-social, you will be bombarded with information. It actually requires effort to avoid learning new information. As we all know, it is extremely difficult to intentionally un-learn information. The fact that learning is easier than not learning tells me we live in a truly amazing time.

There is another factor, though, that has resulted in increased prominence of spoilers. An increasing quantity of the works created in modern artistic mediums are of a nature that is very prone to being spoiled. Serial, as opposed to episodic, television shows are perhaps more popular than ever. Literature, especially graphic literature, is also increasingly serial. Multi-volume series, such as Harry Potter, are much more prevalent than self contained novels. These popular plot structures that keep the audience constantly in suspense of what will happen next are much more easily spoiled than works in other styles.

I, like most people, am a fan of surprises. For some psychological reason, pleasant things give people more joy when they are unexpected. Thus, when you become informed about a good thing that will happen, you feel as if you have been deprived of some joy. It’s as if knowing there is a yummy batch of cookies waiting for you when you get home will diminish the flavor of the cookies. I think most people can empathize with this feeling.

On the surface, a spoiler seems to be no more than a ruined surprise. This is why they are widely despised. Though, on the fundamental level, spoilers are merely information about a work of art. If you’ve ever been to an art museum, you know they post small cards associated with every piece to provide relevant information. In many cases the information on these cards does not merely enhance enjoyment of the work, but is in fact necessary to have any amount of appreciation for it. Why is it, then, that some information about a work of art can enhance the experience, while other information can diminish it?

In my experience I have found that the truly great works of art are still great no matter how much information you know about them. For truly epic works of art, I believe that learning more information about them can only serve to enhance the experience they deliver. This line of thinking flies right in the face of common conception, but I will show you that it holds true.

Think of one of your favorite jokes or comedy routines. Since it is your favorite, you have undoubtedly seen or heard it before. You already know all the punchlines. Yet, because it is your favorite, you must still find it funny, no? In fact, it is because you find it funny every single time, despite having committed it to memory, that you hold it so dear. If the logic of spoilers holds true, no joke should ever be funny if you know the punch line. However, we see in reality that the best jokes are funny no matter how often they are repeated. It is only the sub-par jokes that lose their power after their secrets are revealed.

The greatest film of all time, Citizen Kane, is the perfect example. Long before ever seeing the film, I knew that Rosebud was the sled. This was largely thanks to Warner Brothers cartoons making jokes about it. My knowledge of the ending did have an effect on the experience I had watching it for the first time, but it did not ruin it. I actually watched the movie as part of a film class in college, and the professor taught us a great deal of information about the film. I feel very lucky to have been able to learn so much that I never would have seen watching on my own. Knowing this extra information greatly immensely increased my enjoyment of the film.

For one final example, let us look at the Mona Lisa. Most people know that the Mona Lisa is a special painting, but those who have not had an art education, like myself, are typically not aware of what makes it so special. If you knew nothing about the painting, seeing it really isn’t that exciting. It’s a relatively small painting of a smiling woman. Personally, I had no appreciation for the painting until I watched this video. After learning about exactly why the Mona Lisa is so famous, I am now find myself fascinated by it. Spoiling the Mona Lisa for myself has made it possible for me to enjoy a painting that I previously found unremarkable.

When you think about your favorite works of art, and the truly great works from history, I think you will agree that one common trait they all share is that they are immune to spoilage. They are all enjoyable multiple times over. Learning more about these works makes them taste better. For an artistic creation to be truly great, it must be evergreen.

If you agree with that, then I think you must agree with the conclusion that follows. It seems that for much of the popular art created today, the enjoyment is diminished when the works are spoiled. If enjoyment of these works increased with more information, as do the great works, then people would not be trying so hard to avoid spoilers. Therefore, I believe it is safe to say that the spoiler-prone works are not all that great. If they were truly amazing, we would be trying to learn more about them, not less.

I’m as much a fan of surprises as anyone. The element of surprise is a necessary tool in the arsenal of any creator. Having surprises ruined is indeed upsetting. I just feel that the effort required to avoid spoilers is not really worth it. Unless you decide to become a hermit, it will only become more difficult to avoid spoilers as time goes on. If a story is spoiled for me, and that ruins my ability to enjoy it, then it probably wasn’t a great story in the first place. If something is truly awesome, then all the spoilers in the universe can only make it greater.

I ride the train to work every day. While I am commuting, it would be very nice if I were able to work on various software projects. It is very easy to setup a development environment on my laptop to actually get work done, but it is not easy to get the documentaiton. Most documentation these days is, understandably, done online, often in a wiki.

Online documentations is awesome, and definitely needs to stick around. However, offline documentation should not suffer. It’s not too difficult to make some sort of weekly, or even monthly, cron job that exports the online documentation into some sort of offline format. Even just static HTML with proper links is enough. Yes, I know there are scripts to download wikis, and also wget -r, but they are usually not satisfactory.

Not everyone has an Internet connection all the time. When working with new frameworks and libraries, documentation is a necessity. I’m sure there are plenty of other developers out there like myself who would very much like to have documentation available offline. Please don’t forget us.

I’m looking at you Javascript library and web framework people. You know who you are.

Don’t think it stops there. Recently I have been doing a better job of keeping my ear to the ground in the open source world. I have become enamored with many new frameworks. I’m discovering new features in software I have used for years. Ubuntu and Firefox, the two applications I use more than any others, are going to receive major updates in the very near future. I’m also combining old programs in new ways to great effect. Software has never been this good, and it’s only getting better.

With developing software being easier and more fun than ever, why is it that I haven’t actually been very productive? What was the last software project I actually finished? I don’t even remember. My problem is that I often end up just playing with the tools and not actually getting real work done. I read documentation and fool around enough to learn how to use the tools. Then when the time comes for real work, the novelty has already worn off. I hammered nails for no reason. Then I take a pass at real carpentry because the hammer no longer interests me.

I’m presently working hard to overcome this problem. You may see the fruits of this labor sometime in the future. Despite that, I just can’t help myself from wondering. How many other developers are just playing instead of developing anything useful? Is there something about the design of the software that encourages this behavior? What is the psychology and neurology behind these feelings? Can we make actual productivity more fun than useless play?

One thing seems to be pretty clear from where I’m standing. The people making the tools are getting a lot more work done than the people using them.

The first thing I noticed is a subtle change to the menu when you boot from an Ubuntu CD. Before there used to be an option called “Start or Install Ubuntu”. Now there are two separate options “Try Ubuntu Without Changing Your Computer” and “Install Ubuntu”. That’s a very smart change that is going to make a big difference for new users. Also, they have supposedly made changes to how the Live CD works when you put it into a computer that has Windows presently booted. Handing out CDs is going to be a much more effective way of spreading the love.

Also, there were a bunch of features included in the Feisty Fawn, and also the Gutsy Gibbon, that weren’t 100% perfect. This includes some of the audio and graphics support. All those things have been polished a great deal. I think that is because Hardy is an LTS release. That’s actually a big deal because Dapper has reached the point where it is too old to be still useful. I’m actually thinking that I might use Hardy full on until the next LTS release. Though, I don’t know if I’ll be able to hold myself back from upgrading for so long. Maybe I can do it on my computer at work.

I don’t really have that much else to say other than that I tried the Xubuntu Hardy Heron to see what was up. I used Xfce way back in the day on Gentoo machines, and I was a fan. I really like the idea and style of Xfce, but since I switched to Ubuntu and Gnome, I can’t deal with Xfce. Basically, when I use Gnome, I only use a fraction of the features it offers. Most of the other stuff is cruft. Xfce is sort of like Gnome light, even though Xfce people will probably yell at you if you say that. I like that it has most of the Gnome features I want, and takes out pretty much all the ones I don’t want. The thing that keeps me away is that there are always a handful of things I really need that Xfce leaves out. It’s getting better, but I don’t see myself using it anytime soon.

Everyone, I mean everyone, with a PC, should at least try the Hardy Heron. Even if you’ve tried Linuxes or Ubuntus in the past, that doesn’t matter. Try this one. This is the real deal.

My other major gripe with Apple is how proprietary their hardware and software is. More than just lower prices, the major reason I like to build my own PCs is because it leaves the hardware wide open. If I want to upgrade or modify, it really can’t get easier than on a box you put together yourself. With a Mac, such as the mini or the iMac, the exact opposite is true. The Mac Pro, yet again, changes this completely. Right on Apple’s website they are putting pictures of the inside of the machine right up front. They are actively pushing the fact that the case is accessible. Looking at the pictures, I can not deny, that is among the most well designed towers I have ever seen. I also imagine that it is much quieter than most boxes I could build myself.

Like so many other people, the iPod has also helped me to warm up to the Mac. While there are many cheaper alternatives to the iPod, I still use my nano. The main reason for that is because of the devil of details. If I start playing a podcast, pause it, and then synchronize with iTunes before finishing, I can play the podcast in iTunes from where I left off. This is a small feature, completely unnoticed by most people. However, I can’t live without it. This kind of thing is presently, to my knowledge, only possible with the iPod and iTunes in tandem. Right now I’m using iTunes on the Mac mini downstairs, but it’s horribly inconvenient. Having a Mac on my desk would make my music and podcast listening life a lot easier.

Even though I don’t own one, the iPhone has also helped to whet my appetite for the Mac Pro. My mobile phone contract will expire next year, and I would like to get a phone that does more for me than just making calls. I will have a tough decision to make between a Blackberry/Android device, which will integrate well with my Google applications, or the iPhone, which will work well enough with my Google apps, but will also allow me to carry fewer devices on my person. If I do end up getting the iPhone next year, a Mac in my room will almost be a must. I can’t leave my phone docked overnight in the living room as my iPod is now.

It’s no accident that I mention the Google applications. Strangely enough, it is mostly thanks to the likes of Google and Mozilla that buying an Apple becomes viable for someone like me. Any computer with an Internet connection and a browser is just as good as my own personal machine. Whether I’m using OSX, Linux, or Windows I feel right at home as long as I have Firefox. There might be plenty of things I don’t like about OSX, I don’t imagine they will bother me so much, as I will be using Firefox 90% of the time.

It’s not just web-based third parties that are making a difference either. Without the magic that is VMWare Fusion, the Mac Pro would have absolutely no appeal to me whatsoever. I absolutely need to use Linux to get development work done. I absolutely need to use Windows to play PC games. Using OSX to manage my music and for Adium would be optimal. With dual quad core processors, and a motherload of RAM, the Mac Pro, more than any other PC, can do absolutely everything I need. I might have to use boot camp to play a game once in awhile, but a Mac with VMWare Fusion is still more convenient for me than any other currently available configuration.

For the first time ever I am actually able to seriously consider purchasing an Apple computer. In that, I have realized something about Apple’s business strategy. People, especially those like myself, will always have something to dislike when it comes to Apple. We have something to dislike when it comes to everything. Despite this, slowly but surely, Apple products constantly improve over time. It’s hard to imagine them ever getting worse. You might never make the switch on principle, and that’s just fine. Whether I make the switch still remains to be seen. However, you can bet that at some point in the future an Apple computer will be capable of satisfying almost anyone’s needs and desires. While I like Ubuntu more, Apple is currently a lot closer to creating a system that satisfies all of my computing needs.