Mac Mini

It may finally be time to retire our Apple G3 Powerbook.

I'd forgotten that yesterday was the day Steve Jobs was due to give his famous keynote address. Mr. F and I usually wait until later on in the day and watch it at home. But I happened to pop on CNN and saw the headlines about the much rumored, much anticipated new $499 (USD) Mac from Apple.

We've been drooling over the prospect since it first started getting tossed around on ThinkSecret.com and MacRumors.com. Now the truth is out! Six inches by two inches, weighing in at about two pounds, it's absolutely adorable. I'm coming down with a serious case of the gotta-gets

My poor Powerbook has been giving me fits lately, because I keep pushing its limits with new software and upgrades, and sadly it just can't keep up anymore. But I haven't wanted to be angry with it, it's been such a good little machine. I still admire its design and enjoy using it to blog with, so we'll probably keep it, along with the five or more other Macs we have about (Classics, Plusses, we got 'em).

The iPod shuffle I'm not as crazed about, though I can see where it would be a huge hit for anyone who was balking at the iPod Mini's $249 price tag. I say, if you're really craving an iPod, do what we did and get a refurbished model. They're in tip-top shape and are supposely subject to more rigorous testing than new models. We've had no trouble at all with ours, and we love them.

I am particularly excited about the new word processing/publishing applicationPages. If it lives up to the Apple standard, it should beat the stuffing out of Word. I'm dying to take this app for a spin. Not having a better alternative than Word for Mac has been one of my biggest (but few) complaints about Macs. Appleworks just didn't cut it, and I refused to install Word, because I loathe it. I've been a FrameMaker aficionado since version 3.1, and it became my tool of choice for work projects, but the $800+ price tag was a bit prohibitive when it came to home use. We actually used LaTeX a few years ago to layout and publish a family history. It came out well, but it shouldn't have to be *that* tedious. So I have high hopes for Pages. Hope it doesn't let me down...