after dinner sneeze

t says: Welcome to one of our first non-food-related rants!  To ease you in to this new category, I’m going to talk about Apples.  No, not apples, but Apples.  Not fruit, but computers.  As you may know, Apple released their latest lines of Macbook Pro laptops this past Tuesday.  As someone who is going to be purchasing a computer through work (free for me!!), I’ve been reading up on the pros/cons of these new PC’s.  That’s right, PC doesn’t stand for “a computer running Windows”, it means “personal computer” – I still have no idea why “PC” means “Windows” to everyone – good marketing by Microsoft I guess (although now it’s biting them in the ass).

First off, I’m a little disappointed that the Macbook Air didn’t get updated – I was really going to jump on one of those for the portability.  Because I need to decide on a computer really really soon, and because the Air will likely see an update in the somewhat near future (i.e. before the close of 2010) and it would CRUSH me to have an outdated model within the first 6 months of ownership, I think I’m going to have to go for one of the Macbook Pros.  True, there are PCs out there which are vastly superior to Macbook Pros in terms of hardware, but over the years, I’ve found that ease of use and reliability are just far more important than speed.  Plus – have you ever made use of an Apple store?  It’s 742 times easier visiting an Apple store in person than it is trying to call up tech support, talking to someone, shipping the computer to them, waiting a while without a computer, and then finally opening it up when it gets back to you, hoping that it didn’t get damaged along the way.  I’ll do that for frying pans.  But I’m really tired of doing that for something I actually depend on (also, they’re opening up a new Apple store in Center City!).  Also, after years of using Windows XP, if I have to learn a new GUI (as Windows 7 is different enough to have a learning curve), I might as well go over to the dark side.  Lastly, g likes Macs, and as the saying goes, “Happy wife, happy life.”  (Shout out to the Real Housewives of NJ)

What will I buy?  I don’t know … but I’m really digging the high resolution, matte screens available on the 15″ model (I hate seeing my reflection in computer screens – I don’t care how good movies look on them or how good of a hair day I’m having).  I’m going to wait for the benchmarks to come out – I don’t want to spend extra money on upgraded hardware if it doesn’t result in real-world performance.

Another question.  Will I get an iPad, too?  I don’t know – I’m leaning towards “not now” – I just can’t figure out what to use it for.  But in the back of my head, I know that  in order for Steve Jobs to rule the world, each and every one of us must find an excuse to carry one of these things around wherever we go.  (Actually, it’s quite amazing how Apple’s really good at making us want to use their stuff, even if we technically don’t really need to use their stuff).

Finally … what’s the point of this post?  I don’t know.