Status-Q

“Well,”, said Sam Gamgee, “I’m back”. And so am I, after nearly a month of travel; back to unpacking, clearing my in-tray (which now supports a pile of sufficient height that I’m hoping it may topple over and clear itself), and catching up with all the other things I should have been doing during March.

Of course, all of these might have been done more quickly if it weren’t for the fact that my new MacBook Pro arrived while I was away, so the first thing I had to do after kissing my wife, of course, was to set that up. The Apple migration tools are very good; I just plugged the old laptop and the new one together during the installation, and all my applications, settings, documents, photos, bookmarks and so forth were copied across with no trouble.

So this is my first posting from an Intel-based Mac, and so far, everything is working very nicely.

The new power connector is very neat, but it does mean that all the old Powerbook power adaptors I have lying around won’t work until somebody produces a convertor cable.

There are a couple of apps which don’t work under the Intel and I’ll need to wait for upgrades – NeoOffice and Final Cut being the main ones – but the fact that I’ve only hit a problem with these two is quite remarkable when you consider just how many apps and utilities on this machine were compiled for a completely different processor architecture. The Rosetta emulation technology is really very good and most normal apps and utilities just work.

Otherwise, frankly, it’s not very different from my old Powerbook except that it’s noticeably snappier and has a bit more disk space, and that’s just fine with me! As the saying goes: If it ain’t broke… just make it go a bit faster.

I like iPhoto, but I haven’t really used the keyword facility much. Creating and assigning keywords is just a bit too much hassle.

So I was pleased to discover Ken Ferry’s Keyword Assistant. Much easier.

Update: Keyword Assistant doesn’t work on the more recent versions of iPhoto, but there are some tips here which can get it going again.

A couple of weeks ago we had the interesting news that Apple’s market cap. exceeded Dell’s.

They’ve crept ahead in another way too. According to this MacWorld UK article, Apple now has more of the education market in western Europe, at just over 15%.

In Switzerland, they have 54%!

Now, this is quite a nice idea.

On Slashdot:

Nine years after Michael Dell said he’d shut down Apple and give the money to the shareholders, Apple has passed Dell in market value, at $72,132,428,843 compared to Dell’s $71,970,702,760…

One thing my new MacBook won’t have is a PCMCIA (PC Card) slot. I’ve been rather fond of this on my old Powerbook – a CF card adaptor lives there permanently, and it means that I can always get photos off my camera without the need for cables.

The new machines have an ExpressCard slot. This is the replacement for the old PC Card standard; it has been around for a while and has lots of advantages, but I haven’t seen any cards for it yet, and the slot is too small for a Compact Flash adaptor, so it’ll be back to cables, I guess, for transferring my photos.

Well, I’ve been very patient. Patient, first, while my insurance company took two months to pay up after my old Powerbook came to a tragic end, and then patient while I waited for Steve Jobs’ keynote address. But it was worth it, because he announced the Powerbook replacement, the MacBook Pro, and I have one on the way… Hee hee.

But my patience is not yet exhausted, and it’s just as well, because though they’re taking orders now, delivery is sometime in February. And the Apple retail stores will no doubt get them sooner than the local dealer with whom I placed my order. I’m hoping that good things come to those who wait…