Okay, okay, my stance has changed slightly over the past year and a bit what with the acquisition of a MacBook and, at work, an iMac to call my (almost own), so I must admit I was very, very nearly tempted to forget eating for a few months and buy myself a fancy Macbook… then I took a breath.

The morning after the Steve Jobs keynote, people came up to me asking if I had seen the Jobs keynote… for a moment, I did wonder if they were referring to jobs-as-in-careers, but they actually meant the keynote. Now, you see, I hadn’t watched it and I hadn’t been privy to endless phone calls from colleagues and friends updating me on the ground breaking announcements being made. You see, I don’t tend to sit around watching keynote speeches or waiting for big announcements to be made because I am, first and foremost, a consumer. I appreciate that some people do - for example, the wonderful fellows at the perennial source of all IT news that is ITPro (I’m not sucking up, honest…) are (hopefully) paid to keep on top of what’s happening in order that people like myself can keep track, in our own way, without the presence of large envelopes and gasps of awe.

Anyway, I digress (as always) and must now chip in about the Macbook Air.

I nearly ordered one from Apple. I was stunned by how thin it was, how light it was (I guess… it’s difficult to gauge from the pictures) and how new it looked. I was amazed by the functionality that they’ve managed to cram in there and felt confident that, having used a Toshiba Portege 3500 TPC for over 3 years ago, I wouldn’t miss the optical drive. I was relishing the option of dual booting Mac OS X or Windows Vista. I even liked the idea of being able to put more into my bag, thanks to something so slim it makes Posh Spice look portly. Then, I stopped…

Why? I hear you ask (don’t talk to the screen, you’ll look mad!) Was it the 3 week wait? Was it the £1200 price tag? Was it the fact that I am using a perfectly functional, if somewhat discoloured, first-gen Macbook?

No, No, Maybe. That, and it lacks Firewire and I have access to Firewire enabled camcorders and hard drives and don’t fancy replacing. It is awkward (or maybe impossible) to increase the RAM or replace the battery. I could get a Macbook Pro, which is still wonderfully slim and has many, many more features for a similar price. Hold on, fixed battery and good looks - it’s the iPod of laptops.

Yes, I know that the Air is aimed at a niche market - I guess the type who can drop more than a grand on something stylish - but I do use my Mac for a variety of features, including video editing and I’ve shoved more than 1 CD into the SuperDrive! The Air definitely has that Wow factor, but that won’t be my reason to purchase.

I’ve had my MacBook, it would seem, since July! This surprised me as I didn’t think I’d had it that long.

Anyway, to recount - it’s a 2Ghz Core Duo Macbook, with 2 GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive (replacing the 120GB one that failed a fortnight after getting it from the seller on Ebay.) Looking at the Apple website, it appears there are two main faults with this model of MacBook

1 - On the first generation MacBook, the palm rest discolours. This isn’t just dirt that can be wiped off. Noooooo! It’s actual a chemical reaction between the oil in your skin, air and the plastic that the palm rest (and mouse button) is made from! The whole assembly can be placed under warranty - which ran out 1 month and 1 week before I got mine! ARGH! I may get it replaced, at the moment I try not to think about it much.

2 - The hard drive! It clicks and fails. Touch wood, the replacement hasn’t stuffed up yet! Apparently, it’s a logic board issue, though no confirmation from Apple on this, so I’m hoping and preying that it was just a dodgy hard drive. We’ll see.

Anyway, that’s not the point of this missive. The point is how fantastic VM Fusion is.

VM Fusion is virtualisation software designed to bring other OS’s to the Mac OS X platform. It’s an off shoot, I guess, of VMWare for the PC and is an absolute breeze to install and run (and didn’t cause me to have to force quit like Parallels did when it was pretending to install the tools/drivers.) Admittedly, it doesn’t give me access to the native graphics card/sound card, but for what I do, it’s fine. It doesn’t slow my machine down (much), lets me drag and drop files between OS’s and, even better, it lets me Vista it up all over the shop (just without things like the Aero effects and stuff.)

I did try Boot Camp and I liked that, except I got fed up of having to reboot to access the other OS. For those who want to know, Vista rates my Macbook as 3.0 running Boot Camp.

VM Fusion can also run the Boot Camp partition as a VM Fusion machine, however it needs the tools installed to prevent re-activation when you boot into one or the other. However, for some reason, this didn’t work for me and I ended up scotching Boot Camp in favour of VM Fusion, ho hum! I may, at some point, stick another copy of Windows Vista (actually, I may do XP instead) and Boot Camp away.

Why do I want to virtualise Windows on a MacBook when OS X is up to the job? It’s a necessity of the job really. I have to produce stuff that will work for Office users and some applications like, believe it or not, PagePlus and other bits like that. Alas, whilst I could use Microsoft Office for Mac, I don’t want to be in a position where, for some reason, a feature doesn’t work as I expect in the stuff I produce. It’s hedging my bets, I guess.

Why do I want to run Boot Camp and XP, though. I have a lot of PC games that are suddenly doing nothing!

Next thing I’ll do, probably stick an even bigger hard drive in! Oh, actually, I may even install Linux!

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to take a look at MacBooks on eBay, as this was where I previously bought, and sold, my G3 iBook.

Just to let you know, I’m not totally against Apple hardware.  I just prefer to not think of them as the be all and end all of computing.

So, I find a decent Core Duo 2Ghz, 120GB, 1GB RAM MacBook and win it for a decent enough price.

It arrives, exactly as described, which is a testimony to the seller.

Anyway, away from eBay, I bought 2GB of RAM in 2×1GB sticks from Ebuyer and set about fitting them.  That was a challenge.  Imagine putting After Eight Mints into a credit card machine and you’ll have an idea of what’s involved.  You have to push the RAM with increased force into these little slots and hope that you don’t end up slicing the top off your thumb with the pressure.

All upgraded, Bootcamped and Windows Vista’d, I decided to enter the world of Apple for the third time - iMac, iBook, now Macbook.  It’s an enjoyable experience that, for me, is no more or less easy than using a PC.  in fact, there are some downright infuriating things!  Why, oh why, are the @ and ” symbols on different keys to the PC!  However, there are some remarkable things that might just make my presenting of materials easier - I’m thinking of Comic Life, what a wonderful and easy to use program.

I am, however, drawn to a slight bit of bizarreness.  In the latest Mac Advert, starring those two from Peep Show, the Mac bloke (Webb, I think he is) pokes fun at the other one who says that there are programs that are trial versions and don’t seem to do much unless you register them.  Not with a Mac, Webb says, you get only what you need, in iLife.  Neglecting to mention, then, the trial version of iWorks that comes with the machine.  I know that he doesn’t say that there isn’t any limited/trial software on the machine, but it is a slight oversight.

in the meantime, Quicksilver is probably my favourite app - AppRocket is the closest thing that I had on the PC - along with Handbrake.  I’m sure there’s more freeware out there that’s more or less essential and I’m sure there are plenty of people who can point me in the right direction.

So, there we go.  Me and my Macbook.

I have a confession to make… the Nokia N91 Smartphone with 4GB microdrive is a fantastic phone and a bloody nuisance thanks to it’s resemblance to a house brick, it’s fiddly little number pad, it’s annoyingly small connector on the charger that just feels like it might snap off at any moment, the fact that it feels like it takes a full five minutes (nearer one in reality) to start up to a useable state, the fact that every so often it decides to just hang after you’ve sent a text message and I know that one day I’ll use it as a projectile weapon!  Oh, and the wonderfully mirror like surround to the screen which, in the middle of summer, blinds you if you catch the sun in it.  Aside from that, it’s a fantastic idea let down by a bit of a ropey implementation.

The Apple iPhone (not to be confused with the Cisco iPhone… how long before Apple just call it the MacPhone… or would McDonald’s lawyers be banging at the door?), though, looks like a fantastic idea supported by a rather snazzy implementation!  I mean, come on, and proper iPod crossed with a proper phone.  Up to 8GB of storage, Apple OS X (which I don’t mind that much, I guess (assuming it doesn’t have the bouncy dock thing)), just over 1cm thick, and… that touch screen.  I love touch screens.  Really.  I don’t want to think how grimy it will look when my fingers deposit their prints all over it, it’s a touch screen and that’s all that matters.  I can’t imagine myself scrolling through my contacts (they’ll fit on one screen!), but music… yes, it has to be better than the never-quite-in-control method I seem to have become comfortable with with the N91.  If the touchscreen is anything like the surface of my PSP (obviously not touchscreen, unfortunately), it’ll be attracting fingerprints from the ether anyway, so that’ll be okay… nothing says ‘used’ more than fingerprints everywhere.

Will I dash out for an iPhone when it arrives in the UK?  Probably not until my contract ends, but after that… I’m game….

What I’ll be really interested to see, however, is what Nokia and Motorola put out in competition.

“My Mac plays mp3’s better than a PC,” “A Mac’s better at playing/writing DVDs than a PC,” “Firefox was written for Macs originally.”

Okay, laziness has stopped me checking the validity of the last one, but I doubt it!

Why is it that Mac users are happy to wave their (unfounded) belief system in everyone else’s face, but when you relay your own happiness with using PC’s towards them they act as if you’ve just said you slept with their mothers?

Seriously, I know Mac users that refuse to believe that PC’s are capable of doing anything and that everything was done on a Mac first.  They also believed that Intel processors would turn them into a PC… I did try to explain that PC is a generic term anyway and, whilst associated with Windows machines, it is also associated with Linux, Mac, etc.  Having none of that, though!

Indeed, Mac’s, it would seem, can do no wrong.  “Oh, I see Windows has got another update out for it this month…” says a Mac user.  (I’d love a month with only one update).  This despite the fact that in the past month or so, we’ve had a new point release for Mac OS and countless updates for whatever happens.  Oh, it’s all cosmetic apparently.  Yes, it is… that’s what I’d do… release a security update for “cosmetic” purposes.

Is it more stable?  It depends, I suppose, on what one chooses to do with the OS.  I managed to delete the installer application on the Mac and couldn’t install anything after that!  Never had that one happen in Windows.  Might be my ignorance, mind you.  I do have some.  It’s probably a Microsoft product, according to Mac users.  I get the feeling that some Mac users are blase about things like security and it’ll end up biting them.  You know the type, using Adminstrator level accounts for everything.

Oh, and whilst I’m thinking.  Apple Boot Camp for the new Intel processors!  Let me get this straight, some Mac users are getting excited because they can now run Windows.  Yet, too many of the one’s I know like to take potshots at Windows every time they get a chance!  Why do you want to run it then?  Hey?  Come on.

Having said that, I do like to point out that I think of computers in the same way that I think of tin openers.  .  Well, you know, it’s just a means to an end and when was the last time you said to some one “My tin opener is better than yours.”