Yay Hurray it’s iMac Day!

It’s my favorite day, when Apple rolls out new products and software! Let’s dig in, shall we? I’ll start off with the new iMac. I’m not gonna lie. I don’t think I care for it. I like the bigger, cheaper sizes. (I still remember they day they abandoned the 15″ iMacs… So long 17″, I’ll keep you around.) I like the upgraded video cards, the bigger hard drives, the faster chips. It even meets the EnergyStar requirements, for you hippies. I love the aluminum enclosure. But you know, the problem for me is, that black glass around the screen. It looks awful and distracting and weird to me. DB says that it would be prudent to wait until I see it in person to make my decision, so I’ll wait. As for buying one? Don’t get me wrong, I’d love a new iMac and all, but I’m not due for a new one until spring of 2009. In good time I will buy a new one, don’t worry.

iLife ‘08 came out today too. New features look slick. In iPhoto, I like the Events feature. Since most people take pictures at events (weddings, birthdays, bar crawls, etc.), it only makes sense to organize them that way too. iMovie was completely rewritten too. Before, it was Final Cut lite. Nice enough to use, but the new version makes it even easier to jump right in. I definitely need to get a video camera. Also, storing all your clips in a library is an awesome idea. You never know when or where you’re going to need to insert that clip of Tyler getting hit in the balls. Garage Band has some cool new features. Better management for scoring, multi-take recording, dynamic effects (finally! I’ve been wanting that for a while now) and visual EQ. The new Magic Garage Band deal looks kind of gimmicky to me, especially with the goofy animation, but I guess I’ll have to play around with it to see. Even more shocking was that they released a new Jam Pack today. They haven’t done that in years. The new one centers around vocals, adding Gregorian chant, beat boxing, and different choirs and ensembles. I’m hoping it will include some Tuvan throat-singing, at least until I figure out how to do it myself. And finally, there’s iWeb. My favorite new feature with iWeb is that it finally supports non-.Mac hosting. Before you could only automagically upload to a .Mac site. If you wanted to host your iWeb site somewhere else, you had to manually ftp your site up from your Sites folder every time you made a change. It’s got some new googley integration too, and I’m guessing there are a few other neat features tucked away. And yes, I did place my order straight away. I’ll have my full review in a couple of days when it shows up.

iWork ‘08 too? Does the fun ever end? Keynote? Wank wank. If I were the sort of jerk that had to make presentations, I would love Keynote. It’s about a million times better looking than anything Powerpoint shits out. Pages is awesome, I will admit. Microsoft Word may be more powerful than Pages, but all that power (read: feature bloat) don’t mean nothing when you’ve got a 20 page paper, double spaced, in 12 pt. Times New Roman. Pages focuses on form, making it easy to create beautiful documents. The big announcement though is Numbers. It’s been rumored since iLife ‘06 came out, so it’s neat to see it finally released. With the addition of a spreadsheet app, iWork takes on a new meaning: It’s a big raised middle finger to Microsoft and the “we’ve-delayed-Mac-Office-2008-once-again” crew. Not only is iWork cheaper ($79 vs. $399? Who do they think they’re kidding?) but it’s more Mac-centric. And not as bloated.

All in all, a good smack in the mouth of Apple stuff. Now we just have to wait until Leopard come out…

Update! Transmission, my favorite Bit Torrent client for downloading warez free and legal Creative Commons music The Bible and other books about Jesus was updated today. One of the big new features? Selective downloading, i.e. only downloading the files you need out of the whole pack in the torrent. Whoohoo!

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