Rumors and speculation, as usual for Apple events and products were at an all time high and yesterday was the big day. Well, it came and went and it looks the majority of the internets are a bit let down. It would be hard not to with all the expectations folks were forming in the their creative little minds.

The majority of the complaints are that it doesn’t bring anything new to the table and it’s nothing more than a giant iphone or an ipod touch. On a cursory glance, one could see why someone would come to that point of view without testing the product at all.

My thoughts are that it really could be a game changer. Most folks are focusing on what’s missing, and not what it is designed to do.

According to Steve Jobs, the iPad’s purpose is to “browse the web, enjoy and share photos, videos, music, play games and read books.”

If you’re looking to do something more than this with an iPad, then this device is not for you. Look elsewhere… for now.

Netbooks have become popular devices. People who have been gobbling them up get them because they’re inexpensive computers, but if you’ve spent time with one, they are horrible devices to use. The keyboard is cramped; depending on the quality, you would be hard pressed to get a Youtube HD video to actually play smoothly on it, and it’s a horrible resolution and screen size to look at. What do the majority of people want these devices for? It’s not to load Office on it and write books or essays. They want them to surf the web, read their email, and socialize, but the experience is horrible.

This is the problem that the iPad is providing a solution to. A lightweight device for surfing the web. They have removed the cramped keyboard, they have created a UI that works for a smaller screen and device, and improved upon the features that people purchase netbooks for, which is to surf the web (or at least the only thing it could sort of be considered good for) but made the experience more pleasurable AND they’ve added the ability to do music and photos and play games.

If you got excited about Chrome OS, they you should be peeing your pants for the iPad.

From the Google Chrome blog below: Replace Google Chrome with iPad and Google with Apple.

“Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web…

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet.”

Google is stating what the average computer user wants. Not the tech nerd bloggers. Apple does the same thing. Simplify the experience. Their design choices are for the benefit of most, not the few. The same thing happened with the iphone when it was released and everybody was crying about how it didn’t have this or that, and should have had this or that. People still bought it, love it and use it today. I think the very same thing could happen with the iPad.

The iPad is bigger than people realize and are giving it credit for. This is no Apple TV. This is a small step for Apple in their plans for the future.

“In many ways this defines our vision, our sense of what’s next.”
– Jonathan Ive

Also, check out this guy’s thoughts. They’re better written than mine.
A Message to the Internets regarding the iPad – Michael Pusateri

UPDATE: Thanks to Clayton for sharing this video with me. It’s worth a good laugh. Hitler and I don’t see eye to eye I guess.

[youtube link for mobile visitors]

Hope that helps anyone who may have had questions about this feature. Let me know if you have any questions. This kinda thing is actually kind of fun to do, so maybe I can another quick screen-cast to help someone along.

Amazon is selling the Mac Box Set, which comes with all 3 for the price of $134.99, which is only $5 more than just buying the Leopard upgrade by itself. Now is the time to buy since Apple will be offering upgrades for $29 to Snow Leopard for users that are runing Leopard already. Users of Tiger and older OS will have to pay $129 to upgrade to Snow Leopard in the fall.

So what are you waiting for? Get it now! Also, the Mac Box Set Family Pack is only $148.95 if you’ve got more than one Mac you’re trying to upgrade.

If you’ve already got Leopard, you can also Pre Order Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard from Amazon for only $29. Not a bad deal folks.

Mac Box Set

Opening up the program you can see that it’s incredibly powerful and even overwhelming with all the amount of stuff available to do. As much as I like to tweak around and figure things out on my own, I thought it in my best interest to actually get a how-to book for Logic, especially if I want to have an understanding of what I’m doing, how it does it and why.

I decided to go with the Apple Pro Training Series: Logic Pro 8 and Logic Express 8 by David Nahmani.

I completed lesson one last night, which is titled Make Music with Logic Now!

The objective of the chapter is getting you used to the Logic interface and navigating around the program. I learned some really great keyboard short cuts that are going to come in extremely handy and I can already see that this book is going to be extremely beneficial in getting me up to speed not on just how to do things, but how to do them efficiently.

By the end of the first chapter, you create a finished track made entirely of the included royalty free Apple Loops and export it as an mp3 file.

Even though I was just learning to navigate through program, I had a fun time learning how to do things and tweaking things around. I’m looking forward to working on Chapter 2: Recording Audio.

In the meantime, I would like to share my final work of art from chapter 1. A little trip hop piece called New Day.

[RSS Readers, visit the site to listen to the song]

Also, if you’re interested in recording or learning Logic, this book seems like a great place to start. If you click on the link below and purchase it, you’d be hooking me up with a little kick back.

With this new Spring season upon us, as I tend to do from time to time, I’ve created a new ‘mix-tape’ that feels appropriate for the new Spring season of Life I’m entering. I’ve called it my Breathe iMix
.

Well, I’ve actually called it Breathe, but I made an iMix out of it and would love to share this lovely mix with you, oh faithful reader. I titled it Breathe after the song on U2′s album No Line on the Horizon. I really love that song. I built the rest of the list and track from there. I usually try to theme the songs in one way or another when I create these mix tapes. I feel they flow better when listening to them.

itunes left out a few tracks from the original mix that I created since they don’t sell them. Those songs are

My Dear Machine, Amazing Grace (Give it Back), Sooner than Later, and Around by Sixpence None the Richer

Hologram by Katie Herzig

and Lost Part I and II from the Viva La Hova project.

How to Create an iMix in itunes

How about you? Would love for folks to share what you’re listening to in this new Spring season. Feel free to share.

For those not technologically inclined, watch the video below to learn how to create an iMix in itunes, and then share the link.

On the bottom right hand corner, click on the computer screen icon to make the video full screen. It will help make things easier to see.

How to Create an iMix in itunes

“There are some customers which we chose not to serve. We don’t know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that. But we can continue to deliver greater and greater value to those customers that we choose to serve. And there’s a lot of them.”

Steve Jobs

This is why Apple’s products are in my opinion of better quality than many of their competitors. They have a laser beam focus on what they want to produce and who they are serving, and they choose to do it the best way they know how to. Some companies suffer from trying to be everything to everyone for the cheapest price possible. In an effort to keep costs low, they cut corners and their overall quality suffers, but they get the cheap price that people want to pay, but then people endlessly complain about their purchase.

They have made a choice to do the best they can and nothing less. Some people will accept that, some people won’t. The ones that don’t, they aren’t too concerned about.

In my life, I strive to not produce junk with what I do. When it comes to music specifically, I want to be the best that I can be, and do the best that I can do. This is why I practice on my own at home, and when I go to group rehearsals and practices, I’m ready to work and work hard for as much time as I have allotted. I may not be the best musician in the world, but I’m going to do my best to bring the best that I can be to everything I do. My DNA will not let me produce junk.

So far, I’ve had it one week, and it has been a world of difference. For a little perspective I was running an iMac that I got in January of 2002. It’s a 700 Mhz G4 with 768 MB of RAM. I spent so much time waiting…. ugh. Anyway, that problem is gone now.

This thing is amazing. Stats below.

Anyway, with a new computer comes transferring and installing new software.
I plan on sharing a list of software I have installed on the new computer and recommend you check out. I hope you enjoy it, and If you haven’t checked out the software, click the links and let me know what you think. We’ll start with web browsers.

Safari

Safari is my weapon of choice, and on OS X, it’s the default browser.

What makes Safari special?
Well, it’s fast! It looks great as well. It doesn’t take up a whole lot of real estate on your screen and isn’t a distracting eye sore and lets you surf the web without getting in the way. The way Safari handles bookmarks and the bookmarks bar is very elegant. Let’s say you have a group of websites you like to visit pretty consistently. With Safari, you can create a folder on your Bookmarks Bar, and add all those site there to make a quick drop down of your favorite sites to visit. You can also open all the sites in that one folder in their own individual tab if you’d like. Safari includes an embedded RSS reader, which would be a great way for a beginner to start learning and using RSS feeds.

Some other great features of Safari is that it renders photos the way they are supposed to look natively, allows you to resize text boxes if you need a little more space to type or see, has a web first ‘snap-back’ feature and Safari’s Find Features is the best of any browser out there. Check out http://www.apple.com/safari/ for more information.

Camino

Camino is an open source web browser developed with a focus on providing the best possible experience for Mac OS X users.

The Camino Project has worked to create a browser that is as functional and elegant as the computers it runs on (Macs, of course). The Camino web browser is powerful, secure, and ready to meet the needs of all users while remaining simple and elegant in its design.

Camino combines the awesome visual and behavioral experience that has been central to the Macintosh philosophy with the powerful web-browsing capabilities of the Gecko rendering engine.

What makes Camino special?

Camino includes native Ad Blocking that is ridiculously good as well as session saving. If a page has a search feature, such as youtube or Facebook, you have the option of adding that search to Camino’s search bar secion, re-ordering the search engines added or you can delete them. Camino also natively supports Mac OS X keychain, and maintains compatibility with Safari keychain entries so that it’s easy to switch back and forth and like Safari, Camino has a simple elegant look that let’s you browse the internet without getting in your way. Another favorite feature I love is that Camino supports has the ability to block Flash animation from sites. It’s a beautiful thing.

For more information on Camino, visit http://caminobrowser.org/

Opera

Opera started out as a research project in Norway’s largest telecom company, Telenor, in 1994, and branched out into an independent development company named Opera Software ASA in 1995. Opera Software develops the Opera Web browser, a high-quality, multi-platform product for a wide range of platforms, operating systems and embedded Internet products.

What makes Opera special?

Opera has a feature called Speed Dial that allows you to save up to 9 websites that you visit on a regular basis to individual square whenever you open up a new window or tab. You can then quickly click and the select the tab you’re interested in to visit that site quickly without having to type in the address. Opera also includes access to different search engines such as amazon.com, google, and others, and you can perform searches quickly by typing shortcuts in the address bar. Opera has great tab management as well, and if you hover over any tab you have open, you can get a quick preview of the content on that site.

Some other features that Opera provides are customizable skins, widget support, a quick and light mail client, mouse gestures, plug-in blocking and a feed preview (as well as a reader). To get more information on the Opera browser, visit http://www.opera.com/

Opera is fast and actually has a lot of innovative features that were stolen borrowed by Google for their Chrome browser. Google it.

Firefox

Firefox is an open source browser like Camino that is based on the Gecko rendering engine. Most folks have already heard of Firefox in some way shape or form.

What makes Firefox special?

Because of Firefox’s history it is a very customizable browser by having Add-on/plugin support. If there’s a particular feature or item you would like for Firefox to do, you can probably find it by searching their Add-Ons site. Some other features of Firefox include it’s own password manager (as opposed to using Mac OS X’s keychain), a smart location bar that quickly searches through your history of sites for what you are looking for, and 1-click bookmarking of sites. Firefox also allows you to add Searches from sites around the web, and includes a Session Restore feature should Firefox unexepectedly close.

Check out http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ for more information.

These are some of the browsers I downloaded for use on my new computer. There are plenty other browsers out there. What’s your favorite?

I’ve been fiending for a laptop for quite a while now. After getting most of my pennies saved up, I finally decided to purchase the type of laptop I wanted, one of the new Macbooks recently released by Apple.

In the morning decided to check Bestbuy.com to see if my local store had gotten any in stock, and according to the site they did not. I carried on with my work day as usual but I thought to check again in the afternoon before going home to see if anything had changed.

Around 5pm, I checked Bestbuy.com again, and the information had changed and I was told that my local store had Macbooks in stock for purchase.

I raced off to Best Buy immediately.

Once I got there, I went to the computer department and tried to find someone to help me. There was no one available. I waited for about 10 minutes or so and then decided to ask a Geek Squad rep for assistance. The Geek Squad girl pointed me to two associates who were talking to each other and said, ‘they should be able to assist you and they don’t appear too busy at the moment.’

I headed on over to them and asked if one of them could possibly assist me. They asked what I needed and I said I wanted to buy a computer, to which they replied that they were busy assisting other customers but as soon as they were finished they would help me.

The customers they were assisting were on the phone talking to someone, and the other was apparently having a discussion with their daughter about a laptop.

So I patiently waited. And waited. And waited. No less than 30 minutes went by before I was finally approached for assistance. I kindly asked for a Macbook.

The associate quickly replied, I’m sorry we’re out of them.

WHAT!?

I told her, I just checked online before coming here, you have them in stock according to the website.

She said that she had looked all over for them in the morning and couldn’t find any and that sometimes the computer or online website messes up with the information. She also said to try calling in to make sure they’re in stock.

I was flabbergasted. No effort was made to look for them, and my previous experiences trying to call in had proved quite futile.

I waited for at least half an hour and wasted over an hour of my time, for no reason. Had someone just taken the time to find out what I was looking for earlier, I could have saved my time.

That was my horrible Best Buy shopping experience. I STILL cannot get a hold of anyone trying to call in. Their website as of today says they have no Macbooks in stock. Too bad I can’t make sure by calling in.

This is why buying a computer at Best Buy sucks.

This is my local Best Buy store:

Tallahassee FL 1400 Apalachee Pkwy, Tallahassee, FL 32301
Their phone # is:850 942 2300, option 3 to speak to someone… which doesn’t work. IF someone does answer and you ask for the computer department, it will ring until it eventually hangs up. Horrible.

Enjoy this little bit of little bit of fun being poked at the iphone courtesy of E!’s The Soup.

That’s for all my new iphone toting friends.

via TUAW

Head to to check it out. (click the itunes link to the left)

The album also features the original version of Bless the Lord featured on Tye Tribbett’s newest release titled Stand Out.

Here goes the argument.

Apple and Adobe are currently running a promotion where if you purchase an Adobe design suite, Apple will give you up to a $300 discount on your purchase of a new Mac.

Generally, these Adobe Suites run for $1,200-$1,500 if purchased brand new. This promotion however is an Educational program/discount. If you were unaware, Adobe sells their suites at a student prices around $300 (it can be a little more or less depending on the software package you select).

In addition to this particular offer, Apple is also offering a back to school promotion where if you purchase a new Mac and ipod, you can receive a rebate up to $299, essentially making the ipod touch free if you purchase an 8GB Touch (obviously, if you go for the 32GB one, you’ll receive a $299 discount, and you pay the difference).

Also, as part of the student discount program, Apple reduces the cost of Macbooks by $100.

All of these offers CAN be combined per Apple’s website.

That means, that for the price of a new Macbook, I would be able to get not only an Adobe Creative Suite but also an ipod Touch! Seriously, isn’t that a deal worth going for people? Not only that, but the Macbook is $100 cheaper. My sister, Keren works and Florida State University, so she would be eligible for the Faculty discount and be able to purchase the gear for me (I’m sure she wouldn’t mind) so all is well on that department as well.

I’ll break it down again.

$1299 (Macbook) + $299 (Adobe Suite) + $299 (ipod) = $1897 Purchase Price

$1897 – $100 (Education Discount) – $299 (Adobe Discount) – $299 (ipod discount) = $1199!!!

Someone tell me that isn’t a great deal!
So, are you convinced? Should my wife be convinced as well?

Info Links:
Creative Design Link:
Free ipod link:

Once you have created your remix, you can upload it to http://www.radioheadremix.com/ where listeners have the ability to listen to it and vote which ones they like the best.

There are five stems consisting of bass, voice, guitar, strings/fx, and drums. You can purchase the stems individually or as a whole on itunes.

I’ve never really done a remix before, but the idea intrigued me, and I happen to like this song, so I’m seriously considering purchasing all the stems of the song to try my hand at a little re-mixing.

There are a few kickers though with this promotion:

First, like I said before, you don’t win anything.
Once you upload the song to http://www.radioheadremix.com/, you no longer own remix (technically, you didn’t even before).
Since you don’t own anything you make anyway, you aren’t allowed to profit from it should you so desire.

So, basically, radiohead gets thousands of people to PAY to make remixes for them, they pick the one they like the best, and if they choose to, they make money off of that remix. They also get free publicity from the stunt (a la blog posts like mine) to promote their album.

Something I found ironic is that when this album came out, they allowed people to purchase it for whatever price they wanted, including free, but to remix the song, you’ve got to purchase all the individual songs. You ironically can pay more to remix this one track than what you paid to purchase it.

It’s actually quite a brilliant idea. Major props to radiohead then.

So, anybody planning on trying to do this? Check it out on .

For more information and for terms and conditions, click the respective links or visit itunes.

The performed their entire most recent album, It Won’t Be Soon Before Long live, but it looks like only 6 of the tracks made it into the album.

The album listing follows:

1. If I Never See Your Face Again
2. Makes Me Wonder
3. Little of Your Time
4. Wake Up Call
5. Won’t Go Home Without You
6. Nothing Lasts Forever

A digital booklet is also included.

The album is only sale exclusively on for $4.99.
if you purchase the album before March 31st, you are given the ability to purchase tickets for Maroon 5′s upcoming tour before they go on sale to the general public.

Click the itunes link to check it out.

How a MacBook Air baffled airport security: “Alternate title: The MacBook Air is a device, but it’s not a ‘Device.’

Programmer Michael Nygard is used to travel. He’s got the process down, from airport to hotel. Unfortunately, the TSA isn’t as prepared.

While passing through airport security recently, he was pulled aside and made to sit in the holding area. He watched as a gaggle of TSA workers examined his things, especially his laptop …

”There’s no drive,’ one says. ‘And no ports on the back. It has a couple of lines where the drive should be,’ she continues….’
“

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

Hmmm, is Apple making strides to become a ‘record label’ of sorts? This is certainly one way of doing it and being the exclusive holder of such live recordings will help set them apart from other online stores like amazon.com as more and more retailers are pressuring the record labels to go DRM free with their music.

If you’re in NYC, here are the deets:

Maroon 5 will be performing
at Apple Store, Soho
This Sunday the 24th at 7:00pm

Located at
103 Prince Street
the corner of Prince Street and Greene Street.

They will be performing “It Won’t Be Soon Before Long,” live and electric, from beginning to end.

Maroon 5 was Artist of the Week here, and if you haven’t checked out their album, it’s a good listen and can be found on

Their B-Sides album, The B-Sides Collection, can also be found on

I would LOVE to get a new ipod but that’s just not in the budget for me right now. The prices are $299, $399, and $499 for the 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB respectively. Seems a bit pricey, but when I purchased my first (and only) ipod, it was back when they had just released the ipod photo. It was the first color screen ipod and you could store and view photos on it and I actually paid $499 for it. It’s a 40GB model, and I haven’t quite filled it up just yet (granted I can’t watch videos on it).

Oh, they also updated the iphone too to 16GB. Don’t care much for that though.

Anyway, I know Valentine’s day is coming up. Anybody asking or giving?

I know a certain someone who happens to read this blog and just might be married to me who might be looking for a good gift for me…

Puppy, huh, what?

Apple.com