I had been planning to replace my iBook (I know it isn’t the most positive post, but it has my specs, and most of my performance issues were solved when I upgraded to Panther) this year having hit the end of my 3-year upgrade cycle. Given a lackluster Macworld Expo 2005 in January and some personal purchases, I was forced to hold off on it. In the end, when the bomb dropped I resolved to put off my purchase of a new Mac by two years until the end of 2006 or rather the release of revision 2 Mactel iMac.

Man, that decision is killing me.

It seemed easy at the time. I wasn’t really using my iBook all that much anymore as I was leveraging the dual-processor workstation (upgraded from Athlon 1600+ MPs to 2800+ MPs) for personal use and my work laptop for professional use.

Things are different ever since I did a clean install of Tiger this year and found this neat network keyboard and mouse sharing application called synergy. I think the linch pin has been my recent work with Imprints. I’ve been using the iBook to work out the Information Architecture.

While I’m not sold on Tiger for older hardware (it’s no better than Panther in my opinion), some of the software available is truly amazing. Here is my Top 7:

1. Quicksilver – an application launcher but so much more.
2. Fink – an opensource OS X port of Debian apt-get
3. jEdit – my favourite text editor
4. Omnigraffle Pro – Visio’s better looking, although sometimes dumber twin
5. Transmit – By and far the best FTP/SFTP program for the Mac
6. Unison – By and far the best Newsgroup reader for the Mac
7. ViewIt – The only picture viewing application that reminds me of XnView

Anyway, the new iMac G5 is a stunner, and had Apple decided not to change platforms I’d probably be using one to post this message. Hopefully he gets smart and includes:

• DVI input so I can use the iMac monitor for my PC
• DVI output and screen spanning out-of-the-box so I can run the iMac in dual-head mode using my TV
• 24-inch form factor (so I can at least be at par with Kev’s Dell monitor)

sigh

Such is the life of a Mac Fan-boy with no money.

Update (2006-04-04): Apple is way ahead on the intel transition and have released intel versions iMac and Mac mini. They also introduced the MacBook Pro. They’re fast—and they all boot Windows XP. Still looking for a virtualization solution for windows XP—dualbooting sucks. Maybe I will be able to afford one by the end of the year (granted with Catering being such a huge expense…looks unlikely).