MyFirstMac.com, a new site that appeared on Digg today, is a great site for those thinking of buying a Macintosh. I’ve already read through most of their content, and I’m impressed.

I’ve wanted to get a Mac for quite awhile, and I can see that this site could be a valuable resource in the future.

Ah, the much-awaited iPhone is now available. It’s a great product from what I’ve seen/heard, even now that it’s out. Unfortunately, it’s not the sell-out we expected (AT&T didn’t help there…).

What a lot of people forget is that the original iPod didn’t sell-out either. It took quite awhile to catch-on. We’ll see, I predict that it will do to the phone industry as the iPhone did for MP3 players.

EDIT: Well, maybe they’re not doing so bad after all.

If you head over to MacRumors.com, they’ve got some videos of Mac OS 10.5 “Leopard” up.

My favorites are the Stacks and Spaces videos.

I just installed a copy of the Safari for Windows beta. So…What are my first impressions?

First of all, it looks very Mac-like. It’s got a rounded blue scrollbar, brushed-steel window chrome, and the text fields glow blue when orcs are about when you select them.

Pages load at half the speed of Firefox, and there are rendering goofs as well. Pages that look fine in Firefox and IE sometimes have highly noticeable problems in Safari. Then there are less pressing design matters, like bigger, bolder text than in other browsers. There are AJAX issues, too. Safari is famous for it’s problems with AJAX.

There are some cool features, like an RSS reader that’s a few steps ahead of other browsers’. The interface takes some getting used to as well, me being used to Windows.

Final thoughts? It looks cool, it competes with Internet Explorer, and it’s an Apple product…but I’m sticking with Firefox!

There have been quite a few people who don’t like Mac OS 10.5 Leopard’s new menu bar. It’s nearly invisible and….Vista like. The dock’s a bit odd too.

No one knows if Apple will include settings to disable the interface “improvements” in the final product. Even if they don’t, I’ve got a hack for the menu bar (not sure what to do about the dock, though). (more…)

I’ve just compiled a list of all the things Apple’s been doing. Note that the last item on the list is unconfirmed. They may or may not be releasing new iPods this year. There’s a good chance the are, though. Those 5th Gen. iPods are getting a little stale. (more…)

At WWDC 2007 in San Francisco, Apple showed off a near-final version of the upcoming Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. The operating system, to be released in October, has a lot of new improvements. Microsoft barely manges to bolt on a new interface (and a couple security updates) to Windows XP in six years, meanwhile Apple majorly improves their OS, which was already way ahead of Windows. Here are some of the improvements Apple made:

• The Time Machine backup system
• Dock updated (including the new “Stacks”
• Core Animation
• Spaces, a Virtual Desktop tool
• Boot Camp. Want to dual boot Windows? Go ahead. You don’t need two computers anymore.
• iChat, iCal, and Mail upgrades
• DashCode: Make your own Dashboard widgets with a few clicks.
• And more, obviously.

The revolutionary OS will cost $129 USD. A lot cheaper than Vista, eh?

You can view the press release here, and also the OS X Leopard page. The Leopard page has some screenshots of the OS.

How interesting….

Apple has just released a public beta of Safari for Windows. Yes, you read that right. Apple’s web browser is coming Windows (Firefox is still better!).  Too bad someone found a security exploit only two hours after it was available for download. It’s beta, what do you expect? It’ll be patched pretty quick.

The whole idea of Safari for Windows reminds me of an old rumor. Could Apple be planning to release their iLife suite for Windows? Who knows. Personally, I don’t care. I want my next computer to be a Mac anyway.

An interesting rumor surfaced today. Could Apple and Google be planning something for Apple’s .Mac email service? There was a post on Engadget suggesting so.

There are several possibilities, supposing this rumor has any validity.

• .Mac could end up being powered by GMail
• Push GMail on the iPhone
• GMail integration with the Mac OS
• All of the above

There have been mysterious quotes from Steve Jobs as well. Is something being planned? Who knows.

Apple has released their new MacBook Pros with LED-Lit displays, and Santa Rosa chips. You can view Apple’s press release here. Take a look at the specs for the 15-inch $1999 model, the one at the bottom of the MacBook Pro line:

• 15.4-inch widescreen LED-backlit 1440-by-900 LCD display;
• 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor;
• 2GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, expandable to 4GB;
• 120GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 5400 rpm, with Sudden Motion Sensor;
• a slot-load 8x SuperDrive® with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) optical drive;
• NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 128MB GDDR3 memory;
• DVI-out port for external display (VGA-out adapter included, Composite/S-Video out adapter sold separately);
• built-in Dual Link support for driving Apple 30-inch Cinema HD Display;
• built-in iSight video camera;
• Gigabit Ethernet port;
• built-in AirPort Extreme® 802.11n wireless networking and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR;
• ExpressCard/34 expansion card slot;
• two USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire 800 port, and one FireWire 400 port;
• one audio line in and one headphone out port, each supporting optical digital audio;
• Scrolling TrackPad and illuminated keyboard;
• the infrared Apple Remote; and
• 85 Watt Apple MagSafe Power Adapter.

That’s pretty good. You can get a lot more for that $2000 now. Just upgrade the hard drive up to 160-200GB and you’ve got a great laptop.