Installed Final Cut Express HD. This is the next step up from iMovie for video editing. As I understand it, “Express” is the Lite version of Final Cut Pro. At first glance, it reminds me of Adobe Premiere in that it’s packed with features and will have a bit of a learning curve. But it comes with an excellent tutorial DVD so, we’ll see. I can see myself running back to Studio 9 (Windows) in a pinch.
Twenty years of DOS and Windows has conditioned me to expect new things to be difficult. As I fired up the Mac in preparation for this evening’s attempt to have a video chat with Bass, I was mentally girding myself for a long, frustrating evening. Bass was already online and waiting for me so the first thing I saw was a little window asking me if I would accept a video chat? Uh, yeah, sure. And there was Bass, in all of his video glory (video).
We played with the lighting a little and he offered a few tips for good video chatting. But there was none of the futzing and fiddling and tweaking and rebooting. We were…chatting. A few more experiences like this I’ll be handing out Mac flyers on street corners. Now all I need are some folks to chat with. My .mac user name is smays.com. I look forward to hearing from you.
BTW, the video clip about (:30) was shot with my little Casio. George tells me about a handy little app that records iChat sessions. Stay tuned.
In time, I suppose I’ll come to appreciate the the more philosophical (spiritual?) aspects of the Mac invironment. For now, I’m finding delight in small discoveries:
I wonder if the Great Mac Mystique is really nothing more than lots of little “oohs” and “aahs” like these. I’m confident that, in time, I will come to appreciate, if not understand, the the more substantive differences between the two operating systems. For now, I will amaze the people of my village with tales of wonder.
Here’s the plan. Tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. I meet Henry and we head for St. Louis where I purchase my first Mac. I really think he is more excited about this Moment than I. This could be the let-down of all time but for a peek in my head, pop Sergeant York into the DVD and FFWD to the scene where a drunken Gary Cooper gets knocked off his mule by a bolt of lightening and stumbles into Walter Brennan’s church, where they’re singing “Give Me That Old Time Religion.”
If they guys at the West County Apple Store could pipe that song over the sound system as I walk up to the counter, we’d have us pretty good TV spot. My plan is to see if I can wait a few days before I crack the seal on the new toy. Just to fuck with the Mac users a little bit.
Do people still get what we once called “new car fever?” A completely irrational, irresistable desire to buy a new car? I buy a new Toyota every 10 or 15 years, so I don’t suffer from this particular affliction. I am, however, suffering from Mac lust. I want one of the new MacBook Pros. I have a couple of computers at work; a year-old Dell here at home; a perfectly good ThinkPad. I do not need another computer. But I want one. I have never used a Mac. Don’t look forward to having to learn a new operating system or move back and forth between Mac and PC.
I want a Mac because they are cool. And all the cool kids have them. They are sexy. There is no logic or reason at work here. This is happening in the lizard part of my brain. I’ve thought about sneaking over to St. Louis to the Apple store and putting my hands on one of the new MacBooks. But that’s like saying I’ll just lie down on the bed next to the super-model, but we won’t “do anything.” If I walk in that store, I’ll walk out $2,500 poorer. So I’m holding on. Like a junkie trying to survive the shakes and chills and maybe in the morning I won’t want that fix.
In June of 2002 I finally got DSL service. For two years prior to that I paid $100 a month for an ISDN line (128kbps). That’s just Internet, mind you… local and long distance extra. Pricy, but the alternative was dial-up. I’m currently paying $65 a month for 3 meg DSL access.
Today a nice young man at Sprint upgraded me to 5 meg DSL service for $40 per month. In a perfect world, someone from Sprint would have called or emailed something along the lines of, “Mr. Mays, as a long-time Sprint customer, we wanted to let you know you can get improved services for less money. Shall we sign you up?” But I’m not complaining. I’m thrilled I lived to see this day.
Sony Ericsson has introduced a couple of new Cyber-shot digital camera phones that come with 3.2-megapixel cameras and are designed to work with Blogger. Snap a picture…bada-bing…it’s on your blog. The cameras are equipped with more goodies than most manual cameras, including autofocus, red-eye reduction, digital zoom and a flash. They also come with a music player, video player, FM radio, push e-mail, a memory stick slot and 64MB of internal memory. Google will also be made the standard search engine on all Sony Ericsson phones with Internet access. [Thanks, Morris]
Fill your home with sound, not stereo components. Keep your music collection at your fingertips, not in countless CD cases. Change the way you experience digital music. For $349, iPod Hi-Fi delivers crystal-clear, audiophile-quality sound in a clean, compact design.
Might have to have me one of these. We probably turn our stereo on 3 or 4 times a year. I think I read that Apple has sold 10 million iPods. If 1% of them buy one of these… 100,000 at $350?
“Rural Americans are less likely to log on to the internet at home with high-speed internet connections than people living in other parts of the country. By the end of 2005, 24% of adult rural Americans went online at home with high-speed internet connections compared with 39% of adults in urban and suburban areas.”
— Pew Internet & American Life Project of high-speed Internet access in rural America
May I add one of my own? When you send an all-company email, please put the recipients in the BCC field so we don’t have to scroll through 300 names. And please, try to resist the impulse to reply-to-all with something witty like, “I couldn’t agree more.” The reply-to-all button should automatically include something along the lines of “This is a Reply-to-All from a Clueless Ass-Clown” …right at the top of the message.