Infrequently Noted

Alex Russell on browsers, standards, and the process of progress.

Apple is just toying with me

I'm sitting at home feverishly working on new Wiki features in preparation for my ass being out of the proverbial hot seat during FOSDEM, and what shows up in my well-worn maildir? The shipment notification for my new MacBook Pro.

I use my laptop for nearly everything and I've been frustrated with the speed for a while. The macworld keynote wasn't even over when, with some fellow uber-dorks from work, I trundled down University Ave. to see if I could get my hands on one of these things. 2 cores, each faster than my current CPU? Yes, please. Now. Freaking right now!!!

Needless to say, that didn't work. Who knew that they Apple stores don't get shipments of stuff until it actually ships? We all skulked back to work laughing nervously at ourselves, all kind of thankful that we didn't have to explain 3+ thousand dollars of new hardware to our respective S/O's. Not that I'd let a little setback like that stop me.

As soon as the Apple Store (online variant) come gasping back to life, my order was in. RAM: maxed. Hard drive: spindle speed, baby! I think I might have actually signed away my vote in the next presidential election in the process. I sure as hell wouldn't have noticed.

So it's finally shipping. I should be ecstatic, right? Kinda.

Problem is that I'm also an unrepentant Unix dork. This little Powerbook has so many configuration tweaks and external utilities installed that transferring to another system will probably take me the better part of a week. Last OS update, my mail client alone took two days to resurrect. All of this means I can't really trust new hardware enough to take it to conferences yet, even if it does arrive before I leave.

It's a cock tease in the form of a laptop.