Last week I talked a bit about the experiences of my first week using an iPad as my main piece of writing hardware. I thought I’d covered the whole thing pretty thoroughly, but I just realized one topic I didn’t discuss: How weird it is not to use a mouse.

Okay. Confession time. I have been writing long enough to remember the days before the mouse ( Read more... )

Yesterday, I talked a bit about the experiences of my first week using an iPad as my main out-of-the-house writing machine. In particular, I talked about the hardware, but just as important really is the software. That’s what I’m going to talk about today.

The question of software functionality really breaks into two major categories: Writing/ ( Read more... )

Well, it’s now been a full week of having and working with my iPad, so this seems as good a time as any to do my first report/review (since a surprising number of people actually requested that I do so). To begin with, I guess I should talk about what hardware I’m using.

I talked to a lot of people who gave varying bits of advice about which model ( Read more... )

One thing I have to say about Apple, they certainly have their shipping processes wired. After receiving my keyboard, I was still able to track the process on the remainder of my order (namely, the iPad itself), which it turns out was coming to me direct from the factory in Shenzhen, China. I knew when it was scheduled to ship, and when it was ( Read more... )

As with so many big retailers these days, Apple is shipping various parts of my order to me separately from warehouses in different parts of the country. Yesterday, I got the first of those shipments.

Now, who doesn’t like the thrill of opening up packages containing items you’ve ordered? (There’s that consumeristic hedonism again.) But that joy is ( Read more... )

When I placed my order at Apple.com, they said that my shipment would arrive in 1-2 weeks. But the friendly folks at the Apple Store said that the web site generally plays it very safe in those estimations, and that if I ordered there I’d probably get my products faster than the listed time. So I really was left with no sense of certainty WHEN I ( Read more... )

Yesterday I talked a bit about my thoughts about Mike Daisey’s monologue The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs and how those thoughts had been rattling around in my head. Today I want to take a closer look at my own ongoing bout of consumerism.

I’m a writer and a bit of a technophile. I also really like Apple products. I’ve got a Mac Mini as my ( Read more... )

I’m a Mac guy … always have been. I don’t have anything against PCs, but I’ve always just kind of liked Macs better … and I’ve been lucky enough to be able to fulfill all my personal computing needs with their products. Given any choice in the matter, I don’t see that changing in the near future.

Recently, I’ve had a pair of reason to think about ( Read more... )

This video is only going to be funny to some people ... but I'm DEFINITELY one of them!

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I ALMOST want to get into chat roulette JUST so I can try to run into this guy!

My friend Sean posted a link to an awesome mash-up video where the moves of Fred Astaire are synched to the music of Michael Jackson. That'd be interesting to me any time (you may not know it, but I'm a big fan of classic movie musicals) ... but it so happens that just last week I watched Band Wagon, the movie that most of the dance sequences come ( Read more... )