so, apple refreshed the imac line yesterday and…well, i just ordered the top of the line model. i feel like i need to justify it, because it may not seem rational to some people. anyways:
- it plays games (as in PC games) – and plays them well. it’s the first iMac with a really decent video card (NVIDIA 8800 GS) that can handle most current games pretty well. i’ll be installing Windows Vista Ultimate x64 via Boot Camp.
- i can sell my gaming PC…which, by the way, is the worst technology investment i’ve made in a long time. i bought it about 6 months ago for $1400 and i’ve been struggling to sell it on craigslist for $600. the parts add up to over $900 (based on today’s prices) and still, nobody wants it. PCs are total cheap-ass commodities these days.
- i’ll probably also sell my dell 24″ lcd monitor to clear desk space, though it’ll be indulgent fun to use it for a while as an external monitor for the imac. 2 x 24″ = 3840×1200.
- i’ll also sell my apple tv, since the imac will be a permanent fixture in my home office.
- the imac will serve as the ‘main home system.’ the mini is the tv room system, the air is my use-anywhere system, the macbook is amo’s, and the macbook pro is my work system. so naturally, we need a main home system.
- i get a $550 discount off the retail price. ’nuff said
iTunes Store opened for business 5 years ago today, April 28, 2003.
- Pricing: $.99/song then, $.99/song today
- Sales: 1M songs sold in first 5 days; 5B sold to date. As of Jan ‘08, the #1 music retailer in the US.
- Selection: 200k songs then, 10M songs today (plus 20,000 audiobooks, 10,000 music videos, 350 television shows, and 1000 feature films)
- Users: 50M accounts today
- Regions: US only then, 22 countries today
Related: iTunes to seize 28% global music sales by 2012 | 9 to 5 Mac
Q2 ‘08 numbers are in:
- Best Q2 in history
- Revenue up 43% yoy
- Mac sales up 51%
- Traffic in Apple Stores up 57%
- 1.7M iPhones sold, and confidence in selling 10M this calendar year.
tough times, tough times…
Apple Riding a 51% Jump in Mac Sales – New York Times
Raised Price Target:
- Merrill Lynch raises its price target from $180 to $186, maintaining their Buy rating.
- Deutsche Bank raises its price target from $225 to $235, maintaining their Buy rating.
- Citi raises its price target from $218 to $248, maintaining their Buy rating.
- ThinkPanmure raises its price target from $165 to $195, maintaining their Buy rating.
- WR Hambrecht raises its price target from $218 to $238, maintaining their Buy rating.
Maintained:
- Needham maintains its $234 price target and Strong Buy rating.
- FTN maintains its $215 price target and Buy rating.
- Caris & Co maintains its $170 price target and Above Average rating.
- AmTech maintains its Neutral rating.
- Cross Research maintains its $225 price target and Buy rating.
- Piper Jaffray maintains its $250 price target and Buy rating.
- Soleil Securities maintains its $200 price target and Buy rating.
i’ve never really had a preference when it comes to hard drive manufacturers, mostly because i’ve never had one die on me…til now. my Maxtor OneTouch III 1TB just completely bricked, months after the crappy 1 year warranty ran out. our full itunes library was on it, and luckily i’d made a backup a few days before. after reading online a bit, it seems lots of people have customer service horror stories with Maxtor.
anyways, my new preference is for Western Digital. i love my new WD Passport 320GB drive, which i use with the Macbook Air. it comes with a nice, short USB cable which also powers it.
drives are so cheap these days, you really should backup every drive that has anything of value on it.
Time Machine is the easiest solution, but it’s overkill for me. i don’t need old versions of files, and the default backup interval of 1 hour is just too much (use something like TimeMachineEditor to set it to daily or weekly). say you download a big video file to your desktop; TM will start to back it up within the hour, which is a complete waste of cycles and space. also, a complete restore from TM takes a long time: you have to boot up with the Leopard install DVD first, and then it takes a few hours to restore.
my choice is SuperDuper!, which creates a bootable clone whenever it’s run.
cool freeware for mac & pc: desktoptopia is a little app that changes your desktop wallpaper at set intervals. you tell it what categories you like (or add your own feed) and those wallpapers show up, hand-picked by their “über talented designers.” so far the images i’ve seen look pretty good. a nice way to keep your desktop feeling fresh.
From Gartner’s Q1 report:
- Mac sales: 32.5% year-over-year growth in the US
- US average: 3%
[From Mac sales beat industry average tenfold in Q1]
there’s already a lot of buzz about the iPhone becoming a great gaming platform (Quake 3 running on iPhone). now TechCrunch is reporting on a stealth startup working on a location-based social networking app:
The startup behind the new application won’t let me disclose their name yet. But the application is awesome. It shows you everyone around you who has it installed on an iPhone (default privacy is set to off, but can be changed). Users can scroll through nearby users, and set filters for men, women or age ranges. If you find someone interesting you can pull up their profile and ping them. If they respond you can start a chat, on the phone or in person. Of course, they can also choose to block you.
[From I Saw The Future Of Social Networking The Other Day]
