I thought about taking a few moments to recap but, better yet, I'll share it straight up. Here's the link to Cous' recent adventure involving a mall, Wolfgang, Apple and Starbucks. Enjoy.

If you can't tell, my new theme is a kind suggestion to the new laptop I hope is under the Christmas tree. :-)

Feel free to have one shipped to my place. Or if you'd like, donate the money via PayPal (on the right side of the page). Either of those works.

One of my favorite WDFN sports radio personalities, Bob "Wojo" Wojonowski, often yells "Gimmick!" at various headlines, celebrity news, and sports trades. I hope Bob yelled out when he heard that Apple released their web browser for Windows.

Frankly, my thoughts are that it is a lot of nothing. For many it is the greatest thing since sliced bread, simply because of the company name that developed it. For others (mindless Microsoft cronies) it is a spawn of Satan, never to be used. Then there is me, Mr. Cynical. I don't like Apple or Windows. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are on my LeBron James list. If I met them, I would treat them casually and coolly, not fawning over them or giving them undue respect. Simply a polite hello is all I would extend. But as I was saying...

The Safari-for-Windows experiment is a sham. It's not super fast. They claim it's much faster than Firefox and Opera, but I've yet to see it load pages any faster than any other browser on my machines. It's not super cool. If you like the iTunes style and format, you'll probably enjoy Safari. Personally I think iTunes is the biggest waste of space since Courtney Love so I'm not falling over everyone to download Safari.

A gimmick is when you release a device that will only use Web 2.0 applications to protect your slow-as-crap-EDGE-data-network iPhone. Boo that. Sure, Apple wants developers to build Web 2.0 applications, and in order to run them on the iPhone, they have to work in Safari. So they need it to test it.

Apple is touting that they had over 1 million downloads in two days. Great. I'm happy for you. It'd be nice to get a read in two months of how many people are using it. That will be the real test.

Safari on Windows. Yawn.

I do not doubt that Steve Jobs had ulterior motives when he released his blog-style opinion of DRM. The legal issues Apple is facing in Europe no doubt played a part. But the important thing to consider, in all of this, is the real problem with DRM and the music industry.

For you regular readers/conversationalists, you no doubt know that I hold no positive feeling for the RIAA, the MPAA, and DRM in general. Acronyms aside, I basically loathe the Big Business Knows What Poor Starving Artist Needs idea that permeates our entertainment society today.  Even Courtney Love took five minutes from her busy life to pen an anti-RIAA piece (those who have seen the Roast of Pamela Anderson should be laughing hard about Courtney Love right now). Granted, her thoughts are from several years ago, but they still stand. The industry people make a significant majority of the money earned off of CDs and downloads (which, by the way, the RIAA believes should cost significantly more).

The real point, I think, is simply this: the industries are adverse to the idea of change. They want the consumer to continue to purchase their products in the same way as they have in the past. For a long time, the music industry itself was opposed to the downloading of singles, despite the obvious signs of consumer demand for that. They (the industry) prefer you, the listener, to buy an album worth of songs at the same time, often times giving you one or two radio singles with several average tracks to fill out the album. What does this mean? Instead of selling those two singles ($1.98 on iTunes), the industry just sold ten or twelve songs for $13.99 - $17.98, or even more, depending on your shopping preferences (BestBuy vs. Borders vs. your local record store, for example). If you were Big Business, which model would you choose? Clearly, you'd choose the most profitable one. But when your customers flock to a different medium, will you stay behind the curve, or ahead?

The RIAA is, frankly, staying as far behind the curve as they can. Apple's current DRM technology means that users must go through the process of licensing each device they wish to transfer their music too, restricting their ability to license devices to a certain, small number (I don't recall what it is). Well, that works alright now when users have one computer and one iPod, but what happens when someone, like me, doesn't want to use an iPod? What happens when the user accumulates multiple computers, devices, etc. to the point of not being able to put the music on all of them? Does it seem fair that I can't put the music I purchased on my second device, when I am perfectly capable of playing my CD on every single CD player known to man?

DRM is a bad thing. It doesn't benefit the cosumer at all, and it really doesn't benefit the artist either. Ask them. It only serves to aid those raking in the billions off of us, the consumer. Perhaps we should cause more of a stink then we already do. But I bet we still keep buying crappy music for its overpriced rates, even though we really don't like it.

It seems quite plausible that I merge everything into this template, dumping the current one you see at dsimmer.com (the homepage). This means you can expect some tweaking here and there on the site for the next few days, so stay tuned. If you've noticed, I've installed a few new Plugins into the site, perhaps most obviously the Snap Previewer. If you're on the site, you'll notice it when you hover over links. Let me know what you think.

My post, Why My Next Laptop will be a Mac, ended up on Digg and garnering a decent amount of attention. Considering it's Digg, I received tons of negative and often-humorous comments there (for example, "Who cares? Who are you? Why the hell should I keep track of what laptop you will use?") but some quality comments here on the site.

I've exchanged a few bits of communication with a fellow developer who happens to be an MCP and have a bit more qualified code experience than I. Hopefully it will garner some appreciated tips back and forth.

In April, I built my own desktop, much to the celebration of 7 of my housemates and chagrin of the other (long story). Desktops, easily configurable from a hardware standpoint, can be relatively inexpensive, and you can always add a hard drive or memory or whatever you might wish 6 months after you build it. Laptops, however, are a different story. Often times it is a "you get what you pay for" situation. Let's face it, you cannot easily upgrade the screen, for example, if you decide it is not big enough. I have never had a new laptop. In fact, I did not have a laptop at all until a year ago, when a friend's fortunes (old laptop died, parents bought her a new one) resulted in my acquisition of a cast off, 5-year old Dell machine with a dead hard drive. Since then, Giles' personal laptop has rendered itself unusable, leaving us with only one quality working computer (when two computers run through one monitor, you can only use one at a time). Now that we have a used laptop to replace Giles' Gateway (temporary fix, I promise), I figured I would look for a new machine for myself as well. Which has led me to decide on a Mac. All that being said, here's why.

1. Operating System.
   1. While I am not a "Microsoft Hater" (I loathe Steve Jobs more than Bill Gates, to be competely honest, but that is another post in itself), I am convinced to stay away from Vista until at least the first service pack is released. It has taken them too long to produce this new OS and yet it lags far behind Mac OS. Many of the features they intended to build into Vista have been left out. Internet Explorer 7, a bloated waste of hard drive, is still built into the operating system like IE6 (also a bloated waste of hard drive) is in XP. Program installs and registries eat up valuable memory. Frankly, Mac OS is to Windows (Vista, XP, etc.) what Toyota and Honda are to American automakers. Where once the former were expensive and fringe, now their design, features, and cost (now that only applies to the analogy, not to Mac) are being lauded as the best in the industry.
   2. Granted the argument that Mac OS is "better for graphics and music" has become an old broken record, and frankly hard to believe. Considering that the industry leader, Photoshop, is used widely on both operating systems, it's hard to contend that Photoshop on Mac is "better" than Photoshop on PC. Garage Band, while easy to use, is in no way the "best" product available for music recording and editing. Considering it is included in iLife, however, makes its accesibility key when purchasing software.
2. Intel Hardware.
   1. Because Apple recently switched to Intel hardware, the ability to install both Windows and Mac OS on the same machine is very enticing. For me, the draw is not the ability to have both Mac and Windows for simply the sake of having Microsoft Office (for a free alternative, see OpenOffice.org) but to be able to test software, websites, etc. on two OSes on the same laptop. And considering that Linux builds are also a possibility, it seems that the options are endless (okay, not exactly endless, but you get the point).
3. Diversification
   1. Between Giles and I, we have several computers. Granted, they are almost all old and underpowered (with the one exception), so I have taken to using them as test machines. Most of them have Ubuntu installed as the only or secondary operating system, which is definitely a nice and different feature, but I have yet to acquire a Mac. Granted, I hate Steve Jobs (again, that post will come soon), but that doesn't discount the fact that some of the things his company develops are great and belong in my ever-expanding Electronics and Technology Division of DSimmer Enterprises (my second bedroom).

Granted, the eventual purchase will probably happen after the next update to the Mac OS. While I gladly bought my PS2 at $120 just before the PS3 released, I'd rather wait until the new software comes out so that I do not have to purchase the upgrade. I hate purchasing upgrades (I hate the idea of it, in fact) so I can wait a few more months, especially because I hope to have the money saved up by then. Even so, this is a guarantee from me. Very soon, I will own a MacBook.

I need mobility. It's a fact. I'm not usually in the same place more than a few hours. I travel a lot on the weekends. And it is really hard for me to not have my computer and my junk with me. REALLY hard.

So this is an open request. I am currently accepting all PC laptop donations, as well as Apple laptops within three years of age. The Apple machines must have an operating system, while the PC laptops do not.

Please contact me for shipping information.