I was so close...

...to missing out on the latest speed-bump of the MacBook Pro. My order was placed on Friday the 22nd. The computer was delivered to my new office on Monday the 25th, the day before Apples next Super Tuesday.

Not knowing that, on Monday night I sent an e-mail to my IT support guy, asking him to wait before ordering, after reading the rumors that new part numbers for the MacBook Pro series had been released. He e-mailed me back, telling me that unfortunately the order had already been placed, and that he in addition thought it would be another four weeks before delivery (at least here in Sweden) of the new machines. Tough luck, I thought to myself, remembering the old rule that there always will be something newer around the corner when it comes to technology, no matter how long you wait.

The corner turned the very next day, with another Apple Super Tuesday where the new MacBook Pros were released for almost immediate delivery. Fortunately, that's also when my luck turned. My support guy put in a (large) extra effort to see if he could arrange for me to get the new version, and succeeded (thank's Anders ;-) ). The scheme is as follows:

- I start out with the already delivered 2.4 GHz version, and set it up for the dual boot.
- As soon as I get the new 2.5 GHz delivered, I will migrate to that computer.
- The old (well, by comparison) one will be transferred to a leasing program. All thanks to first class IT support and a generous employer, willing to take a slight extra cost for this!

It's not about the speed-bump really, but the increased hard disk space (from 160 to 250 Gb) will come in handy since I will use a specific Boot Camp partition for XP, that I will primarily use mounted in VMWare Fusion. Before too long, I imagine that I also will want to triple boot with Vista. With OS X at hand, though, it doesn't feel like a very urgent need.

Actually, the primary reason for wanting the new MacBook Pro (aside from newest=coolest), is the multi-touch touchpad. I am currently tutoring a thesis on multi-touch user interfaces on iPod Touch, and it would be sooo cool to be able to use/test some of the prototypes that the thesis team are building.

On a side note, I'm really fascinated with the possibilities of multi-touch, especially in combination with a large sized touch display. If you haven't already stumbled across it, here is an awesome demo of such a setup from Jeff Han's presentation at TED Talks in 2006.

I had a nightmare

The other night, just about when I had placed the order for my new MacBook Pro, I had this nightmare, although a funny one.

I dreamt having the new Mac delivered to me. It was in a colorful box, all cluttered with text and specifications. A little confused, sure enough, I found the Mac logo there on the package.

Inside the box I found a laptop that was not fully assembled yet. One thing that stands out in memory is the processor: it consisted of a lump of coal with a few steel wires connected to it. I also remember feeling quite stressed from looking at some instruction video that was in the package, that basically consisted of a bunch of Windows 2000-greyish windows that flickered by, stacked on top of each other at hyper speed.

When I woke up, I realized it was my subconscious idea of the Windows platform, maybe inspired by the following video that I watched a few months ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k

Waking up I also realized that I had thought that I was at least fairly neutral when it comes to the old Mac-PC platform war, but my subconscious told me something else:

- You are a religious man! (and a geek too...)

When awake, though, I will still stick with my eclectic, non fundamentalist, "whatever-does-the-job" attitude. Actually it's more about a love for Apple products, that hate of everything not Apple. And without that grain of soundness, I think this blog would be totally uninteresting.

All in all I found the dream very funny, and I think that was what sparked my decision to start writing this blog.