For those of us – myself included – that cannot simply afford to drop good coin on a 9-dimensional quantum quad core extreme dx processor, 5 gigatonne atomic video card, and RAM the equivalent size and girth of China, we have to make do with what little things we can.

In this case I’ve come across a selection of little tweaks you can do to speed up Photoshop. Maybe not by a massive amount, but when you’re used to 10 seconds of lag, taking a couple seconds off that can make a huge difference. To your sanity, and to the survival of you and those near by.

And so I’ve opted to take them from that forum and post the tips here, complete with screenshots. I apologize in advance as these screens are done on my mac. The concepts should still be the same though.

Preferences

Performance Tab

Navigate to Preferences > Performance:

1. Up the amount of RAM Photoshop is allows to use. Basically, the more the better, but remember that your computer needs some to do other things. I suggest somewhere between 70-80% if you can spare it.
   

   This is all relative. If you have 8 gigs of RAM 6.4 is a crap-tonne, but you still have 1.6 for the rest of your computer, which is decent assuming you’re not doing anything else crazy. On the flip side, if you only have 2 gigs, you donate 1.6 to Photoshop and leave 400 for the rest of the computer… this will probably make your computer divorce you, and you will lose the kids.

2. If you have a good video card, enable 3D acceleration if it’s available. I assume that letting your card do the work will help take the strain off of your CPU. If anyone with knowledge greater than mine on the subject can comment on this, please do. I’m guessing a bit based on common sense reasoning.
   
3. Keep your History States low. (This is how many times you can hit undo) The lower the better, but be practical. If you usually hit “undo” 20 times, then set it to 20. Mine is set to 40 because I’m a chronic “nudger” and it helps.
4. Lower your Cache levels. I don’t know what this does per say, but keeping it low seems to help performance. If someone can speak to this one as well, that’d be swell.
   
5. If you have a spare hard drive sitting around, consider hooking it into your rig and allowing photoshop to turn it into a scratch disk. That apparently helps a butt-load, though I’ve never had the opportunity to do so. Rigging one into my laptop would be a little difficult; Apple hates my soldering work so very much.
   

Type Tab

Navigate to preferences > Type:

1. You can turn off Font Preview, which can help if you have a whole mess of fonts. This may or may not become a total pain in the ass to those that nitpick fonts, but honestly Photoshop doesn’t seem to do the greatest job handling the renders. If you have a proper font management program, I’d suggest using that anyways to pick out your fonts.
   

Panel… Stuff

Go to your Layers/ Channels/ Paths panels.

Turn off the thumbnail previews, that will apparently help out a lot. I’d suggest doing this if your files start getting larger/ more complex to help out. Just remember that you will have to have descriptive layer names or you’ll start getting lost. I can’t really live without my thumbnails, but that’s because I am hopelessly visual in nature, and the ikle pictures help.

No Ickle is not a typo.

1. To do this, navigate to the panel(s), and under the palette menu, go to ‘Palette Options…’
   
2. Turn off your thumbnails. The Layers, Channels, and Paths panels all have this option.
   

Having said all this, if your hardware is truly in need of updating, these fixes will only help you so far.

Got one of your own?

If you’ve got a comment to make about my tips here, or have your own you want to add, please feel free to leave them in the comments. I’ll add them to the post!

Perfect.

So without further delay, here is my giant list of (mostly) free mac apps.

Communication

Adium

Adium is basically the chat client on the Mac. Since Microsoft’s version of Mac MSN looks and acts like the original Microsoft messenger did, people have tried to find different chat clients that can pick up the slack. I’m sure there are others, but Adium is my clear choice for this.

Out of the box, Adium supports 20 services including (but not limited to): MSN, Yahoo!, AIM, and Google Talk. Hell it even has support (albeit a little shaky) for Facebook and Twitter. Beyond this there is a large collection of plug-ins that extend the functionality of this already robust program.

It’s also got a slew of options to customize the look and feel of the program, Growl support, and a whole boatload of customization options.

There are only two major limitations to Adium, and I’m not entirely sure one is their fault. The first is that Adium supports the viewing of custom smileys, but to date I have no figured out how to add my own. The second is that there is no sharing box. This was a big blow to me, as I was using my sharing folder a lot with the windows version of MSN.

Beak

Raise your hand if you use Twitter. Yeah, you and a gazillion other people. With the recent super-adoption of Twitter, applications to sift through the mass of 140 character messages are becoming more plentiful, more powerful, and way prettier. I know a lot of people will advocate for TweetDeck, and I wouldn’t disagree; TweetDeck is a fantastic program if you’re really into Twitter and/or have large screen real estate.

For those of us who have small screens, TweetDeck is just too big to be practical. It literally takes up 90% of the screen, and that’s not something I want when I’m doing quick alt-tabs. Beak fills in this role quite nicely.

Thankfully there is a huge list of Mac-Twitter applications in the Twitter wiki, but the big ones are generally TweetDeck, Twhirl, Twidget, and Tweetie. Beak isn’t as big as some of the others and it’s still in Beta, but since it’s most recent release it’s been amazingly stable and does everything I need. Tweetie is pretty solid, and similar to Beak (with some differences), but I don’t really want to pay 20 dollars American just to use Twitter (yes I’m aware there is a free, ad-supported version. That’s not much better.)

You get everything you’d expect from a solid twitter app – posting tweets/DMs, ReTweet, Favoriting, mentions, search, and link statuses – but with none of the cost. Now you can’t have multi-user support, something I personally don’t need to worry about, nor do you get TweetDeck’s Multi-column viewing. Everything that is featured is offered in a tabular view, meaning that you can easily switch between views. It also has a neat feature to display a users twitter information inline.

Everyday

Firefox

Let’s be honest here. I don’t need to advocate for a browser that advocates for itself. I’ll say that I’m not a fan of Safari, as I’ve always found the interface to be a little wonky. I know there are other options out there: Camino, Chrome,  Flock, Opera, SeaMonkey, Shiira, and I’m sure there are many, many more. I’ve been with Firefox for a while, and it’s done me well. I’m not a zealot, but even I must admit that Firefox does it’s job, and it does it well.

Hell I’ve been using Firefox since it was called Phoenix. That’s how old school I am. Kick it.

Thunderbird + Lightning

I’m aware the Mac comes with Mail and iCal, but neither of them are all that impressive. They’re light-weight, and do their jobs with minimal imagination. I tried mail out for all of 5 minutes before I was sick of it and downloading Thunderbird. Ditto for iCal.

Thunderbird is Mozilla’s local mail system. It has all the bells and whistles that you would expect from a mailing system, but it’s free. Sadly it’s not as polished as say, Microsoft Outlook – lets just pretend they’re not going to use Word to render emails for a minute – but it does it’s job and does it well. It has rule support, multiple account management, and a crap-tonne of other features making it a very appealing option to those who don’t want to log into a website to check their mail.

But what is an email client without a calendar system? Light-weight, yes, but not nearly as useful.

That is where Lightning comes in to play. Now on it’s own, Lightning is very much like iCal, if iCal tried a little harder. Lightning can hook into services like Google Calendar (so can iCal, I know) and allow you to actually create events, tasks, and everything else with amazing ease (something iCal does not do).

Now they’ve gone and developed a plug-in that gives you all of the abilities of lightning, integrated into Thunderbird. This effectively removes the need for an additional program running. One less thing running is always a boon to me.

Jomic

Back when Watchmen was coming out, I had no idea of the story specifics. This resulted in my having to read the entire story in one sitting. Now I didn’t mean for this to happen, but as it worked out Watchmen was a fantastic graphic novel, and Jomic was a fantastic comic reader.

Jomic is a sourceforge project, and though their website was obviously developed by a programmer, their program has a solid finish to it. Now I’ve tried a couple comic viewers for the Mac but I can assure you that Jomic was both the smoothest functioning and simplest to use.

It features nifty abilities such as being able to go straight into the next comic in the series (I assume this works off the concept that every comic is within the same folder), two page spreads, zooming, and keyboard navigation. If you want to read comics on your computer (those not in the ‘web’ format), Jomic is totally the way to go.

NeoOffice

There is absolutely no shortage of Mac text processors out there. Given that the list is as long as I am tall, it’s hard to pick out a sure-winner. NeoOffice is not by any means a sure winner, but it does it’s job.

Now I cannot explain all of the many things that NeoOffice apparently does, as I’ve only ever used the Text and Spreadsheet portions of it. What I can say is that from what I’ve used, everything worked as expected (minor visual hiccups aside).

I can’t gush over NeoOffice, because to be honest I haven’t had to use it that much. I’ve recently found myself gravitating more towards Google Docs, which is filling the need for a text editor pretty well.

Smultron

Everyone that develops on the Mac needs some sort of editor. Many swear by Coda, which I admit is a good program. The issue with Coda is that it isn’t free, and that doesn’t swing it with me. I ended up coming across Smultron and I haven’t looked since.

Smultron offers me everything I need from a code editor: Snippets, extensible colour coding, multi-file editing, project support, and automation commands. Now I’ll admit that it doesn’t have built-in FTP support, something Coda brags about, but it does work well with Cyberduck in allowing you to edit files you open and save them right to the server. This works just fine for me, though I totally understand the appeal.

Maintenance

ClamXav

I’ll admit that I’ve never really had to use ClamXav. That doesn’t make it a bad product, in fact it’s very simple to use. See the issue is that I have yet to run into a virus that would affect me. Having said that, it’s always good to be prepared, and that’s where ClamXav comes in.

Though its interface is far from sexy (nothing like having a giant frame with your disclaimer in it on the main panel) it does have a feature set that makes me happy. You can target specific folders for instant scanning, set up scheduled scans, and have a watch dog-style setup so that anytime a file is added to specified folders, they’re scanned instantly. Very handy.

OmniDiskSweeper

This is a very straight-forward program that has one goal: Tell you where all your Harddrive space has gone. I tend to run this every once in a while when I notice my hard drive space tanking out, and I cannot figure out where all of the space is being used.

Now OmniDiskSweeper isn’t a big program, nor is it all that impressive, graphically. It does, however do it’s job perfectly. It scans through your computer and lists off the main folders and the total size that they take up. From there you can drill down into the folders and find out what, specifically, is eating up all of your hard drive space.

OnyX

I love OnyX. It is pretty much your one stop shop for every day MacBook maintenance, tweaking, and general upkeep. Hell it even allows you to access functionality that would require you to operate a couple of programs.

It verifies your startup disk and file structure, it can run general system maintenance scripts, it can configure hidden parameters for things like Finder, Doc, Dashboard, Exposé, Safari, the Login window, and more. It can delete caches, it can clean out logs and files. It also cuts Julianne fries (no it doesn’t).

Basically, if there’s something you want to adjust to your MacBook’s settings, run maintenance scripts (I didn’t even know the MacBook had maintenance scripts), and generally do some spring cleaning, OnyX is your best choice.

XSlimmer*

This is the only program I’ve paid for in this entire list – hence the “mostly” in the title. To that end, Xslimmer is so worth it’s money that not buying it is just silly.

Xslimmer basically saves your computer from having to store binaries of code that aren’t required. Universal installers are compiled to run on either the new chipset or the old one. This requires you to have twice the amount of code stored in your app in order for it to work across the board. This is a fantastic idea for developers, but for those of us who only install and use the product, it takes up twice as much room as it needs to.

This is where Xslimmer comes in.

Xslimmer is quite literally a program slimming utility. You can either select programs for it to attempt to slim, or run the Genie, and have it list all of the products that you have installed to see what can be slimmed. It has a built in blacklist you can update to help it know what programs don’t operate properly when slimmed. You are also given the option to install programs “pre-slimmed” meaning that you drop the app into XSlimmer, and it will slim it down before installing it to your system.

It has backup and restore functionality as well, so if you slim a program and everything borks, you can restore the previous version of the code without any terrible aftermath. XSlimmer also allows you to report any programs that should be blacklisted, allowing you to contribute to the community!

I am pretty sure I saved roughly 6 gigs of memory from running XSlimmer the first time, but I can’t remember. I do recall that it was some obtusely large number though, and that makes Corey happy… and talk in the third-person.

Utilities

Burn

I recently had to make a couple copies of CDs for the place I am working at over the summer. Now as far as I can tell, the MacBook only comes with the “Burn Folder” which is all well and good if you’re doing a data cd. But what If I have to make a copy of an instructional video for a class, and I can’t keep the original?

Burn comes to the rescue!

Burn is a painfully simple burning program that allows users to backup, burn, or make copies of CDs and DVDs. What I really liked is that when you back them up, it allows you to make a backup as a mountable hard drive. This means that you can actually emulate the CD/DVD from your desktop should the need arise.

Amazingly simple, yet surprisingly powerful. Now I don’t know how it would handle copy-written material, but that’s not something I generally use my Mac for anyways.

smcFanControl

smcFanControl is one of those programs that you kind of wonder why it had to be made in the first place. I mean really, I shouldn’t have to download a program in order to tell my computers fan(s) “ohgodtoohotburninglapcoolthisthingdownmoreitburns” but sadly, that does seem to be the case.

smcFanControl is a tiny app that sits in your menu bar, and allows you to change the current RPM of your fans on a whim. You can create your own settings for quick swapping (I have Default, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000, MAX) and even has MacBook Pro support so that you can control your fans separately. It’s free, it’s tiny, and it’s saved my computer from melting while running intense Photoshop sessions. A total must-have.

Cyberduck

I used to use OneButton FTP, which I still think is a fantastic program. But when I moved servers, I had to change FTP clients because OneButton does not support SFTP or some other advanced connection options. So I went hunting around and eventually got my hands on Cyberduck.

Cyberduck does everything you expect it to do, and that’s pretty much it. It’s simple to use, easy to navigate, and can even detect local servers to connect to (a la Bonjour devices). It supports opening documents directly from FTP and saving back to, which is always nice. I’m not sure how common that is in FTP programs, but there it is.

It does everything the big, costly FTP apps do, but it’s free.

Oh, and there’s a widget that you can get with it to quick-upload things from your dashboard. So that’s handy.

FontExplorer X

Made by Linotype, FontExplorer X is a great way to quickly access, activate, deactivate, and test your fonts out. You can tell it where to install fonts (like the normal spot, or wherever you want them to go), you can organize them according to labels, and even have sets and smart sets.

Basically FontExplorer X has all of the features that Finder has for normal files, but for your fonts. Conveniently, FontExplorer X has the ability to buy fonts and download them direct from LinoType (much like iTunes).

All in all, it’s actually a very smooth process, and for those in the graphic design business, or for those new to it, FontExplorer X is a God-send.

UPDATE: Apparently this one is still downloadable, but no longer supported. I still recommend getting it while you can. You can always pay for the pro version, but once again: money.

DropBox

I really don’t know how much more I can really talk about DropBox. I have boasted it’s pure sex functional experience before.

I don’t think I need to get on my soapbox again, but let me say this: It’s a backup system that is simple to use, easy to install, and works. What more do I have to say that I haven’t said before?

Get it.

Senuti

I’ve only had to use this once, and that was only because I had to migrate all of my music that I had on my iPod. Now I know you can pull off the music from your iPod by making it act like a drive – blah blah blah – but when you do that, the file names are still encoded by the madness that the iPod runs off of. So what do you do if you need to get your music off of your iPod? iTunes won’t do it, so you have to go somewhere else.

Senuti is one of those solutions.

It’s fairly straight-forward, and does what it says it does. Plug in your iPod, select what you want to transfer, and you click the Transfer button. You’re asked where you want to save said files, and then it goes. Simple, to the point, no annoying setup times.

UPDATE: Apparently it’s not exactly free anymore, which is a damned shame. Still, if you only need to use it once (like I did) the trial will do you just fine.

Transmission

Not much to say about Transmission: it’s probably the easiest and best torrent program you can use for the Mac. Granted I don’t really download things often, especially on my Mac, but when I do have to Transmission makes it as simple as possible.

It’s got a clean interface (the most recent upgrade has improved it even more-so). If you’re in the habit of downloading legitimate, non-illegal files using torrents, Transmission is the way to go.

See what I did there?

VirtualBox

I heart VirtualBox. I don’t even need to run it all that often, but I still love it. As I use a Mac, it is generally thought that I cannot run any Windows applications because Microsoft and Mac don’t play well together. Well with the new Mac software, you can do a dual-boot into Windows. This is all well and good, but most people don’t want to have to reboot their computer in order to run Windows.

This has lead to programs such as Parallels, Coherence, and Fusion. The issue with all of these solutions is that they cost money. I’ll admit that they all work well and are probably worth every penny. I, however, prefer not spending money when possible. This of course has lead me to VirtualBox.

VirtualBox works by creating a sandbox environment for your new operating system. It’s sort of like picture in picture, with your Windows (or Ubuntu, or whatever) build running in a window. What really makes VirtualBox shine is that a) you can full-screen the environment making you “feel” like your in windows, b) you can make network drives to folders in your Mac (allowing you to share files between builds), and c) you can customize the beejeezus out of your box. How much RAM you want, what ports are enabled, localization, everything.

If you’re looking for a way to run your install of Windows on a Mac, and don’t have any more money because you spent it all on your install of Windows, then make sure to check out VirtualBox.

Conclusion

So there you have it, a collection of programs I use on my Mac, and I’ve only paid for one of them. I think that’s a pretty good track record if I do say so myself. I hope that my quest to not spend money for programs will assist you, the reader, in doing much the same.

If you have anything to add to my list, feel free to comment them in this post.

Not at all.

For those who bother keeping up with my site, you will have noticed that I’ve recently been accepted to school for graphic design. Now I never actually saw any requirement for purchasing a laptop, and I prayed that I had dodged that financial bullet. Turns out that I did no such thing, as I was alerted via letter that I would have to purchase a MacBook for the course.

I was … unimpressed to say the least. Not only did I not know I had to purchase one (which would have affected my saving plans just a touch… roughly 1400 dollars), but I was being told that I had to get a device that I have little knowledge of or about. This does not make me a happy camper.

The start of it all

I bit the bullet and bought the standard MacBook (which I notice they’ve “cheapened” since my purchase. Had I waited I would have saved roughly 60 bucks. Woo.) I didn’t get any bells and whistles, as I figured I’d get them as I needed them. I placed my order, felt my wallet give a death shudder, and felt rather dirty. Please note that this was on a Saturday. It’s important to the story. It told me that my new MacBook would be shipping within the next 8 days (free shipping! YAY!) and I could expect it 8 days after that. Fair enough, I thought.

So Monday morning rolls around and I get an email saying that my Mac has been shipped. “Wow!” I thought, “that was fast.” Alright I’ll get it next week, which will give me loads of time to get used to the bastard. Tuesday after work, my mother hands me a letter saying that Purolator had come and missed me. “That can’t be my MacBook. It’s only been a couple days!” Wednesday morning I woke up early, swung by Purolator, and picked up my mystery package.

It was my MacBook. My order went from 16 days down to 3 days (4 if you include me getting it the next day). I have to admit that turn-around time like that is nothing short of herculean. My mind was blown, and I figured that Apple was working extra hard to try and convert me.

So what do I think of my new computer-turned-art?

It’s pretty.

From the second I opened it, to my current use of it (this blogpost has been entirely done via the new Book, as a bit of training for me) the whole thing has just been so damned pretty. no, not pretty; sexy. Sexy like that 23 year old teacher with the low cut tops. Sexy like the rich guys car down the street that he bought to make up for his useless penis. Sexy like those dreams that you don’t tell anyone about while you’re washing your sheets at 3 in the morning. That sort of sexy.

Everything works pretty much the way you expect it to.

It took me five minutes to get it all setup and started, which is something that the PC user in me geeked out over. The wireless setup was simple, and within moments I was up and running. Programs run smoothly, and I’ve yet to experience any crashes or oddities. All the weirdness is reserved for the input devices.

New buttons ahoy! Fuck you normal other buttons!

Where the hell is my Home key? How about my End key? Paging? nope, not there. Oh wait it’s all multi-key combos now? Excuse me while I blow my brains out. Why the hell would you remove common keys like that? Stupid users (like me) are used to them on their keyboards! I’m still getting used to using the function, alt, control, and option keys to do different things.

Now to rag on the mouse.

Whether it’s mighty or not, the mouse for the mac makes me want to kick puppies while flipping off an old lady all while stealing money from a blind beggars money can. The fact that I have to use the mouse in conjunction with the keyboard angers me so very, very much.

I’m a lazy person, I shouldn’t have to plug in a third party mouse that has a left, right, and middle clickwheel just to get what has become standard functionality. Even with the improved “two-finger” options built into the touch pad, I still find myself having to jump between the two inputs. This is not what I call simple, nor sexy. This failing sits in the “granny-panty” section of the sex market.

Built in programs are … cute but useless

iCal: sucks. TextEdit: Weak. Mail: Sucks, Front Row: totally useless. Preview: Waste of time. The list goes on. Don’t get me wrong, I like that there are basic versions of commonly used things… but there is such a thing as too basic. I ended up having to get more robust programs to handle everything. Not a bad thing, but somewhat annoying.

The battery lasts for-fucking-ever

Seriously now. When a battery can clear the 4 hour mark while playing music? That’s just impressive.

Overall I think I like it, though I’ll reserve my comments for until after I’ve had to do some serious work with it. I’m sure I’ll swear at it as much as I swear at PCs.

If this works as well as it says, then this is pretty much the best backup device for a home network I’ve ever seen. Granted it only really comes to life if you have the new Mac OS, but that’s how Mac has always worked. If you like their new toys, you have to play by their rules… and buy all their crap. It’s a dick business plan, but it works for them.

As I was saying, Time Capsule really comes to life when you combine it with Time Machine, which is a pretty slick backup program that comes with Leopard. I wont bore you with all the details (you can view them here) but the short of it is basically a backup as you go program that handles it all for you on the fly. It only backs up files that have been changed, which are used to stack off of the base image it takes. It’s pretty hot. On top of that it acts as a WiFi centre that features the new 802.11n mode and even allows you to share a printer as a network item.

If I had been raised on Macs I would be pre-ordering this so fast my mouse would be burning from my ferocious clicking, simply to make my house go up a notch on the sex-o-meter.

Item number 2: Apple TV

They’ve fixed it, from what I’ve been told. I’m going to just declare my ignorance here and state that I don’t know what they did wrong with the first version, and so I really cannot discuss that here. I will discuss how Apple is offering a free upgrade to everyone who bought the original. That’s just solid customer service people.

What I can discuss is their new game plan. Basically the new Apple TV is supposed to put movie rental places utterly out of business. I know that’s not the written intent, but when you set up your business plan the way Apple has… well it’s just hard to ignore. The general idea is that you can now rent movies from iTunes. You keep it for 30 days, but once you start watching it you have 24 hours to complete it. This is just what I’ve gotten from the Macworld meeting, so I assume there are possibly different plans.

The prices are pretty reasonable; with 2.99 for library titles, 3.99 for new releases, and 4.99 for total HD movies they don’t really seem to be heavy on the money pouch. On top of this, they’ve already got most of the major labels signed up so there isn’t going to be a shortage of movies to choose from. They’re also going to feature TV shows and a slew of other media types (Flickr integration anyone?) that will turn your TV into a haven of ocular goodness.

They’ve also added a bit of Social Web 2.0 to the mix with trend-viewing. The idea behind trend-viewing is pretty straight forward. You can see who else has rented this movie (anonymous or not, I have no idea) and what other movies they have rented. People are going to end up feeling mixed about this, but I’m sure you can opt out if you’re afraid of Big Brother.

I’m going to be honest. When I have my own place and a nice TV setup, I’m pretty sure I’ll own this. It really takes the pain out of movie rentals, watching TV, and it even broadcasts to wireless speakers. That’s just awesome.

Item Number 3: Macbook Air

This was the finale piece to the Macworld expo, and with good reason. It’s fucking amazing.

Seriously.

I could go on and on about this laptop, and it’s shear sex factor breaks the whatever the hell you use to measure sex as a unit in the first place. It’s thin, its light, it’s still got processing power. It’s every Starbucks bloggers wet-dream.

First off, lets start with the obvious: it’s thin. Please note my use of both bold and italics there, because they are the best tools I have to articulate my amazement. Go watch the ad, and the guided tour. The specs can be found here, and I have to admit that it’s actually a pretty solid laptop.

The one thing I noticed is that it does not come with a built in CD/DVD drive. this is pretty much the only weakness for the laptop itself, and once again proves that Mac are amazing at getting you to spend more money on their stuff. In order to get CD/DVD support, you need to nab one of their AirDrives (or borrow another computers drive, if what I remember is right). The other flaw is that it’s magnetically clasped, and something about that bugs me. Call me old fashioned, but I like my plastic, sliding clasps.

As I stated, this is the pro-bloggers wet-dream come to life, as it’s perfect for bringing about with you. Small, light, and still managing to provide a solid computer experience what with a full keyboard and reasonable screen-size. If I had to own a Macbook, this would probably be the one i’d go for, simply for the ease of transport it offers. That, and it would make my nerd-penis fucking massive.

Of course I cannot afford 1900 dollar starting price, but I’m sure they’ll come down in a little while. I’ll probably end up just waiting for when computers are chips inserted into your brain.

So that’s the run-down of my feelings on Macworld. To summarize: Apple knows what they’re doing. They’re going for markets that are otherwise faltering, and then throwing every creative bone right at them. They’re not directly competing with anyone, and yet their winning every fight. I still don’t think I’d ever buy a Mac, but goddamn they can run my entertainment system anytime.

Also, Randy Newman? Seriously Apple, you could have picked someone younger then 9 million? Is he a robot yet? Was that some secret plug for Macworld 2009? Randy-bots? I’m pretty sure he’s gone totally nuts. If nothing else it’s clear he hates what America is becoming, so props to him for that. I cannot find a recording of his Mac performance, but this was the song he played.

And that’s the end of my gushing.