Fire with fire, Apple with Apple
In the last couple of years I’ve become more and more dependent on my laptop (a beautiful MacBook Pro). Before, I used it to program, do email and surf the web. Now, in addition, I keep all my music in it. I don’t even buy CD’s any more, I buy directly in electronic format. I also use it as my photo lab and database (with Aperture), as my video-conferencing tool, and of course, to write this blog and keep track of other blogs.
This is fine with me. Every now and then I hear people talking about “getting away from technology”, or looking down on the internet as a medium that dumbs us down and shortens our attention span. Nonsense, I tell you, nonsense. I do have one problem with my dependence on my mac. When I come home, exhausted, after a long day writing code and battling compilers, I want to just sink into my sofa, take my shoes off and listen to some music. Of course, this means opening the mac and firing up iTunes. Before I know it, I’m checking email, viewing my friends’s status in facebook, and catching up on my article and blog reading. Yes, a whole day spent looking at a laptop screen.
That all is changing. This weekend I bought an Apple TV. The Apple TV is basically a storage device that synchronizes with your mac over your home network, and connects to your tv and hi-fi set. Now I don’t need the laptop to listen to music, and I can also watch all my photos in the big screen. The little box can also be used to watch films, some of them in High Definition (HD). I decided to try this with Juno, and the quality really is noticeably better than DVD. As I type this, I’m half way into Into the Wild in HD, and I’m liking it much much better than the book. I may be buying the soundtrack and the film. Good job, Sean Penn! And all through the weekend, I’ve opened up the mac much less. Good stuff.
You may think that I’m now too dependent on Apple, though. Nonsense, I tell you, nonsense. There are some products that Apple makes that I don’t own, like the iPhone (but we’ll see about that). In any case, mom is a stock holder, so all stays in the family. There.
