Do or die time, Apple

Ahem.

I have had around $2500 set aside specifically to use for buying my first Mac, a MacBook Pro (witness the iPhone “halo effect” in action) for 5 months now. Anyone who has been reading this blog has seen me predicting them for a while now. I was all set to buy one, had already gotten a quote on a BTO model with lots of accessories, and then boom! The rumors – some of them seemingly credible – started coming out about imminent hardware updates (see here and here for early examples).

Not being one to blow $2000+ on an outmoded architecture, I said I’d give Apple till the holiday season to announce new MBPs. If nothing was forthcoming, I’d look elsewhere. Then I said I’d give them through the launch of the i5/i7s. Then I said I’d wait until the MacWorld Expo. Then I said I’d wait until after the iPad launch.

5 months ago, I didn’t *need* a new laptop, but I *need* one now. Tradeshow season is starting, and I need a mobile workhorse. My aging Windows XP HP laptop is choking some of the editing software updates I’ve installed. I’m lucky to get 2 hours out of my battery, and I fly the 6-hour cross-country BOS to LAX route on a monthly basis. Meanwhile, In the past 5 months, I’ve grown to really enjoy Windows 7 on my desktop PC. Sony, Asus, and HP have all put out some very attractive, very competitive, very powerful i5 and i7 laptops.

If Apple doesn’t launch something this month, I’m out – Sony or Asus will have my business. There’s no excuse for Apple to go almost a year between hardware refreshes. They’re playing in the big leagues – they need to be updating every 6 months, at least. Release early, release often. Iterate. Evolve and improve.

It took Apple 15 years to convince me to switch to a Mac – and it only took 6 months for their policy of absolute secrecy on their product roadmap to give Microsoft and PC manufacturers the chance to win me back.

Enough, already

What is it with indie films and their incessant need to mix in music by these obscure bands that no one has ever heard of and then beat us over the head with it? Is it not enough to simply *use* the music? To feature the song in your intro and prominently in some pivotal scene? Why must the characters engage in an existential debate about the meaning of the song and how it changed their lives and on and on, knowing full well that 99% of the audience has never heard of them and has NO idea what the characters are talking about (even though 80% of the audience will, as of tomorrow, be experts on the band, their history, their influences, and will profess to have been fans of theirs “before they went mainstream”). It’s stupid, it’s trite, and it’s obvious. Grow up, indie directors: we know you were a really great bassist in high school, but you’re never going to be a rockstar, and Rolling Stone is never going to hire you as a writer, no matter how amazing that characters’ analysis was of the meaning of the Editor-in-Chief’s favorite song was in that movie you made a few years ago that grossed like $10 million in the box office.

Seriously, just stop. You don’t have to stop using the music, but the next time two characters engage in that kind of discussion about some rando indie band that will immediately drop their label and sign with one of the big studios a week after the movie comes out (the soundtrack grossed twice as much as the film, and indie musicians need their Escalades too, you know) the next time they do it I’m going to walk straight out of the theater, drive home, log onto iTunes, and post a rant just like this one as a 1-star review of their (now iTunes front-paged) debut album on their soon-to-be-former label.