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The Ultimate iPod Accessory

With one thing and another, I never got around to posting about my pre-Christmas present. Having been very happy with my Powerbook for the past two years, I’ve been planning to buy a desktop Mac, sometime in January ’05. Originally I had been looking at the PowerMacs, but after getting my hands on an iMac G5 at the Apple store, I began to have second thoughts.

Initially, I was reluctant to consider an iMac G5. As incredible as the machine is, I’ve always had a problem with computers that have integrated monitors. “What happenens if something breaks? It’s just like a TV with a built-in VCR,” I reasoned. Then one day, it occurred to me that I’d owned just such a machine for years – the Powerbook. After that, reason took over, and I forgot my dislike for integrated monitors (surely a mental holdover from my younger, pro-PC days).

A couple of weeks before Christmas, the need presented itself. My Powerbook does not have a Superdrive, but Sherri and I wanted to put together a DVD for her parents as a Christmas present. Last year, a Christmas display her family had visited for 40 years closed down, and we shot some video to remember it by. I could produce a video using iMovie, but without a Superdrive I had no way to put it on DVD.

In an act of ultimate sacrifice, I bought my new computer a month early. I bought the 20″ iMac G5 with the Bluetooth package. What a gorgeous computer. The screen is huge and looks fantastic. The entire design is sleek and elegant. The bluetooth keyboard was an excellent addition, although I’m not using the bluetooth mouse… no amount of love for Apple will ever drive me to use a one-button mouse.

This machine will also become the ‘primary’ computer in the home office. Sherri still has an XP laptop, and the kids still have a PC in the basemaent, but there’s now a Mac that everyone can use. Eventually, I intend to win them all back from the dark side. I’ve already created an account for each of them, and enabled fast user switching.

Of course, now I have to wonder if I’ll miss out on anything this Monday, when His Steveness announces all of the cool new whizbangs in his Macworld Expo Keynote. I’m not too woried about new hardware… this G5 is big enough and fast enough for now. What I’m concerned with is new software… if the much rumored iWork suite and iLife ’05 start shipping with every new Mac on Monday, will there be any retroactive love for recent Mac buyers? I believe they did something similar last year when Panther shipped, but I don’t recall if that extended to iLife.

Guess we’ll see on Monday.

(p.s.: I’m certain Steve Jobs or Apple marketing or someone refered to the iMac g5 as “the ultimate accessory for the iPod” or something like that. I’ve searched all over the internets (several of them) and cannot find the quote. I’d be grateful to anyone who can provide a link. )

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