The Keynote Aftermath

I had a great day at my brother's and ended up rewatching The Girl Next Door and seeing Y Tu Mama, Tambien for the first time. The former is of course a great movie, but the second I thought was a little too sexually oriented. Still, it was pretty good. Oh, and they gave me my first kurta, so I'm excited about that. I wish I had a camera so I could show you. Anyway, Apple put up a video of Steve Jobs's keynote address yesterday evening, and it was just so thrilling for me to watch being a Windows user. It also features a new iPod ad and a new iMac ad. So what are the reactions like? Not all good, I'm afraid. Some bloggers are making claims that the Intel commercial is almost a remake of the music video for "Such Great Heights", and the evidence is actually surprisingly clear. If they didn't already clear it with The Postal Service, they're real stupid. Intel wasn't too happy with the ad mocking Windows users, but I didn't think it was too blatant. Some are nitpicking at what the MacBook Pro leaves out. He didn't mention the slightly unnecessary ATI Radeon graphics card, but some of the stuff he mentions I think were cut for price reasons since the Dual Core can't be cheap. I thought the iSight was a smart inclusion to it for videoconferencing though, but I didn't know about issues with the bus speed. I'm sure it's pretty solid anyway though since Apple machines are consistently rated high. At least one site agrees with me that this is a huge turning point for Apple and by jumping into the Intel computer arena will ensure healthy competition, which yields better products for the consumer. Welcome to a new world of Mactels!

More stuff was shown off at MacWorld, and Make magazine put up some handy highlights from the show (as well as a podcast for on-the-go listening). I think the coolest thing is the LCD glasses for the fifth generation iPod, which allows you to see your favorite videos as if you were watching it on a big screen television. Joel Spolsky put up his foreword to a book about MicroISVs (i.e. small, software firm startups), and I think it's a neat read if you ever wondered about what starting your own company may be like. I can't say that I haven't thought about it several times (for after college, of course). Netjak has an interview up with video game hater Jack Thompson who is now calling video games "masturbatory." This guy is just a constant source of comedy, and I love how accuses Penny Arcade's poking fun at him as "terroristic". I guess that Santa didn't get him a sense of humor this Christmas. Lastly, I think it's odd that multiple sources are citing Peter Moore, a Microsoft executive, as saying that the Xbox 360 may release an external Blu-ray hard drive depending on how well it does, but I can't see why they'd want to help Sony out.

That shot is from Miami Vice, one of the first couple of official stills from the movie, and I just thought that it looked like really cool. There are also a few new stills from X3, but, again, they're just not as cool. Variety got word that four actresses are in the running now to be the next Bond girl, and this is an extremely important role because Bond aficionados have hinted that she sets the tone for 007's future relationships in the end (assuming the movie sticks to the book, though it likely won't). In case you were wondering what movies did best last year, JoBlo prepared a convenient chart of them with Star Wars predictably topping the list, though I'm sad to have seen less than half of them. I also can't believe that War of the Worlds made more than Batman Begins. I'm sure that DVD sales made up for it though. Lastly, Rotten Tomatoes put up its Golden Tomato awards with Good Night and Good Luck and Wallace & Grommit taking top honors while Elektra and Alone in the Dark had the worst reviews of the year.

Now for some Wednesday Mind Humping action, which is a welcome relief to me since I thought it was Thursday for most of the day:

Who do you want to thank today, and why?
I already thanked my brother and his fiance for the beautiful kurta, so I'll go with my parents for my education. I may get annoyed with them living at home over these breaks, but my life wouldn't be possible without them in so many ways, and with their financial support in college I can focus on studying and getting internships rather than part-time jobs.