Mac Popularity

I'm pretty tired and still have some work to do, so this will end up being a much abridged post so that I don't have to skip it entirely. I thought it was just me, but apparently others have noticed that Macs have been gaining popularity lately, and it's worthwhile to ponder why. I think there's no doubt that iTunes and the iPod have played a role in that in the sense that they've made Apple as a company cool again and has made Apple very hard to forget about, which leads people to look towards their other products. When they see how slick the MacBooks look and how slim the iMacs are, I'm sure they become very appealing. And then their switch to Intel put them in lots of news articles and watercooler conversations among geeks. I believe that they either had a smart marketing team or a lot of dumb luck with all this. To top it off, some of their Get a Mac ads have been contraversial, which we all know is an even better marketing technique. I always figure that the most important thing to selling a product is to generate excitement about it, and I definitely think that that's what separates Apple from companies like Dell.

It looks like Mozilla realized that not everyone was happy with the new betas of Firefox because they've begun accepting suggestions for version 3, which I think is an important step for them. It's quite rare for browser developers to reach out to the community like that, and I think it'll pay off big time for them in the end. Paint .NET has a new version in beta featuring a really neat Multi Document Interface (MDI) for intuitively handling multiple pictures. This is a great step for them, and I recommend checking it out. A lot of people seem puzzled over what the differences between LCD and Plasma TVs are, and now there's a rather unbiased video available to help you decide. I personally avoid the whole issue though and just support DLP. Lastly, another common question is what to get instead of the iPod, and there's a god listing of decent choices over here for this holiday season. Just be sure to research before you buy and make sure it has what you value most.

In the box office The Grudge 2 barely reigned supreme with a still weak $22 million, and it's likely to drop by a good bit next weekend whereas The Departed only lost 30% of its viewership with $18.7 million. The only real failure was Man of the Year with a pitiful $12.6 million. Next weekend should be a much more interesting one with a number of good movies includings offerings from Christopher Nolan (The Prestige) and Clint Eastwood (Flags of our Fathers).

Now for some Unconscious Mutterings:

I say ... and you think ... ?

1. Weeks :: Years


2. Cough :: Cold


3. Jail :: Bird


4. Produced :: Movie


5. ? :: Question


6. Stapler :: Red


7. Next :: Please


8. Perky :: Pigs (not sure why)


9. Oxygen :: Mask


10. Musical :: Play