Mac Buyers Guide

It's no fun buying the current model of a product one week and then the next week seeing the new model get released. Fortunately for Mac fans the cycles are more predictable. By simply tracking the average release time of new models and the number of days since the last release, most of the time you can get a pretty good idea if it's a good time to buy or not.

If you are like me you have better things to do with your time than track these details. Fortunately, someone else has done it for use. You can check all the details out here.

As a snapshot of things at this moment, it's a good time to buy (new models just released):
iPods, iPhone, Mac Mini, iMac

It's an ok time to buy (new models have been out a few months):
MacBook, MacBook Pro

You should definitely wait to buy (new models will probably be released soon):
XServe

For up to date details go here >

iWeb 08' Review

I am at the end of a two day immersion into iWeb 08'. There has been a lot of chatter on the internet about problems with the latest iWeb. Most of the complaints have come from users migrating sites from previous versions. Since I have never used the previous versions, I thought I would give a few notes from a first time user's experience.

My first impression of iWeb 08' was that it is amazing. I know of no other software package that can put together as high of quality sites as easy as iWeb. The templates can no doubt allow amateurs to make professional looking sites.

Things I loved:
1. Overall ease of use
2. HTML code widget (provides unlimited possibilities)
3. Podcasting and Blogging integration
4. Quality of templates

Things that I want changed:
1. Allow full customization of the navigation bar.
At a minimal, the designer should be able to change the font size, the font type, and have the option to center the text horizontally.

2. Add some more widgets in addition to Google Maps and AdSense.
This is a big area that Apple could expand iWeb in the future (and I imagine they will).

3. Browser Compatibility.
Generally, I did not have any major problems, although I have an issue with the navigation bar not loading on an AOL browser that I need to look into. What was amiss is the fonts. iWeb default fonts look great on the Mac, but on the PC the text looked aweful.

4. Easier publishing to non iMac sites.
Sites can be published to .Mac with on click, but have to be exported to a folder and then ftp-ed separately for other servers.