Jason Prini .com

OK, Apple released some nice new laptops a couple days ago. I’ll still be waiting for Macbook Rev.B, as I’ve been burned too many times with first gen hardware from Apple. Although I should say both 1st and 2cd gen iPhones have been great.

My primary work machine is a first gen 2006 17″ iMac 1.83Ghz 2GB RAM with a second 24″ screen set up in portrait mode. While it’s still working great for most of my tasks, I’ve been thinking I’ll be replacing it in the next 3-6 months.

Apple should be refreshing the iMac line sometime within the next 90 days or so. There’s rough ideas out there on what it will offer, from most probable to least:

• Boosted CPUs: probably 2.8-3.2Ghz (up from 2.4-3Ghz)
• NVIDIA graphics, probably 9800GT derived cards
• Dual-Link displayPort
• LED backlit screens
• 64bit chipset (for 8GB+ RAM)

These are all evolutionary upgrades, and the last two are unlikely to happen soon as most consumers won’t need 8GB+ RAM for a while, and large LED backlit screens are still expensive.

My computer will be 3 years old in April, so I’ll be looking for a replacement around that time. I hope Apple can get a LED 24″ into the iMac before then.

I’m playing tag with UPS right now, but I’ve taken the plunge and ordered a 3G iPhone with 6GB/month 3G data access.

While having GPS will be nice, it’s the 3G data access I’m most looking forward to. I’ve already started to browse the apps store looking for productivity apps, and I’ve upgraded to Flickr Pro which I’ll be using to share my mobile pics.

Some of the apps that have really stood out so far are Evernote, Wordpress, reQall (speech-to-text!), and Wikipanion. I’m still waiting for a good turn-by-turn navigation app. I’ve heard that the soon to be released 2.1.0 iPhone firmware might add this. I hope I can add the John Cleese voice … OMG they have Mr. T! “I said turn LEFT you FOOL!”.

I’ve found myself using my laptop less and less these days. My iPhone fills in nicely and I really find myself preferring it to a laptop in many situations.

I still use my workstation for work, and I wouldn’t think of ditching it for something like an iPhone (yet).

But the fact is, unless I’m at my workstation, I use my iPhone to surf the web. I would say if you looked at all the hours I spend online, minus work, the majority of it is on my iPhone. That’s an interesting change.

If Apple modified their NDA requirements on iPhone development I would be all over it. The device provides a really compelling experience, offers live data acquisition (position, light, gps sensors), ubiquitous network connectivity, and a fairly efficient (if a tad too strict) software market. It’s the start of something really great.

In the next few years there very well could be 50 million iPhones in use. That’s something awesome.