apple juice

what am i using these days?

computers

• MacBook (white plastic)
  this is my work computer, with which most of my computing is done these days. i’m envious of the new aluminum MacBooks, but can’t justify it right now.
• MacBook Air
  the juice’ette’s work computer, which i wish i were allowed to use more, but i restrain myself from going too nuts. definitely wouldn’t be my sole computer given the lack of connections, but if i were a bit more of a road warrior, i’d be all over this one
• PowerBook G4
  this is basically acting as a server, with a few hard drives and the printer hooked up, running time machine and carbon copy cloner to keep all our data backed up… bought this computer in 2003, and it has been running strong. recently upgraded to a larger hard drive.

cameras

• olympus e-500
  it’s a few generations old now, but paired with an f/2 50mm and a 14-45mm lenses, it’s performed quite well for  us. i’m envious of all these D-90s that I see everywhere though!
• Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3
  this was a bit of a rush purchase, and the quality of the pictures isn’t too great, but it takes great movies and is dead-easy to use… so it’s usually along with us for quick snaps

phone

• Nokia N85
  why didn’t i get an iPhone? well, good question? as much as i love the apple products, sometimes i get a little paranoid about the lock-in. there were a couple features I really wanted in a phone:
  1. an awesome camera (the N85 is a 5mp which takes 640×480 video)
  2. physical keys. i just like it better. certainly there are times where I’d like the touch screen, but i also like to type with reasonable accuracy
  3. nerd factor — ok, so I wanted to be “different”
  4. apps without restrictions. Apple has decided to restrict what gets made for the iPhone in terms of software. Things that compete with Apple are generally out, it seems. On Symbian, which is now open source, it’s pretty much a free-for-all (for good and bad)

  Now that I’ve had it for 4 months, would i still get this over an iPhone? Hmmmmmmmm… not sure

software

i don’t think there is much i could say here that hasn’t been covered elsewhere, but here are a few software items i can’t live without:

• NetNewsWire
  It’s free and it’s awesome. It does authenticated feeds, which google reader doesn’t do, and the interface is still the best. the companion web interface is no google reader, but it’s not that often that i don’t have my laptop with me. I’ve gone back and forth on this, but settling back into NNW is like putting on a great pair of sweat pants. Comfy.
• BBEdit
  it would seem hard to justify spending money on a text-editor, but i never regret it. i use it almost daily
• OmniFocus
  i’m still trying to get all my projects and todos under control. i think this will be a life-long struggle, but OmniFocus is the first app I’ve found that i don’t think about using… it’s just there and it does its job seamlessly
• MarsEdit
  honestly haven’t bought it yet, but a recent post I made with many pictures from flickr may have sold me…
• WordPress
  might be obvious, but this blog is running wordpress. I’m hosting with dreamhost, which I’ve been extremely happy with.