Apple News Galore

All computers crash, get quirky, and eventually die on you. In my opinion, the Macs I've used over the last 20 years are just better quality machines, with significantly fewer problems, then the Windows machines that surround me. Designed better, built better, easier to use.

For instance, we have cheap PC in the soundbooth at church, which is relatively new but has been acting up on us. I've never had a Mac that was as unreliable at this thing. On the other hand, the PC was cheap, and fixing it will probably be pretty cheap too.

That said, the image of Macs being expensive is not entirely true anymore. Apple doesn't make cheap low-end machines. Their cheapest Macs are more mid-range, which are priced about the same as the mid-level Dell machines I see in the Dell catalog.

In the end, I'm a diehard Mac geek. So all the cool gadget news today is irresistible to me.

• iPhones get upgraded this month. Lots of new features are included in the update, some of which have been desired since the iPhone first came out. This sinches it for me. As soon as I'm out of my Verizon contract, Shannon and I are switching to AT&T and the iPhone.
  
• The current iPhone 3G is dropping to $99. These things are finally getting affordable for those of us with kids to feed. There's also a new model of iPhone being released.
  
• Snow Leopard (10.6), the next Mac OS, will come out in September. I've been waiting for this one. My computers run Tiger (10.4) and I've been longing for an upgrade. This one's cheaper than usual and for customers like me it's bundled with new versions of all the other great Mac software.
• OS X users now number 75 million, according to this mornings report from Apple, and thanks largely to the iPhone. Pretty good for a company that used to cater to only 4 or 5% of computer users in the U.S.
• A new version of Safari (4), Apple's web browser has been released. I use a mix of Safari 3 and Firefox 3.
• All of the laptops for Apple got improvements this week. I use a MacBook at work which I have absolutely loved. I want to make it last another year or more if possible.