After eight weeks I finally have an iMac to work on. Say hello to iMac 3, screen 2. So far it seems to be working well enough. AppleCare will keep me covered and all will be well. (I hope) I’m praying that the drama I had outlined here is now well behind me. Now that I’m getting settled in, my iMac is doing exactly what I had wanted. It’s enabling me to be all sorts of creative and I’m loving it.
As you can see, I’ve already cooked up a new masthead. I’m ashamed to have left the last one up for so long, especially considering the fact that it was the default theme image. I purchased a copy of Aperture 3 which I’m really excited to get started with and yesterday I picked up a copy of Pixelmator for half price. I’m more than thrilled to pay just $30 for something that does pretty much every single one of the basic Photoshop functions. Not only that, but Pixelmator does it all following the standardized user interface guidelines for Mac and isn’t bloaty. (Imagine that, software that just works with both a streamlined price and hardware requirements list. Get your crap together Adobe.) For now this will more than sufficient to get me going.
I downloaded Steam for the Mac which was one of the reasons I wanted to get the iMac. I’m able to play mainstream games on my computer now! Woot! They were giving away Portal for free which I snapped up and have played and it is really fun. I was surprised how well Apple’s buttonless Magic Mouse performed while gaming. Right and left clicks registered perfectly and it tracked well. I look forward to pickup up Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. I remember playing that game as a kid on my family’s old 386, crammed in the office nook next to the washer and dryer. That game totally rocked!
This will be the beginning of a new era for me, creatively. Though notebooks have the upper hand with portability, they just don’t work for me when I’m trying to get a creative workflow going. Since 2001 I’ve been using notebooks. There was a brief three month stint where I used the iMac G5 when it first came out. (That was a ridiculously sexy machine back when it was introduced.) Unfortunately, at that time I just couldn’t use a computer which wasn’t mobile and immediately switched back to notebooks. With the introduction of the iPad I had a strong feeling I could finally move to a desktop machine again and I was right. The iPad takes care of my casual computing needs effortlessly.
The problem with notebooks isn’t power, it’s form-factor. At the ripe old age of 25 I now have severe RSD issues with my right wrist and some nasty tendonitis in both arms. I think that heavy computer use in general had a lot to do with that, but I honestly don’t think that notebooks helped. I’m a big guy and having to curl up into a hunched ball over a laptop was definitely not the most elegant ergonomic situation. Now that I’m all set up with my pretty new computer I’m really excited to be able to dig into a lot of projects and really work on some of my hobbies a lot more effortlessly. I’m already starting to see the fruits of this strategy and I’m really pleased.