Have iBook, Will Relocate Yet Again

Hi all! Long time no see!

Yep, I know, I have neglected you, my dear readers, for far too long, but so many things have happened that I rarely had the time to sit down and share my thoughts with you.

As you have probably guessed, I have relocated. Again. As New Zealand was just a tad far away from the best girlfriend ever and commuting over 18000 km can be quite tiring, I dissolved once again my household, sold off all my Macs (except for my trusty iBook), and got my bum on a Quantas 747 Megatop back to Europe via Singapore, avoiding picking up SARS on the way.

So now I live in lovely Cologne, Germany, and work three days a week in a small market town in South Lincolnshire, UK. Thanks to the new flock of cheap no frills airlines, this is cheaper than I thought and works quite well (and the best girlfriend ever is happy).

We now have just a little geographic problem with this column's name: I am obviously not in NZ anymore, but as things look at present, I'm not going to stay in Germany/UK either, so we have to find a name for this ever so increasingly international column. You guys gotta help me. I hereby invite you to send me your ideas about the title for this piece of orthographic junk and, just like last year, win a T-shirt in original Pilum design.

In the meantime things have happened: We have new PowerBooks (nice), new iBooks (still no G4), Apple has turned into a Music Provide (very cool), and Low End Mac is still running, apparently without any major hiccups (hooray). The new iTunes service especially will start to draw people who legitimately want to acquire music over the Net over to the Mac, as it was never easier to download that new track that you heard on the radio instead of desperately trying to get it either from your local shop (where it's sold out) or via opennap or Gnutella (where it's illegal and all the hosts are busy or offline).

99¢ is good value, and the automatic synching to my iPod makes the whole thing really sexy. So Apple is continuing to broaden their appeal and trying to turn themselves into a hardware, software, and content provider. I would presume that the next logical step would be to upgrade the QuickTime trailer site into a blockbuster movie download service with QuickTime Pro - and with the help of iFood order your pizza and six pack directly from Cupertino as well.

Bon appetite then.