IMPRESSED BUT YOU CAN DO MORE Apple......

FOR THE UNINFORMED:

Mrs. Shields may kill me for how long this post to the blog is, but she can deal with it :P

Alright... I just want to state that I love Apple to death and get that out of the way but I AM GOING TO RANT for a little. Apple introduced the new "iPad Air" to the world today, among other things. The starting price for a 16GB silver OR black iPad Air is $499, and if you want 8x the storage with the 128GB version, it'll set you back $799. To put that into perspective, if you were to buy a 2.3GHz Mac Mini that has a quad core Intel Core i7 (the fastest processor Intel makes, starting at the i3, i5, and then the i7), 4GB of DDR3 ram, and a 1TB hard drive, it'll set you back $799. So you can buy a pretty very good Mac computer (I have one at home but better haha) or a new iPad. Anyways.... 

The iPad Air weights only A pound (yes one pound), is only 7.5 millimeters thick (Apple advertises that by saying 7.5 millimeters THIN), has a 9.7" 2048x1536 Retina Display with 264 ppi. It has Apples A7 microchip with 64-bit processing power and their M7 motion CO-processor (which is the same as the new iPad Mini). It has up to 10 hours of battery life. The only part of this that impressed me was that it uses a touch-recognition algorithm, which allows it to recognize if your thumb is simply resting on the screen while you're holding it or if you're intentionally interacting with that display.

Okay moving on.. Apple also released OS X Mavericks (10.9). When Apple first unveiled Mavericks, the latest version of their desktop OS, I realized this. They are very committed to OS X. Meaning, for those of you who are waiting for a whole new desktop experience, you'll have to keep holding your breath. Like all the iterations before it, version 10.9 is a building block atop the operating system's familiar UI. Apple didn't opt for a "biggest change ever" update as it did with release of iOS 7 (and potentially risking alienating longtime users as a result). Which makes sense, in a way: there's little question that the success of its smartphone and tablet offerings have contributed to the erosion of desktop sales, so it figures that the company is focusing much of its developer talent on mobile.As the company's decidedly modest tagline puts it, Mavericks lets users "Do even more with new apps and features." At the top of the list are the additions of Maps and iBooks -- two apps first introduced in iOS. And while there are no changes to the Finder as major as Notifications, tabbed windows and tags aim to help users better organize their desktops. We can tell you right now that there's enough in here to justify the download time (I started at 6:07 this afternoon and it's 8:48p.m. and I'm still downloading and have another hour to go), especially given that this is free for people already running Snow Leopard or higher. But is it enough to help OS X maintain Apple's self-proclaimed "world's most advanced desktop operating system?" Or is the company's reluctance to think different on the desktop hampering innovation? That is the million dollar question. 

Okay, I'll wrap this up now.

What you'll see with Finder.. If you've so much as touched a Mac in the past decade, you won't be blindsided the first time you boot up Mavericks. Rest assured, everything is just where you left it. While Microsoft has made its way through a couple of UI overhauls over the past decade (some, admittedly, more successful than others), Apple's tinkered and tweaked and iterated, sprinkling in new features where it saw fit, but generally choosing not to mess with a good thing. That means, thankfully, that the company hasn't yet transformed OS X into a desktop counterpart to iOS, but it also means that after 15 years, this once-revolutionary operating system is starting to feel a bit stale.

LAST THING.. I PROMISE.

 Just wait till December, Apple will be releasing their new Mac Pro. It'll start at $3,000 with a quad-core 3.7GHz, or you can go off the deep end and buy the $4,000 6-core 3.5GHz. It'll have up to 64GB of ram, it'll be able to connect up to three 4K (3840x2160) or 6 Thunderbolt displays, along with many more things...