The transfer from old, awesome lamp iMac to new, less-interesting big flat media center iMac was smoother than expected. If you'll recall, the Apple Store jerks told me that my old iMac was beyond repair and they did not suggest doing a data transfer with it. And even though I repeatedly said that it still booted up in firewire mode every time, I was lectured about not keeping backups and was handed the business cards of several reputable data recovery services. Well, New iMac slurped up everything I needed from Old iMac. I even did the transfer in the middle of a thunderstorm. So suck it.

Took an hour, but I had it bring over ALL the documents as well as settings and user profile junk. But what was super is that, after the slurp, Newie came right up just like my old machine. Didn't have to re-enter any internet/email information (which is great, because I forget what all that was), the new iLife apps hungrily accepted all my existing bookmarks, music and photos (just had to authorize the new machine to play the purchased songs... so I guess I should try to find a way to de-authorize the old iMac), and Mail showed up with a month's worth of unread messages. It even remembered that I had turned on Safari's debug menu, because I'm a geek like that.

Had to re-download Adobe Reader, PageSpinner and Fetch. Aside from InDesign and Photoshop, I'm back up to normal operating strength. Those two biggies will come later. Even though Fetch was a fresh install, it picked up my fourhman.com FTP settings from the previous version... which is something else I no longer remember, so yay.

First impression of the Intel iMac: What the fuck is that white-text-on-black-screen shit that briefly shows on startup, before the happy refreshing Mac GUI takes over? That shit can stop right now.

Don't really like the Mighty Mouse. I have an excellent ergonomic reason, too. I naturally grip mice lower than what Apple's studies must suggest. So the nifty side buttons are a full inch above my thumb. And because my index/middle fingers therefore also sit lower, the non-button buttons of the Mighty Mouse don't always track as I expect them to. I'm debating: either I re-train my paws, or I plug in the old mouse.

I like the top-mounted iSight. Which, as I said from day one, just proves that Apple has no other use for a camera than video conferencing... no webcam, no video capture, nothing that would benefit from having a damn camera that you can tilt and position appropriately. And after noting that this built-in iSight fits into a case the width of my thumb, I have to wonder just what the heck is inside that gun barrel iSight that Apple has been hawking for years now. Space for secret eating?

While I was typing this, I picked up the Apple Remote, just on a whim. I hit the menu button and nearly fell out of my chair. When Apple revealed Front Row, I was all meh about it... because I'm never going to watch movies on my iMac, and if I want to browse my music or photos, well, that's what iTunes and iPhoto are for. But when I clicked through those areas of Front Row (after that killer transition from desktop to Front Row that has to be seen to be fully appreciated), I was knocked senseless by how cool it was. Here's what Apple's dopey marketing message did not fully illuminate for me: Front Row and the Apple Remote turn your iMac into a giant iPod. Play music, run slideshows (and movies, I guess) all from one tiny remote, using the basic familiar iPod interface. Why didn't they just tell me that in the first place?

Although, knowing me, even if I had gotten that message out of all the smiling family stock photography and smirky-cool marketing text, I probably still wouldn't have cared. I had to see it in action to like it.

It's good to be back. I had a lot of stuff I fully intended to weblog over the past month, and just didn't since my workflow was grenaded. Updates to my stupid neighbor's house, more talk about Metal Gear, an Infinite Crisis wrapup, Clark pictures, Animal Crossing, the PS2 retrospective... I even wanted to have kicked off a GameCube Farewell feature by now. So maybe I'll get to some of that now. Maybe.