I knew this day would come. Apple introduced a new iMac that uses Intel processors. This effectively makes the iMac G5 I purchased in October 2004 obsolete. This doesn’t bother me as I expect that computers will go obsolete. I didn’t expect that a new, top of the line computer, wouldn’t be obsolete so soon but this is what happens with computers. What does bother me is Apple’s habit of providing significant upgrades so soon after minor ones.

Apple knew this computer was coming when the last iMac was released in October 2005. So my question is this: why release the last one? Many people purchased new iMacs for the holiday and then what does Apple do – release an even newer one 10 days after the holiday season is over.

Of course Apple has a habit of doing this. Last August I bought the newly released iPod thinking “this is a new upgrade, I’m safe for a bit.” Of course a little over 2 months later they release the iPod Video. Last winter they upgraded the iPod Mini only to eliminate it by releasing the Nano a few months later.

I’ve owned 5 macs since 1986 and am a professed Mac fanatic and Apple’s innovation is legendary but it comes with a price borne by those that are their most ardent supporters. We are taken advantage of.

I will never buy another computer other than one running an Apple operating system. It used to be counter culture, but now it’s really about owning a machine that’s better than a Windows machine. All that said, I warn anyone buying a Mac to wait and really think about it. Do your research. Look at the rumor sites. Only after you’re sure do you buy a new Mac.

Not they are out to screw you but they’re out to screw you. Trust me I will be following my advice the next time I need a computer – which unfortunately is too soon for my taste.

Yahoo and Google are all that’s left of the portal wars of the late 90’s. I use Yahoo all the time because of its breadth of service. There is almost nothing online that Yahoo doesn’t provide. It galls me that they don’t pay any attention to Mac owners. How do they hate us? Let me count the ways:

• Yahoo Messenger hasn’t been updated in years. While AOL and MSN upgrade their product often for the Mac, Yahoo has abandoned the Mac version. None of the new features available on the Windows version are available on the Mac version: stealth settings, animated emoticons, launch player, environments, etc. None of these are available for Mac users. Hint: use the excellent IM client Adium as a replacement; it replaces MSN Messenger, AOL, Jabber, and others.
• Launchcast, Yahoo’s music station only supports no Mac browsers. If Yahoo would provide support to mozilla browsers like Firefox it would cover up a lot of problems, but most of their products run only in Windows IE.
• With Stattracker for fantasy football, the new version only runs on Windows IE. All other users pay the same amount of money and get the “classic” version. (If you’re not clear, classic means that Yahoo is too cheap to provide service to anyone else than windows owners).

You would think that Yahoo would go a long way to provide cross-platform support since it chips away at an advantage that Microsoft has. I’m not asking that Yahoo do as much for mac users as they do for windows owners, but they have a long way to go to be considered mac-friendly. By simply providing support to Firefox for all of their features, mac owners would be able to access more features.