First and foremost, I have lived and breathed daily in all the versions of Microsoft Windows since Windows 3.1.  Secondly, I am a developer that loves and uses Microsoft technologies to pay my mortgage every month.  I develop in Windows and for Windows and make a pretty decent living doing so.

That being said, Microsoft has got to get it's act together and get it together quickly.  I am soooo fed up with Microsoft Windows Vista.  I am fed up with it's stability, it's "features", and it's "user interface".

I bought a MacBook for my wife about a year and a half ago.  I bought it for her because they have a reputation of being a lot more user friendly than a PC and she is not the most computer literate.  Her experience with the Mac has been less than stellar mostly due to the incompatabilities with other equipment such as printers, etc and the Office for Mac (another Microsoft program) suite.  I on the other hand have grown to love the little things.  I am going to contrast the little things that the Mac does well below with my issues on the "revolutionary" Vista PC.

I am sick and tired of...

• Waiting for the damn PC to sleep.  I click on sleep and wait, and wait, and wait and finally after 30 seconds, the damn PC is sleeping and using less battery.  On the Mac, just close the lid and right away you are saving battery
• Waiting for the damn PC to wake up.  Same deal as sleep.  It takes a minute for all the drivers to get themselves back to a good state (if that happens at all).  On a Mac, it just works right when you open the lid
• Docking/Undocking.  In Windows, this has always been a toss up.  Will my display work?  Will my network connections work?  You have to wait and see.  Kinda fun except when you get to the meeting and have to reboot because undocking/docking must be a problem that Microsoft just can't figure out.  Maybe Microsoft Research should stop playing with coffee tables and work on this issue.  Macs do not have docking stations so maybe they can't figure it out either.
• Drivers. I know that this is not a Microsoft issue, accourding to them but dammit, I disagree.  It is part of the Windows experience and it reflects badly on them.  Drivers need to be more stable and they need to work really, really well all the time.  They should help OEMs make these and test these.  Macs definately are ahead here because they control the hardware and the software.  Looking back, not such a bad idea Bill?
• Deleting a damn file.  WTF takes so long?  Mark the file as deleted in Windows, flip a bit for f*** sakes.  In Mac world, Move to Trash takes 1 second and you no longer see the file and hear the little wringled paper sound no matter how many files/folders you move there.
• Folders.  I love the fact that my default documents folder is in C:\XXXX\XXXX\XXXXXX\XXXX\XXXXX.  This makes my mom, sister, next door neighbor, and babysitter all call me and go where the hell is my file.  On a Mac, there is a Documents folder and an Applications.  Simple.

I am sick of these little things bug me on a daily basis.  It cuts into my productivity more often than not.  This would be a simple fix for me if I did not love the tablet form factor. 

I could just get my own MacBook and use Parallels and Boot Camp for my developing within the Microsoft stack.  The problem is that I would loose the tablet form factor and I am not willing to give that up yet.  The tablet allows me to do a lot of different things than just using the keyboard.  Ink allows me to think in a different way, take electronic notes for clients, etc.

So my hope is that the ModBook is not yet vaporware.  This things needs to come out soon so that I can have a MacBook that is a tablet.  It is supposed to be released in the 4th quarter of this year.  The problem is that it has been pushed back 3 times now.  Will this thing ever be released?  I am praying and checking the site everyday and I have one on pre-order.  Will this solve my issues or create more?  I will have to get one before I can answer that.  There are a million questions I have for this device.  I will surely blog about them if I can ever get my hands on one.

Angles and Airwaves (one of my favorite bands if not the favorite band) is dropping a new album, I-Empire, on October 23rd.  I can't wait for this day to come as I am sure it will be great.  You can hear snippets of some of the music on their website which plays a video for the new album.  Their first single "Everything's Magic" is already available on iTunes.

The album will be the first for the bands new bassist Matt Wachter, who used to play for 30 Seconds to Mars (another favorite band).  That can only be good.

UPDATE:  10/23/07 - Now it's November 6th according to their website..SOB

Apple has announced another press event scheduled for September 5th.  The tagline for this event is "The beat goes on".  These are always fun and I wanted to throw my thoughts and predictions in the ring. 

One of the obvious things that I believe (not surprisingly) Apple is going to announce is a 6th generation iPod that takes on the touch interface of the iPhone.  I think they are completely going away with the click wheel (it's so 2002) and going the way of the iPhone touch interface.  I don't think much will change with the iPod interface that is on the iPhone currently with one hardware button for sleep/volume.  I don't think that they will announce an upgrade to the Nano or Shuffle line even though there are some rumors out there.  They usually do this later down the line anyway.

Doing this of course will make the value of the iPhone a little less.  One of the three main pillars of the iPhone is that it is the best iPod ever made.  If they make an iPod that is just as good for obvious less money, it will make the value of the iPhone seem less than stellar.  I know many people who are just using their iPhones as iPods because they don't want to switch over to AT & T or the iPhone just doesn't replace the functionallity of their current phone.  This means that Apple should have some announcements concerning the iPhone.  They need to make it more valuable and they need to breath some life into the line that really has not had any updates (besides bug fixes) or news attached to it since it was launched.

So I believe that Apple will announce some iPhone updates.  I'm gonna bet that one of them is ringtones available through iTunes.  I believe they may also add games since the new iPod will need some updated games for the new interface.  They will offer them for the iPhone as well.  Another announcement that may not be as likely but would be a brilliant move by Apple would be the announcement of making the iTunes store available over the air over the iPhone.  Think about it.  This would make the iPhone a lot more exciting to own than just a regular iPod and it is a feature that users have been clamoring for.  They obviously couldn't do video over the slow EDGE network but they could probably add the ability to download songs from iTunes over EDGE.  They would have to save movies and videos until version 2 but it would give them a chance to test the service out now.

Those are my main predictions.  I also believe they will release some Leopard info and probably announce a firm date for availablity.  Probably give out some more feature hints as well.  I will be hoping for a Mac tablet like I always do but I really doubt that will be there.  Maybe after Leopard but well see...

The Day of .NET is back again this year.  The organizers have decided to make this a bi-annual event.  The first one of the year was held on Cinco de Mayo and the next one will be held on October 20th at the same location in the Washentaw Community College in Ann Arbor, MI.

The event is free, you get fed, can learn a lot.  Great speakers and great content.  In May, there were two very good presentations by Dustin Campbell and Brian Prince that were worth the drive themselves.  The organizers are currently calling for speakers and you can go to the website to learn more.