Woah, boy...

I AM TERRIBLY EXCITED, as the new Mac OS 10.5 Leopard is coming out in two days. This is, in essence, merely a whiff of disappointment to come, as I don’t currently have the funds to invest in said wonder-upgrade, and won’t until Christmas… However, that doesn’t mean that I am not absolutely beside myself with anticipation. I have a 24” 2.33 GHz Core2Duo iMac with a fairly nice graphics setup and 2 gigs of RAM, which puts me directly in the sweet spot as far as an upgrade is concerned. I’m convinced that I will install the new operating system, and it will instantly solve all of my problems, world hunger, war, strife, and Orpheus’ annoying propensity for holding back those three simple words. Leopard will instantly make my life Better. I am convinced. It must, after all… Otherwise, why would it excite me so?

To be fair, as an ardent hardware-enthusiast, I still prove a most disappointing technologist. This is, of course, rather unfortunate, as the vast preponderance of my friends are actually quite tech-savvy program-wise. These are people who breathe numbers, and literally laugh when I can tell them exactly what is “under the hood” of their latest desktop by sight, but am confused by the simplest command prompts or software snafus. For example, on the occasion that I came to Sunday role-playing (Dungeons and Dragons, you saucy prudes,) and loudly proclaimed that I’d successfully reformatted my two-year-old Windows craptop WITHOUT LOSING ANY DATA, my Dungeon Master gazed me down levelly and said, “Do you assume that this is some sort of accomplishment to be bragged about? You didn’t even install a new operating system!” The guys were cruel in their ceaseless taunting after that one, let me tell you. Furthermore, DM (Dungeon Master, his once and future name herein) is a Mac-head himself, and has helped me through several problems I’ve had with my desktop, smirking the entire time.

Any way you look at it, though, my Mac is my favorite computer to date. It is, perhaps, not quite as versatile as my Compaq laptop, the first Turing machine I bought after the divorce. MegaMac, as Orpheus has dubbed it, was procured for entirely different reasons. Whereas Muschi (the craptop,) was picked up for her affordability, 64-bit processor, solid configuration and versatility, my decision to acquire the iMac was based purely on “fahrvergnügen,” to misappropriate the German. I have greatly enjoyed getting to know my precious, 24”-screened wonder, and have had more fun and frustration getting used to the excellent Mac OS 10.4 than I ever thought possible. If it’s even 1/10th true that installing Leopard will, in fact, add “a whole new Mac to [my] Mac,” $130.00 is more than worth it. Either way, le-sigh.