Were I not addicted to their MacBook Pro line I'd be slapping down plastic for one right now whether I could afford it or not (read: I cannot.)

There were other releases during that event that also caught my eye. The Mac Mini line was quietly refreshed with faster processors. It's curious. These little Mah Jong tiles are just so cool and functional and yet The Steve gives them at best grudging acknowledgement. A stay of execution if you will. Rumour is that he hates them. And I just don't understand why. Kathy uses one. They rock.

Long. Live. The. Mac Mini.

Another two updates caught my eye: iLife 08, and iWork 08. iLife I don't use that much so wasn't really compelling for me, but what really got my attention was iWork. It's all growed up! Pages >= M$ Word, Keynote >= M$ Powerpoint. This much we knew from the previous version, but there was a facet missing, and they added it:

Numbers >= Excel.

So, I must admit it's only now I've changed my thinking of iWork as being a poor [wo]man's AppleWorks (may it rest in peace, and ClarisWorks before it) but as a serious contender/replacement to the current Mac version of Office. And that's no mean feat. The MacBU division of M$ really knew what they were on about - and really grokked Mac. Hats off to them. But the new iWork suite is really something special. It is built for intel Macs[1], it 100% groks the Mac, and (I don't know whether this is new or not) it has jaw-dropping compatibility with M$ Office docs.

This is something new for me. In times past I would always, say, fire up a new version of OpenOffice or NeoOffice and eagerly hope this was the version that would handle Office documents. They would always do an admirable effort, but with compromise. One key trip point I'd frequently hit is the handling of multi-column docs.

OO (and probably NeoO) would have kittens with these. And in an 'I need to be compatible' world of a Mac-unfriendly environment, this is a deal-breaker. So, I ended up using M$ Office for Mac.

Until now.

Earlier this evening I zipped my M$ Office folder and assigned ownership of relevant docs to their relevant iWork counterparts.

Let's see how this works out; I'm hopeful.

[1]- BTW, may I add my vote to bitch-slap the guy who asked at said AE why Macs didn't sport the oh-so-classy 'Intel-Inside' sticker - so doesn't get the whole Mac Thing. Update: MacUser listened again to the Q&A and identified the guy. Have a listen to the audio of that moment (link on the article), it's quite a laugh.