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“Isn’t it amazing that corporate warmonger GE and its media outlet NBC could suddenly drop me from the debates, and none of my opponents would even comment on it? It’s like Stalin’s Russia when someone would just stop showing up for work but no one in the office dared to ask; “Hey, what ever happened to Ivan?” What does it say about the state of American politics when our presidential candidates don’t have the guts to question a TV network?”

-Senator Mike Gravel

Wow. I actually had a weird scare not too long ago about Google being down, but it was isolated as one computer in the house could access Google (even though two couldn’t). But this time it appears to be none other than Google being down. Take a gander.

So I’m pretty sure hell has frozen over, and I think that might be a flying pig up there.

One of my favorite features in Leopard escaped me when I was writing my first post-Leopard blog, but this post is here to set it right. Apple’s default email reader, Mail.app, has received significant upgrades. Apple seems fairly proud of their new “stationary”, which allows Mail.app users to send messages with HTML formatting (borders, framed pictures, etc). Personally I just see that as absurd — I am not looking forward to a generation where email takes 5 minutes to open because it’s so bogged down with images and useless formatting.

That said, Mail.app does have several great improvements. It now allows you to write yourself notes, and store them with IMAP, meaning you can transfer them to your iPhone or laptop, or some other device, fairly easily. Next is to-do lists, which work in much the same way. Both these features are very simple, but they add a lot to the program. No more iCal running in the background. iCal is great, but I can only afford room for one program.

The last great thing about Mail.app is quite timely for me. I’ve only recently started keeping up with world news, the economy, and things of that nature, as much as I should. Mail.app is going to make this even easier for me with its new built-in RSS reader. Safari simply doesn’t cut it as an RSS reader, because, let’s face it, Safari just isn’t built for that sort of thing. Mail.app is. Again, this is a very simple implementation of RSS, and I’m sure hardcore RSS freaks won’t be too thrilled. But for people like me, who can’t justify dedicating one app to RSS and RSS only, Mail.app’s new RSS capabilities are a very welcome addition.

I should also touch on QuickLook, because it is insanely cool. I don’t claim to understand how it works, but from my perspective this is a technological marvel. I can click a PDF document, touch my spacebar, and BOOM! In a matter of less than a second I have the full PDF in front of me. I have tested this on massive, graphically intensive PDFs that would have taken Tiger take 10-20 seconds to fully load up. Everything is instantaneous.

One last thing I’ll mention is the new voice, Alex. He is intended for the visually impaired, and reads words that are on screen. This has existed before, but the voices available were very robotic. Alex is a breakthrough, he sounds incredibly human-like (for a robot). I’m sure that Alex will have a huge impact.

Summarily, at least figuratively speaking, I’m currently screaming like a schoolgirl over Leopard.

And I’m still amused at this:

That’s right, folks, Leopard is here! I had it yesterday! Matter of fact, I was the first person in Utah to walk out of the Apple Store with box in hand! Everything about it is incredible…from the very packaging, to the beautiful new (but familiar) User Interface. It makes my computer SCREAM, presumably from the jump to 64-bit and an even tighter coding standard.

Excusing a few third-party applications that haven’t updated their apps to the “Leopard-look”, everything is very beautifully integrated. The shadows are subtler than before, and yet they do their job of showing you which window is active even better. The Finder bar’s transparency isn’t distracting, as I was slightly worried it might. The Dock is just simply amazing.

Spaces is even more incredible than I thought from the demos. It so so perfectly smooth. Even when my computer is under load, I am able to switch Spaces quickly and elegantly, with no to very little lag. One of my favorite things about Spaces is that it allows me to organize my screens in a way that there are only 2 or 3 open windows in any given Space. That means I get to see my desktop wallpaper a lot more frequently now, which is always a welcome sight. Before, it was rarely seen.

Time Machine is also incredible. The interface is so sleek and beautiful. It makes backing up your computer easy and automatic. The only gripe I have with Time Machine is that it has caused my hard drives to near-constantly emit that incessant clicking noise that means they’re moving files around. That said, I believe the main cause for this is that I have been installing apps and moving files to their new homes all night yesterday, so files were changing more drastically hour-to-hour than during normal use. The problem shouldn’t occur very much when I’m done settling in.

Safari 3 is so much better now. It’s faster, it’s more stable, it fixes all the bugs and gripes I had with Safari 3 Beta. It’s a beautiful, efficient browser, and among your choices: Firefox, Camino, Opera, Safari, at least for me, Safari is by far the best.

But I saved my absolute favorite thing about Leopard for last. I haven’t seen much buzz about this anywhere, which quite surprises me as I find it to be a very useful feature. You see, when your Mac recognizes a Windows server on your network, it shows you in the Finder sidebar. And if you get info on that, you will find that the default icon for a Windows computer on the network is a beige monitor showing the infamous Blue Screen of Death.

So can we expect Vista Service Pack 1 to show Macs on the network as Spinning Beachballs of Doom? But hey, I’d take a psychedelic spinning cursor over an ugly blue screen any day. That’s just me.

Video of the launch, unboxing, and install will come. Peace out.

Leopard is nearly here. So exciting!

Just over two days from now, Leopard will be. I hear it’s leaked already. No surprise there. Legitimate software tends to work better, though. I will see you Friday, my sweet!

At long last! It may not be as exciting as it would be if iTunes finally picked up the Beatles, but it is pretty cool! iTunes is getting the Led out…Led Zeppelin, that is. Led Zep was a very influential band, and in my opinion an incredible one as well.

Now you can get every album ever released by Zep for just $100. Not bad, if you ask me, although I’ve ben told you can get it even cheaper in physical form via Amazon or eBay. Personally though, I much prefer to buy from iTunes, because of a mixture of these: I don’t like albums lying around all over the place, I like to support Apple, I have had some bad luck with used music, and it’s fun to buy from iTunes and watch gigabytes of music transferred to your computer in a matter of minutes.

Also worth noting, The Complete Led Zeppelin is technically not complete, or at least it won’t be as of its iTunes release on the 13th next month. That same day, Led is releasing Mothership, though it is only a compilation of songs from CDs that are included on The Complete Led Zeppelin, so you won’t really be missing out if you skip over that one. Update: The Mothership album actually will be included on The Complete Led Zeppelin. Thus, the preceding was a lie. Sorry ’bout that, folks.

As an aside, I’m angry at Carrie Underwood. She is SOOOO not better than Jim Sturgess, Evan Rachel Wood, or any of the others from Across the Universe. Yet her crappy new album has trumped Across the Universe on the iTunes standings. A bloody shame.

Oh well, at least Britney Spear’s piece of crap she calls “Gimme More” is FINALLY falling off the charts. Until I saw her song on there, I didn’t know she still actually sold music…I am scared for this world when there are people who will actually pay money to hear Ms. Spears.

Anyway, enough of that. On with my daily token of anticipation for Leopard. It’s a matter of days now, before I have my hands on this revolutionary operating system.

But this is close enough. The Leopard cometh.

In five days, my friends, just five days, I will be running Leopard. LEOPARD!!! w00t.

Yep. Just six days to Leopard.

w00t.