buzzbishop
on - last edited on by
ElizabethS
It's time for another annual look back at the gear I acquired (and retired) in 2011.
I almost had a 50" Panasonic 3D Plasma TV in 2011, but my son took care of that 4 minutes after I plugged it in. Sure, it was just to be a review unit, but it was quickly retired.
BTW, I'm still not convinced 3D has a future in the home. It's gimicky at best in the theatres (studios are re-releasing Star Wars and Titanic in 3D next year) and at home there are still many kinks before it's comfortable for the mainstream.
Despite the iPhone 4S dropping in late 2011, the new phone for me was the iPhone 4 (my wife got one too). I picked it up in January and plan to continue my tradition of skipping a generation with Apple releases. I had the iPhone 3G, skipped the 3GS, have the iPhone 4 and skipped the 4S. Will I go iPhone 5 if one drops later this year? I don't know. Just as I don't know if I'll leap on a new iPad model if it drops later this year. I have a first gen iPad that I still love and I'm not convinced the upgrades are crucial.
The killer app in the iPhone 4S, Siri, is a non-starter for me. I kicked around with it on my brother's 4S over Christmas and while I'm convinced voice is the future, it certainly isn't the present. Siri is an inconsistent gimick that wears the beta tag proudly. It barely works (although when it clicks it's fascinating). This as a "Face Time" type of feature that's great for showing off the device's potential, but nobody really uses.
I love my iPhone 4 and have no need to pony up for the new sexy. The camera (and the camera apps that kick up it's features) have basically retired my Flip and the Panasonic Lumix I added to my bag last year. I've printed the photos from my iPhone, they look gorgeous on my wall. There's a reason 27% of photos are being taken by smartphones, they're good enough and they're in your pocket.
Macbook Pro
I upgraded to OSX Lion in 2011 and while some hate the upgrade and are begging for their Snow Leopard to come back, I have no problem with Lion. The big change of two finger scrolling on the track pad is intuitive and makes the screen almost touch like. I no longer mouse to the corners to scroll and find myself having to re-learn scrolling behaviour when I'm faced with a PC and mouse. It's just another example of Steve Jobs begging us to Think Different and denting the universe.
iCloud
As far as Carbonite is concerned, I'm still mucking through how to use it properly. When I upgraded my Macbook to the Pro, I try restoring the data from Carbonite which just insisted on dumping everything on the desktop. I'll concede I may have been doing it wrong, but for now Carbonite will be great for individual file recovery more than system restoration.
I also bucked up the $27 for iTunes Match. The online backup of your music collection (and amnesty of all music illegally acquired) has been great. I like that I don't need to sync my devices to get apps and music across my network. Everything happens automatically making my entire music collection available anywhere I have an internet connection regardless of the hard drive size of my device.
To round out my Apple addiction for 2011, Santa dropped the Steve Jobs biography on my bedside table. The dead tree version is about as low tech as you can get, but I'm looking forward to learning more about the man in what was the best selling book
What Steve Jobs was to computing, James Dyson is to home appliances. Just because it's a vacuum doesn't mean it can't be beautiful, elegant and stylish. And just because it's a sexy vacuum doesn't mean it can't do the job.
Dyson products are the Apple equivalent on every level. Prettier, more expensive, and better. After choking a Bissel around our house for 3 years, my wife and I sucked it up and got a Dyson. Life has been better ever since. My wife, who won't let me cut the grass because she finds it therapeutic, gets an equal joy from vacuuming. Walking the Dyson around the house is her equivalent of meditating with a guru.
Bosch Tall Tub
I'm doing something today I haven't been able to do in nearly 2 years. I'm working in my living room, watching tv with the dishwasher on. Our old Maytag dishwasher was so loud it was a nighttime only thing. Now, with our new Bosch dishwasher, we can run it whenever it's full. It's elegant, it's quiet, it works. If you're looking for a dishwasher, check out Bosch (there are fabulous deals for Boxing Week right now).
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