The Apple Blog has a nice review of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). TAB covers the big and little, good and bad changes to Apple’s operating system. I’m particularly excited for the new Finder, which looks very iTunes-esque and even includes Cover Flow. Leopard ships October 26, ZingIT review to follow shortly thereafter. Get excited.

UPDATE: Paul Thurrot (yeah, the Windows guy) has a pretty sweet collection of screenshots from his recent upgrade to Leopard.

Good article about tea in today’s NY Times:

Flying to a remote corner of India and braving the long drive into the Himalayas may seem like an awful lot of effort for a good cup of tea, but Darjeeling tea isn’t simply good. It’s about the best in the world…

Link: http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/travel/14Tea.html
PDF: nytimes_high_tea_indian_style_14oct07.pdf

VentureCake has a great article about the kernels used in VMware. It comes almost immediately after VMware’s IPO, which generated lots of investers for the virtual machine software maker. The trouble: VMware basically has two kernels, one of which is the popular Linux kernel. The GPL of the Linux kernel makes redistributing the kernel (for profit) illegal. So now that VMware is $79.99, is it violating the Linux GPL? If so, can it run without the Linux kernel? “VMware had these serious questions posed directly to them a year ago, repeated in a public forum many times since, but have yet to respond at all.” VentureCake explores these questions and the workings of The VMware House of Cards.

Perhaps this is a good thing for the proverbial mother-in-law computer. It’s cheap up front, it runs linux that looks like windows, it comes with gobs of apps and connectivity, and has a subscriber service that does network backup of personal files.

In addition, it is touted as “green” and is certainly low power consumption. If it breaks in the first three years they will send a replacement unit at no charge.

For a $99 start and $155/yr subscription over three years you’ve got $563, or basically the cost of a Mac Mini.

Apple released the next, faster generation of MacBooks today. The new Books are available with a 2.0GHz or 2.16GHz processors (as opposed to the previous 1.86GHz and 2.0GHz) and come stocked with 1GB of RAM instead of 512MB. Hard drive size has also been increased from 60GB to 80GB with options for 120GB and 160GB drives. A dual-layer Super Drive is also available and comes stocked in the black MacBooks.

Nothing but good news here: the new MacBooks are faster but still the same price (starting at $1099) and the price of the previous generation will likely be reduced on Apple’s refurb site. We’ve been huge fans of the MacBooks since they came out, and with improvements like these I’m sure we’ll remain big fans.

Apple Computer and Zingerman’s: It’s All About the Customer

“…Zingerman’s has grown in a deliberate but purposeful way, expanding in areas where it can control the customer experience. It doesn’t franchise. It doesn’t lend its name to stuff that is not home-grown. It treats its brand like a rare and valuable jewel, pulling it out and sharing it only when its safe and only at appropriate times. It now has a thriving mail-order business. It can control how items are packaged, the presentation, and the consistency of quality of the items delivered. It also opened a restaurant in Ann Arbor, again a venue where they can control the customer experience front-to-back. I am a stickler for customer service. I am willing to pay a premium for excellent service, and get very, very irritated if I am asked to pay a premium price but the service doesn’t hold up its end. When I walk into Zingerman’s I always have a smile on my face because I know that I will get first-class, friendly, intelligent and informed service, every time. Zero variation…”

More here: “Information Arbitrage: Apple Computer and Zingerman’s: It’s All About the Customer”

NYTimes article: “A Corner Deli With International Appeal”

“…Why is Sun joining the Mac porting project? If you look around at conferences and airport lounges, you will notice that more and more people are using Apple notebooks these days. Apple has a significant market share in the desktop space. We are supporting this port because of the interest and activity of the community wanting this port…”

http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/sun_microsystems_engineering_joins_porting

If you could get rid of all your junk mail (we’re talking the paper stuff here) for five years, how much would you pay? Well, a Michigan company called 41Pounds.org is working an innovative business plan that bets you’ll pay $41.

Their points:

• NO MORE JUNK MAIL.
• Save time by eliminating 80-95% of your daily junk mail.
• Save trees - 100+ million trees destroyed annually for junk mail.
• Save water used producing and recycling junk mail.
• Reduce global warming - energy used for junk mail.
• Support your favorite charity - we donate when you sign up.

Wired News just posted this article affirming what we’ve known about the overall value of the new intel macs.

From the Adobe blog and The Apple Blog:
We are announcing Creative Suite 3 on March 27th. However, the software will not ship until later in Spring 2007.