Windows 7 Launch Parties. Oh sweet Jesus.

I know it’s easy to heap scorn on Windows. Too easy most of the time. Hell, after two years of wedded bliss with my Mac, I find trying to use Windows roughly analogous to having six of my fingers stapled to a piano and then trying to play the xylophone. But this is some seriously next level shit here. It’s not even like Windows have gone ‘look we’re never going to be cool, so let’s just do something really daggy instead’. They’re just doing something daggy, but seem to think it’s really cool. I mean, I’m watching these things searching desperately for some trace of self-awareness, some loose sense of irony, but there’s nothing. Just… nothing. Except cringeful awkwardness and multi-coloured balloons. You know those horribly stilted “parties” you attended during High School when you were still really uncool and there were like five people there sharing three Bacardi Breezers and you’d pretend to be smashed so you might have a chance with Sally McPlainface and then you’d kiss her and regret it and have to go home filled with self-loathing and other people’s pity? I’d say they were generally more enjoyable than the prospect of these launch parties.

I only made it through about a minute of each. It’s a bit like watching David Brent in full flight. You spend your time thinking “No. No. Surely not, surely… No!” and withdrawing into yourself like a hermit crab made from pure embarrassment. I just cannot work out what kind of person thought this was going to be a good idea? And who thought this was going to be the best way of communicating this “good idea”? Bringing together a motherly type who looks like she’d be at least 80% passive aggression, a token black guy, a wannabe frat boy and a slightly intimidating suburban housewife and making them pretend that they enjoy each others company due to the miracle of Windows 7. “But that will look awkward!” I’m sure someone must have said. To which they obviously replied “Not if there’s balloons!”. At which point everyone in the board meeting burst into rapturous applause and chaired Mr Balloons out of the room. And I know work is work, but even as an actor I think I would have looked at the script for this and said “No, what you ask for is impossible. No-one can make this look good. No-one. Even if the cast was Dame Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Robert Downey Jr and Lt. Daniels from The Wire, this would still not be good. I’d have to live with this for the rest of my life. I can’t do it. I’m going to go dress up as a chicken and sell fast food instead.” Actors. So melodramatic.

So. Anybody here having a Windows 7 Launch Party?

/Luke

/Luke

P.S. The Israeli-Palestine situation may actually be more depressing, but it’s really probably not as funny.

Spring has sprung and the zesty tang of green Granny Smith Apples is in the air. As well as a whole new breed of Uncle Steve’s Apples with big fuck off CPUs and hard drives you could live in. So screw you Granny, Uncle Steve is gonna give me all the springtime nutrition I need.

Which is really just a labouriously rendered way of saying that Apple has dropped the specs on their new Macbooks, Macbook Pros and Macbook Airs. And as usual, they are little short of stunning, if perhaps not so revolutionary as some had expected (the concept of a fully touch screen Macbook had been bandied about. Engadget has a minute-by-minute blog of the proceedings at the launch ceremony, but a lot of the excitement seems to be coming from the buttonless, glass trackpad at the bottom of the keyboard, which allows users to manipulate things on screen in much the same way as they do on an iPhone/iPod Touch. There’s also truckloads of extra hard-drive space and processing power, as well as a new, and much upgraded NVIDIA graphics card. With Wrath of the Lich King just around the corner, perhaps this is a worthwhile investment… You can watch the promo video here (well, I can’t, because Firefox hates Flash), but I gotta say it’s all looking rather tasty. Just like Granny Smith Apples. And the story comes full circle.

But, just so you don’t think this blog is horribly biased towards one side of the computing spectrum, here’s the last half of the promo video to Windows’ amazing new operating system ‘Windows 386′. May I heartily recommend that you keep watching until she starts to remove her clothes around the two minute mark. It really only gets better from there.

/Luke