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Wednesday is my favorite day of the week. I wake up, have some breakfast and wait patiently until 2pm when my Local Comic Shop opens so I can go and pick up this weeks comic books. I recently got back into comics after about 15 years thanks to podcasts like iFanboy and Geekscape but the real unsung hero is my Apple Macbook. Without programs like ComicBookLover, Wednesday’s List and iComicsOnSale, I wouldn’t have really gotten back into reading comics.

ComicBookLover

ComicBookLover aims to be the iTunes for digital comics and it comes pretty close. Its laid out in a similar fashion to iTunes with a 3 pane browser on the top, your library on the bottom and your lists on the left. You can also view by cover art. CBL allows you to organize your entire collection by tagging the file with all the relevant information such as issue name, volume, publisher and year. Just like iTunes, it support Smart Lists. This allows you to make a List based on search criteria which I have found invaluable.

Viewing comics has an impressive feature set such as Single, Western or Manga view. You can rotate images on the screen 90 degrees and it supports dual monitors. What I like to do is rotate the screen and turn my Macbook on its side like a book to read. The 13′ widescreen is almost the perfect size of a comic page. Pages are automatic sized based on which view your using and it provides an On-screen display to navigator when using Full Screen mode.

ComicBookLover will set you back $24.95 but if you read digital comics in any form, its well worth it.

Wednesday’s List

Railhead Design’s Wednesday’s List is a one trick pony. It pulls this weeks Diamond shipping list and allows you to print out your Pull List. The interface divides up each publisher in its own section and lists the name, Previews order number and price. Just check the box next to the comics you want and your ready to save, print or email your list. You can even sync with iCal. My favorite part is you can add in your local tax rate and it gives you a running tally for the comics you selected. I also print and bring my list with me so I know what I’m getting and what its going to cost me.

Wednesday’s List costs $7 and is a Universal Binary.

iComicsOnSale

iComicsOnSale or iCOS is a Dashboard widget. iCOS is similar to Wednesday’s List in that it allows you to print out weekly pull lists. I prefer iCOS because you can view a summary of each comic, cover, price, pages and writer/artist information. They even have a featured comic page highlighting one comic each week. That being said, I don’t use iCOS for two reasons. One its a widget and would work so much better an actually program and two its very unstable for me. It uses an insane amount of memory some times and it eats my pull list. The latest version is still beta so its to be expected but I’ve moved to Wednesday’ List for my Pull Lists because of this.

iComicsOnSale is free and they have just launched a new website which lists this weeks new comics with full descriptions.

iFanboy Podcast

While iFanboy is not an application it is a weekly podcast and video podcast that I can’t live without. And technically I subscribe to both podcasts using iTunes but thats nether here nor there. iFanboy do a audio podcast called the Pick of the Week where they pick one comic for that week and discuss it along with other books that were released. It comes out every Sunday and I listen to it on my way to pick up my comics every Wednesday. Then when I get home, there video podcast is waiting for me. The video podcast differs from the audio as they focus on topics and not weekly books.

So definitely check there podcast out. I look forward to it each week and its always the first I listen to and watch.

Last Friday I received my Income Tax return and felt the need to buy myself something nice. I just got done watching Geekbrief TV where Cali reviewed the Apple TV and I was sold. I’ve been on a strict budget for the past few months so I felt a little guilty dropping $300 on an Apple TV. So I made myself an internal compromise. I said if I sell my Xbox 360 HD DVD drive, I’ll buy myself an Apple TV, which would pay for at least half of it. I immediately call up the local Apple Store to make sure they had some Apple TV’s in stock. They did and off I went.

Well its been a full week and I have to say I love the box. Previously I used Front Row on my Macbook hooked up via DVI. While it did the job, it wasn’t an elegant solution. The Apple TV setup was a breeze which if you used any Apple product, thats a given. The interface is what really sold it for me. Since I don’t have cable, I get my TV shows from iTunes, download podcasts and subscribe to Netflix for my media fix. Only thing I would have liked is a DVD player inside but I understand the decision not to include it. My Xbox 360 does have a DVD player and it works. Thats good enough for me.

While my new Apple TV is awesome, I’m going to have to give credit where its due here. I wouldn’t be able to enjoy my Apple TV as much as I am if it wasn’t for Visualhub who has helped me convert all my existing media over to h264. The program is simply awesome for converting to different video formats and its amazingly fast. I did run into one small problem when trying to convert previously ripped h264 files from Mediafork but it was easily fixed by changing a setting. The latest version 1.23 even supports outputting to Apple TV. If you need to convert some media to Apple TV, I cannot say enough good things about Visualhub. Worth every penny of the $23.

The 40G hard drive is tiny in comparison to my iTunes library which last I checked was around 140 gigs. Hacking the Apple TV’s hard drive is definitely in my future but I’d really like to go to a 250 gig drive which they don’t make yet. So in the meantime, I’m just keeping unwatched media synced which its actually pretty nice. I know what new podcasts are out and new TV shows and don’t have to worry about wading through everything. For the rest I just stream from my Macbook. I have the Apple TV hookup via wired ethernet so syncing and streaming is fast.

For Christmas last year I got a Garmin Nuvi 360 GPS, which has been kickass btw. Since I’m a Mac user, I always had to boot Parallels to install the latest firmwares using the windows software. Well as of today, I no longer have to as Garmin has released a Mac version of their WebUpdater and also their POI Loader. Both programs are universal binary but are still in beta. I just got done loading the latest firmware without a problem tho and the webupdater should work for any of Garmin’s GPS products.

Tuesday night I finally had some free time and decided to install Vista Ultimate on my Macbook. My Parallels install of XP MCE 2005 is getting full and I needed to reinstall anyways. Well would you know my luck, less that 12 hours after I installed Vista, Apple releases a Vista compatible version of Boot Camp. Thank god its just an updated driver CD and I don’t have to repartition and reinstall.

I just wish Parallel’s supported Vista on a Boot Camp partition so I didn’t have to reboot but the only two things i really need Windows for is to watch Netflix streaming movies and Comic Collector Live. Its only a matter of time for Parallels supports it and I can wait.

Video I took of the Apple iPhone on display at macworld

Keynote
I didn’t go to the keynote this year. $200 and standing in line for 5 hours didn’t really appeal to me too much so I did what everyone else did, followed everything online. I followed mostly everything from Macrumors and Engadget with a few refreshes of a couple other sites.

What did I think?

Apple TV
I’ve been waiting for this. I like what they did and will probably pick one up but its definitely not the perfect device. I don’t want to move all my movies into iTunes. I keep everything on a separate drive and you cannot stream from a folder.

The interface is slick and it can sync with iTunes just like a iPod so you don’t have to keep your computer running. I’m probably going to pick one up anyways since I get all my TV Shows from iTunes and its convenient but I’ll probably find another device down the road to replace it.

iPhone
This thing is amazing. I’ve said it before that when Apple drops there phone I would be be first in line to buy one. After all is said and done, I’m probably not going to get one.

Reasons:
1) Cingular. I’m a T-mobile customer.
2) Price. $599 is kinda steep tho I do think its worth every cent.
3) I’ve fallen in love with my Blackberry’s push email from work and I’m not sure if the iPhone can do that.
4) Doubt its going to work with the Nike+iPod kit.

June is along time away, half a year. As more details get announced, I’ll weigh in on my choice.

In other news, if Apple released a 120G touch widescreen iPod, that I will buy.

Apple AirPort Extreme
Nice, real nice. I want one but kinda pricy and my Macbook doesn’t have N in it.

Disappointed
After dropping a bombshell like the iPhone I still felt a little disappointed with the keynote. Why?

No new iPod, no Leopard and no iLife ‘07.

I was actually looking forward to new Leopard details, maybe even a release date and what’s new in iLife ‘07. I’m really hoping they overhaul iPhoto.

My guess is all that stuff will be announced soon and wasn’t at Macworld do to the iPhone stealing everyones thunder.