New Mac - Fun Park

A few weeks ago Joel got it in his head to buy a mac so that he could become a iPhone App Developer. We have the iPhones, and we needed the Mac.Well he had been researching this for the past few weeks and at first was thinking about getting a Mac cube, this is like a desk top, and doing some type of complicated monitor switching and adding it to his office space.Well I Nixed that idea right away. I thought he needed a Laptop, so he could have it for writing, and so he wouldn't always be locked away in the other room. New Mac Book Pro's are like $1650 at the store.You could also but a regular mac book with all of the basic options and smaller hard drive ect. for about $999 So we decided to search Craigslist and see what our options were.Joel really wanted the "pro" version, and we saw several for around $. Well Joel is sometimes afraid to tell me his "crazy ideas" because I have a way of making things happen and running with it. Sometime in the morning he "mentioned" the idea, next thing I was looking on cragslist to see what deals I could find, and before you know it I was calling someone with a MacBook Pro about 3 years old for $675The difference between a used one and a new one were minimal, the processor was only about .2 faster, the disk was large, but the main thing with this one was that it had an ATI Radeon Card instead of an Nvidia.We chatted with our mac using friends, and they didn't really know the difference between the cards, and we assumed that since Joel wasn't planning on doing heavy graphics it would work out. We later found out that sometimes there is a problem with this Graphics card and the computer freezes. It has done it a few times on Joel, but not enough for him to regret his purchase, and it hasn't been a problem.The guy in the ad said he would be in San Jose for the day, so when I called him, he said he was on his way home to Pleasanton. That is actually much closer for us and we arranged to meet at a Starbucks.Before heading out we stopped at the Apple store to make sure Joel liked typing on the keyboards and we looked at the new ones just to verify we didn't want a new one. The used one wouldn't have a warranty, but the warranty doesn't cover any of the type of damage his computer would like get.But for a $1000 dollar savings I was convinced we should go with this one. The next cheapest mac we found was about $800 so he was a little worried that something might be wrong with it because we were getting such a good deal.So we made sure to know how to check everything out when we were at the Apple Store, so we could find the settings on the used one we were going to see. See, neither of us are mac users, and we basically have no idea what we are doing or where anything is, there is literally no file system, and when you have been using a PC type system for 20 years, Mac's philosophy and design is foreign.On our way Holly fell asleep in the car, so Joel went in on his own, checked it out and bought it. He was a little floored, as it had been about 10 hours earlier that on a whim he mentioned that perhaps he should get a mac, but you know... I didn't want and excuses or road blocks to his App Developing empire, so i was ready to get going, we have tossed getting a Mac around as an idea for years, it was time to do it. Holly woke up, and well we were about a mile away from Central Park in Pleasanton, so we headed over and Holly got the treat of playing around in the water feature. We decided that our outing was of course to take Holly to the park, "not" to go and buy a mac, and Joel wasn't dressed for the water, so I got to chase her around this time, but as you can see by the pictures above, she was thrilled and had an amazing time. Water, Sand, tubes, and a awesome Slide. What more could a girl want. Can you believe she went down this slide! Joel was on the structure with her, helping her get in, and Mommy caught her at the bottom, her face was glee, horror, and then happy excitement. She would sign more, and be ready to go again. She was a happy girl, and with his new computer, Joel was a happy boy. He has been busily working on his first iPhone App, a game for Holly on the iPhone, I don;t want to reveal too much, but when it's done, I will have codes for all of you to download it for free, and it will be VERY fun.