There are some things he said that resonated with me; more than anything, that “the iPad is what they’ve been building toward all along” and how they’ve invented a totally new UI paradigm with the iWork apps.

Someone on Twitter said the other day that “this is the end of the desktop OS.” When I read it, I thought it was overdramatized, but after thinking about it, I see what they’re saying and I agree with it. This truly marks the beginning of a change in times. Not long from now, the mouse will die off, to be replaced by a keyboard/touch interface. The iPad is the start of that, and I think it’s a pretty big deal.

I always hear people asking what will happen when Mac OS X runs out of version numbers after 10.9. Will we hit Mac OS XI? I don’t think so. I think Mac OS X will be dead before such a need arises. I’ve heard people refer to Snow Leopard as a “fresh start” for the Mac OS, but Snow Leopard is just a stall tactic, getting people used to the idea of scaling back. The iPhone OS (and by extension the iPad OS) is really the “fresh start” here. Apple is pushing the world into uncharted territory, and it’s up to those of us at the forefront of the technological world to keep up so we’ll be ready with a new vision when the rest of the world joins us after the paradigm shift.

As Gruber said, iWork on the iPad is a huge deal. They have essentially proven that we can throw out existing UI standards and invent something totally new that works better. It won’t be long before the rest of our digital lives get ported to the iPad as well, and even the content creators will be able to get through the day without sitting at their desktop. Imagine iLife for the iPad, with finger scrubbing in iMovie and a playable on-screen piano keyboard in GarageBand. After seeing what Apple did with iWork, it doesn’t seem so far off, does it? This is what Apple is good at, because they’re not afraid of change.

Change is in the air; the future of computing is happening now.

Once I was old enough to manage on my own, I bought a rack-mounted Linux server that I used for several years to host my web sites and various other things online. As time went on, I had to get rid of the physical server for various reasons. It didn’t make sense to keep around anymore, and I decided to move to an externally hosted solution. That’s when I moved to DreamHost. Despite being overall satisfied with DreamHost, there were things I missed about having my own server. I loved being able to set things up exactly the way I wanted them. I loved learning better ways of doing the same things, and putting them into practice. I even kind of loved when I accidentally broke something and had to scramble to fix it. There’s a lot to be said for the hands-on approach. Not only does it teach you a lot about the way these systems work, but it also teaches you a lot about the way these systems should work. And it’s a hell of a lot of fun, too.

Wanting to return to that kind of environment, but not wanting to deal with the hassle of owning my own dedicated server again, I discovered Linode. Linode offers what are called Virtual Private Servers; essentially, a virtual server that’s yours to do with as you please. You choose the operating system, you have full kernel and root access, and you choose what gets installed, where things go, and how things are managed. It’s all the fun of having your own server with none of the downsides. Their web panel is incredibly intuitive and offers tons of convenient features. You can store multiple disk images and switch between them in a matter of seconds, for instance. I’m having so much fun with my Linode VPS that I plan on buying a second one just so I can experiment more freely. (Some of you may have noticed that the site has been off and on quite a lot over the past couple of days; more often than not, this is simply because I was playing with something on Linode.)

So far I have moved four of my web sites over to the new Linode VPS (including DannyStewart.com). Once things stabilize a bit, I plan to move the rest. In addition to web hosting, I have set up the VPS to manage email and chat services as well. It’s been an extremely invigorating experience configuring everything myself, and I look forward to seeing what else I can do with this wonderful little VPS. In the meantime, though, keep your head down and don’t be surprised if the site goes down or something just isn’t working correctly. I hope to have everything hammered out in the next few days.

UPDATE 1/26: I have now moved all of my web sites over to the new Linode VPS and sorted out the last remaining problems I was aware of. As far as I know, everything should be fully up and running at this point. Please let me know if you encounter any problems!

• Startup: A startup script I wrote to launch my most frequently used applications, depending on a few different things (whether I’m connected to the internet, which external hard drives are connected to my computer, etc.).
• Reinitialize: A very basic script that kills the Finder, Dock, and SystemUIServer. A nice way to reinitialize the core components of the system without logging out and back in. It was more fun to make than it is to use.
• Restart into Windows: My most useful script. Sets my Windows drive as the default startup disk for one restart only, allowing me to switch into Windows and then go back to Mac OS X the next time I restart without having to give it a second thought.

Click here to download the whole set.

That changed a bit once Apple came out with their new MobileMe service to go along with the launch of iPhone 2.0. In order to have the best experience using my iPhone, I wanted to manage my calendar and contacts through MobileMe instead.

However this week I’ve decided to move over to MobileMe fully. The biggest thing holding me back was the inability to use custom domain names (sometimes called “domain spoofing”) with their service. I had been using that with my Gmail account to send email from a DannyStewart.com address. Unfortunately Apple still hasn’t added this feature, but I’ve decided that the benefits outweigh the costs, and I have decided to embrace MobileMe as it stands now. I now use my me.com email address as my primary mode of contact, and my old DannyStewart.com address forwards to that.

All in all, it’s not so different considering I use either Apple Mail or my iPhone to access my email anyway, but I do prefer Apple’s MobileMe web interface for those times when I’m away from my computer and need to check my email from a computer.

I’ve also started using Apple’s iDisk service in lieu of Dropbox. I imagine there are some things that it won’t quite be able to pull off as elegantly, but I do really like the integration with Mac OS X, and I’m all for dropping extra services whenever possible and keeping things down to a bare minimum if I can. (Especially with Snow Leopard on the horizon.) The fewer things I have installed on my system, the happier I am.

So far, it’s been a positive (if small) change. I really love having push email on my iPhone. The benefits of that really can’t be overstated. And having all my information with Apple makes me feel a little cozier than having it all with Google. Don’t get me wrong, I love Google as much as the next guy (probably more), but they’re a little scary these days. So consider me a happy MobileMe user, and let’s hope Apple keeps pushing it forward for the future.

The one thing I noticed right away after installing Safari 4 is that Tabs on Top seems to have been pulled at the last minute. It’s just gone, and all traces of the feature have been removed from Apple’s site as though it never existed. Ah well. I had gotten used to it, but I won’t miss it too much. It’s certainly nice to have my title bar restored to normality.