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This Valley is my Hollywood August 26, 2008

Posted by sdpurtill in : Technology, Life , 4comments

I had waited all year to see Radiohead and paid through the nose for a ticket. Finally, I was there, Thom Yorke and crew performing in front of me. This was supposed to be the best show of my life – but I was caught in a dilemma: 10 minutes into their show I got a text message from a friend saying Sean Parker was at this party I had been invited to. What should I do?

I started programming when I was 11 or 12 - Netscape Composer is to blame for me falling in love with the internet and technology. I read stories about these young entrepreneurs with their new technologies and websites, raising millions in funding and making millions in turn. To me, Silicon Valley was a fantasy land. Products like Napster and Netscape inspired me to stay up all night writing code and learning everything I could about programming so I could one day build something just as innovative. Fast forward 6 years and I’m here, living it.

I’ve been in the tech scene full time for about a year now, and I’m beginning to understand how it all works. Everyone knows everyone. There’s all the cool kids that hang out with the Digg crowd and go rock climbing at Mission Cliffs. There’s the big YCombinator crowd full of smart kids from MIT and Stanford (who kill me in poker). There’s the Facebook app developer crowd, and the iPhone app developers. Most of these people either went to a top 20 university or dropped out of school and came here, some of the brightest, most forward thinking people in the world.

But then there are the people that you see very rarely at any of these events. They’re generally the people with net worths north of 8 figures and are probably off on a yacht or busy filing their IPO paperwork. These are the people that I follow religiously in the blogosphere/party gossip. The short list includes Sean Parker, Mark Cuban, Peter Thiel, Nick Denton, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, and a few others. This list is made up of people who have gone against what the corporate world said was possible – Peter and Max starting PayPal, Sean starting Napster, Marc starting Netscape, Denton starting Gawker Media, Cuban starting Broadcast.com, and Zuckerberg with good ol’ Facebook. These are the guys that looked impossible in the face and knocked it out in the first round.

So back to the Radiohead show. I ran a quick cost/benefit analysis of leaving the Radiohead concert early; it was an easy choice, I had to meet Sean. I hopped in the first cab I could find (town car, cost me $50) and headed over to the Marina. Once I arrived I walked past the bodyguards (on the guest list? check.) and immediately recognized him. I shook his hand and said, “it’s good to meet you”, then caught myself and corrected, “no, it’s GREAT to meet you!” I had read so many things and heard so many stories about him, I was standing in the presence of greatness. A guy who turned the multi billion dollar recording industry upside down with Napster, was founding president at Facebook, and now a partner in The Founder’s Fund - the best VC in the world by a long shot. I talked to him for a while and he told me, “what are you doing?! Get back to Radiohead!!” So to capture the moment, I got a picture and he took off to catch his flight.

Sam and Sean

In closing (this went on way too long!). These are the people I dream of becoming: a Sean Parker, a Mark Cuban, a Peter Thiel. Someone that doesn’t accept the norm and bucks the trends, even if it makes people and industries hate you. There is nothing more fulfilling than creating and being the best [insert Ayn Rand diatribe here: joking, I will spare you]. Now I’m at a startup that’s trying to do something on a similar scale - YouNoodle. But seriously readers (especially the ones in the Valley, and especially my too-occasional commenters), I love the Valley. I love the internet. I love the people. I love the parties. I love the City. I have found my home.

Would be very interested if anyone feels the same way about the Valley? Comment!

Discussion over on FriendFeed (Scoble commented!)

Also, Hacker News discussion going on.

SF Outside Lands was a disaster August 23, 2008

Posted by sdpurtill in : Rants , 3comments

this is a rant so i’m not going to capitalize letters or fix spelling mistakes; bear with me. i wrote this whole post refraining from using the f-word or any other explicitaves, it was very hard but i hope you can understand my frustration/anger regarding the following events.

i have heard from all of my friends that have seen radiohead that it is one of the most life changing/religious experiences you can have at a live show. i’ve listened to radiohead a lot the last few years (though to be honest they’re pretty far down on my list of top artists on last.fm, #18). everyone keeps telling me that you HAVE to see radiohead, so i buy the tickets two weeks in advance for $95/ticket to be a part of this experience.

so with much anticipation, i bring you to friday at 5pm before their show that starts at 8pm.

these are the things that went wrong before the radiohead performance:

the ticket cost $95. i don’t care who i’m seeing (unless it’s daft punk or josh groban), i will never pay $95 to see a band play again.

couldn’t find a taxi on embarcadero street - there’s 100,000 taxis in san francisco but they were magically elsewhere at 5pm on a friday. we nix the taxi idea and hop on the n judah.

the n judah had the worst driver of all time, he yields for EVERY car. n judah is packed and nobody can move.

got to the festival and there are no signs anywhere, just crowds walking in a general direction.

get there, the line for will call is hundreds of people long and there are only two will call booths. unbelievable.

wait in line for 45 minutes, finally get tickets. great, we’ve missed beck and all the other shows, but we’re just in time to see radiohead.

so all that was a big downer, but i tried to not let it weigh on me.

walk down to the polo fields, it’s 7:30 and radiohead starts in 30 minutes. looks like the entire crowd left the remaining shows to get good spots for radiohead around 7, because the closest possible place to stand is at least 500 feet from the stage.

radiohead starts promptly at 8, everyones going crazy. i let everything up to this point get erased in my head - i’m here to see radiohead, i don’t want any bad energy while watching them. they start playing, first few songs sound like sigur ros and are pretty inspiring - but i’m so far back i can’t feel the music. i’m used to going to shows/festivals where the speakers are so loud/close they vibrate you, that’s one of my favorite things about live performances. then they play “my iron lung” and i close my eyes, taking it in. still hard to feel anything because i’m so far back and people keep wiggling through to get a closer view (i always let people through, never really cared about trying to be a dick and block them).

halfway through my iron lung a fuse blows and the power gets cut, and for a minute radiohead keeps playing with no sound. i really paid $95 for this? the sound comes back on and i forgive them, but by now my patience is wearing very thin. the song ends and they start playing another sigur ros sounding song. now i love listening to sigur ros on my ipod, but the only time i saw them live i thought they absolutely sucked (coachella 2006). i wasn’t the only person - hundreds of people left that show with the same sentiments (people were pretty vocal about it). i don’t know what it is about that sound, but it doesn’t seem to work well for me outside. so we’re back at the radiohead concert, and they’re mid-way through this song that i’ve never heard before but is pretty cool. some stoner decides to weasel his way up through the crowd to get a better view, but when he gets in front of me decides that this will be his better view point. i gave him 15 seconds to begin his hunt for a better spot, but slowly realized that he was staying there. so now i’m looking at long hair and hear radiohead faintly in the background (remember, we’re far away). that just did it, i turned to matt and katie and said, “alright, screw this, i’m out of here” and began my retreat. this is at 8:20, 20 minutes or 4 songs into the radiohead show. as i am leaving, another fuse blows and the power goes out again. unbelievable.

it all worked out and was meant to be though - i took a cab to [redacted]’s party and met sean parker right before he had to leave for the airport… if i had left the concert 10 minutes later, i would have never met him.

in the end, the universe tends to unfold as it should. that being said, i will never attend sf outside lands again and am going to try to get a refund on my ridiculously overpriced ticket.

I sold my MacBook Pro July 26, 2008

Posted by sdpurtill in : Apple , 1 comment so far

Goodbye Apple, we had a terrible relationship from the start, so I won’t be sad to see you go. Maybe I’ll try again a year from now.

An Update for Everyone July 15, 2008

Posted by sdpurtill in : Life, Updates , 3comments

These last few months have been a whirlwind and I can’t believe we’re already in mid-July. That sentence was so cliché. Anyways, here are some highlights:

And for the next few months:

These last few months have been amazing - and as always, really looking forward to what the future has in store!

PS if I missed anything put it in the comments and I’ll add it. Thanks!

Quality vs Efficiency July 8, 2008

Posted by sdpurtill in : Technology, Web 2.0, Information, Ideas , 2comments

Walter Chrysler once said, “Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy way of doing it.” Companies succeed because of the “laziness” trait found in people - I think of it in a more positive way as the endless search for absolute efficiency. Nearly every electronic device you own and website you go to were built with the intention of making your life more efficient. If people didn’t care about getting from A to B the fastest, Google wouldn’t have a 200B market cap, Tumblr wouldn’t exist, you’d do meetings in person instead of IM, cell phone cameras would have never taken off, and for that matter cell phones probably would have never taken off (cost:efficiency ratio wouldn’t be justified by consumers).

This has become very real for me recently after buying a Canon EOS 20D camera (digital SLR). I could get into the camera and spend 10 minutes talking about all the features, how much fun it is to shoot with, how well the pictures turn out (here’s my Flickr), etc., but I still don’t use it a tenth as much as I use the always-out-of-focus-and-way-too-pixelated camera on my BlackBerry Pearl. It’s a very simple equation in my head: walk around all day with an expensive bulky camera strapped around your neck (not to mention how lame you look going to parties with an SLR) OR pull out a hand sized device and snap a picture in 3 seconds.

Forget the quality of the photos for a second; what is my goal in taking photos? Personally, the photos *I want* are moments frozen in time that I will be able to go back to in 5, 10, 20 years to see how much I’ve changed. I feel the best way to do this is to always have the camera on my cell phone ready to fire, because the moments that you remember come and go so fast it’s hard to know when you should have your digital SLR ready to freeze a moment. I also think that when you are dragging around a SLR to an event/concert/function you miss out on a lot of the fun because you’re so engaged in taking pictures of other people having fun and sights that you forget to live in the moment. A cell phone camera lets you live in the moment and capture an image to prove that it happened/you were there.

The most important part of the photography efficiency war is ease of publishing. Taking the photo is only the beginning. With an SLR you generally do some post production on the RAW files and then spend an hour or two uploading them to Flickr/Facebook/your blog. With a cell phone camera the process is: snap -> email -> done. This process takes about 12 seconds for me. If you have a Tumblr account you know what I mean. I’ve become so used to emailing photos to my Tumblr that anytime I compose an email on my BlackBerry I begin writing “Tu” in the TO field of the message.

And I’ve come to realize - the photos I find most interesting on the internet are ones snapped with cell phones. The quality on all phones are terrible right now (even the Nokia N95 is pretty bad), but in the next few years I expect the cell phone companies to come out with major improvements on their cameras. This will hopefully end the barrage of people at tech events walking around with their bulky SLRs and making sure to capture moments - along with 30 other photographers - of a few people having fun. There is still a need for artistic photography which will never run dry, but that will eventually find its place too.

Whatever product you are building or thinking of building, keep in mind that the you can sacrifice quality for efficiency. The biggest proof for that has been the huge success of cell phone cameras even though SLRs are in a similar price range and take exponentially higher quality photos.

On a final note, there are still very obvious efficiency holes that need to be patched up (governments and education are #1 and #2 on the need list). I am talking about your next startup.

Gawker for Colleges July 3, 2008

Posted by sdpurtill in : Web 2.0, Money, Ideas, Gawker , 3comments

If you follow SamPurtill.com I’m sure you know that I’m a huge fan of Gawker Media and anything Nick Denton touches. I’ve been kicking this idea around for awhile and felt like publishing it because 1) ideas are cheap and 2) the amount of energy/passion required to execute on this idea are so great that I think the only people that could do it need to contact me. Here are my thoughts.

College Gawker

Overview:
Basis of the idea comes from what we’ve seen Gawker do. There is a huge market for a college gossip blogs with campus reporters. There are several issues that would need researching before launching the company, mostly on the guidelines for what the reporters aren’t allowed to write about (preferably nothing, I don’t believe in censorship).

The Problem:
I think the best way to gather gossip in college right now is through Facebook. Gossip news is the most addicting kind of news because people are infatuated with the lives of others (instead of living their own).

The Solution:
Instead of letting Facebook decide what comes into the News Feed, why couldn’t you hire a few reporters to create news feeds for each college? Although Facebook will report on only the people you let in your Friends list, this would be much more interesting because the reporting would be more unique/funnier/original/HUMAN.

Reporters:
Hire 3-4 students to be reporters. Have 1 managing editor. For the first few reporters, try hiring sophomores/juniors as they would be better for getting to know the audience (as opposed to seniors who are leaving and freshman who don’t know enough people yet). Hire reporters that are well connected, have a large following on Facebook, attend all the parties. Hire from various social crowds.

Reporting Guidelines:
Minimum of 2 posts per day on weekdays. On weekends have 1 reporter make all the posts (SPIEGELMAN!). Posts of all different sizes, whatever drives pageviews. Controversial posts are good. Posts with pictures are better. Posts with videos are even better than controversial posts with pictures.

Reporter Topics:
Party Report. Fameballs. Caption Contest. Drunk People. Fights. So Indie. The Brotherhood. We Read The News So You Don’t Have To. Religious Fanatics. Sorority Girls. Hipsters. Emo Kids. The 90’s Called. Valley Girls. Fanboys. Nerds. Rumors. Someone Needs To Graduate. Dorm Stories. Pure Racism.

Reporter Pay Scheme:
Reporters are paid per amount of views. Every 1k PERMALINK (very important) pageviews the reporter gets $6-7 (depending on how the ad/promotion dollars come out). Also paid a base salary (at the beginning $1-200/mo), but this is contingent on having a following on the site (can’t be paying reporters with a dead site).

Commenters:
Anyone with a school address would be allowed to comment on their school’s blog. Anyone else that would like to comment has to audition, and if the reporters like them they can become a regular. Just like Gawker, commenters can be followed and have friends.

Technology:
Would need to program a simple blogging platform. Record all unique page views to each post. Run a cron job every 10 minutes that updates the # of page views on a post. Posts, comments, users, star commenters, followers, etc. Very simple. Could even use movable type.

How is this going to make money?
Some ideas
1) A hardcore/highly targeted audience is worth a ton of money — more than just the ad dollars that can come from the page views. The INFLUENCE you can have on these people.
2) Using the influence you have on the readers, you can begin to promote parties/events that are going on around the school. Do deals with the event organizers saying for every 100 people that show up, certain amount of money would go to us. Could be big for concert/party promotions around campus that need a minimum amount of people show up to break even

Seeding the network:
The hardest part about this idea will be the beginning of it at each campus. How are you going to get those first 1000 that follow/comment? What’s going to draw them? How will you get the word out? Several ideas
- Controversial posts that get in the news. Mainstream news.
- Be the first to break all the stories around campus, beat mainstream news.
- Post videos/pictures about popular people, promote like crazy on Facebook
- Facebook/MySpace promotion - sharing links, etc.
- Advertising in school newspaper
- Advertising around school - putting up posters/flyers in dorm rooms and apartments
- Advertise on school website (if allowed)
- Events for “elite” commenters
- Slow and steady will win. Will have a very hard time first 4-6 months I think, but after you get your initial commenting users things will start flying. More important than viewers is commenters, because commenters will make the site GREAT.

Downside: defamation lawsuits, getting kicked out of school. I’m sure there are loopholes and ways to get around these laws, would consult a lawyer about it.

Highly doubt I’ll ever do something like this but if I do… Well, you saw it here first.

Set movieclip default properties in flash June 26, 2008

Posted by sdpurtill in : Flash, ActionScript , add a comment

I had to write a function to reset any movieclip in Flash. It’s very simple — you have an array with all the default properties you want to have in the reset. Then you pass any movieclip to the setDefaultProperties function to set the defaults. Now whenever you want to reset the movieclip, just pass it as the first parameter to resetMovieClip.

Done.


var aDefaultProps:Array = new Array('_width', '_height', '_x', '_y', '_alpha');


function setDefaultProperties(mMovieClip:MovieClip):Void {
  for(sProperty in aDefaultProps) {
    mMovieClip['default' + aDefaultProps[sProperty]] = mMovieClip[aDefaultProps[sProperty]];
  }
}


function resetMovieClip(mMovieClip:MovieClip):Void {
  for(sProperty in mMovieClip) {
    if (sProperty.substr(0, 8) == 'default_') {
      mMovieClip[sProperty.substr(7)] = mMovieClip[sProperty];
    }
  }
}

Obama Will Win June 25, 2008

Posted by sdpurtill in : Politics, Money , 8comments

This post is more about media control than who I support in the upcoming election. I will be voting for McCain since he’s not going to rape the rich but dislike both candidates equally (sorry grandpa).

You can’t put a price on the power to control people. Look at history up until the last few decades - the ability to influence a large group of people was very limited due to the distribution constraints. The most widespread form of media prior to TV was the newspaper. If you controlled the papers, you could have your way in that region. Then came the TV and with it a larger market to penetrate. Then came the media conglomerates who bought up networks, newspapers, magazines, and of course, MySpace. Which brings us to today where we have Sumner Redstone and Rupert Murdoch at the healm of two of the most influential media companies that have ever existed. News Corp alone has a media reach of over 4.2 billion people - yes, that was a “B”. (wikipedia this if you think I’m lying)

I’m sure everyone is familiar with the political bias the networks have - CBS, NBC, ABC are all extremely liberal. The only right wing network is FOX, which is on the extreme neo-con end of right wing (makes conservatives look like idiots). The big story this election that hasn’t got nearly enough coverage is Rupert Murdoch and who he is supporting. The man that owns the only right wing network, a flurry of newspapers and - yes this will be important - MySpace.

I’ve been following Rupert Murdoch in this upcoming election since I think he is the only media mogul that matters in the US. He controls what FOX News gets to say, and since it is the only right wing network out there, whoever Murdoch puts his weight behind is going to get a good 50% of the vote. A few weeks ago, he threw his weight behind Obama with a New York Post article about him. The NY Post is a trashy publication, but when asked if he had influenced the editors to put Obama on it at the D6 Conference Murdoch said “yes” without even flinching. Now I’m not sure if this was meant to be a joke or of Murdoch is actually supporting Obama in the upcoming election.

It got me thinking. Murdoch has backed the Republican party for the last century (the guy’s old), what would make him switch right now? It could be very simple. Did McCain block a business deal that Murdoch tried to do in the past? Did McCain go after Murdoch for something he did in the past? It could be complicated to (I wouldn’t know where to start). Maybe Murdoch and Obama have an agreement if Obama becomes the next president (Obama passes some exceptions to anti-trust laws?). Whatever it was, I’m sure if Murdoch decides to back Obama it will have to do with something McCain did to Murdoch in the past.

No matter what you think about FOX news, it does have a lot of influence over conservatives since it is the only station they can turn to where they aren’t constantly maligning President Bush and the Republican party. I know everyone thinks they’re so smart and have the power to form their own opinions, but we’re talking about middle America here. This isn’t San Francisco or New York City that McCain needs (he’ll lose them anyways), it’s the states that always vote Republican but could flip this year if News Corp. decides to put it’s money on Obama.

In the coming weeks we’ll see who Murdoch ends up supporting, but if he decides to back Obama, a win for John McCain will be impossible. I will say this once:

Whoever Rupert Murdoch backs for the 2008 presidency will win.

Explosive productivity June 18, 2008

Posted by sdpurtill in : Life, Advice , 4comments

I think I have a condition of sorts. In the last few months I’ve noticed that I am either really motivated and get a lot of stuff done, or have no motivation at all and am useless. I see it now more than ever because one of the guys I work with is really consistent with how he gets work done. I like to think of my condition as “explosive productivity”.

Take the following example:

I try to consistently do a weekly review on Sunday night or Monday morning and write a todo list for everything that needs to be accomplished in the upcoming week. The weeks that where I do these weekly reviews I always cross everything off the list and have extremely productive weeks. But there are weeks where I have no motivation to do a weekly review (it’s about 1 in 4 now, used to be 1 in 3 so I’m improving). In these weeks I have no direction and am generally pretty lazy about everything - work, communicating with people, even making my bed. I call these my recovery weeks where I realize I’m still 19 and not a machine (yet). They’re quite humbling.

I’ve noticed similar behavior in a lot of people that I’ve gotten to know in Silicon Valley. I feel like there is a perception about a lot of entrepreneurs that says you should be working 24/7 to make a startup successful, but everyone is wired differently. Myself? I can’t work for more than 4 weeks straight without having a “recovery week”. As time goes on I’ve been able to build up more and more stamina, but I have a hard time seeing myself becoming a machine. My logic behind this is as follows: If I can get done in 1 week what takes most people 2 weeks, I should have an explosive 3 weeks and then take a 1 week break to recover and get ready for the next 3. I am tossing the word “recover” around without defining it - by it I mean a week where you’re not at your productivity peak. Maybe you’re at 1/2 of your normal productivity. Whatever it is, this week should be spent planning what the next 3-4 weeks will be like.

I’ve read a lot of books on productivity. The best one I ever read was How To Get Things Done by David Allen. Halfway through the book I slipped a bookmark in it and threw it under my bed, never to pick it up again - kind of ironic. How to get things done eh? :) I’ve come to the sad conclusion that no matter how many productivity books I read, none of them are made specifically for me. They’re made for the “general public”. I think these books are similar to health diets — they last for a few months but aren’t sustainable in the long term for people with strong patterns (like myself).

I have applied methods that the books have taught here and there — one of my favorite is the 2 minute rule that David Allen talks about in his book. If you can get the task done within the next 2 minutes, just get it done and out of your system. Another one is writing everything down (I have a habit of sending myself emails via BlackBerry when I’m not around a computer). I’ve found that this takes a lot of my perceived stress away, because I know if I write something down I won’t forget it. Thinking that I forgot something is where a big part of my stress always coems from, so I’m glad I’ve solved that. But by and large none of these productivity books have boosted my productivity more than methods that I’ve found myself (the recovery week being my best example).

I hope that one day I will figure out how to work non stop for several months at a time - until then I’ll need my recovery weeks here and there.

What are some of the things that make you productive?

Making the switch to Apple June 12, 2008

Posted by sdpurtill in : Apple , 17comments

I finally sold out and bought a MacBook Pro the other day to see what all the hype was about. I am coming from three years of exclusively using IBM ThinkPads (well, Lenovo now). I haven’t used a tower computer since 10th grade so I think it’s safe to say that I’m going to be using laptops/tablets for the foreseeable future. Coming from a ThinkPad is hard — my ThinkPad crashed only once, when I accidentally deleted a hidden 13KB file in the root C directory that deemed the machine useless. I took it to the Geek Squad and they were able to fix it, which is cool cause those guys are completely useless. I’ve been using the MB Pro for the last two days, so here are my initial thoughts on it.

This review is really critical because I’m going through withdrawls from my ThinkPad.

The first thing I will bring up is the fact that this thing gets so hot I could make breakfast on top of it if I flipped it over. This is COMPLETELY unacceptable, I can’t believe the FCC (or whatever body governs products here in the US) let Apple release a computer that could get to the temperatures that mine has already gotten to in the last few days. It has gotten so hot that I can’t even type on the keyboard, which ruins my entire experience with the machine. I’ve talked to a few friends and they tell me to put it on a desk, so I’m trying that out now (was on my lap on top of the Lapinator before). My three year old ThinkPad still has a longer battery life and has never gotten half as hot. I also think it’s weird that this flaw didn’t get much bashing in the media, if a Windows laptop had the problem it would be all over the place. SO besides that rant, here is what I think about the rest of it. Probably the worst part, since I am already a pretty sweaty person, IT MAKES MY PALMS SWEAT. Up there on the annoying scale with babies crying on airplanes right before they land.

The computer is extremely fast, has slowed down in Photoshop editing some photos (I shoot in RAW). I have never cared much about speed because I don’t edit movies/audio, and I don’t mind waiting a few seconds for PS to render things. The hard drive is 250GB so I’ll probably have to get an external drive pretty soon - when are they going to have TB drives in laptops? Better be soon.

The mousepad on the MB Pro is a piece of CRAP, I’ll take the ThinkPad’s one any day. And it doesn’t have the little track ball that the ThinkPad had, I’m already missing that a ton. Also, the Apple mouses are the worst designed products I’ve EVER used. Sure they look nice, but coming from a Logitech mouse that is made for *human hands*, this thing is like using a horse vs a Lamborghini.

Ok. Take a deep breath. My positive review begins here.

The software. Easiest installations I’ve ever run through (literally, I ran through them). It takes a good 15 seconds to install anything (unless you’re installing Creative Suite). I love the dock at the bottom because I really only use 3-4 programs heavily, so I can bring those up any time. I am in love with WriteRoom, this software that lets you turn the screen black and gives you the entire screen to write. Really liberating.

AThe software runs so smoothly, it’s kind of weird. In Windows you’re used to things crashing every few hours, you kind of expect it. I become addicted to pressing CTRL+S (save shortcut) on everything I worked on in fear of a APPLICATION NOT RESPONDING error. Still haven’t hit that on this machine, and I’ve had a lot of apps open at once. Also really liberating.

Everything looks so much prettier. Aesthetically this whole experience is beautiful, and I’m sure that’s what Jobs set out to do with OSX. Job well done.

Overall this thing is awesome, very glad that I got it. This review does a lot more bashing than it should, but I promise you I really like this thing. But for the record: I’m not buying into the Apple hype at ALL. It’s just a computer at the end of the day, and someone is going to come along pretty soon and out-innovate Apple’s OS and all the fanboys will jump on that bus. Congratulations.

Conclusion: I can finally say I’m a Mac user, but will probably never say I’m a Fanboy.

P.S.: I still love you ThinkPad. No really, I’m still going to use you when I get tired of my fingers getting singed.

UPDATE: Thanks to Dustin Curtis, I was able to find smcFanControl 2.1.2 which allows me to set the minimum speed of the fans. Already works, so no problems with the heat anymore, yay!