Our closing date is January 26, 2012; unfortunately we will miss Christmas and New Years in our new house, but there is always next year, right?

There isn’t much to say that has not already been said elsewhere. Steve Jobs was a true visionary and completely revolutionized the the technology world into what we know it as today – iPod, iPad, MacBook Air… and those are only the recent accomplishments. Lets not forget OS X; hell, the GUI and personal computer as we know it today!

RIP Steve Jobs. You will be sorely missed.

Apple’s former CEO (and Savior), Steve Jobs, tendered his resignation last night from his post. Steve had indicated that he would like to serve as Apple’s Chairman of the Board and as an Apple Employee – both of which were granted to him immediately after his announcement. Steve’s letter of resignation to Apple’s board of Directors and Community is posted in its entirety below:

To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

Steve

Jacqui Cheng summed up my thoughts best with her Tweet, “8/24/11 Never Forget.” Yesterday marked a monumental part of history for Apple and the technology world as a whole. Am I concerned about Apple as a company, their amazing corporate culture, and their ability to continually innovate? No. I think that Apple has adopted Steve Jobs’ qualities and they have an amazing executive team to continue steering the ship. Am I concerned about the public’s perception over Steve Jobs stepping down? Yes. I don’t think that people realize that Steve did not single handily design the iPhone and iPad – that the same team of people responsible for those products are still working hard as I write this.

Apple will continue to do amazing things and I will continue to be a loyal fan. I wish Steve Jobs the best and also want to thank him for all that he has done for Apple and the tech community as a whole over… well, lets face it, my lifetime.

I have never been much for politics, but as of the most recent election I started taking an interest. I credit this mostly to Mr. Layton and his inspiring messages for Canada and his hope for the future of our country. RIP Jack.

Jack Layton passed August 22, 2011 at 4:45 am as he was overcome by his battle with cancer.

Image Credit: Chronicle Herald

The upgrade process was quick and absolutely painless, no issues whatsoever – except that I wanted to do a clean install and didn’t realize I was doing an upgrade. Once I realized my mistake, going back and doing a clean install was also painless, although not exactly intuitive for a new Mac user.

I purchased the OS through the Mac App Store (as is the new method prescribed by Apple), but once it downloaded I extracted the package contents to pull out the hidden .dmg file which I burned to a DVD – hello OS X Lion install media (good for clean installs, upgrades, and repairs). Cnet has instructions to create the DVD here; I highly recommend it as it will save you from re-downloading the Lion upgrade if you ever need to do a system restore (the installer deletes the 4GB upgrade file once it has finished upgrading your machine).

Things I like about Lion – well, pretty much everything; it’s a polished version of Snow Leopard. The hiding scroll bars are great, the new button shapes, progress bar colors / animations, it all looks very clean. The new login and lock screens are fantastic; really puts an extra level of “Apple” on the OS. When I unlock my computer I no longer forget that I’m using OS X vs. Ubuntu Linux. I also really like mission control, I never really used dashboard (or whatever it was called) before, but I can really see myself using mission control. It organizes your windows in a really intuitive way and multiple desktops is always a nice-to-have.

Things I don’t like about Lion (Steve, I hope you’re listening) – multi-touch gestures that are different from the gestures in Snow Leopard. I have become so accustom to swiping two fingers left / right in my browser to go back and forward as well as three fingers up / down to jump to the top and bottom of a page and you have taken that away from me! Swiping two fingers left and right (in any app) now takes me across my multiple desktops… if I’m on my desktop that makes sense, but not in my web browser! Three fingers up will now take you to mission control – I’m all about the multi-touch, but keep it consistent!

The “natural” scrolling feature doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. They have essentially flipped the scrolling (using multi-touch) so that it is upside down – flicking your fingers up scrolls the page down and vice versa. I get it, trying to make this more like iOS. On a touch screen it makes sense to scroll that way, but it really doesn’t translate to a computer. Luckly you can turn this “feature” off.

The final nit I have to pick is that my external drive still drops from the system if it has been inactive for more than 5 seconds. I suspect this is due to the fact that I have a Western Digital Green drive in the enclosure, but Apple should figure out a way to gracefully detach these drives; I mean, comon… they use the same “server grade” drives in their new Time Capsules!

All in all I really, really like Lion. Is it worth the $29.99? Yes, without a doubt. Is it perfect? No, nothing ever is… but this is pretty darn close.

What are you waiting for? Go upgrade today!

Unfortunately, I didn’t get too many good pictures from this evening – small space and poor lighting. But, I think I got enough to document the process. Installed a Rough Country 4.25″ lift kit on Tyler’s new JK. James also took some time to install extended bump stops on his TJ so he could disconnect without rubbing his boggers on the tub / fenders.

Started out in Bedford and took the “new trail” out to Sackville. The new trail is pretty sweet, different sort of terrain with a mix of water crossings, rock gardens, off camber, etc. We learned that it is not stock friendly… more stock draggable (see pics of the Liberty).