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.

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!

I am looking at buying one of the new $119 (I live in Canada) Apple TV’s so I decided to look into the movie library on the iTunes store; I’m only interested in HD (who wants SD content these days?) and I’m inclined to buy the movie “Get Him to the Greek” (GHTTG) based on the massive advertising campaign put on by Universal and by the fact that I was laughing so hard in theaters that I missed half of it.

This is where the confusion comes in. As I stated I only want HD and the iTunes store lists a pre-order price of GHTTG for $19.99 (again – Canadian prices), but makes no indication of whether this is HD or SD. I see a file size of 1.57 GB and a time of 1:53:49 listed for the unrated version which to me indicates that it cannot be HD. To a less tech-savvy iTunes user that probably wouldn’t jump out.

So I do a little more digging on the Googles which turns up almost nothing except for one, old forum post which indicates that iTunes movie pre-orders are SD only and happened to be talking about Iron Man. For comparison sake I checked out Iron Man 2 (IM2) which is currently in pre-order also except that it has two buttons for pre-order – one for SD and one specifically for HD. So this begs the question, why is GHTTG not available for HD pre-order? Will it be available for HD download in the future?

For the fun of it I decided to do a price comparison. The SD pre-orders for GHTTG and IM2 are both $19.99 and the HD version of IM2 is $24.99. The Blu-Ray version of IM2 at FutureShop is only $23.99! Why is the digital download in iTunes more expensive than the packaged and shipped Blu-Ray version at FutureShop? If we extrapolate and assume that since the SD prices are identical for both movies in iTunes and therefore the HD versions will be the same the HD cost for GHTTG will also be $24.99 yet it costs $29.99 at FutureShop! I cannot understand the pricing structure for these… why is the digital download more expensive in one case, but less in the other? Yes, the two movies are from different studios, but it still doesn’t make any sense to me.

I digress. Pricing aside Apple needs to provide FAR more information in their iTunes Store so that users can make educated decisions of their purchases. If I didn’t look into the running time vs. file size of GHTTG I would have purchased the SD version and an Apple TV and be very upset at Apple for deceptively leading me to believe that I was buying the HD version of the movie (again – it’s 2010, who wants SD movies anymore?). Also, why are there multiple versions of movies listed separately? Just create one GHTTG page with all my options for purchase, rental, etc. Perhaps make a table of options so that it is really clear – purchase HD and SD, rent HD and SD, whatever else they can dream up HD and SD. Include the price options and feature comparisons (5.1 vs 2.0 audio, 720p vs 480p). That would make so much sense, wouldn’t it? Comon Steve, if you can build the wonder that is the iPhone 4 surely you can build a media store that doesn’t require a PhD and 6th sense to navigate and make purchases from.

I’m sitting here using a new 2.13GHz MacBook Air which I currently have on loan from a client. I have never actually had an OS X computer to myself before; I have had friends with them, but I’ve never been able to configure one to my liking and really play around with it. I’m starting to buy into the hype!

The ease of use is fantastic and the OS looks great. Don’t even get me started on the physical machine itself, the craftsmanship is superb and the screen is breathtaking! If it were not for the astronomical price ($1,899 for this build) I’d have one already.

I am in the market for a new home computer, perhaps I’ll try my hand with an Apple product… although, I do have some other big ticket purchase plans coming up in the future. Time will tell.