Sometimes things don’t go as planned.

When last we met I was going to build a Windows desktop. I needed a much faster computer for my photography work and didn’t like Apple’s desktops, and their laptops were too slow, so as much as I hated to leave the Mac push had come to shove and it was time to move on. I’d at least keep the MacBook for pretty much everything else as well as my mobile photo processing.

I picked up a fast solid state drive (SSD) for the MacBook in December then settled in to wait for the new Intel chips to arrive in January. They arrived on schedule to fantastic reviews so I put together a shopping list for my new build. The list was mostly complete, just needed to finalize a few parts, when I woke to news that Intel had discovered a flaw in the new chipsets and all motherboards were being pulled off the shelves.

Of course.

The first week I couldn’t decide what to do but then decided to wait until the fixed parts came out in a few months and build my computer then.

In the meantime, since I was going to transfer my Photoshop license to the Windows machine, I started looking for a less expensive photography app I could keep on the MacBook. Apple’s Aperture was now on the App Store for only $80 so I downloaded the 30-day demo to see if it was at least good enough for use as a secondary RAW converter.

I nearly swallowed my tongue when I tried it on the way home on the train, I was getting much better results out of Aperture than the Adobe converter I had been using for years. I went back and adjusted my Adobe settings and got closer to the Aperture results, but couldn’t help but think that Aperture should be my main program and the Adobe converter demoted to secondary status. But then again, no, since Aperture wouldn’t run on the fast new PC I was building.

Then my portable hard drive went south, and while I had everything backed up and didn’t lose any pictures that caused further delays until I could get a new hard drive in.

Then lo and behold, while still weeks away from fixed PC parts being available, out of nowhere a new challenger emerged. Apple did the last thing I expected and put quad-core chips in the 15″ MacBook Pro. At this eleventh hour a couple of visits to the Apple store convinced me I had found my new computer.

I had to order online to get the configuration I wanted, so it was a week of oh so patiently waiting for the Fed Ex man to show up. I restrained myself from hugging him when he showed up early last Friday morning, I did, just barely.

Stay tuned, the new laptop is so many kinds of awesome and a few images at least will be coming online soon. In the meantime enjoy this picture of Scout, taken with my iPhone.