Yesterday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer wrote a stinging letter to the Yahoo! Board of Directors. Some of you may remember, back in January, there were rumblings of Microsoft’s intentions to buy Yahoo! – this was put into motion on the 31st of that month as Microsoft sent this letter that set the cat amongst the pigeons. The next day, MSFT issues an official press release and the rest of the world gets invited to the party.

Now, more than two months later, Yahoo! has responded with little more than a press release telling Redmond to go fuck itself. And Microsoft is getting impatient.

It has now been more than two months since we made our proposal to acquire Yahoo! at a 62% premium to its closing price on January 31, 2008, the day prior to our announcement. Our goal in making such a generous offer was to create the basis for a speedy and ultimately friendly transaction. Despite this, the pace of the last two months has been anything but speedy.

As John Gruber said,

This is the white collar equivalent of Steve Ballmer showing up at Yahoo’s door with a baseball bat in his hand.

Like many others, I eagerly await Yahoo!’s response. This is going to get interesting.

My birthday, having passed on Monday, I decided to treat myself to a new toy. After years out in the cold with film SLR cameras, I’ve finally moved on and bought myself a new SLR, a Digital SLR. Specifically, a Nikon D80 – the object of my desire for the last eighteen months. So, while I get to grips with the camera, I’ll also be managing my pictures for once and moving from iPhoto (where I have been for a scant few weeks, after a move from Finder windows and large icons) to Aperture 2 in order to better take advantage of RAW images and cataloguing. Thankfully, Aperture now also works far far better with iLife than the previous incarnation, syncing to AppleTV and my iPhone for displaying my new fancy pictures on both big and small screens without hassle.

Look out in the future for a few pictures to start making their way back into posts here, and trips to to actually have pictures with them.

This evening, the long anticipated Mac OS X 10.5.2 update dropped from Cupertino’s Software Update Servers. Available in two flavours, for Server and Client, the Combo updates apply to both PPC and Intel systems. As always, remember to perform a full backup, and try to run the Combo update, rather than Delta.

The Client update is available here with release notes here. Likewise, the Server update is here with the (spartan) release notes here.

Additionally, after 10.5.2 installs, you’ll have the option to grab the Leopard Graphics Update – just try not to get lost reading the release notes. It’s a real bother that Apple doesn’t see fit to include more detailed information on their updates. It’s really something that should be addressed. Maybe in a future update…

As I type this entry, happily eating what must be said, a very tasty slice of Ham and Pineapple pizza, one thing springs to mind; I have greasy fingers. Usually, I’d be having kittens at this point, but not now. My fingertips dart over the keys, and I have one over-riding thought in my mind. This computer is no longer mine.

It’s happened; two days ago, I was contacted by Executive Relations at Apple UK. My 12″ PowerBook has had it’s warrant signed, by me, and by a Higher Up at Apple. My MacBook has finally been ordered. A Core Duo 2GHz and a Gb of RAM, and a light up keyboard. I’m as happy as anything. They’ve even decided to throw in a new case for me. Really, the speed boost should be the most exciting thing for me, but no. It’s a light-up keyboard. Something I could have had two years ago, in fact, were it available on the 12″ PowerBook range. Never was, and really, never will be. Jacqui has a review up at Ars on the 1.83 Core Duo, and it’s excellent; despite the utter bullshite Slashdot and the News thread generated, it’s well rounded and an actual review of the hardware by a real user, not a regurgitation of the press release.
Either way, I’ve now got to wait until I get a fucking tracking number, and then the agonising weeks until it goes from Pending, Packing, Shipping, Shipped, and then all aboard the Mystery Bus to the middle of the fucking airport, a plane ride to the Netherlands, then to the UK, and handing it over to TNT for lord only knows how long until some under-paid driver hands over my Precious.

I’m in for one fuck of a long wait.

I’ve got one of these in the post, thanks to Ms. Rennie at Apple Customer Relations. She’s terribly nice. Needless to say, she was more than pleased to get it all organised after she saw the mess of notes in the AppleCare PeopleSoft DB had on my name.

Of course, I’ll put up my reactions to it, and field the usual questions. And no, I won’t send it to you. So don’t ask.

I’m sure I’ll love it. Other than the name. It has a name only a mother could love.