The New York Times posted a graph showing the stock price of Apple and Microsoft over the last 20 years.

It was announced a couple of days ago that Apple's market capitalization put it ahead of Microsoft, making it America's largest tech company.

I've been an Apple fan since our Elementary school got Apple II clones in the classroom when I was in the 4th grade. During Junior High, I wasn't exposed to computers very often, save for the IBM PCs at my dad's office, or at my friends' houses. I just didn't get those machines. They made no sense to me.

Overall, the TouchPad is promising and – this is the best part in my opinion – it could be the device not from Apple the Apple geeks will love.
 -- MacStories

It's probably not a surprise to anyone who knows me that I got an iPad 2.

I actually wasn't planning on getting one, I was going to wait for the iPad 3, but Jamie decided to surprise me on my birthday. Of course, she had no idea that they aren't exactly easy to get at the moment, tough I think that it's down to a 1-2 week wait now.

I lucked out and picked up one on my birthday by using http://ipad2tracker.com/ to check Target's stock. The one close to work just happened to be the only one around with 2 32 GB WiFi models.

Yes, I went for the WiFi model again. Most of the time I'm either at work or at home and when I need access on the go, I'll just use MyWi on the iPhone to tether. It doesn't make sense to pay the extra to get the 3G Access.

So, on to my thoughts on it.

As I’ve blogged about before, I’m a huge music fan, so I was looking forward to the American launch of Spotify

I have a pretty voracious appetite for music. Financially, renting music makes way more sense for me than buying it. I listen to music pretty much all day at work using MOG. I like to listen through the new releases on Tuesdays, picking out albums to add to my playlist for the month.

Now that I have a few days use out of Spotify, I thought I’d share my thoughts on the two services.

Fun kinetic type video from Al Yankovic. Pretty well-done, but with a couple of kerning problems early on (that's the designer in me).

There have been more than than a few co-workers I would've loved to have sent this to over the years. :-) 

When Netflix upped their prices, I took to the nets to complain just like a million other customers. Now that the price change has taken effect, I’ve dropped streaming from my account. Here’s one of the reasons I’m ticked off with Netflix.

In 1998, when I got my first DVD player, you couldn’t rent DVDs from Blockbuster, so I went in search of an alternative and I found the newly launched Netflix.

At the time, their service worked just like Blockbuster, with late fees and all. When they launched their subscription service in 1999, I immediately signed-up and have been a customer ever since. For a while, my status as one of their original customers got me a better price and extra movies. I used to get 5 movies out at a time for what most folks paid for 3 at a time. But over time, they did away with that. And now that I just dropped streaming, the best deal I can get is 2 DVDs at a time, for about the price I used to pay for 5.

One of the drawbacks of social networking while watching TV is that I’m using time-shifting it. Another is that you don’t want to spoil anything by posting about the fate of a character on a show like Breaking Bad, where people are likely to be a few episodes behind.

Yahoo bought and rebranded IntoNow, and has just released an iPad version. The app will listen to your TV and figure out what you are watching and then serve you additional info about the show, conversation, etc. Cool idea. Just now trying it out.

Only thing is… none of my friends seem to be using it. I need to befriend more early adopters.

I’ve always been curious about the Kindle and when the Kindle Touch was announced, I decided that the time was finally right to get one.

I’m not that big of a reader of fiction, though I am just about through with the Hunger Games trilogy, the first fiction books I’ve read in about 10 years. (Confession: Most of it has been read via Audiobooks while running in the mornings, but I did read bits and pieces the old fashioned way).

I do read non-fiction quite a bit. Religious books, historical books, historical fiction, etc. For a while, I’ve been reading on my iPhone and iPad. The experience is fine there, but no where near as easy on the eyes (and battery consumption when out and about) as the Kindle. The e-ink screen really makes a difference. The text is crisp, with extremely high contrast.

Jamie reads periodically, and I decided that she might benefit from having a Kindle. Through a series of events around wanting get it in the house by her birthday, I ended up with 2 Kindle Touches and decided to keep one.

So far, I’ve been pleased with it. The size and weight are great, though it didn’t feel quite right to hold in my hand without a case on it. I know that one review says that the page turning is a bit slow compared with other Kindles. That may be so, but since it’s my 1st one, I don’t perceive it as an issue.

Where I would like some more speed is in getting to the menu to go through table of contents, etc. I use that a lot because one of my favorite features is having Instapaper send me a daily digest of up to 20 articles I have marked to read later.

If you’re not familiar with Instapaper, you need to be. You sign-up for an account, and then add a bookmark to your bookmark bar labeled Read Later. Then, when you come across a link or article you don’t have time to fully digest at the moment, you just click the Read Later bookmarklet and move on. Most RSS readers, and Twitter clients have support for it.

In the last few days, Instapaper on the Kindle Touch has improved significantly. At the top of each article are links to archive an article, essentially a Mark Read button, or mark it as a Liked item, which you have auto-shared to Facebook, Twitter, etc. depending on your preferences.

Instapaper