I’ve been feeling more contemplative than usual in the hours approaching the flip to the new year. Perhaps it’s the combination of my various Twitter homies making year-end observations, and the fact that so much is in flux right now for me. So I’m going to bloviate a bit over what happened in 2010, as much to help me make sense of it all and to put myself on track for next year.

Apple announced the new MacBook Air this week, and as of today, they appeared in my nearest (albeit not quite local, per se) Apple Store. As someone long fascinated by the MBA, and who also will be upgrading his 2-year-old 15-inch MacBook Pro in January, I decided to have a look. The new Air comes in an 11- and 13-inch version, and as I walked into the store, it was the smaller one that happened to be available, so I sidled up and started to play.

This time was going to be different. I knew that going out. For too long, we Canadians have traveled to the US, and essentially shut our phones off before crossing the border. And while I have a great time in cities like New York, Chicago and (most recently) Boston, there’s a great degree of handicap attached to being in a foreign land without that great security blanket. Having ubiquitous Internet is arguably even more important while traveling; so it’s ironic that traveling is the time you can get it the least.

Okay, pop quiz: what’s going to be on the next iPad’s feature list? You’d probably say one thing right away: the same Retina Display that has made the iPhone 4 such a treat. After all, one look at the precision and crispness of that display, its indistinguishability from paper, its placement directly beneath the glass such that you feel like you’re manipulating the pixels directly, and it’s clear this technology will be propagating everywhere Apple needs to show stuff.

I took a call today from a potential new client. As with many such interactions, there’s always an underlying tension. They want to know, “can I afford this guy?”, while I want to know, “can they afford to pay what I’m worth?” Unfortunately, one of the chief struggles in my business is separating one kind from the other. I’d spoken with this client last December. The general site had been outlined, and she needed to get her ducks in a row before moving any further.