i’ve just clocked up 1000 miles on my road bike, needs new tyres and i recently got a slightly shorter stem because my elbows were aching when i was riding – a 1cm shorter stem has completely solved the problem!
my macbook pro arrived, then went back a few days later… all because of a single dead pixel! yeup, a single dead pixel… there are 2.3 million of the little things on the screen so i’ve rejected an entire computer because of a fault that affected one two point three millionth of a screen but given the price it simply wasn’t good enough… i can’t fault Apple, TNT arrived the next day to collect the box, all i needed to do was write a tracking number on the box and they took care of everything else. i’m sure there was something odd with the screen though, the Macbook Pro has two graphics controllers (an Nvidia GeForce 9400M and a 9600M GT) that have different power consumption characteristics, when using the 9400M the screen on the original laptop flickered badly but not when the 9600M was enabled – trouble is, that card use more power… this new one doesn’t suffer from the problem? odd…
the mac is truly amazing, i’ve kicked myself several times that i’ve never moved to Mac before, the UI is so much better than Windows and any Linux distribution I’ve used – it is truly user centric… usability is simply wonderful… i bought the Apple iWorks software which provides a word processor called Pages, a spreadsheet application called Numbers and a presentation creation app called Keynote… they all work wonderfully, provide all the features you need and i’m starting to resent that I have to use M$ Office at work! Pages does not pretend to be a page layout application, it is perfect for pretty much any document I think i’ll need to write and if I want page layout I’ll turn to InDesign anyway… Numbers is a pleasure to use, provides a wealth of features that just make your life tick along nicely, the graphs are so much better looking that anything I’ve ever seen from Excel and it’s a doddle to use… i’ve not used Keynote yet other than to tinker but that too looks very nice… there is no fuss with any of these applications, in fact there is no fuss with anything (not even when a single pixels goes to pixel heaven)… i am delighted with the mac… battery performance is stonking, the screen is wonderful, i’m not used to the keyboard yet, i don’t like that the @ symbol is on the 2 key where the ” should be and the ” is where the @ should be and the | is above the right hand shift key and the enter key is bit too small (in my opinion) but those really are minor gripe… the trackpad is a pleasure to use and makes the one on the fairly expensive Dell my wife uses seem completely naff and pointless, gestures work brilliantly…
oh, and time machine… at the risk of gushing about a little white box, it is absolutely amazing, the system automatically backs itself up and i can go to any version at any time just by clicking, check out the video and i defy anyone who has had that awful realisation that the file you really need has gone… with time machine it really hasn’t… seriously, it’s such a clever approach to backing up files
finally music… i’m currently listening to The Back Room Editors but despite the fact that it is playing from iTunes on my mac, i am listening to it through the Bose speakers via the amp of my separates but not only that, i can use my iPhone to change the track… so i can see my entire Mac iTunes library on the iPhone, select the music/volume etc. and play it but not from the speakers on the mac, it uses AirTunes to send the audio to a wireless gizmo that is connected to the HiFi… i don’t think i’m a stupid person but when the music started playing from the Bose cubes i felt like a little kid gazing in wonder at how all these things were interconnected with virtually no wires and essentially zero effort required for setup!
i am truly impressed with how easy to use Apple products are, i know that sounds like i’ve turned into an Apple zealot but i don’t believe I have, I just believe i have found a hardware, software & application combination that puts me in the middle of what i’m trying to achieve and i would strongly argue that if the premium price Apple charges covers their usability testing then i’m more than happy to cough up…
