The innovation of touch
I've had my new MacBook for a few months now, and while it has numerous improvements compared to my G3 iBook, the one that I notice the most is being able to scroll using two fingers on the trackpad.
I find myself missing the feature when I use other laptops - it seems like such a natural thing to do. Such a small feature, yet it makes such a large difference and influences my opinion on other laptops when I have to use them.
It's this attention to design that makes me continue to buy Apple products. It's not just about looking good (that helps) - but about the approach taken. One thing that strikes me about most new laptops if the amount of 'features' they have - the external surfaces are crammed with them. Media card readers, media control buttons, WiFi buttons and LEDs, power indicators, battery charging indicators, remote control slots. Apparently, the more stuff you can cram on to a laptop, the better it is - and that's the mistake. It might sound like a good idea on paper to have all these 'features', but it turns out that less really is more.
I tend to find Apple focus on the refinement of smaller details. They don't always get it right, but I don't see any other company even coming close at the moment.
I think the iPhone in particular embodies this. On paper, it has less and costs more (so much more that I can't afford one at the moment). To other companies, they could not imagine who would buy one (apart from the Apple fanatics). "It has a touch screen - big deal! They have been around for years!". But Apple's attention to detail has created a product which shouldn't sell at the amount it costs and with the features it lacks, but does and will continue to. A feature which other companies had ignored as already done, Apple examined, refined and is now one of the key selling points for the device.
Tagged Apple, innovation, iPhone, MacBook and touch.
Boomer down! Boomer down!
So, after 4 and a half years, Boomer (G3 800MHz dual-USB iBook) has finally died. It has been suffering from backlight issues for a while (the backlight would turn off intermittently when moving the screen - rectified by putting the machine to sleep, then waking it up); but a few days ago the screen image began to distort and flicker strangely and now the display refuses to come on at all. Listening to the boot sequence and blindly logging in, the machine still seems to be functioning (I can even hear the alert noise when Google Notifier finds new mail). I had hoped it was merely a hinge cable issue (common on this model apparently) or that the LCD had died, but the external video also appears to have failed, leading me to suspect it's another of the common failures of this model; Logic board failure (partial). Annoyingly, the Apple repair program for this issue ended in July this year, meaning I'm probably looking at about £300+ for an official repair. Even carrying out the replacement myself, working logic boards for this model are selling on eBay for hundreds of pounds - not worth the cost for a machine so old (it has never been able to play H.264 and YouTube videos smoothly).
I hadn't backed up my purchased iTunes tracks for a while, but luckily the machine still boots into Firewire target disk mode, meaning I can connect it to another Mac and copy across anything I need from Boomer's hard drive. With the machine itself still functioning, I'd like to find a use for it - perhaps using it as a local server of some kind, but not being able to see the interface, I'm unable to configure anything on it directly (and unfortunately, SSH access or other forms of remote access were not enabled).