Thursday, May 18, 2006

Micki Krimmel and Al Gore, lookin marvelous! 

New header graphic, taken at Future In Review. 

Podcasting at MIT. 

My new Mac 

The black MacBook is a very nice computer, a clear upgrade from the earlier iBook G4. People have expressed concerns about the keyboard, but so far it's fine, no problem.

Well, that was too good to be true. I hadn't installed the memory upgrade when I wrote the bit above. The people at the store said they couldn't do the installation for me, and it would take me five minutes, and it couldn't possibly go wrong. They actually say things like that at Apple stores. So I was feeling positive (see above), tried to install it, and now the computer won't boot. I tried re-installing, still wouldn't boot. I tried going back to the old memory configuration, and it wouldn't boot. Conclusion: the computer is fried. I got lucky when I called, the person I spoke with was only slightly arrogant. That's the problem with Apple's culture. They teach their people they're so much smarter than we are, but at the same time they design computers that require you to do these upgrades for yourself, and I'm fairly technical, and I managed to break the computer doing it. Bad design. In any case, I'm paying for it with my time today, I'm heading back to the store in Emeryville to see if we can't get this resolved. I feel really stupid for having bought this computer. Yeah, they are the geniuses. They got my money, and I got a time-sink and headache.

Postscript: I brought it down to the Apple store and they were able to install the memory. The tech said "You really have to force it in there." I'm logged on to the net through EVDO. Happy again.

The new Mac keyboard 

Dan Gillmor via email: "How's the keyboard? In the photos, the keys look a little weird."

Well, the keyboard is weird, and takes some getting used to. The fingers don't normally seat themselves in the right place, there's more space between the keys than on the keyboards I normally use. I've done just a little bit of writing on the new keyboard (I'm using it now) and it is difficult to use this one and the one on my Mac desktop. I can see this is going to be a problem, and it's not clear how it's going to get resolved.

On the other hand, the keyboard has a nice feel to it, contrary to some of the reports I've seen. It doesn't feel cheap, and it is quite usable, if it weren't for the non-standard spacing of the keys.