It’s an Apple product. There’s enough hype and info about it already, less than 24 hours after being announced, so go look elsewhere.
Also, I want a mini SIM. They’re cute.
Tag Archive for 'Apple'
Ah, Birmingham. Some people love it, some people hate it. Personally, I both love and hate it. I love the fact that it has a nice cinema, an IMAX, a pretty nice shopping centre, an Apple Store, two nice big arenas, and so on, but I hate the fact that, outside of that, it’s a ugly dump of a city. Seriously, outside the recent development, there’s nothing remotely making me want to live there, or even drive though it. AT ALL.
MacBook.
Anyway, enough of that. So, on Monday the 16th of November, on the exact day that my warranty expired, I decided to finally get my MacBook fixed. Yeah, this is the problem I had. It took me a whole year to get it fixed. 
Honestly, the problem was there, and it was bugging me, but I just seemed to live with it for the year until the last minute – it’s safe to say that it’s now all fixed, and the keyboard is nice and matte again (it had turned shiny from one year of use), and of coursed, fixed. 
The problem is that when I went on the 16th, two days later, I got a cold – most likely because I went into Birmingham in the freezing wind with not much on at all. T-shirt and a hoodie, that’s it. So it’s my fault. I had a sore throat/nose, but I was in bed (and, er, on the computer when mum wasn’t looking 
) for about a week. Anyway, I was up and about from the 25th Nov again, and only now do I feel almost 100%. I’m still coughing slightly but for the most part I feel fine.
MIIIIIIIICHAEL MCINTYREEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!
Take two. I had planned to go before (see here), but my dad actually broke his leg in August, so sadly we (we = me and parents) had to cut short the whole journey and not go. However, I got some more tickets for the 30th Nov (which is technically yesterday) and saw him then, but at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham instead of the O2. End result? Awesome. Funny as ever and it was great seeing him live. If he ever goes on tour again (and I presume he will), I’ll be going again for sure.
Oh yeah, and here are some videos. Enjoy: http://twitvid.com/1A465 (the arena), http://twitvid.com/19BE6 (comedy), and http://twitvid.com/98EBC (moar comedy).
The Journey Home? Not so much.
We (we = myself and mum) decided to go by car instead of the train as, well, it’s easier (and last time I went to the NIA, for Cirque Du Soleil, it was actually pretty much dead quiet when we came out). Or so I thought. Half the problem is that by train, there’s a one mile or so walk to the arena, and in the freezing wind, it’s bloody cold. Plus it’s Birmingham so we wouldn’t have made it back to the train anyway, due to stabbing.
Right, so, car journey down was okay. Not brilliant – I mean, the M6, at 6pm, on a weekday, yeah, there’s bound to be some traffic, and there was. It wasn’t too bad though – about a ten minute delay in total. And I managed to botch up the TomTom’s directions a little. All in all, though, that was fine. So, we went in, saw Mr McIntyre, and because our seats were in block 11 in the arena, we made it out and to the car within about 5 minutes of the end of the show. Perfect. So, we back out the bay parking bay, drive around the corner (we were on the roof of the parking garage), and end up behind a queue of cars. For an hour. Yes, an HOUR. I managed to listen to Robbie Williams’ entire new album in the car. One song after that, and we were finally out. It turns out they decided to empty the entire car park, level by level, before we managed to get out of it all. Lovely. Anyway, as soon as we were out, it was fine, until about 5 minutes later when we hit the rest of the traffic. Oh boy.
So, 45 minutes later and we finally were on the M6 and doing more than 40mph. Half the problem with the traffic jam is that the idiot roadworkers decided to close off half of the “expressway” between the central Birmingham area and the M6, for roadworks (At 11pm? At least wait until midnight!), so we had to go around the long route. Anyway, once we were on the last stretch of the expressway to the M6, it was fine…and then we arrived at the M6. Europe’s busiest motorway. Oh, yeah, and due to roadworks, they had turned it into a one lane road travelling at a whopping 10mph. Amazingly enough, they were ACTUALLY THERE, and ACTUALLY WORKING. I almost fainted. Yet, alas, only about 300 meters worth of roadworks required (I counted) 14 miles of motorway to be slowed down to 50mph, and have cones and warning signs and so on all the way along it. What the hell for? As Jeremy Clarkson said on Top Gear this past weekend, surely the point of dropping the limit to 50 is to protect the workforce? What workforce? Why not put the speed limit back up to 70 when they’re not there (so…all the time).
Anyway, that’s enough ranting. End of the day, Michael McIntyre was brilliant and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Also, note to self: take the train next time.
I purchased a .Mac box set back in mid 2008, a few weeks before the service was announced as having it’s name changed to MobileMe. I managed to get it for a not too bad price (£45 instead of the usual £59), and it worked very well with my iPhone and Mac. Initially, MobileMe was quite unstable, going up and down quite a bit after it’s launch, but after a month or so it became stable, and Apple gave a free extension to all accounts (hence why my one year account has lasted a few months more).
I’m not posting this because I want to complain, I’m posting this because I want to express my love, yet at the same time, shall we say, dislike, of MobileMe. At £59 per year, it’s not cheap. Yes, technically, it’s less then £5 a month, but the only thing I managed to ever use it for was syncing and Find My iPhone, and that’s more then I feel is necessary for that, especially when you can get it for free or cheap elsewhere (eg, Google Sync is free, albeit with no Find My iPhone feature).
As the full package, if you make use of the full suite of features – sync, email, gallery, iDisk, Find My iPhone, Remote Wipe, Back to my Mac, etc, it is, in some ways, worth the money. However, for just sync, it is not. And here’s where my idea comes in. I think that Apple should offer two versions of MobileMe. First off, the full package, with everything, at £59 per year. Secondly, a smaller and cheaper package, called MobileMe Sync. Advertise it as “the basics” for the iPhone, or something like that, and price it low – £15-20 per year is ideal. MobileMe Sync would offer calendar, contacts, and bookmark syncing, along with Find My iPhone, and Remote Wipe, all for a low fee, with, say, 20-50MB of storage for calendars, contacts, and bookmarks. I think that this would appeal to a fair few people, myself included, as it offers just the commonly used basic options, as well as Find My iPhone, which is quite useful if you do happen to lose your phone. This would offer an incentive for Exchange users too – Exchange does allow remote wiping of mobile devices, but it can’t find them.
In addition to that, the current MobileMe service has a “family pack”, whereby you can add additional users onto your MobileMe subscription, and with MobileMe sync, you could do much the same – but for less. Maybe £5 per extra user?
I hope Apple do consider this in future, as I’m sure it would allow them to earn even more money ( 
) – they already have the server infrastructure in place, and of course it would need a few tweaks to both OS X and the iPhone OS to work, but in the end I think it would be worth it.
So, that’s why I’ve not renewed my MobileMe subscription this year. I simply don’t need to spend £59 on something that I use a very small part of. In the meantime, I’ve switched to using a friend’s Exchange server, which does the same job (albeit without being able to locate my phone if I lose it), but for free.
Squarespace did it, Moonfruit did it, and now I’m doing it. For fun. And also as a bit of an experiment. I wouldn’t consider myself huge on Twitter (despite me owning this), so I’d like to see what kind of impact a giveaway from a person with just 325 followers would have on Twitter in general. It probably won’t be much of an impact like Squarespace or Moonfruit’s ones were, but I can try anyway. 
Oh, and lastly, because this is being funded out of my own pocket and because I’m not a rich corporation with lots of spare cash, I’m only giving away one copy, and I’m only giving away one copy of the upgrade version, not the full version. But of course, if you’re willing to offer a sponsorship deal, feel free to ask.
So, onto the details/rules:
- You need an Intel Mac that 1) is running Leopard now, and 2) can run Snow Leopard (duh ).
- To enter, simply add the hashtag #osxgiveaway to any tweet you make. There’s no limit, so feel free to enter as much as you like!
- You can enter anywhere from now until 12pm (midday) GMT+0, on the day of Snow Leopard’s UK release – 28th August 2009.
- You do not need to follow me on Twitter to be eligible to enter.
- Entry is open to residents of these countries only: Apple – Choose your country or region.
- Depending on whether or not I’m able to purchase Snow Leopard from your country’s store, I may have to purchase a copy from the UK Apple Store and ship the box via the postal service to you, so please bare this in mind.
- Because Snow Leopard is stupidly overpriced in the UK (and if you win, and you’re in the UK), I’ll contribute £20 toward it, and you can contribute £5. Fair deal I’d say.
- Once Snow Leopard is released, I will place the order and get it shipped to you within two weeks of Snow Leopard’s public release. I will, of course, keep you updated via email, @ replies, or Direct Messages on Twitter.
- If you win and you already have a copy of Snow Leopard, and you don’t need another (c’mon, be nice!), let me know and I’ll pick another winner.
To link to this post, here’s a nice short tweet-sized URL: http://bit.ly/osxgiveaway
If you want to follow me on Twitter, I’m @williamtm
And that’s about it. Good luck, tell your friends, and get tweeting!
Update: The competition is now closed, and the winner is @djchrisallen! Congrats.
A couple of weeks ago, at Apple’s WWDC event in San Francisco, Apple announced the new iPhone 3GS. Doubtless if you’re reading this, you know what that is, and all the info about it, so I’ll spare you the details.
On Friday last week, it was released. Up until then, I only had one of the original 2G (EDGE) iPhones, and having skipped the upgrade to the iPhone 3G, I decided to upgrade now to the 3GS. So, I sold my old iPhone to Matt Mecham (one of the lead developers of IP.Board ), and used the money from that sale to go towards the new 3GS. However, after visiting the O2 store in Stafford, they said they were out of stock. So, I went and asked Carphone Warehouse if they had any, and they too were out of stock! O2 said they were getting some more units in the next day (which was yesterday – Tuesday), however after I phoned them up yesterday to check, they said no, it would most likely be next week. So, I thought screw it, went to the Birmingham Apple Store, and 20 minutes later, I had an iPhone 3GS (16GB, black) in my hand.
Again, I won’t go into detail about the OS, because there are a billion other sites you can visit about that, however, I will mention the speed and the 3GS-specific features, and one other thing which applies to the 3G as well: compared to the iPhone 2G, the 3G and 3GS is a lot nicer to hold. It feels less slippery, and you can get a good grip on it. However, it attracts fingerprints in the same way as Korea’s nuclear tests attract trouble.
First off, the speed. Apple say that applications like the Messages app open so much faster then before. But, really? In a way, yes. The Messages app does open faster, and you will notice it. But it’s not all that much different from the older ones. It’s basically half a second faster. You’re not really going to need it much on other apps, like Facebook, TV Forecast, 1Password, etc. What you will notice is that games (and other 3D apps), for instance, are a lot smoother. On my iPhone 2G, I often noticed a less-then-perfect framerate on one of the games I play, however on the 3GS, it’s dead smooth. I’ve not had a single framerate issue at all so far in any game, which is fantastic. Overall, in terms of speed, I would rate the 3GS as 10/10. Also, fun fact: the CPU in the 3GS is an 833MHz model, underclocked to 600MHz. My dad’s old laptop, which he still owns, is also 800MHz. 
Onto the camera. The camera in the 2G (and the 3G) was a very “meh” thing. It could take okay photos during the day, but any kind of darkness, closeups, or anything other then a daytime landscape made you want to pull out a digital camera, even for casual snaps. Not so with the 3GS. The camera is great. Autofocus works pretty well (aside from it taking a second or two to focus), the picture quality, for a phone, is pretty awesome during the day (and fairly good in a dark room too, but not great). Now, the video is where the 3GS really excels. Again, it’s not the best quality in a darker location, but if you’re outside during the day…wow. The video really is pretty amazing, for a phone. Here’s a sample clip that I took last night out of my bedroom window, at about 9:30pm: iPhone 3GS Video Test (Quicktime movie, 7.7MB). The video is completely unedited too, so that’s what you’ll get yourself if you record a video.
Finally, the compass. At first, I thought this was a pretty big gimmick. And it is. The standalone Compass app on the phone has absolutely no use to me. I reckon the only time I’ll ever use it is for showing off. However, I will say one thing. The way it’s used within the Maps application is genius. If you click the “Find me” button in Maps, it’ll find your location using both the cell towers, and GPS. However, it’ll still have North at the top of the phone. If you tap the Find me button again, it’ll rotate the map to the direction you’re heading, which is a pretty useful feature if you’re walking around a city like London and are somewhat lost. For that alone, I think the compass is worth it.
So, the iPhone 3GS. If you have an iPhone 2G, the upgrade is very much worth it, as you’ll gain a whole host of new features. If you have an iPhone 3G, the upgrade really isn’t that much, but if you’re very much into gaming, it could be a good upgrade. Finally, if you’re using another phone, check out the 3GS. It really is a delight to use.
As you might know, I have an iPhone, and I love it very much. It’s only a 1st gen one, but it’s still fast enough for everyday use and serves me well. Since the iPhone App Store has been up and running since Apple launched it earlier this year, I thought I’d post a list of the 10 applications that I use the most. I have not included screenshots, as there are ones on the iTunes store listings, and, finally, this list is not in a specific order – it’s random.
• Twitterrific Premium (£5.99, or free ad-supported version) / Twinkle (free)
These two apps are tied, because I probably use them both equally, and they’re both pretty much the same thing. They’re clients for the popular site, Twitter. If I had to choose only one client, it would be Twitterrific Premium, because it’s the nicest looking and it’s very easy to use. However, Twinkle is also easy to use, but it has in the past not shown some tweets, so it comes second place. It does have one feature which Twitterrific does not have though, which is location-based Tweeting. It works by sending all tweets through Tapulous’ servers, and when you open the app on your iPhone, you can see any nearby tweets. This is handy for meeting new people, however if you live somewhere like me, you might be surrounded by retards.
• Facebook (free)
No guesses as to what this is for – it’s an iPhone client for the popular social networking site. It’s also one of the best iPhone apps that I’ve used – it’s pretty to look at, easy to use, and has yet to crash a single time on me. It does lack some features of the desktop-based Facebook site, but for what it is now, it’s fine for casual use.
• Movies (free)
Again, it’s pretty obvious what this is about. Movies shows current films showing, as well as nearby cinemas, with times, and DVD releases. It’s pretty handy for finding nearby cinemas, and checking times, however I’ve found that more then once, it’s shown the wrong times for a specific film then the cinema’s official website does. Also, the movie dates (such as the “released this week” films) are targeted toward the US market. I think this would be a great app if you live in the US, but otherwise, don’t rely on it 100%. It’s still worth downloading though.
• Night Stand (free)
Simply put, this is a clock. It displays a large LED clock, and does it while looking stylish. It also has the ability to disable the iPhone’s turn-the-screen-off-after-X-minutes function, so it can stay on all night long. However, it WILL kill your battery so it’s best if you use the power adaptor and USB cable to keep it charged.
• 1Password (free)
The iPhone based client that works very well with the desktop based password manager, 1Password. This is an extremely handy app for storing passwords, usernames, credit card numbers, and so on. It’s also protected by a PIN when you open it, and you can also assign a second password to specific entries, such as credit cards. While you don’t need the Mac-only desktop software to use this, it’s handy if you’re an OS X user, as you can sync them both over WiFi. This is also easily the most useful and productive app I have on my iPhone, and I would highly recommend both it and the desktop app if you have a Mac!
• TV Forecast (£1.79)
One of my very favourite apps, this program grabs info from (I think) TV.com, about when your favourite TV show is next on. It’s more suited to the US market, as it doesn’t allow you to choose, say, Prison Break on Sky1 in the UK instead of Fox in the US (season 4 of Prison Break has been shown on Tuesdays here, 24 hours after it’s aired in the US). It can show other shows though – it’s successfully worked with the UK’s “Top Gear” and “The IT Crowd”, as well as “Rush”, which is an Australian cop drama type show. Overall, very useful if you live in the US (or live outside of the US but know what bittorrent is ), and only 75% useful if you live outside the US. There’s also a dashboard widget for OS X, made by the same guy, which I also have. It’s pretty much the same thing as the iPhone app though.
• TV Plus (£2.99)
As far as I know, this is a UK-only app, which is a huge guide of all the TV channels available on Freeview or Sky here. Where the other apps fail though, is where this one is great – it has built in support for Sky’s “Remote Record” function, which allows you to set stuff to record when you’re not at home onto your Sky+ or Sky+HD box. However, this app is buggy, and crashes a lot, so it could do with some bug fixes.
• AroundMe (free)
Simply put – this shows points of interest around you, similar to what a GPS does. There are several categories available, including banks, bars, coffee, gas stations, hotels, cinemas, parking garages, pubs, restaurants, supermarkets, and so on. Data is provided by Google Maps.
• Shazam (free)
We’ve all at one time heard a great song, but have no idea what it actually is. Shazam is perfect for this – hold it up to your speakers (or wherever the music is coming from), and it’ll attempt to identify the track. Most of the time this works fine, but I’ve had several times where it’s failed on obscure music off a TV show. However, it works fine most of the time.
• Moonlight Mahjong (£2.99, or free “lite” version)
Last, but most definitely not least, is this great game. Other people might not like it too much, but I find myself addicted to it all the time. It’s also very pretty, has good performance, doesn’t crash, and there’s a frequent stream of new user-created layouts on the blog that you can load and play.
Note: Prices were correct at time of writing. This post is my personal opinion and is not in any way influnced by the developers of these apps. However, developers, if you want to give me a comission for posting this, feel free to do so.
Up until last week, I had been running Windows XP in a virtual machine, using VMware Fusion, on my iMac, and then, when I got it, my MacBook. However, on Friday, the virtual machine just suddenly gave me a BSOD (OS X itself remained fine though).
Before I go on, some people have asked me why I run a Windows virtual machine on my MacBook. The reason I do it is because I still can’t find OS X alternates for mIRC and Microsoft Visio that I like, and other programs I use, such as mkv2vob, are Windows only. Plus, I keep it running because several people I know are *only* on Steam and/or Xfire for IM. Crazy, I know, I use WLM, YIM, AIM, GTalk, Jabber, MobileMe, and Facebook for IM, and yet a small handful of people still only want to use Steam and Xfire for IM. Oh well.
Anyway, I wasn’t doing anything amazing just then, just mIRC and Steam. That was it. So, I rebooted the virtual machine itself, and that worked fine. Until about 60 minutes later, when OS X itself decided to kernel panic (which looks something like this). And it kept doing it over and over again, even with VMware completely closed. So, I decided to try a reinstall of OS X, and started backing up all my stuff off the HDD. However, by the time I was almost done, I’d had several crashes, and by Saturday night my MacBook refused, outright, to boot up.
If I pressed the power button, it would turn itself on, but the screen didn’t turn on at all. I tried all the suggestions on the Apple support site, including clearing the NVRAM or whatever it was called, I tried booting up in “safe mode”, tried booting to the Apple Hardware Test (this requires the OS X install DVD, which my MacBook decided to eat and not give back, too)…nothing worked! So, I decided to go to the Apple Store where I had got it, at the Bullring in Birmimgham (this was on Sunday). The guy who helped was very friendly, however all the Apple Geniuses were booked for that day, so he said I’d have to come back another day, or, if I wanted, he could swap the machine on the spot for a new one. I chose to do that, but, I took it back home first, plugged the HDD into my old iMac, and got all the remaining files off the HDD first. Took it back on Monday, and they swapped it out for a brand new MacBook, all in about 10 minutes. Easy.
Brought it home, and installed all my apps again, copied all my music to the HDD, and this time, I’m not running Windows XP in a virtual machine. I’ve decided to just use Linkinus for IRC, and if I do need Visio, Steam, Xfire, or mkv2vob, I’ll use my old Vaio laptop for those.
So far, so good. Except for one thing. On the now dead MacBook, I had one issue with the keyboard, and one issue only – the F keys at the top were all slanted slightly to the left. Other people have had the same issue too. There’s a discussion on the Apple support forum too, somewhere, about the same issue. However, I can live with that. What I can’t live with, however, is that on this new MacBook, both the N and M keys keep coming loose. And the O key squeaks against the aluminum.
Now, in no way do I type roughly, I think my typing could be considered “moderate”. I don’t type “super lightly”, but I don’t hit the keys hard either. However, after just 4 hours or so with this replacement, the O key sqeaks (the top of it is rubbing against the aluminum unibody), and the N and M keys, if I type quickly, keep coming loose. This is extremely annoying, as I type fast, all the time. While typing this blog post alone, the keys have popped up about 20-30 times! The easiest way to explain this is that if I type something, and my finger hits either key and slides even slightly to the left, the key pops up! Here’s a pic of them both popped up:
The only way I can seem to get around this is to type slowly (which is annoying), or to not use the N or M keys at all (which is just stupid). It’s easy to fix, all I have to do is push them down again. But doing that over and over and over again is EXTREMELY annoying. And, because Apple class the keyboard as part of the whole unibody, if I get it fixed they’ll probably insist on giving me another replacement. Great. This is also annoying because every time I go to the Apple store, it costs £8.30 in train fares to go from Stafford to Birmingham New Street.
Hopefully though, they can somehow replace the individual key itself (because I think the two clips on the bottom-right of they keys has broken or something). Regardless, I’m going to forward a link to this post to the boffins there, and, HOPEFULLY, they can post me the two keys so I can maybe try and replace them myself. Please, Apple? 
I also don’t seem to be having much luck recently. First my PS3 dies last month, and now this. What next?
Last month, I swapped my iMac for one of Apple’s new aluminium MacBooks. I’m pretty happy with it overall.
This month, I’m swapping my Dell 2407WFP-HC monitor for a Sony Bravia LCD TV – the KDL32V4000. Reason being, I originally purchased the Dell as my main monitor back when I had a PC, and I used it for that, but on both my iMac and MacBook I wasn’t actually using it for all that much other then IRC and the few movies I used to watch while I browsed the web. So, since I’m getting Sky HD installed next month, I thought “what the hell”, put it on eBay (for £260), and I’m swapping it for the TV. Considering I was going to use it all the time with Sky anyway, and 1080p is kindof wasted for Sky, I think it’s worth it. Only issue is, I need to reshuffle my room around a bit to fit it in somewhere.
Sometime this month I’m also going to put my Thecus NAS on eBay – unless anyone wants it now (for £220). Reason? I’m running out of space on it (it only has 1.56TB of space), and if I sell it, I can get two 1TB Western Digital MyBooks, which also have the advantages of 1) being quiet (the fan in the Thecus is noisy, to my ears anyway), 2) more HDD space, and 3) it’s USB, so I can bypass OS X’s network file sharing, which, honestly, is horrific compared to Windows. Plus, with USB HDDs, I can swap / add to them more easily.
On Saturday the 25th of October, I took a train ride down to Birmingham New Street to pick up the new Late 2008 Aluminum MacBook, from the Apple Store in the Bullring. As always, upon going into the Apple store I was greeted by one of Apple’s staff, and asked if I needed any assistance, so I said yes, and asked for the new MacBook. 10 minutes later, I walked out the store with a rather heavy box containing the MacBook, and a Mini DisplayPort to DVI adaptor (which was £20 – ouch!).
Itching to open it, I arrived home, took it out the box, took a few photos, and turned it on. Instantly, I was greeted by the Apple setup wizard on the lovely bright display. I must say, after using this for a week, I’m very happy with it. It’s a much better display then any other laptop I’ve had, however, it does still fail to display blacks as vividly as the iMac did, or my Dell 2407WFP-HC does. In fact, overall, it seems a little off on several colours, but it’s not that bad – I’ve gotten used to it so far. If you’re seriously into graphic design, get the Pro. But if you just use it as a general day-to-day machine, it’s fine.
The design of the notebook itself is fantastic. The curvy edges when it’s closed make it feel thinner then it is, and the whole notebook feels very strong – much stronger then the old Vaio laptop that I’ve had (but not used for the past two years+). Whereas the Vaio felt like the screen was going to snap at any moment, the MacBook feels nice and strong. The overall design is nice too, I like having all the ports on the one side (and it’s the left, too – I hate it when the ports are on the right side, where I usually put a mouse and mousepad). However, I do have one complaint so far. When I’m typing, if I put my wrists on the edge of the laptop, the edge is actually pretty sharp – you don’t notice it if you have a jumper on or anything but if you’re just wearing a T-Shirt or something, and your wrists / arm are rubbing against the edge, I can imagine it would get irrating after a while. However, it hasn’t annoyed me that much yet.
In terms of the software, well, it’s OS X. Same as using my iMac. No real difference there, apart from the speed. Dropping down from my iMac’s 2.8GHz to the MacBook’s 2.4GHz isn’t that noticable – Photoshop and H264 HD video playback seems slightly slower, but not that much – both are still perfectly usable. Again, I think Photoshop would be much better with 4GB of RAM, versus 2GB. However, that’s another topic for another day.
Another thing that I love about the hardware itself, which is a very small feature, but it’s great nonetheless – if you plug the iPhone earphones into the audio out jack, you can use them for audio, but, and here’s the good part – you can use the microphone, too! I’ve been using it for the past week with Skype (calling my dad, in the Netherlands), and it’s pretty much perfect to replace my large and bulky headphones – the audio quality, according to him, is very good. As for the built in speakers, they’re very very good for a laptop, some of the best I’ve heard, but, of course, I’ll stick to using my speakers for music. They sound a hell of a lot better.
I’ve not yet installed XP on here to play any games yet, but I plan on doing so in the next week or so.
Now – the bad points. So far, I have a few issues.
Firstly, the trackpad is great, it’s huge, it feels good to use, however, it’s loud if you click. Seriously, if you’re in a quite place, like a library, and you click, I’m guessing everyone would look up and stare at you. The trackpad is just loud.
Secondly, and this seems to have been reported by other people – the function keys seem to all be slightly tilted to one side – the left is lower, and the right is raised.
Finally – and this one annoys me a lot – well, take a read for yourself: Apple Support – Discussions (I know it says MBP and the Cinema Display, but it’s happening to me too, on my 2407WFP-HC).
Other then those few issues, I think it’s been well worth switching from the iMac, and I’m very happy with my purchase. I just hope Apple can fix the issue I’ve been having with the external monitor issue, and soon, because it’s annoying.
I think that covers everything.
…and it’s mine! 2.4GHz model. More pics here, review (well, a post about it) soon too.
In The Castle by Wolfmother
