Uh...the button flexes. Buttons aren't supposed to flex.
This morning, I decided that today was the day to buy a new computer. As you may have read in a previous post, there were some problems with the backlight on my G3 dual usb ibook and it would intermittently turn on and off depending on the position of the screen. I had thought it was the reed switch shorting out because it was getting worn down by a faulty hinge design. More about that here. Last week, the backlight went black and wouldn't come back, and I decided, after some thought, to take it to the local computer repair store and ask them to fix it. I thought that the problem was the video cable was shorted out, and I could just pay about $60 for them to replace the cable. After explaining what the problem was to a Tekserve employee who clearly hated my guts for even attempting to open up my own Apple computer and fix it myself, I was told that the problem is actually something like the inverter chip or inverter board, and it would cost $190 for labor (1.5 hours) and about $40 for the part. I don't even think they checked the video cable. They could be right, but I'm sure as hell not going to pay some asshole almost $250 to fix a computer that is almost 4 years old. I'll do it myself for $40 and save the rest of the cash for a new Intel chip computer.
That leads me to today. Apparently a new Apple store opened up in that mysterious black cube in front of the General Motors building/FAO Schwartz toy store on the SE corner of Central Park. I'd been wondering what the hell that black box was. If I'd bothered to Google "black cube new york" I could have figured it out 6 months ago, but I just figured that General Motors was constructing a mysterious new Louvre-style entrance to their building. Didn't think it was going to turn out to be the tackiest looking Apple store in existence.
So I showered, ate some waffles at the local greek diner, and checked my credit card balance to see if I had enough available fake money to buy one of these new 13 inch Macbooks that just came out last week. Stepped out of the subway at about 4 pm and saw a big (30 feet, plus or minus a few, to each side), clear glass cube in front of the GM building...with a giant, white Apple logo suspended in it. In front of that, and stretching around the side of the building, were hundreds of customers in line to get in the store and win a Macbook. Apple was giving away one Macbook every hour during the first 24 hours of this 24/7 store. To be honest, I was thinkng it might be fun to enter it during one of the hours...you know, play the odds...couldn't hurt, really, and I would just go buy my new computer afterwards. But I completely forgot about the hysteria that accompanies Apple store openings. Decided to skip the no-doubt hourlong line and go back to the old standby Soho location of Apple.
The new Apple store had a tiny, tiny effect on the usual horrendous masstige-lovin' crowds at the Soho store, and we were able to get up close and personal with our prey, the 13 inch white Macbook. And you know what? I'm not saying I won't change my mind later and buy a Macbook, but after all that preparation and thought, I walked away 1/2 an hour later EMPTY HANDED. And I'll tell you why.
The $1099 model of the Macbook is cheap, but it doesn't have a DVD burner, essential for easy back-up of data, so forget it. We're already up a few hundred bucks for the $1299 model, which does have a DVD burner.
Both models only come with 512 MB of RAM, which is bullshit if you're running the current version of OS X. 512 MB is the minimum, which means it will work, but you can bet that there are going to be a lot of spinning beach balls in your future. $100 more will get you two 512 MB chips, for a total of a gigabyte of RAM. My personal rule is not to buy any computer with less than a gigabyte of RAM. At least with that upgrade you could remove one of the 512 MB chips and replace it with a 1 gigabyte chip from dealram for about $90 for a total of 1.5 gigabytes of RAM. Much cheaper than the $500 2 GB upgrade offered by Apple.
That is, you can upgrade the RAM easily if you can figure out how to get to it. Unlike my old iBook and the old Powerbooks, the keyboard does NOT lift out of its slots in the computer. I have no idea if you can even open the computer to do simple things like adding RAM.
The new Macbook comes with iLife, which is cool, I'll admit. We tested the internal mic with the Podcasting/audio editing software, Garageband, and the cute little camera on the top with a program called Photobooth that you can use for pimping yourself out on Myspace.
What it doesn't come with, however, is a WORD PROCESSOR. WTF? No word processor? Yup, that's right. Unless you're happy with TextEdit for all your word processing needs, you're going to have to shell out $79-$250 for iWork or Microsoft Office. And guess what? Pages, the actual word processing app that comes in iWork, will read .doc, .rtf, .txt, etc., but as far as I can tell, it only saves in its new little format, with a .pages extension, which I assume isn't readable by programs like Word. Anyway, iWork is an extra 79 bucks, which is a lot less than Microsoft Word for Teachers and Students, at $150, and even less than Microsoft Office, which is at least $250.
Lastly, and most importantly: the trackpad button. The Macbook has a widescreen format LCD screen, so the trackpad is a little bit bigger and wider than my old iBook's trackpad. The button is wider, but skinnier. Several times, when I used the button next to the trackpad to double click an icon to open an application, or minimize a browser window, the computer didn't register the clicks and did nothing. I messed around with the prefs for the double click speed, making it slower, and it *may* have helped, but it was still glitchy. For some reason, the button feels a little cheap. My iBook button does not flex. This button flexes. I'm not sure I can bring myself to pay almost $1500 for a computer with no apparent access to the RAM chips and a flexi-glitchy trackpad button. And I didn't. Yet. We'll see. Maybe they have to work out some production quality problems. For now, I'm going to order those replacement parts for my old iBook and give it a few weeks to see what people say after the new-gadget-lust wears off.
That leads me to today. Apparently a new Apple store opened up in that mysterious black cube in front of the General Motors building/FAO Schwartz toy store on the SE corner of Central Park. I'd been wondering what the hell that black box was. If I'd bothered to Google "black cube new york" I could have figured it out 6 months ago, but I just figured that General Motors was constructing a mysterious new Louvre-style entrance to their building. Didn't think it was going to turn out to be the tackiest looking Apple store in existence.
So I showered, ate some waffles at the local greek diner, and checked my credit card balance to see if I had enough available fake money to buy one of these new 13 inch Macbooks that just came out last week. Stepped out of the subway at about 4 pm and saw a big (30 feet, plus or minus a few, to each side), clear glass cube in front of the GM building...with a giant, white Apple logo suspended in it. In front of that, and stretching around the side of the building, were hundreds of customers in line to get in the store and win a Macbook. Apple was giving away one Macbook every hour during the first 24 hours of this 24/7 store. To be honest, I was thinkng it might be fun to enter it during one of the hours...you know, play the odds...couldn't hurt, really, and I would just go buy my new computer afterwards. But I completely forgot about the hysteria that accompanies Apple store openings. Decided to skip the no-doubt hourlong line and go back to the old standby Soho location of Apple.
The new Apple store had a tiny, tiny effect on the usual horrendous masstige-lovin' crowds at the Soho store, and we were able to get up close and personal with our prey, the 13 inch white Macbook. And you know what? I'm not saying I won't change my mind later and buy a Macbook, but after all that preparation and thought, I walked away 1/2 an hour later EMPTY HANDED. And I'll tell you why.
The $1099 model of the Macbook is cheap, but it doesn't have a DVD burner, essential for easy back-up of data, so forget it. We're already up a few hundred bucks for the $1299 model, which does have a DVD burner.
Both models only come with 512 MB of RAM, which is bullshit if you're running the current version of OS X. 512 MB is the minimum, which means it will work, but you can bet that there are going to be a lot of spinning beach balls in your future. $100 more will get you two 512 MB chips, for a total of a gigabyte of RAM. My personal rule is not to buy any computer with less than a gigabyte of RAM. At least with that upgrade you could remove one of the 512 MB chips and replace it with a 1 gigabyte chip from dealram for about $90 for a total of 1.5 gigabytes of RAM. Much cheaper than the $500 2 GB upgrade offered by Apple.
That is, you can upgrade the RAM easily if you can figure out how to get to it. Unlike my old iBook and the old Powerbooks, the keyboard does NOT lift out of its slots in the computer. I have no idea if you can even open the computer to do simple things like adding RAM.
The new Macbook comes with iLife, which is cool, I'll admit. We tested the internal mic with the Podcasting/audio editing software, Garageband, and the cute little camera on the top with a program called Photobooth that you can use for pimping yourself out on Myspace.
What it doesn't come with, however, is a WORD PROCESSOR. WTF? No word processor? Yup, that's right. Unless you're happy with TextEdit for all your word processing needs, you're going to have to shell out $79-$250 for iWork or Microsoft Office. And guess what? Pages, the actual word processing app that comes in iWork, will read .doc, .rtf, .txt, etc., but as far as I can tell, it only saves in its new little format, with a .pages extension, which I assume isn't readable by programs like Word. Anyway, iWork is an extra 79 bucks, which is a lot less than Microsoft Word for Teachers and Students, at $150, and even less than Microsoft Office, which is at least $250.
Lastly, and most importantly: the trackpad button. The Macbook has a widescreen format LCD screen, so the trackpad is a little bit bigger and wider than my old iBook's trackpad. The button is wider, but skinnier. Several times, when I used the button next to the trackpad to double click an icon to open an application, or minimize a browser window, the computer didn't register the clicks and did nothing. I messed around with the prefs for the double click speed, making it slower, and it *may* have helped, but it was still glitchy. For some reason, the button feels a little cheap. My iBook button does not flex. This button flexes. I'm not sure I can bring myself to pay almost $1500 for a computer with no apparent access to the RAM chips and a flexi-glitchy trackpad button. And I didn't. Yet. We'll see. Maybe they have to work out some production quality problems. For now, I'm going to order those replacement parts for my old iBook and give it a few weeks to see what people say after the new-gadget-lust wears off.