The Apple Store: doing things… differently

Thursday, August 18th, 2011

Confession time: last night I bought a MacBook Air.

I know many PC owners react to new Mac products with an ire usually reserved for a looter on benefits, but I’ve been without a laptop for nearly a year now, and this Sandy Bridge generation of Air has finally won me over.

The merits and otherwise of buying Apple kit are not the point of this blog though. This blog is about the Apple Store — or, more specifically, how utterly terrifying it is. (more…)

First look: Dell Adamo 13

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

I caught a glimpse of the Dell Adamo concept design at a pre-Christmas briefing last year, where Dell was so nervous about security they banned our phones (little realising that my faithful HTC Touch’s camera is barely worthy of the name).

So it was with some pleasure that I could finally get my hands on a production model at Dell’s Versailles-based event today. And I have to say, it’s a very impressive piece of kit. (more…)

Samsung’s 360-degree turnaround

Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008

I spent the end of last week poking around the Samsung X360, and found that it fell short in several areas. One of these was the optical drive: whereas rivals from Sony and Lenovo manage to cram optical drives into the svelte dimensions, the Samsung doesn’t bother.

I found myself thinking that, well, maybe this isn’t actually a bad thing – in our day-to-day lives, who uses their optical drive on a regular basis any more?

My laptop is used on the train or on the sofa, for example, and I’m normally playing a game or working. The game doesn’t use a disc, and neither does Microsoft Word. Listening to music doesn’t need a CD anymore, as I have my mp3 player, and the vast majority of applications that I have on my laptop don’t require the CD in the drive to boot.

Of course, Samsung has included a USB DVD drive if you need to use a CD, but the excellent battery life means that this, surely, can be left at home more often than not – it’ll usually be wheeled out for an occasional product install, for instance.

I suppose that the optical drive could now be considered virtually redundant for the majority of users most of the time. It also appears that the Macbook Air may have actually done something right. What do you think?

MacBook Air too light for its own good?

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

The carriages on my daily commute to Sussex and back are so well sound-proofed that you can hear a fly scratching its ear in the driver’s cabin. So when a repetitive tapping noise interrupted my gentle snooze on the way home last night, I set about immediately locating the culprit.

I was expecting it to be an inconsiderate iPod owner tapping away to the beat. In fact, it was another Apple product to blame – the MacBook Air.

The chap in the row opposite was rattling out a document, with his laptop hanging precariously over the edge of the train table, so as not to steal any more than half of the available table space (the unwritten rule of laptop etiquette on the Brighton line).

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MacBook Air: the world’s most expensive cake slice

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

We’ve heard of footballers bathing in champagne and Bernie Ecclestone’s lovely leather carpets, but now it seems the computing industry has its own purveyor of grotesque extravagance.

This is Rahul Sood, the founder of VoodooPC and now CTO of HP’s gaming business, cutting his birthday cake with a MacBook Air:

“I assure you no Macs were harmed in the taking of this photo,” Sood claims on his blog. The same can’t be said for HP’s reputation, however. After all, had he attempted to do likewise with a HP laptop, there probably wouldn’t be a cake left.