Back in May 2006, as Apple was transitioning to Intel processors, the company announced the MacBook, a 13-inch notebook to replace the 12- and 14-inch iBook G4s (and maybe the 12-inch PowerBook G4). The new machine came in white or black plastic, sported a glossy display, a built-in iSight, and a brand new “sunken” keyboard design.
The machine was a huge hit. Starting at $1099, the machines were far more powerful and feature-packed than the aging machines they replaced — and cheaper.
The i Mac G3 intro video:
Sorry for the low quality — it’s the best I could find.
Objectified is a film about industrial design, from Gary Hustwit, the same guy who did Helvetica. Here’s a clip from the new film, in which Apple’s Jonathan Ive discusses the MacBook Air and Apple’s unibody construction process.
It makes me happy he carries a white iPhone. When people ask me why I didn’t buy the more popular black version, I’m going to start referencing this clip.
The gist of the tip is this: if you’d like to hide or eliminate scratches on your iPhone’s bezel, or you just want to sport a different look, then find ye a two-sided sponge and tape up your iPhone all kidnapped-like, leaving only the bezel exposed. Take the rough side of the sponge and start buffing the chrome in long, straight swipes. The whole process takes about 10 minutes, but your iPhone will come out looking just just a little sharper than it used to. It’s a subtle change, but the buffed bezel is not as prone to fingerprints and just looks a lot more hi-tech overall. I like it!
Of course, it’s like dating a supermodel: just because the DROID is unbelievably attractive doesn’t mean you want to marry it. Those that aren’t used to Android (or have tried it before and didn’t like it) might cringe at some of the platform’s nuances, and it’s still not as visually slick as webOS or iPhone OS is. I personally found the physical keyboard to be a pretty miserable experience – worse than the G1 and the CLIQ – an inevitable casualty of trying to fit this much technology into a space less than 14mm thick, but the good news is that the capacitive display is large enough to make the soft keyboard very usable for me. It’s also the smoothest, fastest, most satisfying Android experience on any device to date, a combination of 2.0’s enhancements and the speedy OMAP3 heart powering them.
Even though many anonymous sources have described Apple’s tablet as a “larger iPhone,” you’re unlikely to win if all you do is re-size a photo of an iPhone. That would be yawn-inducing. Challenge yourselves artistically, have some fun and make a compelling device worthy of all the hype.
Honestly, the artwork with the story is more compelling than any of the ones entered so far.
Motorola’s Droid is the first phone to use the latest release of Android, called Éclair, which features free turn-by-turn directions from Google and sophisticated speech recognition. The biggest problem was the balance between design, which was once a Motorola hallmark, and the phone’s performance. “When you are trying to make something small and powerful, everything is a tradeoff,” Mr. Osterloh explained. “You have to iterate the design thousands of times to get it right.”
Not surprisingly, it sports a new interface and iTunes LP.
The first revision of Android looked like Windows 3.1 — this is way nicer.
As usual, iFixit has been quick to dissect Apple’s updated MacBook, offering an extensive gallery of photos documenting the process.
A few notes of interest:
- There is no external indicator of battery charge state.
- There is no infrared port, meaning that the new model is incompatible with Apple Remotes.
- The integrated battery offers only 9% more capacity than on previous models (60 watt-hours vs. 55), but Apple claims an increase in battery life to 7 hours from the previous 5 hours, suggesting that the new model is more energy efficient. The new battery is significantly lighter than in the previous generation, offering a power-to-weight ratio that is 23.5% better.