Electric Pig

Well, my Macbook Pro stopped being able to burn dual layer DVDs again. This is the third time that the disk drive has broken since last June when I first bought it, and the fourth time something has needed fixing. I was really worried when I rang up Applecare that they were going to be unwilling to fix it again and would claim that whatever the problem was, it was something that I had done and therefore not their responsibility.

I called them up and as expected the guy sounded a little sceptical. He said that he would have to go off and speak to the technical staff and to his shift boss and would call me back. I wasn't holding out much hope, and was bracing myself to launch into a massive argument, demanding my consumer rights. He called back and indeed told me that Apple were not going to be able to repair the computer again, but instead were actually willing to replace it with a brand new, updated Macbook Pro, from their new line! I couldn't actually believe it, and listened in amazement as he reeled off the stats of the machine they would be giving me. I kind of felt a little guilty at first, but then again, if a computer breaks down 4 times in less than a year, it does suggest something is seriously wrong and any decent company probably should be willing to make a repair in those circumstances. The computer arrived late last week and since then I have been busy installing all the programmes I had on my old one and realising that some don't work now as the new versions of the Macbooks all come with Leopard.

I am still not sure about Leopard. I am not sure if it's a result of the new processors or the ram increase or Leopard or a combination of them all, but it's very, very quick, even compared to my last Macbook Pro. Of the new features, the multi-touch trackpad is really nice, and pretty useful. I can imagine some of these functions will become part of my basic workflow as the two-finger scrolling has done. Stacks seems pretty pointless - even a little annoying - I may have to get rid of the downloads stack quite soon. I haven't got enough disk space to use Time Machine, and probably wouldn't anyway. The empty trash button in the trash can is very nice, and I like the new hover functions in the dock. The transparent menu bar is alright, but seems a little pointless. The other changes seem a quite good, mainly ironing out little problems with Tiger and cleaning up the interface. I think it's probably something that will grow on me, the more I use it.

On the whole, I have to say I am pretty pleased with the way Apple have treated me - and it's not often that you get a chance to say that about a customer service department.