The Genius reported that it was either the logic board, the graphics card or both. I asked how we could find out and he said something along the lines of “if you send it off for repair they’ll just replace whatever’s broken.” I asked whether it was common that these components failed — the MBP is just under two years old — and he replied that yes, sometimes they get a ‘little fried’.

So I rather begrudgingly agreed to have it shipped off for repair. $350 and a minimum wait of 5-7 days. This was Thursday. I then spent the rest of Thursday and all of Friday trying to work as best I could on a fairly slow and clunky Windows laptop. I missed all my shortcuts, apps and passwords. I felt naked and useless. Of course, this is all to do with the data & productivity that I’m used to, not the machine itself. But it was still a weird experience.

The weirdest and most annoying PC ‘quirk’ is that if you press ctrl-alt-down, it flips the entire screen upside down. This is a common shortcut I use frequently in Photoshop. Imagine my joy when each time I wanted to nudge an element down a couple of pixels, Windows thought it’d be helpful to flip my screen.

Seriously, who thought this would be a good user feature? Yes, I’m sure there’s a way of turning it off, but surely the better experience would be for users to turn something like that on — not have it on by default? Anyway, Friday was a strugglesome day.

I got a call on Saturday telling me it was repaired and back at the Apple Store in Chicago. A 2 day turnaround. Impressive. It booted up and everything seemed fine.

As of Monday morning, it’s all still fine. There are a few noises I’m not used to — deleting items in iTunes causes a weird ‘blip’ sound. I’ve not investigated this — it might be a new ‘feature’ of the logic board. At any rate, I’m just glad to be back in familiar surroundings. And I’m impressed with the service I received. Even if I am a little annoyed that I had to fork out $350 on a machine barely two years old.

From left to right:

• Dropbox — useful for sharing files fast. Eases VPN pain.
• JungleDisk — online storage using Amazon S3. This isn’t the default icon but a replacement I made some time ago. The default icon is…unfortunate.
• Littlesnapper — I am just getting into this tool but it’s fantastic. It allows you to capture, catalog & tag screenshots and various other pieces of inspiration.
• Cinch — allows simple window resizing & organisation using hot zones. Brilliantly useful, particularly if you regularly switch between a large external monitor and a laptop display.
• Bashflash — glows red when Flash starts chomping all your processing power. It allows you to kill the plugin. Super useful.
• Love Stars — not shown here but it’s a shortcut for setting the star rating of the song currently playing in iTunes. Incredibly useful when Genius Mixes throws up an awesome tune.

I’m quite particular about what lives in my menubar — it needs to be useful and add value to my daily workflows. It helps if the icon fits in design-wise too — if it doesn’t and the tool is indispensable to me then I’ll redesign the icon to be less…fugly (JungleDisk, I’m looking at you).

So Apple announced the iPad today. No great surprises — it’s been talked about relentlessly these past few weeks. And no great surprises with what it is or what it does. But, to me, it still doesn’t answer the question, posed by Steve himself:

“What are they good for besides surfing the web in the bathroom?”

I’m paraphrasing here, but you get the point. What is the point of the iPad? Is it the App Store? iBooks? iWork? Nothing I saw in today’s keynote made me think “ah, so that’s what a tablet should do”. I got that with the iPhone. Not so with iPad. Maybe I’m missing the bigger picture.

Here are some reasons I won’t be rushing out to get one:

• It’s pricey — $800+ is almost MacBook territory
• It doesn’t do much more than my iPhone does now — iWork and iBooks aside (but seriously, who wants to make spreadsheets on a tablet?)
• ‘Blown up’ iPhone apps just look weird — and regular size apps look lonely
• Scott Forstall had way too much Kool Aid before filming his bit in the promo video

I do get the impression, however, that this is just the beginning. Looking at the home screen, it struck me that it looks rather sparse — like an iPhone home screen with a lot more space. Plus the four icons in the ‘dock’ at the bottom looked strange. Maybe this is something you can tweak in the settings — much as you can tweak icon size & spacing on the Mac’s desktop — but maybe it’s an indication that Apple think this thing will just grow & grow.

How? More apps on the App Store specifically for iPad. More books in iBooks specifically for iPad. Magazines and other material coming through, specifically for the iPad.

Loads more photos to follow!

Celebrating One Year in Chicago

November 15th marked our first full year living in Chicago. It’s gone so fast! I had hoped to post something on the 15th for posterity but it just slipped away with everything else we had going on. Seems so long ago since we arrived at O’Hare to be picked up by Ben & Mandy and wander around Chicago awestruck by it all.

Then we had our first snowfall (I still remember being so excited at seeing that much snow. Remember — in the UK snowfall is pretty pathetic!) and Sap, Mandy & I made snow angels (after a few ‘warming’ drinks, of course) as Ben looked on calling us mad…

Thanksgiving 2009

We had ‘our’ first Thanksgiving this year — we spent Thanksgiving 2008 with the wonderful McKee family (and Ben!) — and thoroughly enjoyed it. We cooked good food and drank great drinks. We ordered an apple pie from The Chopping Block — it was amazingly good. Definitely something we will order again next year. Alas they only make them for Thanksgiving and no other holiday.

Celebrating Two Years of Marriage

Sap and I celebrated two years of marriage on the 22nd December. Again, it seems to have gone so fast! We had a fairly miserable first anniversary in 2008 — we went out walking for the day in freezing temperatures so that, by the time we got home, we were too tired & cold to go out for dinner. So we ordered a takeout which turned out to be fairly horrid. We vowed to have a better anniversary this year so we planned a holiday to Mexico. Needless to say it was better in every way!

Our hotel was amazing and we treated ourselves to a relaxing massage whilst we were there. We came back to a soggy Chicago well rested and looking forward to our second Christmas in Chicago.

Christmas 2009

We arrived back from Mexico on Christmas Eve to a very, very chatty cat. As we opened the door she miaowed as if to say “THERE you are! I’ve been looking for you everwhere!” Bless her. She was very happy to see us (as we were really happy to see her — strange how much you miss a ball of fur that constantly wakes you up at 6am!).

We had done all our Christmas shopping for food, presents, drink etc. before we left so there was nothing we had to do — it was bliss! Great planning & organisation by Sap. It’s her thing. So we woke (early) on Christmas morning to let Peppy open her presents first. She got a tunnel (which she LOVES) and a new bed (which she turns her nose up at) as well as some foody things from her relatives across the Atlantic. She was more interested in the wrapping paper than what was in it though.

We Skyped family and then settled down to enjoy a nice warm, cosy, quiet Christmas. It was wonderful. We had two days of lazing around the apartment, eating & drinking all the goodies we had bought.

New Year 2009

We’re off to the Blackrock pub tomorrow night to celebrate 2010 heading our way. It’s the same place we went to last year with Nick, Paul & Nige (can’t believe that was a year ago either!) so we’re really looking forward to it as it was a fantastic evening.

Then we have a few more days off before we head back to work on the 4th. But let’s not think about that yet!

And I’ve just discovered that archived news reports at Autosport are only available for 30 days. Good job I haven’t got lots of links to that site on here. Oh, wait…

Jordan says that “there’s no downside” for Michael Schumacher.

I have to agree with Joe Saward on this one — can’t see it happening.

But no.

Jenson Button has joined McLaren on a ‘multi-year’ deal.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about this. On the one hand I believe that Button demonstrated just how good he is in 2009. On the other I wonder if he is as good as Hamilton in the same car.

2010 could either serve to further illustrate how skilled Button is or it could leave some saying he only won the 2009 World Championship because he was in the best car/had a slower teammate etc.

Jackie Stewart thinks Button’s made a mistake.

Ross Brawn thought he should stay with Brawn/Mercedes.

Button himself is clearly delighted with the deal.