- Slick packaging, as usual for Apple.

- First thing I’d do is migrate my user account or the whole drive from the old MacBook. Since the new MacBooks no longer have FireWire 400, I can no longer use the Target mode. I’ll have to migrate my stuff over via an external disk.

- I’ll just start with a fresh Mac OS user account.

- The black keyboard feels softer, better.

- I thought the trackpad will get me on my nerves. It does. Badly.

- Downloaded my Layered Desktop from its Flickr page.

- This machine needs a cool name. Since so far it’s an underimpresser, the name needs to say blasé, but not quite lame. Like old friends. Rorschach could work.

- Installing Teleport to remote control dear SUBZERO, holding all my data.

- JMG just passed by, and he convinced me to activate the “Tap to click” option for the trackpad. I always hates this thing, but he called me a grumpy old men in French, so I have no choice.

- Bug with Safari 4, first time I see the tab bar mangled like this.

- Downloading iStat menus.

- It’s good to have 1.93GB of FREE memory.

- Trying Postbox, again, I’ve heard the the latest betas improved features, UI and stability. 5 minutes later: “The application Postbox quit unexpectedly.” Mkay.

- Hmm… the fresh new Mac OS user account thing is too tedious. I’ll just transfer my previous user account from SUBZERO instead, as I usually do when I setup a new machine.

- The Mini DisplayPort to VGA dongle needed a firmware upgrade, which I just did. Unbelievable, even the least piece of dumb cable now has a chip and needs to be patched. We used to jokes about this kind of stuff 10 years ago, and it was funny.

- Pinch-zooming in Safari 4 could’ve been great. Unfortunately it’s jumpy and unpredictable.

- Stuff is being copied from SUBZERO to an external drive.

- Compared with the new 15” MacBook Pro, the display on the old 13” MacBook looks like it lost a couple of brightness notches.

A week later…

- I installed Windows in Boot Camp, bought the Orange Box and played a little. Half-Life at 1440×900 with all the feature maxed out and anti-aliasing is pure bliss. If only I had time to play…

- When playing the aforementioned, the machine heats up quite a bit and the vents get noisy pretty quickly.

- I think I have a dead pixel in the middle of the top-right quarter. Stupid. The resolution is high enough to make it unnoticeable.

- The new trackpad IS indeed unusable. It’s hard to click and makes a horribly loud clunky noise. So yeah, I am vieux grognon.

- Still only two USB ports, and this is a 15-incher. At the same time, Apple forces people to sync the iPhone over USB, instead of going with Bluetooth like it does with any other phone on the market. Dumb.

- Mini DisplayPort? Really? Why not a special VGA connector that could deliver DisplayPort functionality with an adapter? Or both? Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

This sounds hards, but the truth is the new machine is great. The bigger and brighter screen is a huge improvement. So is the Windows gaming. The bigger and faster hard disk, a new battery and the 4GB of RAM are very welcomed.

Plus, it looks and feels like a tight pack of sexitude.

Now, I use an iPhone, I find it OK, but its “in-spite” shortcomings are quite frustrating. I thought I could live with less multi-touch and a bulkier package, in exchange for half-decent support for any of the standard mobile features: keyboard, camera, bluetooth, battery life, memory card, data modem, etc.

Nokia’s stuff is great in all these areas. However, the result is less than stellar. It’s bulky as brick, the keyboard is too flat, the UI is slow and clunky. It’s barely usable. It’s going to be pretty expensive, too. If Scoble’s right about this being Nokia’s touchiest week, this really means Nokia’s out of the smartphone game.

I had hopes for a Nokia, RIM and HTC or Google comeback after the iPhone raised the bar, but each of them had underwhelming responses.

Stupid iPhone.

Here are some hints pointing that the problem is caused by the incorrect extension:

• Using Archive Utility–the default archive handler on Mac OS–to decompress Filename.dmg.bz2 creates a new file called Filename.dmg.bz2.cpgz. Trying to decompress the new file creates yet another Filename 2.dmg.bz2.cpgz file, and so on.
• Using StuffIt Expander with the file creates a new Filename.dmg file. However, if you try to mount the new disk image in the Finder, a error window appears with the message:
  The following disk images failed to mount.
  Filename.dmg no mountable file systems
• Using The Unarchiver gives the same results as Stuffit Expander.

I think the the problem may be caused by a misconfiguration on the download web server and it sure sucks. So remember, simply removing the .bz2 extension may fix the problem.

The problem is that my research for a decent and affordable hosting is inconclusive. I’d love to find a reliable solution that’s not too slow for less than €50/m.

I guess it’ll be Dreamhost for a bit longer. I did switch my payments to monthly instead of yearly, just in case I stumble upon something great.

I think I’ve made my choice.

I’ve purchased the Bose Companion 5 specifically for their USB connectivity. USB audio devices can be fully controlled from the host PC or Mac. The volume control on the host is replaced by the volume of device: changing the volume on the USB speakers/headphones or on the PC have strictly the same effect. The volume indicator on both the computer and on the device are updated in sync. It’s really slick. Why is this important? There are two great advantages to using a USB audio peripheral, besides the fact that the digital sound is delivered directly to your digital device: 1. the control is very precise and 2. you eliminate a remote control.

However, this is not the case for the Bose Companion 5. The speakers have their own volume setting, independent of the volume on the host PC, or Mac in my case. So, the integration is far from seamless; you end up with the same double-volumes control scheme as with any 3.5mm jack connection. If I knew this before, I would’ve opted for the Mackie S.5 Studio Monitors or the AudioEngine 5 instead. They sound better, are built just as well and cost less. And they all have the number 5 in their names, for some reason.

I’m disappointed and I will return mine.