Powerbook Abuse

Jasmeet: Thanks for that info about the genius bar, i just got off the phone with applecare and they told me this is "acceptable" because of "normal wear" ....normal wear means letters completely vanish off the keyboard in a year?! Ill give the genius bar a try though.

The post is kind of interesting, but then again the idea of tapping into the USB powerline is nothing new. It's quite easilly documented all over the place. But while I do like the piece on one level, I rolled my eyes when I read: "Its nice and ghetto and actually kept me a bit cooler than normal. " It's nice and "ghetto". I'm sorry if I sound pissy on this point, but I'm a tad sick and tired of hearing the word "ghetto" used as an adjective. It's not a positive statement and it's quite patronizing.

My owerboo ey boad woks flawlsly!

the keys are all sitting nicely in their place. but the paint on my 800mhz 15" DVI powerbook went awol just after the 1 year warranty expired. it's quite frustrating to buy a 4200Euros notebook just to discover that apple didn't care to test the crappy paint for more than 5 minutes. bha. m

Just an FYI to anyone, I'm pretty sure the Genius Bar will gladly replace your keys (not keyboard) on the house if you have missing letters on your keys, maybe even missing keys. Or maybe I just got lucky. Only one way of finding out right?

I hear that apple will replace your keys as long as its within warranty, I as well need a new A & S key, and will be calling apple care tomorrow to find out if they will replace my keys, it makes my iBook look ugly = But this time i will defiantly be using a cover on the keyboard like a iSkin

Well, I've got a 2 year old who loves to "type like daddy". I guess Apple didn't test their keyboards on such tykes since in the first 5 min, he ripped off the open brace "[" key as the plastic key got stuck under those oh-so-paper-think nails that kids have... It now provides me with a great story to tell each time I open my laptop...

I find it unusual that people are complaining about "cut and paste", citing that they've seen stories on other blogs first, etc, etc. Throughout all my blog reading, there are a plethora of stories that are duplicated across the majority of them. Quite often they'll all have the same quoted text, sometimes they don't. Like with mainstream 'conventional' news, I take great delight in the differentiation of the same story, even more so when the author personalises it. Its a community forum, not CNN. Keep up the fun, formally informal posting TUAW!

"frankly I think there are enough of those out there" Actually, there are quite a few, but there are very few actual good ones. The rest all feed off of the few originals and random Associated Press press released. And I certainly have no expectation of a blog to be a news source, that's not what I'm saying. Blogs can and do have good original content, and are not merely link repositories. I take opposition to your statement that linking to other sites "is what blogs do." That's WebBit-ing, and not Blogging. Take Rob Griffith's new personal blog as an example. I see an unofficial Apple blog being a bit more like that--close to the source personal commentaries and entries. You guys are terribly busy, and that's understandable. But can we please get more original writings from you and less "link to site: Isn't that cuh-razy! What do you all think about this?" entries. Yes, entries will contain interesting links, but good, original content blogging doesn't rely on links for the subject material of an entry, but rather compliments the original content with peppered appropriate links within the entry. I'll not derail this topic further, so I'll take my comments "off the air", as it were. ;)

Brian, thanks for the tip, however I do in fact have a personal blog, as C.K. pointed out (http://blankbaby.typepad.com if anyone is interested), however I thought TUAWers would get a kick out of seeing Vince's sad Powerbook, and perhaps would want to create an USB fan for themselves. And djones, it is true that we link to lots of other Mac websites, so that may lead to some dups, but we are a blog and that's what blogs do. We haven't presented ourselves as a strictly business Mac news website and frankly I think there are enough of those out there. People seem to like to interact with each other and us (i.e. myself, C.K., and Laurie) through the comments of entries such as these. Plus the personal slant is what makes TUAW fun, at least for me. :)