Let me disclose straight away that I've opened packaging on just about every major Apple product released over the past five years and never exerted such effort in opening a little plastic container -- which by the way resembles something you would find sitting on a shelf at Pottery Barn. But seriously, Apple, what is with the tape?

As I stated in the video, certain multi-touch gestures require a great deal of repetitive use in order to acclimate to the Magic Mouse. I am pleased to say, however, now that I'm on on Day 2, the problems I initially experienced with touch-scrolling have largely been alleviated simply by adjusting scroll speed settings in System Preferences>Mouse, which is set at 25% by default. Cranking this up to 50% and beyond made page scrolling must smoother and easier, though upward scrolling is still proving to be a hemorrhoid-inducing experience.

One thing I would like to clarify: in the video I mentioned having rebooted my Mac in order to pair with the Magic Mouse via Bluetooth. This is NOT required. Simply launching the Bluetooth Setup Assistant will begin partnering the mouse with your Mac. I chose the former option because a) I prefer a fresh start when introducing new hardware, and b) I roll that way.

I'm still experiencing lots of unpleasantness with two-finger page swiping though. Apple really needs to allow the user to adjust swipe speed settings by including a slider for that gesture in the Mouse preferences. Perhaps that will come in a future update.

Stay tuned for more hands-on with the Magic Mouse in the coming days.

A little while back we posted about the unboxing of an Apple job offer, and now here's another unboxing having to do with becoming an Apple employee -- Mac Rumors has shots up of an unboxing of one of the t-shirt giftboxes recently given to AppleCare call center staff, and once again, even in something that the public was never really supposed to see, this company shows just how much care and attention they put into their design. From the way the t-shirt's folded, with the stark three word design sitting perfectly centered, to the embossed gift note and company stickers, clearly this is a company that believes presentation is important.

In fact, it almost makes me want to go over to Apple's Jobs site and start looking for myself. Apple, any interest in hiring a witty, sarcastic and cynical blogger? I'll work for peanuts!

This is exactly the kind of thing we love to see here at TUAW (and thanks for sending it along, Danny) -- Glyph of the Twisted project got a job offer from Apple last week, and over on his blog, he posts a set of unboxing pics. Which might sound silly (an unboxing for a new hire packet?), but when you're talking about Apple, it's worth it. It turns out they put nearly as much thought into the design of their paperwork as they do into the rest of their projects. From the iconic folder to the way it's organized, designed, and laid out, getting a job offer from Apple isn't just super exciting, it's apparently a thing of beauty.

To tell the truth, we half expected him to turn the folder over and see the words "Designed by Apple in California." Good luck to Glyph with his job, and it warms our hearts here as Apple fans at TUAW to see that something the company never expected to be shown to the public was assembled with such care and thought.

There's more on the inside, where it counts, but the boxes are definitely downsized: over at ilove.nu, Peter Esse has posted his comparative unboxing pictures from Logic Studio and Final Cut Studio 2 to the newly announced and shipping versions (note that Apple is just calling the product "Final Cut Studio" now, even though many are referring to it as version 3). As you can see, the new pro apps are missing one of the pro features: printed manuals.

Considering the $300 price drop and the sheer tonnage of idle & obsolete Final Cut manuals clogging shelves in edit suites around the world, this seems like a reasonable tradeoff. Will you miss the full-scale paper documentation? Let us know below. If you want a PDF overview of the new FCS features, Apple has posted the Final Cut Studio In Depth 66-page rundown (17 MB).

Ahhhh. The smell of new electronics, released from their cardboard box after a week long journey from Shenzhen, China to Highlands Ranch, Colorado. The texture of a clean, fresh iPhone encased in its plastic wrapper. The fun of finding not one, but two little Apple stickers in your package.

Yeah, it's unboxing time at the Sande household. It's my turn to take you through the delivery of not one, but two iPhone 3G S phones on 6/19/09, followed by the luscious views of a young, unsullied iPhone being taken out of a box and activated (well, not quite).

For those of you who bought your iPhone 3G S's on Friday, this will be a fond remembrance; if you didn't buy the latest iPhone, this is a cruel temptation to get you to exercise your credit or debit card at your local Apple or AT&T store. Enjoy the view!

It's here, it's here! Check out the gallery below for what's in the box. Same as usual: headphones (the earbuds with volume control), sync cable, manuals (one called "Finger Tips" -- cute), the phone and a metal tool for popping the SIM out. The Finger Tips manual is updated to show off the new features in the 3G S. Oh, and there's no dock in this box. It is much smaller nowadays, and probably saves a ton on packaging. Update: whoops, forgot to mention that you do get a wall plug (2-prong, very tiny) for charging.

My in-store experience was great. Once I got into an Apple Store within less than 30 minutes I had activated the phone and had my first MobileMe sync done. The creative specialist I was talking to was eager to show me anything else I wanted, but there was a big line and I know what's what. Something I thought was interesting: the very first thing he did once I removed the plastic on the phone itself was to touch and sorta swipe at the screen. "No smudges!" he said with a smile on his face. When the 3G S was first announced we speculated about the oleoresistant surface, and it looks like that's a feature Apple wants to quietly promote.

I also tested the smudge-resistance on my admittedly greasy face and fingers (I once killed a Mighty Mouse within a month, if that's any indication). Sadly there's no official metric for resisting smudges, but on a 1-10 scale, with 10 being "smudges if you look at it" and 1 being "rub it on a pizza and it still squeaks" I would rate the new iPhone at a 5. The 1st-gen, which I had been using, I would rate at a 9. So there is an improvement. See the gallery for a little bit of testing.

How has your 3G S experience gone so far? Update #2: yes, this is the first iPhone I purchased. My previous iPhone was an aftermarket 1st-gen iPhone. So all of this is new to me, thanks for pointing that out.

The guys at Macminicolo.net have already gotten their hands on a new Mac mini, and they offer not only the obligatory unboxing, but a dis-assembly as well. As before it seems you can take the mini apart with a putty knife. A few parts have been moved around or re-oriented, and there are now three antennas as well as a SATA optical drive (i.e. SuperDrive).

Now that they've got a look at the guts they promise to start benchmarking the new minis in server performance. Needless to say, they're optimistic that the new machines will make even better servers than the last model.

Thanks Brian!

[via 9to5Mac]

It would seem that everyone is buzzing about the new MacBook/Pro, so I went and bought one! Seriously, it was just to do the unboxing photos for TUAW (Really! Stop looking at me like that!). In the MacBook video, Apple tells us that they have reduced the size of the boxes that the MacBooks ship in ... they're not kidding either. The boxes are roughly the thickness of a ream of paper; and they're almost half as short as the old boxes.




Take a look for yourself and see the new box design (it's quite nice). We want to know if you will buy a new MacBook Pro so be sure to take part in our poll below.

If, like myself, you can't tear yourself away from your G4 iBook long enough to upgrade to the latest and greatest consumer laptop from Cupertino, our friend Joe Russell saves you the fuss with his MacBook unboxing pics on Flickr. There are notable changes in the packaging:

"Opening the box, first thing I noticed was that it's virtually identical to the iPhone 3G experience... the back of the lid is black softy foam, and when lifting the black tab it brings the machine up and forward."

Joe describes the box as "small but dense." As we pointed out, Apple is trying to ship more by making less packaging (both economical and green). If you've been itching to see the MacBook unboxing experience, consider yourself gratified.

Thanks Joe!

Vimeo user UnBoxedLunch brings us this hilariously botched unboxing of an Apple Remote. Thankfully, no hospital visits were necessary as a result.

As someone who professionally designs packaging, I'll know I've reached the apex of my career when someone destroys a container I've designed, and captures it on video.

Nothing but a bit of levity for your Monday afternoon.

Ameo.com has posted some great unboxing pictures of the iPhone 3G (both the white and the black iPhone 3G gets unboxed). I'm sure the web will soon be flooded with unboxing pictures as people around the world excitedly rip their new phones open, but Ameo's pictures are some of the best unboxing pictures I have ever seen. Head on over to check out what you'll get in the box (note that the pictures are of the Australian iPhone, so the power adapter might look different than what you're used to) and to see a black iPhone 3G compared to a white one.

Update: changed the link to point to Flickr at Ameo's request.

BoyGeniusReport (BGR) somehow managed to get their hands on the new iPhone 3G a little earlier than anyone else. They have uploaded several high-quality pictures to show the comparisons between the 1st generation iPhone and the iPhone 3G.

In addition, Paul Thurrott posted some iPhone 2.0 firmware upgrade screenshots to show the upgrade process and some of the new iTunes 7.7 and iPhone 2.0 features.

[via MacRumors]

It's not every day that you can buy a brand new computer that's over 10 years old, but Alfred DiBlasi managed it: an eBay find of an original Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, fresh in the box. In the 22-minute unboxing video (more than ample even by our standards) Al and his buddies remove the artifact from another era from its packaging and boot it for the first time. Zoom ahead to the 20:00 mark to watch the delightfully pretentious "Design Is Art" QuickTime intro movie (worth YouTubing on its own, if possible) and enjoy the Michael Hedges-esqe (possibly actually Michael Hedges) soundtrack.

While the TAM may have been a poor bargain when it was introduced in 1997 (2 GB hard drive and 32 MB of RAM in a machine costing $7,500?) it still wears a striking titanium gray silhouette, and we know that sleek, forward-looking design can command a premium price today. I hope Al gets all the enjoyment out of it that a decade-old computer can possibly provide.

Thanks Eric & Blake!

Like it or not, unboxing is a ritual for many Apple users, and when there's a new product on the streets, Flickr is home to many Mac users' latest acquisitions. We don't feature unboxing photosets for no-longer-new products all that often here at TUAW, but upon seeing a photoset on Flickr from user ntr23 this morning we couldn't help but share these frankly incredible unboxing shots of an iPhone.

Lego men abound in the set, with precision unboxing being captured (including ladders to help scale those heights) in a truly amazing set of shots. Yes, it's Apple unboxing shots. But of all the unboxing shots we've seen here at TUAW, these have quite possibly captured our hearts as the best we've seen to date.

Be sure to check out ntr23's full set on Flickr and admire these works of art.

[Via]

My Time Capsule is sitting somewhere in China at the moment, but our friends over at Engadget managed to get their hands on one, and they have even posted some unboxing pictures. They note that the device itself is a little larger than you might think it is based on looking at the pictures on Apple.com. I'm sure they will post more once they put the Time Capsule through the paces.

I'll certainly be posting my first impressions once I get my Time Capsule up and running.