Twelve Inch Powerbook
I’m just going to go ahead and take responsibility (and blame, if anything goes wrong) for getting an Apple into the family. Katy recently purchased a Twelve Inch Powerbook, which impressed me far more than I thought it would. Apple advertises the machines as having “no sharp edges to catch on clothing.” I thought to myself, “well, I don’t have any sharp edges to catch on clothing … how special is that?” Turns out, it really is something you notice. The entire outside is as smooth as … smooth aluminum alloy. For a details-oriented born-again perfectionist such as myself, the subtle touches on the outside of the case are incredibly appealing. For example, the latch magnetically (magically?) clicks into position as the cover is slowly lowered. The light on the catch release pulses slowly when the computer is closed and asleep, as if it is breathing. The charge adaptor comes with a nifty clear plastic cap, and the input into the computer glows orange on charging, and green upon completion. The keypad and single button make for a very symmetrical layout, accented by the centered, gentle white glow of the Apple behind the LCD display. So it’s a work of art. Great. Useful things are always beautiful in their own way, but beautiful things do not have to be useful. Is the outer appearance backed up with real internal assets?
Yes.
Beyond the other “pretty” touches (animated windows galore, unrealievably sharp icons [Apple+Tab for a demostration], perfect sub-pixel antialiasing), OS X’s information design follows a near-perfect ladder of abstraction. Everything you need to see and read is out on the table, and obscure settings are available, but hidden at the correct times. The “face of the document” is an almost ideal presentation of what you need to know, when you need to know it. This reduction in superfluous floods of buttons and checkboxes communicates meaning by itself: “the settings I see must be the important ones that need tweaking.”
I want you to write about my Apple, dammit!
- Sis Meech
This intuitive layout is carried into the dock, where icons hop when executed, and angrily bounce when an unexpected incident is encountered. In the end, you feel like you are dealing with real objects (like in car: I see the steering wheel and peddles, they must be important), rather than administering an arcane system through the thick veil of a complex interface. At this point, I have to conclude that I would have bought a G5 if there was any way I could have afforded it.