Tuesday, August 07, 2007

New Computer

I recently bought a new MacBook to replace my old laptop. You may have noticed how blogging suddenly stopped a while back. That's because I broke my computer. Well actually I almost immediately replaced my computer, but I haven't felt like doing The Cold Hard Facts. But now at last I return.

The computer comes with a 64 bit, 2 GHz Intel processor, 1 GB of RAM, and a nce graphic card. But I didn't get it for any of those reasons. I didn't get it for the display or for the DVD drive. All computers have them. I didn't even get it for the Programming Tools or the Big Bang Tic Tac Toe, although not every computer has them, and the Programming Tools are darn useful. So is the ability to natively run MatLab. But those features are worth blogging either.*

No the first real advantage is the cool new track-pad. The old computer's track-pad had a tendency to freeze up, or drag the cursor in exactly the wrong direction, and the new track-pad lacks those problems. But that's not the cool part. In fact, who even cares if the track-pad works. So long as its boring, it could be made of solid gold and read your finger position with millimeter precision, and still not be worth talking about. No the reason the trackpad is cool is because I can do things with this track-pad, I couldn't dream of doing on the old one. On my old computer, in order to left click you had to push a button, and in order to right click, you had to push two buttons. Such a pain. But behold the new age! For now I can do both by just touching the pad. So far I've saved about .7 seconds that way. And who need scrollbars anymore, the trackpad can do that too!

But the best thing by far is the motion sensor. Apple places a motion sensor in all it's computers. The supposed real purpose is to sense when the computer is dropped or jerked, so the hard drive can be protected by parking the disk heads in time. But Apple also made the sensor readouts available to third party programs, allowing all sorts of cool new features like a car alarm. Yes by actually doing something productive with the stupid remote and motion sensor turns your computer into the perfect way to annoy your brother. Just point the remote at the computer, hold down the Menu button until you hear you hear a beep such as a car's key fob might make, and then "accidentally" jiggle the screen, before running off with the remote. Ta-dah, instant noise. And since he can't turn it off without the remote, you can go off bowling and leave the computer ringing for hours.** But there's more! iAlertU will even take a picture of the perpetrator via the built in camera, assuming it gets a good shot, and send it to you via email, assuming you can check your email with your computer gone and all. But with much effort, we did manage to capture this picture of the perpetrator.


Ha, I must have been trying to steal it for the insurance money. Please excuse me while I interrogate myself.
"WHERE'S THE COMPUTER"
"Oww! On... the desk Owww"
"Don't make me do good cop-bad cop."
"It's on the desk. Right there in front of me. Oww"
"Fine I asked for it. Oww"
"Oww, quit it! It's on the oww desk"

This make take awhile. Excuse me.

*Actually Big Bang Tic Tac Toe probably is. Tic Tac Toe has never been so... creepy. Its unreal.
**I wouldn't actually recommend this. There are such things as hammers.