This machine is a gigantic, high resolution, unibody middle finger to PC makers.

I had time to poke and prod this notebook for about half an hour at a local retailer a few days ago, and the above is pretty much my assessment of the device.

A few words on the — in my eyes — non-issue of repairability:
(1) Only a very very small number of people would ever actually want to attempt it; (2) I don't care that the RAM is soldered to the logic board, because even 8 GB combined with a SSD will be sufficient for very long even for "power users" — forgive the dick quotes, I hate myself; and (3) like with the second generation of the MacBook Air, companies like OWC will probably release alternative SSD modules that fit Apple's home brew interface in the next two months.

Now to the interesting stuff:
I’m not so much impressed by obvious improvements like USB 3, the full flash storage architecture, the insane amount of RAM you can put in them, the faster SSDs, or the dual Thunderbolt ports. These are pretty sweet, though, and make me wonder just how many displays this thing can drive simultaneously :)

What I am impressed with is the amount of effort Apple put into making this machine what it is.

• Exhibit 1:
  The retina display. Many people expected this, still, 2880 by 1800 pixels is simply incredible for a 15.4“ notebook panel. From what I’ve read, Sharp builds them and I’d love to know for just how long Apple has reserved — read: bought-up — all production capabilites for this component.
• Exhibit 2:
  Cooling vents that not only serve to let cool air get into the device, but also work as stiffening elements for the body of the notebook; making it even more robust without making it heavier and thicker.
• Exhibit 3:
  Fans with asymmetrically spaced blades and an improved airflow architecture that reduces noise. I would've suspected that this was born out of necessity, because the internal components needed to deliver the level of performance the new MacBook Pro offers, are going to produce a lot of excess heat. But accounts by Jim Dalrymple and others suggest that it's very hard to get the notebook to even audibly spin up the fans, let alone become warm.
• Exhibit 4:
  The battery. Not only has this machine enough juice to run for seven hours, depite its power hungry innards — due to past experiences I believe Apple doesn’t overstate this number — it's also packed neatly and symetrically into the notebook and at the front of the casing, probaly giving it a nice centroid, comparable to a Lotus Elise ;)

Not even a day after the announcement of the machine, I’ve seen reports by blithering idiots, neckbeards, trolls and New Media Douchebags deriding the new machine for being;

• Made by Apple — which is bad because Apple is _evil!_
• Too expensive — GAAAH! Apple TAX! GAAAH!
• A disappointment, because it doesn’t have feature X, Y & Z.
• Not trumping every weird-ass gamer laptop on the planet based on specs.

To all of these numbnuts I say this: I triple dog dare you to find me a laptop that;

• is built half as well — we’re going to figure out how to quantify this
• has the same or a better display,
• as well as proper OS and application support for the insane resolution,
• has the same or a better runtime on one charge,
• and compares well on the remaining specifications.

All for the same or a lower price in the coming six months — hell, I’d be willing to give you a year. If you can manage this, I’m going to bake you cookies, write „Apple sux!“ on them and send them to you.

Another WWDC keynote in the bag. And what a behemoth of a keynote it has been. Not having had time to follow live blogs, I caught up on the announcements through the Apple’s video of the event and by reading up on the details on Apple.com and other good sites.
I know I'm late to the game with my keynote recap, but there were many interesting software announcements too good not to be discussed.

My overall impression of the event and the announcements was that Apple is flexing its muscles. One major new hardware release, many minor revisions and upgrades and two OS updates at once. This should give the competition a glimpse at what Apple is capable of today, most even likely not even beginning to stretch their resources.

Here's the rundown of the features I'm most excited about:

iOS 6

• Siri only available on the 3rd gen. iPad — This is kind of a bummer, but it’s in line with Apple’s product strategy, meaning it was to be expected and is probably hardware-related, at least to some degree.
• Facebook integration: DUH!
• Maps look simply beautiful, but having to compete against Google Maps and Google Earth is not going to be easy; Apple has their work cut out for them. The application will put pressure on developers of Turn-by-Turn Navigation apps, because just like on Android, the solution integrated into the OS might be sufficient for many people.
• Shared Photo Streams is a neat way to privately share photos without having to upload them to a social network. From the looks of it, the minimal design puts the content first and further sharing options second.
• Passbook is our answer to how Apple thinks mobile payments should look like. I don’t see NFC appearing in Apple’s devices anytime soon.
• The new features in the phone application UI were long overdue. Android has had them for years and they’ve even existed in not so smart phones — those with memories that go back further than four years might remember.
• I like the better handling of Messages across devices. When someone sends an iMessage to my phone number, I’m now going to receive it on my iPad and Mac, too. Great!
• This one I’m extremely excited about, the Do Not Disturb feature. Seriously, what took them so long? Finally (yes, I said it) I won’t have to put my phone into Airplane Mode at night to have peace and quiet. Extra props for the fine tuned options.
• I didn’t see Google show up in the search fields of iOS devices, only a generic 'Search' term. Might there be a chance for additional search engines besides Google, Bing and Yahoo? I’m talking about DuckDuckGo of course. I’m trying hard not to get my hopes up.
• The new store designs and China-centric features are appreciated.

OS X Mountain Lion

• 10.8’s pricing and upgrade conditions are a thing of beauty. Microsoft should slowly start to get the drift.
• Tighter iCloud integration should’ve been there in Lion, but maybe I’m the only one who thinks that way. Easier machine setup is a good thing, though.
• At this point, the built-in Reminders app in iOS has replaced Things (by Cultured Code) for me. The implementation on the Mac (inside of iCal) has been far from good, but a native OS X Reminders app is going to make this complaint a thing of the past.
• Notification Center is a very welcome addition, but I’m interested to see what kind of apps will be able to take advantage of its APIs; only Mac App Store apps, or any kind of app?
• Power Nap is a very interesting and potentially useful feature. From what Apple states as the system requirement for it, though, you’ll need a Mac with flash storage. I wonder if it’ll work with Macs that’ve been retrofitted with SSDs?
• The Dictation feature will be an absolute productivity boon — especially with my Master’s Thesis looming on the horizon! I hope they’ve integrated some kind of fast language switching for this OS feature, because I’m definitely going to hop between English and German a lot.
• Sharing looks nice and I’m hoping for a public API so other services can make use of this — I just want to get rid of all those bookmarklets in my browser’s bookmark bar.
• Safari has received some good upgrades: Apple finally (yes, I said it again) got rid of the separate search box. Now, how about letting me set DuckDuckGo as my default search engine? The tab view is interesting, too, and iCloud tabs will surely come in handy. Apple’s attempting to improve password handling in OS X, let’s see how it compares to the likes of 1Password for regular users. The „Do Not Track“ feature and the ability to rename bookmarks in the bookmarks bar are welcome additions as well.
• Auto Save has been taught two nice new tricks, too: It automatically moves untitled documents to iCloud and APPLE BROUGHT BACK „SAVE AS“! YAY! No seriously, I still need this feature rather often.
• The oh-so benevolent Apple has decided that a permanently displayed Calendar sidebar is a good thing after all, same as a groups column in the Contacts app and they improved the date picker. Regarding the first two: Why the hell did they remove it in the first place?
• Dashboard: It just won’t die. Persistent little fella. Personally, I like Dashboard and would be sad to see it go.
• The OS X Software Update feature and the Mac App Store are rolled into one app. I consider this to be a good thing. Equally good is the automatic download of and notification about software updates both for the OS and Mac App Store applications.
• Mail, Mail, Mail, oh Mail. Tighter iCloud integration FTW I say, because the app (here we go for a thrid time) finally pushes recent senders, favorites, signatures, flag names, smart mailboxes, mail rules, and account information to all devices.
• Quicktime X now uses hardware video encoding for H.264 content on newer Macs. I wonder if this’ll be somehow usable by other applications? But it neat in any case.

CheatSheet is a nifty little application that lets you quickly review all available keyboard shortcuts for the application that is currently in the foreground. Any keyboard shortcut that is listed in the menu of an application will show  up in an overlay, sorted by menu item.

I haven't been using it for long, but for these moments when you simply can't remember that one shortcut, this app might come in handy. Give it a try, it's free.

Link over at Macworld

Earlier today, Harry Marks posted an article on his site rebutting an argument made by Jim Cramer of CNBC. Here's the quote:

When the smoke clears off this miserable Dell quarter, people will realize that Apple’s behind the destruction of the laptop,” Cramer said. “And with that destruction comes a world of hurt for just about everyone, save Apple.

Harry Marks replied by saying:

It’s not a matter of the iPhone and iPad obsoleting the laptop. Apple’s success isn’t just with iOS devices, it’s with MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros, too. What Apple has done is obsolete poorly-made computers, poor shopping experiences, and poor customer service.
Apple isn’t destroying laptops, it’s making its customers happy. What are the other guys doing?

He hit the nail square on the head. The other companies aren't only not doing anything, they're not even thinking.

Not limiting this to the tech business, I believe we might be witnessing the decline of "Bullshit Companies"; companies that are trying to bullshit their (potential) customers in many different ways: By pre-announcing products that might never see the light of day, by making promises they won't even attempt to keep,  by adding asterisk after asterisk and footnote after footnote in order to shroud the truth about what they are trying to sell and last but not least with bad customer service.

Apple being the one of the forerunners here (and a gargantuan at that), I'm starting to see more and more "Non-Bullshit Companies", companies that seem to work by a very simple business principle:
Here's what we offer. We believe it'll make your life easier in this and that way. Nothing more nothing less. This is how much we want for it.

Among other things the wild success of social funding platforms (like Kickstarter) illustrates where things are going:
If you have an honest and good value proposition, people will pay for it. Not out of the goodness of their heart, but because they know they're going to get something out of it.

Here are a few examples of this, that I've noticed around me lately:

• A new bus company has started to take advantage of the fact that the Deutsche Bahn (Germany's predominant railway company) isn't properly serving the population of the region. They set up a bus route covering the major cities on the way from Luxemburg to Frankfurt Airport. Their prices are good, the service is executed well and they know how to communicate.
• A local beer garden, situated in one of the most scenic spots in Trier (with everything from a great vista, large meadows to football and beach volleyball courts) put up a sign telling customers that they could use its accommodations and bring their own food, as long as they buy their drinks here. You have no idea how uncommon this is and I'm sure that this was not the case last year. I should add that their beverage prices are very decent and the service is excellent, which only adds to the positive impression. This tactic has gotten them a lot of good will from guests and from what I have learned their food sales haven't declined and overall business seems to have improved.
• How funny it may seem, my cellphone operator o2 Germany is on this list. The company has many flaws and does plenty of things wrong, but they offer a post-paid plan that is as simple as it can be, not forcing me into a long-term commitment, while having per-minute and data prices that are decent even compared to prepaid plans.

Customers are smarter than most companies think and those still believing that trying to fool customers is the way to go, are going to realise that "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me." will turn into "Fool me once… FUCK YOU!" more quickly than ever before.

People don't begrudge companies for making money (not even for making boat loads of it), they just hate companies who are trying to do so by making false claims and essentially ripping people off. Only those businesses that are trying to make money without feeling the need to scam customers will prevail long-term and prosper. These are the companies that will get the money I earn.

Yesterday John Gruber linked to an article over at the New York Times, which stated that Facebook's messaging system, Apple's iMessage and similar services are slowly reducing the usage of SMS around the world. He said:

It’s hard to think of a technology that more deserves to die than SMS.

I have to disagree with that. SMS might be a limited standard in terms of what can be transferred, and as the link in Gruber's quote shows, the average cost for a SMS is incredibly high in the U.S.A. (even more so over here in Germany). Still, the service is useful, because 1. it is universally compatible with almost all types of cellular networks around the world and 2. because it's fairly reliable due to the fact that it works when a data connection (needed to send any kind of email, iMessage, Facebook message, etc.) cannot be established. More info on SMS here.

The problem is—as it is so often—greed by the carriers. A simple network-inherent, ubiquitous functionality is marketed and sold at a premium, with nearly no price decline over the last ten years.
SMS doesn't need to die, carriers should just stop charging customers for a fairly limited service that costs them close to nothing.

If you believe that any of these sentences have meaning at all, you need to have your brain examined. The bad thing is, hundres upon thousands of marketing students and normal people, too, believe this stuff, becoming New Media Douchebags.

Thanks to Kate Solomon for the link.

P.S.: Don't know what a New Media Douchebag (short: NMD) is? Watch this little video to get to know the most harmless types:

I encourage everybody to read this post and if you can stomach it, the comments by the misogynistic prick below the post.

"this is the trouble that women cause and I therefore try to avoid hiring them" http://t.co/gmUtDaLm

— Nadyne Richmond (@nadyne) May 4, 2012

I cannot even begin to tell you how amazing this is and how much I want it! Radiators a such a boring, but often necessary evil in our homes—if you like it warm in the winter, at least—but this solution is absolutely incredible.

Don't see it? Ok, imagine being a child again, sitting on a comfy pillow, leaning against this radiator, watching The Land Before Time for the first time in your life.

Thanks to Erica Sadun for the link and be sure to check out the design process, which Art Lebedev has documented in pictures on their site.

A quote from the post:

You can preach all you want about rooting your phone and hacking your tablet to do inane things, like control your refrigerator light, but my family was actually getting things done within 30 minutes of opening and activating their new computers - yes, computers.

Ease of use and seamlessness are some of the things that convince many people of Apple’s products in my opinion.

I had a similar experience with my parents lately: I gave them my MacBook Pro, pre-loaded with OS X Lion, MS Office, the current iLife apps and a few other nifty things that I knew they’re going to use.
After about an hour of showing them around the OS and a few apps, my mother was hooked. Guess by which features?
Mission control and full screen apps, gestures and auto saving.
As long as the innards of OS X are somehow accessible to those who want or need to work with them, Apple can iOS-ify the system as much as they want, if it makes full-blown computers easier to use for normal people.

How many times have you been to a product website and seen big bold letters proclaiming that you can CONNECT and ENGAGE and DISCOVER? Every time I see that, I hit the back button, and I bet you do too.

It’s because it’s vague. It’s supposed to sound exciting, but it’s not. It doesn’t say anything about what you can really do with the app.

Nobody wants to connect or discover.

— Brent Simmons on Twitter’s new nomenclature. Spot-on.

I absolutely agree with Brent Simmons’s statement. Having read the articles by Cody Fink and John Gruber, I believe that—at least for me—Twitter’s apps (including the web app) have finally jumped the shark.

The new Twitter iPhone app seems to be aimed at new users and “casual users”. Now, why did I use this word, almost devoid of meaning, “casual users”?
I don’t think “casual users” are those who sometimes check Twitter to see what’s up; from personal experience those users are more likely to interact with a small amount of friends/other users, meaning that the most important features of Twitter are the timeline, conversations and direct messages. DMs, for one, are hidden in the last tab of the app. From Gruber’s article:

“Me”. Oh boy. Stashed into this tab are your profile, your direct messages, your Twitter Lists, and the interface for switching to other Twitter accounts. This tab is the conceptual carpet under which Twitter swept everything that didn’t fit under “Home”, “Connect”, or “Discover”.

And that’s exactly what happened.
As I see it, Twitter is trying to hone-in on new users and what it thinks are “casual users”; users who sometimes check Twitter to stay up to date on the latest happenings, trends and product offers and interact publicly with their friends and acquaintances.

Again, Gruber:

Presumably, this Discover tab is the successor to the late and unlamented dickbar — where sponsors will be able to pay Twitter to promote products and services.

Yup. Combine that with what Fink found out about this tab:

Discover is supposed to get better over time. Depending on where you’re located, who you follow, or what topics you find interest in, Discover aims to offer suggestions around those things.

Until now Twitter’s applications allowed the users to make use of the service according to his/her needs, even the web app. Now Twitter is trying to steer users in a direction.
For me this direction is called “We finally need a way to monetize this service.”, which Twitter perfectly entitled to do.

Unfortunately that means many users will now (have to) steer clear of Twitter’s applications. Thankfully there are alternatives; Twitterrific and Twittelator Neue cater to what I think are causal users; as they integrate DMs and @-replys and photos nicely into the timeline and create a seamless experience.
On the other end of the spectrum there’s Echofon and Tweetbot; two clients help the user make the most of almost everything Twitter has to offer and give him/her quick access to almost any kind of information.

I have found what I was looking for in Tweetbot. Tweetie and Tweetie 2.0 even more so, were the evolution of Twitter on the iPhone; the first clients that were more powerful than the website. Everything Twitter did to it after buying it, was adding features and altering it. Tweetbot has everything I loved in Tweetie 2.0, but with even more useful features, all packaged in a design that makes everything very accessible and a pleasure to use.