Forces you to do hand-stands, thus decreasing your risk of RSI.

I don’t think I can overplay how life-changing this is for me.

Don’t make me switch to Entourage, Apple. Don’t make me do it.

Update: In a curious turn of events, the .Mac Backup app, which is often described as ’shit’, actually managed to restore my Address Book with no fuss, no muss.

As far as I can tell, the main reason for this is that the current hinge design uses the entire back panel of the unit, thus precluding having any ports there. This is certainly an improvement over the TiBook’s hinges (which had an unfortunate tendency to unravel after a while (mine haven’t yet, touch wood titanium)), and some people have even praised the side-ports in their own right, since they are arguably easier to access.

However, in my opinion, the machine looks downright ugly with all these cables snaking out the side of it. My PowerBook could be hooked up to the nines, but all the cables would be coming out of the back, out of sight, and it would still look sleek and elegant. And then there’s this:

The MacBook Pro is a fantastic machine technically, but I still pine for the design of the titanium PowerBooks.

(Yes, I realise this is a rather late complaint, since every new PowerBook since 2003 has had this ports-on-the-side design. But I bitch about things as I find them.)

Normally I arrange myself and my laptop like this:

The screen is angled so that it is roughly perpendicular to my line-of-sight, and my eyes are slightly higher than the top of the lid. This provides a lovely, expansive computing experience, approximately like this:

However, the iSight camera is positioned at the top of the screen, and stares straight out:

This means that the resulting camera image is centered too high:

Of course, I can adjust the angle of the lid downwards so that the camera image is centered on my beautiful fizzog:

But if I do that, the arrangement now looks like this:

The camera is perfectly aligned, but I’m having to stare down at my screen at an angle:

(Angle in photo slightly exaggerated for dramatic effect.) It feels cramped and wrong and I can’t stand it for long.

Mac users are usually pretty obsessive about their computers, and are quick to whine about perceived design faults, but I haven’t heard a peep from anyone else about this situation. Am I really the only person who has this problem? Am I using my laptop in a completely non-standard position? Am I nuts?

Will there be a PowerPC version?
No. Apple is quickly moving its focus towards Intel Macs, and no longer sells Power PC systems in many places. By focusing on Apple’s future, we have been able to bring this powerful application to the Mac platform much more rapidly, and with a stronger feature set.

When Apple announced that they were switching to Intel chips, the first question on many people’s lips was, “How soon will it be before they drop support for PowerPC Macs?” The fact is that Macs tend to stick around for a long time: they hold their value well, and there are plenty of professionals working on Macs that are five years old or more.

Apple knows this, which is why the next version of OS X is going to be Universal (compatible with both Intel and PowerPC Macs). Even Adobe knows that their core customers — graphics and design professionals — will have PowerPC Macs in use for a good few years yet, which is why they are making the next version of their flagship product, Creative Suite, Universal.

It’s inevitable that PowerPC support will one day fade away entirely, but it’s a bit sad to see it start happening so soon.