Aidan Williams - High Acuity

Last week Apple released the latest evolutions of their entire Macbook line and I have to say… I’m not too sure about certain elements of the design. I’m not a huge fan of the keys on Apple’s latest line of keyboards, which have now made it onto the entire Macbook line. I don’t like the look of the black keys on the aluminium casing, nor the black frame around the screen, or the screen itself for that matter. The glossy displays always look incredible on first sight, but the reflections can be a little distracting. That whole look reminds me of some of the cheap old PC imitations of the Macbook line. The specs also aren’t a huge improvement over my nearly-two-year-old Macbook Pro 17” which is a little disappointing. The optical drive is the same 8x Superdrive I have now and there’s no blue-ray drive to be seen, which has been a standard feature in most high-end PC laptops for the last year.

But let’s stretch our imaginations for just one crazy minute and assume that Jonathan Ive knows more about product design than I do and does actually know what he’s doing. I know! I know! It’s a stretch, but I think we can do it if we close our eyes, click our heels together and dream about that yellow brick road.

A couple of friends rushed to the Apple store the morning after Steve’s keynote to buy the Macbook Pros. As did my brother, who has finally made the switch to Mac and invested in the Macbook Pro, maxing-out all of the options for the 2.8GHz version with 4GB ram and he is thus far extremely happy, calling me regularly this weekend to gloat. As my flatmate pointed out to me, and I relayed to my brother, it’s quite shocking that as a gay man with a good sense of style, who enjoys extremely expensive designer suits, gadgets and technology, he has only just switched from PCs to Mac. He then told me he is going to install Windows Vista via Boot Camp for some of his work-based applications. I have understandably subsequently disowned him. It’s a tough decision, but one that had to be made. I know you understand.

There are some cool features in the new Macbooks though, most notably the ability to easily replace the hard drive, which is the fastest-degrading element of any computer, especially in terms of speed. This means that in a year or two you can shell out £50 to replace/upgrade your hard drive easily yourself. Or you could shell out £350 to £500 for the 128GB Solid State hard drive Apple are offering and avoid the speed reduction altogether. It has only one third of the capacity of the 320GB hard drive they’re offering as standard with the high-end configuration though.

Shame there’s no 17” yet, but I’ll be looking forward to seeing how they update it in January.

One of the other things Apple design beautifully are their retail stores. They recently opened stores in Beijing and Sydney, and they both are on par with the standards in architecture and design set by their stores in the US and EU.

Apple Store Regent Street, London

Apple Store Fifth Avenue, New York

Apple Store San Francisco

Apple Store Miami

Apple Store Massachusetts

Apple Store Beijing

Apple Store Sydney

Bloody tasty if you ask me!

Okay, come on, you knew I was going to get one!

I picked up an iPhone a few weeks ago and I have to say, it does have its shortcomings, and they could be considered significant: A 2 megapixel camera with no other features, settings or flash. Mono Bluetooth audio on a device that’s designed to play music. Edge and no 3G on a device that’s designed to browse the Internet. No expandable memory. No detachable battery. No multimedia/photo messaging. No front-side camera for video calls. No GPS. No Radio. No 3rd party applications (for the moment).

That’s a lot of very old technology for a device that’s supposed to be so technologically advanced. These issues are compounded by the fact that the iPhone’s direct competitors do have all of the very latest technologies in these areas and are sold at a fraction of the price, sometimes even given away free with a new contract. Such as the Nokia N95 with it’s 5 megapixel camera with auto-focus, flash, great camera settings, stereo Bluetooth, and 3G. To add to this, the sound quality of voice calls isn’t brilliant, and there is a big difference between the sound quality on the iPhone and the Sony Ericsson phones I’ve owned.

Suffice to say; I am very disappointed with the iPhone’s shortcomings. Partly because I really like having a decent camera on my phone, and given all the hoo-haa Apple made about displaying photos on the iPhone, I would have thought the device’s built-in camera would have been more substantial/advanced, etc. But I’m also disappointed largely because Apple is usually so good at knowing what a new device needs in order excel in the modern market place, and in knowing what the public wants.

However, even with all these shortcomings, I have to tell everyone that the iPhone is absolutely stunning and it does all the typical mobile phone functions far better than any other device on the market. And the extra features that no other mobile phone has are all excellent as well. Three weeks in and I honestly can’t imagine living without this incredible device. I genuinely didn’t expect to be quite this impressed as I am, given that I’d read everything about it six months ago and was starting to feel a little bored with all the adverts, articles and press on it.

Even basic everyday functions, such as being able to walk down the street while listening to my music with the iPhone’s heaphones and knowing that I’ll be alerted to any calls, texts or emails is brilliant – and being able to answer calls without getting it out of my pocket … okay, maybe I’m getting excited over nothing – but this thing is awesome!

The iPhone shows an infinite amount of promise and I can imagine some absolutely incredible improvements and applications available on future generations, but I really do miss that great camera on my three-year-old Sony Ericsson phone.

As a side note, I also bought a family pack of Leopard for myself, my girlfriend and my flatmates and upgraded, and I love it as well! Definitely worth upgrading, especially if you’re working on OSX every day.

We’ve finally moved! My girlfriend and I moved into our new flat with my workmate Oleg and his girlfriend Veronika.

I love this new flat. It’s in a fantastic area – we have everything we could possibly need close by – it’s extremely close to work.

On Saturday we invited David and Angela over for a small housewarming of sorts. I was living with David (who I also work with) for a while and already miss him a lot.

I’m not sure quite what our girlfriends were trying to hint to us, but they placed a Dita Von Teese Burlesque Fetish book open on our coffee table, along with the Jack Verttriano art book that I bought for my girlfriend. When I walked in the room and proclaimed Why have we got porn on the coffee table, they both shouted It’s not porn! It’s Art! Veronika continued I bet it would be another story if your girlfriend were dressed like this!, I replied Sure, but we would probably wouldn’t be having guests round for that probably.

I’m trying to decide whether Oleg and I are the luckiest men on the planet or just part of some sick twisted sexual deviant debauchery that our girlfriends are into. They both look so sweet and innocent, too. Sick Shameful FILTH.

Funnier still was when David walked in, looked at the table and said Oh fantastic, porn!!

Tonight I cooked honey mustard chicken pasta salad for everyone Heat honey on a low heat, mix it with wholegrain mustard, chop up chicken breasts, marinade in the honey mustard for an hour, heat pasta, drain and leave to cool, make salad dressing with chardonnay, honey, mustard, sugar, salt, black pepper, vinegar and olive oil, fry the honey mustard chicken in a pan on a medium heat with a small amount of butter and olive oil for about ten minutes, mix the dressing with the salad, add the pasta and lastly add the cooked honey mustard chicken. Fricken tasty chicken, if I do say so my self. My brother-in-law taught this recipe to me and it never fails to impress.

We all have Apple laptops in this house, so I thought it would be cool to photograph them all for posterity – I’m funny like that. After mocking me for about sixty seconds, Oleg got out his SLR camera and got a bit carried away. Our girlfriends stood behind us asking What the hell are you two doing!? You’re seriously troubled We shouted back It’s not porn. It’s Art!!