Dear Apple,
Yes I know, you have to make it sexy and thin to appeal to a large constituent of your users for whom – how shall I put this – utility is not the first priority.
But lets not be disingenuous; I love the feel and look of the current MacBook Pro as much as anyone and have every intention of getting one to replace my existing model during the next round of upgrades. However, may I suggest a few – dare I say – functional additions that you may want to take into consideration in order to … you know … make the thing a bit more useful.
1. For the love of god! Give us at least one more USB port. That’s the minimum.
2. eSATA. It’s really about time. I’m prepared to tolerate this being a combo USB port since I know you are loathed to put holes in the side of your pretty enclosures.
4. Don’t make it any thiner! Look, a laptop that’s 3mm thinner is not going to make any difference to its portability. A GPU that has to be under-clocked to work in such a thin enclosure however does make a difference to the user experience.
5. If you are not going to give us eSATA, give us back the ExpressCard slot
6. This is really out there and I think there is precisely zero chance of Apple doing this but …. it would really be great if you could build a proper docking station port in the bottom of the Pro models. If it is a proper docking station port, and not a USB port replicator thing, then I’d be happy with the addition of just a eSATA port on the laptop itself.
I’ve seen a few DIY camera dolly projects but this one is one of the easiest I’ve come across and gives great results.
In case you’ve been wondering, this is what I’ve been working on for the past year or so.
Jeff Mangum you fucking cunt. Make another record.
Mean time here is some concert footage from the last century.
Eye tests have become more elaborate that I remember, although my last test was was quite a while back. After a recent examination however, I ended up having pictures of the inside of my eyeballs emailed to me.
The 50,000 ton forge built by Mesta for the US Airforce in the 50s is an amazing machine. It is one of the largest closed die forges ever built and has only really been surpassed in recent years.
Here are some more photographs of the forge.
I don’t know who she is, who the photographer was and when the photograph was taken, but I like it.
Gizmodo writer Dan Nosowitz on why the story about Kellogg etching their brand name on corn flakes may be fake:
This appeared in the Daily Mail, which I don’t know anything about—but it is British, and my damnable xenophobia has convinced me that all British publications not called the Guardian are lying tabloids.
Wired magazine has great selection of images showing some of the X planes developed since the mid 40s.
This is one of those slightly fluffy posts in Wired where a collection of related gear is showcased. In this instance, they’ve chosen a bunch of very large machines, although the pedant in me would dispute the classification. It seems that at least a couple of the ‘machines’ are collections of machines rather than a functionally whole system.
Anyway, big stuff moving big things, making a big noise. My kind of stuff.
