Tag Archives | Apple

Penguin Books of the Future

March 4, 2010

I’ve written here about how much I’m looking forward to the Apple iPad (yes, still, despite the faulty MacBook I wrote about in my last post).

This week I’ve been teaching from two Penguin Books editions, Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly, Or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker (1799) and Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence (1920). I’ve read and used a lot of Penguin’s books over the years. One of my college roommates had shelves and shelves of Penguin paperbacks — at that time the spines were a light green — because he looked the look of them but even more the feel of them in his hands. Newer Penguins have a different link, but they still have the same feel.

All that may be about to change.

Earlier this week, Penguin’s CEO John Makinson gave a demonstration in London of some prototype e-books that Penguin is preparing for the iPad. Have a look at one of the futures of the book:

Maybe I’ll be holding an iPad the next time I teach Brown or Wharton!

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MacBook Screen Rot

March 2, 2010

I still love my MacBook, even though it’s developed a case of screen rot.

I don’t regret switching to Mac as my primary computing platform, but let’s face it, Macs aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Macs hardware is elegant, but in recent years Macs have been plagued by significant manufacturing flaws. Probably more than we’ve heard about. The woes of the 27″ iMac — the flagship of the iMac line — have been well documented. I’ve just discovered, however, that those machines aren’t the only Macs with yellow screen problems.

I recently noticed what looked like a yellow splotch on the left side of the bottom third of my MacBook’s screen. The splotch has grown and expanded sideways. So I thought I’d contact FAS Computing support to see if it is something that warrants warranty service. It apparently does. What I’m told is that”all Apple computers of recent origin have problems with the quality of their display hardware.” Moreover, I should expect that the screen “will indeed continue to darken and spread as the phosphorous layer in there deteriorates — it’s a manufacturing defect. The only way to resolve this is having the unit replaced by warranty.”

So that’s what we’re going to do. Luckily, our tech support will copy my hard drive to a loaner unit so I won’t be without a Mac while we wait for the repair, which apparently can take anywhere from a week to two months.

Ironically, the problem has occurred just as I was starting to convince my wife to make the switch herself. I guess we’ll be holding off on that.

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