Mmmmelting Macbook Pro

Last night while the wife was out shopping I thought I’d play some Ace Combat 6 (great game, btw).  Before I started playing I set my Macbook Pro up in the kitchen to download some files for me.  We have this awesome kitchen with some swank under-the-cabinet lighting.  After setting up my Mac I had left the lights on for my wife so when she came in the kitchen wouldn’t be totally dark.  I went into the living room and quickly became oblivious to the outside world.  Now we have 3 cats and they’re often bumping into things or knocking stuff over.  So when I thought I heard a small crash coming from the kitchen I thought nothing of it.

A few minutes later my wife came back from the store and I helped her put groceries on the kitchen counter. I took a look over at my Macbook Pro to check the status of the downloads.  On my keyboard was the cap to one of the under-the-cabinet lights.

Hot Glass 

I picked it up laughing to my wife that it had fallen off.  How strange.  Apparently the heat caused it to warp just enough to fall off the little clips that hold it in.

 Under the Cabinet After the Cover Fell Off

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I looked down at my Mac.

How I Found Them 

ZOMG!  The light cover was so hot that it had melted some of my keys!

The Victims 

 

Luckily enough the only part that was damaged was the plastic keys themselves, the underlying hinges and scissor mechanism was untouched.  Even the little rubber buttons were fine.

Press F5 to Continue 

So for the short term I’m missing a few keys.  Luckily they’re not keys I use every day.  I checked out a few shops online and replacing these 4 keys is going to cost me close to $40, which is much cheaper than a) Having Apple repair it or b) buying a whole new keyboard.

I’m now concerned with the safety of these lights.  What could have happened if they had fallen on some paper or other more flammable items?  (Not that I have a lot of these things laying around, I’m just saying)

FriendFeed

I use quite a few services to update friends and family about my life.  I often use a combo of a few different tools.

Moodblast to update Facebook, Twitter, Pownce and Adium (for Gtalk/AIM status messages) all at the same time.  Very hand free app that keeps me connected to friends as I work.

I use a ‘post to del.icio.us’ bookmarklet to share interesting sites and links.  Which, when working properly also cross posts to this blog.

I use flickr to share photos as well.

iScrobbler to track my music playback on Last.fm.

Unfortunately not all updates go through all services.  And you may not know where I’m updating and when.

Which brings me to my newest tool that hopefully will help coalesce these various tools.

I just signed up for FriendFeed.  Which allows me to collect all my updates in one location.  Now when I update one of the various services I use they are all aggregated to my FriendFeed.  So, instead of trying to track me down all over the internet you can simply stalk me find my updates here!

Not Home Again

An often overlooked design choice for mobile platforms is the Home button. Usually this button will instantly return you to the main OS screen for most major PDAs and smart phones. For as long as I can remember the most often used icon was that of a house.

And while the HTC Touch forgoes the Home icon on the ‘main menu’ button it does include it in the OS itself.

(update!) My good friend Josh tells me that the HTC Touch’s physical button is not a home button. It’s actually a big honkin’ Enter button. As in Select/Accept/Return. Wow. Even worse that I thought.

As you can see, even very recent devices use this house as a home icon approach. I understand where the designers are coming from. Humans are comfortable with their homes being the space that is their physical center. But it doesn’t make any sense from a UI perspective. (Or in the modern world where home takes on so many different shapes and sizes, not to mention the increased time we spend away from home, but I digress.) Home is where you launch everything from? Home is escape from this program?

Now let’s take a look at what Apple has done with the iPhone and it’s little brother the iPod Touch.

The icon used to return to the main OS screen. (Call it the desktop, springboard, etc) What does it represent? At first glance it’s just a trendy rounded-cornered box. Second glance, it’s a representation of the shape of the device itself. But even that is a bit off, as the device is rectangular and the icon is visibly square.

But wait, what do all the applications look like in the moblie OSX environment?

Small rounded-cornered boxes. Just like the main physical button on the device. Simple, clear iconography.