My current computer is exponentially more powerful than the one I had when I started using Unix, but thanks to software bloat and feature-creep, it still seems to take roughly the same length of time to compile software.

(This comes after hours of trying to get Mactex to play nicely with latex2rtf because my college only accepts assignment submissions in Word format and I’ll be fucked if I’m using that for long essays ever again.)

Normal programming will resume shortly.

There’s a lot of brouhaha about the failure rate of Xbox 360s. In the same week, I saw three different news stories citing three different failure rates for the 360 (54.2%, 23.7% and 27.3%, if you’re interested). And everyone gives them shit because they’re, y’know, Microsoft.

Having spent the morning fixing a dying Macbook, I started thinking about what my failure rate with Apple hardware has been. And to be perfectly honest, it’s been pretty shit. In the past five years, I’ve owned (or co-owned) an iBook, two Macbooks, an iMac, a 60GB iPod, two iPod nanos and an iPod touch. Let’s see what’s happened with these.

• Wife’s iBook ate its own display cable
  Putting a teeny-tiny display cable into a hinge that gets used all the time? Great idea.
• Macbook case cracking
  This happened on both my own Macbook and my wife’s. If you see how the Macbook is assembled, it’s easy to see why this happens — you have to bend the entire keyboard plate slightly to get it to connect. Bending it weakens the decorative plastic ‘lip’.
• Macbook case discoloration
  I got this on my white Macbook. Got the keyboard plate replaced, started happening again before I got rid of the Macbook
• iMac logic board meltdown
  Brand-new iMac died within 8 hours of getting it because the logic board wasn’t connected properly, half the fans didn’t work and melted the graphics card
• Dead headphone adaptor on 60GB iPod
  This was probably my own fault. I like to use headphones with strong cables and very little ‘give’, forcing the headphone jack to bend slightly. Still, this wasn’t exactly ‘heavy’ use. Managed to replace this via parts on eBay
• Random lines on 60GB iPod
  No idea where this came from, but it’s like my iPod had a stroke or something. Turned it on one day and there was a strong black band going across the LCD screen. They’ve slowly started fading away now, going back to normal.
• Dodgy connector on one iPod nano
  This both comes from and affects the Nike+. I plug in the Nike+ adaptor and it doesn’t detect a receiver. Works fine on the other iPod nano. Doesn’t affect normal connection to the computer.
• Dodgy Nike+ on iPod touch
  My iPod touch will only randomly choose to see the Nike+ adaptor in my shoe. Usually after I do a complete reformat and restore, and even then, it only lasts for about a week.
• Broken DVD drive in Macbook
  About a year after my wife got her Macbook, the DVD drive stopped working. It was hardly ever moved and rarely used. Still, it means that OS upgrades are a pain in the dick and I can’t run the hardware test utility any more.
• Broken LCD backlight on Macbook
  This is what I’ve been dealing with today. After a random crash, the backlight no longer works. I can see the display on the LCD, but there’s just no backlight. I don’t even know where to begin with this
• Update: Fraying on Macbook power chord
  Joanne’s comment reminded me about this. About a year ago, power on the Macbook was a bit flaky. We turned over the power chord and noticed that near the connector, the cable had burned almost completely through. We were lucky that we were in the house when it happened, this could have been a lot nastier than the €80 it cost to replace the chord.

So, of all the Apple hardware I’ve used in the last five years, the only thing that hasn’t given me an issue is one iPod nano (I’ve also got an Apple IIe from 1986 at home that still works fine). Which leads me to wonder if Apple products are badly engineered, or am I just extremely unlucky?

According to the site’s public data, the iPhone (green line) is the most popular camera on Flickr, having just passed the Canon Digital Rebel XTi/EOS 400D (pink line). It’s also interesting to see how the iPhone ranks in the percentage usage among camera phones (read: it’s virtually the only game in town).

I had really not been a fan of convergence, since I thought that any device that tries to be all things to all people will end up doing a piss-poor job of everything. But the iPhone is definitely making me rethink this.

Now that high end “Smart Phones” are being released with all sorts of built-in doo-dads, like a camera, GPS unit and compass, it means that phones know exactly where they are and what you’re pointing them at. Which leads to some interesting applications:

It works as follows: Starting up the Layar application automatically activates the camera. The embedded GPS automatically knows the location of the phone and the compass determines in which direction the phone is facing. Each [commercial] partner provides a set of location coordinates with relevant information which forms a digital layer. By tapping the side of the screen the user easily switches between layers.

This is all kind of difficult to explain in words — check out the video of Wikitude in action to see what is going on…

In other words, your phone gives you a Terminator-style real-time Heads Up Display for whatever you’re looking at. Imagine the possibilities — cross it with Wikipedia/Wikitravel to give you the most amazing guide book ever. Cross it with an application that “calls” your phone and you’ve got the most immersive Alternate Reality Game ever. Heck, if it knows your demographic, then you’ve got some Minority Report-style personalized ads beamed directly from what you’re looking at. Which might sound annoying and intrustive, but when it’s this futuristic, who cares?