Latest New York Cube

So, anyway, I went down today, got there about 3:00 PM. Had to wait in line about 20 minutes, and the store was completely packed. The glbutt construction is nuts. It goes way beyond the cube. The staircase also has an all-glbutt structure (glbutt support beams, etc.) and the elevator has glbutt sides, a glbutt roof, and a glbutt door, as does the elevator shaft. The elevator ride makes you feel like you're standing on an open platform in space.

All of this transparency turns the center of the store into a huge light well. You really get a sense of openness, despite the store being underground. Or, at least, you would if it weren't for the crowds. Like most (all?) Apple stores it's one big room, so natural light, diffused through all the glbutt, spreads everywhere.

I played around with a MacBook. It's a really neat little machine. I don't hate the glossy screen quite as much as I thought I would, though I'd still have preferred a matte coating. They keyboard looks really cool, looks like it's much harder to get crud inside than most keyboards, and feels decent enough. The machines look really nice (I think black might actually be worth the extra money), and for someone used to other consumer laptops in this price range, including Apple's previous models, they seem really thin -- it's amazing what cutting off a few tenths of an inch can do. Also, there's no latch anymore, which is great -- those fiddling little mechanical parts are always the first things to go. The machine is held closed by magnets and, I guess, by the design of the hinge.

I also played around with the right-click support Apple has added (it's disabled by default, but a checkbox turns it on) -- tap the mouse button while keeping two fingers on the trackpad, and you get a right-click. It feels much more natural than it sounds, so it looks like Apple has that issue finally solved. I wonder if the Boot Camp drivers for XP support it? I suspect if they don't, they will. The MacBook also has two-fingered scroll (drag with two fingers to scroll -- vertically and horizontally), a feature inherited from the pro models.

Anyway, I won't buy a MacBook, because I need some apps that require non-integrated video, but it looks like a great offering, and it's nice to get an early preview of some of the refinements that will presumably make it into the next generation pro portables. (Which are probably only 3-4 months away, based on Intel's chip roadmaps.)

-- "Those who enter the country illegally violate the law." -- George W. Bush in Tucson, Ariz., Nov. 28, 2005