From Superman/Batman #75, superb Calvin and Hobbes parody strip starring Joker and Lex Luthor, by Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo. I’d hoped Bill Watterson had come out of retirement to draw it but not this time. Amazing stuff!

Click to make it bigger!

Star Wars Uncut “The Escape” from Casey Pugh.

But cool is accurate! And I’ll explain why after a brief explanation of how I got here.

I’d always been frustrated that Apple 15inch MacBooks were limited to a lower resolution (1440).

Thankfully the new selection has a high res option, catching up with PC laptops that have been their for years.

The problem with the high res mac, however was the price; 1919 quid and I just couldn’t condone that kind of cost for Ping at the moment.

However, I had a backup, the Apple refurb store. The only problem with that, however, I needed the latest model to get refurbished. And that’s where my (miser) patience kicked in.

And by golly it paid off. By waiting a few months I ended up saving hundreds of pounds! And you know what, the MacBook is immaculate!

I was prepared and expecting some dints, dents and general wear and tear. I was even expecting it to be a bit clunky regarding packaging but not in the slightest.

A well packaged, ready to go MacBook Pro is what I received, the only difference was a generic white box but that could be due to the order going through online.

From power on to signing in, this is what Apple does so very well. Absolutely seamless, usable and beautifully crafted design, interface and experience.

If Ping can accomplish half of what Apple does with it’s customer experience we are on to a good thing indeed – disregarding any antenna issues of course.

Then Ping can pick up some cool points too.

I guarantee this will be out if date by tomorrow but that’s audio, visual, social and mobile covered.

Now its time to actually use them all!

There has been such a phenomenal push over the past few years to intergrate blogs, sites, social networks and mobile devices but only recently has it started to work successfully. I now have feeds bounces from Twitter to Linked In to Facebook while being able to update this blog via mobile is a real bonus!

Talk about connected!

My good friend Jim Mcbride is cycling all the way from Lands End to John O’Grotes – follow his journey and help him raise money !

Although i wasn’t really sure why as I’ve built and firmware upgraded many pieces of hardware during my day.

And this is Apple so I convinced myself it would be fine…

Oh dear. Once I’d hit the 2 hour mark (which included the sensible backup, download new iTunes & OS4
installer) I was getting a bit concerned.

However a quick check online revealed other iPhone users had spent 4 hours in total waiting for the upgrade so I left it alone.

However, at hour 3 when I was in desperate need of a phone (you know to call a client for example) I couldn’t cancel or restore – I just had to wait…

At about 4 hours 20 iTunes crashed !

I guess Apple decided i’d waited long enough and had set a time bomb for overly patient users?

The next stages involved a call to Apple care, hard reset (which didn’t work when I tried it first time), full restore including calendar, apps, contacts and firmware then hey presto OS4 was installed and running… Kind of.

I still had a few other apps to upgrade and settings to re-enable. I’m still not sure if my wi-fi is working!?!

So all in all it was a 7 hour and pretty boring process – one I wouldn’t associate with Apple. Also an idea of how long the install should take would be nice?

More than anything personally I found the entire process clinical leaving the user to just sit back and get on with something else – but I didn’t like that at all.

I’m so used to high levels of control that this automated system was disconcerting. All I got was an Apple logo & status bar – I need more information!

But, credit to Apple it did work… eventually.

Created by Selina and I for fun!