What I'm typing out right now is basically just to test how this MacBook's keyboard feels, and I must say, compared to an iBook I use with some regularity, it feels somewhat weird and will take some getting used to. However, it looks very pretty, I'm making fewer typos and the black MacBook has a matté finish that makes it feel soft as compared to the iBook and the white MacBook which have more a glassy, enamel-like feel to them.

One of the things that I noticed right off the bat (oddly enough) is that the F12 key has now been separated from the Eject key and that makes the default configuration of Dashboard as F12 a lot more usable. In addition, you can actually right-click on these machines if you want to be masochistic; this is achieved by keeping two fingers on the trackpad and then clicking. Why Apple still hasn't adopted multi-button mice for their entire product line is completely beyond me, though I must say that their solution to the problem of the scroll wheel on the MacBook and MacBook Pro is ingenius! This is to say that, to scroll, you simply have to put two fingers on the trackpad instead of one; when you move your fingers now, instead of moving the cursor, scrolling occurs. If after working on a scroll-pad-enabled laptop, you switch to one that doesn't have this feature, you will find yourself sorely missing it.

Also, the MacBooks are actually quite a bit smaller than they seem when you see pictures of them on the Internet (more or less apple.com). I believe that these will be incredibly addictive machines when you actually get around to using them. Everything about this black one I'm typing on looks beautiful and elegant. And, by the way, I should also like to mention that the MacBooks use a mini-DVI port instead of the mini-VGA port on the iBooks (which is apparently deprecated as no Apple computer now supports it). This mini-DVI port was previously used only by the 12" PowerBooks and now they have too disappeared from Apple's website, implying that the MacBook replaces three ageing models. In all, sweet.

Now, it wouldn't really be a Quick Look (let alone a Review) if there weren't at least something wrong/bad/missing about the object in question. In this case, it's the unit's size. Although much thinner and prettier than the model it replaces, I believe (and I might not be just talking to myself here) that there is a market for an even smaller MacBook/MacBook Pro, which was something that the 12" PowerBook filled until yesterday. And, as I have noticed myself, the 12-incher is simply the best sized machine to take to class. Of course, Apple being Apple, they might simply ignore that segment of users.

Labels: English

IHUM stands for "Introduction to Humanities". When I received the IHUM brochure over the summer before Stanford, I was quite perplexed as to its being and just picked a random option regarding which IHUM I would like to take in my first term of study. Later I realized that I couldn't have done anything better because each and every one of these courses suck.

IHUM is this horrible program where students get to read (get to buy them first!) classics like Homer's The Odyssey, Dante's Inferno, Plato's The Republic and some seriously disgusting books like Ballard's Crash, and go to lecture twice a week to absolutely devastate 100 minutes of their life. Lecture is this unadulterated waste of time mainly because this random 50-year-old guy (a.k.a. 'Professor') comes on stage - addressing a class of about 300 people victims - and spends the next 50 minutes overanalyzing text that might have otherwise been remotely interesting. Now, it would have been OK if they stopped at just lecture, but no… come on, it's Stanford! So, in addition to lecture, there's also this further deviousness known as "IHUM Section". Simply hearing those two words in that particular order makes me flinch. It's like this… now that you've gone to lecture and heard this 50-year-old man overanalyze some 2000-year-old Greek/German text for about 50 minutes, you're given an additional 90 minutes twice a week (that's 180 minutes a week) to overanalyze it personally with a group of about 15 other people plus this one person who is aptly referred to as a "Teaching Faculty". (Now you know where the TF in WTF comes from.) Of course, it wouldn't be Stanford if they just stopped here… wasting 280 minutes of our life once a week is apparently not enough… duh! No, once we've overanalyzed the text to bits and flip-flops, we get to write papers about them! Brilliant, eh? I'm really not kidding when I say that I have never written so much concentrated bullshit ever in my life (and that's taking this entire Journal business into consideration)! Once I'm done with Freshman year of college and I get my grades back, I might just publish some of those IHUM papers that I wrote, and show you, kind reader (that, by the way, "referring to the reader in second person" is a characteristic of eighteenth century writers; so now you know why I have grey hair), what a poor excuse they were for wasting even a single sheet of paper to print them. That, is IHUM.

Ah… it feels so good to get that all out. Now, even though IHUM is this filthy load of dingo droppings that you have to endure for all three quarters during Freshman year, there is a slightly positive side to it, and that is basically the relief you feel when you sit for your last IHUM exam ever… and I personally can't wait for the thirteenth of June.

Labels: English