I’ve not seen one in the flesh; that wouldn’t been possible, but the brand new Macbook and Macbook pro lines are mouth-watering. The hardware upgrades, the change in look, the improved graphics; that’s all nice, but really peripheral to the one ‘feature’ I find intriguing. This ‘unibody’ idea is beautiful.

Anyone who has worked milled aluminium knows how gorgeous the stuff feels, both before and after it becomes a product. Working it down from a solid chunk into a final form is infinitely more satisfying than working with any other material in my opinion. Milling can be frustratingly slow, and if you get it wrong, it’s impossible to make a seamless fix. With CNC you cut that out, but you swap that for a level of precision that is hard to rival even in the most highly-skilled handmade version - the result is a million miles away from a sheet or cast metal construction. It genuinely feels more organic, sharp, natural and real - a single body is infinitely more sophisticated than something that feels like it has been bolted together, no matter how well that has been done.

And that’s why I’m dying to pick one up and hold it. I’m not actually that fussed about forking out to own it - my current model still does more than well enough for my needs (though it’s not like I would turn one down if anyone is offering) I just don’t need an upgrade. But the fact is that you can plainly see from the photos, the videos (especially the manufacturing one) that this a beautifully engineered and solid piece of construction. This technique is to be rolled into their two new notebook products, and that means that even by Apple’s previously high standards, this casing is going to bring the feel of this laptop into a league of it’s own, because as far as I am aware no other company has done this in mainstream laptopware before.

Admittedly, the Macbook Air has used a similar technique for a while (again a stunning product to hold), but I think this technique will lend itself even better to the thicker design of these new products. It’s a bit unusual to be more excited by the manufacturing method than the complete product, but I am.

There is one caveat though. I can think of a number of reasons why other manufacturers might not have gone down this route in the past, and although I can banish most of my qualms about it, there are couple I still don’t have an answer for.

This process is more complicated and initially more expensive to setup due to the hardware involved, but over time it’ll pay for itself and any machinery can be re-tasked for future models. The complexity of the assembly is going to be considerably reduced at the pre-digital component stage.  The thing that gets me is the waste and energy required to produce it this way.

My gut feeling would be that in waste terms, the system is actually going to be pretty efficient - Apple wouldn’t want to be squandering all that expensive material it’s paid for. Although you might be essentially removing a large percentage of the mass as milled-out swarf, that can be melted down and reused, and I would imagine that is what Apple will be doing. The gold and silver trade became incredibly efficient at this a very long time ago. But even if that is the case, the big drawback of this is that you constantly have to keep re-melting down the material, as opposed to the current method of applying a smaller amount of heat for a shorter period of time just enough to form a shape. And that’s expensive. The closest thing to an analogy I can think of is boiling a kettle of six cups for every time you want to make one just for yourself.

For all their talk of green, I do wonder whether this will erode at their other credentials? I mean keeping metal molten for long periods (whether its in their own factories or further up the food chain) is not that efficient. I just imagine it can’t be particularly energy efficient even if their other production processes are. I’d love to know, but I don’t believe tours of the Apple factories are that easy to come by.

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If there is one thing in my digital work and life that continually frustrates me is the lack of synchronicity between devices - namely my iMac and my Macbook.

Files have been catered for a while, and I thoroughly recommend SugarSync for that (continuous cloud backup, with recent revisions), but the killer flaw has been the lack of Address Book and iCal balance.

Finally, lifehacker has handed me an olive branch. I’ve tried some of their other recommended services before, but I’ve not been overly impressed until now (Calgoo was shockingly bad). Fruux is incredibly lightweight preference panel application which keeps contacts and events synced. I’ll stop short of a full recommendation as I’ve only just tried it out, but it’s been astoundingly simple to setup and get working. The best thing about it is that it just gets on with it, in the background, no hassle.

If it delivers what is says it can, and (as it is right now) for free, I will be a very happy bunny.

UPDATED: The link was wrong. Cheers Stuup!

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Here’s another tip.

If you didn’t know already, you can now combine multiple Hotmail / Live email accounts into a single account (or pretty close to) - which means you only have to log in using one account to check the mail in all of the others.

For someone like me who rarely uses my Hotmail accounts these days, it’s handy to speed up the process by merging my hotmail.co.uk and hotmail.com addresses.

You can do this by:

1. Logging into Hotmail as usual
2. Click on your email address in the top right hand corner of the page (right above the Sign Out text link)
3. From the drop down, select Link other accounts
4. Follow the instructions to tie in your Microsoft Passport/Hotmail/Windows Live Mail

You will be asked to enter your password and email address for the other account, then once the process is complete, you will be able to click on the same menu as in step 2, and change to your other email account inboxes on-the-fly.

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Maybe I’d missed this before, but I’ve just discovered a fantastic little app (that runs on Windows, Mac and ‘Nix) that allows you to watch all the UK channels for free, live.

Zattoo just requires an email address, and the funky little program allows you to watch the following useful and semi-useful channels:

• BBC One
• BBC Two
• BBC Three
• BBC Four
• ITV 1
• Channel 4
• five
• BBC News
• BBC Paliament
• Al Jazeera
• CBBC
• CBebbies

According to the website, it’s completely legal and I’ve been really impressed with the quality so far. It comes with an inbuilt schedule too.

My advice? Go try it.

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I’ve been a iPlayer fanatic for a good while now, and I think the popular response it’s seen in the past few months means that a lot of other people think the same way.

So now the new iPlayer Beta is live and after a good play I went back and reread my article about the service when it launched six months ago.

Undoubtedl the big, indeed massive, benefit to me is the rolling together with the BBC’s Radio iPlayer service which is long overdue, and for a audio junkie like myself I am more than delighted with the results. The antiquated RealPlayer has been axed (why do I still need it on my Mac come to think of it?), and has been replaced with a beautiful full-size iPlayer window with a decent sized image - a visual cue that until now has been sorely missing even if I never realised it.

Sticking with radio, they have also cleverly replaced the full-screen option with a more useful ‘pop-out’ player which due to a bit of javascript wizardry makes sure you don’t lose your place when you switch between the two player types. The pop-out also allows you to browse related programmes again without losing the audio.

Even the exceptionally long radio programmes (3 hours for example) are now 100% skippable back and forth - a long time bug bear of mine. The old solution of limiting skipping to only going forwards in 5 and 15 minute intervals only, was highly frustrating, and for a long time I’ve been using Firebug to get the url and just loading up the RealPlayer window option, just like you had the option in the shorter 30 minute programmes. Good riddance to nasty interfaces.

All that said, the streaming interface still uses ASX files, although these do load in Quicktime with the Flip4Mac plugin. I’m unsure if the intention is that this is going to stay this way (I’m not sure of flash’s realtime streaming capabilities) but it is one of the few unpolished edges in the system.

The drill-down category menus, search and enhanced descriptions for radio shows is delectable - I now can get exactly where I want, although there is one really big missing feature (and the same applies to the new TV iPlayer) and that’s the ability to sort all programmes by date (everything is done alphabetically). I try to listen to new comedy almost daily, but it’s hard to find what’s new today across the board.

Switching between media types otherwise is very clear, a three-buttoned TV & Radio, TV or Radio option on every category page making filtering very simple, and the new and big icons work well. Dare I say it I think the radio logos come into their own on their own page - thank god they decided not to leave them all on white backgrounds.

Scheduling (and past days programming) is now built in by default and it’s bliss not to have to leave the pages to get there, and this makes it a lot easier to check the week ahead. A nice touch is that it also already ‘fills-in’ the schedule with repeats that are in the existing library, so you know it’s already there somewhere and available to watch. They’ve also started bundling programmes from the same series into expandable sections within the listings, so you can also backtrack through a series right from the point you find it if the episodes are still available.

The default iPlayer window has been super-sized, and although it’s not immediately obvious if the video size/quality has been altered, if it has I’m sure the UK’s ISPs will all be hopping mad… fantastic :)

The related programme link has also been bundled in with the description, category tagging, a much more discrete title and a very exact expiry date - all in a hide-away box on each programme page which gives a lot more open real estate for that big screen to fill…

Of course, the interface has become very busy with all the new options, cluttered maybe, but I would imagine that if that is the general response they get they could always implement an iGoogle style customisation system where you could pick or choose your version, or more likely what could happen, a ‘simplified’ option or ‘show more’ style interface. That said, as someone who looks at the new homepage and thinks there is nothing they’d want removed, I’d keep the whole lot on there all the time.

My prediction of playlists hasn’t really come to form, but I wonder whether this is down to complexity of interface reasons (e.g. they don’t want to make it anymore complicated). They could have taken the cue from 4radio, so the idea is out there, but clearly is has been dismissed for some reason. I can’t say it troubles me much however, and would only be a bonus if they do ever introduce it.

You may have deduced that I am elated, delighted and brimming with anticipation to really get going with the new iPlayer. Already proved as a very good product anyway, the new version considerably raises the bar for other broadcasters (ITV, C4, and I would imagine, five - like I even know) and this will make this service even more popular; it can’t do anything else.

Well done the Beeb. For all the criticism that could be hurled at you for other reasons, the iPlayer is one place you excel and exceed expectations.

(Now I’ll sit back and wait for Lloydy to complain I wrote this too quickly… ;P )

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Once in a while I see some truly ingenious thinking, and it’s rare to see a product that is so functionally trend-defying, especially when often concept cars are beautiful, but little else.

The Gina prototypes with fabric ‘skin’ is a really good demonstration of how approaching a problem from a different angle can reap big rewards. I can remember as a kid watching Thunder in Paradise (yes, a truly masterful programme) where Hulk Hogan’s boat could morph shape. Incredibly futuristic, but now here is a real and simple alternative to produce lightweight, flexible, form-altering products.

Of course spaceframe technology has meant this has been possible for years, but I’ve never seen it put into practice. There are inevitably ‘issues’ too - how many times would you return to your posh looking cloth convertible to find someone had slashed it - but it’s not like a new paint job or sidepanel doesn’t cost a lot of money anyway.

Unfortunately, I don’t ever really expect to see a car like this in production, at least not in such a stark and complete form. Clearly cutting down weight and simplifying panel creation would be very desirable for manufacturers (each being expensive in their own way), but metal isn’t likely to be thrown out for fabric in the foreseeable future. However I do think it gives a good platform for moving car design forward and hopefully will stimulate truly beautiful, lightweight solutions to problems that are currently overlooked because their remedies appear ‘essential’.

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I think I knew this day would return, but I had sort of hoped it would happen a bit more slower and obviously than last time, but it didn’t.

On Tuesday Will was using the Macbook for some notes when it suddenly froze up. I shut it down and left it after being unresponsive for over half an hour (really unusual) and when I started it back up the next morning I was faced by the flashing folder of doom.

So I knew it was curtains, but thought I’d better just check, and all the tricks I learnt from the last this happened (a faulty drive going in the first weeks of having the laptop two years ago) just confirmed it for me. Dead drive.

For those curious to know how you can tell whether you’ve got a pretty nasty situation:

• Incredibly long start up wait then the flashing folder of doom (comes complete with question mark)
• Rebooting takes no effect
• Holding down T while booting and linking to another machine via Firewire: if it fails to show a big firewire symbol on the screen/it’s non-mounting as a disk-type device on the other machine
• Booting from DVD setup disks and running Disk Utility demonstrates no reference to the hard disc, only the mounted DVD
• Additional clicking noises are not a good sign (the stylus may have collapsed or similar - potentially scratching the disc face)

If you meet this criteria, you’re probably in for some fun and games.

Luckily, I’ve been using SugarSync for a month, which silently syncs everything up to a big S3 vault, so I’ve lost very little thankfully. That’s damn good timing though - there were some critical files still on there from the last time I remote worked; this time last month I’d have lost it all.

The only other thing affected was my calendar and address book, but luckily I also run a regular automated iSync (using Proximity and an AppleScript) which keeps a complete and up-to-date version of both of these on my phone. Still, it’s a hassle having to transfer it all back into the appropriate multiple calendars. I’m going to start using gCal I think.

Anyway, the new hard drive with five year warranty is in the post. All I’ve got to do now is wait for the fun of installing and configuring every single app again. Hurray.

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