Adventures in Apple
Guess whose MacBook Pro broke yesterday? (Hint: it was mine.)
The bad news is that my video card totally failed, meaning it doesn’t even work with an external display, which makes it totally unusable. I dropped it off at the Apple Store in the Village this afternoon, where they’ll be ordering the replacement part (2-3 days) and doing the actual repair (2-3 days). This means I’ll be missing my Mac through the iPad launch and into next week.
The good news is that the failure was caused by a known defect in the NVIDIA 8600M, which means the replacement is free even though I’m well out of warranty. The rest of my computer seems to be working fine, and my data is all backed up on a WD Passport.
So: what does this mean for Pinch Pad? Well, it means that the launch-day launch I was aiming for definitely isn’t happening. I’m very proud of how far it’s come, and I definitely think it has long-term potential, but it still needs a few small tweaks before it’s opened to the masses. I really needed those last 72 hours to be comfortable with opening it up to the world, and unfortunately I won’t be getting that chance until the middle of next week.
However! There is a silver lining. Sure, Pinch Pad will be delayed a week, and that sucks. On the other hand, though, I’m presented with a very interesting opportunity: using my brand-new iPad as my primary computer for the first week that I own it. I think it’ll be a fantastic chance to really get to know the new hardware, and to explore what works and what doesn’t with the iPad UI and the initial wave of third-party applications.
I’m a little bummed that it all had to happen like this — don’t computers always fail at the worst possible times? — but it should be a very fun experience playing around with an entirely new machine and an entirely new paradigm for computing. I’ll probably be posting a bunch of impressions over the coming week, so keep an eye out!
