MacMetal... Power Chords anyone?

Does anyone feel like I do? Have we finally sacrificed function for flash in our electronics?

I remember growing up with PC cases left unscrewed so that I could get in and overclock and tweak and swap RAM, graphics cards and CD-ROM drives that often didn’t match the colour of the case but could burn at 4X instead of 2X. I remember the glory of gunmetal beige. I remember accessories that dangled from serial and parallel ports. I remember when I tried to squeeze every single last ounce of power out of my system and really not care about how it looked.

I remember the first laptop I had was dinged, scratched, butchered and every blemish was a badge of honour that was embellished by a sticker or liquid paper graffiti. I remember the besmirched black plastic that I abused and bled every last recharge from.

Is there really any reason to pay for what Steve Jobs’ called “the new range of aluminium bodied MacBooks [that] offered the same features as the old MacBook Pro series?” It used to be that notebooks were year-old technology from desktops that got shrunk down. Apparently the Macbook is year-old MacBook technology dressed up in a Judas Priest jacket.

Now I’m really not a Mac hater… I’m not a Mac user mind you. And I certainly don’t begrudge Apple marketing style to all of the hipsters that love art in their computer design. I think they look plenty cool and I’m sure they work very well. After all, I’ve got some very smart friends who swear by them. That said, Macs to me are like SmartCars; if Apple wants me to try one, they better make them significantly cheaper than current PC technology or I really won’t have any reason to switch… I can’t wait ’til people start buying Macbook skins to protect their aluminum finish that no one will ever see again.