You can always change this.

The story is short and sad: within one year, the great Mac Book Pro, as far as software is considered, worked like immaculate. As for the hardware side, Niko forbid!, there were way too many problems.

First, the battery had to be replaced under the Apple battery exchange program. The new battery lasted till yesterday; the laptop does not start on it anymore or shuts down without warning when disconnected from power cord (but fully charged). In addition, the capacity seemed to drop down in last months, at it’s best I could run for about 2.5 hours. It seems the defective battery is a general problem in MBP.

In the meanwhile, I had also problems with the power cord. At the point where the cord goes into the great magsafe plug, the insulation had not managed to endure the torsion and twist and the wires appeared gradually from the insulation and frayed. At the end they broke completely and the whole power adapter had to be replaced. To avoid the same to happen, I have fixed the new cable near-by the magsafe with a good layer of scotch tape.

To remain with the power adapter, after a friend wanted to quickly disconnect the charger from the wall (in plain English: he kicked the charger), I had to fix the exchangeable male plug with a glue. Also, I have not mentioned that from the beginning there seems to be some current flowing through the casing when the laptop is connected through the power adapter to mains.

There are some other problems with the casing. At the point above the dvd drive the metal plate bends upwards, so every time you rest your palm on the computer, you feel it moving.

After searching for other reports on MBP issues, I begin to feel these are not isolated cases. I become annoyed by having to send parts for replacement every three months. In summary, MBP has so far been a good tool in a disappointing wrapping. The good parts, however, cannot outweigh the problems with hardware.

Woody Allen once said:

My education was dismal. I went to a series of schools for mentally disturbed teachers.

Observing how boring and unoriginal lecturers (and thus lectures) at most of the university CS courses are, I suggest the lectures shall be limited to at most 1 hour at a time. So, the four hours per week of reading from slides would be reduced to half. Students can read the slides in their own time, teacher concentrates on what is important, courses (probably) become more compact, more practical by having better proportion of lectures/demos,… in short, only positive outcomes. (It’s your time to point out the negative ones in the discussion)

How do you like this proposal?