Having not attended last year’s highly successful (or so I heard) BarCamp Amsterdam, I felt I had to make up. By being late every day. But anyway. It was an interesting experience.

I intended to code somewhat on a DNS based remote Growl Notification Thingo I’m working on. In practise, that never actually happened. Between running around with my camera and talking to other people, there was just no time.

I did meet some interesting people, among which were Matt Biddulph and Deb Bassett. They both brought Canon 350Ds, which I also happen to own, so we had this little unphotoclub thing going on. Matt instantly handed over his newly acquired (same morning, in fact) Canon EF-S 10-22 lens when I, at that point a total stranger, asked for it. That’s the kind of trustingness that I like in people. I think at this point I’ve used his new lens more than he has. (Sorry about that.) Deb has a sixth sense for cameras. She is able to tell if any camera in a fifty meter radius is pointed at her and will break out a big smile (barely contained, here). We tried to see what would happen if we overloaded it by pointing 5 cameras at her, but she’s pretty resistant to that. I gave them my lensbaby to try. There was ‘oooh’-ing.

I also had a quick go at iRex’s e-ink device, the iLiad, handily brought by Edwin Mons. At first I thought the device was just an empty fake one, as seen with cellphones and PDAs in stores because the display looked like it was just printed plastic. But then it changed. This is what it looks like. Look at the screen, it’s beautiful. If it weren’t glossy, it could have been actual paper. (iRex: hint, hint.)

Anyway, of course the usual suspects were there, as were lots of other
interesting people. The list is at the BarCampAmsterdamII wiki and above-mentioned Matt has one too, so I’m not going to duplicate those.

I think everything went rather well. Some initial trouble with the WiFi on friday night after a thinko on my side causing everyone on the second Base Station I added not to be able to get DHCP going. Got an epiphany after the second Mac user complained and fixed it. No more complaints after that, except for Gijs Kruitbosch, who was reinstalling his laptop and was having trouble even getting Ethernet going, most probably due to something Ubuntu did wrong. Oh well.

So I had a good time at least, hope we’ll do this again soonish.

Or so far, at least. Apple has replaced their übercool iBook line of notebooks with something they call MacBook. As with any new product, a few good things have happened. For one, they’re finally widescreen. About time, too. They get audio in and dvi out, and will support screen spanning without an open firmware hack. Also the MagSafe thing is definitely good, I’ve also snagged my leg behind the power cord before, and they finally get Gigabit Ethernet. Nice as all that is, the list of disappointments weighs slightly heavier.

• The name. iBook versus MacBook. iBook definitely wins. (Of course this also goes for PowerBook versus MacBook Pro, but I suppose not wanting Power in the name for non-PowerPC machines makes some sense).
• The keyboard. Since the beginning of time, Mac keyboards (actually, all keyboards I’ve ever touched save a rubber one) have been slightly hollow. The MacBook does away with all that. I predict lots of typos for future MacBook-owners.
• The colour. Now, this doesn’t hold true for the white one of course but the black makes it look like a generic PC laptop. The white colour was the single most differentiating feature of the iBooks (until PC laptop manufactureres started making iBookalikes, anyway). And indeed: when the white colour is replaced, iBooks no longer look like iBooks. They look just like any other laptop, just done right (i.e., without two million lights and buttons and stickers and whatever).
• The processor. I still don’t like this Intel deal.
• The screen. Biggest letdown for me. Glossy screens are just unacceptable. If I wanted to buy a mirror, I’d visit IKEA. Not the Apple store. This is another reason the black one looks like a generic PC laptop: all those things come with piece-of-shit glossy screens, too. They’re unworkable as soon as you’re in any kind of light, at any angle that isn’t a dead-on 90º. Of course the good thing is you can tell immediately after opening your laptop that you forgot to do your hair in the morning.

So far, I’m not even so much as considering buying one until that final point gets fixed. No glossy screens for me, please, thankyouverymuch.