Half eaten fruit, half a fruit to eat

Have to be honest here, while I cannot profess to be a Mac/Apple user, I do use Apple products, a total of 4 pieces of hardware and 1 software (excluding OSX).

Despite what readers may think, I don't hate Apple and their stuff, they are good tools to use. Sometimes. Ok will be nice for a while, just a little not to damage my credibility as a criticizer.

Mac OSX is a robust Operating System, less cranky while simply trying to do something simple. Sleep mode on MacBook works far far better than a Wintel machine. You could open and close the lid many times before it might fail, requiring a reboot. For a newbie to computers, its a lot easier to visualise and understand, and the system more tolerant to mistakes.

I jumped onto the iPod Touch because of one reason, I was really impressed with the Chinese character recognition software. (Of course later I discovered they purchased it from a Chinese company...Shush..trying to be nice.)

The now famous user interface is another reason, it is the best touch interface ever. (I just shuddered hearing myself say best ever...but nice I shall be).

The bestest software eh-vah is Pages from the iWorks suite. It was to help a friend in making an event brochure where I had no choice but to learn the program on the fly and he is definitely a Mac user. I had a bit of experience with word processing and page design programs like CorelDraw during ancient times aka Windows 95. That gave me a little bit of foundation, but Pages blew my mind, mind boggling blown. It is really easy on a newbie, not just to the program but to desktop publishing in general, build off the templates and expand beyond that, very logical and easy to do. How much of a fan am I? I bought 2 copies of iWorks. Ain't that just lurve.

The trick to Apple's popularity is simple, they sat down and thought really hard. The collective light bulb that lit up, I imagine, was brighter than R136a1. Why settle for a whole lot of guides for dummies, let's make dummies less er dummy. Use each device to your maximum, having never to apologise for your inadequacies.

Talking of maximum, the iPad is I think the embodiment of this dummies less dummy philosophy. The instant on makes it easy to pick up, be online, be working and be entertained. So natural that it is like another part of your body. There is no need to think, what does BIOS version 2.457 or System Ram means? Just make it happen already.

It is not just dummies that benefit, the jailbreaking business has been booming, people who reach the maximum that Apple offers, simply break out and soar. For the more legal minded, there those who have come out with creative uses, like a eatery offering them as customisable interactive menu, albeit expensive and breakable. There are simply possibilities with this latest export of the Cupertino Orchard.