After a mere nine months, I’m dumping my Hackintosh netbook (more precisely, selling it to my editor Dylan Tweney so his children can make better use of it). This is by far the shortest relationship I’ve ever had with any of my gadgets. Why the abrupt end? Oddly enough, the puny, low-powered computer didn’t fit into my lifestyle. And my recent purchase of an iPhone 3GS made the netbook completely lose relevance.
Allow me to explain.
Like I said in a previous post, my Hackintosh (10-inch MSI Wind) and I went through a brief honey moon phase before stuff got rocky. Most notably, I eventually encountered problems with Wi-Fi connectivity in “Hack OS X.” And the most annoying quirk was when the netbook kept shutting down with the slightest bump or nudge.
But even then, I gave my HackBook a second, third and fourth chance. I fixed the aforementioned problems. And then I kept finding weird applications for the netbook: I turned it into a pet cam to check on my kitten, and recently I used it as a virtual instruction manual to guide me through installing an iPod-integration kit in my car trunk. While the netbook was indeed useful for these instances, I realize these are rather rare instances. (My kitten has grown since, so I no longer need to check on her. And how often am I going to be installing iPod kits in cars?)
Then came the iPhone 3GS, which I purchased June 19. After work, I found myself plopping down on my couch and pulling out my iPhone to browse the web, check e-mail and instant message friends. The speed boost makes the iPhone much more bearable to use as a companion computer for extended periods of time. And the introduction of push IMing enabled me to switch between apps without logging out of chats. With those two changes, the iPhone 3GS became a perfectly adequate gadget for casual computing — perhaps even better than my netbook, whose keyboard and track pad create a pretty crampy experience over time.
During Apple’s quarterly earnings call in October 2008, Steve Jobs said the iPhone could compensate for Apple’s lack of a netbook offering. Back then, I disagreed with him because the previous iPhones were just too slow for me, and the lack of the ability to run multiple apps in the background was a serious drag. But the 3GS and iPhone 3.0 OS cover those shortcomings, and Apple could stall for even longer on offering a netbook if the company chose to.
One could argue that a netbook would be better than the iPhone 3GS for doing work. I’ll be honest: I didn’t get crap done on my netbook. I tried reporting for Gadget Lab once using my HackBook, and I gave up after 30 minutes squinting at the 10-inch screen. (For serious work, I use a MacBook Pro.) I could find a bunch more kooky applications for my netbook, but let’s face it: If you’re looking for reasons to use something, it means you don’t need it.
Crazy how much can change in just nine months, huh?
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Photo: Brian X. Chen/Wired.com
