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Johan Bové

Really annoyed that the Apple MacBook does not have a USB Type A port anymore as now I cannot even connect the Iphone to it as I forgot the adapter in my other bag. This is a €2000 plus device that cannot connect to a €700 device just because of a stupid dongle.

Johan Bové

Just had a terrible experience with an "emotional agent", an AI powered assistant application which represents a virtual person which is supposed to assist patients that are suffering from stress. The experience with the system was anything but relaxing. Mostly because of the assumptions made by the developers of the application: not everyone has the latest powerful macbook, not everyone connects to the internet through a high-speed connection, not everyone is actually using a laptop, some people still use a PC where a camera and a microphone setup is a bit more complicated to set up. Also the scripting of the session was really bad. If this was a benchmark for these kind of systems, then there is still a lot of work to be done.

Johan Bové

Does anyone actually enjoy this sharp edge cutting into their wrists from the bottom of the latest Macbook laptops?

Johan Bové

The battery life in this i9 MacBook Pro from 2018 has diminished to being barely enough to serve as an UPS backup system with enough time to perform a safe shutdown

Johan Bové

V-Tech "Download Manager" issues

2 min read

Had a really bad experience trying to get the V-Tech "Download Manager" for their Magic Book 3D to work on Windows 10 - the application window did not resize and I had to put the screen size to a ridiculous 480x640 pixels to be able to get to some point where I could actually use the buttons in the application.

Somehow it detected the 3D Magibook on USB, but then, after waiting for the app to "load", and I was able to see the books to add the media of, the USB connection all of sudden disappeared and I was stuck again. I tried four times to get through the process to no avail.

Luckily I have a Macbook from work. I am not really supposed to use it for private applications, but in this case I was a little desperate. So I installed the "Download Manager" for Mac on it and had to mess a bit with disk access for it work, but was happy to see that all worked well on the Mac version of the application. First of all, a "firmware upgrade" window popped up and I had to go through the whole process.

I am suspecting that this firmware issue is the cause of the Windows problems. After the firmware upgrade, I was able to get the media for the new book we got our son, using the Mac app. But haven't tried with the Windows 10 version of the app.

Disappointing that the experience with the application on Windows 10 is so bad. So I wrote the customer service about it. Let's see what happens next.

Johan Bové

A new colleague started this week and got the new MacBook 16 inch and everyone is jealous about how much better the keyboard of this new Mac is compared to the 2016 models. It even comes with a dedicated escape key!

Johan Bové

Always a lot of fun when the only solution for not hearing anything through the connected mini jack headphones on a MacBook is a full reboot.

Johan Bové

This Macbook Pro 15-inch keyboard is one of the worst keyboards I ever had to work with in over 15 years of working on computers. I keep missing the "⌘ + s", "⌘ + c" and "⌘ + v" (command) combinations and my work is literally full of stray "s", "c" and "v" characters.

Johan Bové

Working on the updated 2016 keyboard and I am getting extremely annoyed by how the `command+s` combination sometimes doesn't work and only gives me an "s", so I'm involuntarily typing s-es everywhere. This new keyboard is a disaster.