It is no secret to anyone who knows me that I love my MACs. There are currently four in my home. (Full disclosure one is the company's PowerBook, and another is not currently in use.) But I have never been in agreement with Steve Jobs' politics. Or for that matter with Apple's. I mean they just re-elected Al Gore to the board of directors.

I have the same sort of love hate relationship with Ben and Jerry's. Love the ice cream, despise the socialism.

So I found it interesting that at the stockholders meeting, Steve Jobs took on the people who were protesting at the gate. And who were these protesters? Environmentalists angered over what they see as Apple's irresponsible approach to waste and the environment.

The demonstration included people dressed as iPods in front of a big sign that read, “From iPod to iWaste.''

The short version of the story is I dropped my 20Gb ipod and severely damaged the disc inside. I bought a compatible 10Gb drive on eBay. This left me with the question of what to do with the bad drive.

It had some little screws on the case so opened it up. The scratches on the platter were clearly visible at the right angle. The insides of the thing were quite remarkable and actually quite beautiful. I tossed the top half of the aluminum case in the trash. (and yes I know it was probably recyclable.) The I put a piece of velcro tape on the back of the case and hung it on the fabric of my cubicle partition. It's a little piece of high-tech abstract sculpture.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 02:56 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment