Possibly one of the most frustrating parts of my migration away from the lumbering old PC (which has served me well, albeit on occasion frustratingly unreliably) over to my new Apple MacBook Pro (a set up and operating system I have been using smittenly at work for a couple of years) has been the peripherals: the AirPort Extreme is an innovative and amazing piece of technology that allows me to access my external harddrives over my home wireless connection, but it’s bloody difficult to then use it to share with the other (Windows) computers in the house as well. Possible, but difficult.

The one thing that frustrates me more than anything else is the new Apple Wireless Keyboard is a think of stunning beauty and the chiclet keys are very user friendly, but I need one as a replacement to my laptop’s keyboard when I’m sitting at home tied in to the desktop monitor. So the fact that they’ve done away with the numeric pad and everything above the cursor arrow keys is frustrating to say the least.

I think it’s an oversight on their behalf, but that said, I’ve still bought one and will no doubt adapt to the change very quickly, as will the hundreds of thousands of other Apple users who opt for the wireless keyboard option (the wired keyboard offering, at present, still has a numeric pad). Perhaps this really is corporate power at it’s most obvious: we too often rely on someone else to tell us what we do and don’t need, and Apple users are loyal enough that they fall for it every time…