Apple¡¯s PowerBook laptops were a big success in the early 1990s, and the PowerBook 5300 had the potential to take that success to an even higher level. Released in 1995, the 5300 was the Ultrabook of its day, kind of. Well, it didn¡¯t have an optical drive, but it did include a 1.4MB 3.5-inch floppy drive, which you could remove when the machine was powered down, handily replacing it with a Zip drive. It was also the first Apple laptop to use the new PowerPC processor developed by Motorola.But things went wrong right from the start. Hinge problems caused cracks in the laptop¡¯s cover, and worn video cables affected the display. And when battery problems caused some models to overheat and catch fire, the 5300 was dubbed the HindenBook and quickly consigned to history.Released to mark the arrival of the third decade of Apple itself, rather than the Mac, the 20th Anniversary Mac (TAM) was one of Apple¡¯s more glorious failures. Like the G4 Cube, the TAM was ahead of its time, boasting a slimline, all-in-one design with an integrated flat-panel LCD (12.1-inch, 800 x 600) screen at a time when bulky CRT displays were still the norm. The more affordable iMac didn¡¯t get the flat-panel treatment until 2002.

Bizarrely codenamed Spartacus, the TAM had a front-loading CD drive, built-in stereo speakers and came bundled with a Bose-engineered sub-woofer, not to mention a separate keyboard with integrated trackpad.The TAM had Apple fans drooling ¨C I saw it; I was at the launch ¨C but the $7,500 price tag meant that it failed to sell even its limited-edition production run of 12,000 units. Apple had to cut the price drastically to sell off the final stocks in 1998, but the TAM remains a popular collector¡¯s item with many Mac fans. Antennagate was a prime example of a PR disaster exacerbated by the sheer arrogance of Apple¡¯s management. Soon after the launch of the iPhone 4 in June 2010, it emerged that reception to the handsets¡¯ antennas, which had been wrapped around the top, bottom and sides of the phone, could sometimes be blocked by those fleshy protuberances known as fingers.But rather than admitting that the mighty Apple might have got it wrong, Steve Jobs simply blamed iPhone owners. ¡°You¡¯re holding it wrong,¡± was the headline that ricocheted around the internet, prompting gale-force laughter from all corners of the globe.

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In the end Apple solved the problem by giving away a few million dollars worth of iPhone cases ¨C a paltry cost to Apple, but an expensive lesson in humility. Especially since, if it had bundled its ¡°Bumper¡±, it could probably have avoided the controversy in the first place.Speaking of the Bumper, isn¡¯t it interesting that Apple¡¯s first ever iPhone cover, available at the phone¡¯s launch, was designed very specifically to cover the troublesome external antenna? Apple didn¡¯t rush these things out because it knew the iPhone 4 was problematic, did it? Of course not.As Apple products go, you would have thought the release Final Cut Pro X in June 2011 would be a cause for celebration. The original Final Cut Pro non-linear video editing software had started life back in 1998 as a Macromedia product, and relied on Apple¡¯s QuickTime. However, Macromedia¡¯s own licensing tie-in with Microsoft prevented its release.So Apple bought it and ran with it for the next 12 years, enhancing and expanding its capabilities to the point where it became the editing tool of choice for a wide range of video professionals. Yet given its early beginnings and its capacity to handle legacy projects created on the platform, the product was rooted in the past.Announced at NAB in April 2011, the professionals looked forward to 64-bit processing on Final Cut Pro X that would enable more efficient use of the hardware it would run on. Workflow would be faster, smoother and, what the faithful hadn¡¯t bargained on at all, completely different.

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Apple, in its infinite wisdom, culled just about all the professional features you could think of in its first release of Final Cut Pro X. It caused outrage and to say it soured Apple¡¯s relationship with the user base is an understatement. This was no niche product, with an SCRI report from 2007 stating that in the US 49 per cent of video editors relied on FCP. Add to this the 2008 study from the American Cinema Editors Guild notching up 21 per cent of users.It¡¯s difficult to know whether it was laziness or just a brutal decision to focus on a different kind of workflow, but Apple¡¯s thinking appeared to be to target the single camera videographer who would be using the HD video capture features found on the latest wave of DSLRs. With that kind of creative in mind, who needs multicam editing that the pros had come to rely upon? As for features such as XML and Open Media Framework (OMF) or legacy elements such as an Edit Decision List (EDL), they were gone.

The user interface had changed radically too and Final Cut Pro files from previous versions could not be imported. To add insult to injury the only video projects you could import were from iMovie. Needless to say, the creatives who¡¯d built their careers on knowing FCP inside out had plenty to say about the new version with many airing their views on video.Editor and knowledgeable video blogger Jeffery Harrell put his thoughts on FCP X into action with ¡°a little thing¡± he made to test Adobe Premiere that went viral among the video editing community, only to be pulled for copyright reasons, so we¡¯re told. Sadly, Harrell¡¯s entertaining and informative blog went silent soon after that. For now at least, you can still view his video I don¡¯t have a title for this (NSFW if sweary singing is not your boss's thing), albeit not uploaded by him personally. Better be quick if you want to see it.Others ran with the well-worn Hitler bunker scene from Downfall to good comic effect and the issue even went prime-time with US TV presenter Conan O¡¯Brien¡¯s show featuring a spoof put together by the programme¡¯s own editors.

In subsequent updates, Apple has introduced some of the absent features such as XML and broadcast monitoring support and the reviews appear more favourable these days. Even so, other missing functions now rely on third party software to solve compatibility issues.Consequently, many still treasure their old-style Final Cut Pro installations, and others have migrated to Adobe Premiere or stepped up to Avid Media Composer. Final Cut Pro X did have one thing in its favour though: the price.The last Studio suite version of Final Cut Pro featured a host of specialist companion apps and was priced at ¡ê800. At ¡ê200, Final Cut Pro X is certainly well within reach of many who would never have had the chance to try the original and best. Apple also offers a trial version of Final Cut Pro X, enabling old-school users to face their fears. BD At last year's Melbourne VMware user group (VMUG) conference, VMware's Mike Laverick opined that IT pros need a home lab these days, because bosses have stopped shelling out for training.Plenty of you agreed with that proposition. Some even showed us their very own home labs.Most used old servers, an arrangement that this year's Melbourne VMUG conference heard is a redundant approach.The source of that pronouncement? None other than Simon Gallagher, a member of the London VMUG steering committee, former VMware staffer and ¨C most importantly for this article ¨C creator of the vTardis home lab. Gallagher describes vTardis as follows:

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¡°A small, low cost physical infrastructure (or single server) which is capable of supporting several multi-node ESX clusters. It provides an infrastructure representative of enterprise-grade vSphere/vCD deployment through heavy over-subscription of physical hardware as well as providing 'production' home services like media streaming, data storage, DNS, DHCP etc.¡±Tardis has been around since 2010, with some variants able to run on laptops. But in Melbourne Gallagher said he's been able to ditch servers altogether, thanks to the combination of a Core i7 processor and ¡­ Windows 8?The Core i7 resides within a Lenovo W530, a laptop Gallagher says is up to the job of running a home lab because it can handle 32GB of RAM. With a 512GB solid state disk and VMware Workstation 10 aboard, he says he has no trouble running up to ten ESX instances, complete with nested virtual machines.Gallagher says lesser laptops will struggle to pull off that trick, and noted that the Core i7 3720QM he's using offers Intel's implementation of second level address translation (SLAT), Extended Page Tables, as this technology makes it easier for virtual machines to use memory (AMD's equivalent is called Rapid Virtualization Indexing). Not all Intel or AMD CPUs offer SLAT and Gallagher's messages was don't try this stuff at home without it.