I've been using a Macbook for years now and love it, but reading this makes me nostalgic for my ThinkPad from a few years back. It truly stood apart from all other PC laptops. I happen to think (just my opinion) that the black body was a stroke of genius. The cobalt blue 'enter' key contrasted beautifully with the black keyboard. I miss the magnesium alloy hinges. Look back to the IBM 370 mainframe console from the 1970s and you'll see the origins of the ThinkPad aesthetic: http://www.answers.com/topic/system-370. The look and feel of the keyboard was sublime, nothing else matched it. The trackpoint was wonderfully quick and accurate. I didn't fully appreciate it until I tried the same mechanism on a Dell and found it to be clumsy and badly calibrated. A ThinkPad running Gentoo Linux was a beautiful thing. In recent years Lenovo seems to be cutting costs and compromising the look and feel of this legendary machine. And Macbooks are slowly but steadily being turned into appliances for the masses and becoming closed machines. I wonder if ten years from now there will be a handheld or personal computing device capable of generating the same kind of cult following.
Another thought on the use of 'F*cking". I smiled for a brief moment when I first read it. But overall, it's not very classy and undermines (a tiny bit) what is indeed a beautifully done introduction to the new hottest thing.
This manual is clearly the work of some right-wing, neo-conservative, hawk bureaucrat, so common during the Reagan era.... part of the group of lunatics who so nearly convinced the Soviets we were contemplating a first strike that they almost got us all killed.
I bought one of these model M keyboards out of pure nostalgia. It is superbly built and I love the sound of the keys. However, by today's standards it's an ergonomic disaster, as it forces you to rotate your wrists to an uncomfortable degree. And I quickly tired of how much pressure it takes to depress the keys. My new favorite keyboard in the world is the aluminum beauty that came with my iMac. Oh well.