My past few years with Apple

As the title suggests, what follows is a laundry list of the annoyances and difficulties I've experienced using Apple products over the past few years:


The IPod
1. Received an iPod shuffle, 2nd Gen, nicely engrave with my handle :)
2. (2 months old) the IPod clip, while clipped to my waist, gets a severe bend. I manage to bend it back with pliers, but it never clips as well again.
3. (5 months old) iPod stops interfacing properly with the Mac. When plugged in, it's orange light continues to blink, and it does recharge, but does not appear on my system so I can't change songs. I proceed through all of Apple's troubleshooting suggestions, though most of them talk about resetting the iPod software using a program that also cannot detect there's an iPod connected.
4. (11 months old) After not using the iPod for about six months, I call tech support, who are quite helpful and agree to send me a new docking cable. The cable arrives, doesn't solve the problem, so tech support agrees to send a replacement iPod. I'm given a choice between getting it sooner or waiting longer to have the replacement engraved. I choose the engraving; the replacement iPod arrives unengraved.

The MacBook
1. Purchase a brand new MacBook online; it arrives promptly and complete.
2. (Day 1) Notice that the mouse button is sticking in a horrible way. Apple website says to take it in to the Apple store; another forum is full of posts saying the Apple store doesn't do anything, but it can be fixed by putting a small piece of folder paper behind the battery. This works.
3. (Week 1) Plastic begins chipping off the front edge of the keyboard plate.
4. (Month 1) Battery stops connecting entirely. Take Mac to the Apple Store in London for a replacement. Days a couple of days, but they do it all under warranty and also replace the chipped keyboard plate free of charge.
5. (Month 1 + 1 Week) Keyboard plate begins chipping again.
6. (Month 3-present) Mac randomly decides to restart when lid is closed
7. (Month 6) First power cord stops working. Purchase a new one.
8. (Month 8) Second power cord stops working. Call to get a replacement from Tech Support. They say that the cord is covered, but I'll need to pay $40 for shipping. I ask to speak with a manager, and that $40 charge soon goes away.
7. (Year 1.2) Battery stops working entirely. Apple store suggests I take machine to my nearest apple store, and helpfully tells me that it's in Toronto (I'm on Vancouver Island).
8. (Year 1.2) I set machine up to save its state and hibernate when the lid is closed in order to not have to restart it every time it's unplugged. This requires waiting for it to sleep when I'm finished and for it to wake up when I want to start again. I still must restart and lose work whenever the magnetic power cord pops out, which is designed to happen quite easily.
9. (Year 1.3) Third power cord stops working, it's head frayed off completely. Tech support sends me a new one.
10. (Year 1.5) The same old battery manages to reconnect. Only has about four minutes of life at full charge, often dying before or as the "low battery" warning came up. But, I now had enough time to replug in the power cord before losing work, so I was happy.
11. (Year 1.7) A new problem begins, in which when waking up from hibernation, the keyboard is completely inactive. Sometime it comes back if I wait about five minutes, normally I must either restart or rehibernate and wake up again.
11. (Year 2) Chips have continued to regularly fall of the plastic at the edges. At this point about half of the keyboard plate's edges are gone, the monitor plate is chipped in three places and cracked straight across in two places at the top.
12. (Year 2.3) Forth power cord stops working, with atrocious timing, and I have to purchase a new one in order to use the machine—I opt for a third party model. I call tech support for a replacement regardless, in order to have a spare.

The Magical Negro

I was recently exposed to the concept of "The Magical Negro", a tv and movie trope in which a white protagonist is aided by a African character. Often, this character will possess some variety of super-natural powers, be disabled and/or of visibly low status, and be patient and wise. This aid will be entirely altruistic, purely out of the goodness of the character's heart, and will often be the only contribution of that character to the story.

And it's true that endless examples of this can be found. From Will Smith in "The Legend of Bagger Vance", to The Oracle in "The Matrix", to Whoopi Goldberg on "Star Trek: TNG", to Morgan Freeman in "Robin Hood", to Morgan Freeman in "The Shawshank Redeption", to Morgan Freeman in "Bruce/Evan Almighty...

Yet somehow this didn't sit well with me: not the phenomenon but the very concept itself. "Aren't we supposed to strive towards not seeing colour?" I though, though that's a rather arrogant view if this truly indicates a problem.

Eventually I realised that I was uncomfortable with how the question is being posed, implicitly asking "How many examples of this character being black can you think of?" And, lo and behold, a slew of black examples are returned as the answer. I wondered what one might find if, on the other hand, one searched for such characters from any ethic background?

So that's what I did. Went through my list of favourite movies, noting where I could each character that fit the definition above, the results of which are in the table at the end of this post, and a racial summary shown in the chart at left. This wasn't a formal study, of course, and from about 250 films only 30 characters came to mind. Part of the difficulty again stems from the definition of a "magical helper". The help offered must be altrustic, i.e. not befitting the character himself—at the same time, the character is defined as one-dimensional, with no background, existing solely to help the protangonists. But, without knowing the character's background, how can we know his reasons for helping? For example, in "It's a Wonderful Life", (spoilers ahead), we know Clarence helps George Bailey in order to get his wings—had the story not given us that background on Clarence, would his help then become altruistic, and his character become a magical helper?

Despite that, from these rough results in seems that far more of these characters are Caucasian than of African origin; in fact, the number of these helpful characters played by black-skinned people is about the same as the number played by animals. And this shows the crux of my issue with this question: what would be the "correct" percentage of African characters to play this part? If examples of this character were invariably white, wouldn't the complaint become that Africans are never shown as altruistic characters with the virtues of patience and understanding? I posit that there is no "correct" ratio of ethnicity here, no more than there would be a correct ratio of hair-length, age, occupation or anything else unrelated to the character's part in the story.

Role	Actor	Race
Red	Morgan Freeman	African American
The Wolf	Harvey Keitel	Caucasian
Obi Wan Kenobi	Alec Guiness	Caucasian
R2D2 & C3P0	--	Robot
Motivational Speaker	Brian Cox	Caucasian
Tim Roth's Supervisor	--	African American
Oogway	--	Animal
Various sea creatures	--	Animal
Miracle Max & Wife	Billy Crystal	Caucasian
Silent Bob	Kevin Smith	Caucasian
Turnip Head the Scarcrow	--	Object
Journalist	Philip Seymour Hoffman	Caucasian
The Sphinx	Wes Studi	Native American
Rufus	George Carlin	Causcasian
S. R. Hadden	John Hurt	Caucasian
Shepherd Book	Ron Glass	African American
Nick	Robert Prosky	Caucasian
Sylva	Natascha McElhone	Caucasian
Curly Washburn	Jack Palance	Caucasian
The Hermit	Tommey Tweed	Caucasian
Gaby LaRoche	Syme Jago	Caucasian
Sebastian	Samuel E. Wright	Animal
Lisle Von Rhoman	Isabella Rossellini	Caucasian
Peter Malloy	Tom Selleck	Caucasian
Mary Poppins	Julie Andrews	Caucasian
Nikola Tesla	David Bowie	Caucasian
Wilson	Volleyball	Object
Andrew the Butler	Roddy McDowall	Caucasian
Del Paxton	Bill Cobbs	African American