An Early Christmas Present

Yufang gave me the sweetest Christmas present a little bit early so that I could begin using it right away. Actually, I’m using it to write this post. She gave me an Apple Wireless Keyboard as pictured above on my desk.

I’ve had a Wireless Mighty Mouse for a year, which I really like except for scroller issues that have to be remedied too often with the help of a rough sheet of paper.

Now that I have the Wireless Keyboard, I can set my MacBook on Yufang’s hand-me-down computer stand, which places the screen at eye level. She’s been worried I spend too many hours perched over my laptop, so I hope that her fears are now allayed with my keyboard and elevated computer screen. I can report that it is more comfortable in this new configuration, which I haven’t experienced in quite awhile.

However, I do have a beef with Apple about the way that they shipped the Wireless Keyboard to our house. The keyboard is the same size as my MacBook keyboard, and the box that it came in isn’t that much larger. To save space, they even pre-installed the two AA batteries! With all of these packaging efficiencies, Apple looses their environmentally friendly gains by first shipping it DHL, which circumnavigated a curiously long route from Pennsylvania to New Jersey to Kentucky before being handed off to USPS for its final trek to Ohio with USPS, and placing the teeny-tiny keyboard inside a ginormous box full of packing paper, which you can see below.

Perhaps they mega-packed my keyboard, because they knew that it was going on an epic journey to find its way to us. Nevertheless, Apple needs to find a better balance between packaging and product shipping safety. I’m afraid that this earns them a SHIPPING: FAIL.

Now, if I can only keep myself from reaching up to my laptop keyboard to do things like adjusting the volume.