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| Product: iReset Buttons |
Company: Power Support (sold exclusively in North America by Macs Only!) |
| Web: www.macsonly.com |
Phone: n/a |
| Platform: Apple iMac |
SRP: US$8.75
Street Price: same |
Cred Rating: | Special Award: |
The iMac is a heck of a machine but it's vexed by a few troublesome idiosyncracies. Some users have complained about the lack of a
removable disk drive. Others are not happy with the design of the keyboard and mouse. Neither of these bother me that much. There *is* one design flaw that really gets my goat: up until recently, my Bondi Blue didn't have a way to be reset after a crash without resorting to the old fashioned straightened paper clip (a.k.a an "ejectrode"). All that's changed with the oh-so-simple iReset Buttons.
I frequently install beta software, test drivers and do other things that
tend to cause problems with the overall stability of my computers. The only way
to safely reset the iMac after such a failure is to insert the straightened
end of a paper clip into a pinhole drilled into the side panel. My computer desk doesn't have any drawers, so I end up losing or throwing out the paper clips once I'm done, and I've gone through about a half a box of the darn things since I got my iMac a few months ago.
The pinhole that takes the paper clip is positioned over a programmer's
reset switch on the motherboard of the iMac itself. When depressed, the
switch forces the Mac to restart regardless of what it's doing or what
condition it's in. It's quite a handy feature if you need to bring
your Mac back from limbo. There's another pinhole underneath that's the interrupt switch. This one is useful if you're a Mac developer and you have to force your machine into debug mode to check out what's going on under the
hood. Restarting from crashes isn't the only useful function for these
programmer's switch holes, either. On occasion, Apple has released firmware
upgrades for the iMac and getting these upgrades to load properly
requires hitting the programmer's switch.
For such an elegantly designed machine, it seems inexplicable that
it would lack a more sophisticated way of resetting itself. Perhaps it's hubris
on Apple's part, expecting that no one would need to reset the Mac using
the programmer's switches frequently. To address this unfortunate oversight,
Japanese manufacturer Power Support has developed a simple, elegant
solution cryptically called Odd Switch Technology (or OST). North American
retailer Macs Only! is the exclusive distributor of the OST, which they've
christened iReset Buttons to help dumb Americans like me figure out what
the thing does.
iReset Buttons consist of a translucent polycarbonate switch comprised of two thin, long prongs connected to a C-bracket. The long edge of the bracket
contains a piece of adhesive tape. On top of each prong is a small nub.
When installed on the iMac's side access panel, iReset Buttons sit on top
of the programmer's reset and interrupt switch pinholes, with the prongs
positioned inside the pinholes. If the need arises, a firm press to either
nub activates the switches on the motherboard.
It seems absurd to pay US$8.75 for a simple plastic switch, which is why
iReset Buttons get rated four batteries instead of five. If you're an adventurous "crash test dummy" (i.e. someone like me who insists on monkeying with the latest alpha and beta software), or otherwise have an iMac prone to freezing, you really should consider one of these dohickeys. And just think of all those paper clips you'll save!
- Peter Cohen [5/12/99]
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