Due to my non-disclosure agreement with Apple, I cannot divulge much about the latest iOS version.

So…

Over the Air Updates = GOOD!

Today’s release of the new Macbook Air lineup vaults the machines from “nice to have, but not enough machine to do any real computing” to “the future of laptops”.  I’m speaking more specifically about the new top of the line 13″ model.  With the processor upgrade to the Core i5 and i7 “Sandy Bridge” line and the addition of the Thunderbolt port, the two biggest knocks on the Air have been quashed.  Additionally, the keyboard is now backlit which, for me, was a total show stopper with the previous model.

It will be fun to see the reviews from the “experts” (guys with enough readers or money to get the new models early) who slammed the previous model for being too slow, too underpowered and with to few expansion options. As I examine the specs for this new mini-mighty 13″ model, I can only find one reason not to buy it: there’s too few Thunderbolt accessories to date.  As with any new peripheral interface, it will take the third party guys a while to catch up, but in the next couple of months we will have forgotten about today’s shortcomings.  So, why do I think the new Air defines the future of laptops?

1. Moving parts and portability don’t mix well. With no hard disk or DVD drive the Air is a true “solid state” machine.  The two most fragile components of a laptop are also the slowest. The SSD is so much faster than a spinning disk that even the previous generation Air with its much slower processor felt snappy and responsive and 256 gigs ain’t shabby.  DVD drives are going the way of the floppy disk. I can’t remember the last time I slid a disk into my MacBook Pro. Yep, more rugged, affordable and much faster…I’ll take it.
2. Core i5 & i7 = Plenty of muscle.  Let’s face it, a 1.4 GHz Core 2 Duo is a bit whimpy when we’re talking about modern laptops.  While they’re adequate for the $500 Best Buy specials, we Mac users have come to expect a bit more for $1000+.  While still just dual-core, these new grinders have enough beef to handle all but the most demanding number crunching, like video encoding or 3D modeling.  Virtually everything else is quite doable.
3. Thunderbolt will make all things possible. OK, maybe I’m jumping the gun a little bit, but my mind just reels when I think about all the technology a bi-directional 10 gigabit connection makes possible. I imagine it won’t be long before we see gigabit ethernet adapters, firewire hubs, external video cards and much more to go along with the already available super-fast storage devices. The old “lack of peripheral connectivity” argument no longer holds any water at all.

Any one of these improvements alone make a MacBook Air a very desireable machine, but taken together (especially in the 13″ model) the Air could become a “MacBook Pro Killer”.

Well, I had a reader tell me that I’m no longer a noob. I’ve been using a Mac almost exclusively for two years now so I guess I have crossed the threshold out of noob territory. OK, so I guess it’s time to move on. I’ve registered the mactexan.com domain and I’ve built a Squarespace site for starters. I really love the WordPress ecosystem, but Squarespace does make things mighty easy. I’ll be phasing out MacNoob.net and focusing my efforts on MacTexan.com. No promises, but I think I’ll do a little of both for a while until I decide on the new platform. Stay tuned here and here.

Three days ago the FedEx man dropped off what I thought was way too small a box to contain my new laptop. I bought a 17” MacBook Pro to replace my late 2007 model (also a 17” MBP). Most reviewers write off the big Mac portable as impractical, but I’ve loved mine since I got it nearly two years ago and have always been happy to trade a little portability to get all the features offered by the 17, not least of which is its big, beautiful, high-res (1920 X 1200) display. At this year’s WWDC we learned Apple was removing the ExpressCard slot on all MBP models except the 17”. For me, that was the clincher. I use the expansion for eSATA, 1394b (FireWire 800) and a multi-card reader and wanted my new portable to retain those capabilities. This model may be the last to do so, but its not like I need much of an excuse to get a new Mac. This just happened to be a good one. Here’s what I bought:

17” MacBook Pro

3.06 MHz Core 2 Duo

4 GB DDR3 RAM

256 GB SSD

First impressions:

Apple’s “unibody” manufacturing technique for all MacBook Pro models yields a laptop that, when closed feels as solid as an axe blade. Additionally, the fit and finish of this portable is more precise with tighter tolerances than any laptop I’ve ever seen. Its < 1” thick body is amazingly rigid (both open and closed) given its larger proportions. The non-user-replaceable battery came fully charged according to the LED indicators along the left edge so I immediately powered up as soon as I got the protective mylar off. After going through the OS X setup I applied 150 megs of software updates from Apple and powered down. After moving to another office and attaching the magsafe I was anxious to see how the SSD would affect boot speed so, using my iPhone as a stopwatch, I pressed the power button. 32 seconds later OS X was running and the disk access was zero! In the thirty years I’ve been in this business I’ve never seen any computer boot so quickly.

Benchmarks I’ve seen for Apple’s SSD performance were far from stellar when compared to others, but this initial experience put a big smile on my face nonetheless. It happened again the first time I launched Safari. I clicked its dock icon and Safari appeared instantly. It’s almost as if it were running already and I just unhid it. Next, I opened Mail. Same thing. The app launched almost before I got my finger off the mouse. After two days use and migrating all my apps, settings and data from my old MBP, the boot time has increased to a whopping 44 seconds. My advice: If you can afford an SSD for your laptop, buy it! No other upgrade will increase the overall speed of your computer a fraction of what a good SSD will.

After three days:

This is by far the fastest laptop I’ve ever used. Apps open in a blink and file saves happen so quickly I rarely see a progress bar. The NVidia graphics do an excellent job rendering 3D and I’m sure the upgraded GPUs have a lot to do with the machine’s overall “snappy” feel. On more than one occasion I’ve caught myself unnecessarily waiting for something that had already happened while I wasn’t looking.

The LED-backlit display is quite an upgrade from my late ’07 model. First, when the display is off, the black bezel and the screen become one, a nice look. Wake the machine and the high-res, glossy display instantly comes to life. This is quite different from my previous machine with its fluorescent backlighting. It normally took 5 – 10 seconds for the screen to reach its normal brightness and color accuracy. This new Mac display is not only more responsive, colors look quite a bit more accurate also. Side by side, the older Mac’s screen looks almost dull by comparison.

I used the Migration Assistant utility to copy everything from my old Mac via a FireWire 800 cable. It was very simple and took about an hour and a half to copy my settings, apps and data totaling 110 GB. After a restart, I was almost sad. My new Mac looked exactly like my previous one. It took some of the “new” feeling away. Other than that, the tool worked amazingly well. Everything “Apple” transferred without a hitch. iTunes was complete, recognizing my iPhone and Touch, iPhoto, Aperture and their libraries are intact and the new Mac now knows all my network settings for three different networks and multiple hotspots. Maybe I’m still a bit of a noob, but when something works so wonderfully I appreciate it. I haven’t become jaded by Apple’s thoroughness just yet. All I’ve had to do since migrating is re-authorize a number of applications. Some were much more difficult than others, but I’ll save that rant for another day.

Contrasts:

I’m preparing my old Mac for my daughter as I write this. Starting that task after not using the computer for a couple of days throws the differences of the two machines into sharp relief.

Booting the older MBP seemed painfully slow even though it only took about 90 seconds.

Also, I immediately noticed the audible difference. The older Mac’s hard disk does make a little noise. It isn’t much, but after using the SSD for a couple of days, even the relatively light chatter of the 320 GB disk is noticeable.

The older display is less bright and the white balance appears shaded slightly yellow by comparison.

The keyboard difference is noticeable although I use an external keyboard and mouse most of the time. I use this box as a desktop replacement for the most part and the new keyboard feels almost exactly like the latest desktop keyboards from Apple.

The new buttonless trackpad is a much bigger improvement than I imagined. I spent some time setting it up and adjusting my preferences where I also discovered the new gestures make the new trackpad the control device of choice when manipulating graphics and also for navigating Spaces and Expose´.

Speed. This new MacBook Pro is damn quick. It runs every bit as good as my iMac (purchased in April). It should, the specs are almost identical and the SSD is definitely faster than the iMac’s 640 GB hard disk.

If you couldn’t tell, I’m completely pleased with this new machine. Am I $3400 pleased? Probably not, but machine envy is nothing I’ll have to worry about for a few months and my techno-itch has been scratched.

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As the netbook form factor exploded onto the computing scene last year, Linux gearheads everywhere rejoiced in the notion that they finally had a toe-hold into the mainstream computing world. Hardware manufacturers almost universally offered price-leading netbooks (many <$300) with some flavor of Linux pre-installed. Unsuspecting bargain hunters sucked them up but quickly realized none of the software they wanted (or already owned) would run on their new, tiny laptop and the familiar buttons on the screen didn’t do the same thing as the ones on their other computers. Consequently, Linux-based netbook manufacturers saw a 35% return rate. The open source community got their collective bubbles burst when netbook owners shunned their beloved kernel in favor of the six-year-old Microsoft retread, Windows XP. Redmond happily obliged by offering the home version of their old reliable OS to netbook makers for thirty bucks, effectively jabbing the entire Linux community right in the nose. Sure Linux is free, but $30 is really close to free and certainly worth it (for most users) to avoid learning a new operating system.
Fast forward to this year. Look up the word failure in the dictionary and you see a Windows Vista logo. Incompatible, bloated, overbearing and slow are the words frequently used to describe Microsoft’s current OS offering. Installing Vista on a netbook is like putting a Sumo wrestler into a Smart Car. Even a company as obtuse as Microsoft could see that Vista is a complete non-starter in this sub-compact hardware category. But wait, Redmond has a new + improved OS, Windows 7. Is it like every one of its predecessors? Bigger, flashier and feature rich to the point that nothing but the latest, fastest hardware will run it?
No.
As betas trickled out to developers it quickly became apparent Microsoft did something they’ve never done before. They made Windows 7 trim and fit to the point that it runs as good as XP on very minimal hardware. It only took a few days to see 7 popping up on YouTube running on a Dell Mini 9 or Asus Eee PC. And it wasn’t just running, it was running quite well! Windows 7 beta quickly became a very hot item, seeded to every file sharing site you can imagine. The next announcement from Microsoft surprised even me, a long-time Windows developer and MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) subscriber for over 12 years. They said they were making the Windows 7 RC (release candidate) available to everyone for one year! FOR FREE! Now there’s a free version of Microsoft’s latest operating system and by the way, it runs great on the average netbook. Ouch, Linux faithful. If $30 XP was a jab to your nose, free Windows 7 is a right cross to your chin. Down you go.
The referee is counting and I don’t see any sign of the penguin getting up.

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Anybody remember Friendster? How about AOL? Twitter? Bingo! I’m sure that last one rings a bell, even to the non-techies of the world. You can’t tune into a news channel these days without hearing the word tweet every few minutes. I know when my 56 year-old minister asks me about Twitter that its’ cool factor is nearing an end and the technorati will soon abandon it for the next big thing. Being of considerable years myself (53), and having spent the past thirty years in the computer field, I’ve observed and participated in this technical upheaval with more than a passing interest. As I’ve watched the crowds moving from AOL to Friendster to MySpace to Facebook I’m reminded of a similar phenomenon of the non-technical social networks, nightclubs. Although I haven’t been a “clubber” for many years, I have kids in their early twenties and their recounts of social behavior don’t differ much from my own recollection of post-pubescent revelry.
Social networks are only cool as long as the tech elite and others of the “in” crowd grace them with their presence, pronouncements and participation. I knew that Twitter had peaked when the mainstream world made Ashton Kutcher’s million follower milestone newsworthy and Mr. Kutcher proclaimed the event to be as epic as landing a man on the moon. Give me a break. Certainly, the “A List” found Twitter, making the most popular tech pundits like Leo Laporte with a mere 50,000 followers seem insignificant by comparison. About the only thing as certain as Twitter’s “king-o-the-hill” status is its inevitable decline to Friendster-like obscurity. It is just a question of how long it will take. That is largely a function of when a cooler replacement emerges and lures the fickle A-listers away. As with all things social on the street, tech-trendies flock to what’s hot in cyberspace. Today, AOL is about as relevant as Studio 54.
Facebook has almost sent MySpace to the waste bin much the same way MySpace replaced its predecessors like Friendster. To me, that makes Facebook’s Mark Zukerberg the biggest goof on the planet. While he may be technically brilliant for his design of the social networking giant, I think he was a complete idiot for turning down the reported $1.8 billion for his 30% stake in a company with only $150 million in annual sales. To put the numbers in mere mortal terms: If I owned a company that had total sales of $60,000 per year and turned down an offer of $720,000, my relatives would have me committed and rewrite my will. Assuming my company had no operating costs (a silly notion), that’s a factor of 12!
Maybe Facebook will will be different and nothing will emerge to displace its’ popularity. For Mr. Zuckerberg’s sake, I hope so but rather doubt it. Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps he has more technical brilliance up his sleeve and Facebook will evolve into something that keeps the tech-savvy enamored and engaged. History paints a very different picture though. Coolness is perishable. It’s almost like everything social is born with an expiration date and through no fault of their own they waste away just because the clock keeps ticking.

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