Glanced at the announcement for the revision to the Macbook lines.

The main change makes the entire notebook line very disposable. Sure notebooks tend to be that way. However the Macbook Pros are supposed to be aimed at a “Professional” market. As nebulous as that can be.

To my mind the logical lineup is a basic feature set that grows as you move up the line. Firewire and express card slot should be part of that basic set at least for 15″ and 17″.

Apple appear to have bowed to pressure and brought back firewire to the 13″. This makes it a very tempting small machine that I’d seriously consider. Even with the combined audio in / out jacks.

Interesting that they’ve brought back a 15″ at the old mid $2K price bracket. Look closely though. Its a high end 13″ with a 15″ screen. There is no discrete video card.

The big issue I have is the removal of the express card slot from the 15″. Apparently the SD memory card reader is considered more useful. That slot offered a good amount of flexibility for a notebook. As such its a deal breaker if I was in the market for a new 15″.

This leaves the 17″ as the “Professional” machine. But its a desktop replacement with quite a price tag and needs a chiropractor to help with the attendant back ache from hauling it around.

I can see why they’ve gone with a sealed battery. I’ve not got confirmation but I’d say the user replaceable memory and drive feature has probably gone as well. The benefits to Apple are two fold, customers are forced to order their upgrades up front (so improved options sales) and not needing to stock so many pesky batteries.

Where the designs appear to have gone as user friendly as possible. Its flipped the other way completely. No room for improvements. Totally sealed units.

I’m of two minds. Given my usage is fairly average these are not problematic. But for a media professional that’s quite a lot of limitations if they’re wanting to be totally portable. Once that battery is drained, good luck with finding a power point.

I don’t believe that Apple are saving on production costs by removing such features. Some just don’t make sense, like firewire. They’ve done it before and brought it back to the 15″. Its just odd. The designers seem to work in a bubble or at least have a very specific user requirement in mind.

By and large this works to their benefit. However this just seems to emphasise how disposable notebooks are becoming. Guess my next upgrade can wait for the next revision. Not that that’s a significant change.

Corrections:
The fun of leaping in boots and all. Apparently the Mac Book Pros can be upgraded by removing the bottom plate. Not as huge an issue as I initially thought.

According to Anandtech, the revised batteries grant significantly greater battery life. Staggeringly so based on their tests. So the tradeoff is the EC card slot being taken up by battery it seems. The 15″ almost doubles its battery life.

Thats not insubstantial. Well worth considering.

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The thought was to implement a wiki for the development team. Simple enough.

Decided on MediaWiki. Check out the requirements. The latest PHP and MySQL were required.

The wrinkle is that the UNIX server is Red Hat Enterprise 4. An upgrade you say ? Well the problem is that neither the downtime or time required to get the upgrade done are available. Since its the development back end.

Put it on the Windows server ? Feasible. Lots of good WAMP stacks available. The problem is that most are designed as development environments. Additionally MediaWiki requires a couple of UNIX utilities. There are good Windows versions. However some additional work would be required in getting it configured to use them.

Seek an alternative. Well there is that Mac Mini spare at home. Only the problem is that its Tiger on a G4. Its got a use by date ticking closer every day. Its got the same issue that the RHEL4 server has. Eventually it’ll end of life.

Another option is to repurpose an old machine. Put on the latest version of Fedora since thats what I prefer.

Its the fact that Open Source projects are predicated on the latest and greatest stack. As they should be.

The upshot is that hardware should be generic. Allowing as many options as possible. In the case of Apple, the premium paid means that the buyer darn well better run OS X. Why else buy one. However it can be repurposed should the need arise since its now Intel based.

So here is to old leftovers.

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So I pulled the old desktop out. Refreshed it and have it running server duties. As I’m lazy as all get out, its running Windows XP. All thats needed is file shares and running TVersity for media streaming.

Flicking through the local stationary office supplier and big box store catalogs yielded a plethora of NAS devices. Some that even acted as DLNA servers. Nifty in terms of a plug and play option.

However there were a number of problems:

1. Wildly varying feature sets and price points.
2. Limited expansion.
3. Not quite as silent as expected.
4. Exchange rates causing prices to rise by 20% +.

Given these issues, I decided to plod on with the noisy heat generator.

But then the NForce 730i landed. In the shadow of the new Macbooks, these nifty HTPC motherboards offered a great feature set for a reasonable price. Reasonable graphics card, video acceleration, hdmi. All crammed into a small board designed to generate a minimum of heat.

So I set out wallet in pocket to upgrade just the core. Meaning CPU, motherboard and memory. The total cost was a touch more than the NAS option. However a lot more flexible and expandable.

Herein lies the problem. Most hardware stores are geared to volume. Even more so with the current retail climate. So these boards are scarce as hens teeth. Despite all the breathless press coverage.

So here sits CPU, memory, disk and SATA DVD burner with no useful purpose. Options multiplying to headache proportions. Going with the alternative Intel G series chipsets (supposedly less advanced but common as flies) or with a more standard motherboard (and possibly needing to upgrade the power supply as well).

The additional wrinkle. Mistakenly buying 1066 DDR2 memory.

When did it become so complicated ?

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Attended Google Developer Day. Along with a significant proportion of local and interstate developers.

Three streams of crunchy API goodness. There were a number of American accents floating around which was great. Google are definitely making a commitment to developers and producing solid tools.

Enlightened self interest.

Well run and organised. I attended the introductory talks and flitted between the in-depth ones. Most of the talks are available on youtube and the documentation is around for study.

Caught up with some folks. Chatted with some new people. All up it was a great day.

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As with any and all things. Free doesn’t necessarily mean good.

Some free things are exceptionally good. Open source software is a great example. I won’t draw the distinction between speech and beer. Except to say that both are good.

I was tasked with fixing a computer. It was a Windows machine. So all the things that spring to mind were what was wrong.

If only people would choose more wisely. Examine what it is that they are being offered. Is it really worth installing ?

In this case it was the attempt to fix / remove the malware, spyware and virii infestation. Nearest I can figure they were using whatever first came to hand. Its not necessarily their fault.

As far as can be determined. The antivirus software was causing the menu bar to disappear, hijack the browser and cause reboots at random.

I disabled all non essentials with msconfig. Installed a spyware remover. Had it clean out malware and spyware.

The plan was then to run Housecall to look for virii. Unfortunately it locked up during the scan. The harddisk deciding that it was all too hard. It crashed unceremoniously with no warning.

Not even the usual plaintive grinding noises. Reboots yielded an error message that there were no drives.

The last resort is to try and recover the data by putting the drive in an external case. Crossed fingers that it responds.

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Done the rounds. But still amusing.

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Been doing a bit of spring cleaning around the house. Following through on some new years resolutions.

Decided to not be so precious about books. I love them. Would dearly like to have a room to dedicate to a library. Lovely idea but dead weight in reality.

So I’ve been purging all the books that aren’t near and dear to me. Well at least that I think I might re-read anyways. Shifting a third of them out.

As a side thought, I’ve been eyeing off those e-book readers. Dymocks have gone into it in a big way. The only problem is that they’re selling the Iliad reader for eight hundred and ninety nine dollars.

I’d tried to locate the Sony reader in Japan whilst I was there. But had no luck. Not even at the Sony store. The Iliad has more that I want. From what I’ve read its not that flexible.

The ASUS eeePC could probably do the trick. Its small and light. However the screen is small and the form factor really isn’t conducive of reading on the bus or train. The newer model with the larger screen looks serviceable.

That currently leaves me with the Ipod Touch which I own. The chief issue is that the only reader is a builtin PDF reader in the mail app. I needed to drop twenty five dollars to obtain it and a number of other apps. Lets not go into this issue again.

The multitouch interface serves well for reading. Being able to magnify text at a sweep. Both portrait and landscape reading.

Graphics come up well. However the overall screen size is small. Reading comics may be difficult as it would require much touching to get through a page. So to speak.

But mailing a document to read ? I guess thats easier than most other methods. Although I can’t see why they didn’t just make the pdf viewer available generally.

Its a good start. I’ll give it a go around and abouts to see if it serves.

Definitely looking forward to the App Store. Perhaps the forthcoming WWDC will provide further details. There appear to be developers galore in line so it will be interesting to see how they compare to the existing apps available.

A document viewer must be in there somewhere. Either from Apple or a third party.

Using the Itunes store on the Touch is a revelation. So I can only imagine the App Store will be the same. As a delivery and payment mechanism it should be seamless.

Apple are going to go to the bank.

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The state of the internet on mobile devices is all over the shop. On Saturday we needed to book a restaurant for Sunday night.

We only had the name and the suburb. So I though I’d go to whitepages from my phone browser. Bad mistake. Whitepages came up a mess. Soldiering on I plugged in what details I had but came back with an eye straining mass of gibberish.

Sitting there for awhile to think. What the heck give google a go.

Plugged in the URL. It detected my phone and adjusted the web page to suit my Nokia Navigator. Entered the restaurant name and it comes back with the address and phone number. Not to overdo things, it also returns a map and a link for directions.

Now thats what I call a service. Plus its free !

People may complain about Google being a monopoly. Theres a reason for it though. They really know their tech and they make sure that it works in most given situations.

That little extra care is what keeps them king of search. Plus we got to have a great meal.

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The Ipod Touch is a great bit of gear. As an Ipod its features and functionality are top notch.

However what annoys me is Apple’s dogmatic enforcement of product differentiation. The Touch is an Iphone without the phone components. I accepted that on release that it was decided that it be stripped of some functionality.

The problem is that functionality is solely some applications. In this case some small apps for mail, weather, stock, etc. A little over the top. To anyone its abundantly clear that a Touch is not an Iphone. So whats the harm in giving them both the same apps.

I have no qualms about buying new apps.

It just stings that the missing apps are now made available to new Touch purchasers at no charge. In fact there was a price drop on the Touch. But for early adopters those apps come at a cost. Various places have said that its an accounting requirement.

I’d like to know if theres an official statement that it is. It seems very much a grey area. Especially given the long practice of BIOS and firmware updates.

Case in point, PS3 and XBox360 adding DIVX and XVID playback functionality. How is it that these significant features come at no charge ?

Nearest I can figure is that Apple is conditioning the public to pay for apps delivered via the Itunes store.

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I don’t need or want another login.

I have a document that currently tracks my logins. Note that none of these are work related.

Your app better be darn good is all I can say.

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The latest trip was immense fun. As per usual I took care of video duties while the better half handled photos. This is the usual assignment to keep things simple and light.

As much as I like video and editing. Sometimes its just easier to capture that one moment. Snap and its done. Not like video where I need to actively look at everything I want to capture. Make sure I don’t run into someone whilst filming. Changing tapes and keeping batteries fresh.

Having said that I’ve gotten into a groove with video. I “run and gunned” it for two weeks. Got short snippets and key moments. Was happy to leave it at photos for certain times. I miss things when all I’m doing is video. Its important to stop and enjoy the moments as much as record them.

There was just so much great stuff with the Japan trip it was overwhelming. I kept wishing I’d brought the DSLR. Especially around Kyoto. Give me three days of photo shoots and I’d be a happy camper.

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So I snagged a Touch a couple of weeks ago. Succumbing finally and laying down the readies for a shiny new toy.

Its a very cool bit of gear. Mobile safari works a treat. Sixteen gig is more than enough for all my music and podcasts. Its seems quite heavy after my first gen Nano.

No signs of video display issues with blacks that have been reported elsewhere. The multitouch interface is a revelation. I’m still currently investigating the rigors of H264 encoding.

My Ipod duties are split between the two devices. The Touch fits the bill during planned activities out i.e. daily commutes and waiting on appointments. The Nano is the omnipresent entertainer in that five minutes that needs to be filled as I’ve slipped it into my pocket on the spur of the moment.

The main annoyance I have is that since the Iphone release. There has been several revisions to Itunes. I can’t help but think that most of them are to do with Apple blocking the hacking of the Iphone. All in aid of protecting their revenue agreement with AT&T.

My cursory scans of the update notes don’t really highlight any pressing issues that would require such speedy updates. Although I’m anxiously awaiting the new release which enables event entry to the calendar.

Here in lies my second peeve. The intentional hobbling of features on the Ipod Touch in comparison to the Iphone.

So if your after an Ipod with a good screen that can double as a web browser in a pinch then the Touch is it. It is expensive though if you do a feature comparison between the Iphone and it.

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USB2 extension cable. Simple enough accessory. Go to a computer store your looking at between twenty and twenty five dollars for a one point eight metre extension.

Go to the local supermarket. The same extension is five dollars.

Go figure.

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Last Saturday the second Barcamp for Sydney was held.

Top notch event. A varied mix of talks. The most popular revolved around startups and experiences with startups. Extremely informative and lively discussions.

I ended up staying for the full day.

Well worth the effort of attending. Thanks to the organisers.

As the slogan goes. Time to get out there and execute.

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Google realised the ill will they were generating by only offering Checkout credits after they shut down their video service.

DRM cuts both ways it seems. This turnabout is really only due to them needing to keep their reputation. A smaller company with less invested would have most likely just cut and run.

So good for Google for doing the right thing in doing proper refunds on top of the Checkout credits they issued.

Perhaps distribution companies will realise that DRM isn’t a good thing. Certainly some seem to be if Universal are any judge.

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Remote desktop via dialup.

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A certain phone launches on Friday.

The coverage has been astounding. Both good and bad.

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Its early June. Where are the new Macbook Pros ?

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I’m not complaining that Microsoft are patching their software.

In the last day and a half I’ve had thirty plus patches installed on my machine.

The programmers in Redmond must have been working overtime these last few weeks.

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I gave in and bought a 512Mb 7900GS to get better frame rates on Supreme Commander. I’d have spent double what I paid for it, if I’d gone with an 8800GTS and a new power supply to run it.

I’ll save getting a directx 10 card for when I get an entirely new setup. Not a lot of point since there aren’t any directx10 games out.

However I discovered the new hard drive I’d added previously was dropping out. Intermittently running and then failing.

Popped open the case to investigate. I figured the new video card was overloading the power supply since its only a 350 watt. I found that I’d chained two hard drives and the video card on one power cable.

So I moved the video card to a less used power cable.

Let it run over night. Voila. Problem gone.

I’m not holding my breathe though. I’ll run it over the week to see if its genuinely gone. I could still be up for a new power supply. Crossed fingers that I’m not.

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