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The Road Warrior Mailbag + My New Years Apple Subnotebook Predictions; How Did I Do?

"A new Pismo, that's what I want"

From Jim

Charles,

I'm going on 7 years of use on this 400 MHz Pismo - nary a problem, except for a 30 GB IBM drive failure. The original 6 GB drive is still going strong in an external case. It now has a 100 GB drive. And I added RAM to 768 MB. IF, (a BIG if) Apple ever came out with another Pismo-style laptop, I'm in!! To me, it is hard to see how the Pismo form can be beat!

Running Tiger 10.4.11 great. My dream machine would be an Intel Pismo-style in a 12" model - might be a little tight, but I do not need/want a CD/DVD drive, and therefore I think Apple could make one that size with easily replaceable hard drive, etc. A new Pismo, that's what I want.

I bought this one used from eBay when it was one year old, so it has a total of 8 years on it now.

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Hi Jim;

Pismos are amazing. I also bought my first one used when it was one year old, and it's still serving as my utility machine with three hours or so of daily use. It's never given a moment's trouble. The screen backlight glows a bit pink when it's first woken up, but it's been doing that for about two years now and it cleans up after a few minutes.

An Intel Pismo would also be my dream machine. In terms of ergonomics, versatility, and expandability, it's never been matched let alone topped. I find it's performance quite acceptable with OS 10.4.11 Tiger, although I think that will be the end of the road. I expect to get several years more useful service from my Pismos, but it's sad to contemplate that we'll likely not see the likes of them again. The new MacBook Air indicates that Apple is going in a radically different direction from the Pismo's utility and practicality (not to mention its astounding ruggedness and durability).

I wouldn't want to give up on an optical drive, but I would be satisfied with and external one - so long as it was FireWire.

Charles

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My New Years Apple Subnotebook Predictions; How Did I do?

Just before New Years, I stuck my neck out here with some predictions of what the new Apple subnotebook anticipated for intro at Macworld Expo would be like, noting that:

"Notebook computers - not iPhones or iPods - are Apple's hottest product these days, and as such it's reasonable to assume that Apple will give them some attention and limelight at Expo this year.

Also, the reports of ultraslim notebook prototypes being seen in the hallways at Cupertino and a report this week that had at recent holiday event where Apple had artists perform, the latter were promised each of the new laptops to be released at MacWorld have the ring of incidental authenticity about them."

So, how did I do with my prognosticating? I was right about a new 'Book debuting at expo, and the reported "ultraslim notebook prototypes" was obviously authentic, since that fits the MacBook Air to a tee.

As for my bullet-point my projection of the shape the new machine was likely to take, here goes:

• Very thin form factor, probably not as thin as the new Apple aluminum keyboards, but trending toward that.

Pretty spot-on with that one, although the MacBook Air is even thinner than I ever imagined it would be.

• Styling theme - think iPhone

Struck out there.

• 12" widescreen display, 1280 x 800 resolution

Guessed wrong on the screen size.

• LED display backlighting

Nailed that one

• 2- 2.4 GHz Intel mobile CPU, maybe Santa Rosa, maybe the new Penryn mobile processor

Way off base. A special 1.6/1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo 60 percent smaller than the standard notebook C2Ds. Who knew?

• 1 GB RAM upgradable to 4 GB

Wrong on both counts - turned out to be 2 GB but not upgradable at all


• 64 GB NAND Flash data storage (although I'm still equivocal about this, and won't be terribly surprised if it has a hard drive of 120 GB and up, at least as an option)

I got that right, although I overestimated the hard drive capacity.

• ATI Radeon X1900 GPU with 256MB VRAM (as opposed to the MacBook's integrated "vampire" video)

Totally mistaken. The MacBook Air also uses the same Intel GMA X3100 integrated graphics processor with 144MB of annexed system memory as the MacBook.

• Lithium Polymer battery providing up to six hours runtime

Not too far off; an hour optimistic on the runtime, and I was totally blindsided by the battery not being user-swappable

• Dual-layer SuperDrive, but not necessarily inside the main notebook case. The old PowerBooks 100 and 2400c both had bundled external floppy drives, and I won't be surprised at all if Apple goes with something like this to help achieve a shockingly thin case profile. I can't imagine them selling a machine at the premium price of $1,700-plus without some sort of optical drive solution included. You still have to install software, and not everything is downloadable from the Internet. Likewise, some sort of backup and data copying medium is really indispensable or maybe you just want to watch a movie on the 12" widescreen.

Not too far off. There is an external SuperDrive, but it's optional ($99), and I was more right about the "shockingly thin" profile than I imagined!

• An iPhone-style camera and or GPS (long shots)

No GPS, but the MacBook Air does come with an iSight camera.

• 3 pounds weight or less

Bang on with that one

• iSight, Bluetooth, 802.11b/g/n, Firewire 400 (and maybe 800), USB2.0, 10/100/1000 Ethernet, audio in/out, mini-DVI

The MacBook Air has iSight, Bluetooth, 802.11n, a lone USB 2.0 port, an earphone port and mini-DVI, but alas no FireWire whatsoever and no analog audio-in.

• Price at $1,750 - $1,799

Yup, but I never figured you'd be able to option it out to more than $3,000.

I also commented:

There have also been rumors of an aluminum Macbook, but I'm extremely doubtful, and what I think may be happening is some confusion with the much more probable aluminum subnotebook. The MacBook form factor is just 19 months old - a spring's chicken by recent Apple praxis. Heck, they hung on to the dual USB iBook form factor for more than five years, and the current 15" and 17" MacBook Pro case designs date back to the correspondent PowerBook G4 models of September and January 2003 respectively.

It's not impossible of course, but I am exceedingly doubtful that Apple is planning any major form factor revisions for the MacBook in 2008 (the cooling vents and keyboard were changed a bit with the Santa Rosa MacBook revisions in October. What we are likely to see is a switch to LED-illuminated 13.3" displays in the MacBook from the current CCFL backlights, and that may indeed be announced as early as Macworld Expo.

There were no MacBook or MacBook Pro updates whatsoever announced at Expo, but I guessed pretty much correctly on the rest.

In summary, I think I didn't do that badly with my predictions on the isolated details, but was way off the mark on the whole picture of what Apple was about to unleash.

I'll have more to say about that, and how my own system upgrade plans are shaping up in tomorrow's The Road Warrior column.

CM



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cmoore@macopinion.com


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