Macopinion

The Road Warrior Review - UNIEA Haptique Hard Shell Case For Unibody MacBook

One of the heartbreakers about buying anything new and nice is that dreaded first scratch or dent marring a hitherto pristine factory finish. It's one reason I've never been persuaded to buy a new car. Computers, however, have the advantage of being able to be transported and even used inside protective cases - not an option with an automobile.

The unibody MacBooks and MacBook Pros (now all Pros with the latest WWDC revisions) are drop-dead gorgeous. I love the look and feel of the the 2.0 GHz unibody MacBook I bought last winter, and the thought of it getting bumped or scratched in negotiating the inevitable contact, wear, and abrasions of life in the mobile environment is painful, so some sort of cladding is in order.

Such as the Haptique Hard Shell Case by Universal Electronic Accessories (“Uniea”), a molded plastic snap-on carapace designed to cover and protect your unibody and ensure that its elegantly handsome looks and jewelry-quality finish are preserved unmarred for when you want to show it off or just enjoy the pleasure of looking at it yourself.

The Haptique case is currently available for the 13" unibody MacBook (and presumably the 13" MacBook Pro, although a check with my Uniea contact was unable to confirm that for sure at this point, and pitched as combining the "leather-like" look and feel of a soft case with the protection of a hard case, and is designed to allow the computer to be opened, closed and operated without restriction while remaining in situ in the Haptique.

The various I/O ports, headphone jack and optical drive slot. (and hopefully the new SD Card slot on the Pro model) are all accessible with the case mounted, and cooling vents are unobstructed, although, keeping it real, the extra insulating layer of the case shell will inevitably make the machine run a bit hotter.. There's also a button to access the MacBook’s side-mounted battery indicator.

There is even a tiny aperture for the MacBook's correspondingly tiny blinking sleep light to shine through, which is visible in this shot.

The Haptique measures 230W x 30H x 330D mm and is molded from ABS plastic which provides a hard, rugged shell to protect the computer, and then coated with a soft-textured coating. This coating provides a good gripping surface, but calling it "leather-like" is a bit over the top. Especially in the brighter-colored models, the material looks and feels pretty much like what it is - a good-quality grainy-textured plastic, which should be reasonably impervious to the bumps and abrasions of life on the road, and a really super job of repelling liquid splashes and drips, finger/hand prints, and greasy smudges, and it is very easy to clean using a damp cloth.

The Haptique is easy to install. The case consists of two pieces; one respectively for encasing the screen lid and the main housing of your MacBook. Insert the machine in the bottom section first by resting it on a desk or table and then pressing the MacBook into it. It should nest in "home" with small plastic tabs securing it in several spots around the periphery snapping into place. Keeping the MacBook shut, you then apply the top piece , snap the small tabs home and the Haptique is installed. (Note: the little black bits shown in the photo are just spacers that position and protect the Haptique for shipping in its box.) I also found the Haptique Case easy to remove.

The inside surfaces of the Haptique case don't tightly contact the surface of the MacBook, but instead strategically placed soft pads keep most of the computer skin surface from touching the plastic. The Haptique adds a significant amount of weight to the package, tipping the scales at 13.7 oz (390 grams), but if you need the protection, it's worth it.

While it's difficult to improve on the appearance of the gorgeous Unibody MacBook ( and IMHO neither the Haptique or any other hard shell case does ), having the machine enshrouded in the Haptique for handling and transport does give you a reassuring feeling that it's being insulated and shielded from wear, tear, and trauma, and the case's surface texture also provides a more positive "higher-traction" grip on the MacBook, especially when carrying one-handed. Peace of mind is hard to put a price on.

The Haptique is available in a selection of six semi-translucent (the Apple logo on the lid shows through hazily) colors - White and Black or rather bright shades of Pink, Blue, Green, and Orange. Our test unit came in Key Lime Green, which was incidentally my favorite color for the original clamshell iBook,, but were I choosing one of these cases I would probably go with a more subdued white or black, both of which harmonize nicely with the unibody MacBook's elegant livery.

The Haptique Hard Shell MacBook Case sells for $49.95

For more information about Uniea products, which also include a line of very cool laptop and small digital device totes available in silk, visit:
http://www.uniea.com

***



Charles W. Moore

The Road Warrior archives may be accessed from the link at the bottom of this page


Note: Letters to The Road Warrior may or may not be published in The Road Warrior Mailbag at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context.

If you would prefer that your message not appear in The Road Warrior Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published.

CM

The Road Warrior Mailbag - June 8, 2009

MCS and Macbooks
Laptops And MCS
PowerBook 2400c Video Slideshow

MCS and Macbooks

From Andrew

Hey Charles,

I just finished reading your article about MCS. I have serious problems in that area also although they chemical off-gassing triggers an allergic reaction in my eyes leading to the feeling that they are on fire. The doctors can see the allergic reaction and note it down as being obvious and severe, but when I tell them that is 100% certainly caused by chemical off-gassing, they tend to try to suggest it is caused by some kind of seasonal natural element. Of course this is not true as there is almost nothing in nature that I have any kind of reaction to (I can walk through a forest with thousands of smells and have no problem at all). The reaction is always very easy to link to some kind of product and goes away when I remove the product from the house.

Anyway, I was thinking of getting a Macbook and was wondering what kind of experience you had with the new aluminium ones? It is funny because it often comes down to the manufacturer as to what kind of affect will occur. I bought a Panasonic plasma last year and it had zero affect on my sensitivity. It is too difficult to analyse which products will and won’t cause problems as it can sometimes just be that one manufacturer coats their product in some kind of fire-retardant that I don’t get along with and another manufacturer doesn’t. I wonder if each person reacts differently to different chemicals or if we are all reacting to the same set of chemicals in different ways? Many times there doesn’t even need to be a smell and I get major problems. I bought a Dyson vacuum cleaner and for the first 3 months, even with it just sitting in the cupboard, it absolutely destroyed my eyes despite there being no detectable smell. Then, suddenly, the problem disappeared as I guess the chemicals finally off-gassed enough.

Oh well, it bloody sucks. I really don’t think it would be that difficult to manufacture products that were friendly to the indoor air quality but companies don’t really care about small groups of people. Oh yeah, I have to buy a new car soon, that is going to be fun *sigh*

Thanks for writing the article.

Andrew

------–

Hi Andrew;

First, good luck with the car-hunting. I have had to abloutely dismiss any thought of buying a new vehicle, or a lot of other things new. I find that it takes about five years here in Nova Scotia, Canada, for the plastics in car interiors to gas off to an extent that I can use them eithout wearing an activatede charcoal respirator, and even the gas mask isn't adequate for some vehicles when they are brand new.

Non-cognizance on the part of medical professionals is pretty much par for the course as well. Most of the physicians in this part of the world who take MCS seriously are ones who are afflicted themselves.

Of course, even as a medical specialty environmental illness a challenge because the irritant/symptom/individual combinations are virtually infinite and typically ideosyncratic — addressing your "I wonder if each person reacts differently to different chemicals or if we are all reacting to the same set of chemicals in different ways?" question.

MCS isn't really, strictly speaking allergy in the classic sense in most instances, but rather a cluster of hypersensitivities, although the general pattern of adverse reactions to particular substances is a parallel with allergy. Or so I've been told.

As to the MacBook, as with new cars, I've long since given up anticipating that I'm going to be able to tolerate sharing ari space in close proximity with new computers — laptop or desktop. The last ones I was able to do that with were the new PowerBook 5300 I bought in 1996, which never caused me any difficulty, and a WallStreet sales demo I had for several months in 1998 — the latter on of the original series that was built in Cork, Ireland. The positive experience I had with that unit convinced me to order one of the second series "PDQ" PowerBook G3s, but unfortunately Apple had shifted production to Quanta in Taiwan, and the chemical constituency of either the plastic enclosure, some of the internal components, or both had changed. It smelled distinctly different from the Irish-built model, and I soon discovered that it made me quiite ill sitting near it or even being in the same room with it. For the first two and a half years I owned and used that computer, it had to be either inside an externally force-vented isolation case or I had to wear a respirator. It did eventually gas off, and I had no fiurther problems with it, which has been the pattern with every iBook, PowerBook and MacBook I've owned for the past decade.

The ones with the metal housings seem not to to much different from the older polycarbonate skinned units in this context. My 17" PowerBook G4 was not noticibly better than my G3 iBook when new. Both finally gassed off, and I was/am able to use them comfortably in literal hands-on laptop mode, but it took over two years in both cases. I would say that the aluminum MacBook might be a bit less of an off-gasser than the previous two. It's hard for me to judge in terms of odour because I can't really smell any of them, I don't have a very acute sense of smell any more, but my wife and others tell me they do or at least did stink, to a diminishing degree as they age. I did try using the MacBook sans positive ventilation or breathing filtration when it arrived, but quickly banished it to the isolation case after I began reacting. I expect that like the others, it will be a while before it gasses off. Since I'm using it mainly as a desktop workstation, that's not a problem for now, although the whole thing gets very tiresome, as I don't need to tell you.

I agree that it should be possible to manufacture products that would be at least less pronlematical for the chemically hypersensitive. As I notes, the old PowerBook 5300 was benign right out of the box, but then again it ran pretty cool. The nature of plastics pretty much makes off-gassing inevitable, and adding fire-retardant chemicals to the cocktail (a major element in automobile interior and upholstered household furniture off-gassing as well) just makes it more fun.

Good luck!
Charles

------–

RE: MCS and Macbooks

From Andrew;

Thanks for the thorough reply Charles. I guess I will just have to try and play the return policy game if things don’t work out for me. Yeah it is probably a hypersensitivity rather than an allergy, but the symptoms appear the same on the outside. Anti-allergy medication does not work, which supports that idea. I may have to go the second-hand car route if things don’t work out.

------–

Hi Andrew,

Yes, in most cases MCS reactions to environmental chemicals are do not involve histamine or Immunoglobulin E type antibodies.

Strictly speaking, allergy is one of four forms of hypersensitivity and is called type I (or immediate) hypersensitivity ( the other three are Cytotoxic, antibody-dependent, Immune complex disease, abd Delayed-type hypersensitivity) and involves cell-mediated immune memory response, antibody-independent characterized by excessive activation of certain white blood cells called mast cells and basophils by IgE, resulting in an extreme inflammatory response that manifests in symptoms like eczema, hives, hay fever, asthma, food allergies, and extreme reactions to the venom of stinging insects such as wasps and bees.

MCS is something different and is not recognised as an organic, chemical-caused illness by the American Medical Association, or as an established organic disease by the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology. OTOH, in Germany multiple chemical sensitivity is formally recognized by the national health care system, and the European Parliament passed legislation in 2006 requiring substitution of less-toxic alternatives for building materials, finishing products, furnishings and equipment may be beneficial to some people with environmental senstivities. The Canadian Human Rights Commission recommends workplace accommodation for chemically sensitive workers.

Charles

***

Laptops And MCS

From Chris

Charles,

I saw your 2007 post on MacOpinion re: laptops and MCS (and general toxicity issues). I'm wondering if you have any info on more recent laptops. I have (moderate, I would say) MCS but I have a new job for which it would be useful to have a laptop. Right now, I have a box around my LCD screen and 30 foot cables that connect to a PC in a closet in another room. Works great, just not easy to travel with. I also would like to switch to a Mac.

I ran across one blog that touted the 2008 Macbook Air as being less toxic. Any thoughts on that?

Thanks for any help with this. I know we're all different, but at the same time it's obvious which laptops royally fail (even after years of baking and airing out).

Thanks for your time. I was glad to find your posts--a voice in the wilderness!

Cheers,
Chris

------–

Hi Chris;

I'll venture that my now three months and a bit old aluminum MacBook could be somewhat less of an off-gasser than my last two Mac laptop purchases were, but I still react to it, and am using it for now in an isolation case positively vented to the outdoors. FWIW, my impression is that Apple laptops are no better or worse in this context than PC units.

With the setup you describe, you're versed in computer isolation techniques. Mine works fine for desktop substitute duty, but would be very cumbersome to take on teh road. My solution for that is to use an older, gassed-off laptop (currently either my 2000 Pismo PowerBook or my 2005 17" PowerBook) for road warrioring, although in the fullness of time I expect that the little unibody will become tolerable.

As you say, we're all different, especially in terms of chemical sensitivity. The unibody MacBook emits no strong odor (at least any that I can detect, although my wife says she can smell a chemical odor from it. Your mileage may vary. The ideal solution is if you can borrow one and try it out in the envirionment(s) where you plan on using it before making a purchase, although that is usually not possible, so it's always a bit if a crap-shoot.

Charles

***

PowerBook 2400c Video Slideshow

From Ryan;

Hello Gentlemen:

Enjoy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8HPspNjHVw

Ryan
http://www.thisoldmac.com/wordpress

*** cmoore@macopinion.com Note: Letters to The Road Warrior may or may not be published in The Road Warrior Mailbag at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context. If you would prefer that your message not appear in The Road Warrior Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published. CM

Why Pre?

by Marc Zeedar macopinion@designwrite.com

Palm's new Pre cellphone is about to be available and the early reviews are mostly positive. In terms of checklist features, like many "iPhone killers," the Pre sounds great: it's got all the hardware of the iPhone plus a physical keyboard and removable battery the iPhone lacks. The design is stylish, and the operating system sounds like it's actually got a handful of innovative features. But I still can't figure out the appeal.

Basically the Pre is as close to a clone of Apple's iPhone as you can get. Palm has borrowed (stolen?) much of the iPhone's gesture user interface and design: with the keyboard drawer closed the thing looks like an iPhone, and many of the screens are nearly identical (like the Pre's "launcher" screen which has a grid of colorful app icons and four favorite apps on the bottom). Even the pricing is almost exactly the same.

So where's the innovation?

People who want an iPhone are going to get one. They don't want a cheap knockoff, they want the real thing. The only people I can see being attracted to the Pre are people stuck with Sprint for some reason, or people who are anti-Apple. With Sprint struggling and losing customers like I'm losing hair, I don't see either of those crowds being significant groups.

Yet the Pre has its rabid fans who are raving about it (most have yet to even see a Pre in person). I don't get it. What's the appeal?

Granted, the Pre has a few things that might be considered improvements to the iPhone, but are those enough to make up for its deficiencies? Remember, the Pre is a first generation device: it's going to be full of bugs, lacking in software and support, and missing key functionality for at least a year. Within that year Apple's iPhone will move substantially ahead (that will start with iPhone OS 3.0 being released this summer). Why get a Pre when the iPhone already has -- or will have soon -- everything the Pre offers and a lot more?

Many years ago I read an article in a Mac magazine -- back in the days of print -- which made an important point about the then Mac versus PC debate: for a new product to take on an established product, it can't just be as good, or even twice as good: it must be ten times as good. The article used that logic to explain why PCs dominated and Macs were a minority: Macs were better, but perhaps not ten times better (at least in the general public's mind).

This was a concept that made a lot of sense to me. Look at it yourself as a consumer: do you switch cars or detergent because a new one's marginally better? No, you want a dramatic improvement.

Today the same "ten times better" logic applies to Pre versus iPhone. This time Apple's product is the status quo, the Pre the contender, and while it's not a bad device, and arguably even better than the iPhone in some ways, it's certainly not ten times better. (I personally don't think it's even as good, let alone twice as a good, but that's me.) Without being massively better than iPhone, why bother?

Palm's leader are trying to downplay the "Pre versus iPhone" battle, stressing that the smartphone market is huge and large enough for many players. But what sort of role is Palm looking for? Do they want to be the next Zune? By all accounts a Zune is a decent music player. It works, though there are some flaws and limitations, but no one is interested in buying one. (Apple sells more iPods in a month than Microsoft has sold Zunes since launch.)

It's also important to remember the financial situation Palm is in: they are bleeding cash and desperate for an influx. Is a small amount of Pre sales going to be enough to keep them going until they can release updates and fix the early bugs?

Not Getting the Hype
There are some anti-Apple people who claim the iPhone was hyped by Apple. That's not true at all: the media and fans did the hyping, not Apple. Apple stated the facts. But Palm, since the Pre's announcement in January, appears desperate for the same sort of media frenzy as Apple received. Statements Palm has made -- like their chief investor claiming that "all" original iPhone owners would be switching to the Pre when their original two-year contracts are up this July -- border on ridiculous.

According to the dictionary, hype is "extravagant or intensive publicity or promotion" or to "promote or publicize (a product or idea) intensively, often exaggerating its importance or benefits." It's even sometimes "a deception carried out for the sake of publicity."

Apple's good at publicity, but I don't see their marketing as deceitful. Palm, however, seem to be somewhat underhanded. (The company's had to issue a lot of retractions about their statements so that they wouldn't get in trouble with the stock market authorities.)

Why was Apple's iPhone hyped? Mostly because it was a breakthrough product. It was something revolutionary and remarkable. A smartphone without buttons. A touchscreen device without a stylus. A new mobile operating system based on Mac OS X, the world's most advanced desktop OS. A revolutionary and intuitive gesture-based interface. Desktop-class web browsing and applications on a mobile device. Unique integration of hardware and software, providing features like device rotation-sensing.

What does the Pre have that's new? Very little.

Wireless charging (which sets you back an extra $70) is interesting and gimmicky, but not essential, and is available in other devices. The automatic merging of social media into a single interface is nice and potentially convenient (if it works, and early reports are that it doesn't work as well as advertised), but there are iPhone apps that do a similar thing.

The Pre supports multitasking and Palm tries to imply the iPhone does not (the iPhone does, only not with third party applications). Apple does not support multitasking simply because a mobile phone is not powerful enough -- yet -- to do that properly. The early reviews of the Pre show that multitasking does decrease battery life significantly and slow down performance considerably. I suspect most people won't bother to use this feature as the drawbacks outweigh the benefits. When mobile processors are powerful enough to support multitasking, Apple can easily enable this feature, since the OS already supports it.

The Pre's physical keyboard is nothing new (see: Blackberry). While some see a physical keyboard as a positive, I see it as a strong negative. The keyboard only works in portrait mode, which means a lot of rotating back and forth if you're looking at a website in landscape and need to type. Worse, Palm's OS makes use of the keyboard for important functions (such as copy-and-paste, which requires you to use the keyboard), meaning you can't access basic parts of the OS without being in "keyboard mode." Awkward!

The Pre has a removable battery, something I've never seen as a feature. Unless it uses standard off-the-shelf batteries (like AA or AAA), what good is it? It still requires I buy expensive, proprietary batteries, and I have to charge up those spares separately (probably spending even more on a separate charger). Replacing the battery presumably shuts off the phone, requiring a reboot, which sounds yucky. Isn't an external battery pack (or battery case) for the iPhone easier? Those charge both the battery and the phone simultaneously with your original charger and the extra weight is no different from carrying a spare battery.

Palm's new "WebOS" (a name that does nothing to convey "mobile") is undoubtedly the Pre's best feature. From the earlier reviews I've read it does a decent job and has some nice features. There are few things lacking and a handful of questionable decisions, but overall it gets positive reviews. But is it unique? Is it innovative? I'll be generous and say that it is. The "cards" feature, which allows you to shuffle through launched apps similar to Safari Tabs on the iPhone, is nicely done. But is that one feature ten times better than an iPhone? Certainly not.

The operating system goodness takes a questionable turn when you start to look at applications. WebOS apps are built using browser technologies, not true compiled applications like on the iPhone. A good comparison are Mac OS X's Dashboard Widgets, which are cute little apps made with web tech (like Javascript) that can do a lot of useful things -- but no one would confuse a widget with a real application. Without the WebOS SDK released it's too early to tell exactly what limitations WebOS apps will have, but it's pretty certain that you won't be able to write apps as sophisticated as on the iPhone. Early on, that's probably not a problem. Simple apps will work fine on WebOS, but as consumers become more demanding and their smartphone expectations rise (something the iPhone has already had a huge role in increasing), they'll want more and the Pre won't be able to do it.

When you combine limited app ability with a market of zero phones sold so far, the Pre's app store is a vast wasteland, especially compared to the iPhone's thriving App Store. With nearly 40 million iPhone/touch devices sold and proven app ecosystem, what developers are going to want to write apps for the Pre? And without apps that do the things people want, who is going to want to buy a Pre?

I anticipate many being interested in Palm's Pre. But I don't anticipate many actual customers. Many will wait for bug fixes and apps to become available. Others want to wait to see what Apple's going to do next. Others are waiting for the Sprint exclusivity to expire. Who's going to buy it?

Tell Me Why
I am genuine when I say I am mystified by the interest in the Pre. I really don't get it. I see a nicely done iPhone clone that I can't imagine anyone wanting. If you want an iPhone, get an iPhone. If you're anti-iPhone, since the Pre's such a direct copy, you should be anti-Pre.

I should stress that I'm a Palm fan. Or at least I used to be, before they went so far downhill. (Dropping Palm OS to produce Windows-based phones? Come on, Palm, that's sacrilege!) I don't have any particular interest in seeing the Pre or Palm flop. But I don't like Palm's attitude about the Pre, spreading lies about iPhone (like that it doesn't support multitasking), pumping up mediocre Pre features (like the hardware keyboard) without revealing the key disadvantages (portrait mode only, microscopic keys), or claiming that the very limited WebOS is somehow better than iPhone OS (which is a real UNIX computer). If Palm had marketed the Pre as a less expensive, simpler, and easier iPhone, that would be fine. Instead Palm is making claims that's better, and I just don't see it.

If you know why the Pre is better than iPhone, please say so. I don't just mean silly comments that "the Pre is better," but substantial details as to why it's better. And not just a little bit better, but whoppingly better. I just don't get the fuss.

macopinion@designwrite.com

The Road Warrior Review - MacCase Premium Leather Flight Jacket For Apple Notebooks

Nearly a year ago I reviewed the retro revival of the MacCase Classic computer case, originally designed in 1999 for the then brand-new clamshell iBook, and now offered for the 13-inch MacBook in the full range of classic iBook colors. I was impressed with both be design and workmanship of the Key Lime Classic Case we tested, but a more recent and upmarket offering from the MacCase folks takes cool and classy to an even higher level.

Like the MacCase Classic, MacCase's a new Premium Leather Flight Jacket has a retro flare as well, but this time reaching substantially further back to the era between the twentieth century World Wars when aviators wore leather flight jackets to buffer the wind-battering they got in open-cockpit aircraft and chilly temperatures at high altitudes in non-pressurized cabins. The Flight Jacket Case indeed looks like a piece of kit in which Indiana Jones - a young Indiana Jones - might have packed his gear around.

Designed by MacCase CEO Michael Santoro, a professional industrial designer who spent six years working in Chrysler's styling office, during which he created the exterior design of the 1995 Car Of The Year - the Chrysler Cirrus - and its sistership the Dodge Status, as well as the return-to-its-roots restyle of the 1996 - 2006 Jeep Wrangler. Mr. Santoro clearly has a feel and flair for traditionally iconic form, having also done design consultancy for the Vector M-12 and the Lamborghini Jota exoticars, and the Gulfstream G5 executive jet aircraft.

Drawing on the success of MacCase's Premium Leather Collection of computer sleeves, shoulder bags, and iPod, iPhone, and accessory cases, which are contemporarily-styled, the MacCase Premium Leather Flight Jacket has a more complex and retro-funky look, and is entirely believable as something that might have been made in the 1930s (except perhaps for the embossed MacCase logo on the front of the casse and the name on the back). Pictures really don't do it justice, and it has a presence that kind of reaches out and grabs you. "I want that," was my wife's immediate comment upon spotting the Flight Jacket for the first time, before she even knew what it was. It has that effect; you want to touch it.

The MacCase Premium Leather Flight Jacket is available custom-sized to fit and protect the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and MacBook, and its vertically-oriented compact form factor is intended to offer protection for your Apple laptop with minimal bulk, although it is not as heavily padded as some laptop cases or backpacks. It can be carried a briefcase-style with its top handle, under the arm using the provided matching leather shoulder strap, or in a backpack mode with the optional backpack harness straps.

Michael Santoro comments that "the design of the Flight Jacket embodies the minimalism of the MacBook Air and the the romanticism of our Premium Leather. Apple owners looking for a timeless case designed with outstanding protection and minimal bulk will find this, and more, in the new Flight Jacket."

The Flight Jacket combines the protective benefits of the company's sleeve with the utility of the larger shoulder bag.

The Flight Jacket is available in three colors: Chocolate, Black, and Distressed Vintage, all with contrasting white stitching and robust stainless steel hardware. Our review unit is the Distressed Vintage version, and while I have only seen the Chocolate and Black versions in photographs, my provisional take is that the Distressed Vintage highlights the retro design most effectively.

As noted, three models are offered, respectively custom sized to fit and protect the MacBook Air , the MacBook Pro, and the MacBook. The Flight Jacket perfectly fits the entire MacBook series save for the 17" model including the unibody 13" MacBook and 15" MacBook Pro.

The quality of the leatherwork is excellent. The material itself thick but luxuriously soft, with neatly-done stitching. The computer compartment closure is a foldover flap with generous overlap and secured with color - matched the overall heads of generous dimensions.

The Flight Jacket has several storage pockets for accessories and a removable, customized pouch for the MacBook Air Super Drive or AC adapter for the larger MacBook Pro models. On the outer face of the flap is a full-width zipper-closure pocket lined with nylon taffeta fabric over what feels like a thin layer of foam padding.

Under the flap cover on the front of the Flight Jacket is another pocket, also taffeta-lined and with its own dedicated Central Velcro closure. There is another deep, open pocket on the back side of the case.

The computer compartment is lined with a soft knit fabric and has somewhat heavier protective padding. An interesting and sort of whimsical but still practical feature is a removable custom pouch which attaches to the front of the flight Jacket with a quick release connector and is sized to carry a MacBook Air SuperDrive or an AC adapter for the bigger-sized MacBook models.

The shoulder strap or backpack harness attach to the Flight Jacket with hefty, swivel-mounted spring clips and it riveted, sewn-in stainless steel D -rings.

The MacCase Flight Jacket's retail price is $169.95 (shoulder strap and handle carrying options included). The backpack strap option bumps the price to $189.95.

Delivery is via DHL in the US, (varies in other countries), and costs anywhere between $10-15.

For more information, visit:
http://mac-case.com/
and
http://mac-case.com/Leather%20Site/MacCasePLJackets.html


***



Charles W. Moore

The Road Warrior archives may be accessed from the link at the bottom of this page


Note: Letters to The Road Warrior may or may not be published in The Road Warrior Mailbag at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context.

If you would prefer that your message not appear in The Road Warrior Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published.

CM

The Real Revolution of iPhone OS 3.0

by Marc Zeedar macopinion@designwrite.com

There's been much talk about the forthcoming iPhone OS 3.0 Apple introduced this week. Everyone is excited to finally see copy and paste arrive on iPhone, as well as improvements such as search, landscape keyboards, and other niceties. And there are some amazing new things that will have longer-term impact, such as new APIs for programmers, including the ability for third party hardware companies to allow iPhones (and iPod touches) to control their devices.

But no one is talking about the one feature that is truly remarkable about iPhone OS 3.0.

It makes sense. The feature has to do with money, and it's impolite to discuss money. But especially in these times, money is extremely important. The iPhone is the hottest tech on the planet not just because it's cool and innovative, but because it is selling. And the App Store has turned the iPhone into the hottest marketplace because people are buying apps.

Like it or not, the financial side of the picture is critical for the future of the iPhone OS. If developers can't make money on the platform, they won't create apps, and without apps, the platform will die.

That's why I'm amazed no one is talking more about in-app purchasing. This is incredibly exciting and -- I will say it -- revolutionary.

In-app purchasing, to put it bluntly, is micropayments. We've been talking about micropayments for decades, but no one has succeeded. The two problems with micropayments is that the system needs to be:

• ubiquitous
• invisible

Current Internet purchasing systems fail on one or both of these counts. Paypal is getting closer to the ubiquitous goal, but still far too cumbersome and limited. Amazon's "one click" buying has the invisible part down, but it is limited to one website.

Apple's iPhone OS -- with the ability to embed web content right within a native app -- now has the ability to allow that content to be paid for. That is revolutionary.

One could argue that iTunes accounts are not ubiquitous. That is true in the "whole Internet" scheme of things. But within the iPhone/touch universe, they are ubiquitous. Everyone who has an iPhone has an account. The purchase process is the same for all users, in every app. It is invisible and simple.

And because iPhone can bring the entire Internet to it, you've now got a way to easily require the user to pay for access. Brilliant.

Paying for Stuff is a Good Thing?
Now some of you freeloaders out there are getting upset. You want your free content. Well, sorry folks, but the ride is over. With the new economy -- and yes, we are entering a new era, so get used to it -- the proliferation of free information is ending. Internet advertising is just not effective or lucrative enough to pay for all that content. Sure, huge sites can probably generate enough traffic to justify giving away stuff for free, but there are millions of tiny sites that just won't be able to keep up. Traditional media organizations are struggling as print readerships and advertising are down and the companies can't afford to keep giving away their product for free on the web.

But shutting down the website and requiring people to pay is extremely controversial and awkward. First, the whole method-of-payment thing is far too complicated. Say I'm writing a book on spiders and I see a link to an article on a scientific magazine's website. But the article is locked. I cannot read it unless I pay. My options are to:

• set up a unique account with this publication
• pay a not-insignificant fee
• possibly subscribe to the entire site even though I just want the one article

At this point I don't even know if the article's of importance to me or not. But the hassle of access is so great, I don't even bother.

Contrast this with the world of the future iPhone. I launch the magazine's iPhone app. It gives me some content right away (for purchasing the app), but the article I want is in the archive. There's a beautiful display and description/preview of the article so I can see it looks good and would be helpful to me. My choices are:

• buy just that article for 99 cents
• buy all the archives for $19.99
• subscribe to the magazine for six months for $4.99

I can do any of these options with one click and have immediate access. The system prompts me for my iTunes password and it's done. Apple handles all the ugly payment details. In seconds I'm reading the article. Beautiful. There's no unique login/password system I need to remember for this particular website/app, and it's secure as I'm not even sharing my financial details with the website (only with Apple). It's so simple and easy I'm far likelier to do this than the old web approach.

Even better, this identical approach -- the same universal payment system -- works in all my iPhone applications. I can now pay for my New York Times and National Review subscriptions via the same payment system!

No, this is not reality yet. But this will be happening and as it does, Apple's iTunes payment system is going to become the world's first successful micropayment system.

For those of you who still want free content, there'll still be some. Some of it may be cluttered with advertising, or perhaps in a form not as easily read (like sites that break articles into 20 smaller pages for more hits).

But for those of us willing to pay for content, it will usher us into a brand new era where digital content is actually useable and useful. Imagine sites where the design is for readability, not ad hits, where the goal is conveying you information quickly and accurately, not trying to get you to buy stuff. I picture powerful applications that offer customizable navigation, flexible formatting options, search, article translation, different article lengths (pick from summary, condensed, or full-length), and much more. All of those features cost time and money to create; they won't be offered for free via websites as sites are cutting back. But if people prove they are willing to pay for such convenience and access, sites will make the apps and offer the content.

One More Thing
Here's one more thought to stir your imagination. Right now Apple has only opened in-app purchasing to paid apps via the App Store. But what of the future? If this takes off, couldn't Apple add a way to incorporate this via Mobile Safari? Then websites, using custom Safari protocols, could securely allow you to purchase items -- anything they sell, digital or physical -- via your iTunes account!

And don't forget the rumors of an Apple iTablet device: a large-screen iPhone/touch would make reading all this content a dream.

Thus a true micropayment system is born.

macopinion@designwrite.com

iFixIt Revamps Apple Laptop Teardown Guides; Disassembles 17” MacBook Pro

iFixit's lab has completed its disassembly of the new 17" MacBook Pro, with photography of the process to be used in a new iFixIt teardown guide for that machine.

More on the 17-incher below, but first, If you are inclined to tinker with your Mac laptop and have never availed yourself of iFixIt's superb Fixit Guide series, you're missing out on one of the most helpful and useful free resources for Mac laptop and Mac mini owners on the Web:
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/

iFixIt is a parts and service outfit specializing in Apple laptops, and has transformed their technical expertise in taking Mac portables apart into this wonderful series of FixIt Guides that unlike Apple's service manuals, are designed to walk an uninitiated user through the process of opening up and tearing down a PowerBook for service/repairs or upgrading.

Initially launched way back when as hard copy manuals for the WallStreet, Pismo, and Titanium DVI PowerBooks and others back in 2003, the iFixIt Guides are now exclusively available for free as online resources or in downloadable PDF format, and provide clear, easy-to-follow, and comprehensively detailed step-by -step illustrated instructions for opening up and disassembling these machines. "Mac repair for the masses." Just what the doctor ordered.

The guides rely heavily on attractively-reproduced color photographs to convey what you need to know, and what little text there is essentially amounts to photo captions. Each image identifies the action to take and highlights screws to remove. The Guides break the process of disassembling your PowerBook down into manageable steps, allowing you to approach the task incrementally.

Each image identifies the action to take and highlights screws to remove. The Guides break the process of disassembling your PowerBook down into manageable steps, allowing you to approach the task incrementally.

To upgrade your RAM, for example, simply follow the links until you get to the RAM upgrade section. The photography gives you a birds-eye-view of what your computer should look like after you remove major components.

The Guides walk you through the teardown process from removing the keyboard to separating the display from the CPU unit and on down to a bare chassis. For reassembly, just follow the same steps in reverse order.

Key features of the iFixIt Guides:
• Customized instructions for each part
• User-friendly layout
• Professional, close-up pictures of each step
• Printable screw guides to keep track of screws

And if you haven't visited lately, iFixIt has recently done a substantial makeover of the guides, the new features including:

• Guide notes. iFixIt's Kyle Wiens says that they've always appreciated useful feedback about our guides from users, but sometimes it takes them a little while to integrate your disassembly tips into their instructions. Guide notes provide a platform for you to help share what you’ve learned about while working on your own hardware.

• Troubleshooting notes. Do you have any additional ideas for diagnosing hardware problems? Do you disagree with iFixIt on a diagnosis? Post what you know so other people don’t have to reproduce your knowledge the hard way.

• Community forum. Brag about your triumph over the gremlins Apple hides inside Macs, or get help from everyone with your current problems.

• Search. Kyle says this has been the #1 most requested feature, and apologizes that it has taken so long.

• New navigation. They've added helpful background information about specific devices alongside links to the step-by-step guides and troubleshooting documents. For example, if you browse from Mac to MacBook to MacBook Core Duo, you’ll find that they've added a list of possible MacBook Core Duo upgrades, links to other useful information on the net, and some historical information on the hardware, and Wiens says they will be adding to this over time.

iFixIt has done a tremendous service for the Mac portable (and mini) community by preparing and http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/ publishing these excellent guides. iFixIt sells thousands of PowerBook & iBook parts and accessories through their online store, so if there's something you need, you can check it out here and possibly send some business their way in appreciation:
http://www.iFixit.com

Now back to the 17" unibody MacBook Pro, Kyle Wiens offers these notes and comments:

* Even after paying Apple $2799, this computer STILL doesn't come with a Mini DisplayPort adapter.

* There are three tri-wing screws holding the battery to the Unibody case. Apple did this to intimidate people out of swapping the battery, but a small flathead screwdriver works fine to remove the screws.

* You can replace the battery by removing 13 screws and a replaceable sticker.

* The battery is HUGE. It weighs 20.1 ounces (1.25 pounds). That's 20% of the computer's weight!

* The Bluetooth board is much easier to access and repair than it is in the MacBook Pro 15" Unibody, where it is tucked away inside the display assembly.

* As expected, the 17" design and internal layout is very similar to the MacBook Pro 15". Most of the extra space is occupied by the battery. The Unibody case does make the computer feel much more solid than its predecessor, which had a lot more torsional flex. This is a very solid computer.

Interesting photos:

Overview

Logic board top

Display comparison

iFixIt have posted initial disassembly photos of the new MacBook Pro 17" Unibody here:
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/First-Look/MacBook-Pro-17-Inch-Unibody/618/1

and here:
http://s1.guide-images.ifixit.com/igi/Gf2GPJlfKvbLJLDZ.huge

For more information, see:
http://www.ifixit.com/blog



***



cmoore@macopinion.com

Note: Letters to The Road Warrior may or may not be published in The Road Warrior Mailbag at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context.

If you would prefer that your message not appear in The Road Warrior Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published.

CM

Lenovo S10 Beats Out Used PowerBook G4 For Value And HP Launches Stylish Designer “Clutch” Netbook

Lenovo S10 beats out used Powerbook G4 12. We bought two!

Longtime The Road Warrior reader James Pearson, referencing my column: "Why Can't Apple Build A Laptop Like This?" says:

A good friend and I were comparing netbooks and used PowerBooks for one of my daughters this Christmas. She's 14 and interested in photography, music and video editing. She's also a real Machead so our first option was a used Powerbook. In the end, we couldn't deny the value and style of the Lenovo S10. We opted for the higher end model: 1.6 Intel Atom, black with 1 GB of RAM, 160 GB HD and built in Bluetooth on sale for 359.00. The price was so good we bought two - one each for my girls in middle school.

I was really worried about my older daughter accepting the Lenovo based on her distaste for all things Windows. The plan was to wipe the drives and install Ubuntu. My friend, Chris, works for a network solutions company and I worked in broadcast engineering and IT so we've seen just about everything over the years - DOS, Sun, Red Hat and every flavor of Windows and Mac OS. It was the easiest OS installation either of us had ever done - start to finish in less than 30 minutes from a thumbdrive!

Ironically, another friend facing the same decision for his daughter went the other direction. He purchased a used PowerBook 1 GZ with 1 GB RAM and a 100 GB HD off Craigslist for 600. He brought the machine to me to set up so I literally had the Lenovo S10 and Powerbook G4 12 side by side for a couple of days. The Lenovo easily beat the Powerbook in every sense - faster, smaller, larger storage, brighter screen, sharper image, more expandable, better value... it's painful to admit but then again we're comparing apples and penguins.

The only concerns have been that some programs don't display properly on a 600 pixel high display, syncing video to iPods isn't supported yet in most Linux audio apps and the built-in mic isn't working with the default drivers. The built-in wireless didn't work with the initial install but Ubuntu immediately recognized this and, after connecting with Ethernet, downloaded and installed the correct driver automatically. That's how far Linux has come with Ubuntu.

Several weeks later and no regrets. Both daughters use their S10s every day for homework, surfing, social networking and light gaming. Ubuntu is slowly winning us over. It's user friendly, attractive and easily customizable. We upgraded the standard installation with all the Ubuntu Studio packages so there's a broad assortment of media apps configured to work out of the box. (The S10 as configured handles all these better than any PowerBook or iBook G4 I've used.) There's also good community support online for comparable Linux alternatives to Apple applications but we've been using open source apps on our Macs for years. Besides the obvious Firefox and Open Office, I recommend Amarock for iTunes (although Songbird is coming along) and Pitivi for video editing. All come in the Ubuntu Studio installation by default.

So, for $100 more, we have TWO netbooks that easily outperform a used Powerbook at $600. I'm bowled over!

I know....hard to believe but our experience with this combination has been that good. Apple better get in this market if they want to compete in the new economy.

James Pearson

Thanks to Jim for sharing this report, and his compelling argument corroborates what has been my own deduction for some time - that the so-called PC "netbooks" do offer incredible value for the money, and that the more recent desktop Linux distros, particularly Ubuntu, are hitting their stride as a credible alternative to both Windows and the Mac OS for non-geeks and well as the geekily inclined.

You just can't argue with the price, and as for Steve Jobs' supercilious categorical dismissal of sub-$500 computers as "junk," if they do the job you need them to do, then they're providing fair value for the money. Personally I would much rather have a small laptop with a real keyboard and 10" display than an iPhone for roughly the same money.

So where does this leave Apple, which evidently is still resisting the netbook tsunami (although we of course don't know what they may be working on behind the scenes)? While traditional Mac laptop sales held up remarkably well through the last quarter of 2008 as the world economy melted down, thanks mainly to enthusiastic reception of the new unibody MacBooks, reportedly while foot traffic in the brick and mortar Apple Stores is still reasonably brisk, sales are flagging. Last week Silicon Valley Insider's Henry Blodget observed, "Apple Stores are now just cheap entertainment for broke shoppers," citing Mark Veverka at Barron's: "the registers aren't ringing the way they used to....."

Consequently, rumors that persist about a forthcoming MacBook nano shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. HTLounge thinks an Apple-branded netbook or UMPC would sell very well in this market, which is almost certainly true, but the conundrum is would it make any money, or just serve as a placeholder to prop up (or expand) Apple's market share until a "normal" economy returns? As Henry Blodget's Silicon Valley Insider colleague Dan Frommer notes, netbooks are both a blessing and a curse for PC makers, being an engine to support rapid growth market for some companies, like Acer and Asus, but relatively low-revenue and low-margin.

Another potential avenue for Apple to pursue is joint ventures with service providers for 3G enabled MacBooks. Appleinsider's Aidan Malley reports that Apple's iPhone partner AT&T is hoping to make 3G-enabled notebooks a staple of its cellular business, noting that in a Fortune interview AT&T's Emerging Devices group president Glenn Lurie said he would like his company's deals with Apple to extend beyond the iPhone, hinting that it may be chatting with Apple to extend its reach into MacBooks or other non-iPhone devices.

However, based on recent developments in the netbook world, I agree with HTLounge that an Apple MacBook nano is perhaps a more likely bet. While I would be very surprised to see Apple wade into the sub-$500 laptop pool with an OS X machine, the release of premium netbooks like Asus's very enticing Eee PC S101 and the HP (see below) as well as Sony's VAIO P (which is not being pitched or priced as a netbook) have created a category in which Apple should be able to compete strongly without compromising its engineering principles.

The Sony VAIO P starts at about $900, which is of course just $99 less than what Apple will sell you the recently enhanced and newly very desirable base white MacBook for.....

And speaking of premium netbooks and small notebooks, how about a "ClutchBook?

HP Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam Special Edition Mini Laptop A "Netbook" With Designer Flair

Particularly if you're female, or for that matter a male looking for a cool Valentine's Day gift for your significant other, and think netbooks can't cut it as seriously useful work tools and look good while doing it, check out the HP Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam Special Edition, which HP pitches as "the world's first purse-size digital clutch designed inside and out for the fashion-forward women on the go"

Featuring Tam's peony-inspired design (peony blooms symbolize good fortune and prosperity in Far Eastern philosophy) in vivid shades of violet and red from her Spring 2009 collection, this mini laptop coordinates perfectly with Vivienne Tam fashions if one is so inclined. The slightly undersized keyboard (92% of full size) key labels are in gold, and the Enter key includes the Chinese symbol for “double happiness.”

Weighing in at 2.45 lb. and less than 1" thick, the Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam Special Edition is more than half a pound lighter than a MacBook Air and nearly as thin.

The not-so-good part, at least for Mac fans, is that the Mini 1000 is powered by a relatively anaemic Intel Atom N270 1.6Hz processor and supports only Windows XP Home or Linux operating systems instead of the Air's full-powered Intel Penryn Core 2 Duo CPUs and OS X, but then at $699.99 (or even much less than that if you eschew the designer livery - see below) it also sells for less than half the price of the cheapest MacBook Air and $300 less than the cheapest MacBook Pro.

However, the HP Mini 1000 isn't exactly austere in terms of equipment and features. It has no internal optical drive, but neither does the MacBook Air — in either case the drive will set you back another $99.99. It does have internal speakers, microphone, a headphone/microphone jack, and a built-in Webcam, and trounces the Air in connectivity with a 10/100 Ethernet port as well as 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi and Bluetooth v2.1, two USB ports, an SD card reader, an expansion port and a VGA port. Display choices are an 8.9" or frameless 10.1" diagonal BrightView Infinity display as opposed to the MacBook Air's expansive by comparison 13.3" screen. It comes standard with less RAM at 1 GB, but can be upgraded to 2 GB.

The hard drive is a not really adequate these days 60 GB, and the optional HP Mini Mobile Drive is available for additional storage with SSD (an even smaller 8 GB or 16 GB) configuration only.

Personally, I would try to scratch together the extra $300 and get a white MacBook, which gives you full power, OS X, and a full range of notebook features, but of course weighs twice as much as the Mini 1000 and has a much larger footprint.

Also, if you can live without the designer livery, the price of entry for a MIni can considerably less. The HP Mini 1000 Mi Edition (Linux version ships with “HP MIE” OS)
http://www.hp.com/united-states/campaigns/mini1000/hpmini1000_mie.html
sells for $379.99, and the HP Mini 1000 XP Edition (Windows XP Home)
http://www.hp.com/united-states/campaigns/mini1000/hpmini1000.html
starts at $399.99

For more information, about the HP Mini 1000 XP Edition & Vivienne Tam Edition visit:
http://www.hp.com/united-states/campaigns/mini1000/hpmini1000_vivienne.html

$999 2.0 GHz White MacBook With Nvidia Graphics: Most Notebook For The Money From Apple Ever?

Instead of releasing a stripped-down, feature-challenged MacBook to address the market share challenge posed by the small, cheap PC laptop (AKA *netbook*) phenomenon, Apple has evidently chosen, as a first response at least, to hold their entry-level price point, but add value - an impressively substantial amount of value - by upgrading the price leader $999 white polycarbonate MacBook with some solid enhancements.

GMA X3100 Graphics Gone

Most importantly, gone is the old, slow Intel GMA X3100 integrated graphics chipset - replaced with the state-of-the-art new Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics with 256MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared memory that was introduced with the aluminum unibody MacBooks last October, followed by the Revision B MacBook Air. Apple claims the Nvidia integrated graphics offer performance up to 5x faster and powerful enough to support 3D games and applications. That alone would be cool enough, but it's just for starters. The white MacBook also gets a faster 1066 MHz frontside bus (up from 800 MHz in the preceding model}, plus 2 GB RAM standard instead of the former 1 GB, all for the same $999 price point, and.... it still has a FireWire 400 port, which is a huge point for some users. Unchanged are the standard 120GB Serial ATA 5400 rpm hard disk (upgradable to 320 GB) and dual layer 8x SuperDrive.

Photo Courtesy Apple

The white MacBook has been clocked down 100 MHz, now using the same 2.0 GHz Penryn Core 2 Duo CPU with 3MB on-chip shared L2 cache running 1:1 with processor speed as are used in the base unibody MacBook. However, given the faster graphics and frontside bus, I don't think we'll hear many complaints about that. The White 'Book also comes with (less expensive) 667MHz DDR2 memory instead of the faster 1,066MHz DDR3 used in the unibodies, but again, the performance difference for real-world tasks should be insignificant for most users.

The Best Value Apple Notebook Ever?

It looks very good, and I'll venture to say that this machine arguably offers the most power and features and best value for dollar spent that Apple has ever offered in a notebook.

The form factor's not as sleek and sexy (or solid) as the unibody machines carved as they are in one piece from a single block of aluminum. The unibodies are also gorgeous — no argument. Another shortcoming by comparison is the conventional CCFL display backlight as opposed to the newer design's super-bright, instant-on LCD backlighting. The white MacBook also still has a Mini-DVI video port instead of the new Mini DisplayPort interface of the unibodies, but some might regard that as an advantage thanks to cheaper adapters. Ditto for the old-school trackpad and button instead of the newer machine's too-gimmicky for my taste buttonless trackpad.

I do wish that Apple had chosen to carry over the black old-school MacBook instead of the white one, which is attractive enough but dates in general form-factor and appearance back to the original dual USB iBook of May, 2001, and has been looking past its best-before date for some time now.

Value Purchasers Will Find It Hard To Resist This One

Anyone who is on a tight budget and in the market for a new Mac notebook should find this one hard to resist. I have to say that I agree with Apple's philosophy of value-added rather than ditching features in order to hit a lower price point. This machine is a whole lot more satisfactory than a PC netbook, provided you can swing the $999.

There is precedent for Apple's pile on the features strategy. Back in August, 2005, with sales sagging after the June announcement that Apple would be switching to Intel processors, they helped goose sales of lame-duck (how's that for a mixed metaphor?) G4 iBook by throwing in a raft of theretofore PowerBook-only features while holding the price points. The summer 2006 iBooks got the PowerBooks' scrolling TrackPad and the Sudden Motion Sensor, Bluetooth 2.0 (Enhanced Data Rate) and AirPort Extreme 54 Mbps 802.11g WiFi, and with its system memory expandable to up to 1.5GB maximum, the last revision iBook actually exceeded the 12" PowerBook in that category by 256MB thanks to having 512MD rather than 256 MB soldered to its motherboard.

Apple as usual kept its cards close to its chest as regards sales figures, but G4 iBooks seemed to sell reasonably well through the remainder of '05 and into 'o6 before finally being replaced by the first 13" MacBooks in May of that year.

Sales Spike Predicted

(Photo Courtesy Apple)

I predict that the white MacBook value enhancement announced this week will also provide Apple with a nice little sales spike at a time when that should be most welcome, but that said, the $300 more expensive base unibody merits serious consideration as well. Choosing between these two excellent-value machines is a nice sort of dilemma to have. As someone observed last week: "The white one is a better buy, but the aluminum is gorgeous." Both are great values. It boils down to your budget and which will make you smile the most.




***



cmoore@macopinion.com

Note: Letters to The Road Warrior may or may not be published in The Road Warrior Mailbag at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context.

If you would prefer that your message not appear in The Road Warrior Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published.

CM

The Road Warrior MailBag - December 15, 2008

Mac Fan Finds PC Netbook Life Satisfactory
Cleaning Soiled White MacBooks, iBooks and iPods







___

Mac Fan Finds PC Netbook Life Satisfactory

From Dave

Hi Charles,

I wouldn't exactly say I'm "living" with Windows, as I still use Macs both at home and at work. Most of what I use a portable computer for is the casual stuff, web surfing, email, minor photo storage and retouching - if I'm on the road. But I probably spend more time with my laptop (now a netbook) than I do with any desktop, just because that kind of stuff is more fun.

Windows really isn't so bad. It certainly isn't as good as Mac OS but it's fine for the simple stuff. The only real aggravation is dealing with security and all the resulting popups when installing software or when visiting the occasional bogus website. For browsing and emailing one doesn't really have to spend much time with the OS, so Windows is kind of invisible in that regard. I'm finding Safari to be my favorite browser in Windows, over Firefox and Chrome, simply because it has the best, most readable type rendering of them all. (I don't bother with IE.) I usually use Firefox on my Macs since text displays just fine in Firefox on a Mac.

My netbook (Samsung NC10) is plenty powerful for what I'm using and plan to use it for. A big plus is it NOT being powerful enough to create a lot of heat on my lap, where I use it most. I had to use a plexiglass platform under my MacBook to keep the heat off my legs and that's not necessary with the netbook. The last time I could say that about a Mac, was my 2001 G3 iBook. The battery life is great. I timed it recently and I got exactly six hours on the battery before it went into hibernation. Viewing angles on the screen are much better than my (late 2006) MacBook, where there was considerable lightening and darkening of the image depending on vertical angle of view.

I'm sure Apple could build and sell a great Mac netbook if they wanted to. I doubt they will at a reasonable price because like the Mac mini, it would eat into sales of their more profitable Macs. I seriously doubt Apple would ever sell a portable for much less than $1000 no matter what it cost them. And it would probably have a super glossy screen. I won't get started on my opinion of those!

It's not my intention to start bad-mouthing Apple now that I have my first Windows box. I'm still a Mac fan. But many of Apple's decisions lately are discouraging. And I don't feel the advances in design they're making justify the never-ending high prices of their computers. It makes me want to shop around.

Be well and stay warm this winter!

Kind regards,
Dave Clark

___

Hi Dave;

Thanks for the netbook report, which confirms my vicarious deductions about the appeal of these machines.

In a way, you're using the netbook much the way I use my elderly Pismos. No Leopard (at least for me, my more than twice as fast PowerBook G4 with 64 MB of video RAM struggles quite enough with it for my liking), but they run cool and quiet.

I too find Apple's recent decisions, (such as leaving FireWire off the new MacBooks) frusterating, and given the price cuts on the PC side the price premium for MAcs is indeed getting hard to defend, except for the fact that the new unibodies are selling like the proverbial hotcakes.

Charles






Cleaning Soiled White MacBooks, iBooks and iPods

Dear Mr. Moore;

I wanted to let you know of a helpful solution I've found for Apple white finish products like my iBook. Although I haven't tried it on a iPod, I assume it works in much the same way.

Although I'm NOT sure how it would work on painted surfaces, but I thought I would tell you some actual experience with white plastic cleaning. For my iBook, it was developing 'frequent use' marks from my hands, although I'm a NUT about laptop cleanliness. I assume it would work similarly with iPods
.
I'm sure you've heard this before, but here goes. To clean the 'palm-rest' area and area around & over the keyboard; Thoroughly moisten the Mr. Clean AE Magic Eraser and squeeze excess water out(although you have to moisten it to activate the cleaning solution, make sure the cleaning pad is damp but not dripping). Gently, clean the smudged area and the area around the keyboard and over the keys (this is why the Magic Eraser is not to be dripping). Vary the rubbing pressure according to ground-in smudge marks.

Naturally, the iBook was COMPLETELY shut-down and unplugged before rubbing
the DAMP eraser over the laptop. Once I completed this, I simply let it stand open to air-dry. Because I'm HYPER-CAUTIOUS about the friendly mix of WATER and computer components, make sure the Mac is powered off. For extreme smudge cases, follow with a paper towel and let air dry.

Thanks, your column is always a good read!
Sincerely,

Anthony

___

Thanks for the kind words, tip and mini-tutorial, Anthony.

Something else that works is Kleen Glo, a Canadian "All Purpose Cleaner," product made by Alliance Mercantile Inc. http://www.alliancemercantile.com/english/pacifico/index.php that is non-toxic, non-abrasive, biodegradable, and suitable for a variety of cleaning chores including soiled plastics. It is inexpensive, doesn't contain solvents and is pretty much odorless.

You can find it online here:
http://www.hollynorth.com/store/product.php?productid=141&cat=5&page=3
and here:
http://www.janitors-warehouse.ca/

As well as at many environmental and industrial retailers in Canada and the U.S.

Charles



***



cmoore@macopinion.com

Note: Letters to The Road Warrior may or may not be published in The Road Warrior Mailbag at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context.

If you would prefer that your message not appear in The Road Warrior Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published.

CM

Why Can’t Apple Build A Laptop Like This? - Perhaps They Will

How come Lenovo can build a $400, sub three pound netbook with an ExpressCard 34 slot (in which you can use a FireWire adapter card) and a card reader, while Apple supplies neither, with no FireWire workaround whatsoever available on the new $1,300 unibody MacBook? Just asking.

The excuse has been floated that there simply wasn't room for FireWire or an ExpressCard slot in the slimmed-down unibody case, but I find it difficult to buy that. Of course the old school MacBook had no ExpressCard slot either, and the preceding iBook no CardBus slot -- more a matter of market placement than lack of room. I also suspect that removal of FireWire from the MacBook's port array has more to do with some perverse desire in Apple's planning to kill off the high speed interface they invented in favor of the inferior USB 2 and the still unproven USB 3, and convince us that less is more.

One reason why I'm an as-yet vicarious fan of PC netbooks is that the orientation of their designers and manufacturers seems to be to pile on as much value and as many features that people want as they can while still selling an attractive package at an affordable, even commodified, price. That's a business and marketing strategy that appeals a lot more to me than Apple's typical aloof snobbery, superciliousness, and elitism.

I love the Mac OS, which is head, shoulders, and torso above anything else in the personal computer operating system category, so it keeps me coming back, and Apple hardware, such as my fleet of old PowerBooks, can be quite sublime, but Apple appeared to stop trying to give us the full laptop feature set serious users want after the Pismo in 2000, instead orienting toward a fixation on making laptops thinner and thinner (both in form factor and versatility). Of course it's hard to argue that this approach hasn't been a success for the company, with Apple's laptop sales now representing over 60 percent of the strongest general CPU sales picture the company has ever enjoyed, but it is an ongoing disappointment for us veteran Apple portable fans, and I do have to wonder how far they can push the envelope, especially in this toxic economy.

As for that little Lenovo netbook, a tip of the hat to CameraHacker.com's Chieh Cheng for bringing it to my attention. Cheng maintains that "Netbooks are photographers' and cinematographers' dream. For four hundred dollars, you can get one with a decent processor, lots of memory, 60 GB of hard drive space, memory card reader, USB ports, and WiFi.... in a Netbook weighing less then three pounds..... and for photographers and cinematographers who like to travel lightly, this kind of notebook computer is a highly desirable travel companion.

Cheng's only complaint was that the critical element missing netbooks was a FireWire (IEEE 1394 in PC-speak) port, which he considers essential for serious photographers, but then discovered the Lenovo IdeaPad S10-1208U netbook, which he found available at TigerDirect for all of $399.99, and which does have an ExpressCard slot.

A nice little piece of kit it is too.

The IdeaPad S10-1208U weighs 2.76 lb. including battery, is a sensible 1 inch thick, has the usual netbook 1.6 GHz Intel Atom Processor, Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 integrated graphics support, an 80GB HDD, 512 GB of DDR2 memory upgradable to 1.5 GB, a 4-in-1 media reader, 802.11 b/g wireless, a 10.2-inch screen with 1024 x 600 resolution, 2 USB ports, an ExpressCard 34 Slot, a VGA video port, audio in and out jacks, and an Integrated Webcam, plus a swappable battery and easy access to the battery bay and RAM slot.

If only Apple would build a small laptop like this.

Well, perhaps they will. Last week, Computerworld's Gregg Keizer reportedthat Technology Business Research Inc. analyst Ezra Gottheil is saying that the tanking economy will oblige Apple to introduce a lower-priced and lighter-weight laptop in the first half of 2009 to compete in the netbook category.

Gottheil doesn't think Apple will try to compete directly with netbooks on price or form factor, but does need an "entry-level notebook" that could sell for $599, and probably be be more like the MacBook than the MacBook Air.

Cool, if it happens, but while I'm an as-yet vicarious netbook fan, one contrarian argument that I think holds a lot of water is that the best value in an inexpensive laptop is still a used or refurbished older Mac 'Book. For example, as my friend and fellow columnist over at PB Central Joe Leo observed in an essay on Friday, "Anyone currently looking for a Mac that's small, 'cheap' (in the $499 to $699 range), and still does pretty much what you need and has high-end processing power, need not look anywhere else but eBay or Craigslist, since the 12-inch PowerBook G4 is the king of that hill," and that's of course the price range those higher-end PC netbooks are selling for.

I pretty much agree. As one still using a semi-elderly 1.33 GHz G4 PowerBook as a production platform running OS X 10.5 Leopard, I can attest that these older Power PC Macs are still formidable performers that offer a lot more power, capacity and features than a new netbook at those prices.


***



cmoore@macopinion.com

Note: Letters to The Road Warrior may or may not be published in The Road Warrior Mailbag at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context.

If you would prefer that your message not appear in The Road Warrior Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published.

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The Road Warrior Mailbag, December 1, 2008

The End Of Matte Notebook Displays

From Taurus

“FireWire ports, per se, are not that expensive. but the ultra-compact motherboard design necessary to fit inside that MacBook Air-esque, ultra-slim enclosure simply left no room for a FireWire port, or so they say.”

I think it’s not that simple. Back in the old days, when Macs were based on the PowerPC architecture, Apple designed its own chipsets. E.g., the Pismo uses Apple’s custom “Uni-N” northbridge chip to implement (among many other things) the Firewire interface.

Nowadays, Macs are based on PC chipsets, and Firewire is uncommon in the PC world, so PC chipsets simply don’t support Firewire. To “emulate” the previous situation, Apple is forced to include an additional chip on the motherboard. And that chip costs money, requires space on the motherboard, complicates the design and manufacturing of the motherboard, and takes power, countering the efforts to use more energy-efficient parts like an LED backlight.

Looks like Apple is loathe to include this additional chip on its motherboards and therefore tries to get the user base accustomed to a Non-Firewire situation. It’s a problem they’ve catched with the Intel-transition. I do agree that the lack of Firewire is absolutely unacceptable, given that USB 2.0 is much slower than Firewire 800.

As for the glossy display, there’s an alternative anti-glare film product by 3M called Vikuiti ARMR200 ("Anti-Reflection Matt Removable"). Might be worth a look.

I also wanted to throw in my 2 cents worth on your upgrade plans: I really do think that you should buy a Unibody Macbook Pro. Just wait until the first affordable ones turn up on the Apple Store’s Refurbished page.

And that’s because I’d love to see a review of that notebook from a die-hard Pismo user’s perspective.

Being a Pismo die-hard myself, I’ve been waiting for years for an adequate replacement for that machine, and my impression is that the Unibody Macbook Pro might finally be what I’ve been looking for. While there still are several things that I don’t like, particularly that the case is silver and not colored (like, black), I’m impressed with the engineering achievement, and I’m particularly impressed that they managed to keep the power consumption down. The German c’t magazine writes that with the 2.4GHz version and 3D acceleration turned off, the fans are rarely on. And that’s good news, because one of the reasons I’ve been turned off by the previous Macbook Pro was the amount of heat and noise it generated. With the Unibody machines, not only did they manage to reduce the power consumption to Pismo levels, they can also use the Unibody as one giant passive cooling system. I think that’s a really interesting architecture. I also like the Pismo-style tapered edges of the Unibody machines.

The c’t magazine writes that one of the four machines they received for their review had a mechanical glitch: The battery/harddrive cover’s size differed by 1 mm from the Unibody case’s size, suggesting that the manufacturing precision of these parts still needs improvement. Another reason not to buy one of the first Unibody machines, but to wait for a few months.

Finally, some rambling on G4 upgrades for the Pismo: Last week, my G3/500 card died. I called Daystar to order a G4/550 card. Turns out they no longer perform this upgrade. They pointed me to WegenerMedia, but as you wrote, the Daystar upgrade was the most “cut and dried”. I already wanted to buy a Daystar upgrade last year and sent an email to Gary Dailey with a few questions in December 2007. I completely missed that they discontinued that product this year.

Geez. I guess the US economy can’t be that bad if companies can afford pointing customers to competitors like this. Shame on them!

taurus

(now working with a spare G3/400 card I had lying around, looking for a used Daystar upgrade...)

___

Hi Taurus;

Thanks for the commentary and very plausible explanation as to why Apple is disinclined to retain FireWire support in the unibody MacBook. I still think that's a mistake, and evidently so do a lot of others.

I too am smitten with the unibodies, and would love to have a uni MacBook Pro. I thought long and hard about taking advantage of Apple's Black Friday sale price on the uni MacBook, but in the end didn't pull the trigger. Thing is, I have a provisional policy about not buying Revision A gear, so by the time Revision B refurbished MacBook Pro unis enter the channel it could be next fall. Not sure I can hang in using a 1.33 GHz G4 that long. I can't justify (or afford) the sticker price of a new one.

Sorry to hear about the processor card crapping out. Yes; Daystar is out of the laptop upgrade business, at least for now. Gary Dailey is a stand up guy, and I'm not surprised that he suggested an alternative source. FWIW, I've had very good luck with a Wegener 550 MHz Pismo upgrade - no hassles or problems at all, and it's in the Pismo I use daily. The FastMac 550 upgrade works well too.

Charles

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Glossy Screens A Major Turn-off

From Krishna

The glossy screens are a major turn-off for me. While there are options to remove the glare by purchasing anti-glare film, why pay more money on top of what is already a premium product?

I had high hopes for the new MBP models to include a matte option, but since that door has forever shut, I'm now contemplating the purchase of an older model with the matte screen (at a substantial savings).

___

Hi Krishna;

I actually don't find glossy displays a problem, but a lot of folks certainly object to them, and I'm sorry that Apple decided to drop matte displays as an option on the MacBook Pro, but as long as they stick with the "display-behind-glass" styling motif pioneered on the aluminum iMac, I don't hold very lively hope for restoration.

As you say, the deals offered on Certified Refurbished and leftover discounted Early 2008 MacBook Pros are pretty attractive.

Charles

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May Never Go Back To Apple Portables Again

From Undo

Removal of Firewire and new extra, extra-glossy glass displays on the MacBooks prompted me to buy a new netbook; my first ever Windows computer. It has a bright matte display with great viewing angles, weighs less than three pounds, has a sweet 93% keyboard, exceptional battery life and costs just $500. I've previously owned five different PowerBooks, iBooks and MacBooks but I may never go back to Apple portables again.

___

Hi Undo;

Interesting, given my advocacy of Apple building a netbook (hopefully with a matte display optional at least).

I would be interested in hearing more about your impressions of how the PC netbook performs, and what it's like living with Windows after so many years on the Mac; what sort of stuff you do with the computer, and so forth.

Charles

***

Wireless Hard Drive

From Terry

Hi Charley:

Hope you are having a Merry Christmas and happy New Year.

The reason I am writing is I would like to see you write an article on the best way to back up using wireless. The points I would like to see is speed in backing up would be the most important, then the most expensive to the cheapest. Range and ease of setup along with security. I am by far not a writer and have no idea how much time or work this is. And I am sure it would not been done before the New Year if you like the Idea.

Thank you for your time and you do not have to respond to this email.
Looking forward to more of your articles.

Sincerely Terry

___

Hi Terry;

Thanks for the Christmas greeeting. Sunday was the first in Advent for this year, and so far, so good.

Thanks also for the suggestion.

While I'm sure that the topic would be of interest to many readers, the problem I would have in writing an article like that, is that I have essentially zero frame of reference or experience in wireless backups. I don't have an Airport network, and am still a hard-wired Ethernet LAN user.

It's a good idea, however, and I'll keep it in mind if circumstances change.

Merry Christmas to you.
Charles





***



cmoore@macopinion.com

Note: Letters to The Road Warrior may or may not be published in The Road Warrior Mailbag at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context.

If you would prefer that your message not appear in The Road Warrior Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published.

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The Road Warrior Mailbag - November 17, 2008

Voice Recognition on the Mac

From Ken Shifrin

Hello Charles

I hope you don't mind me writing to you to ask for your advice. I got your address from Richard Houston in response to a posting I made on the OxMacUser group. He thought you had experience in this area.

Briefly, we're about to buy an Intel iMac and some speech-to-text software. We've been advised that the best thing is Dragon Naturally Speaking v10 which we'd have to run on Windows via Parallels Desktop. We loathe using Windows, and I've seen a program called MacSpeech Dictate which seems to get very good reviews, especially in its latest iteration (v.1.2). I wondered what your experience of these is and which of these paths you thought we might best pursue. Or maybe there's another alternative altogether that we've overlooked?

Any help or advice you can give would be greatly appreciated. I look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes
Ken Shifrin

___

Hi Ken;

I do have about ten years experience using Macs with dictation software. I'm still running a Power PC Mac, so haven't been able to upgrade from MacSpeech's iListen 1.8 to their new Dictate program, but I can convey based on the experience of colleagues who've tested Dictate that it's an excellent dictation program, which is no surprise since it uses the same speech engine as Dragon Naturally Speaking which you've been correctly advised is the gold standard of speech recognition software.

My inclination for use with a Mac would be to go with native Dictate rather than running DNS in Parallels. If you do decide to pursue the latter solution, I suggest contacting DNS Support before purchasing the software to confirm that the program will be a happy camper running in Parallels Desktop. I'm not sure if there would be any problematical issues there or not.

I hope this helps a bit.

Charles


***



cmoore@macopinion.com

Note: Letters to The Road Warrior may or may not be published in The Road Warrior Mailbag at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context.

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New MacBook Pro A Performer In Spite Of “Questionable” Apple Choices

It's always interesting to peruse non Apple-centric reviewers' impressions of Apple products. In his review of the new unibody 15" MacBook Pro, Computershopper's Les L. Shu is generally positive, but says that the poverty of accessories and adapters it ships with - none besides the necessary power cord and AC adapter is a chintzy bit of nickeling and dimeing for top-of-the-line computer. Especially that MiniDisplay port adapter that will set you back an extra $99, that is if you can find one at all.

In the positive column, Shu notes that while saying a laptop is built like a tank is a bit of a cliché, it does appropriately describe the impression he got from the MacBook Pro's solid, dense construction, which designer Jonathan Ive claims to be "fundamentally thinner, stronger and more robust". That impression may be a bit illusory according to this report from ITWire, but I'm sure Apple will take the compliment.

Back in criticism mode, Shu is not enchanted by the black accents around the screen, back, and keyboard, which in his estimation slightly cheapens the feel of the machine, a point on which I've been in agreement since the black accent theme debuted on the MacBook Pro last January. I rather like it on the aluminum iMac, but it doesn't translate gracefully to the laptop form factor - I think the prominence of the keyboard as a murkily black area with the laptop form factor is the key to this impression if you will. The aluminum-colored keyboards on the old school MacBook Pros and PowerBooks look classier and more aesthetically-pleasing to my eyes.

Another gripe I share with Shu is the MacBook Pro's relative poverty of ports. "The system still has only two USB ports, which is sure to annoy those who love to plug in a ton of peripherals," he comments. It certainly annoys me, and when even cheapo (and thin) PC netbooks often come with three USB ports, Ethernet, and internal modem, and a card reader, I don't perceive any reasonable excuse for Apple not doing likewise with the MacBook Pro, or for that matter the MacBook, other than a perverse ideological minimalism when it comes to I/O support. FireWire 400 is gone too, leaving us with a single FireWire 800 port, which is backward compatible with FireWire 400 but you need an adapter dongle which is more extra expense and bother to live with. At least it still has FireWire, which the unibody MacBook does not.

Speaking of which, if you'll forgive a digression, in my Low End Mac review this week of the Targus USB 2.0 High-Speed File Transfer Cable. which is designed to facilitate transferring large amounts of data from computer to computer via USB, serving essentially has a USB substitute for Apple's built-in FireWire Target Disk Mode, I note that this cable could ease the sting and become a popular workaround for buyers of the new, FireWire-bereft, Unibody MacBooks.

The High-Speed File Share Cable offers a claims maximum nominal transfer rate of 480 Mbps, although that speed will never be attained in real world applications, with something like 260 Mbps being more likely on most machines. However, some testers have reported that USB throughput on the Unibody MacBooks seems to be significantly faster than we've been accustomed to with older Macs.

The genius of the Targus High-Speed Data Transfer Cable is that it includes built-in file transfer software called EasySuite that works with both Mac OS X and Windows OS - it can be used to transfer files cross-platform as well as from Mac-to-Mac or Windows-to-Windows. And unlike FireWire Target Disk mode, one of the computers does not have to be shut down and restarted in order to set up file transfers.

As for another magesterial Apple decision not to offer a matte display option with the new MacBook Pro, Shu observes, and again I agree, that while a glossy display tends not to be an issue with a consumer notebook, the MacBook Pro is targeted at professionals. Personally I think they probably would have continued offering a matte display except it just doesn't work with the display under glass styling motif, so function has followed form as is so often the case with Apple hardware.

Shu notes that the MacBook Pro delivers in the performance column but still runs hot. This is true, although there has been a substantial improvement with the latest Penryn Core 2 Duo CPUs, which draw less power (and thus create less heat) than older C2Ds, and especially the Core Duo chips used in the earliest MacBook Pros and MacBooks. OnScreen Scientist.com reports that his 1sr Gen Core Duo MacBook Pro can hit operating temperatures of 100° C or 212° F, (the boiling point of water) while running graphics-intensive software under Windows Vista installed on a Boot Camp partition on my first generation MacBook Pro, and has recently observed temperatures under Mac OS 10.5.5 climbing to levels that make the Vista temperatures seem mild in comparison, however, hitting 104° C with the Microsoft Update program open, and 121° C (250° F) during a photo download with a browser before automatically shutting down.

Overall Les L. Shu concludes that from out-of-the-box to starting the OS to firing up applications, the company has made the experience completely seamless and enjoyable, and although some of Apple's choices are questionable, they are minor compared to how well the machine works. It's just too bad that Apple couldn't rethink those questionable choices and give us what we want rather than what they decide is good for us, which I think would be good for them.

A ChangeWave survey of 3,699 consumers conducted between Oct. 23 and Nov. 3 found that a full third of US notebook buyers surveyed, or 33 percent, plan to buy some form of Apple notebook during the holiday season or within the next 90 days from the start of November, and that about 20 percent of the 33 percent leans towards the higher-end MacBook Air and MacBook Pro systems, with notably a relatively small 7 percent likely to buy the new unibody 13-inch MacBooks (could the misbegotten decision to drop FireWire support be hurting worse than Apple anticipated?), with nearly as many at 6 percent setting their purchase sights the holdover (and FireWire-equipped) while plastic MacBook.



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Charles W. Moore

The Road Warrior archives may be accessed from the link at the bottom of this page


Note: Letters to The Road Warrior may or may not be published in The Road Warrior Mailbag at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context.

If you would prefer that your message not appear in The Road Warrior Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published.

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Is The End Of Matte Notebook Displays A Problem For You?

The two most prolific complaints about the new MacBook and MacBook Pro models are abandonment of FireWire entirely on the MacBook, and cutback to just one FireWire 800 port on the MacBook Pro (which is backward compatible with FireWire 400 via an adapter dongle), and the discontinuation of a matte finish display option on the Pro (the MacBook has always has a 13.3' glossy display).

Personally, the FireWire issue is the more problematical one for me. Maybe someday, but I relay on FireWire too much at this stage of the game to give up on it and resort to the various inconvenient and inferior workarounds that have been floated. There's no substitute for FireWire Target Disk Mode, and I still have a bunch of FireWire peripherals that I won't ready to give up on for probably years to come yet. That factor alone will most likely be the tipping point in making my next computer an early 2008 model MacBook Pro. I'm torn, because I really an smitten with the engineering of the new unibody MacBook cases and a new MacBook Pro is too expensive for my wallet, but FireWire is close to being non-negotiable for me.

I'm more ambivalent about the matte vs. glossy screen issue. Refurbished old school MacBook Pros are available with either, and I haven't decided which way to jump, but I'm probably leaning toward matte without really strong preference. They both have their strong and weak points, and after all we used to live with glossy glass displays in desktop systems not so long ago and curved-surface ones at that. However, for some folks this is a matter of passionate conviction, and as with FireWire for me, is a deal-breaker that's settled them on grabbing one of the outgoing MacBook Pro models, with some even vowing to never buy a Mac portable with a glossy screen.

Another issue that's surfaced, so to speak, with both the MacBook and MacBook Pro unibodies is that even glossy screen fans are finding that while the brightly LED backlit displays go a long way toward overcoming glare and reflection off the display area itself, the wide black display bezel surround, likewise under glass, is of course not backlit and under certain light conditions essentially becomes a mirror surface aiming glare and reflections right at the user. Even in the Apple PR Press images that appear here, reflections are evident.

One potential workaround is Photodon's $15.50 anti-glare film ( http://www.photodon.com ) that can be used to cover the entire display surface including the black bezel surround.

The Photodon film uses a no-residue silicon resin adhesive, that can be removed without leaving sticky residue behind. According to a mini-review on MacInTouch this week Photodon film does indeed go a long way toward subduing glare and reflections from the unibodies' mirror-like screen surface, although they say it it adds some graininess to the image, making it a tradeoff. This is definitely a matter of taste, but if you can't abide the glossy reflections, the Photodon film redeems the new MacBook. For just, it's a very cheap way to vastly improve the MacBook's day-to-day usability.

Matte display advocates cite the lack of reflection and glare, and superior characteristics for color calibration, while glossy fans tout bright, more saturated and vivid colors and intense blacks.

Some have suggested that dumping matte displays is a cost-cutting measure. That could be a subsidiary factor, but the main reason as I see it is that the "under glass" motif is an integral design element of the new machines, and so far as I can fathom there is no practical way that could be made to work with a matte display option, so once again with Apple, form trumps function.

For that matter, the elimination of FireWire on the MacBook is also a consequence of styling rather than cost. FireWire ports, per se, are not that expensive. but the ultra-compact motherboard design necessary to fit inside that MacBook Air-esque, ultra-slim enclosure simply left no room for a FireWire port, or so they say.

I had been concerned about this ever since the MacBook Air rolled out in January, since it seemed virtually inevitable that future MacBooks and MacBook Pros would follow the design themes introduced with the Air. The shift to a Mini DisplayPort from the former DVI video port on the MacBook Pro is another example. As in previous instances, Apple will try to brazen it out and convince us that less is more, but it patently is not.

That said, I would rate prospects for restoration of either FireWire or matte displays as slim to nil. The only instances I can think of where Apple restored lost or omitted I/O support was in adding FireWire to the late 2000 iBook, a second USB port to the 2001 iBook, and a FireWire 800 port on the 15" MacBook Pro at its first or second revision.

With the under glass display motif pushing matte off the options list, the last of the Mohicans there will be when the 17" MacBook Pro gets replaced by a unibody model, probably in the spring of 2009, so if you really want a new Mac notebook with a matte screen, better grab one of the end-of-the-line old school 17-inchers while they're still available.



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cmoore@macopinion.com

Note: Letters to The Road Warrior may or may not be published in The Road Warrior Mailbag at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context.

If you would prefer that your message not appear in The Road Warrior Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published.

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The Road Warrior Mailbag - October 27, 2008

New Apple Notebooks Enticing But Not Without Shortcomings
New Apple Laptops
Laptop Laidback 3 Discount?



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New Apple Notebooks Enticing But Not Without Shortcomings

From Rick

Charles, I read your thoughts on Apple's new notebooks with interest because I value your views on such matters perhaps more than any other writer on this subject.

I ordered a maxed out MacBook Pro (2.8 Ghz., 7200 RPM 320 GB HD) the day they were announced, and I'd like to tell you why I'm pretty excited about the promise of it.

First, I've been wanting to consolidate to one machine after using both a desktop and a laptop/notebook for many years. I've attempted to do this twice in the past (once in 1998 when I switched to the Mac and again in 2005). I've been unsuccessful each time for one or two reasons. The primary factor in the past has been hard drive size. I simply couldn't get a portable Mac with a hard drive as large as I needed. I seemed to always be swapping files back and forth between my portable Mac and my desktop Mac at home.

A second reason was video capability. For the past two years, I've used a MacBook, which has been enough computer for most of my needs, but was very slow when editing video. Granted, I don't do a lot of video editing, but the MacBook simply isn't made for this kind of use with any regularity. I bought an aluminum iMac last year strictly for video editing which is a wonderful computer, but having it for this sole use seems like a waste of a good computer. Well, technically video editing wasn't the sole use of the iMac. I also kept my iTunes library on it because of the aforementioned issue with hard drive space.

So anyway, because over the years, I've come to the point where I use a portable machine 90% of the time, I really only felt I needed a Mac notebook. When Apple announced the new MacBook Pros last week, I felt like my answer had arrived.

I have a number of Firewire peripherals, so I had to opt for the MacBook Pro with which I'll use an adapter. But I wanted the larger 15" screen anyway if this is to become my only machine. Also, I know a lot of people are upset about the glossy screens, but for my purposes I've very much grown to like the glossy screens using one on my MacBook for the last two years and the iMac for the last year. I find that simply tilting the screen slightly usually takes away any significant glare.

Regarding my concern with hard drive space, if Apple had offered a 500 GB drive (which is now on the market from third parties) I would have opted for that, but I'm willing to be patient and upgrade the MacBook Pro myself later when even larger hard drive offerings arrive. One thing about the new MacBook Pros which is especially nice is how easy it is to swap out hard drives. My MacBook had been easy enough and I had already upgraded the hard drive on it once and performed the same kind of upgrade for a couple of my friends. But with the new MacBook Pros, Apple has recognized that consumers ought to be able to upgrade the storage space on laptops as easily as we can upgrade RAM.

Further, from what I understand, the new MacBook Pros use a SATA optical drive. This should mean that the drive could be replaced with a SECOND hard drive with very little effort (although I'm not sure yet how easy it will be to get to the drive). Frankly, I don't use an optical drive all that often anymore. I need one occasionally, but I certainly wouldn't mind having an external solution via USB2 for the optical drive.

With this kind of expandability--although it's not exactly the same--the new MacBook Pro may be the most expandable Mac portables since the Wallstreet/Pismo days.

Regarding video concerns, the dual Nvidia chips will certainly allow me to replace the iMac for the purpose of occasional video editing and then some.

But there may even be more advantage. Although Apple says the memory limit on the new MacBook Pros is 4 GB, there is much speculation going on as to whether 8 GB might not be the actual limit. Nvidia has confirmed that their chipset will not limit the MacBook Pros to 4 GB but will allow for 8 GB:
<http://blogs.computerworld.com/nvidia_says_new_macbook_pro_can_do_8gb_of_ram>http://blogs.computerworld.com/nvidia_says_new_macbook_pro_can_do_8gb_of_ram

Of course, right now the only question is whether or not Apple has crippled the MacBook Pros to a 4 GB ceiling. I haven't heard of anyone actually testing this out yet because two 4 GB chips cost upwards of $1100.

However, IF the new MacBook Pros can be expanded to 8 GB (RAM prices always come down eventually), this fact along with the easily expandable storage options could mean that these notebooks could have VERY long life spans for consumers.

So while a lot of folks weren't overly excited about the new offerings, I think they are quite significant in the ongoing evolution of Mac Portables. Mine should arrive today, and I'm looking forward to finally consolidating to one machine.

Rick

___

Hi Rick;

Good to hear from you again, and thank you for sharing your thoughts on the new Mac ntebooks. I sounds like the new MacBook Pro hits the sweet spot for you.

I totally agree about the ease of swapping hard drives. Long overdue, and one of the most compelling features of these computers for me. Unfortunately, the new Pro models are out of my price range, and with good deals available on leftover and refurbished early 2008 MacBook Pros,which also have LED displays, I can;t justify the greater outlay for one of the newbies, especially in this economy with my retirement nestegg melting away like an ice cube in the hot July sun.

As for the RAM, perhaps you recall that the official Apple ceiling for the Pismo was (and remains) 512MB, but they happily support twice that. I have no idea whether the same dynamic will obtain in the new MacBooks.

Good point about expandability. Well short of expansion by grade, but definitely some enhanced flexiility with the second SATA bay.

Reportedly, getting at the insides isn't too bad with these 'Books. See this article.
http://blog.smalldog.com/article/1375/the-new-macbook-from-a-service-technicians-point-of-view/

I hope you will send us a report or two about how well you like your new MacBook Pro.

Charles







New Apple Laptops

From Lachlan

Hi Charles, just read your astute impressions of the new Apple portables.

Personally I'm saddened that Apple chose to differentiate the models by leaving FireWire off the MacBook. It seems to me that they are shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to the education sector, as many schools have drives, audio interfaces and cameras that all connect via firewire and are not going to rush out and purchase the MacBook Pros due to price. (I believe the entry level MacBook (White) is a run-out model that won't be around for much longer - and seriously, who "upgrades" to the same machine they already have anyway?) In Australia we are paying a price premium, with the new Unibody MacBook retailing at $2099 - with less connectivity!!

This leaves the door open to other manufacturers and operating systems surely.

Steve and Co need to get back into the real world, where people have peripherals they expect to be able to use. (It's not like firewire was replaced with a new superior standard ...)

I don't find the new laptops compelling enough to justify their price especially with the dearth of connectivity options. (Only 2 USB 2 ports on a > $2000 laptop? Ridiculous.)

Thanks for the review. I'll be looking for a last gen MacBook Pro too.

Cheers,
Lachlan

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Hi Lachlan;

Glad you enjoyed the article.

I agree with you about FireWire, although I don't think it was a product differentiation decision so much as that the tiny logic board necessary to fit inside that ultrathin unibody case with a footprint dictated by the 13'3" display simply didn't have room for a FireWire port.

Personally, I have too many FireWire peripherals that I have no intention of giving up on for a good long time yet to seriously consider buying a machine that doesn't support FW.

Charles







Laptop Laidback 3 Discount?

From Jimmy Yuan

Thanks for your intro.

Laptop Laidback 3 Stand For Reclined Computing Re-Engineered is a good and funny goods, but $99 is too expensive. Where have a discount price?

Some can help me?

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Hello Jimmy;

Actually, that $99 price is a substantial cut from the price of the earlier, Laidback 2 model which sold for $139.

As far as I know, the only vendor for the Laptop Laidback is the manufacturer and no discounts are available.

Charles



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