Nicest of the Damned

MacBook Air=Portable Cube

MacBook Air @ Macworld,
originally uploaded by viejomoeb.

I was excited about the rumors of an Apple subnotebook being announced today. I've loved what Apple has done in this space before, and have been a regular user of all three generations of Mac subnotebooks — the PowerBook Duo (I had a 230c), the PowerBook 2400c, and the 12" PowerBook G4.

Having watched the keynote, and gone over the specs with a fine-toothed comb, I'm mostly disappointed. The MacBook Air is a very sexy form factor surrounding some very ordinary parts -- you've got an iPod hard drive, integrated video that burns 144 megs of system memory, and 2 gigs of RAM that it appears are permanently attached, and cannot be upgraded. Unlike every portable Apple has ever built, the battery isn't even user swappable.

I initially thought Apple might take this opportunity to introduce a new form factor in between the MacBook and MacBook Pro that would, in a year or 18 months, serve as the model for the next revision of the MacBook. Such a machine would skimp a little in comparison with the Pro, but likely offer a dedicated video card, standard laptop components cleverly packaged, and an LED-backlit widescreen display.

Instead, what we got strikes me as a “café computer,” one that will be fine for e-mail and weblogging, but that I don't see using for on-the-go video work (there's not even a FireWire port) and that won't even open Photoshop. To better manage heat and power consumption, Apple has designed in a 1.6-gigahertz processor, significantly slower than a standard MacBook (and at least nominally slower even than the processor in the Mac mini). Instead of the commodity hard drive, a 5400-rpm Serial ATA model, the Air gets a 4200-rpm Parallel ATA model in the iPod's 1.8-inch form factor.

Apple has provided one option that could mitigate the machine's performance handicap a bit: A solid-state hard drive, currently 64 gigabytes. Unfortunately, building that drive in is a $999 option!

It's beautiful, certainly. Apple's design aesthetic seems to be collapsing in on itself, leaving just a single word: Thin. Beveled corners, like those on the iPod touch, make the Air's edges visually sharp, while the drop-down ports, required by the crazy thin-ness of the case, are very cool.

But it's beautiful at a price. Here's a machine for travelers that won't be able to connect to the in-room ethernet. Here's a machine that can't simultaneously handle a keyboard and mouse unless the keyboard provides USB pass-through (lots don't). I find myself wondering if it's true: You can be too thin.

Sitting here 10 hours from the keynote, the Air doesn't remind me most of the late, beloved 12" PowerBook or the 2400c, still my favorite computer of all time. The Mac it reminds me of is the Cube. Like the Cube, it's beautiful, offers little expansion capability, and looks pricey when compared to its Apple stablemates.

Is there a miniBook in the pipeline?

Apple Recon | Mac Book Mini

Apple Recon is reporting on rumors that Apple has a subnotebook in process, with specs and pricing in between the MacBook and MacBook Pro. The rumors suggest a 3.5 pound package, with a 12" 1280 x 800 monitor, hard drive and optical drive (and possibly a new caching flash drive as well), and 6 hour battery life.

If this comes to pass, I will be sorely tempted. My two favorite laptops of all time are the PowerBook 2400c and the 12" PowerBook.

I know such a machine is possible -- I'm currently using one, even if it has a Dell logo. It's not 3.5 pounds, and I'm sure Apple will bring other innovations to theirs (Apple Recon speculates on an LED backlight and the flash drive), but my Dell XPS M1210 matches this rumor, to be announced in June, today.

The base system is 4.3 pounds, and about the same size as a PowerBook 12", but it's got a lot of features I would be surprised to see in the final Apple release, as well: S-Video out, 2 gigs of memory with support for 4 gigs, and an ExpressCard 54 slot. Mine's got an extended battery, and it's good for 4-5 hours of wireless use, enough that I haven't really noticed the battery life. The 256-meg nVidia 7400 video card drives my 20" widescreen display alongside the internal LCD, and nVidia supplies a software wizard to gracefully set up multiple displays. There's plenty I don't like, of course: Something about the keyboard feels like it's coming off on my fingers, and there are media keys along the front of the case that I keep bumping by mistake. The topcase is a black plastic that picks up oil from my hands every time I pick it up. It's got the glossy screen, which is very bright, but I've found myself in two situations where I had to move the laptop to eliminate glare. If I were using it in the field, that number would be higher.

I love the rumored specs for an Apple subnotebook, although I wish it could fit an ExpressCard, since its target market (knowledge workers and execs on the go) are likely to take advantage of high-speed cellular wireless connections. Also, I hope the rumor is wrong about a 2-gHz ceiling on clock speed. If Apple addresses this giant, yet tiny, hole in its portable line, the machine should have at least a nominal speed increase over the MacBook.

iPhone 4+ years in the making?

Nicest of the Damned | isync + ical + ichat + inkwell = iphone?

I'm not usually one to self-link, but I'm getting some Google hits on the short post linked above from August 2002. It references a John Markoff story, now lost to the New York Times TimesSelect product, but the abstract is pretty prescient.

Remember, this is from August 19, 2002:

Apple Computer reportedly weighs introduction of hand-held device that would combine elements of cellphone and Palm-like personal digital assistant; forthcoming Macintosh OS X, Version 10.2, is being marketed as improvement for desktop computer users, but it has features that make more sense in hand-held device than desktop; move would play into Apple's so-called digital hub strategy, in which Macintosh desktop computer is center of web of peripheral devices of Steven P Jobs, Apple chief executive...

By the way, my very next post, later that day, was on a cool new RSS aggregator, called NetNewsWire, then in version 1.0b13.

Biggest Macworld and switching to the PC

Hivelogic | Regarding Macworld 2007

O'Reilly MacDevCenter | Our Macworld Wishes

So the biggest Macworld in years starts tomorrow (Tuesday for Macworld Expo). Nobody seems to have a real handle on what Apple's going to do this year, so predictions are all over the place. Apple has pushed the hype by promising that “The first 30 years were just the beginning,” suggesting major things afoot.

Over at HiveLogic, Dan Benjamin offers a fairly safe list: Whatever Apple's iTV becomes, updates to the iMac, iPod, iLife and iWork, and a preview of Leopard, with Windows virtualization built in. All good stuff, with the virtualization probably the only controversial choice.

Benjamin doubts we'll see the iPhone/iPod phone, new iSights, or a Mac Pro update, widely expected because Intel will be announcing its new Kentsfield processors tomorrow. He rates as “possibilities” high-def iTunes (to support TV and movie content in HD), an update to the iPod Hifi, a MacBook Pro speedbump, and BlueRay support, and is holding his breath for a “true” video iPod, a nanoBook (an ultraportable laptop), and a Beatles iPod, heralding the arrival of the Beatles catalog on iTunes.

Over at O'Reilly's MacDevCenter, a survey of writers turns up a surprisingly common wish for a Core 2 Duo update of Apple's longstanding desktop form factor, last seen in, what, the 7600? For years, this was the most popular corporate Mac, in its IIcx/IIci/Quadra 650/Power Mac 7100/PowerMac 7500/7600 iteration, which usually shared a motherboard with Apple's top tower, albeit generally with a slower processor, and generally offered 3 slots. The iMac line is inherently wasteful in a corporate environment, because most companies are ready to upgrade the CPU long before the LCD has died, but the Mac mini is generally a little underpowered for corporate use. So I'll add this to my wish list (fat lot of good it will do).

Also looking back to the future are a couple of writers who want a replacement for the 12" PowerBook. That would be terrific. The Mac world significantly lags the PC world when it comes to sub-notebooks, and it seems like I'm seeing more and more of the smaller, lighter machines in airports. If you spend a lot of time on the road, and use your machine for office functions, a 12" (or smaller) machine you can hook to an external monitor in the office, with a decent keyboard and battery life, makes a lot of sense.

Also, three of their writers want changes to .Mac. One wants it eliminated (I don't see that happening), while another wants to see it significantly enhanced. I still would like to see .Mac become an extension of a home server product (like the HP MediaSmart server, but software or Mac mini-based and therefore cheaper), with two-way synchronization of selected files and folders between .Mac and the home server; automatic backup of purchased iTunes and other user content to the home server; domain, weblog, calendar and photo sharing support over the internet.

Meanwhile, I'm starting a new job tomorrow, and I hear they've got a sub-notebook Dell waiting for me. I'll be sure to let you know how that goes. It's been 5 years since I spent more than 30-45 minutes at a Windows desktop.

Apple developing PocketBook?

O'Grady's PowerPage | Apple Developing New Palmtop Mac

Geez, I hope this rumor is true. PowerPage is reporting that Apple is working on a new "pocketop" machine, that would use Inkwell and a stripped-down Mac OS X.

Target hardware: Sony's UX-50, which offered Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, video record, and low-res camera in something that fit in a shirt pocket, and the OQO, a full Wintel machine (not PocketPC) that's 3.5 x 5 x 1 inch, partly thanks to the hard drive used in the iPod.

Target market: Anybody who has ever thought it would be a good idea to carry their laptop with them all the time. It could quickly become the blogger's equivalent of the Radio Shack Model 100, long beloved by journalists, who could carry it anywhere, and file (through acoustic couplers and the built-in 300 baud modem) anywhere they could find a phone. If Apple is truly working toward an online movie store, this machine could also be the portable player.

Target feature set: There are two key factors to creating a world-beating palmtop: battery life, and bandwidth. Users should never have to worry about either one. Bandwidth is a really interesting concern: out here in flyover country, Wi-Fi still doesn't have penetration to give dependable connections from an arbitrary location. Verizon's high-speed wireless would be awesome, and including support for it in hardware might let Apple offer a branded connection (annual iLife, .Mac, frequent OS updates: Apple is really working to drive recurring revenue). Bluetooth to your phone would be nice, but might impact battery life.

The battery has to last a full day; I would guess that's something like 8 hours of usage.

What makes this idea work is running standard OS X software. If I have to learn a whole other set of programs, I'll stick with the laptop. Resolution should be at least 640 x 480: Apple's Displays preference panel mentions that some applications won't display correctly at less than 800 x 600. The OQO is 800 x 480.

Target price: The OQO costs nearly $2,000. The UX-50 was around $600. It's going to be a tough sell if the machine is much more than an iBook, which officially starts at $999.

$70 million in iBooks?

ajc.com | Cobb wants Apples for teachers and students

Looks like my old school system has eliminated both Dell and IBM from consideration for a very large laptop program, in favor of about 63,000 iBooks from Apple.

Cobb County's public schools expected to pay about $275 each for the machines (and that's one healthy volume discount), but also will be buying support, training and maintenance, that make up the bulk of the deal. If the Journal-Constitution's numbers are right, 63,000 students times $275 per iBook runs only about $17.25 million, so the majority of the costs (as we all know) come after acquisition.

The system intends to roll the program out in three phases, first to teachers, then high schoolers, and finally to middle school students.

The linked article includes dates and times for 4 meetings the superintendent is holding for parents during the next 3 weeks.

Pundits on parade, take 2

BBC NEWS | Business | Apple Macs: Objects of devotion

I don't know how you could write a whole column positing the existence of a "Cult of Mac" without mentioning Cult of Mac (the website), or The Cult of Mac (the book), both by Leander Kahney.

It's pretty clear reading the linked article that the author is working from Kahney's book (which I got for Christmas. I wasn't going to buy it, since I follow the website, but it's worth it for all the photos, which Wired's website doesn't handle well).

Dawn of a new Apple

So Steve Jobs has finished the big keynote at Macworld '05, and the Apple website has been updated with the new products he announced. If you haven't been following along, feel free to go take a look.

Wow. This is the beginning of a whole new era for Apple. No longer do I have to grit my teeth and say, "Well, you could buy a white-box PC," when somebody says they only want to spend $500 on their new computer.

This is beginning to smell like a no-excuses Apple. We only have five percent of the market? What the hell are we going to do about it? Asked and answered. We're dominating the hard drive music player market, but people are still buying smaller and cheaper flash players? What the hell are we going to do about it? Asked and answered.

It's great to see Apple leveraging their superior product design skills to bring out some low-end products. As of today, you can actually take home a useful piece of Apple hardware for $99. The iPod shuffle looks like exactly what I was talking about in December, the iPod cheapy tiny sport. My only problem is that it doesn't have FireWire support, so it would/will be very slow with Sophie's TiBook (which is still USB 1.1, of course).

As for the Mac mini, that's every bit as nice as the G4 iMac I'm writing this on, for $599. The $499 model will probably do very nicely as the replacement for my home web server, and somebody on my tech team pointed out almost immediately that the new mini is essentially the same size as the mini PC we're planning to deploy to field locations where space is tight.

I expect both of these new products to sell like crazy.

World's cheapest G5 upgrade

My G5 fans have been running a little loudly, and almost all the time, lately. I hadn't noticed an effect on the machine's speed, but in checking the load average, it was always above 1.00. At first, I thought maybe this was an effect of the dual processor setup, but I checked the dually at work, and the load average was about .50.

I installed a fresh copy of Panther on an external FireWire drive, booted up, and my fans spun down. Load average was suddenly in the .25 range. I rebooted off the internal drive, and the fans came back. Looking at 'top', I discovered the Finder was hovering within a few percent of 100 percent. Hmmmm. In poking around, I noticed my 'Finder Preferences' file (com.apple.finder.plist) was about 2 MEGABYTES. I deleted it, fired back up, and my machine was instantly 5 times faster, with the load average down in the .20 range.

Right now, running NetNewsWire, MarsEdit, Entourage, SpamSieve, iPulse, QuickSilver, and iTunes, I'm showing "0.20 0.12 0.13" in 'w' or 'uptime'.

It's been about 36 hours since I fixed it, and the office is even noticeably cooler.

Nothing left to take away: the iMac G5

Almost everybody reading this already knows, but Apple introduced the new G5 iMac today (actually yesterday, as I check the clock). Single processor, 1.6 or 1.8 gigahertz, hooked to Apple's great 17" or 20" LCD display. A little skimpy on memory with 256 megabytes stock on each model.

The big news is the minimalist design. It's a 2-inch deep rectangle, with an aluminum stand keeping the whole thing from floating off your desk.

Many of the stories talk about the debt the new design owes the iPod. I wonder if they considered putting a clickwheel under the display, to be used as a hardware equivalent of Synergy, and to allow scrubbing in other media apps.

If the monitor-spanning hack works with it, you could build an amazing system by hooking a new 20" display into a 20" iMac, all for around the price of a 17" G4 PowerBook.
Update: The monitor spanning hack works; here are pictures to prove it.

Speaking of, when will we see a G5 PowerBook? Checking out the innards, it looks like Apple could build a 17" G5 PowerBook right now, if people would buy a 3-inch-thick PowerBook. In other words, if they could design it like a Dell.

Taking the shorter list first, here's what I don't like about the new iMac:

The monitor is still locked into the CPU, so you're forced to upgrade them together.

No FireWire 800?

Things I love:

The pricing: the systems are $400-$500 less than the G4 systems they replace.

They're VESA-compliant, so you can hang the whole thing from a desk or wall mount.

Punditry:

Find myself agreeing with Chuck Toporek that Wi-Fi and Bluetooth should be standard to further cement Apple's place as the PC maker who includes what costs extra with the leading brand. I wonder if they're doing it to push build-to-order sales, since the integrated wireless options are only available through the online Apple Store.

Find myself disagreeing with Paul Jackson of Forrester Research that this machine should have been a media center PC competitor. Jackson obviously likes his, but I don't know a single Media Center PC owner, and I haven't seen any evidence from ads and store displays that they're setting the world on fire.

I continue to hold out hope that Apple will legitimize this space, as they did with MP3 players when they introduced the iPod, by introducing an iServe that, among other things, can interface with your cable or satellite provider and stream video to any computer in the house (and the TV, naturally). There have been a couple of rumors about iPod-related products in 2005, and if the iPod eventually supports video, the iServe is right there.

Side note: Jackson says, "Better still would have been a software option to turn this machine into a full Wi-Fi access point: Intel's Grantsdale chipset already promises this functionality for PC owners." It does this, Paul. So will any Mac with an ethernet port and an AirPort card since 1999. Simple matter of checking "Share my Internet connection through...."

Like Adam Engst's suggestion that a new iMac plus Open Door's Envision would be a dandy living room installation, that would double as a digital picture frame.

Adam repeats the conventional wisdom that Apple has to disable monitor spanning to differentiate Pro and Consumer machines, and Glenn Fleishman suggests monitor spanning would add $75 to $100 to retail price. I doubt it. The monitor-spanning hack above proves the hardware support has been included on almost every recent consumer Mac. It's entirely a marketing decision, and I think it's one that doesn't make much sense in 2004.

Now that the G5 Pro line is all dual, it's differentiated by 1) having twice the CPUs, 2) faster frontside bus, 3) more maximum memory, 4) PCI-X expansion, 5) FireWire 800, 6) digital audio both in and out, 7) gigabit ethernet, and 8) much beefier video cards. Letting the iMac span monitors would be a very powerful argument for why the Mac is worth the premium over a Wintel box. It would also probably sell a lot of Apple displays.

On the PowerBook side, most of the same differences persist, although my 12" model shares some of the limitations of the iBook. Once again, only the Pro models (the "PowerBooks") are allowed to span monitors, even though the iBook features a 32 megabyte ATI Mobility Radeon 9200. Again, Apple would be better served by shipping a software upgrade that enabled spanning across the product line and really playing up what a difference the extra real estate makes.

Airport Express extends non-Apple base stations

When I got home with my new Airport Express base station/print server/iTunes stereo interface thingy, I decided to try to set it up as a range extender, using Wi-Fi's WDS technology on my home network. Apple says the APX will only work with an Airport Extreme base station, and around the web, I've seen a few people claiming it can't be done, because WDS is not really a part of the 802.11 standard, so vendors are free to implement it in their own way.

This appears to NOT be the case. Leafing through 802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide, it looks like WDS is in fact, implemented in a standard way, with each repeater taking a role equivalent to a single port on a switch.

The good news is that I got lucky with my hardware selection. About a year ago, I bought a Buffalo WBR-G54 base station, so I could use the Airport Extreme card in my PowerBook at full speed, and because, after rebates, it was $50 (!!) at CompUSA. The Buffalo has a very frustrating interface, but lets you set everything under the sun, and a jack for adding an external antenna, all for around half the cost of an Airport Extreme Base Station. It's therefore a good choice for geeks looking to save money and unafraid of getting their hands dirty. It's also very similar to the Extreme base station, and showed up as a choice in my Airport Express software, when it was looking for a base station with which it could associate.

It was a fairly simple matter to get the two units on the same channel with the same SSID and the same password. Since I'm filtering on MAC addresses, I had to make sure the Buffalo had both MAC addresses from the APX, and had to set the APX to serve packets originating from the Buffalo. It can be hard to tell if it's working, so iStumbler can be a big help: When you see two base stations with the same name and channel, you're likely home free.

The Linksys routers, which are generally the standard among geeks who know, have some problems here, and people are flashing custom firmware to get this to work with them.

Some links:

garth.org | Buffalo WBR-G54 and Apple Airport Express as a Relay

Set-Up Guide Buffalo WGR-G54 BaseStation with Apple Airport Express in WDS mode.

Apple - Discussions - Buffalo WBR-G54 + APX = WDS WORKING!!!!

Buffalo Technology - Downloads

Express checks in for hotel WiFi

I bought an Apple Airport Express today, when I saw they were in stock at the local computer store (probably influenced by one of our developers, who has been pestering the Apple Store for weeks, and hearing that they're not available yet). I am on the road today, and I knew I would be spending two nights at a hotel with high-speed broadband, so I thought I would get a good chance to try it out.

If you haven't seen the Airport Express, it's a tiny Airport Base Station, MINUS the dial-out and antenna, but PLUS a stereo-out jack (one jack that can handle analog or digital out). Here's what I had to do to use it:

1. Open box
2. Plug in the power
3. Plug in the ethernet
4. Join the network that shows up

Since I'm on a hotel network with the "Accept our terms" page, I popped up a browser, agreed to the terms, and started downloading several hundred bounced spams (some spammer or another has discovered a domain I administer, and is forging spam from it).

Long term, I think it will spend its time in my travel bag for use in a variety of remote sites, including my parents' house, in hotel rooms, and possibly at client sites. It also supports WDS, where one base station extends a network provided by another. When I get home, I'll try WDS with my Buffalo base station; so far I've only seen one report confirming that it worked with (I think) a D-Link base station. Update: It was a Linksys 54g, but some gymnastics were involved.

I hooked up my travel speakers to the audio-out, went to iTunes, and was briefly baffled: The speakers don't show up in the list of devices at the left of the iTunes window, but in a pop-up menu at the bottom. Switch from "Computer" to "Base Station 0xb38ag" (not its real address), hit play, and the music is coming out of the speakers across the room.

Connecting from my Tungsten C was totally uneventful as well. Everything works exactly as you would expect. If you had adjoining rooms in a hotel, you could share a single wired connection very easily with the Express, say if the hotel charged for internet access, or you wanted to use Rendezvous between rooms. I could also see using it in a corporate suite or at a trade show.

I haven't tried the print server capabilities, but they're on-board: The Express has a USB port with directions on hosting printer sharing out to the wireless network.

One small surprise: The Airport Express closely resembles the power adapter that Apple uses for the PowerBook, down to the piece with two wall prongs that slides off, and that I immediately replaced (on my PowerBook, that is) with the longer extension cord provided. With the Express, there's no extension cord in the box, so you have to plug the Express directly into the socket. Apple sells a Stereo Connection Kit that includes that extension cord, plus two sets of Monster-brand stereo cables (TOSLINK and RCA).

Amazon has a great price on the Express right now, and as always, if you get one by following the link below, I'll get a kickback:

Apple knows transitions

Macworld UK | Happy 10th Birthday, Power Mac!

Sunday was the 10th anniversary of the introduction of Apple's Power Macintosh line. Based on IBM's POWER line of processors, the original PowerPCs gave Apple a big performance leg up on Intel, one that Apple only regained (however fleetingly) with the introduction of the G5.

One of the great things about working at Coke (and later, at CNN.com) was that companies would provide software and hardware before it was released to the public.

In late 1993 or so, we got a couple of Top Secret boxes from Apple. They were prototypes of a new generation of machines we read about in the Mac press, and which would eventually be the first Power Macs.

Apple sent us the top two models, and the cases weren't even finished yet. The small one, the Carl Sagan, was in a sheet-metal box about the size of my Quadra 650, and the big one, Cold Fusion, was in a Quadra 800/880 case. We knew that the new boxes needed optimized code to perform at their very best, but we had also heard about "fat binaries," which allowed them to run older code with good performance.

Bigger fish than I got first dibs on both of them, but eventually, the time came for us to test KO/Office, Coke's internal office automation software, and since I was the support specialist for the Mac version, I finally got some seat time with the newest God Box.

We were worried about KO/Office, because it had one control panel in particular that worked on some fairly low-level routines. It was a security piece that managed logins and a secure screensaver, and we were trying to figure out what would be involved in rewriting that piece to work with the new hardware.

So I sat down with Cold Fusion, the box that eventually was introduced as the 8100/80, fired it up, and ... was immediately at home. The first thing I noticed was how little I noticed. Everything looked and ran exactly like it did on the Quadras. I had kind of hoped the PowerPC Macs (which is all we knew them as) would have some new bells and whistles, but Apple was focused on easing the transition as much as possible.

I installed KO/Office, rebooted so the control panel would work, and gave an exploratory sniff for fried hardware. No? Can I login to a network server and authenticate? Yep. Fire up the (in-house, custom) e-mail program? No errors. In short, everything worked. We were agog.

I was reminded of how seamlessly Apple made that transition recently, when I helped a friend upgrade to OS X. The friend in question has worked through 4 Macs: an SE, a IIsi, a Power Mac 6100, and a Blue and White G3/350, the target box for OS X.

My friend (I'll call her "N"), has some old, old code on her machine. She uses an address book desk accessory that was last updated in 1995, and barely appears on the web. She's happy with Freehand 7, from 1996, and doesn't want to buy an upgrade. As a result, she became the first OS X install I've done where Classic is likely to be up all the time.

Once again, I expected some fireworks. Maybe it would come from the third-party SCSI card, or the print-shop level Epson inkjet, or the comparatively low-powered CPU, or some of the old, old code. No way is this one going to be a smooth upgrade.

Once again, Apple proved me wrong. The old code happily runs under Classic, which itself runs quickly. The unusual inkjet is one of the stock printer drivers, and the SCSI card just works.

I don't know if anybody else in technology has so adeptly handled two such radical technology shifts, but it's enough to make you wonder ... If Apple decided it needed to, would it be any harder than these transitions to bring OS X to x86?

Datapoint for new Mac release?

I ordered a new iMac 17" Build-to-order on Thursday, February 5th, from the Apple Store online. It was scheduled to ship in 1-3 days. Today, I was notified that there's been a delay, and the machine is expected to ship “on or before February 17th.”

I can't imagine a reason that the iMac would be backlogged, so you have to wonder if this is one of those holds Apple puts on before new products are announced. I could go to the Apple Store and pick one up immediately, without the customization, but now, I'm intrigued. Will we get a new model instead of what I ordered? Only time will tell.

Update 2/11/04: Literally 8 minutes after I posted this, I got notified that the computer has shipped. If it arrives with a G5 onboard, you’ll be the first to know, but I don’t hold out hope.

Funky OS X screensaver problem

I’ve periodically seen a strange error on awakening the PowerBook from sleep. The screensaver’s login box appears, I enter my information, submit it, and the screen goes black. It’s not entirely black, however — the cursor is still visible.

If I put the machine back to sleep with the power button and ‘s’, I can repeat it ad infinitum. If there’s a second user on the machine, I can log in as them when the login window appears, and they get a full, graphical session, but switching back to the original user lands me in the black hole again.

I’ve finally discovered a workaround: login to the machine from a second box, and kill "/System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Contents/MacOS/loginwindow console....". Doing so logs out the current user and generates a new login window, so it’s only slightly better than my previous solution, shutdown -r now.

Next goal: find a way to get just the window manager to restart, so I don't lose the user session.

Update and some detail on “Running a Business...”

I'm overwhelmed by the response to my posting on how we're running my new company. It's been linked on a lot of sites that I read all the time, and a few that I'm just discovering, and I appreciate those links.

First, a few clarifications: Nobody would consider us an ‘enterprise’ — we've got seven employees or in-house contractors at the moment. On the other hand, that means we work with a lot more outside partners, on construction, manufacturing, and transit operations, so we rely on the Mac’s ability to read documents from the Windows world and work on them.

Second, some more specifics on what we‘re using:

Hardware:
• My PowerBook 12", an awesome road-warrior notebook
• The 17" iMac flat-panel
• PowerBook 15", a good desktop in a laptop case
• A couple of left-over G3 iMac DVs
• Compaq/HP Proliant servers running RedHat Linux
• A couple of white-box PCs, one running Windows XP
• We’ll occasionally use my Nikon Coolpix 880 or Sony TRV-33 camcorder for site surveys, quality assurance or demonstration purposes

Software:
• AEC's FastTrack Schedule. Early in MTNI's life cycle, I bought MS Project for the Mac, then (and still) frozen in Version 4.0, which shipped on (8?) floppy disks. It stopped working with OS 9, if I remember correctly, but by then, I had discovered FastTrack, which handles resource management, dependencies, and a whole lot of project management stuff I don't begin to understand.
• OmniGraffle is a terrific diagramming tool we’ve used for network diagrams, station sketches, and other drawing tasks.
• As I mentioned previously, we still use Office for the Mac for office apps.
• I use Entourage X for e-mail, mostly so I can use Softhing's Entourage E-mail Archive X, which I use to archive my e-mail out to FileMaker Pro. Everyone else is using Apple’s Mail.
• Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection, to (rarely) drive the single XP box from one of our Macs

I’m not going to go into much depth on our server software, but we use Python, PostGreSQL, and Apache, and build from there.

We’ve experimented with MovableType for a group weblog, but it hasn't taken off yet. I’m also intrigued by the capabilities of VoodooPad, and am considering building one or more project wikis with it.

Why I may be in the market for an iPod mini

I own a Rio 500 (and there's a perfect link for 5 Years Ago in Wired: “It took about 27 minutes to encode 24 songs at the default rate of 128 kbps. But for some reason it missed most of one track.”). Christy has started using it for workouts, but she's gotten to the point where she doesn’t like updating it, since it’s a slow process, and the player doesn’t hold much music.

That got me to thinking. Every song she’s interested in would easily fit in the new iPod mini, with space left over. Once her machine is running OS X, she could share my purchased music from the iTunes Music Store. And she would probably prefer it to the bigger, blander, white iPod.

Of course, I could just as sensibly swap her my 1st-generation 5-gig iPod, and get a bigger iPod for myself, but that would be like buying her a new bicycle that’s — hey! just my size. Unfortunately, the minis aren’t shipping in time for Valentine’s Day.

One of the guys at work is eyeing the iPod mini, as well; again, it’s more than big enough for his whole collection, and he thinks it would be less of a bother when he runs with it.

Tip: Stay active on iChat forever

A friend is considering ditching iChat, which he (or she) likes, because he (or she) couldn't figure out a way to keep it from going idle when, in fact, he (or she) is idle.

Why is it a problem that it works as expected? Well, the friend is concerned that his (or her) manager might use his (or her) instant-messenger status to determine when he (or she) might not be working.

I tried to AppleScript a solution, but it doesn't seem to matter if you've sent a message or not, or if your status is getting updated on a regular basis. Apparently, the only thing being monitored is whether there's been a keypress or a mouse-down event in the last hour.

Low-tech solutions to the rescue! I put a measuring tape down on my keyboard (the cursor keys, to be exact), and almost 24 hours later, that IM session is still showing the green dot. Presumably, some Scotch tape could fulfill the same function invisibly.

Upgrading a 400-mHz iMac DV

So, after 4 years of use and abuse by the kids, the DVD-ROM on Christy's iMac gave up the ghost.

The Mac is a 400-mHz Grape DV model, bought in February 2000, with 128 megs of RAM in the inner slot, 256 in the outer, and a 5400-rpm drive that holds 10 gigabytes.

I decided that, if I'm going to be in there anyway, I should upgrade the upper memory slot and the hard drive. I have a 512-megabyte DIMM on order from Crucial.com, which will replace the orginal 128-meg in the upper slot. I ordered the replacement DVD from Other World Computing; I saw a few advertised at a lower price, but out of stock.

I'll be picking up a standard IDE drive at Best Buy, with a gift card left over from Christmas. There's some debate about putting 7200-rpm drives in the iMac, but it's hard to find (non-notebook) 5400-rpm drives larger than about 40 gigabytes, so I'm going to give it a shot. As with my Lombard PowerBook, OS X requires a partition of less than 8 gigs to boot from with the ROMs in this iMac, so I'll be splitting the drive into 2 or more partitions. I don't think the original iMac's hardware can handle drives greater than 128 gigabytes; I'm looking for something in the 60-100 gigabyte range.

TechnoWarehouse, LLC also has a G4 upgrade for the slot-loading iMac, at about $300, but that would have blown my budget, and made me seriously consider a new eMac.

Once I've done all that, I'm going to try to migrate Christy to OS X. It's critical that you upgrade the iMac's firmware to 4.1.9 before installing OS X. A friend didn't, and wound up buying his mother a new machine.

Opening an iMac is non-trivial, but relatively straightforward. I had to remove another optical drive from an identical model when an employee at my former company inserted a business card CD into the slot (don't do this!). There are good directions available with pictures at theiMac.com. Make sure you stay clear of the CRT — I had an employee at UGA who touched the flyback transformer on an itty-bitty Mac SE screen, and didn't want to repeat the mistake; the iMac probably stores 3-4x the energy.

I'm likely to actually do the upgrade Tuesday or Wednesday night. I'll try to post some more details then. Looks like I'll be spending about $300, but I think the machine will be useful for at least another 2 years if I do so, and that's a tradeoff I'm comfortable with.

iServe pieces continue to fall into place

Between Macworld, CES, and the efforts of the open-source community, we continue to move closer to the day when we'll all have an iServe in every pot.

New or recent releases that help:
• Ovolab's Phlink is an answering machine for your Mac with full programmability -- you can get an e-mail with the message anytime someone leaves you a message, or give everyone in your house their own PIN code, with calls being routed by PIN code.
• Perceptive Automation's Indigo interfaces with X10 home automation equipment.
• There's a detailed writeup on using a Linux box as an iTunes server, complete with Rendezvous support.
• There's also TunesAtWork, a Java streaming server you can run on a machine at home that provides a web interface to your iTunes library.
• Finally, on the client side, ElGato has introduced their new EyeHome, which brings your computer's music, photos, movies, and internet bookmarks into the living room, showing them on your TV, and playing them through your stereo.

I notice that this week, I can walk into CompUSA and plop down $99.99 and walk out with a 200-gigabyte drive (after a $70 mail-in rebate). Imagine the price a big manufacturer like Apple would get.

Hype and backlash on the iPod mini

As expected, a smaller, color anodized iPod at a smaller price. Unexpectedly, the price was only $50 less than the previous 10-gig model, now expanded to 15 gigs. Some swooned, some seethed.

There still seems to be some confusion over the technology at work in the mini. It's the IBM Microdrive, now owned by Hitachi, which bought out IBM's hard drive business. Steve's Digicams did a good story on the 4-gig version in September 2003. I've seen a few people online suggesting that the player is flash-based, but the specs are clear. Confirmation is available at News.com, as well.

Over at Daring Fireball, John Gruber opines: "The whole point of the iPod Mini isn’t that it’s cheaper. It’s that it’s smaller. The initial consensus seems to be that it’s too expensive — but that was also the initial consensus for the original iPod."

Notable backlash:

What Do I Know: "Apple had a golden opportunity at this MacWorld to release an iPod 'for the masses' — the ones unwilling to pony up more than $200 for a music player, but are very interested in using the iTunes Music Store. For me, they blew it. "

I was psyched by the possibility of a $100 iPod, just like everybody, but I wondered about the business model. I wondered even more after seeing the Stevenote today. Apple has sold 2 million iPods in 2 years, but the sales curve has been climbing steeply since the introduction of Windows support on the iPod and the iTunes Music Store. More than a third of all iPods sold (730,000) were sold in December 2003 alone.

And that's the case for a product that you could argue has had only 1 price adjustment in a 2-year lifespan, and that was an increase when the 10-gig model was released at $499. Since they introduced the third iPod, it's been $299, $399, $499. Sure, the capacity has increased 8-fold, but the entry point has never dropped significantly below $300, even though Apple's drive prices must be dropping like crazy, due to their purchase volume and improvements in drive manufacturing and technology.

So why not take over the whole industry, by pricing iPods with the smallest margins possible? Because that increasing sales curve means demand is still very high for the classic iPod, and the last thing Apple wants is to give up $100 million a quarter in revenue because they've priced the iPod mini too low.

Apple will be tracking sales extremely closely on the mini, and there are two possible scenarios: It will sell well, or it won't. If it sells well, Apple priced it just right. If there are even two weeks of soft sales, Apple can pounce in a couple of different ways. First, they could bring out a lower-end mini that maintains their margins, but holds 2 gigs, or 1 gig, or even 340 megs, the original size of the microdrives. Second, they could adjust their prices down on either the mini, or the full line of iPods, but right now, that just doesn't make sense. Finally, since the standard interface for the microdrive is through a CF slot, I have to think it would be simple for Apple to swap the microdrive for flash memory, if the market were to demand it.

Also, I visited a few sites to see what a raw microdrive goes for these days. When the iPod was originally introduced, there was some amazement that it sold for the same retail price as the Toshiba 1.8" drive mechanism itself. Apple has improved that a bit: at Amazon, the 4-gig Hitachi microdrive is for sale for $479.95! At CompUSA, the 1 gigabyte is $330.48. And on PriceWatch, searching for 'Hitachi microdrive' turns up 3 suppliers of the 2.2 gigabyte model, with prices ranging from $189 to $205.

Everything iPod

iPod Battery FAQ

There's a new Frequently Asked Questions page about iPod battery issues. It includes (down toward the end) a very handy resource guide with links to almost anything you would want to know about the iPod.

By the way, my first-generation 5-gigabyte iPod is now 2 years old, and the other day, I did some battery testing. After 5 hours, it was still showing half-charge. That suggests that the battery lifespan issues are not universal. since my iPod has seen pretty heavy use.

Christmas tech support: HP 7660 and OS X

My parents gave Christy and me a Hewlett-Packard PhotoSmart 7660 for Christmas. I had been considering a photo printer for a while, but hadn't pulled the trigger, and this seems like a nice choice.

I unpackaged it, and hooked it up to the 500-mHz TiBook I use to record TV shows and spool jobs to the office laser printer. I loaded the software from the HP CD, ran the included web updater to pull newer software from their web site, and printed a calibration page without a problem. I fired up iPhoto, loaded up some glossy photo paper, chose a cute kid photo, and let 'er rip. Oops -- iPhoto unexpectedly quit. Ouch. How 'bout Graphic Converter? Unexpectedly quit. Hmmm. Try the miniBook; iPhoto unexpectedly quit.

Google didn't turn up anything. HP's support site didn't turn up anything. But wait! I noticed that the driver HP's updater pulled down is version 2.3.5, but that deep in the bowels of their web site, there's a version 2.3.6. Loaded it, and everything works exactly as expected. I printed out a 3.2 megapixel image on letter sized photo paper, and it looks fantastic.

Listening to Baby It's Cold Outside from the soundtrack album for "Elf" by Leon Redbone/Zooey Deschanel.

And on the first try, too....

Which OS are You?

Apple Music: Turning scofflaws into customers

I immediately downloaded iTunes, QuickTime 6.2, and iPod Software Update 1.3. I went straight to the store, and ... bought nothing.

I finally bit this morning, buying one track and two albums (here's how I'm linking your copy of iTunes directly to the store).

The yammering fanboys sniping at the service have a few good points: It would be nice if the service had broader selection, wider availability (both internationally and for Windows users), and zero DRM.

It seems to me, though, that Apple has scored a breakthrough, at least where I'm concerned: I don't see myself ever downloading a track I can get through the iTunes interface through a file-sharing service again. The DRM doesn't seem likely to get in my way, and the 99¢ price-point reminds me of buying 45-rpm singles. It doesn't seem too much to pay to carry a song everywhere.

One of the albums I bought was on my Amazon wishlist at $13.99, the other at $13.49, plus shipping. Seems like a no-brainer to make those purchases at $9.99 (plus sales tax). On the other hand, Blonde on Blonde is $8.99 on CD at Amazon, and only available by song (14 songs at 99¢ = $13.86) through iTunes.

Another point I haven't seen mentioned is what a powerfully executed example of web services the iTunes store is. It clearly is influenced by Watson, and really encourages serendipitous browsing (and would even more if it had some more obscure stuff).

Business 2.0 and Paco Underhill on Apple Stores

Business 2.0 - Magazine Article - The Floor Plan With a Plan

Business 2.0 interviews Why We Shop author Paco Underhill about Apple's retail stores.

I'm very impressed with how Apple puts together the layout of their stores. They're inviting, they encourage you to stick around, and they've got soup-to-nuts for the platform.

I still think they may want to turn up the sales pressure a little. I mean, just to the point that an employee asks you if you need help with anything.

Best of both worlds?

O'Reilly Network: Introduction to PyObjC [Jan. 31, 2003]

An introduction to PyObjC, a project to provide Python developers access to Objective-C and vice versa. It's sort of like AppleScript Studio, but for Python, and the development efforts have accelerated lately.

Apple and Open Source

MARC: msg '(fwd) Re: Greetings from the Safari team at Apple Computer'

I didn't mention this the other day, but during the keynote, Steve Jobs made a big deal about Open Source. "We love open source," I believe the quote went. Apple went on to reaffirm the position by releasing Safari, built around the KHTML underpinnings of Konqueror, and releasing their change log to the KDE development team the very day the product was announced.

I hope Apple will continue to leverage existing projects like this; it's a way for them to perform some market judo on Microsoft, focusing their comparatively limited development resources on the last 10 percent that separates usable software from great software.

Wouldn't a copy of OS X: The Missing Manual be more sensible?

DVForge, Inc. - Adding New Value To Your Digital Desktop

This has to be the dumbest thing I've seen out of this year's Macworld Expo. It's a metal square that you use as a base for your G4 Cube. It's beautifully finished, of course, but it 1) changes the proportions of the Cube in way I'm not wild about, 2) makes it take up nearly as much room as a small tower, and 3) features a fairly large corporate logo dead-splat in the middle of the front face.

Oh, and it's $229.99.

The same company offers a TiBook stand that seems overpriced, but at least would serve a real function. And it's only $179.99 -- such a deal.

Another Macworld without an iServe

Oh, well. The iServe wasn't one of Steve's "just one more" things. That's a shame, because a product like it is going to come around, and change the computing landscape forever.

There were a few nudges in the right direction this week:

AirPort Extreme is much better suited to wirelessly streaming video around the house than regular AirPort, with its 11 megabits per second theoretical maximum.

Tivo announced it will offer a premium service package that lets you view your photos or listen to your music collection hosted on your Mac through your Tivo.

El Gato Software revised their EyeTV external TV tuner for the Mac, and hinted at a next-generation model that might use a FireWire interface, feature wireless capabilities, or include multiple tuners. What if the iServe took your television order through a listings web page, then (automagically) burned the show to VideoCD for playback on the bus, at lunch, or whenever you had a break? CDs would replace videotape in short order.

Apple to dive for low end?

LEM/Rumor Mill | Stunningly Expandable, Affordable, Compact Successor to CRT iMac

"Anne Onymous" suggest Apple might build a new machine slotted even lower than the iMac, with a high-resolution 12" CRT monitor, G4s at 700 or 800 mhz, and a host of options including a TV Tuner, color side panels, an iBook battery, a PC Card slot to facilitate digital camera memory card uploads, and more, more, more, starting at $799. Oh, yeah! It will supposedly include a DVI-out that will mirror or span.

I highly doubt this one, since it would tend to turn the current iMac into next-generation cubes, desireable for their design, but significantly overpriced and/or underfeatured against the lower-end models.

Of course, if the iMac were significantly revalued, say by dropping the 17" models to the prices of the current 15", and adding a bigger-screen iMac at the 17" price, Apple would have a pretty juicy lineup.

Apple Thanksgiving+1 deals

Apple Store - Thanksgiving

Apple's running a special promotion tomorrow evening (6 p.m. to midnight) at retail locations, with "free stocking-stuffers, special values and a chance to win a new 15-inch iMac." The last time they did a special values promotion, it was 10 percent off any computer or display, so if you're in the market, this might be the perfect time....

980 Christmas songs ... and then 20 Doobie Brothers ... and 1 Sheryl Crow

Apple - Switch - Ads - Holiday Fun

Apple has posted 2 more Will Ferrell ads, with Will as Santa. I don't think we'll see these on TV.

iServe resurfaces

Proof that great minds think alike: SpamDude links to my post on the iServe. He had posted a similar idea, focusing on an enhanced Airport Base Station, way back in October, and expanded on it earlier this week.

I've thought some more about what would motivate me to buy an iServe:

• Integration with entertainment systems: Including Tivo functionality, a sound-out capability for streaming music over your home speakers


• Integration with X10 and other home-control systems (thermostat, lights, security system, etc.)


• Built-in hooks to the client OS: when you create a new user, it allows you to specify a home directory on your iServe, where user-installed apps, new documents, and iApp data (iTunes music, iPhoto pics, etc.) are saved by default


• Clever backup mechanism. This is one of the most expensive components of a server. Apple can inexpensively provide backup to their .Mac online service, but I would love to see a tape drive or DVD-R option for personal, off-line backups


• Internal sharing of calendar and contact information, with an option to share elements to the web


• Speaking of the web, it should understand how to setup a dynamic DNS entry at one or more of the services (dyndns, no-ip, etc.), so you can easily host a site over home broadband, even with DHCP


• Weblog software built-in, so you can turn it on and start a family (or class, or business) weblog immediately

I honestly think this is a great business opportunity for somebody. It's similar to what Cobalt is trying to do, but with an emphasis on the consumer rather than the dot-com market.

If you have opinions, please share -- I think this is a very interesting thread....

Update: I notice SpamDude mentioned the telephone, as well, I would love to have simple answering machine capabilities built into a home server, so it could call me with my messages, e-mail me that I have one, or (if my server is visible on the web), let me listen to an mp3 of the message over the web.

Another update: More on the idea from September 2003.

Mac OS X: The Missing Manual updated for Jaguar

David Pogue's guide for the displaced OS 9 user, Mac OS X: The Missing Manual has been updated to include the tremendous changes that came with OS X 10.2 Jaguar. If you're about to make the jump from 9 to X, this book is a great place to start.

If instead you're a Unix/BSD person joining Mac Nation, I would recommend John and William Ray's Mac OS X Unleashed, which unfortunately isn't yet available with Jaguar updates. An updated edition is scheduled for December.

Seen at MacMerc.

One-stop Switch site

Other World Computing- Product Reviews

Mac retailer Other World Computing has collected up the "Switch" parodies, including the Will Ferrell ad shown only at Macworld, both the Anakin Skywalker parodies, a Lego parody, and more...

Seen at MacMinute.

Those crazy Mac modders

Wired News: 'Modders' Can't Leave Macs Alone

and

Japan's Growing Mac 'Mod' Squad

Wired takes a look at Mac modders, in the US and Japan.

Speaking of tablets...

eBay item 2064507418 (Ends Nov-03-02 14:52:42 PST ) - Very RARE Vintage Apple Newton WALT Tablet

Someone's selling a prototype of a Newton tablet, which he claims was called a "WALT": the Wizzy Active Lifestyle Tablet. The one for sale is number 61 from 1993. It was developed in conjunction with BellSouth, which was also working on the Simon with IBM at the time.

Spotted at O'Grady's PowerPage.

Election day = Apple announcements?

Mac Rumors: 19inch LCD's and PowerBooks November 5, 2002

Well, the PowerBooks that I thought would ship by the end of September probably won't even be announced in October, but rumors are that they're still on the way.

Also, Apple is expected to improve their range of LCDs by adding a mid-range 19" model with 1600 x 1024 resolution, which would make it a wide-screen model.

Cocoa Pie

bbum's rants, code & references : October 17, 2002

One of the very best things that's happened in the last couple of weeks is the emergence of PyObjC (I'm not linking here for reasons described below).

When AppleScript Studio debuted, allowing folks to couple Cocoa's Interface Builder and Project Builder with program logic in AppleScript, I started looking around for a similar tool for Python. I discovered that there was a longstanding project at SourceForge called PyObjC (don't bother going there -- the last release archived there is from January), which started as a project to bridge Python and Objective C in NextStep. I joined the mailing list, and followed the incremental progress toward making it a workable solution for OS X. Last week, there was finally a release that mostly works.

The link above points to a couple of different locations for downloads. There's a version .7.0 packaged up here, but it probably makes more sense to get it through CVS as described on Bill Bumgarner's page above -- a lot of changes are being made as people start using it (changelog here).

(Unregenerate Perl users can find a similar tool here, and Ruby fans can find the equivalent here.)