Multitouch Support in Firefox 3.1 beta 2 (a salmon of doubt (shade1978)) by David

I installed Firefox 3.1b2 on my MacBook this evening to a pleasant surprise—it now supports a variety of multi-touch trackpad gestures as seen here.  I remapped two of them slightly, however—three finger swipe to scroll to the top/bottom of the page wasn’t useful for me, and I find the twist gesture to be kind of awkward.  So, I remapped that to changing tabs.

It’s a very nice feature and I’m glad to see they’ve added it.

Posted in: firefox , macbook , technology

? New MacBook and MacBook Pro arrive at Amazon (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

If for some reason you don’t want to order one from Apple, the new 13″ MacBook and 15″ MacBook Pro (the aluminum unibody and glass models) have arrived at Amazon. Those are affiliate links, so if you end up buying from them, I get a small percentage from Amazon that will go towards a cool project I’m working on that will be revealed soon. Much obliged.

Posted in: linkblog , linky , macbook , macbookpro

Liveblogging the October 2008 Apple Notebook Event (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

This post is where I’ll be posting my thoughts during the October 14, 2008 Apple “notebook” event, where it’s expected that they’ll be unveiling new MacBooks and MacBook Pros. I won’t be at the event, but I’ll be following it live at all the usual suspects’ locations:

• Ars Technica (I’ll probably drop into their IRC channel as well)
• Engadget - they’ve got a blurry spycam pic of what the new MacBook Pro is supposed to look like (like an aluminum and glass iMac, basically), with *two* NVidia GPUs. Interesting…
• Gizmodo
• MacRumorsLive, if they’re around (they were absent during the last Apple event) Looks like they won’t be back until MacWorld 2009 in January

And of course, I’ll be hanging around on Twitter and FriendFeed to see what people’s thoughts and reactions are. I hope they can handle the load. I’m starting this post the night before to be ready for the AM. It’s like Christmas Eve - the anticipation of what Steve Claus is going to bring us is palpable!

Rumors of what is going to be announced range from new aluminum MacBooks (almost certain, given the spy photos we’ve been seeing) with Nvidia chipsets replacing Intel, a “real” Apple TV - a TV with Apple TV functionality built in - to the everlasting Mac Tablet/Giant iPhone/Newton 2.0 rumor, which has practically become a legend at this point.

The most interesting thing I think Apple’s likely to announce is a low cost MacBook. Rumors have been going around about a sub-$800 device. Some have wondered if this will be Apple’s entreé into the netbook world. Personally, I don’t see Apple doing anything with a netbook until OS X 10.6 Snot Snow Leopard is out, which should be in early 2009. Read why I think Snow Leopard is the critical ingredient for an Apple netbook. So what about this $800 system everyone is talking about? I think if they do anything, they’ll drop the price of an entry level 13″ MacBook to $800. It’s $1099 now, and I can see Apple making an aggressive move to get more people using Macs by dropping the price of their iconic laptop. You heard it here first.

But we’ll all know for sure in about 12 hours!

8:30 AM - John Gruber has a post up over at Daring Fireball wherein he seems pretty certain about what’s going to be announced. MacBook Pro with 2 GPUs and a glass no-button trackpad, similar update to the MacBook. No $800 device. Some other minor updates around the line. And a heretofore un-speculated upon new 24″ Cinema Display. Sounds about right, and John knows his stuff. We’ll find out soon.

10:00 AM - I’m here hooked up to the 60″ TV in the JF1 “living room”, ready to go. Got my tabs lined up, Brent Logan is here with me. Lay it on us, Uncle Steve!

Tim Cook is talking about how awesome Macs are. Sold 2.5 million last quarter. Yada yada. Slamming on Vista. Playing a new Mac vs. PC ad. Mac sales have “beat the market” 14 of the last 15 quarters. Great market share. Already equalled 2007 sales in the first three quarters of 2008. We get it. And now Steve’s back!

Jony Ive: “I’d like to take a couple of moments to tell you about a real breakthrough we’ve had about how we can design and build our notebooks.” Here comes the “brick” announcement (aluminum cases machined from a solid billet of metal).

Steve on the new NVidia 9400 M graphics/chipset: “They’ve dubbed it the NVIDIA GeForce 9400 M — it’s an amazing chip. Chipset and GPU on one die — 70% is the GPU, 16 parallel graphic cores, 54gflops of graphics performance. It’s a stunner.”

New glass trackpad: larger, multitouch, glass surface (like the iPhone - should feel great!), the whole thing is one button, can assign multiple buttons via software. I like. Should appear in all new MacBooks.

Which brings us to the new MacBook Pro - just like the spy shots. Black bezel, aluminum and glass (like the iMac), black keyboard (like the Air), all connectors on one side, NVidia graphics and chipset, and the new “precision aluminum unibody” case construction. Oh, and all Macs will now have the “mini display connector”. Uh oh. I hate those.

(Took a break to keep up with the news and chat with people.)

The new MacBook Pro starts at $1999, goes to $2499 for bigger hard drive, faster CPU with more cache, etc. And the Pro line has TWO Nvidia GPUs. The 9400 M, and the 9600 GT (which has 512MB of RAM and 32 graphics cores). You can use the lower end one to save on power and extend battery life, or use “turbo” mode and use the faster GPU. So, 48 graphics cores in the MacBook Pro. The foundation for all of the multi-core/GPGPU stuff like OpenCL and GrandCentral in OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard has been laid.

The MacBook line also got updated. They’re keeping the current plastic case 13″ MacBook (most popular ever), and dropping the price to $999. Nice entry level model. The “new” MacBook is very similar to the new MacBook Pro. Precision aluminum “unibody”, NVidia 9400 M chipset, glass trackpad, glass display with black bezel. It also uses the new Mini Display Port connector. Besides the second GPU and an ExpressCard 34 slot, and a bigger display (15″ vs 13″), there’s not much difference between the new MacBook and the MacBook Pro. The new ones start at $1299. $1599 gets you a faster CPU, bigger hard drive, and a backlit keyboard (boo on Apple for not making that standard!).

The new MacBook and Pro are available for order today, should be in stores tomorrow.

The MacBook Air got an update - CPU speed bump, 120 GB hard drive or option for 128GB SSD, and the new Mini Display Port. Not much else changed (including the price). Available in November.

And there’s a new 24″ LCD Cinema Display. Edge to edge glass, very thin, looks great. Cool features include a wire bundle that gives you a MagSafe power plug to charge your laptop, a USB connection for the hub in the display, and the new Mini Display Port connector. $899, available in November. Looks to be the perfect companion to the new Macs.

Oh, and Steve’s blood pressure is 110/70, in case anyone was interested. Now, for some Q and A.

Steve: “Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt. It’s great to watch the movies, but the licensing of the tech is so complex, we’re waiting till things settle down and Blu-ray takes off in the marketplace.”

Steve: “In terms of netbooks, that’s a nascent market that’s just getting started.” Says netbooks are a new market and “we’ll see how it goes.”

Looks like that’s it! I might update this post later with link to the video that was shown, showing off the new laptops, and anything else interesting that comes up today. Now, to figure out how to get one of these new bad boys into my hands!

Posted in: apple , blog , laptop , liveblog , liveblogging , mac , macbook , macbookpro , notebook

Christmas came early: contract signed! (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

This afternoon I got a call from my friend and new boss Dirk. We'd planned on me driving to his place this weekend to take care of the paperwork. Knowing about Marli's condition and willing to save me a lot of travel time he suggested that he drop by this evening instead.

As the title of this blogpost suggests, the paperwork isn't all that he brought ^_^ It's Unixerius' policy to give each employee a Macbook and an iPhone to work with and he brought my pair in early /o/

I know I've used the pic to the left about 1.5 years ago, but I reckon a re-use isn't an awful crime. Mr Sienna's right: the iPhone is fscking swank :D

The best thing about all of this though, is the fact that my contract's signed and I'm now officially an employee of Unixerius (per 1/10). I've been hearing some great things about my new assingment. It seems there's a whole rumor mill going! "Have you heard?! Thomas Sluyter's coming back!" Seriously, I'd never expected someone to say such a thing :)



Posted in: contract , iphone , job , macbook , sign

The MacBook Air's Emotional Specs (Martin Gordon's Blog (cptncelchu)) by Martin

The MacBook Air is selling well, Ars Technica reports, with many stores reporting stock shortages and long lead times.

As Railsdaddy David Heinemeier Hansson mentions, this probably comes as a surprise to geeks all over the blogosphere, who were largely focused on the shortcomings of the tech specs - the relatively slow processor, shortage of ports, etc, and not focusing enough on the design and feel of it. Whether it takes 20 minutes or 30 minutes to convert a movie to iPod format is largely irrelevant, what is more noticeable (and therefore more important) is the general feeling of delight (or despair) one feels when using any device. Remember the awe people experienced when flicking images back and forth on the iPhone? Similar experiences abound on the MacBook Air - the feeling of not feeling like you're carrying a laptop, the feeling of not feeling like there's a computer under your keyboard - these are the specs, emotional specs, if you will, that are causing people to buy MacBooks Air. Indeed, the MacBook Air is just another in the long list of examples that prove that Apple is destroying the competition when it comes to emotional specs.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MacBook, MacBook Air, emotional specs, tech specs, design

Posted in: apple , design , macbook , thoughts

OneNote 2007 is my new god. (a salmon of doubt (shade1978)) by David

No, not really, but it turns out to have one really nice feature that I wasn’t aware of. If you import an image into OneNote, it will automatically OCR any text within it and make it searchable. It will even highlight the portion of the image where the search text appears.

As it turns out, this is an extremely useful feature for me. I’ve been wanting to take a bunch of my somewhat important paperwork—stuff that might be nice to have around for reference, but isn’t necessarily something I need to have hard copies of—and get it scanned in so I can destroy the hard copy. This is mainly because I’m sick of how much space that paper starts taking up.

I had been looking into doing this on my MacBook—DEVONthink Office Pro is very similar to OneNote—but my Canon Lide60 scanner doesn’t seem to want to play nice with Leopard. Canon does provide Vista drivers that work fine, however, so I’ve been using that. I know some people really like the Fujitsu ScanSnap scanners for this particular application—and they would be easier since they’ve got an automatic document feeder—but I’ve heard some complaints about their reliability. They also don’t appear to be TWAIN or Windows Imaging compatible, which is a serious downside. Plus, I just can’t see spending $400+ on a scanner for that; once I’ve cleared the backlog, a simple flatbed scanner like the Lide 60 should be more than enough.

For the sake of security, I plan to store the OneNote database files in a TrueCrypt container, once I do a little research on how OneNote manages its databases. I also intend to back these files up regularly and probably put copies on CD/DVD (or a thumbdrive) into a safe-deposit box every couple of months.
In other news, after debating the idea for a couple years, I’m finally getting a new hearing aid. I’m currently using a Phonak SuperFront analog behind-the-ear model that was manufactured 15 years ago and has been rebuilt a couple of times. It’s apparently pretty unusual to keep using the same hearing aid for so long. It’s worked well for me, but it’s been through the wars and is definitely due for a replacement. One interesting note—it appears that Phonak still makes that model; when I Googled for a link to it, I found that page and it is the exact model that I have with an identical model number (PP-C-L-4). I’m a little surprised they’re still manufacturing them.

At any rate, I’ve decided it’s time to take advantage of some of the technological advancements of the past 15 years, so I’m getting a Siemens Cielo 2 SP digital model. It’s supposed to be able to filter background noise and wind noise, two features that I think will be absolutely worth it if they work well. I’m hoping it will provide a bit more clarity than my current one has, too. I’m planning on going swing dancing the evening I get it, so it should be subjected to a pretty immediate stress-test. I’m kind of excited to get this, and very curious as to how well it’ll work.

One thing that is kind of annoying is that they’re not cheap, and my insurance doesn’t cover them. I kind of wish that I could at least purchase them through the insurance company to take advantage of their bulk-purchasing power, but I guess we can’t have that since it might actually, you know, make sense. Oh well.

That’s all I’ve got for now.

Posted in: cielo , hearing aid , macbook , onenote , paperless office , personal , phonak , siemens , technology , vista

Modding my Macbook: I guess not (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

A little over a year ago I modded my iBooks in a simple way: I put different colours of crepe papier behind the Apple logo lens, making it the rainbow apple (Apple's original logo from the eighties). Now that I've ordered my Macbook I was looking forward to doing the same with this new piece of kit.

Until I saw iFixIt guide for disassembling the lid and the LCD panel. Basically it boils down to the fact that you'll be taking apart the complete laptop (as in "everything"!), just to get to the lens. I guess I won't be doing that ;)

Instead I'll be getting a GelaSkin which is a piece of art, printed on vinyl, that adheres to the lid of your laptop. In my case, I really love the pieces called Nevermind, The great wave and Starry night

Posted in: gelaskin , glogo , macbook , mod , rainbow apple

MacBooks Get Core 2 Duo (Martin Gordon's Blog (cptncelchu)) by Martin

Well, it's official: My Mac lineup (17" iMac and 13" MacBook) is now completely obsolete. I'm not worried that much since the new models are only slight speed bumps and not something more drastic. As seen from the iMac and MacBook Pro bumps, Apple is continuing their long-standing tradition of incremental speed bumps once or twice a year.

Just a short time after their pricier, gray brethren made the jump to Merom, the 13" MacBooks are now outfitted with Core 2 Duo processors. Clock speeds on the MacBooks remain the same at 1.83/2.0 GHz, but the 2GHz chip now has 4MB of L2 cache, twice that of the 1.83GHz chip and the previous Core Duo models.

Not much else has changed, however. Besides the new chip, other incremental upgrades include a bump in the SuperDrive speed from 4x to 6x, and a bump in hard disk space on the 2GHz models from 60/80GB to 80/120GB (white and black models, respectively). The cost of bumping up the hard drive from 80 to 120GB on the white 2GHz is $150, so the black paint only costs $50 as opposed to the previous $150. If you were going to upgrade the hard drive anyway, going for black is almost a no-brainer.

Only time will tell if Apple has fixed the problems that plagued the first-generation MacBooks and MacBook Pros. Even if they haven't, notebook buyers are slightly better off today than they were yesterday.

Technorati Tags: Apple, MacBook, Intel, Core 2 Duo, Merom, notebook, MacBook Pro, iMac

Posted in: apple , macbook , news