Year: 2012

Ian Chilton, freaking out:

However, I think this is a bit sly of them – they’ve soldered the RAM to the motherboard, so you not only can’t use cheaper third-party RAM, but you can’t upgrade the RAM at all.

You have got to be shitting me… As [I said on Twitter](http://twitter.com/BenjaminBrooks/status/212900940687220736), this is not only *not* news, but it is *not* new to Apple. MacBook Air RAM is soldered to the board starting in 2010. This isn’t Apple being sly, this is Apple doing what Apple does: designing small computers.

But, hey, let’s give Chilton the benefit of the doubt here and say that Apple really is trying to screw over users that want to upgrade RAM using cheaper third-party RAM.

Guess what?

New retina MacBook Pros come with 8GB and can only expand to 16GB. I don’t know how much that specific RAM costs, but let’s use the regular MacBook Pro RAM as a benchmark. To upgrade a regular 15″ MacBook Pro to 16GB will cost you $169.99 at  [OWC](http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Apple_MacBook_MacBook_Pro/Upgrade/DDR3_1600MHz_SDRAM). To do the same upgrade on the retina MacBook Pro, from Apple: $200, but for that $200 you don’t void a warranty ((Note that I mean you don’t void the Retina Mac warranty, not the older style MacBook Pros)) and don’t do the work yourself.

So basically: same price.

Gasp!

There is an argument to be made that you could do the upgrade at a later date when RAM is cheaper, but if you know that’s what you like to do, then you already know you *can’t* do that with the retina MacBook Pro and will buy accordingly.

This is only news because [Hacker News](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4105325) blows everything out of proportion.

[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4105325Hacker News](Hacker News)

Snopes.com:

>(Although McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets are typically offered as an example of a popular MSP-based food, since 2003 that product has been made with all white meat rather than MSP.)

And:

>In February 2012, fast food chains McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and Burger King announced they would stop using BLBT in their food products. In March 2012, the grocery chains Kroger, Safeway, Supervalu, Bi-Lo, and Winn-Dixie announced they would stop buying BLBT products.

Interesting because I thought both still used these products. I guess your McNuggets aren’t as gross as I thought they were… still, I’m not eating them.

MG Siegler trying to figure out what Mac portable is best now:

>That’s not necessarily a bad thing, we just happen to be at the beginning of a transition of the Mac into its next phase. In some ways, this is a mid-life crisis.

He can’t decide between a new Air or retina MacBook Pro. It’s a tough call now because the Air is perfect for so many people, but that new MacBook Pro is also excellent. I went with the latter, we’ll see how that goes.

Florian Mueller with the bad news to Android “partners”:
>The decision is an embarrassment for Google, which waited almost a year and a half after Apples first patent lawsuits against HTC before it provided this kind of support to HTC, and then apparently failed to do this the right way. Too little, too late. If Google had assigned all substantial rights to HTC by truly transferring those patents to the Taiwanese company as opposed to imposing limitations and restrictions, Apples motion wouldnt have succeeded. But Googles support for the Android ecosystem has clear limits.

Bummer, guess it sucks to not be Motorola.

Lukas Mathis on wher to place, and when to use, a ‘back’ button in iOS:

>To the user, there’s a spatial system that conveys how screens are arranged, and which button should be used, depending on where she wants to go.

That explains why non-standard placment drives me nuts.

Great story of how OS X and Intel came to be, told by a wife of the engineer responsible for it.

The Macalope:

>Gladwell seems to want Jobs to have been something he wasn’t, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be remembered for his own contributions.

That post for Gladwell sounded too stupid to even read, glad ‘Lopes read it for me.

Cory Doctorow writing about what users give out in search of ‘free’:
>Even if you read the fine print, human beings are awful at pricing out the net present value of a decision whose consequences are far in the future. No one would take up smoking if the tumors sprouted with the first puff. Most privacy disclosures don’t put us in immediate physical or emotional distress either. But given a large population making a large number of disclosures, harm is inevitable.

Rachel Metz:

>It’s clear that the fledgling service has a ways to go, though. Currently, much of the on{X} experience takes place in a Web browser: You can only add, modify, or code rules from the website. The mobile app allows you to delete or turn off rules, or view the activity log related to individual rules.

>Still, Weitz thinks users will be drawn to on{X}, since we’ve long desired the kind of automated intelligence that can alert us in the morning if it will be a cold day.

It’s an interesting project by Microsoft to create an IFTTT type app for Windows phone. What’s lame is that all work needs to be done in the browser and in JavaScript, which makes the above statement seem silly, IFTTT can alert you of cold weather, no JavaScript needed. This is the type of service though, that iOS needs, an Automator/Keyboard Maestro like tool for iOS.

Fantastic, *subscribed*.

My thanks to this week’s RSS sponsor, Harvest.

Harvest is one of the best ways to track the time you spend on billable projects. When you have clients like Happy Cog, well you are doing something very right. I’m not a user, but the only reason for that is because I don’t bill based on time — otherwise I would be right there using it.

Be sure to check out all the screenshots because they have some great looking tools and reports.

Clever macro from Gabe over at Macdrifer, kicking myself for not having thought of this.

Peter Kafka summarizing and summary, notes:

>If you want a reason to be skeptical about this, you’d note that Facebook is a comScore client, and that the two companies worked together last summer to produce a study about the way brands use Facebook.

That’s a typo, I assume, it should read: “You should be skeptical about this, because Facebook is a comScore client.”

>In this episode Shawn and Ben talk about grilled cheese bacon burgers, shooting at cats with automated paintball rifles, what does “GTD” mean anyway, the craziness of Apple rumors leading up to WWDC, traveling with only an iPad, and using a Mac mini as a server.

Brought to you by the fine folks at [Igloo Software](http://igloosoftware.com/origami) — they are giving away an Origami case for the iPad.

Shawn Blanc:
>The iPhone’s display is its preeminent hardware feature — everything else is secondary. If the next iPhone has a bigger display it will be because Apple decided bigger is better.

Yes, a thousands times, yes.