So a company is claiming to make a flash memory module that you can swap out with the built-in storage on your MacBook Air, giving you 256GB of storage. They also give you a USB 3.0 housing for your chip that you take out. Sounds pretty neat, no pricing yet (that is going to determine if it is worth it).
As a side note I busted off a connector on my Wife’s MacBook Pro last night swapping the HD – upgrades like these are not for those that can’t afford to have to replace expensive parts.
In my iPhoto ’11 review I mentioned that there is no Calendar printing feature like there used to be, well apparently it just wasn’t ready yet. This note from Apple says that it is coming soon and that your calendars from the past are not lost.
In both the CPU and GPU tests the 13″ MacBook Air is right there with the 13″ MacBook Pro – very impressive. The 15″ blows them all away though.
Reuters says that the white iPhone is delayed until next year, so you can buy your white iPhone 4 while everyone else gets their iPhone 5s. Coincidentally Duke Nukem Forever is also set to ship next year.
Secure Mac:
SecureMac has discovered a new trojan horse in the wild that affects Mac OS X, including Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6), the latest version of OS X. The trojan horse, trojan.osx.boonana.a, is spreading through social networking sites, including Facebook, disguised as a video. The trojan is currently appearing as a link in messages on social networking sites with the subject “Is this you in this video?”
When a user clicks the infected link, the trojan initially runs as a Java applet, which downloads other files to the computer, including an installer, which launches automatically. When run, the installer modifies system files to bypass the need for passwords, allowing outside access to all files on the system. Additionally, the trojan sets itself to run invisibly in the background at startup, and periodically checks in with command and control servers to report information on the infected system. While running, the trojan horse hijacks user accounts to spread itself further via spam messages. Users have reported the trojan is spreading through e-mail as well as social media sites.
Best bet is to go into Safari preferences and uncheck the box that says ‘Enable Java’ (under the Security tab). Also, what a great name.
Aaron Mahnke on what a freelancer really needs:
What we need is a simple online payment system for freelancers that doesn’t have all this baggage and unpredictability. Create a profile, tie it to your checking account, and give the link to clients. All it needs to do is direct the funds to my bank. No holding tank. No random lockdowns. Just a place for payments to be made.
It is true, PayPal’s hold they put on funds is ridiculous. I used to buy and sell a lot on eBay, and the worst part was PayPal. So who is up for the challenge?
This may be a Kindle competitor, but I mean come on, are they even trying? A 7″ IPS capacitive touch screen (good), 802.11n WiFi (good), $249 (good), 8gb memory with expansion (OK), 8 hours of battery life with WiFi off (WTF).
Hey Barnes & Noble, buy some Duracells® huh?
My favorite bit is when the presenter in the video says, “because we’ve been talking about this for a while.” By which of course he means since some time around, oh I don’t know, say, January 27th 2010.
MG Siegler on his 13″ MacBook Air (aka my future computer):
It’s funny that I haven’t really even talked about the size of the machine yet — that’s the glittering lure that ropes people in. But the Air has always had that. What it didn’t have previously was a great price and killer performance. Now it does. Just in the past six days, five people that I’ve showed this thing to have already bought one. That’s the stuff iPhones and iPads are made of. It has the “wow” factor.
I cannot wait to get mine, this is going to be a great machine especially given the Macworld tests.
Josh Bressers filled all but one block on his Sony flash drive, then kept writing to the drive until it failed and this is what he found out:
It took 90593104 writes for the drive to die. That’s 90.5 million, well beyond my expected 30K.
and:
I can still mount and read from the drive, but I can no longer write to it. It’s nice to know that when a drive dies, it’s more likely you just won’t be able to write new data to it, rather than complete data loss.
I wonder how consistent this is throughout all the different manufactures of these little drives.
Look no further than Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who says that they only drive somewhere once with their Street View cars – so you know if you don’t like that you can just move after the cars has come through. Because you know if you don’t like something Google is doing it is your damn fault.
This appears to be solved in the 4.2 beta builds right now – so perhaps Apple already knows about it and was trying to keep it hushed until the new update came out, I don’t know. Either way this is not good.
James Galbraith:
The 15-inch 2.4GHz Core i5 MacBook Pro’s Speedmark 6.5 score is 55 percent higher than the 11-inch MacBook Air, and 22 percent higher than the 13-inch MacBook Air. However, the flash storage in the new MacBook Air still beat the standard hard drive in the Core i5 MacBook Pro, but in tests that could take advantage of the Core i5’s HyperThreading technology like CineBench and Handbrake the Core i5 MacBook Pro was twice as fast as the 13-inch MacBook Air and not quite three times as fast as the 11-inch MacBook Air.
Leander Kahney reviewing the new 11″ MacBook Air (base configuration):
In an initial test, I opened up 17 applications and launched more 40 tabs in Safari and 24 tabs in Google’s Chrome browser (each is its own separate process). A funny thing happened: nothing. It kept on cranking. There were no spinning beachballs, no stuttering in the music I was playing.
I opened three more Safari windows and 40 more tabs. At this point the RAM was completely overloaded. The Air had carved out 1.76GBytes of drive space for virtual memory. Now the music started stuttering. But then it resumed.
Impressive – most of this is due to the flash memory, it is simply mind-boggling how much faster flash memory is than platter based HDs.
Looks like the base configuration of the 13″ MacBook Air fairs well considering its size. Be interesting to see how well the 2.13GHz version does.
This is not just another review – if you are thinking about whether to go with one task management app or another you need to read this first. It is an epic write up of one of the most valuable tools on my computer. OmniFocus is not just a great task management app, but it is a great reason to own a Mac.
As Shawn Blanc says:
But what I have found with OmniFocus is that once you’ve taken the time to learn it and acclimate to its features, it just may be the best thing that ever happened to your task list.
Amen.
Mg Siegler is curious whether the Mac is about to see a deluge of cheap apps, specifically cheap games, when Apple launches the Mac App Store. In a word I think we will definitely see a deluge of these sub-$10 games.
Why?
Because the question I am often asked by ‘normal’ computer users when they switch is: “where is solitaire?”
Instead of a deluge of links as I clear my Instapaper Backlog here are some links that I think are worth time if you have it – perhaps not must reads for all if you don’t have the time.
AppleInsider looks at the new scrollbars in Lion
I must say – I like them, I think that the scroll bars in Snow Leopard are very inconsistent with the rest of the OS styling.
Stephen Hackett weighs in future touch based Macs:
Even with Lion’s new features, Mac OS X is simply not ready for touch. Menus, window controls, lists and complicated toolbars are too small of targets to be usable with a finger. The remarks Jobs made about 7-inch tablets and small targets can be applied to the desktop, too.
Danny Sullivan reviews the new Sony Google TV:
A menu appeared asking me to enlarge a box on the screen to match my actual screen size. Then I got another menu asking how I wanted to connect, through a wired or wireless connection. I went the wireless route. Next, I was asked if I wanted to update my software. Sure!
After about a 10 minute download, that Google TV logo came up again. And I had to do the screen size thing again. And enter my wireless details again. Hmm — annoying. The “update” seemed more like a fresh install.
TechCrunch has video of them using the new HP Slate 500
Pro tip: you only have to watch the first minute to know that this thing will not out sell the iPad.
It costs $799 and I didn’t read anything else about it – why? Because I say the pictures of it and stopped caring.
Gruber says that this picture of the permanent slide out panel (that serves no purpose) sums up the device. I say it is this picture depicting the fact that you need a STYLUS to use this tablet.
[Updated: 10/22/10 at 11:12 AM] This thing only has 5 hours of rated battery life! Pathetic.
John Gruber after receiving confirmation that new Macs will not ship with Adobe Flash Player installed:
This also absolves Apple of responsibility for the distribution of Flash Player security updates. Recall the controversy last year when Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) shipped with a slightly older version of Flash Player, with a few known security vulnerabilities. Henceforth, Flash Player security updates for Mac OS X are Adobe’s problem, not Apple’s.
That is ominous enough – I was curious to see if the MacBook Air in the Apple Store had Flash on it or not, but I have yet to be able to get my hands on one (a source tells me the stores in Seattle are getting shipments and will have them on display this afternoon).