mac

If you go to Apple’s website right now, you’re greeted in large letters with “Meet The Next Generation Of Notebooks”. How exciting is that? I have been psyched up for a while knowing that Apple had plans of re-fitting their notebook line and also doing a little price update, which they did both.

They took a chunk of time this morning talking about the base that their laptops are built on. Jonathan Ive went into detail about how they are forging a frame out of a solid piece of aluminum instead of piecing together frame. This is really meant to beef up the machine and make it feel more rigid and robust.

Also updated are the graphics in the new units by switching to an Nvidia solution. Depending on what model Macbook Pro you purchase you will see either the 9400M or the 9600M GT. Both these solutions are a combined GPU and chipset on the same chip, thus saving room.

The trackpad of all things has been changed. This to me is one of those features that needed updating but no one knew we needed the changes they came up with. I rarely hear anyone complain about trackpads unless they don’t like to use them all together, but these guys have made it larger, out of glass and the entire thing is the button. And to top that off, they have made it multi-touch (4 touch).

The pricing (source: www.arstechnica.com) comes in lower as well. More features and a lower tag is good in my books!

• $1999 for 15.4″ LED-backlit display, 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo/3MB L2, 2GB 1066MHz DDR3 memory, both NVIDIA chips, 250GB hard drive and a slot-loading superdrive.
• $2499 for the same but upgraded CPU to 2.53GHz, 6MB L2
• both are upgradeable to 2.8Ghz

Steve Jobs saved the Macbook to the last because it seemed like the most exciting. I believe it’s because most people would be in that market if they were looking at a mobile Mac solution. The Macbook as it is now will keep selling but at $100 less, so now $999.

The new Macbook will have some cross over features from the Pro that people have been asking for. The main 4 points are the size and it will be thinner, it will now have the Pro’s metal enclosure, have a glass screen (glossy), the same faster graphics and an LED-blacklit display. They have answered and still kept the price somewhat reasonable at $1299 for the base unit. I still believe that Mac’s pricing needs to come down a little more to compete head on with the HPs and Dells of the world, but that’s another post.

So it’s time to go check out the new line at www.apple.com. I am excited to see them in the stores (apparently we should see them as early as tomorrow) so that I can play with one. I want to see how the trackpad is better and if the display really is better being glossy.

I have gotten Kubuntu installed and upgraded to KDE 4.1 and I am not sure what it is but the GUI seems like it is lacking consistency. I haven’t been able to put my finger on something concrete as of yet, however as I noticed when moving from XP to Vista, this upgrade from KDE 3.x to 4.x feels like a bit of a step backwards.

Some parts of it are completely visual. I think that this is partly to do with Kubuntu releasing KDE 4.x before they have had a chance to put a theme or skin on certain things (ie. Firefox). We’ll see how that pans out with future official releases of Kubuntu with KDE 4.x.

The rest of it has to do with things like the “start” menu (I don’t know if I will ever call it something else, I know… bad Marcus!) changes. Like with Vista it feels like there were changes; not to improve the functionality, but to change it. I am frustrated with things being changed just to change them. I have felt that Microsoft has done that often in the past simply to roll out a new version of software (as with Office suites when all you notice is new icons) simply to gain revenue.

To compare this to my first experience with KDE 4.x when it was still in beta and RCs would be a positive thing. When installing those versions I was usually greeted with usability problems of insurmountable proportions causing me to drop the idea within a day. Don’t get me wrong, I am still going to be using my Mac as my main computer as I still have no desire to move away from OSX. This is one of the first times that I will test and OS in this fashion. In the past I have usually switched my main computer over to the test OS, partially because it is a good test method and partially due to my tiredness of Windows. To continue this test I will be running the operating systems side by side and try to perform the same tasks on the Kubuntu machine after having done it in OSX.

I know that my initial reaction is not positive but I will try to remain unbiased and really look at the functionality of the interface.

It looks like Lenovo is moving away from the old IBM Thinkpad days and trying to compete with a different client base. At the company I work for 9-5 we switched from Lenovo to Dell laptops and I don’t think that says as much about Dell as it does about Lenovo. I don’t think that they really took over the IBM laptop division with as much success as they had hoped. They have lost some corporate customers and now seem to be trying to gain ground in other markets.

Case and point; the Lenovo Ideapad S10. I was reading through my daily RSS feeds and saw this article on Endgadget. The laptop looks like a good model but just glancing at the picture it looks like they are trying to take back a few Mac users or stop the potential Mac buyers from buying. The unit I am sure will work well but I am afraid that they are making a mistake with this strategy. People aren’t just switching to Macs because of the cute package that their laptops come in, but because of the whole user experience; including the operating system.

I hope they don’t loose focus on building solid laptops. I still have an IBM Thinkpad T43 in my collection of test computers at work and it is one of the best machines I have used. The only thing that was ever missing from and IBM machine was a Windows key.

Read all about this and other articles at http://www.engadget.com/.

I have wanted to try OSX for such a long time now. I remember seeing the first versions at a friends house when it was still not cool among my PC geek buddies to use a Mac. I was still intrigued with the interface. I am not sure what it was at the time but it just looked polished.

I am in the IT field and need to use a PC at work simply because I am troubleshooting problems on them and writing scripts on them. It doesn’t leave me with much of a choice really, and it doesn’t bother me either. For work purposes I understand why corporations use Windows based machines and quite frankly they do their job very well.

That being said about work, at home I have always felt that something was lacking with my computer. I am always trying a different Linux distro or another Windows add-on to try something new. So when I first heard that Apple was going to release Intel based Mac’s, I was excited! Here is the first opportunity for me to get a system that was able to run both OSX and Windows. This is an exciting proposition. The problem with that is I already have many computers and they are all working. It is very hard to justify buying a new computer just to change OSs.

This lead me to wish that Apple would release OSX for the masses. I would definitely use it. Many people already are with hacked versions of the OS calling them Hackintosh’s or labeling the practice the “OSX86 project”. That means that there are some people out there wanting to try OSX but most likely financial reasons are holding them from buying a Mac.

Let’s look at this financially. Take the MacBook Pro from the Apple Store, which sells for $1999 and compare it to the Dell XPS which sells for $1049.99 on Bestbuy.com. The Dell has more memory, a larger hard drive and it also comes with an OS, Windows Vista. So when we are comparing apples to apples here (no pun intended :)) the Dell seems to win the battle. My conclusion to the money battle is that even if Apple charged $300 for OSX, it seems like you would be better off with the Dell. Or would you?

Apple has always been in complete control of their entire product. This is the OS on the hardware they are manufacturing. By only using certain components and in certain situations, Apple has managed to keep their product pretty sound. There are many arguments from Windows fans that OSX has many of the same shortcomings as Windows, but I feel that some of Windows shortcomings affect the day to day experience.

Apple has had the Mac vs. PC ad campaign for quite some time now and one of the ads that still catches my attention is the ad that pokes at the need for a major upgrade for you to run Windows Vista. It’s funny because Apple has stopped support for legacy hardware on a number of occations. There were many systems that were left behind when OSX first was released. Where as some people in the Windows community think that is a negative point and now even Apple has brought it up, I think that ties into the polish of the product.

Let’s look at this another way. Apple doesn’t release OSX because it is not in the OS business. Maybe people would disagree, but I feel that they have written an OS to put on their hardware so that the user is offered a complete solution which is sound due to control.

So would I run OSX on my PC? Only for the geek factor. Really what I want is a Mac and I think my next computer will be one.