Ad Terras Per Aspera

Like I said in my open letter to Steve Jobs and my previous posting, I finally went out and bought a Mac: an Apple Aluminum G4 Powerbook to be specific.

A screaming fast 1.25ghz G4, combined with 1GB of memory, a 60GB drive, a 15″ 1280×854 screen, and OSX 10.4.

For $550.

Compared to a Dell Latitude, a Lenovo Thinkpad T61, a just born Apple Macbook Pro, or any of the other numerios options out there, this Powerbook won. Of all the things it doesn’t meet on my requirement list, such as the screen resolution, or the speed, or the maximum memory (2GB, by the way), it makes up for the fact it cost roughly 1/6th of the laptops it was competing against.

Now, I’m not saying a brand new laptop that only cost $550 would be viable, because it isn’t. No company’s cheapest configured laptop is worth the money in any way, but for this Powerbook it managed to beat every other laptop I configured to meet specifications because it cost so little.

I always thought the whole “Macs have an extremely high resell value” rumor wasn’t true, but now I really do think its true: take any other 3 year old laptop and try to, say, eBay it, and you’ll lucky if you get $500 for it. Similarly configured Powerbooks I’ve seen go on eBay for $1000, in fact, I got a really good deal on this.

Hey Steve Jobs, if you’re reading, you can pat yourself on the back now: I bought a Mac. It might not be a new one, but it’s a Mac.

My first experience with owning a Mac

This is more of an assorted list of thoughts than anything else.

• The dock goes on the left, since I have horizontal space to spare due to the wide screen.
• Quicksilver is needed so you don’t have to click three times (Finder in the dock, Applications, the chosen application) to start an app that isn’t in the dock already.
• Safari doesn’t support tabs yet; I installed Firefox. Update: Okay, so I have to turn them on. Safari still doesn’t support the Foxmarks, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon and 4chan extensions.
• Safari is very very fast.
• Having a built in VNC server so I can remote control it to act as a dual monitor environment in conjunction with my workstation (via x2vnc) is nice.
• x2vnc crashes said VNC server.
• Having a power plug that lights up is very nifty.
• Being able to sleep (which uses virtually no power) and return from sleep within 2 seconds is nifty.
• Having a light on the front of the Powerbook that says it is sleeping instead of off is nifty.
• Easy to setup WiFi, even though I use WPA2, is nifty.
• Democracy is nifty.
• Not having to startup a Windows VMware machine to run iTunes, Adobe Photoshop, or Starcraft is nifty.
• Not having the blasted window list taking up room at the bottom of the screen in addition of no way to not lose minimized windows; minimized windows hit the dock as icons, and apps themselves don’t even need windows to stay open.
• Having a *nix other than Linux is nifty.
• Having a functioning Objective-C/NextStep environment other than GNUstep is nifty.
• Not wasting room on redundant window menus; the Mac way of putting it at the top of the screen works better.
• Not needing a third party app to do Expose like I do with a Beryl function on Linux.
• Not needing Beryl.
• Extremely fast startups in the few cases I actually have to reboot.
• Battery charge lights that shine through holes on the bottom of the case are nifty.
• For a three year old laptop, the LCD screen is bright, reproduces colors reasonably well, has good contrast, and has dark blacks.
• It can almost play back 720p H.264 content without frame-dropping I suspect the 1.67ghz G4 can get away with it better, or at least drop a lot less frames.
• No damned disc tray for the DVD drive, and the disc goes in the front.
• No rear ports, all are on the sides.
• A DVI port instead of a VGA one, nifty.
• A Firewire port, nifty.
• A terminal that uses a sane shell is nifty.
• Apps are installed by dragging an icon to the Application folder from a mounted virtual image is nifty, though it took me a few seconds to realize thats what I was supposed to do.
• To delete an app, I just delete the app out of the Application folder instead of doing whatever it is I’m supposed to do on Windows.
• I’m going to have to buy a new Wacom pad because mine is so old it uses serial, and OSX doesn’t support serial ones even if you have a USB->serial interface.

Since I’ve only had this Powerbook for two days, thats all the stuff I’ve noticed so far, though finding a bug in the VNC server is a little disconcerting. In the mean time, I’m using Synergy2 to remote control the Powerbook, so shit hasn’t gone totally wrong. So yeah, I’m very happy with my Mac, but before anyone asks, that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop using Linux as my primary desktop.

Normally, I wouldn’t write a blog entry about this, and just shove it in my Elsewhere links sidebar, but I think my recent open letter to Steve Jobs may or may not have effectively got Apple to release a high end laptop meeting my specifications; either that, or I just accurately predicted what Apple was going to release.

I asked for, among other things, 1920×1200 LED-backlit screens, Santa Rosa, a large 4200 or 5400 rpm drive (although, it was meant to be paired with some flash cache technology), 4 gigabytes of memory, and a DX10 capable 3D chip…

The new Macbook Pros that just came out today with those features, and the 17″ models have the 1920×1200 screens optional. Whats missing is Leopard, a flash cache to go with the drive, and the memory itself isn’t 800mhz but 667 (not that big of an issue, the amount is more important than the speed).

Configured to meet my specifications, a 17″ Macbook Pro is about $3,700. Due to recent events (which I will blog about, but it does contain a Mac), I will probably wait until MBPs ship with flash caches and Leopord (800mhz is probably going to be in the next refresh as Apple runs out of 667 stock).

Oh, and Steve Jobs? Thanks, I think.

Dear Steve Jobs:

I’ve known of Apple since I was a child. One of the first computers I used was an Apple //e with it’s little monochrome screen. I’ve watched Macs come into the world, I’ve watched PowerMacs come into the world, and I’ve watched iPods and the new Macintels come into the world. I am now watching the iPhone take it’s first baby steps into the world. I have even written about Apple, both positive and negative, on my blog. Last but not least, I have seen people enjoy Apple products.

I’ve seen other companies fail where Apple managed to pull it off. I’ve seen Apple create new products that no one has produced before, or at least, didn’t get right before (the iPod wasn’t the first, but it was the first that actually got it right). And in my entire life, I’ve never owned an Apple product.

So, I’ve decided that I want to finally join the Cult of Mac and buy a Macbook Pro sometime in the next 6 months. Please release a model that contains the following items and/or features:

• LED-backlit LCD to improve power efficiency, lower heat output, increase color vibrancy and brightness, darken blacks, and increase contrast.
• Said LCD panel should be available in 1920×1080/1920×1200 resolution. I do not care if it is 15 or 17″, however manufacturers are currently shipping panels with that resolution in both sizes.
• Either Intel’s new solid state cache module, or a hard drive with built-in hybrid technology.
• A large 5400 or 4200rpm drive as an option, which in theory should boot faster than a 7200rpm drive without a solid state cache, yet use far less power, make less noise, and be less expensive.
• Intel’s new Santa Rosa platform.
• The option of 4 gigabytes or more of 800mhz RAM to go with said Santa Rosa Core 2 Duo.
• A WiFi chipset that can be software upgraded to spec-N when the 802.11N specification is finally released sometime next year; this does not, however, mean I want a new chipset if the current pre-N ones now shipping will work properly with spec-N.
• A 3D accelerator that, on a PC, could be described as DX10 compatible: Nvidia’s, ATI’s, or even Intel’s if their new DX10 chip doesn’t suck.
• Leopard.
• Even after all these features, I also want a total powered-by-battery time longer than the previous Macbook Pro model; however, this should be easier due to the backlight using less power, the CPU being able to idle more efficiently, and the optional slower drive using less power when spun up.

You may consider my request odd and specific, however I would like my first real Mac experience to be enjoyable and fruitful. Please consider my request.

However, do not misunderstand: this is not an ultimatum. Even if the Macbook Pros coming around the corner do not include all of these options, I will still consider one as my next laptop. I am simply giving you first chance at my business before everyone else gets a chance.

Signed,
        Patrick McFarland

I think my crappy Logitech-built-for-Packard-Bell PS/2 keyboard is finally going. Manufactured in 1994, this keyboard has survived my constant use for almost 14 years. Some of the dome switches are failing to pop back up, especially the ‘S’ key which sometimes randomly presses down on it’s own (it doesn’t even pop up the whole way anymore).

It is now time to buy a new keyboard.

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This article describes a version of USB that is not related to the new USB 3 spec that Intel has released for 2010 products

The Universal Serial Bus, or USB, is right now the most common serial peripheral bus in existence. Allowing all the most common devices to connect to your computer, to each other, through hubs, and now even wireless USB has become the dominant method of low bandwidth communications between devices and their peripherals.

However, USB is not without flaws, in fact, it has tons of issues that other less accepted standards have already solved, and USB has either not solved them or solved them only recently. One of those problems is that, although USB does provide electrical power to peripherals, it is rarely enough to run devices that suck juice like no tomorrow. Powered USB exists to solve this problem.

I will tell you why Powered USB will never be widely accepted, and also why we need it. However, to do so, this article is split into two three parts: the first part discusses the history of USB and previous peripheral ports, and why it it became widely accepted, the second part contains the meat of my argument on why Powered USB is both needed, yet failing to be accepted, and the third part describes a possible future USB 3 specification in detail.

This is part 1. Part 2 is available here, and part 3 is available here.

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