Ivory Tower -
April 2009
Just because
it’s portable doesn’t mean it is good!
By Ted Bade
Perhaps it is
just me getting older. You might have heard the old tale, one’s eyesight begins
to give out, requiring the use of “reading glasses” to read a book. Along with
this seems to comes an attitude that things one uses should be to one’s
satisfaction. The true beginnings of the crotchety old man.…
Making portable
electronic equipment smaller generally seems like a good idea. If its smaller,
it’s more easily portable. It also probably requires less power to operate,
which either reduces the size of the battery it requires, or means it will
perform for a longer period of time between charges. These are all desirable
things.
Where this model
fails is when one tries to shrink a video display. The other day I was trying
to see if I could use the iPod touch to display a PDF document I wanted to
read. What I found was, if I got the text large enough to comfortably read, all
I could see was part of a sentence. Which means I lost the sense of the
document and found reading to be very disjointed. If I got the document small
enough to see it’s layout, I couldn’t read it. So I tossed the Touch and used
my MacBook Pro. I find that a 15” screen is pretty good for reading documents,
looking at web pages, or watching a movie.
On a similar
note a friend related the story of a guy coming to a social gathering with one
of those new mini-portable computers. He was wowing everyone with how small it
was. Then they decided to use it to visit a web site. Ooooh, isn’t this fun,
now you get to view either the left side or the
right side of the site’s main page. Wow, I am impressed.
Then again I
heard an advertisement for a new cell phone device that includes the ability to
“watch” TV shows on it. Yes you can fit it in the palm of your hand and still
watch broadcast quality TV! I remember asking myself, why did I bother to buy
myself a 40” LCD HDTV for the living room? Why didn’t I just buy a 2” one, it
would definitely been at least as good! I could carry it around the house and
never have to worry about action scenes making me queasy…
Sure, the
portability of this device would be nice, but I don’t see how I could enjoy
watching a show that small. I think I could remember more detail about the show I watched on
a regular sized video display then I could actually see on a 2” screen! (By the way, what was
the logo on that guy’s hat?
Hey, even the
guys at Pixar implied this was an issue. If you saw their animated movie Wall•e
you might recall the scene where he is watching an old VCR tape using an iPod
as a display. Yet even Wall•e, the robot with obviously advanced visual sensors
uses a magic magnifying glass plate to bring the iPod’s video up to a useful
size. (Or was that simply for the “old” guys in the audience? ☺ )
Small and more
portable is good, but not for video displays. Until the engineers come up with
a display that is 2” but looks like 50”, I am going to stick with a regular
sized laptop! Maybe Apple will add one of those nifty pull out extension
displays to their laptop like one PC laptop manufacturer offers? Perhaps one
day we will have displays that appears room sized and in 3D! I can’t wait.
Finally!
Apple updates their desktop computers.
- While the improvements aren’t extremely stunning, they are significant
improvements. Since I am a fan of Apple computers, and this particular article
is mostly about what happens related to Apple computers, the news of March 3rd
was very significant to us.
Apple updated
the MacMini, the iMac, and the MacPro. Let’s take a brief look at these updated
machines.
The MacMini, which
I consider the ultimate low end machine, gets some impressive additions. The
biggest change (IMHO) is the inclusion of a real graphics card. We have a first
generation Intel MacMini, which has the onboard Intel graphics chip. The lack
of graphical ability is probably the biggest negative aspect of this otherwise
great machine. Some other interesting features include a “greener” set of
components; the machine doesn’t have a number of toxic materials and is
supposed to use only 13Watts of power when in standby, which is said to be 45%
better then the previous machine. While the stock processor speed up is only to
2 GHz, you can upgrade to a 2.26 GHz one. The hard drive size has been
increased, the optical drive is 8X, and the wireless card is version n. As with
the previous MacMini, this isn’t a powerhouse, but it is a low end machine with
everything a basic user will ever need. My wife has been happily using her
first generation Intel Mini for years. I thinks she will look forward to this
new one! To check out these new Mac Minis, visit: (http://www.apple.com/macmini/)
Apple also
updated the iMac. Some of the new features include either a 20 or 24” screen,
only the low end iMac offers the 20”, the rest are all 24” screens. Graphic
cards have been enhanced to slightly better NVIDIA cards. The highest end iMac
can have either a NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 512MB or an ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB.
There is a lot of hard drive capacity as well. For more information on these
new iMacs visit: (http://www.apple.com/imac/features.html).
Finally Apple
also upgraded the MacPro. This powerhouse machine has several new features that
a power user might love. First of all the processors are now the latest
Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem”, which is faster then it’s predecessor.
Expansion is even easier on this machine. due to the redesigned interior. (Take
a look at this page for details: (http://www.apple.com/macpro/design.html#expansion).
Graphics is improved by the options of either a stackable NVIDIA GeForce GT 120
512M (can stack up to four) or an ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB. If you want to see
a real super computer, play with the Apple Store’s configuration options!) For
all the details on this new machine visit: (http://www.apple.com/macpro/ ).
I am personally
really happy to see an update to Apple’s computer line up. Still, I truly wish
Apple had a fourth machine, a consumer level desktop. It would be a step above
the iMac, without the attached display, include options for some expansion of
drives and graphics cards, and other cards, but with the less expensive core
duo chips rather then the quad core. Don’t take me wrong, I love my MacPro with
it’s Quad core Xeon chip. I would still like the option to buy a similar
machine with a core duo and all the other bells and whistles I am interested
in.
Macs in
government agencies - It
appears that more and more government agencies in the US are including Macs in
their computer workforce. I have seen a couple of articles in print magazines
that talk about this. One such article on the internet is: (http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/20308/).
But this isn’t the only article. Most of this info and some extra was in a nice
little article inside a print magazine called “Government Computer News” (http://gcn.com/articles/2009/02/23/mac-in-the-enterprise.aspx),
February 23rd 2009 edition.
This is really
good news for the Macintosh community (and even more so for the government
employees.) Frankly, I am tied of trying to access a government related sites
only to be told that I “need to upgrade my browser”. This is modern parlance
for: “Our web people use Windows. They have convinced us that we NEED Internet
Explorer’s security features. So go get a PC is you want to use this site!”
My own state’s
department of IRS gave me this message. I have to admit they were kind enough
to tell me that if I was a Macintosh user, I could use FireFox. I guess this
means they don’t want to make it too too hard for the cyber-pirates to get
access to our information. ☺.
Apple
wireless technologies now includes a “Guest zone” - This is a neat little idea that has
been around for a bit. One of the biggest hazards of wireless routers is
allowing access to unknown computers. One of those unknown’s might be a hacker.
But being a friendly person, I wouldn’t mind sharing my wireless with others.
What Apple has
done is to include a Guest Zone in their wireless routers. This zone is
completely isolated from the network your Macs use. Guests can access the
internet from this zone, without access to the Macs or other computers on the
inside zone. Cool idea.
Talking
Shuffle - Leave it to
Apple Engineers to come up with an elegant solution to not having a display!
The recently released iPod shuffle will speak certain pieces of information!
This new iPod
shuffle has fixed two of the major problems I have with the older Shuffle. I
bought and use my Shuffle when I take walks / go jogging and when doing yard work.
As I start whatever I am doing and often while I am doing my thing, I have need
to grab the shuffle and move it. With the controls placed as they are,
invariably I press the skip forward or back buttons, abruptly ending the
current piece of music. With this new shuffle, the control functions are on the
earbud cord, so when I grab it the Shuffle, I am not going to hit the skip
functions.
However, and
this is a big one, this means that one must use the Apple earbuds. Not
something I usually do. I use my shuffle when doing yard work, like running the
leaf blower or lawn mower and other noisy equipment. I have created a modified
set of hearing protectors (the big cup ones like airline ground people use). I
disassembled a set of stereo headphones, and put them into the hearing
protector. Now when I run the noisy lawn mower, I can listen to my tunes at a
moderate level. The roar of the lawn mower is just a faint sound in the
background.
So the issue
with this new Shuffle is that I won’t be able to use my hearing protector
headphones. And of course, it also means one is stuck using Apple’s earbuds.
Personally, I hate earbuds. I expect that some third party company will come up
with a cord one inserts between an alternate headphone set and the shuffle.
(Hurry, please!)
Right after the
release of the new Shuffle, rumors were flying that the required earbuds had
some type of DRM (digital rights management) chip hidden in them. Apple denied
this allegation. I haven’t heard anything firm on this. I expect that people
are just being suspicious. However, I wouldn’t put it past Apple to do
something suspicious ☺
The other thing
is that the Shuffle will now, when asked, speak the name of the song and artist
you are currently listening to. Probably one of the biggest complaints about
the Shuffle was the lack of display. There is no way to see what is currently
playing. With this new Shuffle, you press and hold the middle button and a
computer voice will tell you the name of the song and artist you are currently
listening to. Continue holding and the Shuffle then lists the name os the
playlists on the Shuffle. To select one of these playlists, press the button
when you hear the name of the playlist you want. This is a really cool feature.
It is amazing
how much technology Apple has placed into this tiny device. I don’t know for
sure, but based on the description, I expect the new version of iTunes “reads”
the information using the parent computer’s voice, then uploads this file along
with the song. Really, the magic is in iTunes, the Shuffle simply plays back
the information when asked. Nevertheless, it’s cool!
Until next time,
keep on using you Mac...
