New Laptop

I've had a few days to play around with my new machine, and I love it. It's so sleek, so zippy, and so capable. It exhibits no hesitation whatsoever, even when I have many applications open at once. The larger screen is nice, and is incredibly bright compared to my previous machine. The keyboard is essentially the same, which is good, because it feels smooth and types well without fatigue. I have yet to really tax the battery, but I imagine that it would outlast my ability to write about it at least. The Migration Assistant built into OS X made transferring and setting things up pretty easy. I can probably avoid filling this new hard drive for a good long while. I have no need to do a raindance to get my iPhone to sync up.


It is certainly a larger machine - not nearly as compact as my previous. That's mostly OK, because my portability needs aren't as great as they were when I was in college. We'll see how it handles on an airplane, but that probably won't be for a good long while. I have most of my old apps moved over to the new machine, and a few new ones, too. For instance, I have Keynote, apple's answer to PowerPoint, which I will tinker with a bit in the next few weeks.

My previous computer, when I first received it and it was new and fast and not full and had a good battery, I christened "Shadowfax," because it was silvery and fast (and because I'm a lifelong Tolkien fan). I feel pretty good in transferring that name to my new machine.

Update Cycle

My current computer, a steadfast Powerbook G4 12" laptop, has been starting to show its age in myriad ways for a while now. "Its age" has a double meaning here: 1) its apparent speed for doing the things it always has done and 2) its obsolescence compared to current technology. For reference purposes: I purchased it not long after my (first) graduation, in June 2003. That makes it about 4-1/2 years old.

Examples of age in the first category. It has a 40 GB internal hard drive, of which about 3 GB remains available. I have in recent times had that down below 1 GB. Where does that all go? Well, there's a fair bit (about 8-9 GB) devoted to the operating system (OS X 10.4.11), and the applications. About 14 GB is my music collection (meaning I have to be selective about what I put on my iPhone, but that's a different issue). Another 6 GB or so is devoted to pictures. There are a few GB of movies which don't really need to be there. Thankfully I picked up an external hard drive a while back (also good for backups), otherwise I'd have run into a serious problem a while back. It is not only a matter of how little more I can hold: when a harddrive get more than, say, 75% full, you start running into performance issues. A second example: while I have done a little video editing on this machine, it was never all that speedy, only then only for 30-60 sec clips for the web. The computer would probably vomit if I asked it to do of that today, which is a bummer, because I'd like to do more of that in the future. Thirdly, the 867 MHz G4 processor and 1 GB of RAM, which were really only "good" when I bought it, just barely meet the minimum specs for the latest release of Mac OS X, 10.5 "Leopard", which I haven't installed yet. I am a bit anxious about whether it would go well or not. I have already mentioned the rain dance I need to do to get my iPhone to sync up with iTunes using my laptop's USB 1.1 ports. Lastly, I have worn these ol' batteries right out, even replacement batteries. These days I'm lucky to get much more than an hour or two out of my computer, untethered, before it konks out.

Compare this to what I could get today (i.e., examples of age in obsolescence terms). Apple and IBM were never able to get a G5 processor into a laptop without frying eggs, so there was a generation skipped. The move to Intel processors started about two years ago, with the Core Duo in the first MacBook Pros, call that another generation. The transition to the Core 2 Duo is a third (there was a sizeable architecture shift wrapped up in that "2"). At some point here Apple will roll out laptops with the new 45-nm Penryn chips from Intel, which is another generation still. So, my current computer is about four generations behind. Hard drives are 3x-4x larger for laptops, RAM is 2x-4x as capacious (and with faster bus speeds), screens are brighter, battery life is 3x-4x longer. (UPDATE: I didn't mention it before, but with the introduction of the MacBook Air, which has a multitouch trackpad, it is only a matter of time before multitouch is rolled out in all of Apple's laptop line.)

Don't get me wrong, I have gotten 4-1/2 good years of use out of this machine, and it has traveled with me on many adventures. There here machine got me through my fifth and sixth years of college, including my 300-page master's thesis and fieldwork in Greenland. But surveying what's out there, and considering the age and limitations of my current machine, I have come to the conclusion that it's about time for an upgrade.

But, there are two things that stand in my way of throwing down the credit card and walking off with a new machine. First, the laptop I have my eye on now (15" MacBook Pro) is no small amount of money - so throwing down the credit card would cause some amount of pain. In fairness, it's about as much as I paid for my current laptop (4-1/2 years ago). Second, the MacBook Pro lineup hasn't been updated since last July. Intel is coming out with their new 45-nm Penryn chips right now (although they'll still be branded Core 2 Duo). Many expected Apple to announce new machines with these chips at Macworld this past week, but nothing was mentioned. The attention was all on the new MacBook Air (an odd name, but a slick piece of work, although it doesn't fit my needs), iTunes movie rentals and the AppleTV, etc.

So, it's just sit back and wait, and marshall my energies (read: $$$), until the time is right. It better happen soon, otherwise I'll be tempted to wait a bit longer, until mid-year, when Intel's new mobile chipset, codename Montevina, comes out.

iPhone Troubles

Well, I suppose the other shoe was going to drop eventually. Hilary's phone ran into some troubles, and now mine has, too. The story of how it met its fritzy demise is too long to tell, so I'll summarize: it blew a fuse, probably in the literal sense. So, in the space of an hour on Monday, it went from fine to dead as a doornail.

But, hey, that's OK, because it was only a few months into its one-year warranty. Apple Tech Support agreed with me: dead as a doornail and no fault of mine. They offered me the choice of sending the phone in via mail, or seeking out the Genius Bar at the nearest Apple retail store. My guess, in either case, was that they'd take one look at it and swap it for a fresh iPhone.

The choice between mail service and waltzing into a store filled with Apple swag and speaking to a real person...it was not actually as simple as it might, at first, seem. You see, the closest Apple store is in the Mall of America, which Hilary and I have scrupulously (and, some might say, conspicuously) avoided. It is a place that goes beyond the extremes of capitalism and all that is shallow in America - our own little Las Vegas. That, and the fact that it's an hour and a half away. Mail might not be so bad in comparison, particularly since I won't be using my phone next week in Europe. On the other hand, there's a transatlantic flight ahead, and I'll certainly be wanting my iPod.

So, up to the Mall we go, on December 26th. God in Heaven preserve us. Thankfully, the Apple Store is only about 100 feet from one entrance, so we were spared most of the insanity. It was about 8:45 before my 8:00 appointment came up, but once I got some face time with the guy behind the bar, it took all of five minutes to get a brand new iPhone into my hands. Swap the SIM card, and I was back in business. Remarkably good service, very pleased.

I'm still having great difficulties with syncing up my iPhone to my 4-1/2 year old computer. It's not the age really, it's more the fact that my computer lacks a USB 2.0 computer (USB 1.1 only). It sort of works, but USB 1.1 isn't actually supported. It's particularly painful because, rather than just an album here and there, or a week's worth of podcasts, it's as much of my library that I can fit. Oh the pain of it all!

iPhone

I've had an iPhone for over a month now. It is such a slick device! I greatly enjoy being able to get information from anywhere, anytime. The screen is beautiful for whatever I'm viewing; the multitouch interface is a wonderful step in intelligent design. It is smaller than my old (3G) and recently-deceased iPod, and replaces my run-of-the-mill clamshell cellphone, which I always found a pain in the ass and unreliable.

One example of its coolness and utility occurred shortly after I got it. I was coming out from a haircut, and feeling a bit peckish, and felt like getting some takeout. So, I look up the listing of a chinese/thai/combodian place I know in google maps, which leads me to their website, which leads me to their online menu. Go back to the google maps listing, tap the button with their phonenumber, and place my order.

I have started to get into ripping movies to put on the device. To stay on the less-shady side of fair use, I am restricting it to movies (and TV series) that I actually own. It is a simple enough process, although much more time consuming than ripping CDs. The iPhone's preferred video format is called H.264 which, although it compresses things down nicely, is very computer intensive. My laptop (see below) can crawl along at about 3 fps while encoding - 1/10th realtime. My work computer manages to encode at just-about realtime, so two hours for a feature-length film. A brand new desktop, I am told, could probably pull off 2x-4x. It results in about 500 MB/hour of video. So, while I could conceivably fit the entire extended edition Lord of the Rings trilogy onto my 8 GB phone, it probably won't happen soon.

The ease-of-use and beauty of this device is difficult to describe short of a hands-on demonstration. Gripes, on the other hand, I can put into words:

* The first is that, although my company has a wonderfully ever-present WiFi network, I am unable to access it. The wireless network, like the wired one, requires authentication (a username and password) before it'll allow a device to access it. For my company's wireless network, this is accomplished using something called LEAP, which sort-of acts in parallel with encryption technologies like WPA. While LEAP is supported by my Apple laptop, it is not supported by the iPhone. This may be because of past wrangling between Apple and Cisco - LEAP's owner - over the trademark of the name "iPhone." It is my hope that support will eventually be added through a firmware upgrade. In the meantime, my company does have a parallel, less fast, guest wireless network that I can access. Unfortunately, however, it requires me to go through a sign-on page in Safari (with ridiculously verbose terms of use) before assigning me an IP number. This can become a pain in the arse pretty quickly, because I need to do it just about every time I use the network.

* A related difficulty is that, even when using my home WiFi network or the slower-than-moles'-asses-in-january EDGE network, I cannot access my company email or intranet. This is hardly surprising - my company has taken great pains to keep that all behind a strong firewall. I could access through that firewall using a VPN client, which I sometimes do on my laptop. The iPhone even comes with a built-in VPN client. Unfortunately, my company's VPN system uses IPSec, which is not supported by the iPhone. Again, I am hoping that an eventual firmware upgrade will fix this, but it is only a hope.

* Syncing. My computer is a four-year old 12" Powerbook G4. It has always been a very capable machine for me. Unfortunately, however, its USB ports are only v1.1, not the more widespread and higher speed USB 2.0. As a result, I have been having increasing difficulties getting my computer and iPhone to talk to one another. I suppose getting a new computer would help fix that, but it's hardly a sensible solution, even if my computer is starting to show its age. I'll post back when I've had a chat with Apple's support.

* Ringtones. I am not one to go crazy looking for that one perfect ringtone - the one that not only announces an incoming call, but announces something very special about you to everyone within earshot. Even if I was into it, I would never actually pay for a ringtone. I know there are various utilities out there that would, in the past, have allowed me to bypass the $3.99/tone racket the phone companies and RIAA cartel have put out there, but honestly I never cared enough to bother. Now, with the advent of iTunes 7.4, I am able to put ringtones on my iPhone, but only after paying an additional 99 cents for the privelege of using a 99-cent song I've already purchased. Never mind using music I have ripped from CDs I own, or music I have (hypothetically) recorded in a jam band. Sites like engadget and slashdot have posted a number of articles, and very lengthy discussions, about these issues, so I won't bother to get into it further. I was pleased that Ambrosia software came out with a helpful utility for using any AAC-encoded track as a ringtone, but it appears that itunes 7.4.2 has killed that backdoor. We'll see how it pans out.

* Price. Everyone now knows about the dramatic price drop in the iPhone. It bugged me a bit at first, because it happened one months after my purchase, and barely two months since its release. One expects price cuts in technology, but a 1/3 reduction so soon after release did seem like a kick to the face of early adopters. Ah well - I am not complaining much. It was worth it to me to spend $600 at the time (although, had I known this was coming, I certainly could have waited). It was a gift from a very generous person, too, who was quite happy to bestow it. The $100 Apple credit is nice, though, and I'll find a use for it before too long.

In the meantime, I am having a blast with this-here amazing piece of work. I imagine a demo at the upcoming family reunion will be fun.