Apple's newest MacBook Pro lineup: what is it?

My eyes have been crossed ever since the Apple announcement last week.  I'm just not sure what the company was trying to accomplish and how they ended up at this point.

The Touch Bar looks like great technology and in the video editing portion of the demonstrations, I was enthusiastic.

However, they removed some products, such as the 11 inch MacBook Air and the 15.4 inch MacBook Pro with only Intel graphics hardware.  At least, I believe that's what they did.  My eyes are still crossed.

I recognize that the MacBook Air has become less popular and they make the MacBook Pro line thinner and the MacBook exists just to draw people closer with its bling-y looks.  Supposedly, my iPhone 7 is faster than the MacBook and MacBook Air.  The MacBook with Intel Core M processors is slow indeed.

US$2399 and $2799 seem about right, but maybe a bit extra.  My mid-2012 refurbished machine came at a slight discount in January 2013.  It's difficult to believe that someone would pay $1999 for a MacBook Pro with Intel Iris Pro graphics hardware but there is one in the refurbished list for $300 off at $1699.  I'm thinking that they were introduced at $1499.  Then again, I remember paying for a Wall Street-era Apple laptop computer with passive display for $2600 something around 1998, and that was the cheap 233 MHz model.

It still feels as though the changes in specification aren't enough.  However, I remember when 66 MHz or 133 MHz seemed as big a change as we were getting when Motorola couldn't enhance the PowerPC G3 or G4 further.  Intel is mostly at that point now.

The updated Radeon graphics hardware is appreciated in the higher level machines.  Switching to USB C for everything makes sense.  Leaving the headphone jack does not.  Where are the Lightning connectors, so I can use my ear buds, etc.?  Does the new iPhone come with a USB C adapter?  No.

If I had the $2399 to spend easily, would I replace my current machine with the newest one?

Update 2016.11.04: A lot of people are complaining that the RAM is limited to 16 GB.  One person wrote Phil Schiller who replied that the current technology is such that more RAM would diminish battery life.  It seems that Intel isn't very good at designing processors--or this is a situation of planned obsolescence.

Others are complaining about the ports.  I'm finding it interesting to require a dock or a lot of cables to convert to the proper connector.

Further, a company called Plugable has noticed that their products are not compatible with Thunderbolt 3 in the new computers, because they use a Texas Instruments controller.  This isn't the first time I've heard of TI doing a half-ass job but it certainly is a problem that will be rectified with new controllers from the company.

I'm just not sure these new machines are compelling enough, especially for the wait.

The Touch Bar is useful.  For all the time that I used a touch screen Windows-based Lenovo Flex 3, I never really found the touch screen completely useful.  The display housing would bounce at my finger pressure, and Lenovo has better hinges than most.  In tablet mode, it could be useful, but who wants a 5 pound, 14 inch tablet?

Microsoft continues to make waves with their Surface lines, but will they actually sell many?  I don't believe so.  For the artist, Wacom has been the name for a very long time.  Of course, that's like saying "No gets fired for buying Microsoft." and things have changed.

For most people, the tablet market is only for replacements now.  I wouldn't expect to see more powerful tablets because of the heat, and the weight for heat dissipation hardware.

If Apple had announced a touch screen-enabled display, I would have expected the MacBook Air and MacBook lines to go away immediately, and a lot of "Macs don't need touch screens" kinds of quotes to be dug up from the past.

So, do you need an updated MacBook Pro that isn't much different?  It may all come down to killer Touch Bar additions.

Thinking back to when I was a IRC channel operator and then, moderator for the world's largest Apple-related forums, I remember people building lists of unachievable things for Apple to do with their next revision of whatever machine was next.  They had to be big and powerful and slim and light--at the same time.  Oh, and they had to all be 12 inch laptop computers, similar to the one IBM Japan made for Apple.

Naturally, almost nothing came true because what they wanted wasn't realistic.  This time, the machines are good and powerful, and didn't have anything that anyone wanted, of course.  I gave up on the forums around 8 years ago (after iPhone arrived), although I made a cameo appearance as an Olympic torch bearer for 24 hours or so.  I didn't understand it, so I can't explain it to you.

Why are brand fanatics so--fanatical?

Update 2016.11.13: Got my hands on the new 13 inch MacBook Pro without Touch Bar.

The speakers on each side of the keyboard are, as they say, long overdue.  The track pad is !@#$ huge.  I can only think that the size of the track pad is to overcome the touch screen alternative.  My experience with the capable Lenovo Flex 3 14 inch tells me that touch screen is a good idea but even the best hinges have trouble keeping the display steady when you're poking it.  You can put it into a 14 inch tablet mode, which was seemingly heavy and hot.  The new, huge track pad may be a good idea, even if it looks odd.

I can't say that it is much more powerful.  These days feel like the days when Motorola was lucky to eek out an extra 66 MHz to the clock speed.  For the most part, all of the i5 processors are powerful enough to handle most jobs.  Handling video production is another matter.  My mid-2012 15.4 inch MacBook Pro with 2.6 GHz i7 struggles at times--at 100 degrees C.

I'd be happy to try one of the 15.4 inch models.  Certainly having a newer GPU would improve processing power when working on video.

Update 2016.11.23: Saw the Touch Bar-included MacBook Pro models, 13 and 15.4 inch.

There is a US$900 gap between the two sizes, especially since there is no Intel-only graphics 15.4 inch machine.  It's unfortunate that there is no room for better heat dispersion in the 13 inch model since it's so (increasingly) thin.  I'd be more than happy to have a thicker, small model to fit around US$1799.

The Touch Bar was usable, quick, and easy to understand for the function key replacements.  I suppose I should have tried to see if Final Cut Pro was installed to see the timeline enhancements in the Touch Bar.  Instead, I looked at the US$2399 of the 15.4 inch machine in front of me and considered that my mid-2012 machine was just fine.

2012 Refurbished MacBook Pro, One Year Later

It's difficult to believe that it's been a year since I ordered this MacBook Pro.  After three years of daily use, my 2009 MacBook was showing its age and lack of capacity.  Today, I bought an AppleCare extended warranty, just in case.

My main photo raw development software, Phase One Capture One 7, was pushing the system.  6 GB of RAM just didn't seem to be enough, and it would grind away at the hard drive swapping processes' information, leaving me with a few Megabytes of free working memory.  The 750 GB 7200 rpm hard drive was still too slow to really do a great job when I handed it a basketball game with 1000 photos.  The transfer of images over USB 2.0 didn't help.

I'd been watching the refurbished machines for a while.  I choose refurbished machines from Apple because they've been through a bit of trouble and repaired and checked again.  The prior two machines (late 2004 1.33 GHz PowerBook G4 and 2009 2.13 GHz MacBook worked quite well as my main machine, and they still work well), so buying another refurbished machine was the best way to go.  I didn't mind the savings, either.

I really wanted the 15.4 inch display but with the 1680x1050 resolution and anti-glare display.  I missed buying the PowerBook with the 1440x960 display to save a bit, and with photo resolution becoming larger all the time, I could use a denser monitor.  However, finding the higher resolution and anti-glare property at the same time was difficult, and the extra cash made me think twice.  Still, it has the nVidia GeForce GT 650M, which is used by OpenCL to aid in computational math, a feature than Capture One Pro 7 uses.

As my photo processing was taking 3-4 times as long, I decided on a 2.6 GHz i7 MacBook Pro with the typical 1440x900 resolution and the glossy display.  Inexplicably, the company chooses to use a 5400 rpm drive, and 750 GB or not, it's not fast enough for work or games, really.

The day after I ordered it, I placed an order with OtherWorld Computing for two 8 GB RAM sticks.  They were "only" about US$100.  Contrast this to 1993 when I bought a 72 pin SIMM with 32 MB of RAM (for the Quadra/LC/Performa 475/476) for $1040, or 3 rebuilt 16 KB Atari RAM cards (for the Atari 800) for $108 in 1983.  16 GB was the most the model would support and I wasn't going to be held back by the hard drive speed.

Apple managed to push me from Snow Leopard on the MacBook to Mountain Lion on the new MacBook Pro.  It was very, very broken, and it was a pain in the ass because I had to download it all over again to put it on another drive, a 750 GB 7200 rpm drive that I'd been using in the MacBook.  Thankfully, I was able to use the connection of a repair shop that was convenient, as I was familiarizing them with Apple technology.

When I'd got the thing running correctly, I noticed that my batch processing of photos was driving the machine to over 100 degrees C, with all four processor cores running, along with the extra 4 virtual cores.  It's still close to that but under 100 degrees C these days.

After a month or two, I changed to a 480 GB SSD, which fixed a lot of the speed problems.  Not only was photo processing much quicker, but games were loading reasonably well, and even Valve's games weren't stuck with "LOADING" long enough for me to get a drink.

Seeing the recent, new Retina-only models made me think that I'd bought the correct machine for me.  I still need an optical drive.  The nVidia 650M is strong enough for me, at the moment.  Being forced into OS X Mavericks/10.9 doesn't seem like a good idea, enhanced battery life or not.  Thin may be in, but Apple's machines become hot too easily.  This one is indicating 40 degrees C and it's actually chilly to the touch.

I'm hoping to get 3-4 years out of it before I need to buy another machine.  By then, photo resolution may have increased again, depending on the ability to miniaturize, and I'll need a stronger machine.  I might even be on 10.9.x by then, because I know that they won't have fixed 10.8.x further.  Maybe, they'll have the Mac App Store fixed by then.

I wonder if we'll even have typical laptop computers by then, or whether they'll mostly be hybrid tablets with keyboards at that point.  In any case, I'll be sticking to a slightly older, 100% guaranteed to be refurbished machine, and I'll be happy with it because it will work well.  Hopefully, this one will still be happy by then.

If you're wondering, I'm still using the 2004/2005 PowerBook G4 and the 2009 MacBook.  They work just fine but they're not exceptionally powerful for photo processing.

Update 2015.08.15: It's getting close to three years that I've had this computer.  It's still what I use daily.  It's been through a lot, including having flipped into the air and it landed upside down on the floor.  It's more several months since then, and it's fine.

In November 2014, I had the closest Apple Store update it to OS X 10.9.5 and it has been reasonable.  I need to have it updated to 10.10.5 now that it is available.

Making videos with it, it seems to struggle a bit.  I looked for a computer running Windows, but they were running about the same amount of money for similar resolutions and power.

I gave away the 2009 MacBook to someone who had helped me set up my apartment but it wasn't extremely powerful with those nVidia graphics.

I keep looking at the recent MacBook Pro models and I have to go with a Retina model to get something current.  They're not easy to customize after the sale.  It's better since they've been out a while, and OWC has had time to figure out some options.  It still seems a guessing game as to what Apple will do next.  The latest 15.x inch MacBook Pro models haven't had a good CPU upgrade for a while.  Since the Back-to-School sale is in progress, updates should be out soon.

WWDC Monday: turning 2012 obsolete

We all know it's coming as soon as we buy something: it's turning obsolete as soon as it has been released.

A car depreciates the moment you sign the paperwork and drive off the lot.  An electronic gadget starts toward obsolescence the moment it arrives in the real world and can be bought.  Even humans and other living things start to decay after they're born--we live to die.

So, it's no mystery that once new laptop computers are revealed by Apple at WWDC on Monday, mine will be the previous generation.  Oh, no!

As I had said when Apple released the first MacBook Air, the company would develop all of their laptop computers in a similar form for the long term.  They've accomplished some of that but they're still holding on to an earlier type.  I suspect it won't be until 2014 when they cut all ties to past laptop computer designs that are still current at this moment.

More than that, they desperately need to replace the Mac Pro--the tower-encased work horse created for the most professional pursuits of creativity.  Will they still have Xeon processors?  These processors have kept the price abnormally high, but have kept the performance equally high.  Will they be replaced with simpler, 8 core i7 processors?

I believe they must.  Apple have been working toward more reasonable pricing lately.  No, they aren't going into budget-class territory.  There is no reason to fight for the bottom end.  However, they can bring more power at a lower price.

Intel boasts the Haswell series of Core i processors as being less needy for power.  Certainly, whole systems seem too needy, especially when it comes to graphics hardware.  We've gone from 300 watt power supplies to much more than 650 watt requirements for many middle class graphics cards fit to a system.  As the CPU becomes less thirsty, will the GPU just soak up the rest?

When the various Macs were using G4 processors, they needed very little energy to survive, in contrast to the Pentium 4.  Even the PowerPC G5 wasn't incredibly ravenous.  It would be good to see a laptop computer that supposedly can last 7 hours on battery last more than 12.

I was reading something about nVidia's 600 series GPUs being re-badged with higher numbers for 2013.  Whatever Apple decides to use, I'm sure they'll be somewhat more powerful, but careful to conserve battery life.  The 650M graphics hardware in my machine can drain the battery so much faster than the Intel HD 4000 hardware, but then, there is so much difference in performance.  The HD 4000 uses less juice, but is it nearly as efficient?  I'd think it isn't.  Intel bought a third rate graphics hardware company to "help" the industry and they haven't really made a lot of progress with it.  It's still quite laughable.  How AMD/ATI and nVidia continue to dominate without tripping over the patents of each other is amazing.

So, when Monday afternoon (GMT-4) arrives at 13:00, will I cringe that my computer has suddenly shifted into the past?  No, it's quite powerful and will be after any announcement.  It's all perspective, of course.  If you live for tomorrow, you'll miss today.

I've seen the details now and I suspect that my MacBook Pro is safe--there was no replacement today.  The MacBook Air people should be feeling the strain, as those machines were given the newest Ultra Low Voltage (ULV) Haswell processors.  The battery life on the bigger machine has improved to a rated 12 hours.  It's not as good as I would have expected but it's very good.  Once the new (Mac) OS X arrives in autumn, that should help also.

 Speaking of which, OS X Mavericks is the first Apple operating system to make me smile for a while.  They've actually been working on the functionality, instead of spending most of their time on eye candy.

Virtual Memory has long been a problem for Mac OS X.  Considering that Mac OS X has had its roots in the Mach (micro-)kernel project and BSD UNIX, it's a wonder that Virtual Memory would have ever been a problem.  The various BSD-based operating systems (OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD) have been really stable.

Apple, in their infinite wisdom, thought that they could fix the world with an enhancement and it's been hell ever since.  I used to be a PowerMac user with the fastest (Ultra) SCSI hard drives and the virtual memory swapping was always at the wrong time.  I suppose for most people using a web browser and e-mail client, it wasn't a problem.  However, I've been at the edge of free memory far too often--even on my newest machine with 16 GB of RAM.

I'm hoping that this new Memory Compression technique will put things right.  It says a lot about processor power when they can do such a thing.  Back when the Motorola 68000 series processors were new, virtual memory was something only big business machines would do.  Motorola came out with an add-on that allowed virtual memory, but when you consider how slow all of the components were, it was much better to limit memory space to available RAM--16 MB or 4 GB.  Of course, the 16 MB limit of the 68000 was rarely used.  It was more likely restricted to 4 MB by an artificial limit.

Replacing the networking hardware was an expected change, as they were a bit behind the times already.  It's not that everyone has been running to stores to find 802.11ac (Gigabit WiFi) equipment, but the major vendors already have it out there.

In any case, Apple are finally pushing toward the future again, having put it on pause earlier.

Update 2013.07.21: Apple are in the middle of a Back-to-School clearance, so there is no new iPhone, iPod touch, Mac Book Pro, etc. until supplies are exhausted.  I suppose it's good for all involved but once a year changes aren't really enough to keep up with other companies.  I thought that Apple were trying to be more flexible.  Hopefully, they'll also have enough displays for a high density iPad mini, but I wouldn't bet on anything, given all the delays.

A new computer

Okay, so it's kewl to hate Apple.  I'm not an Apple fanatic anyway.  The fanatics drive me crazy.  I like the company's products, but don't own a huge number of them.

I've had Apple computers since 1993 when my IBM L40SX' mouse port died and they'd have to replace the motherboard to fix the problem.  The company gave me almost $1000 for a two year old computer that originally cost me $1500, and sent me on my way.

I took a friend and went to the local OfficeMax.  They had an Apple Performa 426 (LC/Performa 425 with a 250 MB hard drive).  Yes, Performa was the budget line and for around $1500, you got a keyboard without the keypad, a mouse, and a 14 inch 640x480 monitor.  It was a good deal, especially when the Quadra version of the same machine was more expensive (having the 68040 with inbuilt math coprocessor, instead lf the 68LC040) but lacked the keyboard and monitor.  I'm thinking that the keyboard and mouse were included in the LC425 version.

19 years ago, the company was okay, but their operating system was craptacular in fundamental ways, i.e., it needed to be scrapped.  Today, they have a good operating system that has some weird issues and they're trying to make it more mobile--like handheld devices mobile.  Is something with a 15.4 inch display a mobile device, really?

At this moment, I'm transferring my data from a backup of my current mid-2009 white MacBook to a mid-2012 aluminium MacBook Pro.  I'm thinking that I should have bought a USB 3.0 drive instead of saving a bit of money on the clearance item, as USB 2.0 isn't so fast.  The previous time I did a migration, it was over a Gigabit Ethernet connection from my late 2004 PowerBook G4 to the white MacBook.  I regretted not having a machine with discrete graphics but the nVidia 9400M graphics hardware was fast and with almost 5 years of technology between the two machines, the games I had ran very well on the MacBook.

This new machine has current graphics hardware: nVidia 650M with 1 GB of GDDR5 RAM.  That's fairly extreme for a notebook computer.  These days, desktop graphics hardware requires significant power, so it's nice to see that they can give good abilities to a mobile computer that doesn't require a long extension cord to do anything.  For daily uses, it's got the Intel HD 4000 graphics chipset, which is, ummm, less underwhelming than the HD 3000 chipset.  That's as generous as I can be.  I expect that Fishlabs' Galaxy on Fire 2 HD will run fine at 1440x900, rather than the 1024x600 window it uses on the MacBook.  However, I suspect UT2004 won't run at all, due to deprecated (retired) software in Lion/Mountain Lion.

Yesterday, I took the old PowerBook to have the backlight repaired.  The machine is a pleasant design and doesn't give any feeling of being cheap but it's not a unibody design.  Neither is the MacBook I have a unibody design, though it doesn't feel expensive or cheap.  Certainly, remembering the late iBook family sitting in a store with half its keys missing is enough to make you think that any of the MacBook family are not cheap.  However, this certain MacBook Pro is the aluminium slab unibody machine, and it felt very impressive pulling it out of the box.  It should be interesting to compare the two side-by-side.  Notably though, the 1440x900 vs 1280x854 display resolution and graphics hardware are the biggest details.  Considering that the 1280x854 15.2 inch widescreen display arrived in 2001 when most of the world offered a 1024x768 4:3 display is still amazing.  Of course, you pay extra for the better, higher resolution display and back then, Apple didn't have the sales numbers to push down the cost of the display with economies of scale.

I'm interested in how I'll function with Lion or Mountain Lion.  I didn't get far enough to find out which it has, but the entry on the Apple store said that it qualified for the up-to-date program.  I'm all for massive security improvements, as Apple has lagged the industry, even when the security improvements were free and available to them.  I can't understand the need to suck people into their world without protecting them.

The operating system(s) is much different than Snow Leopard from what I've seen.  A lot of it seems to be superficial eye candy, which doesn't do a thing for me, if the system is still broken when you use it.  e.g., I have a problem when I'm not a System Administrator in Snow Leopard.  I'll go from my default of the Applications folder to one of my photo folders, the Utilities folder, or some such.  The Back button should be enabled and light up with a visual cue to let you know that you can click it to return to the previous folder.  Nine of ten times, it does not, and clicking the button does zero.  I'm sure it's someone else's fault because Apple never makes mistakes.  Did your sarcasm detector just jump to 100 %?

I have about 2 hours, 21 minutes at latest count until the Migration Assistant finishes.  The good thing is that this machine is not tied down since it's all being pulled from the Time Machine backup.  It's odd watching the latest thermometer/progress bar work.  It has sharp edges--no rounded rectangle there, but it still has the fluid effects and the ever-present blue.

Hopefully, it will handle my Phase One Capture One 7 Pro software well.  If not, after the 16 GB RAM switch, it'll be even better.  I'm being hampered by only 6 GB of RAM, and the system is often at a crawl.  Isn't that crazy that so much RAM isn't enough?  I'll find out in a couple of hours.  Hopefully, it'll be a wonderful experience.  I mean, it's Apple, yes?  Nothing could ever be wrong.  Yes, yes, there goes your sarcasm detector again.

It took about 3 hours for the Migration Assistant to finish.  That's not terrible, but it missed a few settings or, I guess, they didn't apply correctly for Mac OS X 10.8.  Just after that, I went to the shop where they're going to repair my PowerBook and used their internet connection to download 1.32 GB of updates to the operating system and other Apple-related software.  When it wanted to restart, I clicked Restart (as opposed to Not Now) but it didn't seem to work.  It was only much later, when I went back to the merged Software Update/Mac App Store that it updated correctly.  It's confusing.  As of midnight, the machine seems to be working reasonably well.  I can't keep a Finder window but other things seem to be working, including my Capture One 7 Pro.  That's a good thing.

Continuing, all of my updates have been processed, and I replaced the 8 GB of RAM with 16 GB.  The combined Mac App Store/Software Update found a tiny update for MacBook Pro and MacBook Air.  It's been out a couple of weeks, so I'm surprised that it wasn't found already.

Of course, the 16 GB of RAM makes the re-launch of almost any application instantaneous.   However, Capture One 7 Pro still lags when loading more than 1200 photos (and their associated change information) in one folder.  The 5400 rpm drive has a lot to do with that, but of course, 1200+ photos are quite a lot.  I started out with over 2100.  The drive really does feel abnormally slow when I've been using a 7200 rpm drive for about 1 year but limited there to 6 GB of RAM. 

In the standard user account where I have my photography, it mostly remembers my Finder window.  In my administrator account, it almost never does.  Of course, this is 10.8.2 and I'm not comfortable until any release gets to 10.x.4.  Apple just don't figure out things correctly until around that time.  I'm concerned about sync-ing my iPhone with iTunes 11.  I can appreciate the enhanced user experience, but iTunes is generally flaky until the second patch, but they've been stopping at the first and releasing something new after that.  I don't want the data on my phone scrambled.

I'm not saying that anything is unusable.  It's just not as good as it should be, and things are moved around, probably for the sake of moving things, like with Software Update.  Be sure to click on "more" at the end of the description, so you can see the whole list of updates and choose which you would like.

Apple retail is unfriendly, almost hostile now

I saw this article on MacRumors: http://www.macrumors.com/2012/08/28/apple-retails-emphasis-on-profits-continues-tied-to-operational-perspective-of-cook-and-browett/

The last time I visited an Apple store in a mall, it felt uncomfortable.  It was tremendously crowded and the employees seemed to force smiles.  Software availability was at a minimum, and there were so many iDevices that there wasn't much room for traditional computers.

The first time I visited an Apple store was just after September 11, 2001.  Apple opened a retail store in Tampa's International Plaza near the airport.  A couple of friends lived northwest of there and I drove from the Orlando area to get them and go to the store together.  When we started to walk toward the mall, we stopped for a moment and realized the silence.  It was eerie.  There wasn't much activity other than people going to the new mall but all air travel had been suspended, and next to an airport, you'd expect to hear planes occasionally.

Finding the Apple store, there was a queue/line to enter.  I felt like one of the fanatics being there early enough to see the store open for the first time.  (I have a love-hate relationship with Apple, so it was strange.  I love their hardware designs, especially internally, but I'm always frustrated with their operating systems and lack of fixes.)  Being with friends, one of whom sold Apple equipment, I was interested to see how they would react.

As the store opened, the staff were cheering, and handing out t-shirts in tubes.  I was immediately reminded of The Gap clothing store, where I never shopped.  (Mind you, I've shopped at Old Navy and Banana Republic.)  The equipment was out on (fake) wood tables lining the walls, while there were two huge rows of software centrally located.  Given that Mac-related software was almost impossible to find at the time, this was as close to heaven as it came for a Mac user.  Of course, everything was at full retail pricing, even though you could occasionally find software elsewhere at a discount.

The store was pleasant and Apple made sure that employees kept you comfortable.  I remember mentioning that they should serve cappuccino and biscuits.  It had that kind of a feel.

I'll jump forward to 2006, to a store in the Los Angeles/Orange County area.  The previous year, I bought a PowerBook, and the company was making the transition to Intel processors when I was there at the store.  I was looking at a MacBook and its unusual keyboard.  (If you ever saw an iBook with most of its keys missing, you'll understand why they changed the keyboard.) A staffer started talking to me, and asked how I was, and if I was interested, and as soon as I got through the name "PowerBook", he turned and walked away.  How rude!  Considering the article, this was far earlier than 2009, when they were revising the store and its policies.

In 2007, as the iPhone became the holy grail and fandom, I became less and less settled with the fanatics.  I noticed that Apple were feeling similarly, banning some Mac-related website authors from their media events.  Having been at the Genius Bar in one of the Orlando area stores, I was practically assaulted by an iPhone owner who put the phone within 6 inches of my face, telling me how beautiful it was.  He could hardly catch his breath, he was so excited.

it seems with every new iDevice release, Apple has become a distant relative, even though I had a second generation iPod touch and now have an iPhone 4S to replace it.  My current computer is a mid-2009 MacBook on 10.6.8.  I'd like to update it, but they'll put that !@#$ Mountain Lion on it and it's not what I want.

In any case, I don't look forward to visits to the Apple store, especially if I have problems with the iPhone.  I did this once already.  (Seriously, Apple, if the phone's operating system can't clean up after itself, why should I do it manually?  This stinks like Multi-Finder and setting memory allocations.)  The probably is finding Apple equipment otherwise, although some Best Buy and fewer Target stores have Apple equipment available.  However, you don't have to deal with the fanatics and in Best Buy, you'll probably find more software available, since Apple has pushed everything (but Adobe software) to their online store.

It's just not fun or interesting now, and maybe Tim Cook and Peter Oppenheimer will see that and realize that profit > customer is not the correct relationship.

Apple really should give away their products

You can't satisfy all of the people, any of the time.  Apple should give away their products, and even then, I don't believe they'd make some people happy.

I'm always amused in the weeks prior to new product announcements from Apple.  People see the rumours and they add to them fantastic bits that would never happen.  Then, when the presentation is finished, they feel betrayed that Apple didn't do what they wanted.

I'd think that most people would live in reality and understand from history that a company can only do so much.  Many companies are in business to make money, not to make fantasy products.  Am I correct?

Today, at World-wide Developer Conference, Apple introduced a new, slimmer version of the MacBook Pro, somewhat wedged in-between the form factor of the MacBook Air and the current MacBook Pro.  It's quite thin, but still has awesome graphics hardware, plus a much higher density display.

Those of us who regularly use Japanese, Chinese, Korean, or similarly intricate languages will find the new display useful, as was the display on the iPhone 4 and newer (third generation) iPad.  Of course, it requires a lot of graphics power to maintain the previous visual throughput and they included nVidia's GT 650M hardware to push 4 times the pixels.  I predicted something like this when they introduced the original MacBook Air, so it's good to see that they're introducing it now.

I'm still okay with the current MacBook Pro line and of course, the refurbished machines have dropped in price so this could be a great time to get a model from late 2011.  The newest MacBook Pro (regular size) has the same upgraded graphics hardware, so it would be more capable for 3D work and play, but my money is on the discount and not being sucked into the current, soon to be revealed, problems.  There are always new problems!

It's a bit unfortunate that not much was changed with the MacBook Air but there isn't much room.  Intel's pathetic integrated graphics hardware became a little less pathetic with the HD 4000 series, so the MacBook Air does better in graphics throughput that the MacBook Air that was using the Core 2 Duo and nVidia 320M integrated graphics, finally.  Were those 2 years ago?  Congratulations, Intel, you're only merely behind now, instead of really behind the rest of the world!

You have to wonder what would happen if Apple made AMD/ATI choices available.  I wouldn't expect miracles but AMD have some integrated CPU/GPU packages that are quite nice.  It might be interesting to consider what would happen if Apple completed their company by buying AMD, ARM, and Sony.  If AMD wasn't always on the edge, they might do much better.  Of course, buying ARM and Sony would lead to anti-trust issues, and someone might think that they were trying to eliminate the competition.  However, as big as Apple have become on paper, they could still grow and be manageable.

What's not manageable are the fanatics.  Since the announcement, some are crying, others are laughing, and still others are angry, but Apple never seems to leave people emotionally blank.

!@#$ Patents and Copying

How many times are consumers hurt by copying?

There was an episode of All in the Family where Archie Bunker was gloating about his new watch.  He was going on and on about this Omega brand watch he bought for almost nothing.  Then, it's revealed "Oh, no, that's not an Omega.  It's an Onega."

Are consumers always fooled so easily?

A co-worker more than 10 years ago was shocked to learn that her new Lexus E300 was a Toyota Windom.  "Toyota?"  As though the Lexus dealer randomly appeared by the Toyota dealership out of convenience and nothing else.  Then again, people were shocked that the Cadillac Seville started as a Chevrolet Nova.  Would those driving an Escalade be driving the Chevrolet version?

I was reading that the HTC One series phones due to be sold this week are held up in U.S. customs, due to the patent issues between HTC and Apple.  While I understands Apple's frustration, the consumer is losing some great phones, especially those who have pre-paid for those phones.  HTC really haven't done anything to Apple but because they were the vanguard of Android, starting with the T-Mobile G1, they were selected, which is a horrible strategy.  They have made some admirable designs without copying Apple.

The patent war between Samsung and Apple is more realistic.  Samsung copies practically everything Apple have done in the mobile space.  Supposedly, they're planning queues/lines to make it appear their phones are more lust-worthy than they might be otherwise.  However, they made advertising about such lines, and made fun of people standing in line for products.  It looks as though Samsung is Samsung-ing itself.

I read elsewhere that the company is all but stopping production of their point-and-shoot cameras, in order to boost production of their mirror-less system cameras.  I doubt that the few thousand who buy the mirror-less models are going to suddenly want new versions, or that throwing more money at them will make them popular.

Their struggle to overtake Sony may be working but it's going to take a long time.  It's more likely that Panasonic will be there first.  It's amazing to me that Panasonic have gone from household items like rice cookers to high end televisions, phones, and computers in the last 30+ years, and that Sony have diminished.

One last thing about patents and copying: why is it that IBM's laptop computer line never had to look like anyone else's (save my sad L40SX), and they've been such a hit, even now that they're coming from Lenovo?  When most of the Ultrabooks look a lot like Apple's MacBook Air, Lenovo's products don't.  They're stylish in an industrial way and get respect from just about anyone.

Update: In the U.K., a judge has decided that Samsung didn't copy iPad to create their own tablet and has ordered Apple to tell everyone this.  When I was in primary school (as it feels this punishment resembles), the copier was punished, not the person being copied.

If I look at practically every mobile device that Samsung has done in the last 2 years, they look remarkably like Apple devices, so much that I noticed one and wondered what Apple had done to their hardware.  Add to this the rather obvious software tweaks to Android to make it look more like iOS, I can't imagine what the judge is thinking.  The only reasonable explanation I can find is that he was annoyed and decided to fix it since they were acting like school children.

Besides, if Nokia and HTC and Motorola can design devices that don't look much like Apple's, why can't Samsung?

Update 2014.01.10: Apple and Samsung have agreed to another round of arbitration, in order to agree on something, anything.  I don't really understand why the FRAND patents weren't settled already since every other FRAND patent gets very little, unlike what Samsung wants.