computers

I watched a couple of movies over the weekend where Macs were prominently featured, "Independence Day," which holds up better than you might think, and "Office Space," which gets funnier with time, and with every viewing.

(BTW, I watched "Office Space" in HD on my DVR. Not on Blu-ray yet, suckas. More on that in another post, but the general rule of thumb is, no format has arrived until "Office Space" has arrived on it.)

Both of these were pre OS X of course, so the screens had our pal the Chicago font prominently on display. 

Neither movie featured the System 8 bomb, but if you remember the days of the Power PC transition from System 6 to 7, and 7 to 8, we all saw it plenty. Mac was wall-to-wall crashes for a couple years BS (Between Steve).

I bring this up because neither movie had the Macs acting much like Macs. They basically used some kind of animation playing on the computer screen, or composited into it, that allowed the designers to make the machine do what they wanted it to -- without being limited by what applications or behaviors were actually available.

You certainly see this with Windows machines too, on shows and movies everywhere you turn. Clearly identifiable machines, doing things clearly not happening in any real application. Or doing ridiculous things like "enhancing" parking lot security tapes to read license plates or something. Sorry bro, if the pixels ain't there, they ain't there. 

"House" is one of my favorite shows, and they're sponsored by both Apple and Dell. You see plenty of monitors from both companies, but rarely see applications do anything. And no matter how many Macs you see, there aren't any meaningful Mac apps in the medical world, so if you see software at all, it's going to be on Windows.

But think about something like a James Bond movie with all these crazy overlays and colors. It's like those computer virus movies in the 80s, before most of us had actually seen or used a computer, and before we learned that the worst that most viruses do is load your machine up with porn.

Although you remember the Love Bug? I may not have the name of it exactly right, but it basically sent a message that said "I love you" to everyone in your contact book. My wife was working with a lot of folks in the Army Corps of Engineers at the time, and it was pretty funny. "Hey, I don't love you. Ha ha ha. Wait -- it's not that I don't love working with you...or not that I don't LIKE you...just not that...ha ha ha...just not that way." I sympathize, but I'm still not buying that a virus on a floppy is going to start dropping satellites from the sky.

And for that matter, have you seen the ridiculous things that people supposedly find on the internet? There's a lot of Hollwyood OS going on there too. They're just making up the kind of things that are online, and the ease of finding them. It's just not so. 

I was reminded about our MacBook Air conversations (including the comments on a recent post from Walter) by seeing it as one of the minor stories on the cover of Laptop magazine. So I did some poking around the web to see what platform neutral and PC-oriented pubs had to say about Air.

By far the most often-cited reason to love it is how cool it looks, and how much fun it is to use. "An undeniable sexiness," says Gizmodo. PC Magazine tested it running Vista under Boot Camp, and says it's "hard to pass up." The reviewer at Ars Technica says, "I won't be able to go back to a MacBook or MacBook Pro—despite the Air's other downfalls."

I found a bunch more along these lines, and planned to keep going along the "pull quote and link" style, but got a little bored. The fact is that EVERY review I found said that they either wanted them, or had already bought one with their own money...even after much of their reviews were quite explicit about Air's shortcomings, including some you've never heard about, like the discovery that watching movies in iTunes destroys battery life.

These aren't consumers. They're people who work with computers for a living. Of course the one thing they had in common is, not a pro app in sight. And they ultimately love Air.

Which brings me back to my peeps at Laptop magazine. Look, there are a million ways and places and reasons to use a laptop, and the folks in our neck of the woods count for about a dozen of those million. I love Laptop's assessment because it very much agrees with my own -- why else?

This work of art is worth considering for corridor warriors who attend lots of meetings, as well as for commuters who do a fair amount of work while traveling to and from the office.

The last company I worked at was barely mid-sized, around 2,000 people worldwide, maybe a tenth the size of a corporate giant like Apple. And I saw scads of people spending their own money on super-light, super-small computers that they preferred to the corporate issued dogs. Not one of the disadvantages of Air mattered a whit:

All software was on the network, and even the wireless was fast (g speed then, probably up to n by now) and accessible (the only place in the buildings you can stand without being in sight of 2 AirPorts was in the bathroom).

I personally loaded software from disk TWICE - one was Final Cut Studio. That feature where you connect to another optical drive, Remote Drive, works great even if the computer you're connecting to is a PC. Connects automatically when there's one in the vicinity. You can even use the option key to BOOT from a Remote Drive. And that's without buying the $99 USB DVD drive. Which, by the way, can't be used with any other computer, including those from Apple.

Which also reminds me, I'd be more interested in an ethernet adapter than an optical drive. Oh wait, THERE IS ONE, and it costs $12.99. Pushes up to 100BaseT full speed through a USB 2 port. Did I mention that it's only $12.99?

The biggest benefit, as noted above, is the crazy portability. It wasn't unusual for me to be in meetings in 6 or 8 different rooms in a DAY, or that many CITIES in a WEEK. (No kidding. Sometimes more.) I'd have freaking KILLED for a computer like Air. If you think that cutting the thickness AND WEIGHT more or less in half doesn't make all the difference in the world, it's because you haven't gone through this.

Oh wait, one more reason. Every technology company, including the couple I worked for, is paved wall to wall with gear lust - cars, home theater and on and on. Laptop envy is darn near the top of the list, and tiny was always prized over powerful because, frankly, for business, they're all plenty powerful. This tiny computer would make any corporate weasel carrying it the absolute biggest of gear lust dogs.

And why buy a Mac at ALL if this isn't part of the reason you do it? 'Fess up. You know it is.

I can think of a whole bunch of other use cases scenarios where Air is absolutely ideal, but that's the one I lived in. Did I mention that I'd have KILLED for Air? You can find other scenarios at Amazon, where all 9 reviews so far are 5 stars.

Heck, if I had $1800 laying around, I'd buy one. Of course I'm very happy with my MBP, and there are a bunch of things I'd rather spend that kind of money on, all the rest of which my wife would enjoy every bit as much as me. Still, I don't mind being alone again -- naturally -- in my opinion on this, but after chewing on this for a couple of months, I think this is the most interesting Apple machine since...

...well, since the Cube. This ain't anything like that, but I'm just saying. Apple gets big when they do small, and I think this one's a lot likely to be bigger for Apple than smaller.

PS. The "Why is there air?" title is a reference to the 1965 classic comedy album by Bill Cosby of the same name. It's easy to forget today that he won an unprecedented SIX consecutive comedy Grammies, and he did them all IN A ROW. This one starts a run of truly indispensible discs that include Wonderfulness, Revenge, and To My Brother Russell With Whom I Slept. Not really a comic but a storyteller, he was the best at it since Will Rogers, and maybe since Mark Twain.

PPS. Look at the picture for Mr. Cosby's take on the answer to his own question.

...or so some observers believed in 2006! This was upon the news of the second laptop to include Blu-ray drives, this one from Dell. And why not? When Apple joined the Blu-ray Disc Association in 2005, they said they were committed to promoting the format. Seen anything to back that up since then? Anything?

I think Dell makes better computers than a lot of people think, and you certainly have them to thank for the idea of truly custom configurations and computer sales over the internet, both of which they practiced years before many others did. But their stuff is nothing next to Sony's. The VAIO line is pretty elegant, and introduced thin form factors, wide screens and 1920x1080 res back before the turn of the century.

Oh wait, Apple still doesn't support 1920x1080. In fact, the current fave res for PCs is 1980x1200, to allow player controls on a 1920x1080 movie. I love my MacBook Pro - I use it for 90% of my computing, 100% for the last few months, and I am of course typing on it now. But I've long ranted about how far behind the curve Apple's display technology is, and this is one of many examples of what I mean.

Anywayyyyyy.....

So back in MAY OF 2006, they introduced a laptop with these specs:

1920x1080
Blu-ray reading AND WRITING
HDMI out, so you could play those Blu-ray disks out to your HDTV
Built-in TV tuner
4 GB RAM standard
GeForce 7800 with 256 MB VRAM
Built-in camera

At least the 17" MBP has those last 2 now.

The price of that Sony laptop 2 years ago was $3500, very much in keeping with the $2500 price of the MBP plus 2 more gigs of RAM when you add back in the 2 years of price decline for today's MBP...which 2 years later has no TV tuner, no HDMI, no Blu-ray reading or writing, and no 1920 res.

Hmmmm....

And then just about a year ago, Sony introduced a later VAIO that unambiguously smacks on the MBP, with a few tweaks from the previous year's model to bring the base price under $2000.

15 in. screen (check - second lightest in the game after the MBP)
Santa Rosa Intel (check...wait, a YEAR ago?!?)
No longer standard 1920x1080 res, but you can upgrade to that! I HATE that MBP's video options aren't upgradeable
HDMI 1.3 a YEAR ago
Blu-ray burner/reader
Upgradeable to 400 GB storage with 2 internal 200 GB hard drives a YEAR ago

Did I mention that the base price was under $2000?

Again, I love my MBP, and am using it now. I've never owned a VAIO. I'm just saying that Apple has a long way to go to catch up to the state of the art.

Oh, and lest anybody suggest that Sony brought these models out because they had such a large stake in Blu-ray's success, I say, not so fast. The exact numbers are hard to pin down, but most of the sources I've found place Sony's stake in the format at somewhere around 20%. (Look it up - plenty of references.) The job of the laptop team is NOT to support the Blu-ray team (Japanese companies don't work that way). Their job is to sell laptops, and with this kind of price-performance, they're keeping themselves at the top of the PC game.

Couple of other notes as I write this on Sunday March 2 aught 8, Acer has also announced Blu-ray enabled laptops in Q2, supporting 1080p in both 16 and 18 in configurations. (I have no idea what's up with those sizes.)

And in a "you had to see this coming" announcement from the week before, Toshiba has confirmed that it isn't ruling out Blu-ray drives on its laptops.  I'm not sure what "confirmed" means in the context of "maybe," but there you go. The "see this coming" part is because Toshiba still has the biggest laptop market share...and see above re: Sony. These guys couldn't care one flip about the outcome of the format war. They have numbers to meet, and they'll do what it takes. 

Now, to see why this would be cool, check out the specs on T's HD DVD laptop last summer. HD DVD-r of course, and the usual suspects (802.11n, webcam, bluetooth, etc.) but check out the rest:

Santa Rosa 2Ghz Core 2 Duo
GeForce 8600 with 512 MB VRAM (!!!)
included HD tuner
fingerprint reader (a big deal for business computers, trust me)
2 160 GB drives
4 Harmon Kardon speakers

Early last summer, for $3199 stock. You might not care about some of these features, but the price-performance is once again, well ahead of the current generation of MBPs, and maybe the next.

The fact is that I DO own a Toshiba laptop from my PC days. After 4 years, I still love it, a true entertainment powerhouse -- cable tuner, built-in (and very good) DVR with one-click burning to DVD (from 4 years ago, so SD of course), and the best sound I've ever heard on a laptop...with only 2 Harmon Kardon speakers. You know they sound great since HK was the first, and still the best, mfr of matched external speakers for the Mac.

My point isn't to pee on my own MBP...ewwww....a computer that I truly adore. Just an addition to Walter's admonition to Apple, to shake a leg and add the features that have existed on PCs for years.

Final notes from our peeps at Wired:

Later this month (3/08), Dell will ship a sub-$1000 Blu-ray enabled laptop. Wouldn't it be a kick to see this introduced in the MacBook, or even iMac, before the MBP? It's happened before. And btw, if it would work with the Pro Apps, I'd use a 13" MacBook in a heartbeat. Still the biggest bang for the buck in the Mac universe, and a great form factor.

The bulk of the article focuses on what an energy pig the Blu-ray drives are for laptops. The big thing is that Blu-rays decode is currently processor-intensive, but efforts are underway to move that to the GPU. I suspect that this is how Dell is pulling off the sub-$1000 price: a less expensive CPU, and as is ALWAYS the case (grrrr), a less expensive, higher-performing GPU than the MBP has.

So, to invoke the Prophet Biscardi again, Hello Apple! What about it?

Shane Ross hipped me to this. Until he posts his MacWorld ruminations, I'll tell you about it.

The Apple Cinema Display is just fine, thanks -- but here's a 30-inch monitor that's faster and brighter, with higher contrast and a wider viewing angle. It can be hardware calibrated - way way WAY overdue for ACD. (Professional monitor? Hmph.)

2560x1600 res, dual DVI including HDCP-encryption and analog inputs, 12-bit LUT...

Now throw in automatic backlighting and pixel-level adjustments to ensure uniform color across the screen and across time. Did I mention killah and crazy? It is.

Of course, MacWorld isn't exactly gizmo central. Not even vaguely close if you compare it to CES. Indeed, CES is where NEC introduced their bigger, beautifuller, even more expensive monitor, a 42-inch CURVED DISPLAY.

Okay THIS is the one that I want at least 3 of.

2880x900 (double WXGA+) panel with a contrast ratio of 10000:1 - yes TEN THOUSAND to 1. DLP, no bezel, 170% of the NTSC color range - hey! even more than PAL! And for you kids with your fast-twitch reflexes -- the pixel redraw time is .016 MILLISECOND!!

My math is pretty weak, but I think of one and a half-ish tenths of a millisecond as FAST.

NEC is pitching it to hardcore gamers, hence CES. The specific pitch: the curved monitor mimics peripheral vision, perfect for shooting things and making them explode even from the corner of your eye.

Oh yeah, and the specs. And how it looks.

So here's the business model:

1) Show 'em the cutting edge.
2) Charge what you want.
3) Get very, very rich.

Since there aren't many meaningful games on Mac, it's easy for Mac users to forget that GAMING is the dominant force driving computer innovation. Period. It's also easy for video guys like us to comprehend that video games generate more money than theatrical movie releases, DVDs, music and books COMBINED.

Having said all that, why would you NOT want to have a monitor this purty that's 2880 pixels wide?

And having said THAT, I admit that the first one is more practical. So I buy 2 of those for the office, at only $2200 each. Don't know when it will ship or how much it will cost, but I don't care. I'll get the curved one for the game room. Wait! I don't play computer games! So I need to buy some computer games too.

Looky there - I have at least 3 NEC monitors, mixed and matched. Sweet.

Or I could change my mind and go on vacation for a month. Which assumes I could stop working for a month. Which means that buying the monitors is the only smart thing to do.

Maybe these folks have stayed on your radar, but definitely not on mine. I was going to call this "Where are they now?" but the story is more "Behind the Music." Once you know they're alive it's easy enough to track them down, but unless you're really old yourself, somebody really old needs to explain what the big deal is.

Magma was one of the companies we saw as real live heroes back in 1997. This is the year that the Power Mac and its 6 PCI slots gave way to the G3 with, appropriately enough I suppose, 3 PCI slots.

Today, you can do all kinds of video work with no add-in cards at all, but that was still years away. In fact nonlinear editing was pretty new as anything resembling widespread, and we needed expansion cards to make it all work, starting with a mondo-expensive capture card. (Although at the time, a $20,000 edit system was still considered a bargain.)

When the G3 came along, we marvelled at its speed -- 233 Mhz! -- but many of us were literally dead in the water without our extra slots. Magma came to the rescue with an outboard chassis that only took one PCI slot, but held 6 cards inside. Ahhh! Back in business!

[Historical footnote: my brother-in-law was working at Apple at the time. His job in market research led him to discover that, out of 6 slots in the 9600, the average number in use was 1.1. Double that, round up to be safe, and lo and behold, 3 slots was deemed the law of the land. He apologized to me, but hey, Apple was still looking a little shaky. Gotta do what you gotta do.]

As the world comes around again, slots are back in demand, especially when it comes to high-performance applications. (There are some applications, like Pro Tools, for whom the demand for expansion chassis never went away.)

This is a very long lead-up to tell you that Magma is back on the radar with a 1U 7 slot PCIe expansion chassis, ready to go for all you folks ready to build your own blade computing servers. And seriously, for servers, multiple monitors, new Pro Tools systems, etc. Magma has always been all about extending the options for heavy iron computing, and it's great to know they're still at it.

Iomega was another company that hit hard when they hit. Their Zip drives were all the rage -- still the cleverest ad campaign in Mac marketing history (spare me the I'm a Mac bullshoes), backed by the one of best grassroots marketing campaigns in any industry. (Ask your dad about the yellow buttons.)

Not that they needed all that much help making noise. The Zip drive was removable storage offering the capacity of ONE HUNDRED FLOPPY DISKS in a form barely bigger than a couple of floppies stacked.

Did you hear me? ONE HUNDRED FLOPPY DISKS. On one disk. Still takes my breath away. In fact, I'm going to argue that there was nothing that moved the needle this far until we got to DVD storage. CD-Rs were fine, still are. But Zip changed the world of computing in a much bigger way.

Then there was the follow-up to Zip: Jaz. Oops. One gig removable storage, but fragile disks -- look at it funny and it would break. Same with the drive, too. So we had ten times the capacity and ten times the headaches. Buh-bye.

I confess, I had no idea what Iomega was up to until I saw the new eGo drives. Now THESE things are cool looking! And check the size vis a vis the key!

Have to love this, too -- up to 160 GB and still powered by USB!!! It's almost unheard of. (It also supports FW, where self-power in this range is pretty common.) Ain't it cute?

As you poke around the Iomega site, you may be as surprised as I am to find that they've ventured into some relatively serious arrays and other heavy-ish storage...but I'm always going to think tiny storage when I think Iomega, and this one looks like a winner.

Assuming it works more like Zip than Jaz. I'm going to assume it is until I hear otherwise.

Okay, a lot of words for 2 small announcements but hey, there you go.

Seriously. Check it out. Be sure to click on the image to see a close-up detail.

The story comes courtesy of "Steve Jobs." His blog and The COW are all the internet you need.

...in, uhm, 2007. It really did make a huge splash at that show: in addition to MacWorld naming it best of show, I love this article from Ars Technica called "ModBook Rules MacWorld." It's easy to see why - this is the super cool thing that Apple should have released this year...if not last year...if not before. Yeah, yeah, laptops get all the buzz right now, but I'm telling you, tablets have been rocking the PC world for years because for a dramatic part of the laptop market, tablets work so much better. By such a long shot it's ridiculous.

Perhaps not for most folks here, but nobody here, including me, is in anything more than a teeny tiny niche of the market, even with the Apple ecostystem. So when I tell you that tablets are better than laptops for a large part of the market, "large part" by definition excludes us. :-)

(BTW, our boy Gates is on record saying that the tablet form factor will surpass all others....of course he said that would happen by 2006. Yeah yeah, evil empire, borg, whatever. The man knows something about selling massive numbers of things.) 

One of the easiest ways to understand the ModBook is as a cross between a laptop with a rotating screen, and a Newton on nuclear-strength steroids: touch sensitive screen designed by Wacom, handwriting recognition that actually WORKS, 25% higher contrast ratio than any MacBook, a bigger screen and faster processor than the Air, GPS, and on and on.

As for the Newton part, the CEO of Axiotron is the guy who KILLED Newton, so if nothing else, he has a good idea of what DOESN'T work.  And along the way, he's picked up on some things that do. Here's a more recent Ars Technica article, an interview with said CEO, Andreas Haas.

One of the most interesting things about this story is that Apple signed these guys up as an official Apple Proprietary Services Provider, and have made clear that they're just not interested in tablets.

"Apple just isn't interested in this type of thing, and that's why we're fulfilling that need. We're thrilled about it, and we are not going anywhere."

Of course the folks at Digital Voodoo and Matrox probably said the same thing, so whatever.

In any case, I think one of the things this shows is that Apple is only marginally interested in expanding its reach into new markets in the computer biz. Even if it's not at all useful to YOU, I think that the ModBook will be around longer than Air, which I think is destined to join Mac models like The Cube on the list of interesting failures.