Do you realize that the lithium-polymer battery tech Apple is using in the 17" MacBook Pro battery is expected to have a life of 5 years? That is longer than most people keep a computer.
I would understand if there something to gain by not having a removable battery. But really, does it save any space at all? Usually the bottom of the battery is the exterior of the laptop, so it doesn't have to fit "inside."
They gain considerable volume by ditching the rugged battery encasing that other laptops must have. Apple claims that they were able to achieve 40 percent greater capacity than they could have with a traditional user-serviceable battery. That means to get the same battery capacity, they would have had to make the battery about twice the size with a user-serviceable battery. That would add a good bit of thickness and weight to the laptop.
You can also drop files in the Public folder of your iDisk that people can easily mount from within the Finder (select iDisk from the Finder's Go menu) or any WebDAV client. And your public folder can be password protected. Your friends and family can easily store that password in their Keychain so they don't have to remember it.
That's great! Now my neighbor won't be penalized for the 6 different virus and anti-spyware applications he has installed on his Windows XP notebook./sarcasm
You're right. I guess I wasn't entirely clear. I was somewhat happy using Windows 2000. But, back then Windows XP was coming along and was going to be the future of Windows. XP is what debuted Product (de)Activation and I wasn't going to have a part of it.
So, like I said, I switched from Windows 2000 to the Mac (once Mac OS X was shipping on Macs) and I haven't looked back.
The funny thing about your comment is that my mother uses Quickbooks on her iMac that I bought her all of the time. So, it is even worse than you said, they also have to overcome the mere assumption that software they're used to on Windows isn't available elsewhere.
You know, I switched from Windows 2000 to the Mac back in 2001 because of similar stupidity Microsoft was engaging in. Back then it was Windows Product (de)Activation. I haven't looked back.
Apple doesn't have crazy long keys that you have to enter in to install the OS, you just install it. You don't buy your computer from a vendor that didn't feel like giving you a restore disc. You don't have to ask Apple for permission before using your computer, you just use it. They don't use copy protection on their iLife applications (iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, etc.), they trust their users. They recently dropped copy protection from retail copies of their iWork suite (Pages, Numbers, Keynote). And Apple has been fighting the good fight on getting rid of copy protection in music and finally won that as well.
It just strikes me as bizarre that people put up with all of these restrictions from Microsoft and let themselves be treated as criminals first and customers second when there is a company like Apple that doesn't do any of that and arguably also has a better user interface.
This is a good point. And it really does fully discount what was a somewhat silly hypothetical instance of trying to frame someone. But, there is still the possibility of this coming back on the purchaser in cases where the original iTunes Plus music was actually stolen.
But, as I have said in other posts I haven't heard of any cases of this since May 20, 2007 when iTunes Plus was rolled out. So, it doesn't appear to be a practical concern.
I have the same concern as you. However, Apple includes the Apple ID of the purchaser. Whatever e-mail address you find for your hypothetical enemy probably doesn't match their Apple ID. But, it might.
Secondly, Apple has included this information in iTunes Plus files since May 30, 2007. It's been over a year since then and I haven't heard of any cases of the RIAA bringing a lawsuit to anyone with similar circumstances. As time goes by, my concern around this becomes less and less.
I agree with you for the most part. This isn't anything new. Apple has embedded identifying information about the purchaser since iTunes Plus was launched on May 30, 2007.
The only situation where I could see this being a problem is if your equipment is stolen (MacBook, iPod, etc.) and it resulted in your iTunes Plus files being loosed into the wild. There is the potential for the recording industry to come at you with a lawsuit stating that you willfully infringed copyright. However, it has been over a year since iTunes Plus has been around and I haven't heard of any problems like this, so I suppose it isn't really something one should worry about.
By the way, AtomicParsley can already remove the identifying information from the files.
Why is it that we never get any love from the phone manufacturers?
Perhaps it is because Verizon is notorious for crippling features that manufacturers build into their phones?
Also, Verizon did have a crack at the iPhone, but they turned down Apple.
Verizon's general suckiness aside, I really do like the Palm WebOS and think it might be a decent competitor to the iPhone. We'll have to wait and see what happens when it comes to market. But, it has some neat ideas.
However with Apple supporting round-tripping of photo meta-data with Facebook in the new iPhoto '09, I wouldn't be surprised to see Facebook integration with the iPhone's Contacts application in the next version.
The device has a keyboard. It isn't a good keyboard, but even so it's a whole lot better than the keyboard on the iPhone - and the lack of a keyboard is a significant part of the reason I don't have an iPhone.
Have you used the iPhone's keyboard? I bought an iPhone on day-one (my Sony Ericsson T610 died a week before the iPhone's release) and while I was waiting on an AT&T salesperson to ring me up, I checked out their demo units. I'd never typed on a phone's QWERTY keyboard before in my life since I was coming from a T610.
I decided to jump in with both thumbs and immediately fired up the Notes application to test out the keyboard. I quickly typed out a sentence as fast as I could and when I looked to see how close my results were I was only off by one letter.
The iPhone is what has made me realize that I have NEVER touch-typed in my life and that all this time all I was doing was typing by muscle-memory. I can easily type on the iPhone without looking at the keyboard at all with great results. And, the excellent bonus for me is that I'm not pounding my thumbs and fingers into hard little keys that make my fingertips sore if I use the keyboard too much.
And if, as claimed, the device has good Microsoft Exchange support, then for many commercial users it's one better than the iPhone on that count as well.
How so? I have two friends that use their iPhone with their work Exchange accounts and they have no complaints.
the iPhone, despite being very pretty, isn't actually a very good telephone - contacts management is poor, reception is poor, battery life isn't good, sound quality is so-so
How would you improve contacts management? I think the iPhone is close to perfect in that arena. I don't have Exchange but I do have MobileMe so I get the same sort of updates to my contacts over the air that my friends get through Exchange. I can quickly get to the right contact in my list of 55 and if I want to I can search search my contacts easily by name and company.
I don't have an iPhone 3G, but I have no issues with the battery. I'm a fairly heavy user (podcasts, music, web browsing, e-mail, Twitter) and I can get two-days use out of it at times. Worse case scenario for me is that I need to recharge at the end of the day. Obviously, the 3G has shorter battery life if you're using the 3G radio, but that isn't unique to the iPhone.
Apple doesn't prevent you from copying music from an iPod to another computer. Many third party applications will do this for. Apple just doesn't add an easy feature to iTunes specifically for this purpose which is a long, long way from preventing you from doing it.
The other is that this makes the device much more disposable. Apple is in the hardware market, they make their money on buying new gadgets. It would be best for them if people viewed the gadgets as disposable and simply tossed them after a few years.
In no way does this make the notebook more disposable. Apple offers a battery replacement program just like they do for the MacBook Air, iPhone, and iPods.
Also, more information how this MacBook Pro is not (as you said) disposable. From Apple's website:
The removable batteries in most notebooks are designed to be replaced. You use them for a year or two, then get a new one. Itâ(TM)s a process in which lots of batteries are used up and discarded. Because the battery in the new 17-inch MacBook Pro lasts up to five years, it uses just one battery in the same time a typical notebook uses three. And to help ensure that batteries are disposed of in an environmentally responsible way, Apple offers a battery take-back program in 95 percent of the countries in which it does business.
It's hard to make a user removable battery and get an 8 hour battery life out of it due to space constraints. And studies have shown that very few people use spare notebook batteries contrary to your "people want it" belief.
You're right about their pro tools, though. It is surprising that Apple hasn't either updated DVD Studio Pro to support Blu-Ray authoring or partnered with a third party to provide integration between Final Cut Studio and a Blu-Ray mastering application.
Apple really needs to cozy up to Netflix. Using Netflix streaming on my Xbox is really awesome. I pay a minimal fee for Netflix and I get to watch unlimited streaming video in addition to my 1 disc that I can have out at a time.
Of course, now that Apple has gotten the music industry to drop DRM on the iTunes Store, maybe they can talk the TV & movie industries into supporting rentals with better prices and more of a library.
You obviously haven't been paying attention to Apple's sales for the past several quarters. About 50% of all Mac sales through Apple Stores are to people that have never owned a Mac before. Mac sales have been on an upward trend for several years now.
I agree with you on Engadget. It's unfortunate that MacRumorsLive was "haxx0red" because they were providing the best live coverage until then in my opinion.
I also agree with you about iLife, iWork, and of course iTunes Store being the big news of the day. It really brought Apple's last appearance at Macworld back to the Mac. The new iLife features are fantastic, I cannot wait to finally get all of my photos tagged with the people in them. This is simply too time consuming to do it manually. And being able to crowd-source tagging new Faces in iPhoto via your Facebook network is a brilliant stroke.
By the way, Numbers also has vastly increased the number of functions it supports. There are now over 250 functions available. (http://www.apple.com/iwork/numbers/functions.html) And in addition to being able to link charts from Numbers to either Pages or Keynote, you can also restyle them and retain the link to the data. If you can do that with MS Office, I never figured out how.
Keynote Remote for the iPhone is also a pretty cool addition, but I am disappointed that they're charging 99Â for it.
And, finally, let's hear it for Steve Jobs' "Thoughts on Music" open letter finally bearing all of its fruit with the iTunes Store going totally iTunes Plus (sans DRM, 256 kbps) by the end of this quarter â" it is already most of the way there.
So, if you think Steve Jobs is still made about some comments you made towards iPod development, what does that mean for the low-latency gaming work you were doing with them? Has that ended?
Slashdot Mirror
That sentence is straight from NASA. LOL! Come on, y'all, this isn't rocket-science!
I wish I could buy a 15" MacBook Pro with a higher capacity, non-user-serviceable battery.
I agree with you on all of your other points, except for this one...
they feel honored to pay $50 extra for a matte screen surface
No one feels honored to pay $50 for a matte screen.
Do you realize that the lithium-polymer battery tech Apple is using in the 17" MacBook Pro battery is expected to have a life of 5 years? That is longer than most people keep a computer.
They gain considerable volume by ditching the rugged battery encasing that other laptops must have. Apple claims that they were able to achieve 40 percent greater capacity than they could have with a traditional user-serviceable battery. That means to get the same battery capacity, they would have had to make the battery about twice the size with a user-serviceable battery. That would add a good bit of thickness and weight to the laptop.
Thanks for the link.
You can also drop files in the Public folder of your iDisk that people can easily mount from within the Finder (select iDisk from the Finder's Go menu) or any WebDAV client. And your public folder can be password protected. Your friends and family can easily store that password in their Keychain so they don't have to remember it.
That's great! Now my neighbor won't be penalized for the 6 different virus and anti-spyware applications he has installed on his Windows XP notebook. /sarcasm
You're right. I guess I wasn't entirely clear. I was somewhat happy using Windows 2000. But, back then Windows XP was coming along and was going to be the future of Windows. XP is what debuted Product (de)Activation and I wasn't going to have a part of it.
So, like I said, I switched from Windows 2000 to the Mac (once Mac OS X was shipping on Macs) and I haven't looked back.
The funny thing about your comment is that my mother uses Quickbooks on her iMac that I bought her all of the time. So, it is even worse than you said, they also have to overcome the mere assumption that software they're used to on Windows isn't available elsewhere.
You know, I switched from Windows 2000 to the Mac back in 2001 because of similar stupidity Microsoft was engaging in. Back then it was Windows Product (de)Activation. I haven't looked back.
Apple doesn't have crazy long keys that you have to enter in to install the OS, you just install it. You don't buy your computer from a vendor that didn't feel like giving you a restore disc. You don't have to ask Apple for permission before using your computer, you just use it. They don't use copy protection on their iLife applications (iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, etc.), they trust their users. They recently dropped copy protection from retail copies of their iWork suite (Pages, Numbers, Keynote). And Apple has been fighting the good fight on getting rid of copy protection in music and finally won that as well.
It just strikes me as bizarre that people put up with all of these restrictions from Microsoft and let themselves be treated as criminals first and customers second when there is a company like Apple that doesn't do any of that and arguably also has a better user interface.
This is a good point. And it really does fully discount what was a somewhat silly hypothetical instance of trying to frame someone. But, there is still the possibility of this coming back on the purchaser in cases where the original iTunes Plus music was actually stolen.
But, as I have said in other posts I haven't heard of any cases of this since May 20, 2007 when iTunes Plus was rolled out. So, it doesn't appear to be a practical concern.
I have the same concern as you. However, Apple includes the Apple ID of the purchaser. Whatever e-mail address you find for your hypothetical enemy probably doesn't match their Apple ID. But, it might.
Secondly, Apple has included this information in iTunes Plus files since May 30, 2007. It's been over a year since then and I haven't heard of any cases of the RIAA bringing a lawsuit to anyone with similar circumstances. As time goes by, my concern around this becomes less and less.
The identification tags are applied on the client-side.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PyMusique
I agree with you for the most part. This isn't anything new. Apple has embedded identifying information about the purchaser since iTunes Plus was launched on May 30, 2007.
The only situation where I could see this being a problem is if your equipment is stolen (MacBook, iPod, etc.) and it resulted in your iTunes Plus files being loosed into the wild. There is the potential for the recording industry to come at you with a lawsuit stating that you willfully infringed copyright. However, it has been over a year since iTunes Plus has been around and I haven't heard of any problems like this, so I suppose it isn't really something one should worry about.
By the way, AtomicParsley can already remove the identifying information from the files.
Why is it that we never get any love from the phone manufacturers?
Perhaps it is because Verizon is notorious for crippling features that manufacturers build into their phones?
Also, Verizon did have a crack at the iPhone, but they turned down Apple.
Verizon's general suckiness aside, I really do like the Palm WebOS and think it might be a decent competitor to the iPhone. We'll have to wait and see what happens when it comes to market. But, it has some neat ideas.
However with Apple supporting round-tripping of photo meta-data with Facebook in the new iPhoto '09, I wouldn't be surprised to see Facebook integration with the iPhone's Contacts application in the next version.
Microsoft didn't invest money in Apple. Microsoft settled a lawsuit Apple had filed against them for stealing QuickTime code and that was part of it.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/592FE887-5CA1-4F30-BD62-407362B533B9.html
It's a long and rambling article but it gets to the truth towards the end.
The device has a keyboard. It isn't a good keyboard, but even so it's a whole lot better than the keyboard on the iPhone - and the lack of a keyboard is a significant part of the reason I don't have an iPhone.
Have you used the iPhone's keyboard? I bought an iPhone on day-one (my Sony Ericsson T610 died a week before the iPhone's release) and while I was waiting on an AT&T salesperson to ring me up, I checked out their demo units. I'd never typed on a phone's QWERTY keyboard before in my life since I was coming from a T610.
I decided to jump in with both thumbs and immediately fired up the Notes application to test out the keyboard. I quickly typed out a sentence as fast as I could and when I looked to see how close my results were I was only off by one letter.
The iPhone is what has made me realize that I have NEVER touch-typed in my life and that all this time all I was doing was typing by muscle-memory. I can easily type on the iPhone without looking at the keyboard at all with great results. And, the excellent bonus for me is that I'm not pounding my thumbs and fingers into hard little keys that make my fingertips sore if I use the keyboard too much.
And if, as claimed, the device has good Microsoft Exchange support, then for many commercial users it's one better than the iPhone on that count as well.
How so? I have two friends that use their iPhone with their work Exchange accounts and they have no complaints.
the iPhone, despite being very pretty, isn't actually a very good telephone - contacts management is poor, reception is poor, battery life isn't good, sound quality is so-so
How would you improve contacts management? I think the iPhone is close to perfect in that arena. I don't have Exchange but I do have MobileMe so I get the same sort of updates to my contacts over the air that my friends get through Exchange. I can quickly get to the right contact in my list of 55 and if I want to I can search search my contacts easily by name and company.
I don't have an iPhone 3G, but I have no issues with the battery. I'm a fairly heavy user (podcasts, music, web browsing, e-mail, Twitter) and I can get two-days use out of it at times. Worse case scenario for me is that I need to recharge at the end of the day. Obviously, the 3G has shorter battery life if you're using the 3G radio, but that isn't unique to the iPhone.
Apple doesn't prevent you from copying music from an iPod to another computer. Many third party applications will do this for. Apple just doesn't add an easy feature to iTunes specifically for this purpose which is a long, long way from preventing you from doing it.
The other is that this makes the device much more disposable. Apple is in the hardware market, they make their money on buying new gadgets. It would be best for them if people viewed the gadgets as disposable and simply tossed them after a few years.
In no way does this make the notebook more disposable. Apple offers a battery replacement program just like they do for the MacBook Air, iPhone, and iPods.
http://www.apple.com/batteries/replacements.html
Also, more information how this MacBook Pro is not (as you said) disposable. From Apple's website:
The removable batteries in most notebooks are designed to be replaced. You use them for a year or two, then get a new one. Itâ(TM)s a process in which lots of batteries are used up and discarded. Because the battery in the new 17-inch MacBook Pro lasts up to five years, it uses just one battery in the same time a typical notebook uses three. And to help ensure that batteries are disposed of in an environmentally responsible way, Apple offers a battery take-back program in 95 percent of the countries in which it does business.
http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/17inch-battery/
It's hard to make a user removable battery and get an 8 hour battery life out of it due to space constraints. And studies have shown that very few people use spare notebook batteries contrary to your "people want it" belief.
http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/17inch-battery/
we cant author BluRay DVD's because apple bet the farm on HD-DVD so now our DVD authoring app is useless.
Huh? Apple is a member of the Blu-Ray camp. Microsoft is the one that backed HD-DVD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Association
You're right about their pro tools, though. It is surprising that Apple hasn't either updated DVD Studio Pro to support Blu-Ray authoring or partnered with a third party to provide integration between Final Cut Studio and a Blu-Ray mastering application.
http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/dvdstudiopro/
Apple really needs to cozy up to Netflix. Using Netflix streaming on my Xbox is really awesome. I pay a minimal fee for Netflix and I get to watch unlimited streaming video in addition to my 1 disc that I can have out at a time.
Of course, now that Apple has gotten the music industry to drop DRM on the iTunes Store, maybe they can talk the TV & movie industries into supporting rentals with better prices and more of a library.
You obviously haven't been paying attention to Apple's sales for the past several quarters. About 50% of all Mac sales through Apple Stores are to people that have never owned a Mac before. Mac sales have been on an upward trend for several years now.
I agree with you on Engadget. It's unfortunate that MacRumorsLive was "haxx0red" because they were providing the best live coverage until then in my opinion.
I also agree with you about iLife, iWork, and of course iTunes Store being the big news of the day. It really brought Apple's last appearance at Macworld back to the Mac. The new iLife features are fantastic, I cannot wait to finally get all of my photos tagged with the people in them. This is simply too time consuming to do it manually. And being able to crowd-source tagging new Faces in iPhoto via your Facebook network is a brilliant stroke.
By the way, Numbers also has vastly increased the number of functions it supports. There are now over 250 functions available. (http://www.apple.com/iwork/numbers/functions.html) And in addition to being able to link charts from Numbers to either Pages or Keynote, you can also restyle them and retain the link to the data. If you can do that with MS Office, I never figured out how.
Keynote Remote for the iPhone is also a pretty cool addition, but I am disappointed that they're charging 99Â for it.
And, finally, let's hear it for Steve Jobs' "Thoughts on Music" open letter finally bearing all of its fruit with the iTunes Store going totally iTunes Plus (sans DRM, 256 kbps) by the end of this quarter â" it is already most of the way there.
The first "made" should be "mad".
So, if you think Steve Jobs is still made about some comments you made towards iPod development, what does that mean for the low-latency gaming work you were doing with them? Has that ended?