A gripe I have with the memory is that it comes with 128 MB built-in and 128 MB on the memory placeholder, by default. I don't get that. Why didn't they include that 256 MB as built-in so it could free up the memory placeholder for the user to add a 512 module and go up to 768 MB of max RAM? The way it is now, the max is at 640 MB and after you upgrade, you end up with an unused 128 MB DIMM that you can't use anywhere else! The price difference for Apple doing that would be really minimal, and the customers would be happier and this Powerbook would sound more powerful. If 640 MB is ok for you though, well, fair enough. But Mac OS X is a Unix, which means that it can utilize well any extra RAM, so as much RAM one can put in, the better. Personally, I want this machine maxed-out in RAM and I can't wait for my 512 MB DIMM to arrive.
Last point is the graphics performance. The machine includes a 32 MB GeForce4 MX 420. The 420 is the slow GeForce 4 model. And you can read here and here about what Carmack suggests about the GeForce 4 MX. Yes, for a laptop, this card is a _great_ solution, but this is a Powerbook we are talking about. And the 420 model is significantly slower than the 440 model found on the higher end laptops. That's bad of course if you want to play games, but if you are not interested in games, the included 420 model is good enough. Speaking for myself, I don't mind it having the 420 instead of the 440, but having the Radeon 9000 or the 440 could also be good.
Conclusion
The new 12" Powerbook is nothing more but an iBook on steroids with a G4 in it. This is exactly how I feel about it. It is crippled when compared to its big brother Powerbooks:
* Max of only 640 RAM while the limit could easily be 768 MB (the other Powerbooks max out at 1 GB). Plus, it could use PC2700 RAM instead of PC2100, but on the other hand it wouldn't make much of a difference cause of other front side bus issues (and it would be more expensive).
* Terrible LCD screen quality
* No L3 cache, while traditionally Powerbooks have 1 MB (which greatly improves overall speed)
* No gigabit ethernet (not that I care about this one much really)
* Slow-ish graphics card
If Apple was to take down their G3-based products and rename the 12" Powerbook as an iBook, I wouldn't be surprised at all.
So, this was a review negative you say? I say not necessarily. I am obliged to write about my experiences and any problems that I came across. It is an $1800+ purchase at the end of the day, it is not like buying chocolate from the store in the corner (except if you are Steve Jobs ;-).
If you want a cheaper Powerbook to boast to your friends, or you want a fast-ish Powerbook that is able to do its job fine and be small and really be portable, this is the Mac laptop you were looking for. And no matter what, don't buy an iBook, shave off the extra $500-600 and get this laptop instead. But don't except it to be as "wonderful" or as "glamorous" or as "full-featured" as the other Powerbooks. But it would be glamorous, and fast, and wonderful and full-featured compared to the iBooks. Yes, this is the cheapest Powerbook ever, but have you considered what was crippled in order to pay this "better" price? And speaking for myself, I don't like crippling my own eyes just to pay $300 less. I expect a certain (LCD) quality from a piece of hardware that bares the name "Powerbook".
This might even be a new strategy at Apple, to use cheaper parts or less features in order to compete with their PC competitors. I don't know. All I know is that I want a better LCD screen for the $2000 I paid Apple for, especially when older laptops were better in this regard. I see it as a backwards step, *or* as a way to blend between the two product ranges of the Powerbook and the iBook.
For many people this machine should be able to completely replace their desktops, however, if Apple was more careful and they included/fixed the issues we are mentioning in the "baaad" section, this could be THE laptop you were always dreaming of.
Don't misunderstand me though, I like the Powerbook. It is already a best-seller for Apple and I haven't make up my mind for purchasing it. I use it all the time and it is solid and it does what you expect and its keyboard is great. But it could [easily] be better for the $2,000 it cost us.
- "Intro, The Good"
- "The Bad"
- "The Bad II, Conclusion"
It looks like a new "locally integrated menu" will make it into Unity, starting with version 5.6.0. There's basically no information about the new locally integrated menubar, except for two bug reports which link to some custom Unity, Compiz, Metacity and Light Themes branches so to see "LIM" in action, I've compiled all these branches and here's the result. The "locally integrated menubar" can be displayed on the panel (for maximized windows) as well as in the window decoration (unmaximized windows). But it's not displayed on both in the same time.
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Today Samsung AV product lead Chris Moseley had comments about Apple's rumored entrance into the television marketplace that sound eerily similar to that which Palm CEO Ed Colligan's said a few years back about how Apple's ability to simply walk into this market and figure it out like they had managed to do after years of research.
What your interface communicates to users can be just as important as what your software does, writes Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister in discussing the latest edition of the 'Microsoft Manual of Style,' a style guide aimed at designers and developers who create Microsoft software, as well as those who write about it. 'The gist of much of Microsoft's advice is that a user's relationship with computer software is a unique one, and it's important to craft the language of software UIs accordingly,' McAllister writes. 'Occasionally, Microsoft's recommendations verge on the absurd. For example, you might not think it necessary to admonish developers to "not use slang that may be considered profane or derogatory, such as 'pimp' or 'bitch,'" but apparently it is.'
"It's tough being a journalist, especially if you're covering technology and living in Silicon Valley, because it seems as if everyone around you is getting fabulously rich while you're stuck in a job that will never, ever make you wealthy. What's worse is that all these people who are getting rich don't seem to be any brighter than you are and in fact many of them don't seem very bright at all. So of course you get jealous. And then you start thinking maybe you could find a way to cash in on this gold rush. But how do you make gobs of money when your only marketable skill involves writing blog posts?" Absolutely brilliant down to the last letter. Coincidentally, I hold no shares, interests, or anything, in any company whatsoever. I'm a freelance translator by day. Not that anyone cares, but hey, full disclosure and all.
"A hybrid solution that takes the best parts of iOS's one-by-one acceptance and Android's expressed and obvious intents seems like a proper model here. In fact, Apple has many of the pieces in place elsewhere." This is a big issue. Nor Android's model (just list a bunch of confusing permissions), nor Apple's model (individual modal dialogs for each permission) is particularly workable - I doubt regular users check them on Android before installing an application, and in the case of iOS, Apple didn't think it was necessary to secure the address book, so every application has access to it without alerting users. Justin Williams proposes a hybrid solution.
"Although current discussion of the Linux desktop tends to focus on the disharmony around Unity and the GNOME shell, the true revolution on the desktop is taking place out of sight of users. The Wayland display server is expected to reach version 1.0 later this year, and is seen by many as the long term replacement for the X Window System, with real potential to improve and transform the performance of the desktop for Linux users."
Mozilla has announced plans to integrate its Firefox web browser with Metro for Windows 8 - including Gecko. "Windows 8 contains two application environments, 'Classic' and 'Metro'. Classic is very similar to the Windows 7 environment at this time, it requires a simple evolution of the current Firefox Windows product. Metro is an entirely new environment and requires a new Firefox front end and system integration points. The feature goal here is a new Gecko based browser built for and integrated with the Metro environment. Firefox on Metro, like all other Metro apps will be full screen, focused on touch interactions, and connected to the rest of the Metro environment through Windows 8 contracts." I haven't checked - does Microsoft allow different rendering engines?
"One of the things that the GNOME design crew have been focusing on recently is creating a new approach to application design for GNOME 3. We want GNOME applications to be thoroughly modern, and we want them to be attractive and a delight to use. That means that we have to do application design differently to how we've done it in the past.""This is the first real release of Wayland and Weston. Wayland is the protocol and IPC mechanism while Weston is the reference compositor implementation. The 0.85 branch in both repositories is going to be protocol and interface stable. We have a series of protocol changes on the table before 1.0 but this branch marks a stable point before we jump into that." Change is coming to the Linux world. And yes, I get the irony of using this particular icon, but it's the closest I could find.
Well, this is good news. "Germany will not sign an international anti-piracy treaty, despite having already agreed to it in principal, government sources in Berlin said Friday, February 10." with Germany on the side of reason - for now - we're a huge step closer to stopping ACTA.
