MacBook Air posts

Curse you, TwelveSouth! You keep coming up with ways to make me spend my hard-earned money.

This time, it's a wonderfully unique sleeve for the MacBook line, the BookBook. This US$79.99 sleeve looks like an antique leather-bound book, but it wraps around your Apple-made pride and joy to give it a level of class it hasn't had since it first shipped from the factory in China.

The attention to detail is, as usual for TwelveSouth, incredible. Not only does it have the distressed leather appearance of an old book, but the leather zipper pulls look like bookmarks. The BookBook comes in red (seen above) and black, and in both 13" and 15" sizes.

It's practical as well as beautiful. The rigid spine provides crush protection to the MacBook, the hardback covers protect the exterior of your laptop, and the unique look provides a level of stealth that could keep your MacBook from being stolen. After all, who wants to pick up something that looks like an old book that you picked up at a library sale?

TwelveSouth is going to be sending one of these beauties along for a full review and giveaway, so keep your eyes open for a future post where you can win a BookBook from TUAW.

It's no secret that I am an unabashed fanboy of Mac accessory design firm Twelve South. Their BackPack for the iMac and Apple Cinema Display is sleek and utilitarian, and the BookArc is a stylish way to stash that MacBook Pro when you want to use it with the cover closed. So it was with a great deal of interest that I read about another of the company's accessories, the BassJump portable subwoofer for MacBook.

The idea behind the US$79.99 BassJump is simple -- the built-in speakers on the current MacBooks do a poor job of replicating the low-end of the sound spectrum, so why not add a USB-powered subwoofer to the mix to make the MacBook sound better?

The BassJump portable subwoofer kind of reminds me of a shrunken Mac mini. Five inches on a side and a tiny bit over two inches tall, the speaker has a rubberized base to avoid sympathetic vibrations that could ruin sound quality. There's no power supply -- as noted earlier, this is a USB-powered accessory.

You're not going to be able to use the BassJump as a replacement for a high-end audio system. The existing speakers in the MacBook line do an "OK" job of replicating the higher frequencies and the BassJump can fill in on the lower frequencies, but the combo still doesn't beat a dedicated audio system. But if you have a need to pump good-quality sound out of a MacBook for a presentation, or just don't want to be tied to a set of earbuds or headphones when listening to your iTunes library, the BassJump is a great solution.

The sust-it website, which provides rankings of energy usage and annual energy cost for thousands of appliances, home entertainment devices, and computers, has announced that Apple's Mac mini fills the top four spots for the most efficient desktop computer in their latest listing.

The 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Mac mini is at the top of the chart, sipping just .94W when turned off (power still goes to circuits monitoring the power status of the computer), 1.71W when in sleep mode, and just 12.6W when turned on but in an idle mode. sust-it calculated the energy cost per year for the mini (without a monitor, of course) as US$5.51 when calculated with the average US electrical rate. It's interesting to note that this model is no longer produced by Apple, and that the new 2.26 GHz mini is even more energy efficient. Apple's own environmental report for the mini shows that the revised model uses only .80W when turned off, 1.39W in sleep mode, but 13.4W while in idle mode.

Not surprisingly, other Apple models were near the top of the charts in both the laptop and all-in-one computer categories. The 1.86 GHz MacBook Air was barely edged out of first place in the laptop category by the HP Pavilion DM3. Although the two laptops had identical annual energy costs (US$2.39), the HP model had lower sleep and off power consumption than the MBA.

In the all-in-one category, the top iMac came in 6th behind eMachines, Acer, Asus, and MSI all-in-ones. Although the sust-it site is citing an iMac model that is no longer produced, even the new iMacs would be a bit behind the list-leading eMachines EZ1601.

If the power consumption and CO2 footprint of your computer is of concern to you, the sust-it site is a good place to make comparisons. Be aware, however, that due to the fast-paced changes in the computing world, the lists may be inaccurate at any particular point in time. In addition, it doesn't appear that sust-it looks at the total lifecycle energy consumption of the computers, something that Apple provides in their environmental reports for each model. When energy consumption and CO2 production are factored from raw materials at the beginning of production to recycling of an obsolete machine, Macs may very well lead the pack in all categories.

Our sharp-eyed iPhone goddess, Erica Sadun, alerted us to the fact that there's a small, but potentially important, update that has just shown up in Software Update.

Performance Update 1.0 "addresses intermittent hard drive-related stalls reported by a small number of customers." It may not show up for you, unless you have one of the following Macs:

MacBook Air (Mid 2009), MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2009), MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2009), MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2009), MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2.53GHz, Mid 2009), iMac (20-inch, Mid 2009), MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2009), MacBook (13-inch, Early 2009), MacBook (13-inch, Mid 2009), MacBook (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008), MacBook Air (Late 2008), MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2008), iMac (24-inch, Early 2009), iMac (20-inch, Early 2009), Mac mini (Early 2009)

If you own one of these models, be sure to load the update at your earliest convenience, especially if you have experienced the problem described in the update notes.

Thanks to Erica and to Joachim Bean, who provided the link to the Apple KB article.

quirky is a design firm with a difference. Rather than pay a brain trust to sit around and think up product ideas, they let average Anns and Andys submit designs that are then refined and named by a community of site visitors. When designs are ready for production, quirky sets a threshold number of units to be sold to be profitable, and once that number of orders comes in, they send the design off for manufacturing.

Plato said "...the true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention." In this case quirky community member Jeff Scholen was driven not only by the need to neatly wrap up the thin power cable and thick AC line going into his Apple MagSafe Power Adapter, but also keep the transformer "box" off of the floor or desk and give it a way to stay cool.

In less than 24 hours, the design was finalized through input from Apple fans worldwide and the PowerCurl (US$9.99) was ready to roll. It comes in "quirky orange" only, but has two sizes to match the 60W and 85W MagSafe Power Adapters.

The quirky community has also come up with a case design for the new iPod nano that not only protects that shiny finish, but acts as a stand and video handgrip as well. The Kickster (US$14.35) is awaiting your commitment to purchase before it moves into production.

I'm pretty paranoid about making sure that backups are done on all of my Macs. That's why I carry a small Western Digital MyPassport hard drive with me wherever I go with my MacBook Air, since I do at least one Time Machine backup a day -- even when I'm on the road.

This is my second MyPassport drive. That's not saying that anything is wrong with the Western Digital drives; it's just that the first one I owned fell off of a classroom desk while a backup was in progress, pulling out the USB cable and dropping about three feet onto a hard floor. The drive appeared to be OK, but never worked again.

That's why I was happy to hear that OWC announced the Mercury On-The-Go Pro series of portable bus-powered SSD drives yesterday. Solid-state drives, since they have no moving parts, can put up with a lot more abuse than traditional platter-based drives. They also offer better read performance than regular hard drives, and are often less power-hungry.

The drives come in three different capacities -- 64 GB (US$279.99), 128 GB (US$449.99), and 256 GB (US$729.99) -- and all offer 64 MB of cache, as well as Firewire 400/800 and USB 2.0 interfaces. Being bus-powered, they don't need an AC adapter, making the On-The-Go Pro series perfect for road trips.

While SSD drives are still more expensive than traditional hard drives, they're definitely more rugged, and in the long run that might be less costly than replacing a dropped hard drive. I've had extremely good success with OWC's products in the past, making this a doubly-attractive proposition. Of course, making sure my students don't cause my drives to take a dive off of a desk is a cheaper solution!

If you joined us Friday night for the Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard liveblog, you probably saw me say that I didn't have many issues with the upgrade. That's an understatement -- I think Snow Leopard is one of the smoothest upgrades I've ever performed with any operating system. You've probably already read the reports of fellow bloggers David Winograd and Mel Martin, which noted many similar findings.

During a four hour period after the delivery of my 5-install Family Pack by FedEx, I upgraded three Macs. The experience with each of them was slightly different, which is something you'd expect since all three are completely different models, but in each case the end result was essentially the same. All had about 10 - 15 GB more hard drive space than when I began, all were more "snappy" in terms of response, and the display looked crisper.

After surprising the FedEx delivery person with my HD video camera (yes, there's going to be an unboxing video coming later this weekend), I ripped open the box, pulled out the Snow Leopard box, pulled off the plastic, and then got the disk ready to go. I had done a final Time Machine backup of my MacBook Air just to make sure I had captured the last changes made on documents, so I plugged in the MBA's external SuperDrive and popped in the disk. I'm not exactly sure what I did after starting up the installer, but on the MacBook Air, I was asked to reboot the machine and then the installation began.

Mac Life and Gizmodo are both reporting that Snow Leopard will add multi-touch gestures to all older MacBooks and MacBook Pros. This has gotten a lot of people's hopes up that three- and four-finger multi-touch gestures will be back-ported to all Apple portables that previously did not have them.

Unfortunately, this is incorrect. Apples own information on Snow Leopard's enhancements reads, "All Mac notebooks with Multi-Touch trackpads now support three- and four-finger gestures." (emphasis added)

This raises the question, what's the difference between a multi-touch trackpad and a regular one, and which models have it?

The multi-touch trackpad was introduced with the first MacBook Air in early 2008. Not only does it allow two-finger scrolling like older models, it also allows advanced three-finger gestures like swiping to go back in Safari.

One month later, the early 2008 MacBook Pro received the same trackpad, with the same gestures. The multi-touch trackpad gains this new functionality because it has an embedded controller chip, identical to the one in the iPhone and iPod Touch, which allows advanced input from more than two fingers at once.

Later, the unibody MacBooks and MacBook Pros debuted with multi-touch trackpads, but also introduced new four-finger gestures, which will not be officially supported in the older MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros until Snow Leopard's release.

The original MacBook Air and early 2008 MacBook Pro are the only machines which will gain additional gestures via Snow Leopard. The only reason these notebook models are able to gain these gestures via software updates, while earlier MacBook Pros and all plastic MacBooks are not, is because they possess the multi-touch controller chip in their trackpads.

Just to break it down, this is a list of the only, and I mean only, notebooks that support multi-touch gestures, either now or after Snow Leopard:

MacBook Air (all models)
Early 2008 MacBook Pro
Late 2008 17" MacBook Pro
Unibody MacBook (all models)
Unibody MacBook Pro (all models)

If you have a MacBook Pro manufactured before early 2008 or any plastic MacBook, then Snow Leopard or not, multi-touch isn't coming your way...

It's one of the most overlooked product refreshes of the day, but the MacBook Air still deserves some credit. Not only did the Air get a drastic price drop (specifically with the SSD model), but it also gained a few specs. The base MacBook Air now starts at $1499US with a 1.86 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM, 120GB SATA drive (runs at 4200 rpm), and NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics card. The second model, which adds a 2.13 Ghz Core 2 Duo processor and 128GB SSD drive will only run you $1799US. That's a huge difference considering the last SSD model cost $2499 -- a difference of $700!

It is also worth noting that the MBAir now comes with a USB Ethernet Adapter in the box. You can also choose a keyboard format in either: English, Western Spanish, French, or Japanese. If you have been wanting a MacBook Air, but let the price hold you back, then there's no reason for you to complain any longer.

You can see all of the specs on the new MacBook Air models by visiting either the product page or the Apple online store.

I swear, getting old is not a lot of fun.

Last night, I taught a class in data security for home and small business users at our local community college. There were a lot of good questions from the community education program students, so the class ended quite late and I was still answering questions as I walked out the door.

This morning, I went to grab my MacBook Air out of my laptop bag and literally grabbed air instead. In my haste to get out of the classroom and head home, I had packed everything but the laptop. Fortunately, the classroom was locked and few classes are scheduled for early morning, so I called the campus police and had them rescue the MBA for me. Problem solved!

After actually losing an iPhone 3G a few months ago, I wrote a post about what to do to prevent data loss and identity theft when lose your iPhone, and included a few tips on how to hopefully keep yourself from losing the phone in the first place. In this post, I'll talk about the things that I do (or can do) to keep my MacBook Air and my data safe, even when my mind conspires against me to try to lose the computer.

It was just a few days ago we were talking about hacked MagSafe connectors, and now a lawsuit seeking class action status claims the innovative connectors are a fire hazard and a risk to life, limb, and property.

As an example, here's a link to some Flickr images of what is claimed is a melted MagSafe connector.

The complaint, filed last week in San Jose, California says that eventually the cord will fray from heat or wear, with a resulting danger of fire and injury. The suit, filed by plaintiffs Tim Broad, Naotaka Kitagawa and Jesse Reisman says Apple is aware of the problem and has done nothing about it.

The suit also claims when people demonstrate the problem to Apple, the company suggests they buy another $80.00US cable. Actually, we reported in August that Apple was replacing damaged or worn cables if they were not subject to abuse.

Apple has not commented on the lawsuit. It will be interesting to watch this one wind through the courts.

The power connector was introduced at Macworld in January, 2006. It has not always received positive reviews, even at the Apple Store.

Consumer Reports continues to shower praise on all things Apple it seems. In a report in the June issue, the Magazine says Apple won the top three places in the 13 inch laptop derby. The unibody MacBook was in first place, followed by the MacBook Air, with the white plastic MacBook in a solid third place.

CR also named the 15-inch MacBook Pro as top laptop in the 14- to 16-inch group, and the 17-inch MacBook Pro walked off with the honors in the 17- to 18-inch category. The HP Pavilion publicized in the first Laptop Hunters ad from Microsoft came in 4th in the category behind Dell and Lenovo laptops. The Sony VAIO FW370 that was the star of the 3rd Microsoft ad came in 5th in the 14- to 16-inch category.

Apple also took the honors for best in tech support.

This won't bring smiles to the folks in Redmond, who are going all out to convince people that Apple computers are not a good value. It should be noted that none of the Apple laptops were rated a best buy, but they all scored the highest in each category and were recommended by the magazine. Of course Apple has repeatedly said they are not trying to win on price, but on quality, and Consumer Reports seems to accept that as the case.

I generally don't put a lot of stock in CR for some of its testing, but these high ratings for Apple laptops are just one of a continuing chorus of approval from the press and generally happy Mac owners.

I have a MacBook Air. Although I can get about 5 hours of mobile use out of it by dimming the screen, turning off all wireless, and only running one app at a time, there are times I'd love to be able to stay unplugged for much longer. I could always get a solar charger, but that won't work well when it's dark out.

QuickerTek has announced the MacBook Air External Battery, a US$350 external box designed to let you run your MBA for up to 16 hours before plugging in. It's relatively small (7" x 3.5" x 1" -- 17.8 cm x 8.9 cm x 2.5 cm) and adds 1.2 pounds to the weight you'll have to lug around.

In order to connect the external battery to your MacBook Air, you'll either have to send your existing MagSafe cable in to be converted for use (US$25) or buy a modified cable from QuickerTek (US$100). The final bill for the MacBook Air External Battery and the cable is almost as pricey as that solar-powered charger, but it's going to give your MacBook Air much longer battery life. Now if QuickerTek could just come out with a battery to let me play Monopoly (click opens iTunes) on my iPhone for 10 hours straight...

Once again, it's time for another edition of Ask TUAW, where we try to answer all your Mac and Apple-related questions. This week we're taking questions about keeping your Mac laptop running with the lid closed, removing unwanted printer drivers, renaming partitions and the best way to prepare for a clean install of Mac OSX.

As always, we welcome your suggestions and questions for next week; they should be left in the comments to this post. When asking a question please include which machine and which version of Mac OS X you're running. If you don't specify, we'll assume you're running Leopard on an Intel Mac.

Okay, let's get to it.

Our first two questions today come from Quasimoto, who asks:

On my Macbook, is there a way I can keep my computer running without it having to automatically fall sleeping when I have my lid closed?

Absolutely. Just head on over to developer Semaja2's website and download the InsomniaX utility. This handy piece of software will keep your Mac running with the lid closed and prevent it from going to sleep. One thing to consider if you do decide to use this software, however: Even though Apple supports using a MacBook Pro, MacBook, MacBook Air and a Powerbook G4 with the lid closed, you may want to keep an eye on your laptop to help prevent any potential overheating issues. This is especially true if you plan on never letting the computer go to sleep using a tool like InsomniaX.

Quasimoto also asks:

I have a partition running Windows 7 perfectly, but when I'm on OSX, it shows that partition as 'Untitled' on my desktop. Is there a way to rename that partition to say 'Windows'?

Sure. It's as simple as using a tool you already have on your Mac: Disk Utility. Just go to Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility and double-click to run. Once open, select your Windows partition and then simply replace 'Untitled' with the name of your choice.