macbook posts

A friend's MacBook had slowed down to a snail's pace. Despite looking everywhere for the issue, streamlining everything I could, and yelling at it, it failed to accelerate to usable speed. So I recommended we start from scratch and build it back up with only the things she was using, free of all the other downloads and aborted installs of various software she never used or cared about. It also housed a prior system, and a PC migration from a few years back. All told, the computer was a bloated, duplicated whale of files and applications for what was essentially a light-load writer's computer.

So I backed up the essential parts of her system using Time Machine: documents (including her novel and decades of prior writing, published and unpublished), ten years of family photographs, a 41GB iTunes library, among other things, and then....backed it up again elsewhere, outside of Time Machine.

And again.

And just for good measure, once more time, to yet another drive. I wasn't going to be the (ex-)friend who lost her novel.

What I wanted to do was do the ol' "erase and install" that prior system software discs allowed you to do. But clicking around Snow Leopard left no obvious method for this. But instead of booting Snow Leopard while inside of Mac OS X, if you just directly reboot the computer off the disc itself (holding down the "c" button after the system chime, letting go when you see the Apple logo) you get a few more options. Once you've gone into the installer program, you'll see "Utilities" at the top, and if you select Disc Utility, you can see your hard drive. If you click on "erase" (like I did, with one hand over my eyes) you can wipe the drive clean with various security options, and then you can do a fresh install of Snow Leopard on your computer on a pristine hard drive.

Once you've done that, you can either transfer your files back in directly, or use the installer program's built-in migration utility to restore any or all files from Time Machine.

And now? The world awaits the Next Great American Novel, untragically unlost by yours truly.

From every hint, from every rumor, from every direction it seems like some sort of Apple tablet is a done deal. We'll know for sure Wednesday, probably after a "one more thing" from El Jobso.

If a tablet is announced, I'm trying to figure out if I will buy one. I already have a Mac Pro desktop, a very serviceable MacBook Pro, and the latest 3GS iPhone. For reading I have a Kindle, and the 2 week battery life is pretty hard to beat. It's small, it's thin, and compared to the rumored cost of the Apple tablet, it's likely a lot cheaper.

But I think the dilemma will be even rougher on MacBook owners, who already have a nice small information appliance they can take anywhere. Looking at it as objectively as I can, there doesn't seem to be any room in my life for a tablet. It seems like the cure for which there is no disease. I get my email easily away from home any number of ways, and the iPhone is so good at so many things I don't take my laptop on the road as much as I used to. If, as expected, the tablet is smaller than the MacBook, maybe as thin as the MacBook Air, and significantly less expensive than either of those, it will turn some heads, but probably not mine. No way.

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.

Apple is really defying gravity in this economic slump with impressive numbers. Market research firm IDC reports Apple sold about 5.6 million computers here in the U.S. in 2009, giving it an 8% market share. That's up just a bit from the previous year, when Apple had a 7.9% share, and it makes Apple the 4th largest domestic computer maker, behind HP, Dell and Acer. These numbers are preliminary estimates based on 2009 sales.

The report notes that low end notebooks and netbooks were really pushing the computer sales numbers, an area where Apple is not really competing. Windows 7 equipped computers also accounted for a strong 4th quarter in domestic sales.

Sales of computers were also up worldwide. IDC reports that the market gained 15.8% year over year. In the 4th quarter of 2009 there was double digit growth for the first time since the 3rd quarter of 2008.

Apple's 4th quarter growth rate was the third highest of U.S. PC vendors, with sales up 31% compared to a year ago. Toshiba had booming sales up 71.5% from 2008, and HP was up a healthy 45% from the 4th quarter of 2008.

So if Apple makes a tablet, will tablets count as PC sales? Wonder that will do to their 2010 numbers.

• Unibody 13" 2.53Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro
• 15" 400Mhz G4 Titanium PowerBook
• 15" 1.25Ghz G4 Aluminum PowerBook
• 15" 2.5Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro

Amazing stuff -- think of the engineering, manufacturing work, and design arguments that went into those little bands of metal, and all of the good work and art that has since been created with them. Beautiful.

Now here's a fascinating app -- Inklet is a new Mac app by Ten One Design that purports to turn your Macbook's trackpad into a tablet-style input. The program uses the multitouch trackpad interface to sense where and when you're touching the pad, and then translates that into "drawing" marks just like a Wacom pen tablet. Unfortunately, the trackpad doesn't have sensitivity built-in (it can only tell when you're touching, not how hard you're pushing), but with Ten One's Pogo Sketch stylus, which I presume sends pressure information back to your Macbook somehow, you can get that "line thickness" functionality -- press harder for a thicker line, or less for a thinner line. Pretty awesome. It's not as big or probably as sensitive as a commercial Wacom tablet, but just for doodling and messing around, it's a much cheaper solution.

Inklet requires Snow Leopard to work, so if you're running anything pre-10.6, you're out of luck. The software is $24.95, and their website has been brought to its knees by recent press, so you can download it from Apple's site if you can't reach it the official way. The Pogo Sketch stylus is only required for pressure sensitivity, but it's a very reasonable $15. Like I said, if you're like me and want a Wacom but haven't had the cash or inclination to spend on it, Inklet could be the stepping stone you're looking for.

We'll have a full TUAW review of Inkjet within the next few days.

Patently Apple has the news that Apple has filed for another touchscreen display patent, but here's the catch: this one's probably not for a tablet! Or at least, not for the tablet we're expecting. The patent, which covers the idea of a thinner and brighter touchscreen display by combining the touch and pixel display elements (basically including the capacitive and pixel elements in the same hardware), could actually be used in any of Apple's devices, from the iPhone and iPod touch, to future versions of their laptops. And yes, it could be used in a potential tablet, but really, this is more of a way to create touchscreens anywhere rather than specifically a tablet-only function.

Note that this is also different from the dynamic tactile display Apple patented a little while ago. Personally, I'd rather see the much more inventive tactile display used in the hopefully soon-to-be-unveiled tablet -- I'd love to finally get some touchable feedback from touchscreens. But of course Apple will use what they think is best. Having a quicker and brighter display to go along with a multitouch screen wouldn't be a bad thing, either.

Thanks, Mitch Wagner!

Apple typically reports their 1st quarter financial results in late January, so we'll have to wait a few more weeks for the official word. However, the analysts have begun to share their estimates and the numbers are very impressive.

Brian Marshall at Broadpoint.AmTech has estimated that Apple sold 3.3 million Macs during the last quarter, according to MacNN. Here's a little perspective: Apple's all-time sales record for Macs, set during the previous quarter, is 3.05 million. That record was a 17 percent jump from the 2.6 million it sold in the same quarter a year ago. Marshall also suggests that laptop sales could be up as much as 19 percent year-over-year at 865,000 units.

Meanwhile, Philip Elmer-DeWitt has begun gathering estimates of iPhone sales and posting them at Brainstorm Tech. They range from 11.30 units sold (Brian Marshall at Broadpoint AmTech) to 8.17 units (Mark Moskowitz, J.P. Morgan). The interesting thing is that the low estimate, 8.17 million iPhones sold, would represent a 10.8% increase from the last September's record of 7.37 million if true.

Despite would could have been a rocky year for Apple -- Steve Jobs was out for serious health reasons and a lousy US economy -- they did very well. Are you optimistic for 2010 or waiting for the other shoe to drop?

Just a quick note that the online Apple Store has quietly dropped their white MacBook from $949 to $899 for students, teachers, and faculty members. Some buyers are even seeing pricing as low as $728, according to Engadget.

The white polycarbonate MacBook specs remain at 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB DDR3 memory, 250GB hard drive, SuperDrive, and the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics card.

Other Macs and accessories seem to have retained their previous student pricing. It's only $50, but if you're an education customer in need of a cheap Mac this is a nice post-holiday gift from Apple.

If you're feeling like your MacBook or MacBook Pro is cool, but could be cooler, maybe it's time for a trip to Etsy to check out the selection of custom vinyl decals. For as little as US$10, you can make your MacBook a one-of-a-kind at the coffeehouse, and maybe even pick up a date for New Year's Eve (although the latter depends greatly on your personal abilities to do so).

There's a pretty wide selection of decals at Etsy, but one artist in particular has caught my fancy. Ivy Boersma, a.k.a. IvyBee, has some designs destined to be classics. I'm especially fond of the William Tell and Newton images, but it's obviously subjective. There's enough variety that you can find something that really fits you, and carry it as a classy and subtle expression of your personality.

Ivy also offers custom designs upon request, so if you don't see what you want in her online shop, contact her through Etsy (just sign up for a free account) and let her know what you're looking for.

Apple today released several updates today including AirPort client software, and EFI firmware revisions for some MacBook and MacBook Pro models.

First, the AirPort Client Update 2009-002 update fixes the following issues:

• An Inability to turn AirPort on or off in some cases after upgrading from Mac OS X Leopard.
• An occasional loss of network connection when using Wake on Demand.
• An Inability to create a computer-to-computer network, or share the Internet connection on some MacBook, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini computers.

Next, the MacBook and MacBook Pro EFI updates allow the installation of SuperDrive Firmware Update 3.0, reducing the noise of the optical disc drive when waking from sleep and startup. The SuperDrive firmware installation is a 2nd step; you need to do the EFI update, then check again for software updates. This update is available for the Late 2008 aluminum MacBook model and the Early 2009 and Mid 2009 white MacBook models, and for Late 2008 15 inch MacBook Pro models and Early 2009 17 inch MacBook Pro models. (The KB article for the MacBook EFI update may need a little editing, as it refers to a suggestion from a mysterious 'Glenno.')

These updates are available through Software Update, or they're available from Apple's support page.

Excel nerds rejoice! What you see above is the result of a laptop reliability study conducted by third-party warranty shop Squaretrade. The study looks at over 30,000 notebooks over the course of 3 years to determine the final reliability statistics. The results may not surprise you; for instance, netbooks fail 40% more often than premium laptops and Apple's MacBook line has above-average reliability.

The report itself is fascinating to read and the graphs are simple to understand. Also, it is nice to see an independent study confirm what I've known for years: HP makes low quality laptops. A note of personal interest, had I purchased a Vaio all those years ago rather than a Presario, I might never have switched to Mac.

[via Engadget]