Sunday 31 October 2010

MacBook Air & iLife '11 & Mac OS X 10.7 Lion [News]

[Post published by Liviu on Liviu's [Computer Science] Blog]


Did you know that Apple launched the new MacBook Air [Apple section on MacBook Air]? I only found out recently. It looks slimmer [design], has some nice features [features] and specifications [specifications].


I've watched the short video [Apple] and the ad [Apple] for the new MacBook Air - nice.


Steve Jobs' et. al. 90 minutes keynote-on-everything [Apple] crashes Firefox 3.6.12; Safari 5.0.2 plays it, but there are no controls, i.e. there's no way to skip ahead or go back to some point of the video or the stop/pause options hardly work. Wtf? Did anyone watch this in the browser? Could this be happening due my slow Internet connection?

Solution: I finally downloaded the .m4v file [Apple link] of the keynote - it works perfectly. If interested there's also a RSS with all Apple keynotes [Apple RSS].

Opinions/Comments on:
  • iLife '11:
    • iPhoto - bla bla, whatever
    • iMovie - nice; I already like iMovie '08; the latest should obviously be better
    • GarageBand - looks nice; only played a little bit with '08, but I should play more
  • FaceTime: ok, may look nice, but I still like it in-the-browser like GTalk or the standalone Skype; probably Android devices will get some GTalk-like capabilities, I don't know
  • Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: looks nice, pretty cool (App Store, Mission Control)
  • The new MacBook Air: starts at 1:12:00; quite nice, see below. I expected more details (i.e. more bragging like amazing-awesome-beautiful) on this puppy.

The funny summary [YouTube] of this keynote - indeed, a great-nice-beautiful-amazing-phenomenal-awesome summary. You'll laugh quite a lot. [reached there via LifeHacker]




The New MacBook Air


Pro: Solid State Storage

It was about time computers gave up hard disks, which have mechanical parts therefore break too often. It is the time now also because flash memory offers an affordable price & high storage capacity.
N.B.: Affordable does not mean cheap, but cheap enough for some to buy. 1-2 years from now it shall be cheap enough for everyone to buy. Great!


Pro: multi touch with many fingers in many ways [Features - the pictures at the bottom of the screen: 2 series of 5 pictures]


Con: 13 inch screen

I still like MacBook Pro's 15 or 17 inch screen [Apple]. Maybe I'm just an old fashion guy, I don't know, but I like a big screen.


Con: No CD/DVD drive in the Air generation

Never liked that missing. However, I must say Apple does a pretty stupid job with that SuperDrive anyway, i.e. the native API of MacBook Pro does not allow one to read/write a multisession CD/DVD [1] etc. - yes, Windows's Nero [official site] is one killer app that makes a Windows PC much better than any Mac OS X MacBook Pro. So, there's not much to miss about Apple's (lack of) support of CD/DVD - on one way, it's better they have removed the SuperDrive.

Specifications [specs] - CD/DVD sharing: Without a built-in optical drive, how do you install new applications? Simply use DVD or CD Sharing. This convenient feature of Mac OS X lets you wirelessly “borrow” the optical drive of a nearby Mac or PC. So you can install applications from a DVD or CD and have full access to an optical drive without having to carry one around.

Installing a fresh OS works too, but there seem to be some hiccups [article]. Anyway, Air looks nice, i.e. it is a beautiful-great et. al. product :))





[1] Ok, you can write a multisession DVD only in Apple's special-whatever-way, or read a multisession CD/DVD if it has been written on PC in UDF format. PC Joilet - no way, not with MacBook Pro at least. I still throw bad words (and grow white hair) for that at Apple and praise Windows. And Apple calls the unit SuperDrive - oh, spare me! I'd rather call it ShitDrive! No joke on that.