The MacBook Brick is a block of high-quality, aircraft grade aluminum. It is the beginning.
The beginning of what?
It is the beginning of the new Apple manufacturing process to make MacBooks. It is totally revolutionary, a game changer. One of the biggest Apple innovations in a decade.
OK, that would be very very cool, and completely different.
Again, it’s all wild speculation, but I like the novelty of this rumor.
All things TiVo:
The week’s new DVD releases will be run down here tomorrow.
Here’s what I want to do:
I have a Mac tower from 2004. (Yup, it’s not even Intel chipped.) It has two hard drive bays. The first has the 80GB hard drive the machine came with. The second has a 250GB model I added in later.
The machine boots off that 80GB drive and has all the OS stuff on it.
I want to replace that 80GB drive with a 1 Terabyte drive. It would be easier replacing the 250GB drive — just slide it out, put the new one in, hook up the old one externally and copy all the files.
It’s a little more difficult doing this to your boot drive. Has anyone done this before? Do you have any recommendations for sites that explain this process? How easy is it?
Thanks in advance for the advice.
Technorati Tags: Mac
“Snow Leopard.”
Near the beginning of today’s Stevenote, Jobs said he was going to talk about the iPhone and then bring someone on to talk about “Snow Leopard,” the next OS X version. After all the excitement of the iPhone, he said good-bye and walked off stage. If I had to guess, I’d say the demos all ran so extravagantly long that Jobs cut the Stevenote off before everyone at Moscone’s bladders burst.
The funny thing is, I didn’t see anyone in the blogosphere pick up on the lost plot thread for the next few hours. For those of us who’ll likely never have an iPhone, the news of a new OS X is very much more exciting. Instead, all we got was a parade of app demos that ranged from “not for me” to “nice proof of technology.”
I hope that by now, someone’s pointed it out somewhere on the blogosphere. ::sigh::
I’m guessing there’ll be a presentation on it at some point in this week’s conferences.
Update: John Gruber answers the question. And it means answers should be available by now. I must go looking for them!
Yes, this feature is supposed to be up on Fridays, but the Apple TV review took up too much time.. Sorry about that. Back to the questions now.
Josh has a computer purchasing question:
I have been flirting with buying a Mac as a second computer to tinker around with. What is your recommendation for a first time Mac buyer (other than the Mac Mini)?
The MacBook. Especially if your primary computer today is a laptop, I think you’ll be impressed with the speed and power of the MacBook for the price. (About $1200.) If you’re more of a power user, then you could go with the current Mac Pro set-ups, but they tend to start at $2000. They’re very powerful and expandable (four drive bays!), but I imagine you won’t want to start your Mac life on such a large investment. (I did, but I was nuts in those days. Thankfully, it paid off handsomely and I’m still using that computer daily, 3 years later.)
On the other hand, you’re stuck using a non-Mac monitor at that Mac Pro point, so an iMac would be a worthy investment if you prefer a desktop. It’s obviously not as expandable as a Mac Pro nor as portable as the MacBook, but it’s a pretty standard Mac computer that has a stunning monitor that won’t cost you an extra grand. Really, those screens are HUGE on the current generation iMacs. (Sadly, you’ll be paying for the screen AGAIN the next time you buy an iMac.)
Is that too mushy? What kind of computer set-up do you have today? What do you use your computer for? Is lots of storage a key point for you? Are you just using your computer for e-mail and web surfing? Do you just want a multimedia system that’s easy to use? These are all things that could swing my vote one way or the other.
Hope that helps.
Paul C. wants podcasting answers:
Did the idea of doing the Pipeline Podcast come up out of the blue or had you tinkered with the idea a couple of times before getting around to it? Are you surprised it caught on and that you have lasted this long in doing it in, more or less consecutive weeks? Have you ever thought about adding in any new features to it like a top 10 worst sounding books of the week or reader’s mail/questions?
I had toyed with the idea of doing Pipeline Radio a year or more before the podcast began. The idea was to record a minute long thing once a week that we could post on Fridays with some short review/thought/something or other. It didn’t go very far because I didn’t have the time to pursue it past writing up a couple of scripts, one of which I turned into an early Pipeline Podcast. That was more along the lines of an Andy Rooney style editorial piece. I was also worried about bandwidth consumption at the time. Broadband wasn’t so pervasive, and even a minute of audio would be a slow download in those dial-up days.
When I read about podcasting in December of 2004, I knew I had to jump in. I did college radio. I did local radio up until about a year and a half ago, as a matter of fact. I wanted to use that training to do a podcast, and so I started the Various and Sundry DVD podcast and The Pipeline Podcast at the same time - Christmas Break, 2004. I had the time that week to set up a system to produce two weekly podcast shows. Once I started, I was hooked.
Eventually, the DVD podcast faded away. That was due to a lack of time and, honestly, a decrease in DVD and movie viewing habits. While I still enjoy the weekly discussions here on the blog for new DVD days, I didn’t feel comfortable TALKING about a bunch of movies I wasn’t familiar with for ten minutes a week in a podcast.
I’m not surprised the comics podcast has lasted this long. I’ve never been able to give up on comic things. Pipeline is coming up on its eleventh anniversary now and I have never ever once missed a week. Never taken a week off. I’ve been late a couple of times, I’ve pre-written things a few times, but I’ve never missed a week. I don’t think there’s another comics columnist on-line who can claim that. I doubt there’s a print columnist who could say that, either. This next Pipeline is the 563rd or 564th edition. I ain’t giving up on it. The podcast comes secondarily to that, and I’ve never hesitated to just skip a week when I had to. I missed a couple of weeks due to illness and one or two weeks due to scheduling and technical troubles.
The main problem with the podcast is that it’s a timing thing. The new comics release list comes out late on Monday after my chance to record a podcast. I have to record it on Wednesday, or else it’s dated by the time Wednesday night comes around. If I miss that window, I’m sure lots of people just skip over it.
I would like to do more with the podcast. Honestly, I would. I even get requests about that all the time. Oddly enough, most of those requests thank me for doing a show that’s so relatively short to the rest of the comics podcast world, but then ask me to add more stuff into it.
The simple fact of the matter is that I don’t have the time to do more than I am doing right now with the podcast. I do it because it’s not a huge hassle to spend a half hour on Tuesday nights recording and publishing the thing. Sometimes, I can even pare that down to less than 20 minutes. Even the monthly PREVIEWS podcast can be tricky to schedule out with Jamie (as it is turning out to be this month - sorry, Jamie) and finding a solid hour to an hour and a half of our lives to record.
Finally, Ezekiel asks:
What do you think of the new Hulk trailer?
Haven’t seen it. If it doesn’t show up on the Apple TV in HD, I’m not watching it. I imagine it’ll show up in there eventually, though. I hope. I do want to see what this thing looks like.
That’s it for this week. Post more questions below, please! I’d love to answer them in upcoming Q&As.
I’ve had my Apple TV for two weeks now, and it has changed what I watch on TV.
For starters, I watch less broadcast or cable television shows. The shows I’d watch as filler have gone away. I won’t bother skipping around channels anymore to see if there’s anything interesting on. If it’s not already on the DVR or on the Apple TV, I’m ignoring it.
Second, I’m watching more video podcasts. Much more. What were once novelties of the web and YouTube are now viable television show replacements. Sure, they often look cheap or amateurish, but that’s all part of the charm. The content is king. The set dressing is secondary. And with Photoshop User TV airing late nights on the FOX Business Channel, there’s a certain merging of the two forms happening, anyway. In both directions.
But I find myself watching Mahalo Daily while doing the ironing, or a photography tutorial from TWIP while eating a snack, or an iFanboy video podcast while waiting for some show to be on network television that I want to see. Or Cranky Geeks while cleaning around the house. My TV is all content, all of the time. No commercials need be seen, aside from GoDaddy’s at the beginning of a few video podcasts.
There’s no better way to watch Pixel Perfect with Bert Monroy than in an HD video feed on an HDTV. The screen grab looks crystal clear on the television screen. Gone is the slight muddiness or the text that’s too small to make out. On the HDTV, it looks like my laptop screen, only much larger. (40 inches versus 15 or whatever the MacBook uses.) It’s beautiful to behold.
Also very nice, though not free: The Luminous Landscape Video Journal. I downloaded the most recent one, including an hour-long tour of Jay Maisal’s NYC studio, and an hour long video of a recent Antarctic photo trip. Fascinating, very cool, and very nice in HD. Not exactly PLANET EARTH-level video quality, but very nice.
Though I’ve long held that I’d never do a video podcast, myself, being able to so easily watch video podcasts on my TV is slowly changing my mind. Now, it’s only the lack of proper equipment (an HD camcorder) and time to do proper editing/scripting/staging that keeps me from doing one. I’m not morally opposed to it, just lazy.
Third, I’m watching movie trailers again. I know I’ll likely never get out to see the movies, but having the option to preview what’s at the movie theater now in high definition at home on my 40 inch TV screen is huge. The WALL-E trailer from PIXAR is beautiful. The SD trailers aren’t bad, but it’s the HD ones that shine. I compared HD versus SD for a couple of movies that offer both options and you CAN tell the difference. It’s there.
Fourth, the photo slideshows turned out to be a huge hit with my two year old niece. She likes to see herself on the TV now.
The only negative thing I can say about the Apple TV is the finer points of control. Fast forwarding and rewinding is annoying. You can press the FF or RW button once to jump a minute (30 seconds? Minute and a half? I can’t tell.) in either direction, but you have to press and hold down on the buttons to straight-up fast forward or rewind something, and those controls aren’t very fine. It’s like using a sledgehammer to swat a fly. I can’t ff through to a certain spot. It’s awkward and clumsy. I let the commercials play, just because it’ll take less time than attempting to fast forward and rewind all over the place.
Installation was a breeze. I just hooked up an HDMI cable, plugged in a code to my iTunes, and away I went. I don’t have a surround sound system at this time, so I can’t vouch for how well that works. Nor have I rented a movie yet. Given how nice the trailers look, though, I have high hopes. I need to download TRANSFORMERS one of these days.
I’ve chosen to watch most video podcasts synched up from the iTunes account on my laptop. That’s just so I can easily keep track of the specific shows I like to watch. I have, however, streamed some shots through the Apple TV to sample them first. The delay to start watching them, like with the movie trailers, is miniscule. My Wi Fi connection is only 802.11g, too, not 11n.
In fact, my habits are starting to change now. This weekend, I labeled my favorite video podcasts as “Favorite” so that they’re kept in a separate sub-menu on the Apple TV. I can check an episode list and download a show direct to the Apple TV through there now. I’ve deleted gigabytes’ of video files from my laptop, which is always a good thing. As a bonus, I don’t have to go back and delete podcasts I’ve already watched from iTunes later on.
My Harmony Remote 880 accepts the Apple TV as a DVR, more or less. The buttons map out as you’d expect them to on the Harmony, but I honestly don’t use it. I use the small remote that comes with the Apple TV to control it. It doesn’t feel right, otherwise. I can use the Harmony, but I choose not to. I don’t need a remote with dozens of buttons to control a device whose native remote used six.
In the end, the Apple TV is a glorified podcast viewer for me right now, but I do take advantage of the other bits to a lesser extent. The YouTube interface is easy to work, but I don’t use it. Most videos look blocky and low-fi on my computer screen. On my HDTV, they look positively awful. When YouTube goes HD, perhaps then I’ll start using it more. Right now, it’s a minor bullet point on the list of features for this box.
I’ve also successfully transferred files over to the Apple TV from the movies directory of iTunes. (These were not commercial files. They were HD podcasts that are too new to be on iTunes yet.) I think they’re MP4 files. They look great and start up quickly.
Right now, the Apple TV is my video podcast machine. I have some movie files that I play on there, but I haven’t yet worked with the rental feature, or even the Buy From iTunes feature. That’ll make it something that could be more useful for my wife, say. And when we miss a show and the DVRs fail to record it, I look forward to downloading a show straight from iTunes to watch it on the Apple TV. We’ll start with small steps here.
And, yes, it is a very hot box.
Forget the Beatles. This would be very cool, indeed, if it actually happened:
The Financial Times may have nailed one hell of a scoop Tuesday evening. According to the paper, Apple is considering an all-you-can-eat plan in which users would receive free access to iTunes “in exchange for paying a premium for its iPod and iPhone devices.
I really like the idea of paying extra up front and not dealing with Yet Another Monthly Fee.
Rolling Stone : Paul McCartney Divorce Settlement: $48.7 Million
The divorce saga between Paul McCartney and his estranged wife Heather Mills has finally come to an end, with Mills receiving £24.3 million, or $48.7 million.
Last week, the pundits disagreed with me. They dared to say my prediction that the Beatles catalog would wind up on IDOL that night was bunk. They said I didn’t know what I was talking about. Everyone knew, after all, that it couldn’t and wouldn’t happen until after McCartney’s divorce was finalized.
The divorce is now a done deal. And IDOL is doing a second Beatles week this week. The timing couldn’t possibly be better, aside from Yoko Ono casting a spell to bring Lennon back from the dead to perform a duet with David Archuleta.
I thus renew my prediction — the Beatles are coming to iTunes tonight. You’ll see the announcement in an ad during the first half of the show. Bring it on!
And if it doesn’t happen tonight, then it’ll happen on the results show tomorrow night. If it doesn’t happen then, I’ll come up with a new excuse. . . Eventually, you know I’ll be right!
(Let us all just hope that rumors of Mariah Carey acting as a guest judge tonight are horribly horribly wrong. I know she has a new album out to pimp and all, but — Mariah judging Beatles covers? No.)
As I write this, we’re only 2.5 hours away from an announcement of the Beatles on iTunes. I’m guessing it’ll be announced on a commercial at the first break. Come to think of it, tonight’s show was already taped. So I bet Seacrest didn’t make the announcement. (That would have leaked by now, unless they laid it in afterwards.)
It has to be a commercial.
Update: It’s 9:32 and we have no Beatles on iTunes yet. I’m beginning to think it’ll be announced during the results show tomorrow. That’s live, so there’s no need to keep things a secret during the taping of the performances.
Yeah, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Failing that — yeah, the Beatles songs ARE on the iTunes store. They’re just sung by the IDOL contestants. . .
Today, Apple signed the deal with Paul McCartney (rumored to be at about $400 million) to carry the complete Beatles catalogue on iTunes. (I presume it’s an exclusive.)
Tomorrow, American Idol’s Top 12 perform Beatles songs.
Apple is a major sponsor of American Idol.
Apple traditionally releases new products on Tuesdays.
As I predicted a couple of weeks ago, the math on this is too good NOT to be true.
So how will it work? Will Apple announce the Beatles on iTunes tomorrow morning? Will they wait until Tuesday night and have Ryan Seacrest announce it? Would Steve Jobs appear on Idol via satellite to help pad out a two hour show that only needs to be 90 minutes? Or will Apple stay quiet and product a single 30 second commercial during Idol to make it official? (Picture a Beatles song playing for 30 seconds with a montage of pics of the Beatles from their prime, followed by a card, “Only on iTunes” followed by the Apple logo. And cut.)
Make your predictions now!
Augie De Blieck Jr. doesn't know when to shut up, which makes him the perfect blogger. That, and he reads a lot of other blogs. You can e-mail him, if you really wanted to.
