Howboring

Review: 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro offers optimal choice for lightweight laptop users

During the unveiling of the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, Apple Senior VP of Marketing Phil Schiller said that the 13-inch MacBook Pro is Apple’s best-selling Mac. And with good reason: People love the combination of performance and portability that the 13-inch MacBook Pro provides. The 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro is poised to continue the legacy of Apple’s mighty little laptop.

Even since using a 12” PowerBook I’ve been enamoured with the form factor. The 13” still doesnt seem to have the same pleasant proportions as the old 12” but I’m totally in the market for one of these. 

Shame there’s absolutely nothing wrong with my current 13” 2.7Ghz i5 with 8GB of RAM and a hybrid drive.

I do use the DVD drive fairly often: to burn those kids DVDs we get given so the kids can watch them on the AppleTV. We dont actually have a DVD player in the house. 

The new 13” Retina makes the MacBook line very confusing. Maybe the 13” Air goes away and we are left with just the 11” MacBook Air ?

Or more likely, once the transition to Retina is complete and they get cheap enough I can see the MacBook Air line-up just going away completely. So then the Apple MacBook range becomes:

• MacBook Pro Retina 15”
• MacBook Pro Retina 13”
• MacBook Pro Retina 11”

All with 1 or 2 Thunderbolt ports, 1 SD card slot, and 1 or 2 USB3 ports. Thats all you need for the future. 

The Air brand is strong and synonymous with lightweight and portability, but as iOS has become a more useful choice as a mainstream computing OS, the lighter MacBook Air 11” and new faster iPad 4th generation begin to look like close siblings. 

The implicit proposition of the Air brand is that it’s lightweight but compromised on performance. Now that the 13” MacBook Pro becomes is almost as light, the compromised appeal of the 13” Air is diminished.

If I had to put money on it I’d say the Air brand is going away and it’s 50/50 that the 11” form factor sticks around.

Might need to plug in the ethernet cable. With the chunky change set of data through my drive, I’ll never achieve a fully-backed up status at this rate. #backup #apple #timemachine

Zebras on Retina

Shot with a Canon EOS 1N. Thats a 35mm film camera. Apple using a 35mm film scan to show off it’s hi-tech Retina displays seems paradoxical. 

So I’m off to the Apple Retail Store with two dead iPhone 4’s. One with a shattered screen and the other with totally dead with a black screen. One moment it’s glowing and full of life. The next it was instantly dead. The screen literally went black as I was looking at it.

Now I’m not a big fan of the Apple Retail Store. They are better than no Apple Retail Store at all, but as a shopping experience they could be improved. I like to be able to go into a store, select what I want from the shelves and then buy it. I dont like having to ask someone to check it they have it and then hang around in the store whilst they ‘go fetch it from out back’.

It’s hard to argue the Apple Store model is broken. These stores are heaving with customers 7 days a week at all times of the day. They are obviously doing something right.

But I do think the Apple Store experience could be revolutionised in two simple ways:

1. Introduce a queuing system

Give me an obvious place where you can select and then pay for goods.

The last time I purchased a Mac Book in store i waited ages wondering what to actually do, then when I finally got the attention of one of the blue shirted fickle deities I asked “Do you have the new Mac Book Pro 13?” and Lord Blue Shirt shirt responded “yes, we have them over here… blah blah” But then seemed a bit confused when I said “no, I don’t need to finger one, I just actually want to buy one”. Clearly this is unusual to them. Why wouldn’t a customer want to spend an entire afternoon fingering Apple products in the Apple Store? Surely customers don’t have lives and appreciate fast efficient service so they can get back to the office and get some work done!

2. Introduce Deli Counter style numbered tickets for the Genius Bar .

I always sign in at the Apple Store with my iPhone. It tells me the genius will find me. They never do. I’m left hanging around looking lost for ages. It’s horrible. Just give me a place to sit and then call me when the Genius Bar is ready.

Going to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store is literally the worst thing I can think of doing with my day. But I need working phones, so I have no choice.

One good thing about Apple though: They offer $179 refurb replacements for your iPhone 4. Similar deals are also available for iPads. I Wish they did the same for Mac Books - I’ve been going through those like a bag of fresh Jelly Babies.

There is something worse than Apple Stores however: The Telstra T-Life Store.

Good god Telstra Stores are awful. I bought a $99 3G WiFi point. Which failed virtually right away. I went back into the store and was told it would be 10 days to fix. They have to send it away to inspect it so they can check I haven’t deliberately broken it and am trying to scam a new one for free. Telstra, just swap it out for gods sake! It’s only a $99 device. It’ll cost you more money to send it off and have a tech take it apart.

Telstra try to make their stores look like Apple Stores.: Shiny and wooden. They even have a manager hanging around with an iPad. Who tells you that you need to wait for assistance. Whilst they stand around and do nothing.

I clearly frustrated the Telstra sales assistance after I was forced to admit I’d understood nothing that he just said after he spent five minutes trying to explain the insanely complex range of products and plans that Telstra offer. I’ve yet to meet anyone outside of a Telstra shop that pretends to know anything about the products and services they offer.

Apple's Hold On Hollywood

I remember that Apple actually sent us all for a private screening of Independence Day. Which famously stared a Power Book.

parislemon:

Yet another subtle, but important advantage Apple has over competitors: their products are all over popular television shows and films — and Apple doesn’t pay a dime for such placement. The creative talent uses them because, well, they use them.

I mean, did you see Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol? It’s one big iAd — but again, not paid for by Apple. (Though Pixar alum Brad Bird may have played a role in that.) It’s a billion times better than any ad. It’s something money could literally not pay for.

This is also interesting, Peter Burrows and Andy Fixmer reporting:

In the 1990s, Apple’s PowerBook laptops included a company logo on the lid that faced the user sitting at the computer. When the lid was opened, the logo was upside down. Holtzman knew this was inconvenient to filmmakers and had stickers printed to cover the actual logo and have it appear correctly onscreen. A few years after Steve Jobs returned in 1997, he flipped the logo for good.

Hard to believe the logo was ever upside down, but I remember it. It looked incredibly stupid.

Just got my iPod Nano out of my bag and charged it up after months of not using it. I’ve been using the iPhone4 with Run Keeper on my runs. 

I’d forgotten how nice the Nano is! It’s a really great little device. You just don’t expect so many features from such a small device: multi-touch screen, radio, pedometer, photos. 

Now if it only had a GPS, Wifi and did Video playback as well… ;-)

Apple - $97.6 billion in cash and equivalents

So hey Apple, how about kicking some of those billion back to the developers that support the iOS platform and cut that 30% tax on App Sales?

It means little to Apple but a lot to small indie developers.

#airport #apple Another one. I’m easily into double digits here. How big do APE installs get? (Taken with instagram)

There’s a lot of internet chat noise about a possible Apple Television at the moment. I guess they’ve moved on from blathering about an iPhone 5 and quoting portions of the Steve Jobs bio.

Here’s a well linked-to run down on what might be an Apple TV: http://www.splatf.com/2011/10/apple-tv-box

Also a post at Daring Fireball about App’s being the new Channels: http://daringfireball.net/2011/10/apps_are_the_new_channels

Of course there is one very big give away that Apple is going to sell a TV and it’s not just Jobs trolling from the beyond the grave: Google rushed out Google TV. 

Those irksome little tealeafs over at Google would definatley want to be first to market with a TV device and Schmidt probably knew one was coming from Apple. He was after all happy to steal the iPhone ideas. Its a shame for them they stumbled.

But can Apple really make a Television? Should they?

Firstly the TV is the centre point of many homes. But all TV’s are dreadful. Awful slow UI, hideous remote controls and terrible case designs. I bought the most expensive Sony LCD I could find and it’s mostly rubbish. The picture quality is fine, but beyond that the experience is infuriating. I actually hate using it. 

So to have a TV that just started up into an AppleTV interface would be wonderful. There is no question that it would be on my list of home purchases. For those that say that the TV market is all low margins blah blah blah. When have Apple ever cared to compete like that? They make quality products that people actually want to buy. Apple have incredible industrial design and manufacturing capability - just look at the iPad. Of course they can make an affordable well designed television. It might be at a slightly premium price, but it’ll be worth it.

Secondly, there is much chat about Siri being the interface. Sure, maybe. That would be OK. Navigating to search for a podcast on the current Apple TV is arduous. Voice search would solve that. But I also think they could ship a TV with a Touch based remote. Maybe a modified iPod Touch or even just the iPod touch as it stands would work with a  touch based remote control app. A new version of a touch remote that could run Siri would be a home-run. 

Finally, I used to buy into the idea that a TV is just a monitor that you plug devices into and why would Apple want to get into that market. But I don’t think that anymore. You use your TV more than other home appliance. It’s second only to your iPhone, iPad or MacBook. So yeah, Steve Jobs would have wanted to improve this experience. 

TV is also about a socially relaxing experience. My current Sony makes me furious with rage most of the time. I’m preying Apple can fix this annoying problem. It’s a black-hole in my otherwise perfect Apple life.