Cogitare

Novatel Merlin XU870 Cingular on MacBook Pro

This thing rocks! I just hooked up this 3G (HSDPA) modem and was up and running in seconds. The modem is an Expresscard 34 size wireless modem card that runs on the Cingular network in the U.S. It suports HSDPA, which Cingular has rolled out in the major metro areas, and covers most of the area here in Silicon Valley. When it can't connect via HSDPA it will drop to UMTS, EDGE, or GPRS if necessary.

Novatel touts Mac compatibility, and it was indeed a snap to get things running on the Mac. Here's all that was necessary: buy the card, sign up for Broadband Connect on my Cingular account (you may want to get another line of service so you get a separate SIM card. Otherwise you'll have to use the card from your phone, and what good is that?), insert SIM card in the XU870, pop it in the Expresscard slot, and surf away!

OK, not quite that simple. When you insert the card, the Mac recognizes it and it self-configures. I'm assuming that's due to the recent update that added WWAN support to OS X. It hard-coded certain cards for each of the major carriers, including the XU870 on Cingular. So the Network Pref Pane for the Novatel HSDPA card automatically entered the right dial numbers and account names and such. I clicked connect, it connected, and I've now got very usable, fast connectivity. In my living room I'm showing only 1 bar, but connected at HSDPA/UMTS (I'm pretty sure HSPDA is only applicable to downloads). Speakeasy shows I'm still getting 998kbps down and 347kbps up. That's about as good as my DSL connection.

Assuming I can get this kind of speed in hotels and airports and other places on business trips and other out of the office locations, this is going to be great. Internet access in a hotel, which usually tends to be relatively slow and finicky, is around $30 for a 3 day stay. This service is $60 per month, unlimited. It'll pay for itself pretty quickly!

One thing to note is that Cingular will be selling a (different) Expresscard format card very soon, which I assume you'll be able to get a rebate on when you sign a Broadband Connect contract.

My New MacBook Pro

It arrived this morning! There are surely plenty of unboxing galleries up by now, so I'll spare you most of the pix. I thought it would be useful to post some comparisons of the 2.0 Ghz MacBook Pro w/ 1 gig RAM to the 1.67 Ghz Powerbook 15" G4 High-Res with 1 Gb RAM, which I also happen to have, at least for the moment. Both have the faster 7200 RPM 100 gig HDs in them. They are also configured the same, as I just sucked everything over from the G4 during the MBP setup.

Speaking of setup, the MagSafe connector already saved my ass! I was checking on the file transfer, without turning the office light on, and tripped over the powercord. Seriously, how stupid is that? I've had the thing for 10 minutes! Well, the MagSafe connector popped right out and the MBP didn't even flinch. Didn't move a millimeter. Thank you, Apple!

Display comparison, boot and app launch comparisons after the jump...

Hi-Res 15" Powerbook

So the new high-resolution Powerbooks come out just 32 days after I bought a 15" Powerbook at work. Aaaargh. What to do, what to do? Simple, find some other closet Mac-lover in the office that needs a laptop and slyly suggest that it would be OK if they used a Powerbook instead of the usual Dell. Bingo, time to upgrade. Discussion after the break....

OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro FireWire 800/400 USB2 Combo Solutions at OtherWorldComputing.com

Link: OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro FireWire 800/400 USB2 Combo.

Just set up one of these very nice drives with my Powerbook. It was worth posting about. I was looking for an attractive drive to sit on my desk, with FW800 for speed and large capacity but QUIET. The Elite AL is all of these. As you can see from the pic, it really complements the aluminum G5 or Powerbook G4s. The whole case is aluminum and is comes with a stand for vertical use. There's a blue LED behind the front grill to indicate power-on.

You can check elsewhere for actual performance tests, but booting from this drive vs. the internal Powerbook drive puts a little more zip in the 'book's step. Nothing spectacular, but the FW800 connection surely isn't slowing anything down.

The drive is pretty much silent and very quiet reading and writing--hardly more audible than the same activities on the Powerbook internal drive. The only noisy operation relatively speaking, is when the drive spins up or spins down--there's a little clunk.

Overall I'm very pleased with this external drive. Gripes? The case seems to have a little play in it--when you pick it or wiggle it, the various aluminum parts have a little rattle-room. Since I never do this, I don't mind, but I will see if some screws can be tightened somewhere.

OS X on Intel Hacked: Apple ... Giggles?

OK, so here's my crazy bit of speculation: Apple is pleased as pie that something hacked OS X on Intel. Crazy? Hmmm... let's think....

First, this is a developer build, and having it running around in the wild isn't such a big deal. It isn't going to cannibalize sales of anything except maybe a few developer machines that Apple's just leasing to developers anyway. I doubt they were hoping to make a fortune on those $999 machines. They are no doubt subsidizing them, actually. So the more developers that manage to get the kit running on their own machines, the better. Any serious developer will still have to have at least one Apple kit to make sure their stuff runs right. If anything goes wrong, Apple can always try to break the rogue copies in the next update.

The hacked version has a huge upside, though: the geeks who manage the install and run OS X on their own machines are exactly the kind of people that Apple should want running OS X at this point. These are the guys and gals who will write programs and utilities, replicate their favorite Windows stuff on OS X, and generally insure a robust software environment when the first machines come out. On the other hand, they are insignificant from a financial standpoint.

When the Intel machines hit, 99.9% of the buyers are going to be people that wouldn't even consider running a computer with an unsupported operating system that may or may not totally work right. No business user can afford to and hardly any home user would want to let alone know how to. Lost sales are not an issue. But the ranks of the teen geniuses who have the time and energy to get OS X running on their aging Dells are exactly the kind of people that may produce the next killer app, and Apple should desperately want them to fall in love with OS X. Finally, they will have a way to allow that to happen, without having to in any way compromise their "we make the whole widget" ethos.

By officially saying OS X cannot run on anything other than a Mac, and making it pretty difficult to circumvent that, but not doing very much to stop those who can figure it out, Apple gets the best of both worlds.

More Apple on Intel thoughts

OK I've had some time to cogitate on this and I guess the sky isn't going to fall. Apple "will not prevent" people from installing Windows on their Macs, but it seems like it's not going to be that smooth an experience. I expect Apple will use its own motherboard design, and unless Microsoft flat out starts building support for Macs into Windows, it'll probably take some tweaking to boot into Windows.

But what will happen, is you'll have a Virtual PC environment or equivalent that doesn't have to emulate an Intel processor. All it will have to do is translate the Mac's hardware configuration into a standard PC configuration, and run Windows in a window or something. With some more work, Windows apps will run as Mac applications under OS X, with the emulator doing things like translating DirectX calls to OpenGL calls and such.

So what about my scenario where everyone says "just run our Windows version under OS X?" I still think it is going to happen. But not with major software vendors. They'll make the transition. After all, they already have Mac versions. They'll probably be able to share a lot of optimization from the Windows version, so maybe we'll see apps that were not well-optimized for PowerPC get performance boosts.

But many smaller vendors that might have been considering a Mac version may not bother now, or won't update an existing program. The question is, will more software from vendors who were not considering such a version be available by running the Windows version than we lose? I now think that is the case. Let's face it, Virtual PC was only useful if you had no choice. But all that vertical market and specialty software that was never, ever, going to appear on a Mac, running at full speed in a translator under OSX, that is going to be interesting.

Man, this was a rambling entry!

Apple and Intel -- What is Going On?

Update:Um, I guess I was pretty wrong. Hmmm. Well, being a Mac user has always been interesting....

OK, I can't help myself. I'm weighing in on this insanity tonight, before the big unveiling of something, or nothing. Then I can either say I'm incredibly prescient or I got it wrong like everyone else. So what the hell is going on with Apple and Intel?

There is just too much credibility in an CNET and WSJ report to dismiss this as idle rumor. Apple and Intel are up to something. But what? I'm in the camp that says Apple cannot simply announce a switch to x86, and not only because I just bought a brand new G5. Lots of reasons have been cited, including the pain for developers, but I think the biggest reason is that developers would simply stop developing for Mac.

Think about it: if Apple switches to x86, they either have to have some weird hardware lock that makes it impossible to boot into Windows, or they don't. I can't imagine how the former is going to go over in the market, and if the latter is true, doom ensues. If a developer knows that most Mac users can simply boot into Windows, why spend the money on a Mac version for such a small slice of the market? Mac software development stops, and Apple is suddenly a maker of high quality PCs with an esoteric operating system that runs some elegant Apple apps and shareware.

No, I don't buy it. What I do buy is the scenario laid out over on Blackfriar's Blog. Apple, I think, owns enough rights in the PowerPC platform to put another player into business. If they didn't before, think about that 3 Ghz guarantee Steve made long ago: how much you wanna bet there was a clause in the IBM supply agreement that if IBM didn't hit 3 Ghz by the end of '05, Apple had the right to turn to another supplier? That's where Intel comes in.

So Apple gets Intel in on the PowerPC game. Intel's 64-bit Itanium has languished. The PowerPC architecture is making major inroads in embedded systems, game consoles, and of course scales all the way up to 64-bit servers. Intel is no Microsoft, and is far too dependent on Microsoft. Imagine Intel with an alternative, mature OS running on Intel 64-bit PowerPC-based motherboards. Dell is probably chomping at the bit, too. They toyed with Linux, but Mac OSX is really better for any commercial systems vendor.

Intel can push other initiatives like WiMax, and Apple gets another vendor, newer high-volume parts that wind up on custom Apple motherboards as well as Intel motherboards for other PC vendors.

So that's my prediction: a PowerPC-based chip from Intel. Not x86. We'll see...

Apple Newton's History

An article on OSViews has a great history of the development of hte Newton MessagePad: Think you know the Apple Newton's History?.

I owned a MessagePad 2100 and it was an amazing little machine. I did a lot of business travel at the time, and it was a great road warrior--I could check email, send faxes, write documents, keep my calendar, addressbook, etc. It even made a great alarm clock. I later tried a Palm III but it could not live up to the Newton. Not until the iPaq, many years later, did I feel the industry had finally caught up to the Newton, and then only when you added Calligrapher (the original Newton handwriting recognition software).

Adding Bluetooth to the Apple PowerMac G5

I added the Apple Bluetooth Upgrade kit to the new G5 2.7 myself. I followed the instructions here: Adding Bluetooth to the Apple PowerMac G5, but I think things have changed a bit with the Bluetooth 2.0 module in the new G5s, so I thought I'd show you how it went as a public service.... (coming soon)

The Wired 40

Link: Wired 13.05: The Wired 40.

Hey, it's nice that Wired Magazine ranked Apple the #1 master of technology and innovation, but this just bugs me:

As the world moves toward open standards, the last true believer in closed systems refuses to capitulate.

Apple is far more into open standards than Microsoft. Once again, someone mistakes proprietary but licensable for "open." They are referring, of course, to the iPod/iTunes "closed" system vs. Microsoft's equally proprietary but available to anyone with the cash music technology, which of course ignores the fact that most people's iPods and other MP3 players are filled with music that was NOT downloaded from a for-pay music store.

But even just talking about DRM-ed music, nobody is selling "open" DRM music. Microsoft will license their DRM system to anyone, which is not the same as "open." Apple has so far granted very few licenses, which is not the same as being consumer-friendly to be sure. But let's not pretend this is about open vs. proprietary. This is about whose proprietary format makes more money for its owner.

So far, Apple is winning the battle of the proprietary formats. Will they be smart enough, if they start to slip, to license a wide range of devices that use Fairplay? I sure hope so. Apple needs to decide what types of devices they are going to release, then license some other players in non-competitive markets. The quicker the better, I say. But that's their call, based on their ability to support such licensees and keep control of their business.