Macs Are Great!

This morning I had an email from Apple informing me they had shipped my new MacBook Pro. Among the many new features in this notebook are

• LED backlight display for lower power consumption and longer life
• Santa Rosa chipset for fast 800MHz frontside bus
• A 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU
• 4MB of L2 cache memory shared between the 2 cores
• Base memory configuration of 2GB RAM, upgradeable to 4GB
• 802.11n Wi-Fi

In addition, like previous MacBook Pro models you get a firewire 800 port, a firewire 400 port, 2 USB 2.0 ports, the model I chose has the 15.4-inch (diagonal), 1440 by 900 resolution, TFT widescreen LED backlit display.

This is a killer notebook configuration that should not require any upgrades or add-ons, and as I type this Amazon.com is now offering this model for under $2,000.

I can’t wait until my new MacBook Pro gets here, but I guess I’ll have to

[tags]MacBook Pro, Santa Rosa chipset, LED backlight, Apple, Hardware review, notebook[/tags]

written by Steve Rider

Apple has apparently listened to some of the criticism of their Apple TV product, and has introduced an upgraded model that includes a 160gb hard drive. This seems very much appropriate since a 40gb hard drive is a bad joke on a device meant to store an entire collection of digital music and TV and movie content as well. I’ve got about 38 gb of digital music, mostly ripped from our 600 music CDs (that we bought, I’m nae a pirate). Then there are the legitimately owned MP4 videos that I’ve ripped from our DVDs. And the ancient Simpsons MPG videos from our dearly departed ReplayTV. I could easily fill a 160gb Apple TV!

Apple has also added support for YouTube videos on the Apple TV. I YouTube, you YouTube, it’s a good thing.

Now that Apple has gotten serious about the Apple TV, I think I’ll put it on my wish list. And a certain gift I had wanted for my birthday is out of stock (a Canon SLR lens) so maybe I’ll ask a certain person to get me an Apple TV instead of the lens. Woo hoo!

We have a Panasonic Plasma HDTV with an open HDMI connector, and we have a Gigabit LAN with an existing hub in our TV room too. I’m glad Apple decided to treat their Apple TV as a serious product.
[tags]Apple TV, hardware, upgrades, video, HDTV, YouTube[/tags]

written by Steve Rider

Adobe will be releasing their Creative Suite 3 on April 20. I’ve spent some time in the last few days trying to figure out which update, if any, I should buy. I’m leaning toward the Web Standard CS3 Upgrade, for Mac of course. I do own Photoshop too, but i do not use it much.

I use Dreamweaver quite often, and some of the integration features described as included in this release sound like they might be useful. When I use Dreamweaver on my Intel iMac it must run under Rosetta. This does not have much effect except for making it take a long time to start up.

More than anything, I’m hoping Adobe has cleaned up some of the annoying bugs in Dreamweaver. The one that gets me the most is the way it randomly changes login criteria for one of my sites and causes me to sync a file to a different site than the one I am editing. I’ve developed a certain sigh of exasperation that my partner recognizes as indicating that I’m using Dreamweaver. It does have some opportunities for improvement.

[tags]Adobe, CS3, software, Mac, OS X, Dreamweaver, upgrade, wish list[/tags]

written by Steve Rider

It will probably never go back to Asia again, but my new MacBook has left Suzhou, China on its way to its new home. Apple sent me a tracking number, and FedEx estimates delivery by Tuesday May 23rd.

The glossy screen, the easily upgraded RAM, the user replaceable hard drive, these are all factors in what I expect will be huge sales numbers for Apple on this new product line.

To help other people find these great computers, I’ve added the MacBook to one of my own stores.

Is it here yet? Is it here yet? Is it here yet?

written by Steve Rider