512 Pixels

To this day, this is the alert sound I use on my Macs.

Shawn Blanc, on the Kindle Paperwhite:

The Kindle Paperwhite has a lot going for it: the e-ink screen, million-year battery life, illuminated display, improved software, the iOS Kindle apps that sync with my iPad and iPhone, and the lightweight yet rugged build of the device hardware. The biggest compliment I can give the Kindle is that thanks to it, I read more books and I read more often.

I agree. I’ve read a ton more since purchasing my first Kindle a year ago. It’s one of those devices that is so enjoyable to use, I can’t help but spend time with it.

This photo made me laugh.

This post made my morning.

Well, this is one hell of a hobby project.

These pieces on Bob Mansfield and Eddie Cue have something in common: both guys’ careers are in better shape with Scott Forstall gone.

During Apple’s iPad mini event, the company introduced the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. While the machine has a wordy name, it’s a welcome sight to those of us who have always loved the 13-inch MacBook Pro. I’ve reviewed the machine two times over the years, both times showing my love of the form factor and power.

These days, I’m using a 15-inch non-Retina MacBook Pro, and love it, but still ache for something a little smaller. When Apple announced the 13 Retina, I got excited.

Then I did some reading, and got sad.

First there’s the specs. Here are the two models for sale at Apple.com:

You can bump up to a 2.9GHz Dual-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz for $200, and add up to 768 GB SSD for $1,000. It’s easy to spend the same amount of money custom-ordering a 13 as would be getting a similarly-equipped 15-inch machine. While I understand Apple’s trying to keep these machines affordable, limiting them to just 8 GB of RAM is a crime. If I want more RAM, give me the option to pay for it.

Then there’s the performance issues some are seeing with the new machine.

Here’s Nilay Patel, in his review of the machine:

The 2.5GHz Core i5 in the 13-inch Pro offers terrific raw CPU performance in benchmarks, running Geekbench at a solid 6700–6800 range, but the integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics chip can struggle driving such a high-resolution display. Oddly, it showed up for me more during day-to-day usage than under any crazy test situation I came up with: RAW files in Aperture scroll around just fine while QuickTime is playing back 1080p movie trailers, but Safari and Chrome both stutter a little while scrolling simple web pages. And they stutter a lot with image-heavy sites like The Verge and Polygon.

You’ll also notice some general lag when you start multitasking heavily. Open more than a few tabs and apps and you’ll start to notice things slowing down around the system as a whole. My standard workday set of 15–20 tabs open in Chrome, music playing in Spotify, email and IRC open, and Skype, iPhoto, and Messages running in the background never pegged the CPU meter, but I could clearly feel the system running just a hair behind me. You might not notice it if you’re coming from an Air or a much older MacBook, but I’m used to my 15-inch Pro with 2.3GHz Core i7 and Radeon HD 6750M graphics, and and the 13-inch Retina is definitely a little slower. If you’re a pro looking to step down to a smaller machine, you’ll almost certainly notice the performance dropoff as well.

That’s the first time in recent memory that I can remember a review of any Mac using words like “stuttering” and “general lag.” Clearly, Apple’s pushing the Intel HD 4000 chipset further than it was meant to go. Again, it seems like Apple trying to keep the price down has hurt the machine. If Apple had waited a generation of chipsets, or opted to charge enough to get a better GPU in there.

Of course, maybe the 13-inch form factor simply can’t handle a bigger, hotter GPU. As it stands now, the 13-inch Retina machine is the first laptop of that size by Apple to have two internal fans.

So, what does all this mean? First of all, it means I won’t be moving to one of these machines for now.

More importantly, I think it means we won’t be seeing a MacBook Air with Retina display any time soon. Doing so would damage the two thing that sets the Air line apart: thinness and cost.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited to see Retina displays coming to more Macs. But Apple might be moving faster than the technology — or the market — is ready for them to.

The other day, Squarespace reported that downtime was expected due to Sandy. However, since that initial post, the company has hauling fuel up seventeen flights of stairs to keep their servers running on backup power.

By hand.

In buckets.

Apparently downtime due to a hurricane was unacceptable.

Here’s an Internet high five, Squarespace.

(And no, this is not a sponsored post. I really think this is a great example that other companies could learn a few things from.)

Apollo vet Sy Liebergot took Ars Technica writer though the Apollo Mission Control Center. These rooms were used to get men to the moon and back, on technology that is laughably weak by today’s standards.

This hour-long documentary is a result of my brother’s trip to Sudan this summer. It tells the horrifying story of the genocide currently taking place in the Nuba mountains.

I’m running it now on my iPhone 5. From looking over the release notes, this addresses just about every weird thing I’ve seen on my device.

This week, I was joined by Shawn Blanc, and we discussed the iPad mini and Surface RT, as well as the new Iron Man 3 trailer and Disney’s acquisition of Star Wars.

Links:

• John Gruber’s iPad mini Review
• Iron Man 3 Trailer
• Marco.org: An Alternate Universe
• 512 Pixels: The Microsoft Store Experience
• The Next Web: Disney Purchases Lucasfilm
• The Incomparable: When You Wish Upon a “Star Wars”
• ShawnBlanc.net
• Tools & Toys