512 Pixels

Wired has put together a slideshow of Palm’s best - and worst - products.

Gizmodo seems to think that the company’s new WebOS is a diamond, the Pre’s hardware is the rough:

Think of it like this. The software is agile, smart and capable. The hardware, on the other hand, is a liability. If Palm can get someone else to design and build their hardware—someone who has hands and can feel what a phone is like when physically used, that phone might just be one of the best phones on the market.

On the other hand, Engadget and the New York Times’ own David Pogue like the hardware. First, Pogue:

The Pre is a shiny, flattened black plastic capsule, coated with a hard, glossy, scratch-resistant finish. When it’s turned off, the screen disappears completely into the smoky finish, leaving a stunning, featureless talisman. It’s exactly the right size. It’s smaller than the iPhone — half an inch shorter, though a quarter-inch thicker — and therefore more comfortable as a phone.

And now Joshua Topolsky from Engadget:

There’s no question that Palm has built this phone on the foundations laid by numerous devices before it – most obviously the iPhone – but the Pre clearly carves out its own path as well. Some of the ideas and concepts at play in webOS are truly revolutionary for the mobile space, breaking down lots of the walls that separate the experience of using a dedicated PC versus using a handheld device. One feeling that we were constantly stuck by while testing the phone was a kind of revelatory, ‘Hey, this actually feels how a computer feels.’ It was an experience not completely unlike our first encounter with the iPhone – that little light that goes on that tells you that things can really be different than how they’ve been before. We also felt that same thing the first time we picked up a Treo, so it’s fitting that the Pre should inspire a similar response.

Like I said the other day: Palm needs this thing to knock people’s socks off when they pick it up. Will it succeed? Who knows. The Pre will make both friends and foe once it hits street in a few days, but I’m in Palm’s corner here. Competition is good for everyone.

From a piece over at TechRepublic titled “10 reasons why Linux will triumph over Windows,” from back in February:

Out of the mouths of Microsoft comes the proclamation that Windows 7 will run on any hardware that would run Vista and even slightly less powerful hardware. Slightly less powerful? What exactly does that mean? Well for one, Windows 7 will have no luck in the netbook market. And since XP is dying, the netbook market will be owned by Linux. Netbooks are not gaining enough power to run anything from Windows but the watered-down version of XP. Netbooks are not going anywhere, and consumers (both home and corporate) have their limits on how many hardware upgrades they will make to fulfill an operating systems’ needs. As of Fedora 10, the minimum system requirements look like something out of the mid ’90s.

I wonder if he’s gotten the picture now that Windows 7 RC1 is out and running quite well on netbooks? My guess is no.

From TUAW:

The Apple Cafe was to be a high-tech cybercafe where you could order healthy food while videoconferencing with people at nearby tables, surfing the Web, and pulling up movies or TV shows on a small kiosk screen at your table.

Macworld:

Yes, Macs are plagued with as many (and sometimes more) vulnerabilities as other operating systems. These are the doors attackers use to exploit our systems, and Macs are far from invulnerable. But the truth is that in the real world, Macs suffer from far fewer compromises. This is the difference between security and safety. A highly secure home in a bad neighborhood is still more likely to be robbed than a less secure home in a safer area. Mac market share is probably an important reason here, as is the history of the platform, the focus of the bad guys, and a host of other factors

While I disagree with the first bit about the number of vulnerabilities, Rich Mogull is dead-on about the difference between safety and security.

This week, my work-supplied MacBook Pro is having its logic board and optical drive replaced, so I’m using a 1Ghz Titanium PowerBook (pictured here) as my main machine for a while. I figured hauling my aluminum iMac around would be a bad idea.

With a 1Ghz G4 and 1GB of RAM, this TiBook (the last revision of the series) exceeds the minimum requirements for Leopard. While the 64MB of video RAM is pretty wimpy, it’s enough to get the job done. Regrettably, the TiBook shipped with a 4,200 RPM hard drive - which is miserably slow. To add insult to injury, the drive seems to be on its last legs. With its low-end specs and a slow drive, Leopard didn’t run well on the machine. I may try again once its new 5,400 RPM drive comes in later this week, but for now the TiBook is running 10.4.11.

This fits into my my thought that goes something like this: 10.3 is best for G3s, 10.4 is best for G4-based machines, and go with 10.5 for G5s. There’s some overlap in there, but as a general rule, it works.

Tiger is a much leaner OS than Leopard. It uses less RAM - which leads to less paging out to the hard drive - and doesn’t need as much video RAM, as there isn’t as much eye candy to draw. To put it into perspective, the Tiger installer fit with plenty of room to spare on a DVD, while Leopard fills a dual-layer DVD.

But no one wants to be left behind. Having the “minimum requirements” smoke your machine is always depressing, but running Tiger a year and a half after its successor was released isn’t as troublesome as I thought it would be.

The newest version of iLife requires Leopard. Other apps that use Leopard’s Core Animation - such as the excellent Twitter application Tweetie - don’t run. But Tiger users are far from being left out; Apple’s still pushing out security updates for Tiger, and most of the major applications work with no problem - Office 2008, iWork ’09, Safari 4 Beta, iTunes and more. Even MobileMe syncs with 10.4’s apps with no issues.

That said, I find myself missing a lot of Leopard’s features - primarily Spaces. I love Spaces. Having everything crammed together makes me twitch. I was surprised at how much I missed Spotlight as well. Yes, Spotlight was one of Tiger’s headline-making features, but the program is far better in Leopard - it’s faster, more accurate, and can even do basic math, which I use everyday. And of course apps like Finder, Automator, Mail and iChat are much better in Leopard. The one exception in my mind is iCal. Apart from lacking CalDAV support, Tiger’s version of the app is far better.

With Snow Leopard just around the corner, the future of Tiger is uncertain. On one hand, Apple usually only supports their current OS and one version back - meaning 10.6 could bump 10.4 from its “old faithful” throne. On the other hand, since Snow Leopard isn’t going to run on PPC-based Macs (sorry guys, it’s true), 10.4 will always be the next-to-last OS available for some users. My guess is Apple is going to drop Tiger support like a rock. Which is a shame - it’s a solid OS if your hardware isn’t beefy enough to handle Leopard.

From Apple’s support site:

In July 2008, NVIDIA publicly acknowledged a higher than normal failure rate for some of their graphics processors due to a packaging defect. At that same time, NVIDIA assured Apple that Mac computers with these graphics processors were not affected. However, after an Apple-led investigation, Apple has determined that some MacBook Pro computers with the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics processor may be affected. If the NVIDIA graphics processor in your MacBook Pro has failed, or fails within three years of the original date of purchase, a repair will be done free of charge, even if your MacBook Pro is out of warranty.

This program works just like Apple’s other repair-extensions the company has offered in the past - it covers only specific failures on specific machines, and only for three-years after purchase. In other words, the program basically acts like AppleCare for a single failure for those people who failed to purchase the extended warranty.

CNET has put together a list of things they’d like to see out of an Apple tablet.

The list is pretty comprehensive, but I agree with the writer that 2010 is the earliest we’ll see anything like this from Apple - if we see it at all.

Engadget reported last night that Dell is discontinuing the Dell Mini 9:

We just got off the phone with a Dell customer service rep who told us the same thing a handful of our tipsters heard: the Mini 9’s being phased out, with its official “End of Life” possibly as soon as Monday.

The Dell Mini 9 won some heavy-duty geek cred by being the best netbook out there to hackintosh. Outside of it’s amazing ability to run OS X, it wasn’t that unique - there are far better netbooks out there.

Nevertheless, it will be missed by many.

Boy Genius Report:

It’s really not good. My hands aren’t that big (I can type faster than you could ever dream on a BlackBerry, iPhone or E71) and my thumb literally takes up 3 or 4 keys on the keyboard. There’s less space in between each key than say, a BlackBerry Curve 8300 keyboard, and the texture takes some time to get used to. It’s a rubberized coating kind of like the Centro and Treo Pro, and while the keys are a bit harder (better), the coating could possibly get irritating as usage increases. It’s really such an important area that couldn’t afford to be messed with and we’ll admit it… we’re a little let down. You’re going after the big guns here, and this is kind of disappointing.

You can’t compete with RIM in the keyboard area and you can’t compete with Apple in the soft-keyboard area, so how are people going to enjoy using your product when the data entry isn’t perfection? It’s like buying a brand new Ferrari, but getting an Accord steering wheel. It’s not the end of the world, but it isn’t greatness.

I agree - Palm needs every single little detail about this thing to be excellent. Before the iPhone (and RIM’s better models), they could have gotten away with a crappy keyboard. Palm shipped tons of Treos and Centros with tiny pill-shaped keys, but users have evolved, and probably aren’t going to be willing to go back to a 2005-style keyboard after using a superior product.

The Pre’s big breakthrough - and the new face of Palm - is their WebOS platform. Hopefully the hardware they’re shipping won’t hinder the growth of the OS. I think the WebOS on a iPhone/Zune HD/Blackberry Storm type device would be awesome - eliminating Palm’s cruddy keyboard all together.

The Titanium PowerBook was the first notebook from Apple to feature the G4 processor.

At 1-inch thick, sporting a 15-inch widescreen display and wrapped in metal, the notebook caught everyone by surprise. The design is proving timeless. The Unibody MacBook and MacBook Pros are built like the Titanium - a thin plate on the bottom with all the insides built into the top case. Not to mention the black keyboard being back in style.

My first Mac was a 1Ghz model with a 1GB of RAM. I’ve since moved on, but I just acquired one via the wonder that is eBay:

AppleInsider

Beginning June 2, Apple will also make significant changes to its One-to-One personal training service geared towards helping new Mac customers get the most out their systems.

Currently, anyone who’s willing to pay $99 can sign up for a year’s worth of the training service, but Johnson says Apple will start limiting signups to only those customers who purchase a Mac at an Apple retail store or the Apple online store. Legacy users won’t be booted from the program, however, and will be offered the opportunity to renew their subscription for the same $99.

As part of the changes, One-to-One sessions will be limited to three hours, up from one hour. Similarly, up to three participants will now be allowed to take part in the sessions. In addition to its remodeling efforts, Apple will also open 25 new stores worldwide this year, including its fourth flagship location in Manhattan and new shops in Paris, Germany and Italy.

I don’t think this is going to help the Stores that have too few One-to-One slots open as it is.