This week a fair number of updates which have brought forth a few interesting changes, while round here I continue with my second part of the review of the MacBook Pro: hands on.

MacBook Pro 2.53Ghz (Part 2): Hands On

The obvious point here is that the newer computer is faster than mine and than the one EITS lent me: 2.16GHz and 2.4GHz respectively, compared with the 2.53GHz of the test machine plus its 4G RAM, which is double what the others have.

Just after I sent that item in last week -- I mean 24 hours -- the trackpad firmware was updated, so let's hope that goes in: that adds to my mistake in part one when I called the MagSafe connector, MagLev. I sent that in but was too late.

I also hear that, while I was not sure about the battery, if you take the battery OUT, the performance of the MacBook Pro is reported to drop by an amazing 37%.

There are some hardware rumours just in time for the lead-in to the MacWorld Conference. First up concerns the iMac which we have been expecting to be updated for a while. Based on a report in DigiTimes about future Intel processors, Electronista are suggesting that the iMac may be released with quad-core processors which would up the computing power, but drop electrical power consumption.

Dennis Sellers in Macsimum News takes this a step further and asks, if the iMacs are going to get this, why not the Mac mini too? I think both of these are wonderful ideas: love to see them; but they are speculation nevertheless.

Dennis also has a summary of some of the comments that have been appearing in recent days concerning Apple's use of the Mini DisplayPort and its effects when using some connected displays. None of these comments are particularly positive, and they are from sources that are not usually anti-Mac.

We also reminded ourselves of the comments of Professor Gutmann of Auckland who was highly critical of this, among other things, when Vista was released.

[Note: A QuickTime update may have done something to fix part of this -- see below.]

Talking of Vista. We mentioned last week that some interesting emails had begun to surface in the "Vista Capable" trial. This week we see that Ballmer himself is now required to appear in front of the judge: it has to be within 30 days and for no longer than 3 hours.

It looks to me that he will be having a little problem with this doctrine of deniability, especially when emails from the usually unendearing Rob Enderle have come to light in which, it appears, he warned that the direction being taken would lead to tears. For once he scored a bulls-eye.

Another rumour concerns Snow Leopard, OS X 10.6, and it is feasible that the date has been moved forward, say some, and we may see this earlier than originally expected. MAcNN citing a presentation that was done by one Apple executive that revealed dates, think it may be coming about the time of the MacWorld conference. I do hope so.

I get an email once a week from 7Digital: a UK music download service that is one of those that really suits me: modern, independent music with some oddities occasionally and if I like anything, it is just a few clicks (having set it all up) o download the tracks. I picked three last week from a Leeds-based group group called Cavalier and they were on my desktop within a couple of minutes. It took me a bit longer to get them into iTunes as I dropped them onto the next icon in the Dock so they opened as text.

In the meantime, outside my house, were the live efforts of a Thai country music label FourS who bought a house two doors away and party most evenings: twice this [last] week until after 1 am. The guests do not take well to anything that does not fit their narrow field and I got showered with stones when I went out last week with a camera. If I have students to teach, I like to sleep first. Needless to say, this company has not advanced to the state of having a web presence: just big cars with loud speakers and drivers with lots of gold.

With a prediction of updates to the iPhone software floating around, Friday morning here, we had an update to iTunes: to version 8.0.2. This 60MB update apparently (as ever) fixed some stability issues, added more to the features for blind persons -- that was something with VoiceOver -- and also fixed a quality issue when users create MP3 files. I also saw that there was a fix for a proxy issue: something that I suffer from daily at my office as iTunes can never get through, particularly for podcast checks. Nothing there changed for me, but I was not really expecting it to and put this down to the university network rather than Apple.

A few hours later, the iPhone update was released. By Monday morning, Thai time, the jailbreak for the iPhone was available.

First reports suggested that the 2.2 Firmware update fixes a log on issue and adds stability to Safari: not that I had had problems with either of those, although I suspect that any stability with Safari may be due in part to a lack of a Flash plug in for the device. I also saw a couple of days later that there is now a Google search window in Safari. There were other improvements to maps and mail, as well as several improvements to reliability. I went home to download this.

After downloading iTunes and the QuickTime updates [see also below], I plugged in the iPod touch only to have a host of podcasts download. I clicked on the software link and decided to download only, rather than install immediately: who knows what would come down as well. But the download was so slow and showed 3 hours to go. I paused all, then resumed, which gave me a more acceptable figure of 22 minutes.

When it went on I saw that there is now a Thai region setting. No keyboard as yet, but there IS a slight evolution here. The problem for me was that when I changed to the Thai region, all the day and date information was displayed in Thai. I switched back to US settings. Google Maps also seems to be a bit better, although not perfect. However, the location facility was almost instant. Maybe I had a lucky day.

A couple more things about this: one good, one bad. One convenience is that whichever screen one is on (and I have 6 screens now), a click of the Home button takes you back to screen one.

On the other hand, with the number of podcasts I have, I was looking forward to updating directly from the iPod. The update facility appears below a list of downloads of a particular podcast, but when I pressed this, I was told that I cannot connect to the iTunes store as it is unavailable in my country. Methinks that is irrelevant: if the podcasts are on the iPod, then there needs to be some adjustment to the accessibility. Some of those podcasts were initially accessed via the US store, but I subscribed to many via direct links. This really ought to be changed in iTunes itself as well: the podcasts are not normally under the same rules in terms of payment and they are accessible to users outside the normal countries: I switch to the US store and check the podcasts, then switch back. There seems to be little reason why the podcast section could not be made available to all countries.

Something that intrigued me on Monday was an article in MacNN concerning the G2 iPod touch which developers are finding to be considerably faster than generation 1: 532MHz instead of 412MHz, which additionally improves loading times. That speed is faster than the 3G iPhone, by the way. In some cases developers have to slow the app down so that it will work properly on the first generation touch.

Final Cut Pro was also updated on Friday. This time via Pro Apps 2008-04 with the usual performance and stability improvements.

And on Tuesday morning here, we saw that an update to Safari was out. Now at 3.2.1. The update included stability improvements and is recommended for all Safari users, so Apple tells us. A restart was needed for this one.

What used to be Cluck Online, has now re-branded itself as Click. Perhaps Slick would be better: and I don't mean that in a positive way. This week it had an interview with the other Steve: Wozniak. People always listen to him, although I am not totally sure these days. Nonetheless, the interview is online for those who wish to view it. Click bills itself as "The BBC's flagship technology program." If that is the flagship, the navy is short of a couple of vessels.

I thought there were some smarmy digs at Steve Jobs with several deflections by Wozniak and Spencer Kelly got his facts on iTunes a bit wrong: particularly in the light of the way the BBC restricts users.

There have been a few warnings about Trojans this week, so the page with the podcast links to one of them: it is all the same story anyway. The Trojan in question can allow a backdoor to be installed on a computer but it needs physical access to the computer: passwords please, everyone. The greater risk comes from one that can be downloaded from naughty websites. A user will see a Video ActiveX error then be asked to download something.

What really caught my eye this week was a warning from Apple with a couple of suggestions of commercial virus software in a KB document. However the document does not mention the Open Source developed ClamXav, that is well known by Mac users. The downloads page has links to the different versions that are available, depending on which iteration of OS X we use.

We have seen the way the music industry was shaken to its core in the last few years: I am almost all digital because that is more efficient for me -- the customer -- while record companies are still pushing the album as the main delivery system. The fact that iTunes is not here does not worry me much these days apart from the fact that it should be and I would like to get some of those TV shows and movies rather than wait for the cable company here to put them on at inconvenient times.

The app store is a different matter and my own use of that has surprised even me. I thought 6 or 7 apps might do it, but I am up to almost 70 now and I am doing things I did not realise I would want to do: I even found one last week that teaches me Thai.

Jason Schwarz has a look at the App store which is a somewhat amazing market and suggests that Apple has a gold mine here that is a better bet than the iTunes music store. I would tend to agree. Like other things (online selling, MP3 players, he iPhone and the like) everyone is scrambling around to catch up and missing the target most of the time: the Zune for example. He backs up his view with some interesting figures.

Ziff-Davies which has been in a bit if trouble for a while, ceased printing its PC Magazine last week and this is now only available as an online publication: so technology evolves. I am unable to give you a link to the full story as this is on a NYTimes page that requires me to log-in and Murdoch is not getting my details on one of his databases. The news will come out somewhere else.

Mind you, PCWorld are not dead. They reviewed the new Blackberry Storm that everyone was hoping would be an iPhone challenger and comment that they found it "Awkward and disappointing." Particular comment was reserved for the keyboard. Steve Jobs said this was the problem with smart-phones when he introduced the iPhone. If that were not enough, Endgaget tries very hard in an extensive article, to be positive about the Blackberry's many positive attributes but also comes up with a "could do better."

Too Good to Miss?

Time magazine was also unhappy.

Just after the podcast was finished, Apple released an update to QuickTime which apparently fixes that DisplayPort problem with certain iTunes videos on some displays. When I checked, QT 7.5.7 was not available via Software Update (nor via the downloads pages), so may be it is only for those with the new MacBook Pro, which has this particular type of port.

A rumour last week concerned EA Arts, the game maker, and the possibility of Sim City for the iPhone which I would suspect would also work on the iPod touch. I had this once on my Palm m130 but the touch screen is significantly larger. It appears to be an adapted version of SC 3000 which I had for the PowerPC in the past: the disk is still here somewhere. Estimates suggest a $10 cost.

An absolute tragedy last week, when a young man committed suicide by overdose using drugs and medication, live on Justin.tv webcam while chatting with people on IRC who were encouraging him. According to a brief comment by Michael Siebel of Justin.tv, expressing regret for the incident and sympathy for the family, the content has been removed.

We mentioned a while back the success HP was having with creating mega-packages for A4 paper sheets. They are still doing this as a story by Lester Haines in the Register shows: box, plastic wrapping, more plastic inside and one DIMM: memory. Dim describes this Hewlett Packard approach to the environment and the founders would be rolling in their graves.

One thing that strikes me about the problems with the US car industry is that it just got too big for itself. I watched the British motor industry in the 60s especially, go from several independent companies to just a couple and then, presaging the US ones, collapsed, unable to sustain the size itself. We may think about this in the IT and computer industries.

Apple for example: so many suggest that Apple should do this, or that, but Cupertino carries on doing what it does and doing what it does well. Why should Apple licence the OS just to bail out other computer companies? . . .

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