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21st-Jan-2008 07:05 pm - The New MacBook Air - Revolution or Regression?
So the Macbook Air was announced by Apple last week and in curiosity I decided to take a look at both the literature printed on the website and the introductory video (168MB download - QuickTime required). Honestly I wasn't all that impressed, but I'll cover a few things that caught my interest.

I thought the touchpad with its mouse gesture ability was quite neat, allowing you to zoom in/out on screen, move forward/back in web pages, etc just by pinching your fingers together or swiping them across the pad respectively. It would be nice to see this adopted by other vendors, but maybe there is software out there that can simulate this. I know my Acer has a 'Mood Pad" application and can detect and attribute values to different pressure limits on the pad, so maybe this isn't too far fetched a possibility.

The size of the notebook was also quite refreshing, with it being much thinner than other models and weighing in at just 1.36kg. The widescreen nature of the monitor was also welcome, but it's max resolution of just 1024x? pixels was disappointing. Then again the monitor is only a 13.3" model.

I like the option of the 64GB solid state hard drive, although it's extremely high price premium and small size are offputting.

Now for the negatives. Whereas it might be fast, there is no option to expand the 2GB of internal memory, it uses onboard graphics at 144MB which eats into this, it only has a single mono speaker for sound, and I think it's so called 'revolutionary' wireless capabilities are over-hyped and nothing we haven't already grown to expect from other suppliers. Further, it only ships with an 80GB 4200rpm hard drive, quite undersized in my opinion for all Apple's talk about data portability and instant access.

A very sore point for me is the total lack of an optical drive. Apple claim this is because it's not needed, users can just wirelessly map the optical drive of a desktop or another laptop and access the disc that way. But I wonder how many users will want to have to depend on a second machine just for this? This will also be quite restraining for those who do not access to such machines, such as students or mobile workers. A USB 'Super-Drive' is available, but this is at an additional cost and is quite cumbersome as it must be placed separately alongside the notebook.

Talking of cost, all this doesn't come cheap with the 80GB hard drive model priced at 1600and the 64GB solid-state drive option 1200more.

For a laptop touted as the new fashion in mobile computing, this is actually quite disappointing and, in my opinion, certainly not a valid justification for its price, or for ditching any existing system in favour of this. It'll be very interesting to see just how many people take up the offer and stick with it.
23rd-May-2007 11:48 pm - Finally, a full featured alternative firmware for the 80GB iPod
Hello.

I just had to post this as it's something we've been waiting for for some time. I usually stop by the Rockbox site every few days or so to get the latest updates and to download the latest firmware for my iPod. And so, today, I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that as of 20:43 UTC this alternative to the Apple stock firmware is finally compatible with the 80GB iPod 5.5 gen. I haven't yet seen any technical details on what adaptations were made to allow this, but I'm trying to find that info out of curiosity.

I would go and update my own 80GB right away,
but I'm honestly quite tired and don't want to inadvertently make a mistake that might cause me to have to start the process all over again.
Oh, and for those that haven't updated or used Rockbox in a while, there's a new version of the bootloader out that you must use. This was released in February 2007, so those who haven't updated their device since before then will find that simply downloading the latest daily build and copying it to the player doesn't work. Luckily, it's quite easy to install the new bootloader, and there's no uninstallation of the old one required. There are also new updated voice files out for those that need or want them.

Well, what are you waiting for? Go and put an end to Apple's bloatedness and inaccessibility now!

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