The future of PCs?
May 29, 2007
Gizmodo : “Here’s a PC with a 1-inch-thick case by Trident, and it’s so quiet and well-hidden that the company calls it “invisible.” You don’t see it? It’s right there, attached to the back of that monitor pictured above. It has the industry-standard VESA mounting holes on either side, so you install it in between a mounting arm and the monitor itself. Its fanless design keeps things super quiet, and you can also put a 40GB hard disk inside.
This PC is not exactly a powerhouse—it has a relatively lame 1.5GHz Via Eden processor on board and is designed for digital signage and retail displays. However, it’s just a hint of how PCs will be embedded and invisible in the years to come. Soon we’ll be knee-deep in ubiquitous computing without even knowing it, where the PCs will be everywhere and appear to be nowhere.“
So the future looks like a crippled, homebrew iMac then?
In English Law I am not sure the suit would be seen as baffling:-
1. Apple represents that its MacBooks can display “x millions” of pixels.
2. Consumer buys Mac on, or partly on that basis.
3. Consumer claims millions of colours not displayed, and therefore cannot use a particular application.
4. The “pixels” claim is therefore a misrepresentation. It is not a mere “puff” or a “boast” ( think along the lines of “Mac’s are just the best machines around”).
The crux seems to me to be that Apple made a technical claim and if the machine is not up to specification then the consumer should be able to return it or make a claim in damages. Just as would be that case if MacBooks were advertised as being sold with 1gig of ram but actually came with 512mb. However……..
….there is a fundamental issue that seems to me to have been overlooked in the lawsuit: does dithering get Apple over the hurdle anyway?
I have my money on Apple.
Does it matter how Apple gets to its millions of colours?
What you see on a display is a mixture of hardware and software working together. Like I know! But that’s how I’d explain it to a judge, and how I guess a judge would see it.
In fact this very proposition is actually part of the Complainants’ case. It is claimed that XP looks much better than OSX when running on a MacBook. I don’t see any mention in the complaint of a failure within OSX/CoreImage or any other part of the OS relating to graphics.
That’s got to be a problem, perhaps a fatal one, for the complainants.
I can imagine an exchange with a judge along the lines of:
Judge: “So Mr. [x], your client’s case is, is it not, that the millions of colours are displayed not by the LCD, but by a process known as dithering? “
Counsel: “Yes M’Lud”
Judge: “And you have asked me to compare the look of XP with OSX. And when we do that, you say, do you not, that we can clearly see how much better XP looks than OSX? So therefore this dithering is not good enough?”
Counsel: “Yes m’Lud”
Judge: “Thank you Mr [x], now leaving aside, for a moment the specification of the LCD, can you take me to the part of your claim where it is stated that representations were made about the graphical capabilities of OSX ?….”
No doubt, people in the US know better than I that often a complaint is less about getting to trial, than it is about making a claim, whipping up some publicity, and hoping that Goliath gets his cheque book out.
Just one finally aside: the latest MacBook’s marketing blurb makes interesting reading:
Now, that’s the sort of wording that keeps lawsuits at arms’ length.
3 gig memory modules for MacBooks
May 21, 2007
A company called OWC is offering memory for the latest MacBooks of up to 3 gig. The first gen MacBook Pro’s memory limit is 2 gig. This intel road map has some unexpected twists and turns.
Hey Apple
May 21, 2007
My MacBook died last night. I got that lovely ticking hard drive sound. It was 6 months old. Tut tut.
MacBook/Pro Display Lawsuit
May 20, 2007
I always thought my MacBook display was ok, much better than my old iBook’s. However, the people bringing this claim beg to differ. What does seem to be clear to me that the early MacBooks were not particularly well made.
The primary allegations are:
1. MacBooks do not display millions of colours as claimed by Apple.
2. MacBooks use “dithering” to trick the eye into believing that millions of colours are being displayed.
3. The net result of 1 and 2 is “grainy” or “sparkly” displays with colour banding problems.
The plaintiffs seek relief based on misleading advertising claims made by Apple.
The plaintiffs are pro users who want to applications like Aperture and Photoshop. The complaint acknowledges that for most non-pro work dithering will not be that apparent. I must admit though that I have always thought both my iMac and MacBook have a certain “milky” image quality. However, that being said they are much better displays than my girlfriend’s Dell and I have no complaints myself.
The most worrying allegation is that Windoze has a much better resolution than OSX when its run on an MacBook. If that’s true Apple has just handed the opposition a much needed propaganda boost. Surely someone at Apple would have spotted of Windoze looked better?
Perhaps Leopard might see better dithering?
MacBook fook ups
May 18, 2007
I love Macs.
No I do.
I do not mind paying a few quid more for a really class product.
But why oh why is my Macbook not that good:-
1. 2gig black: warped case returned within a week – exchanged for new model by vendor.
2. 2gig black: overheating and freezing and returned within a week – exhanged for a new model by vendor (I took a white version this time purely on the basis that this was from the second production batch and would be more reliable).
3 . 6 months go by…..White MacBook (“WMB”) ……..screen developes discolouration. Next, trackpad dies.
4. Vendor takes WMB and replaces screen and trackpad. Replacement screen faulty, does not turn off when MacBook lid shut.
5. Screen replaced. Oh so happy.
6. Tonight I have three pixels on the screen that have turned bright red – no matter what.
FFS
RAM? Matched pairs?
May 18, 2007
I am currently running a 2 Ghz Intel Core Duo MacBook on 1.25 GB 667 Mhz DDR2 SDRAM.
I can’t make head nor tail of this
Not sure the author is confident either.
Anyways, I know one thing, my MacBook is my “main squeeze” but she’s a little, no a lot, underpowered.
At war with my HP Laserjet 3030
May 16, 2007
The HP laserjet 3030 is a mainstay in my office. It’s a cheap and cheerful all-in-one scanner, fax, printer and copier. For faxing, printing and copying it is fine. But why oh why is scanning such a dark art with it? The instructions for saving a scan, as a file are set out in the HP manual, like so:
1. Load the originals in the automatic document feed. Ok not too hard, even for an eejit like me.
2. The manual then says that you need to click “Scan” from within HP director; a preview of the scan will appear. You can then choose “save as” in order to pick your chosen file format.
Not so.
When you click “Scan” you are faced with the scan dialogue box, no preview, and with the hard copy document sat in the document feed.
This is when things get funky. The scan dialogue box has a number of inviting options, including:-
1 . send to (mail, outlook etc);
2. scan and scan all; and
3. some others….
So what to do? My instinct is to choose “Scan/Scan all”. In my experience this results as follows:
1. 30% of the time, the scanner scans the document, gives me a preview and allows me to save as a file;
2. 30% of the time nothing happens and I get a message stating that the file cannot be found or the scanner is busy or nothing at all occurs. In every case I have to force quit and turn the 3030 off at the power switch.
3. The rest of the time the scanner seems to work and then stops mid way through.
I do not understand why 1. above is not repeatable. It seems to me to be absurd that a relatively simple task can lead to such odd outcomes.
The answer seems to be that you have to sit around and wait after pressing “Scan” for your preview. That seems sensible. However, I have just tried that approach and after sitting around for 4 minutes with nothing happening and the “scan all button” pulsing I gave in. “Scan all” worked fine.
I have decided to move as far as possible toward a paperless office. That means I am going to be relying on scans of all my documents and correspondence. It would be unfair to suppose that the 3030 could cope with this, particularly since it has taken me over an hour to scan 6 pages into pdf format today.
I have no idea what to look for. I seem to remember that Fujitsu make good scanners. So it’s research time.
New Macbooks
May 15, 2007
Apple’s a bona fide, paid up member of the “Intel Racing Club” now:-
As an early macbook adopter I got a bit stewed when, within months of buying my Core Duo Macbook it got elbowed out of the way by the Core 2 Duo range. There’s something a bit troubling to me about being the latest thing one minute and not the next. Why? Well it’s not a case of whining (well it is a bit) but it’s more that:
1. Apple’s marketing bods were sat writing the original blurb for the Core Duo and about how this new machine was the newest latest and greatest thing. They new that:
1.1. We Apple loyalists were all thinking well “Apple’s put a lot of time and effort into this and we’ll be buying a product of a lot of hard work and r&d effort and that’s going to be really cutting edge”.
2. In fact what Apple really did was sell us a “beta” version of the MacBook. My first two “blackmacbooks” were warped and overheating within a fortnight and went back. I flipped down to the white 2ghz model, which has, within its first year had a replacement keyboard, trackpad and screen (two screens to be fair, one replacement was missing the magnet that runs down the screen edge, meaning that the screen stayed on even with the lid shut).
It seemed to me that the PPC range allowed Mac users a certain isolation from the constant upgrading and reavamping that went on with pentiums. Why? The speed thing was not as much of an issue. When I bought my first iBook I knew the Ghz reading was not as high as a comparable windoze machine. However, I also knew straight comparisons were misleading and it was roughly up to the same spec. Now the differences in spec are there for everyone to see.
Now we are following the Intel roadmap it seems we are on the neverending Intel racetrack: CoreDuo, Core2Duo, Santa-pod-Rosas bla bla bla.
At least this new macbook has 1gig of ram Apple has to know that the minimum for a stock machine of any credibility these days. But be that as it may I still think the reliance on the Intel GMA 950 graphics processor is a mistake. My coreduo has 1gig of ram and it starts getting very hot and noisy playing youtube clips. I had a try at playing World of Warcraft on it: impossible. Why Apple does not go with a radeon mobility or something similar I don’t get.
Plus, if Apple’s going to get away with being overpriced in comparision with other brands, style and a great OS are going to have to be supplemented by a better production standards when it comes to hardware. At the moment I really wish I could port OSX onto a Dell, yes they are pretty useless looking bits of kit, but they are cheap, solidly made and are priced cheaply enough that I would not mind the thought of upgrading more regularly or being outmoded so quickly.
gear
May 15, 2007
In the office I use a Power Mac G5, dual core 2ghz. This is my main office machine. It has the basic 180gig hard drive with a second 250 gig back up. It has 3.5gig of ram. After 2 and a half years this is still a pretty impressive piece of kit. I hope I can get another two years out of it. I don’t see why not as it outperforms both of the Macintels I use at home.
