AppleGazette’s Kevin Whipps addresses the quandary over how to choose between a MacBook and a MacBook Pro, noting that it used to be that if you wanted a 13-inch Mac laptop (excluding the MacBook Air), the only option was the original MacBook. Now with a 13-inch aluminum MacBook Pro on the market, the decision has become more complex.

Kevin allows that the 13″ MacBook Pro doesn’t give you a lot more value for your dollar, comparatively. I beg to differ, but there’s a large element of subjectivity in any such judgment, with many variables such as how much you value FireWire support (some of us a lot), how important a SD Card slot is to your needs, and whether the premium look, fit, finish, and durability of the Pro’s aluminum unibody construction justifies the 20 percent higher price.

20 Percent Higher Price — 20 Percent More Value?

Personally, I think these factors do add up to 20 percent more real value and then some, although Kevin has a point about the two machines being pretty much clones when it comes to core computing power. For example, it now appears that even Apple’s nominal 4GB maximum RAM upgrade spec for the MacBook is completely arbitrary. OWC is offering 8GB memory upgrade kits for the plastic unibody MacBook.

The MacBook comes with a 250GB hard drive, which is more than respectable for standard equipment, especially since the 13″ MacBook Pro’s base $1,199 model comes with a more modest 160GB drive. With the MacBook, 320GB and 500GB drives are BTO options, but that bumps the price to MacBook Pro levels.

The Case for the 15″ MacBook Pro

Kevin actually includes the 15″ MacBook Pro in his comparison, noting that at 5.5 pounds, the unibody 15-incher is not a whole lot heavier than the 13″ MacBook and MacBook Pro units at 4.7lb. and 4.5lb. respectively, and offers much more expansive screen real estate at its 1440 x 900 resolution. Being a former 17″ PowerBook user who recently switched from the big, old ‘Book’s 1440 x 900 display to an aluminum unibody MacBook’s more cramped 1280 x 800 13.3″ screen, I have to agree, and the latest $1,699 entry-level 15″ Pro is especially price-enticing.

However, note well that if you need the heavy-duty graphics support provided by the discrete NVIDIA 9600M GT GPU with 256MB of dedicated VRAM, you’re still going to have to pony up $1,999 for the middle-model 2.66GHz 15″ Pro. The $1,699 unit is essentially identical in power to the high-end $1,499 13″ MacBook Pro, and has only the integrated NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics chipset (which should be more than adequate if you’re not into high-end graphics or video, or serious gaming) that annexes up to 256MB of your system RAM for video support.

A No-Brainer

Personally, while I find the new polycarbonate unibody MacBook very attractive — a quantum improvement over the old, iBook-esque MacBook form factor — my recommendation remains if you can somehow scratch up the extra $200, the base 2.26GB MacBook Pro 13″ represents the zenith of value and power for the money that Apple has ever offered in a portable computer, and if you’re willing to go with an Apple Certified Refurbished unit, the Apple Store currently has them available for the same $999 price as the new plastic MacBook, with the same warranty and AppleCare eligibility.

For me, it’s a no-brainer.

The new plastic unibody MacBook is arguably the second-best MacBook model Apple has produced yet (trumped only by the late 2008 aluminum unibody MacBook). So why am I finding myself unexpectedly underwhelmed and disappointed with it?

When rumors began circulating in late summer about an imminent new unibody MacBook in polycarbonate plastic. Being a consummate Apple laptop aficionado, I was excited. Speculation that it would sell in the $700 – $800 range further whetted my anticipation but I was also expecting something insanely great. After all, Apple could build on what it had learned making polycarbonate MacBooks for three and half years (the best-selling Mac model ever) combined with the unibody engineering of the MacBook Pros adapted to plastic materials.

Instead of Insanely Great, We Get…OK

However, instead of insanely great, we get OK — or perhaps just a bit more than OK. I like it a lot better than the original MacBook, but there’s nothing really exciting or special to get up in the night and write home about. It’s just a good, solid-performing machine with better case engineering and build quality than its predecessor, and better-looking, but alloyed with some strange compromises that undermine its desirability and the “must-have” factor.

The case aesthetics are definitely a major step up from the iBook-esque previous model, whose looks were getting tired after eight and a half years. I like white computers and I like glossy finishes, and this has both, although I think Apple is blowing an opportunity by not offering it in black as well, and the high gloss is proving quite controversial with some.

I think the MacBook’s all-white keyboard looks more attractive and inviting, and will be easier to see (I’m not a touch typist), than the black keys on my aluminum Macbook, which are probably my unfavorite element of its generally pleasing appearance.

As for robustness, I haven’t got my hands on one yet, being out here in the Nova Scotia backwoods 150 miles from the nearest Apple reseller, but reportedly this new unibody machine has a solid feel, with no case flexibility or squeaks and rattles, and excellent panel fits, which is what I would expect based on my own aluminum unibody machine. Actually, the new MacBook’s rubbery-coated bottom panel is an aluminum stamping.

True Mediocrity Rears its Ugly Head

On the downside, true mediocrity rears its ugly head in the context of I/O connectivity and expansion, with an impoverished port array comprised of two USB ports (only one fully powered), Ethernet, a mini DisplayPort a combo headphone/line-in port (you can’t use both earphones and a microphone at the same time) and a security slot. No FireWire and, most bizarrely, no SD card slot (“Pro feature?” — get real Apple). No HDMI either.

FireWire and no expansion headroom are the big disappointments to me. I’m living daily with the vicissitudes of FireWirelessness with my aluminum unibody MacBook, and I’m not cheerily disposed, but Apple seems determined to dump FireWire wherever it can get away with it. When USB 3.0 is finally incorporated, maybe there will be a case for dropping FireWire, but USB 2.0 is an abominably lame and crippled substitute at this point. I’m dumbfounded that Apple didn’t learn its lesson from the chorus of boos when it tried that with the aluminum MacBook (OK, so I bought one anyway, and I like it almost unreservedly except for the FireWire crippling, but that really rankles).

No Legitimate Excuse

As for no expansion, there’s no legitimate excuse. Even the humblest tiny little $300 PC netbooks comes equipped with SD Card readers, and often three USB ports as well. There’s no satisfactory excuse for Apple leaving the SD Card slot out of the new MacBook and providing a measly two USB ports — only one of them delivering full bus power. My speculative deduction is that it’s just Apple contriving to put some distance between the MacBook and the more expensive 13″ MacBook Pro specs-wise.

Ample Power

In the positive column, the new MacBook’s internals pretty much match the current base 13-inch MacBook Pro’s: a 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo with a 3MB L2 cache, a 1066MHz frontside bus and 2GB of standard RAM, and the ubiquitous NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics chipset, as well as a similar LED backlit display — the only difference being that the Pro has a 60 percent greater color gamut. Power-wise, I would find it more than satisfactory, having no complaints in that department about my 2.0GHz MacBook.

Then there’s the built-in, non swappable battery, which I have definitely mixed feelings about. Apple rates it at seven hours runtime, but a real-world four-to-five hours will be experienced more typically, after which you have to find a power outlet. I prefer swappable batteries.

In summary, while I want to like this new MacBook, I don’t find its $200 lower price nearly compelling enough to even tempt me to not opt instead for the $1,199 13-inch MacBook Pro with its SD card slot, FireWire port, brighter, better color gamut display backlit keyboard, and aluminum case, Certified Refurbished examples of which should be available for about the same price as a new unibody MacBook.

If this machine sold for, say, $799, it would be a whole different value equation — an opportunity missed in my estimation, although it’s harder and harder to argue with Apple’s pricing and marketing strategy given its latest quarterly financial results. I think the new MacBook will continue to be a strong seller for Apple, but I wish it would have tried a little harder with this one, though. Don’t you?

Apple is putting a lot of emphasis on its “green” initiatives lately. But is it the real deal?

For example, Apple’s new energy efficiency page says that because 53 percent of Apple’s greenhouse gas emissions are a result of the power its products consume, it’s designing these products to be as energy efficient as possible employing three strategies to reduce energy consumption: more efficient power supplies, components that require less power, and power management software. Every new Mac is claimed to meet the strict low-power requirements of the Energy Star specification.

However, the operative questions are how much does “green computing” matter to consumers, and whether corporate marketing of “green” IT devices amounts to more image-spinning than substance.

Only the Bare Minimum?

Some critics, such as MacNewsWorld’s Rob Enderle accuse Apple of doing the “barest minimum necessary” to justify its “green” claims — indeed less than its major competitors, but viewed pragmatically that’s a sensible approach because based on his research into the matter, in Enderle’s view Apple’s customers mostly don’t care. Is that an accurate assessment, or exaggeratedly jaundiced? After all, environmentalist poster boy Al Gore sits on Apple’s board of directors.

Enderle claims that Apple tried to ignore green computing entirely until the eco-activist organization Greenpeace began relentlessly slagging the company as an environmental foot-dragger and laggard.

Addressing Apple’s Environmental Footprint

Apple’s website highlights several key areas in which it’s addressing its environmental footprint, citing engineering innovations such as the unibody MacBooks, whose light, fully recyclable housing is sculpted from a single billet of aluminum, and the lightness of the current iMacs which contain less than 20 pounds of materials.

Apple also claims to be at the industry forefront in eliminating toxic chemicals, such as arsenic, brominated flame retardants (BFRs), mercury, phthalates, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) from its products.

Cupertino has reduced packaging bulk, and, somewhat questionably in my view, bundles fewer peripherals with its systems, which arguably has some minimal environmental benefit, but also saves Apple a fair bit of money while diminishing value to the consumer of what is a premium-priced product.

Diminishing Value for Minimal Environmental Benefit

For example, the new WallStreet PowerBook I bought in 1999 came with video, Ethernet, and modem cables and a decent hard copy manual. To connect the unibody MacBook I bought this year to an external monitor I need one of several varieties of Mini DisplayPort adapters, have to supply my own Ethernet cable, was obliged to buy a USB modem, and documentation amounted to a quick start pamphlet. Environmental sensibilities notwithstanding, I don’t perceive this as progress.

Apple’s claims of cleaning up its environmental footprint act do have substance in terms of operational energy consumption. One reason using laptops has long appealed to me is that because they must be able to operate on battery power, they’re engineered for energy efficiency. However, even Apple’s mass market desktops have very decent energy consumption profiles these days, with iMacs reportedly using about as much energy as a 60-watt lightbulb, and Mac minis substantially less than that.

How Much Does the Average Mac-buyer Care?

But how much does the average Mac-buyer care? I’ve been almost exclusively a laptop user for the past 13 years, but even back when I used desktops, I almost always shut them down if I would be away from the keyboard for a half-hour or more. My observation was that most people were inclined to just leave their computers up and running all day, and even in many instances all night as well.

My inference, not only in the context of personal computers and other IT devices, is that while people like to think of themselves as being “green” and environmentally conscientious, their resolve tends to flag quickly when reducing their personal environmental footprint begins to involve more than minimal inconvenience and/or significantly increased cost, so that for many a commitment to “greenness” is heavier on politically correct rhetoric and feel-good exercises that let one imagine they’re “doing something” virtuous to save the planet with empty symbolic gestures rather than substantive behavior changes, like, say, taking fewer showers or washing clothes less often, or shutting off (or sleeping) their computer when not using it.

A Pew Research study found the average North American’s definition of what constitutes “necessity” these days includes a car (91 percent), washer (90 percent), dryer (83 percent), home air conditioning (83 percent), microwave (68 percent), TV (64 percent), car air conditioning (59 percent), and home computers (51 percent). Substantial minorities also included cell phone (49 percent), dishwasher (35 percent), cable or satellite TV (33 percent), and high-speed Internet (29 percent), and a few even considered a flat screen TV (5 percent) and an iPod (3 percent) “necessities.”

Am I being overly cynical? How much do Apple’s and the other computer-makers’ green efforts impact your buying intentions and user behavior?

ChannelWeb’s Steven Burke says that in the manifold comparisons of Windows 7 with Snow Leopard burning up the Web, what all the reviewers and pundits seem to be forgetting is that it’s not about the operating system, which he maintains is simply the engine that runs the PC. As Burke puts it, you don’t go into a car dealership and buy an engine. You buy a car, and in his opinion, starting October 22, there will be no better ride available for the money than Windows 7.

Burke leans heavily on the initial purchase price angle, noting that an Apple Mac Pro desktop he cites as an example is nearly four times the price of an HP Pavilion, asking rhetorically whether anyone really believes the Mac is four times better than the HP Pavilion? I think some of us would argue that the value is there under the right circumstances, but it would’ve been more relevant to compare a mainstream Mac model such as the iMac or MacBook to their still admittedly cheaper, but not so dramatically so, Windows competition.

Apple Ignoring “Economic Reality?”

Burke accuses Apple and company CEO Steve Jobs of not considering “economic reality,” and having no interest in producing mass-market PCs, which is fair comment I suppose. However I’m constrained to observe that as Forbes’ Brian Caulfield pointed out last weekend, over the past year, banks have collapsed, PC sales have plummeted, unemployment has soared, and Steve Jobs went on mysterious medical leave for a liver transplant, but meanwhile Apple has thrived through all this with sales and earnings down less than everyone else in the industry and actually up year-over-year — on Monday reporting the company’s best quarter ever and a net quarterly profit of $1.67 billion on revenues of $9.87 billion. Consequently the question is begged as to who is and is not considering economic reality.

Netbook Sales Soar But Profitability Fizzles

NPD Group’s DisplaySearch Q2 ‘09 PC shipment data released last week estimated that netbook sales soared a whopping 264 percent year-over-year in the quarter, accounting for 22.2 percent of overall PC sales, but woefully for PC manufacturers and for Microsoft — only 11.7 percent of revenues. Overall PC laptop sales (excluding netbooks) declined 14 percent and PC laptop average selling prices dropped to $688 in Q2 2009 from $704 in Q1 2009 and from $849 in Q2 2008.

Apple, on the other hand, eased prices somewhat on entry level MacBook Pro models in all three sizes while holding the $999 price point for its price leader white MacBook, and is still enjoying healthy sales and profits on its laptops. Even the most substantial MacBook Pro price cut — $400 on the base 15″ model — was partly compensated by substituting an SD Card slot for the preceding model’s ExpressCard slot, and leaving out the discrete NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT graphics processor unit with its 256MB of dedicated VRAM in the new price-leader model, so I doubt that Apple has taken a major profitability hit. It’s more about marketing refocus.

Burke says Jobs wants to build “Rolls Royces,” not “Fords” and for him it was never about putting a PC on every desktop, while Microsoft has always had more of a Henry Ford style mass production bent. Again, partially true I suppose, although it doesn’t hold up particularly well in the iPod and iPhone context, and I don’t think Mr. Jobs has anything against growing market share provided he can do it without compromising quality standards or profitability, as his “there are some markets Apple doesn’t choose to serve” comment a year ago attests.

Simplistic Fixation On Initial Purchase Cost

I don’t gainsay that Windows Vista was a gift to Apple that just kept on giving, or that Windows 7 will prove much stiffer competition for OS X, but I think Burke is overstating his case in contending that Apple’s market share gains over the past several years are now destined to evaporate. To borrow his own analogy, it’s the whole car, not just the engine, and many of us perceive the Mac as being not only a smoother, better-handling ride, but also a better value in a whole raft of contexts that transcend simplistic fixation on initial purchase cost. CNET’s Dong Ngo reports that Snow Leopard consistently beats Windows 7 in many general performance areas including boot up time and battery charge life in laptops, for example.

Burke says PCs running Windows 7 are for “the masses” while Macs running OS X are for “the rich.” I’m not rich by the wildest stretch and neither are most of the other Mac-users I know. I do like to think that I appreciate value, a superior user experience, lower total cost of ownership, and elegance of form and execution, and that while Windows 7 will narrow the gap somewhat, it will fall well short of closing it.

I usually have at least three browsers open at any time. One will be a Mozilla Gecko app (Firefox, Camino, or SeaMonkey) and one an Apple WebKit based program (Stainless, Cruz, iCab, Shiira, OmniWeb, or especially since Safari 4 was released, Safari itself). Interestingly, I find I like Safari 4 better on my old Pismo PowerBooks running OS 10.4.11 than I do under Leopard on my Core 2 Duo MacBook where Stainless tends to get the nod.

However, the browser I consistently use more than all of the others combined is Opera, and it’s an abiding puzzlement to me as to why Opera has thus far been unable to carve out a more substantial market niche in North America.

According to NetApplications’ HitsLink Market Share statistics watch for August, Opera now has a cumulative global two percent share (2.35 percent when Opera Mini is included) behind Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Firefox, Apple’s Safari, and Google’s Chrome, thanks largely to its popularity in Eastern Europe and Asia, where it has about four percent of the market. Opera claims that in some regions of the globe, such as Russia, Ukraine and parts of Europe, it is now the most popular browser with growth last year of 67 percent and roughly 100 million users worldwide (translation into 39 languages probably doesn’t hurt either). But its penetration in the U.S. and Canada is more like one percent. Indeed, Google’s Chrome, still a beta with no general release Mac version, has now bumped Opera from forth to fifth place in the U.S. browser market.

“The reality is that in the U.S. we have some work to do,” Opera boss Jon von Tetzchner recently told BBC News.

Opera 10 reportedly hit 10 million downloads in its first week, so it will be interesting to see how that plays out in the September Hitslink stats, but there’s no indication that Opera 10 is taking the U.S. market by storm.

Personally, I warmed slowly to Opera, which has been around since 1994, and released its first Mac versions in the late ’90s, at which time it had an interesting interface and some unique features, but was pretty awful performance-wise. However, Opera’s Mac support is now impressively strong, and since the release of Opera 8, it’s been a fixture on my desktop, and most of the time it’s the browser I reach for first for general surfing and a lot of my work-related browsing as well.

Probably one of the things about Opera that handicaps it in North America is that it’s a bit — and in some instances more than a bit — different from other browsers, which is partly why I like it, but North American consumers tend to be conformists, which explains why Windows has 90-odd percent of the desktop operating system market. When there’s the slightest learning curve to scale, many people balk. With Opera, the learning curve is not steep, but it’s there.

Have you given Opera a try? Did you stick with it? Why or why not?

MacNewsWorld’s Chris Maxcer addresses the abiding conundrum of whether to upgrade one’s existing system or buy a new Mac, noting that when you’ve had your Mac long enough, it’s only natural to start thinking about more speed and more memory.

So the operative question is whether to dig deep and go with a full hardware upgrade, or spend much less to upgrade a few select parts that will help bring your aging ‘Book back closer to contemporary standards of performance — is it worth upgrading an existing Apple notebook with more RAM and a new hard drive — or more sensible to simply buy a new one?

I would say it depends on the individual machine. I’m typing this post on a nine-year-old Pismo PowerBook that’s been considerably breathed-on, with processor, hard drive, optical drive, RAM, and wireless upgrades, and I even have a FireWire 400 PC Card adapter for it. But on the other hand, I have a six month old unibody PowerBook, with an up-front upgrade to 4GB of RAM, and it’s many magnitudes superior to the Pismo in objective terms.

Maxer says he tends to buy a new PowerBook, iBook, or MacBook every two years or so, usually around the 16-month point. I provisionally shoot for three year system upgrade intervals, but this Pismo is well outside that envelope, and still my second-most-used computer. Despite being more than a bit power challenged, and limited to OS X 10.4 Tiger, it’s such a likable tool that I’m unmotivated to move on to using, say, my 17″ PowerBook G4 as my number two laptop.

I am somewhat puzzled by Maxcer’s suggestion that, while the new MacBook Pro models are fantastic, they don’t seem quite worth the cost just yet. My contention would be the diametric contrary — the current low end 13″ and 15″ unibody MacBook Pros are the most rip-roaring value-for-the-money bargains Apple has ever produced.

However, Maxcer says he still likes his black 2.4GHz MacBook, notwithstanding its poky Intel GMA X3100 integrated graphic chipset that pales by comparison with the powerful Nvidia 9400M integrated graphics chipsets in the new MacBook Pros, but is finding the 250 GB hard drive way to cramped for his needs, and 2GB of RAM isn’t quite enough either.

Good on Chris. I’m all for squeezing every bit of useful service life out of a Mac before upgrading to a new system, so long as one isn’t terribly compromised by performance limitations for things one wants to do. So if I were in Chris’s shoes with a nice black MacBook that I was fond of, I’d buy a bigger hard drive and double the RAM — both easy and relatively inexpensive upgrades for that machine — and hang on to it for a while. The only semi-specialized tool you’ll need for these upgrades is a Torx T8 screwdriver, which can be hard to track down on short notice (I have a nice one I got from Wegener Media) and some very small Philips screwdrivers.

I’d love to have a new 13″ MacBook Pro with FireWire and a SD Card slot, but my plan is to still go to early 2012 with my current MacBook, although a new inexpensive polycarbonate MacBook, provided it has those features, could test my holdout resolve.

Chris decided to proceed with a mid-life upgrade for the old MacBook, going with a Western Digital Scorpio Black 320GB 7,200RPM drive, with 16MB of cache, and bumping the RAM spec. with a $54 Kingston 4GB kit, which was considerably cheaper than I paid for a 4GB upgrade kit from Other World Computing (currently $87.99) for my MacBook last spring. The BlackBook would need DDR2 RAM, while my unibody machine uses DDR3, but a 4GB DDR2 kit at OWC is still $78.97.

With the great deal he got on the Kingston RAM, Chris’s memory and storage upgrade of the BlackBook came to a pretty digestible $130, which seems like good value to me, although Chris says performance gains realized are not as dramatic as he’d anticipated, and he thinks if he was doing it over, he’d opt for a 500GB 5,400RPM drive instead, noting that the 7,200RPM Scorpio’s speed causes a minor but annoying vibration. He also says that upgrading the OS to Snow Leopard provided a more substantial performance boost than the new hardware bits did.

I also expect he may notice more subtle and welcome improvements down the road. With its stock 2GB of RAM, my MacBook was a decent performer, but it’s even better with 4GB, and while pre-upgrade I had to restart the laptop every two weeks or so to freshen the memory heap, with 4GB I can go for a month or more between restarts.

Frankly, with new (or even better, refurbished late model) Mac laptop prices plumbing historical lows, and the extreme desirability of the unibody notebooks in particular, it’s harder to make a compelling argument for upgrading an older Mac rather than applying the cost of that to a new purchase, especially if you can sell your present machine for a respectable price.

What do you think? Better to hang on to a spruced-up known quantity, or go new/refurb with a fresh warranty and the latest feature set?

Writing on Fast Company, Farhad Manjoo says that not long ago, he got his hands on “one of the slowest, ugliest, and least-user-friendly Macintosh laptops the world has ever seen” — and he loves it, since it sports a couple of features that others can’t match. It’s tinier and lighter than Apple’s pricey MacBook Air, and even better, having cost him only about $500, a third of Apple’s tariff for the most inexpensive Air.

This laptop is of course a “Hackintosh” — specifically a 9-inch Dell netbook Farhad has hacked to run Apple’s Mac OS X. He notes that since Apple adapted its elegant OS to run on Intel’s processors, hackers have been diligently breaking down the walls between Macs and PCs.
My daughter, a lifelong Mac fanatic, is one of them, having been happily running OS X — currently Leopard — on a 2.6 GHz Pentium 4 desktop box for the past three years and finding it more than satisfactory. I’ve tried out this machine, and it’s impressively fast. However, my daughter is an accomplished computer tech who’s been able to deal with the necessary tweaking and technical tedium of getting OS X up and running reliably on her bargain basement Dell.

Not for the Faint of Heart

Farhad Manjoo notes that, no surprise, Apple doesn’t look kindly on the Hackintosh movement, but this evidently hasn’t slowed the movement’s momentum, and Mac hackers, some on constrained budgets like my daughter, have discovered that they can build precisely the features and products they want into a custom desktop or laptop model of a type and price point Apple doesn’t choose to offer and save a boatload of money in the process.

“We don’t know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that,” CEO Steve Jobs observed last October. That may be all well and good, but there are an awful lot of folks out there these days who want a $500 computer, or indeed in today’s snakebit economy simply can’t afford a higher price of entry, or who really want a netbook-sized laptop, which is one of the market categories Apple has chosen not to serve, at least yet. And its an exaggeration to insist that all sub-$500 computers are necessarily “junk.” Legions of satisfied netbook users contend otherwise.

Manjoo warns, and my daughter’s experience underscores this, that Mac hacking is not for dilettantes or the faint-hearted, and there are plenty of potential technical hurdles and pitfalls to be overcome, but there is support available from the fraternity (and in some instances sorority) of experts populating online forums who’ve probably encountered — and solved — the problems that may be your current stumbling-blocks.

But is it Ethical

There is of course the ethics question. Installing OS X on a non-Apple computer is a direct violation of Apple’s End User Licensing Agreement. My daughter has been encouraging me to get a PC laptop and let her install OS X on it for me, but while I profoundly disagree with the thrust, extent, and spirit of current copyright regulations, especially the execrable and draconian DCMA, it’s still the law, which I personally prefer to stay on the right side of, although I don’t pass any judgment on those who are exercising civil disobedience against what they (and I) consider unjustly excessive intellectual property end user restrictions.

I also understand and appreciate that if Apple were to have a change of heart and authorize the Mac OS for installation on non-Apple PC hardware, it could very well spell the end of Apple-branded computers. This very nearly happened in the mid-’90s with previous Apple CEO Gil Amelio’s near catastrophic experiment with Mac OS licensing to third-party clonemakers. The latter made some very attractive machines. I still have a UMAX SuperMac S-900 that was a formidable piece of work in the context of the era, in many ways outdoing the Apple PowerMac 9500 and 9600 that competed against it at higher prices.

So this is definitely one of those matters where the “be careful what you wish for” axiom applies. It would be neat to be able to buy a Dell or Asus laptop, some models of which I personally find quite enticing — and not just because of prices. However, I would hate for the ability of Apple to keep rolling out sublimely elegant and delightful machinery like my unibody MacBook to be compromised because of a bleeding away of Mac OS users and profitability to cheaper PC boxes.

How about you? Do you think Apple should license Mac OS X? How about the ethics of hackintoshing?

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the original release of the Macintosh Portable — the first truly untethered Mac, thanks to its internal battery.

There’s a quote attributed to Steve Jobs: “Do not trust a computer that you cannot lift.” The original compact desktop Macs were offered with an optional carrying case, and some pioneer Mac-users did lug them around, but analogous to the tiny Mac mini today, they couldn’t be considered truly portable due to the necessity of a wall-current umbilical.

The Mac Portable development project was launched in 1986, not long before Steve Jobs’ departure from Apple, and the product was first released for sale on September 20, 1989. It was featured on the cover of the November 1989 edition of MacUser magazine, which called it “by far the most complex piece of machinery devised by sale by Apple computer.”

While it incorporated a laptop-style foldable form factor with a front-mounted carry handle/lockdown lever, the Mac Portable weighed only about a pound less than contemporaneous Mac Compact desktops — a hefty 16 pounds, due partly to it having a robust lead-acid battery. It wasn’t cheap either, selling for a likewise heavyweight $6,500 — or $7,300 with an optional hard drive.

Internally, the Mac Portable had a 16MHz Motorola 68HC000 processor chip, an internal 1.4MB 3.5-inch floppy drive, a 40MB 3.5″ hard drive, and a whopping 1MB of RAM, expandable to 9MB but unfortunately in an oddball 30ns SRAM card (one slot) module format. The monitor screen was a crisp 9.8″ 1-bit active matrix, 640×400, LCD — initially without backlighting — and there was also a video output port for driving an external monitor. The upside of that heavy lead-acid battery was a very respectable five-to-10 hour charge life.

Also included were an ADB port for a keyboard and mouse, DIN-8 serial ports for printer and modem connections, and a DB-25 SCSI connector. An internal modem was optional. An interesting trivia note is that the Portable was the first Mac to ship with a pre-formatted hard drive and a pre-installed operating system.

Apple added a backlight to the Macintosh Portable in February 1991 and also increased the standard RAM to 2MB or 4MB, changed the RAM ceiling to 8MB, and replaced the expensive SRAM chips with less-expensive pseudo-SRAM, although the pseudo-SRAM and backlighting reduced battery life.

The Mac Portable was replaced by the PowerBook models 100, 140, and 170 in October 1991 — the 100 slimmed down to five pounds — launching the modern laptop computer era with a form factor essentially the same as the one still dominant today. However, the Portable gets credit for pioneering the battery-powered Mac concept. Happy Anniversary!

OS X Liger?

Now that Snow Leopard is on the prowl, thoughts turn to what Mac OS 10.7 might be called.

When it was announced that Mac OS 10.6 would be christened “Snow Leopard,” there was some speculation that Apple was running out of big cat names for its OS X versions. OS X 10.1 was Puma, 10.2 Jaguar, 10.3 Panther, 10.4 Tiger, 10.5 Leopard, and 10.6 is Snow Leopard.

More likely is that Apple wanted to emphasize that 10.6 would not be a major new features upgrade (hence the relatively modest price of $29.95), but rather pretty much a code-slimming and streamlining revision of OS 10.5 Leopard, with Power PC support excised. That would make a name somewhat similar to OS 10.5 logical (although the Snow Leopard is actually a completely different species from Leopard).

There’s no danger of Apple running out of cat names anytime soon. According to one wild cat species resource site, there are 36 distinct species of non-domestic cats, although some are concededly so obscure that they wouldn’t be suitable for an operating system moniker (Jaguarundi, anyone?).

One cat name I like is Cougar, although an objection might be that it’s a synonym for Puma, which has already been used for OS 10.1, but then so is Panther in its North American context. The largest wild cat species on this continent is variously known as Cougar, Puma, Mountain Lion, Panther, Painter, and Catamount plus reportedly several dozen other less-widely used names that have been recorded across North and South America.

If Apple wanted a particularly exotic variant, they might consider Eastern Cougar, referencing cats some contend still range in small numbers east of the Mississippi River in the U.S., and Canada — an assertion that remains to be scientifically verified.

Perhaps the most likely not-yet-used for an OS X version would be Cheetah, with the positive association of being the fastest animal on the planet. Running flat out, the fastest horses might hit about 43 miles per hour, while a cheetah can touch 70 MPH in short bursts. Earlier this month a cheetah named Sarah, whose home is the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, broke the world cheetah speed record in the 100-meter dash , covering the distance in 6.16 seconds — .06 seconds off the previous record set in 2001 by a cheetah living in South Africa.

Other Mac OS name candidates would be Ocelot, a primarily South and Central American cat that also ranges into Mexico and as far north as Texas, and the medium-sized North American Lynx and Bobcat. There’s Wildcat too, a name used by Grumman for a World War II vintage naval fighter aircraft, and of course “the king of beasts” — Lion, which for some reason hasn’t been used on an OS X version yet.

Still plenty of cat names to chose from. What’s your preference for OS 10.7?

Photo courtesy of allwest44.

Right on schedule, Opera released Opera 10 for download last week, and, as expected, it’s a solid and lively performer — no major visible changes from the late betas and release candidate builds I’ve been reporting regularly. Opera 10 has been my default browser on all three of my production Macs for the past six months or more, ever since the first public alpha level preview was released, and it’s by far the best Opera yet.

Opera, which supports the Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux platforms, is the fifth most popular browser on the planet according to NetApplications HitsLink stats for August, trailing Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Google’s as yet Windows-only Chrome. But it’s not far behind Chrome if you include the Opera Mini mobile version with the main browser suite app. Given my abiding enthusiasm for this browser, I hope that this version 10 release will enhance Opera’s prospects even further. It’s well-deserved given Opera’s history of solid innovation.

It was one of the first, if not the first, with session restore, tabbed browsing, and tab thumbnail previews. Not to mention, its Speed Dial thumbnail bookmark feature was the model for Safari 4’s Top Sites feature. Some Opera features, such as its built-in and fully integrated BitTorrent download client and mouse gestures support have not yet been adopted by Opera’s competitors, and along with Mozilla’s SeaMonkey it’s the last of the suite browsers with a built in POP 3 email client module.

Opera 10 is speedy, with Opera claiming up to 40 percent better performance on pages such as Gmail and Facebook, however my seat-of-the-pants impression is that Safari currently has the speed edge and reportedly Chrome is even faster, but Opera 10 is certainly no slouch.

In terms of looks, Opera 10 gets a fresh look and feel, and a new application icon designed by Oleg Melnychuk. The red “O” will continue to represent Opera, but has now received a facelift.

Learn more about the features that make Opera unique here and go ahead and download it for free.

Do you disguise your MacBook as a security measure? A couple of computer case makers think it’s an effective strategy.

Mitemite’s Newspaper MacBook Sleeve is a computer bag made from plasticized fabric and designed to thwart computer theft by camouflaging your MacBook Pro as a folded newspaper. The sleeve measures 37.7cm x 27.5cm x 3.4cm and is available masquerading as any of five different newspapers in various languages (including the Herald Tribune in English).

The sleeve incorporates a removable zip/metal chain handle and sells for €60 or roughly $86 plus shipping.

The MiteMite sleeve is getting some competition from a Rome, Italy, based artisan firm called ItaliaCraft which is also offering a newspaper motif sleeve for the MacBook Air.

The custom made ItaliaCraft sleeve is woven in slightly off-white non-bleed cotton/linen blend fabric pre-washed by the craftsperson, with black linen padded backing and double-stitched with high quality German thread and with all inner seams serged flat. No wool is used in order to limit static electricity.

The ItaliaCraft sleeve can also serve as a comfort pad when you’re using the computer on your lap. Free monogramming is also offered.

The price is $62.00 and international flat rate shipping is available for as little as $8.

I expect this ploy might actually work. Nobody steals old newspapers or pays much attention to piles of papers in general. When my daughter was at university, her apartment was broken into and robbed. She lost her digital camera and several other minor valuables, but the most valuable item in the apartment, her then-new white G4 iBook, which happened to be stacked in a pile of papers in plain sight, went unnoticed by the thief, which was cause for a bit of mitigating satisfaction.

Potential flaws in the strategy might be greater risk of misplacing the sleeve with MacBook in situ, or the more horrific possibility of an over-zealous cleaner-upper including the faux newspaper with a pile of real newspapers headed for recycling or the landfill. I think I recall someone reporting something like that happening with one of the early MacBook Airs, and it wasn’t even in a camouflage case — just buried in a pile of papers that got chucked.

Cheaper alternatives, although not as elegant or protective, would be to carry a MacBook Air in a FedEx box or envelope, one of those kraft button & string closure portfolio envelopes, or even a pizza box, although the latter would pose an even greater hazard of being mistaken for actual garbage.

What do you think? Brilliant idea or gimmick?

iPhoto is OK, especially if you like lots of automation when managing your image files, but it’s not as likely to appeal to pros or serious amateurs. Some will use Apple’s Aperture or Adobe’s Lightroom, but there’s another photo management solution you may already have on your hard drive.

I’m talking about Adobe’s Bridge utility, a photo file browser bundled with CS3 and CS4, and in a slightly feature-reduced version, with Photoshop Elements 6 (PSE). I prefer Bridge’s more manual control and configuration options to iPhoto’s automation of how you browse, organize, delete, search, view, edit, and apply metadata to your image files.

Photoshop is too expensive for most, but its consumer version, Photoshop Elements, retains much of the power and functionality of the full version at a relatively low price. The Bridge version Mac PSE users get lacks only a few esoteric bits, like the “meetings” feature that supports project collaboration and the ability to apply camera RAW settings to groups of photos or to access the RAW converter directly.

When you access the Bridge from PSE (File Menu — “Browse With Bridge”), the Elements interface hides and the Bridge interface appears, allowing you to display folder icons or content thumbnails. Six interface layouts are available, with several panels — called Workspaces — that help you find and preview photos, review associated metadata, and so on. You can use the predefined panels, or create your own custom Workspace.

Another Bridge feature, “Stacks,” organizes your photos into stacks of images. It lets you keep each series of photos in a single spot in Bridge, making it easier and faster to find the ones you want. Bridge also lets you apply keywords to help organize photos in growing photo libraries. In the Keywords panel you can create and assign terms to photos, allowing you to instantly filter your library.

There’s also Collections, which allows you to save groups of photos for quick access, or to gather shots you want to use in a project. For example, if you have several cameras, you can segregate your library based on the camera used by organizing the photos from each into different collections.

Note that, unlike in iPhoto, when you move or delete a file in Bridge, you’re editing or disposing of the original copy. Bridge doesn’t keep backups, as it is purely a browser for finding and organizing files — one of the reasons I, being manual control-oriented, prefer it. Bridge is not a busybody app that second-guesses you.

Recently, a reader with a photography business asked my advice on a good Mac-based photo management system. His requirements included the ability to add the files’ EXIF to his contact info, details on where and why the picture was taken, copyright info, and keywords searchable by various image galleries he uses. He also wanted a tool that would leave his directory structure intact. Sounded like a job for Bridge.

The reader said he’d owned almost every version of Photoshop, from 5 to CS3, and checked out Bridge when it was first introduced, finding it slow and clunky, but would give it another try. He reported back that the current version is much better, adding that my suggestion might have just saved him hours of tedious organizing.

If you already have Photoshop CS3 or Elements 6, it’s worth taking a look at Bridge. If you don’t have one of those apps, Photoshop Elements at $89.95 has to be one of the greatest-ever software bargains, and inclusion of Bridge in version 6 is the icing on the cake.

PowerBook Duo: A hint of things to come?

PC Mag’s Sascha Segan posed an intriguing question the other day: “If you put a smartphone in a dock, it could replace a netbook. So why hasn’t anyone succeeded at doing that?”

Good question.

Now that I’ve been thinking about it, the idea of a dock into which you could pop an iPhone or an iPod touch, thereby quickly connecting it to a decent-sized external display, keyboard and mouse, some USB ports, Ethernet, and maybe an SD Card slot, you would have, if not best of both worlds, at least an attractive hybrid.

A dockable smartphone/Internet computer would no doubt cost more than a PC netbook, but it could also be much more versatile, and arguably a better overall value.

Indeed, external input device support over Bluetooth alone would make handhelds much more appealing to me. As Segan observes, with “65,000 apps for the iPhone alone, it’s hard to believe that there aren’t thousands of people who would want to use those apps with a nice big keyboard and screen.”

Of course, to make a docked iPhone or iPod touch truly competitive with the netbook segment, it would require driver tweaking and some re-engineering to support the necessary hardware inputs and outputs. There’s also the issue of what Segan refers to as “the OS problem,” specifically: The iPhone OS as presently configured is not really up to the job of supporting the kind of robust productivity apps that can run on a netbook under Linux, Windows, or OS X.

I’ve long been a fan and admirer of the Apple PowerBook Duo concept from the early to mid ’90s. It combined a subcompact laptop module that could be used as a freestanding notebook, and a Duo Dock with a full-size CRT monitor, a full set contemporary of I/O ports, and internal expansion slots for desktop power with few compromises.

Toward the end of the ’90s, laptop computers became powerful, versatile, and gained improved connectivity and display options. Many of the the Duo’s advantages were negated, but it seems to me quite logical that the PowerBook Duo concept could be successfully updated, using a handheld instead as its “core module.”

Indeed, it’s so logical that it seems a wonder no one has yet acted on the idea. Segan thinks the reason is that Apple and the wireless carriers don’t want it to happen. Presently, folks who have both a smartphone and a netbook need two wireless service subscriptions, whereas our proposed dockable handheld hybrid device would theoretically only require one. As for keyboard-supporting iPhones, he thinks that won’t happen because Apple doesn’t want to erode MacBook sales.

All that sounds a bit conspiratorial, but also lamentably plausible. Even so, look at the issue from the angle of a similar new product category. While Microsoft has a complicated relationship with the netbook phenomenon, and Apple is downright contemptuous, consumers voted with their wallets and made the netbook the hottest-selling category in computers. Now that the dam has burst as it were, Microsoft is playing ball with the netbook-optimized edition of Windows 7.

I think platform convergence and rationalization between the smartphone and netbook spaces could likewise catch the consumer imagination and take on a life of its own. It seems just too good an idea to be able to keep suppressed indefinitely.

My friend and Low End Mac’s publisher, Dan Knight, posted a nearly 3000-word essay recently positing a “what’s the perfect Mac” conundrum: MacBook Pro or iMac. I share Dan’s enthusiasm for examining and debating such hypothetical questions, and I thoroughly enjoyed the piece, but for me, the matter is much more open-and-shut.

I’ve been advocating for more than a decade that laptops are the logical Mac for most users, and in my estimation the unibody MacBook Pros — particularly the new 13-inch model — come as close to personal computer perfection as has yet been achieved.

As his top laptop candidate, Dan Knight leans more toward the 15-inch unibody model, with a particular nod toward the $1,699 configuration, which would be my second choice for ultimate Mac notebook value. First choice is the 2.26 GHz 13-inch MacBook Pro at $1,199, which gives you almost everything you get in the lowest-priced 15-incher, with the obvious exception of display acreage, and for $500 less.

However, for Dan, screen size and finish are much higher priority issues than they are for me. He developed his computing style and habits working as a professional book designer on two-page 152 x 854 and 1280 x 960 resolution screens, and finds smaller displays — say 1034 x 768 (SVGA) or lower resolutions — too restrictive for his tastes and work.

I, on the other hand, spent my first three Mac-loving years on a PowerBook with a 9.5″, 640 x 480, passive matrix grayscale display. After that experience, anything larger has seemed generously roomy, or at least adequate. The highest-resolution screen I’ve had in any Mac to date is the 1440 x 900 display in my 17″ PowerBook, which I like a lot, but adapting to the 1280 x 800 resolution of my 13″ unibody MacBook when I upgraded posed no real problem. Leopard’s Spaces feature has eliminated much of the inconvenience of working with modest display real estate.

Today, I would draw the line at 1064 x 768, which is what my two still-in-service Pismo PowerBooks offer. That’s also the highest resolution any of my desktop computer monitors have ever had, which sounds quaint when the entry-level $1,198 iMac today comes with a 20-inch 1680 x 1050 screen.

Dan’s current production rig is a dual-1GHz Mirror Drive Door Power Mac G4 driving a 1280 x 1024 a Dell flat panel display — hardware that befits the theme of his website, and ideal for a guy who isn’t yet willing to give up Mac OS Classic Mode. However, Dan says he’s excited this week because now that Apple has just added an “antiglare” display option for the 15-inch unibody MacBook Pro, he thinks it could become the perfect production machine for him, even going so far as to suggest that the 15-inch MacBook Pro is probably the perfect computer, period.

I won’t quibble overmuch with that, although I do still champion the 13-incher, since I’m more than satisfied with the glossy display. As Apple notes, with a glossy screen finish you get graphics, photos, and videos with richer colors and deeper blacks, which is better for most users who don’t have to work in print media. But if having an antiglare option helps persuade folks like Dan Knight to dismount the fence on the laptop side, I’m all for it, and let’s have it available on the 13-inch model as well.

So will Dan finally end up on a MacBook Pro, which would be his first production laptop since the original Titanium PowerBooks back in the early-to-mid ’00s? I think there’s a good chance he will, but he isn’t slamming the door on desktops by any means, noting that the perfect desktop computer would take the current iMac design, move some ports for easier access, and offer an antiglare screen option. Perhaps for him it will boil down to whatever Apple does next with the iMac.

How about you? Would you vote for either the MacBook Pro, the iMac, or something else entirely as “the perfect computer?”

There’s more evidence that Apple is missing the boat on a substantial market opportunity due to its stubborn stonewall of the small, inexpensive netbook phenomenon. Steve Jobs may have expressed his dismissal of the device category last fall, and acting Apple CEO Tim Cook took the same line by contending that the netbook experience suffers due to “cramped keyboards, terrible software, junky hardware, [and] very small screens,” but millions of consumers worldwide disagree — with their wallets.

There are elements of truth in Cook’s critique, but it’s nowhere near as cut-and-dried as he implies. Some netbooks are hopelessly mediocre, but the category also includes very nice machines with “chiclet”-type keyboards (inspired by the MacBook), respectably sized 11″ and 12″ displays, decent hardware quality, and better I/O connectivity than some Apple notebooks. Linux builds (especially Ubuntu) are getting better all the time, to say nothing of the forthcoming netbook version of Windows 7.

In a commentary last April, Computerworld’s Scot Finnie questioned whether any computer maker, even 900-pound gorilla Apple, can afford to ignore the netbook trend. Confirmation seems to be growing that it can’t.

Earlier this week, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Retrevo, a consumer electronics search engine/portal, released a new “Gadgetology” study indicating that 34 percent of students buying laptops are planning to purchase small, lightweight netbooks. Another 49 percent will buy full-sized PC notebooks, but the majority of student laptop shoppers will not consider buying a Mac.

With the rumored Apple iTablet looking more and more like it won’t materialize until the first quarter of 2010, at the earliest, Apple has already missed out on the 2009 back-to-school buying surge, and probably the holiday sales season, too, at least as far as the low-cost market is concerned. Of course, it continues to do very well in the premium, $1,000-and-up laptop category, having just recorded the best non-holiday quarter in its history, selling 2.6 million Macs — most of them laptops.

“While Apple has done well historically in the education market, 2009 marks the dawn of the netbook,” commented Retrevo CEO Vipin Jain. “Students told us they wanted longer battery life, smaller size, and a lighter laptop. Fifty-eight percent of them plan on spending less than $750. All but 18 percent have a budget under $1,000. Netbooks are affordable — some costing only $170. In contrast, Apple laptops start at $949. At a time when many people are experiencing economic hardship, having a new Apple laptop isn’t a necessity.”

Personally, I think the iTablet will have a shot at competing with the netbooks and cheap PC laptops only if it:

a) Includes support for using a real keyboard and mouse (e.g., via Bluetooth or USB) in addition to its built-in touchscreen.

b) Runs the full-featured version of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and not just the stripped-down iPhone OS, and by extension, serious productivity applications.

c) Sells for significantly less than $800. A price of $679 being speculatively floated this week sounds promising.

What do you think? Has Apple missed the boat on this year’s back-to-school laptop-buying surge?

Techdirt’s Derek Kerton says “iPhone haters” are “stick-shifters in an automatic world” when they complain about the iPhone’s limited manual user control of function and configuration.

Kerton analogizes iPhone critics’ attitudes to those of manual gearbox holdouts in the automotive world. He notes that the stick-shift versus automatic transmission debate kind of petered out decades ago in the U.S., although it’s still a lively controversy in Europe, and it’s certainly no dead issue in the motorhead circles I inhabit.

As Derek puts it, “True motoring aficionados could not accept the dumbed-down, lazy automatic transmission. They insisted on doing the work themselves. It was harder, but it was ‘the only way to truly ‘drive’ the automobile.’ Tough luck if it put driving out of the reach of some. By now, the mass market has decided that ‘easier’ trumps a religious argument about ‘real feel for the road.’ Good products take people to their destination as easily as possible. The market has spoken: Getting there is not half the fun.”

I beg to differ, but not on the point of who won the debate in the marketplace, which as Derek observes has been fait accompli in North America for decades. I’m not an iPhone hater, but my strong preference with smartphones or computers is to have as much manual control or override as is practical. One of the things I loved most about the Classic Mac OS was the degree of user-control it facilitated — with usually two or three or more ways to execute a specific task.

Some might argue that the UNIX command line opens up a world of user control in OS X much greater and more comprehensive that anything that was ever possible with Mac OS Classic, and they have a point, especially for the geek-inclined. However, I’m more of a GUI guy myself, and miss stuff like being able to to create a Mac OS boot disk by simply creating a file named System Folder, dragging in a System File and a couple of support files from wherever, and you were bootable in a couple of minutes. You could even often drag in an existing System Folder from another Mac or a backup you had stored on a disk with no necessity of mucking around with installers and user permissions or re-configuration. I loved the flexibility and control.

I hasten to add that I love OS X and would not want to go back to OS 9, but that doesn’t mean I like everything about OS X more.

Other control-freak peeves of mine are “wizards” and helpers and in general software that insists on doing stuff for you, whether you like it or not. Microsoft applications have been some of the worst offenders, but the busybody affliction has crept into Apple software as well. One example would be Find-As-You-Type in Spotlight and the Finder’s Find dialogs. That sort of stuff is OK if you like it and/or need the hand-holding and nannying, but there should always be a way to turn it off.

I don’t begrudge automatic transmissions to those who prefer them, but I do object to there being no option for a real stick-shift with a real clutch (paddle-shifters on automatics don’t cut it as an adequate substitute, albeit they’re better than no manual shift control at all).

It’s probably a losing battle, though. Derek Kerton observes cogently that mass market is what really matters in business, and much of the mass market is likely not even aware of the limitations of their iPhones. And even if you pointed it out to them, would they care? Probably not, just as only a minuscule minority lament the increasingly exclusive ubiquity of automatic transmissions in cars and even trucks.

Smartphones, computers and cars…are you in the stick-shift or automatic camp?

How long should a Mac last? Mac360’s Alexis Kayhill posed the question recently, and it got me thinking on the topic, especially since Alexis framed her column around the experience of a co-worker who had purchased a new unibody MacBook (on her recommendation) only to have Apple upgrade the 13″ unibody to Pro status with feature enhancement and a lower price a few months later.

I’m in the same boat, having also bought a unibody MacBook last February. Alexis says her friend “got burned,” though I think that’s a bit harsh. I don’t feel “burned” at all — more like a bit disappointed that I didn’t wait four more months, but you can drive yourself nuts second-guessing such things. I love the MacBook, and am already becoming convinced that it’s going to be one of my all-time favorite Macs. I just wish it had a FireWire port, which the new 13″ MacBook Pro does have.

My target for intervals between upgrading my main workhorse systems has been three years ever since I bought my first Mac back in 1992, and I’ve done pretty well at adhering to it. That would put replacement time for my MacBook in early 2012, which seems a long way off.

The way it usually plays out for me is that the first year I revel in the greater power and storage capacity of my new machine compared with whatever it replaced. At 18 months, twinges of slight frustration and dissatisfaction start to set in, especially after upgraded models have been introduced, but I really have nothing to complain about. However, by the beginning of year three, the aging Mac is usually beginning to feel compromised in some respects, and the hunt begins, although for the last three machines I’ve managed to reach or beat the three-year replacement benchmark.

Of course it helps that I like the challenge of getting useful service out of antiquated hardware. We still have two nine year old Pismo PowerBooks in very active service, and they’re great for what we do with them — text-crunching, email, Web-surfing, and so forth — “netbooks” of a sort, I suppose.

Actually, I still have most of the Macs I’ve ever owned, and only a very few are not in working order. Our six year old iBook G3 died suddenly last winter, but had been a virtually flawless performer up to the day it completely refused to respond to the power button — presumably a terminal motherboard issue. One of my daughters is still using my old 1999 WallStreet PowerBook, and the 17″ PowerBook that served as my primary workhorse between the iBook and MacBook is still in fine fettle.

As Alexis Kayhill observes, there’s a line somewhere between the disappointment that occurs when a newer, power and feature-enhanced, and possibly cheaper revision is unveiled, especially if it’s only shortly after you buy a new Mac. But there’s also the pride you feel when your Mac still looks good and works well five years (or nine years!) after you bought it.

Macs being generally more expensive than typical Windows PCs, at least up front, it logically stands to reason that they should have longer useful lives.

How about you? How often do you usually upgrade your system, and what do you consider a reasonable service life for Macs?

I’ve been looking for an up-to-date, Gecko-based browser to replace the discontinued Netscape Navigator 9 on my old G4 Pismo PowerBook running OS 10.4 Tiger. Navigato still works well, is based on the now-ancient Firefox 2 and probably has some security vulnerabilities. Firefox 3.5 and Camino 1.6 are great on my Intel Mac, but kinda sluggish on the Pismo with its RAGE 128GPU and 8MB of VRAM.

Happily, another Gecko with relatively modest hardware demands is still actively developed. SeaMonkey is the last of the Internet suite browsers, with built-in email and newsgroup client, IRC chat application and a WYSIWYG Web page composer — essentially an updated, refined, security-patched iteration of the old Mozilla Application Suite and Netscape Communicator.

The non-browser elements of SeaMonkey aren’t of much interest to me, so I’ve had a tendency to overlook the program, but my quest for a Navigator 9 replacement sent me checking out the latest SeaMonkey 2.0 beta on the Pismo, and I’m liking it.

Firefox 3.5.1 Under the Hood

SeaMonkey 2.0 Beta 1 is thoroughly modern under the hood, using the browser core and web feature support from Firefox 3.5.1, including all security fixes, audio/video, downloadable fonts, and JIT-compiled Javascript.

Its download manager is completely reworked, including (hooray!) support for cross-session resumable downloads, new-tab and new-window command line options, and fully customizable toolbars.

Mail archiving is now supported and history is stored in a better database. A huge improvement is support for post-crash session restore and the option to restore browser windows and tabs from the last open session when starting.

Interface Refreshed

A longstanding gripe has been that SeaMonkey’s UI looks “antiquated,” with the lack of eye-candy being one reason why it’s lively on older hardware like my PowerBook.

However, with SeaMonkey 2, the UI has a brighter, more contemporary look — still simple, but everything I need is there: tabbed browsing and a real progress bar. I do wish they’d put close buttons on individual tabs rather than having to mouse to the extreme right. Like the Gecko-based browsers (except Cocoa Camino), it doesn’t support OS X Services, but that’s about it for complaints.

“Everything But The Kitchen Sink”

Even as a beta, performance and stability are impressive enough to make me a fan, but if having “everything but the kitchen sink” in one application appeals, SeaMonkey’s suite of Web apps will be icing on the proverbial cake. Indeed I find this SeaMonkey beta so pleasant to use I’ve been running it on my Intel Mac as well for the past several days.

I have a love-hate relationship with Spotlight, OS X’s convenient and useful, but immensely frustrating search utility. Apple introduced Spotlight with OS X 10.4 Tiger, and tweaked it considerably in OS 10.5 Leopard.

Having a search engine ready and waiting all the time is seductive, and Spotlight is nice to have, but falls short of Apple’s “Find anything, anywhere, fast” claim, and I particularly dislike its find-as-you-type initiating searches from the first keystroke. I was told I wouldn’t mind any more once I got an Intel Mac. Well, I now have a Core 2 Duo and still mind.

“Too Much Information”

Spotlight is also afflicted with a Google-esque “too much information” syndrome, even with a fair bit of my hard drive’s contents excluded from indexing. It also doesn’t do simple file name searches.

No path information is revealed in Spotlight’s results window. You must resort to Get Info or Reveal in Finder. No preview of file contents either, you can’t refine your search within results, and Spotlight doesn’t support phrase searches, at least not conveniently and efficiently. You can muck around using quotation marks in the search field, but I’ve had indifferent success with that.

Some have praised the changes in Leopard Spotlight, but I actually think I preferred Spotlight in Tiger, with its readout of the number of search returns and, in my opinion, more convenient and functional “Show All” panel.

Some Alternatives

In a recent article, MacFixIt cites some of these Spotlight shortcomings and proposes alternatives like Google Desktop, Easy Find, Foxtrot, and even Command-line searching.

I’ve tried Google Desktop and find it just too ponderous, resource-hogging, and overbearing. Devon Technologies’ Easy Find is a nice little app, free like Google Desktop, but more hassle to use than Spotlight, and not being indexed — slower. I can’t comment on CTM Development’s 29 Euro Foxtrot utility as I haven’t used it. The Command-line is largely terra incognita for me — not a place I want to go for quick searches in any case.

Where I do go mostly is to SpotInside, a Spotlight-enhancer that layers several elements on top of the Spotlight engine: results preview in the interface window, decently efficient phrase searching, much more conveniently configurable and sortable results organization, searches within results, and searching doesn’t commence before you bid it to.

Well Worth the Effort

SpotInside is yet another application to run, but it starts up almost instantly, is fast, and adds little system overhead. With such a well-conceived and convenient interface, it’s well worth the extra effort.

Unlike Spotlight and Leopard’s Quick Look, SpotInside can use the Find panel and select text in your search result. It also conveniently highlights your keywords in search results. It doesn’t search as extensive a range of file types as Spotlight (eg: music files and email messages), but I’d argue that’s a good thing. For finding words or phrases within text files, PDFs and the like, it’s the best tool I’ve tried.

SpotInside searches ever major text document format (including Pages). It can display PDF previews as images or as plain text, and will also find the folder the desired document is located in with a click of the “Reveal in Finder” button, and open it with the “Launch” button. There is a Zoom slider for adjusting the size of the preview contents.

I haven’t found another desktop search engine that has the uncanny ability to efficiently and quickly zero in on just what I’m looking for, as SpotInside does. If you’re frustrated with Spotlight, or even if you’re not, SpotInside is worth checking out.

SpotInside requires OS X 10.4 or later, and is free.

Microsoft Word was one of my favorite and most-used applications back in the early days. I started Mac word processing first with Word 4 and upgraded to Word 5.1 in 1993. Amazingly, that old application still starts up and works fine in Classic Mode on my G4 PowerBook.

However, the disastrous Word 6 broke my Word habit, and Word 5.1 was the last Microsoft software I ever bought. I’ve turned to other software ever since for text crunching and word processing, and don’t really miss Word except when someone sends me a Word document, or when I need to send a file to someone who works in Word.

Word-Centric World

In a Word-centric world, odds are that you will encounter Microsoft Word-formatted (.doc) documents fairly frequently, in email attachments, files produced by Word-user colleagues, or informational data downloaded from the Internet.

Happily, this is not as much of a problem as it used to be for us non-Word users. Many, in fact most, word processors can open and save Word files these days with formatting rendered reasonably faithfully..

TextEdit Can Likely Handle It

If you’re using Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.5, you don’t need any other Word-savvy software other than OS X’s bundled TextEdit program, which these days warrants categorization as a full-fledged, albeit lightweight, word processor. When you need to open or save Microsoft Word-formatted documents, TextEdit can usually handle the job, and the version in OS 10.5 Leopard is the best iteration of the program yet. Unless you need perfect formatting rendition, TextEdit is up to the task.

TextEdit can open .doc files with basic formatting, such as fonts, text formatting (bold, italic, etc.), colors, line spacing, alignment and justification sustained reasonably intact. More advanced formatting, such as borders, style sheets, graphics, footnotes, bulleted lists, and such don’t often don’t survive the conversion accurately or at all. Most tables seem to translate OK, although not necessarily appearing exactly as they would in Word.

When you save a TextEdit document as a Word file, some of that sort of advanced formatting stuff actually will make the transition in the other direction, notably buttons, numbering and tables, but not style sheets. Just select one of the three Word document format options (Word 2007, Word 97 or Word 2003) and you’ve got a Word document file.

Consequently, as with the famous cartoon depicting a dog surfing the web with a computer, captioned: “On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog,” with Leopard TextEdit, no one has to know you don’t have Microsoft Word. Which in certain circles, might help with your credibility.