Two Worlds Mac and Back Feed

Apotheosis of the PowerBook

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 13:57:19 +0000

The MacBook Pro is a very cool, very fast and very shiny computer. But, as of now, largely pointless for me: until such time as core applications for the photographer and image munger are released as Universal Binaries, I'd simply be paying more for a machine that ran Photoshop and its ilk more slowly than my existing machine (under the Rosetta emulation environment), and which wouldn't run some plug-ins at all. Unless I was using Aperture as the heart of my workflow (which I can't, due to its current, "limitations" in RAW conversion), the only benefit would be that the Finder, email and text editor would run ludicrously fast (and they're fine already). The first generation MacBook Pro has also taken some backward steps in its specification that smack of a rush to market.

The Powerbook is Dead…

Thu, 12 Jan 2006 15:27:26 +0000

…Long live the, ah, MacBook.

So we're starting with sad note in technohistory: I've been surgically attached to both the name and entity of Powerbook since it first appeared rather more than fourteen years (and to my laughingly named Mac “Portable” before that), so I'm unlikely to convert to the casual dropping of, “I'll just grab my MacBook…” overnight. Or possibly not ever. And what happens when Apple migrates their Power Mac range to Intel - do we end up with the Mac Mac?

But enough of the sentimental maundering – this is supposed to be about what the Intel shift means to travelling photographers and meedja types, for whom a Book is their weapon of choice, and for those Wintel frustratees who are considering a shift, now that direct platform comparisons are possible for the first time.

First things first, then – just what is a MacBook, and what's changed from the previous generation of PowerPC-based machines?

Design

A full specification is available on the Apple web site, so I'm not going to reiterate that, but concentrate on what's changed, for better and worse. The basic industrial design remains as for the 15“ Aluminium PowerBooks, albeit in a case that's 1cm wider than before, but a couple of mm slimmer – almost back to the thickness of the PowerBook Ti. Depth remains the same. Strange to tell, that little extra slimness is much more significant for travelling than the extra centimeter of width – I'll happily trade a bit of footprint for something I can stuff into the narrowest possible space in a crowded equipment bag. A good start then. Now for the rest…

Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better

Tue, 07 Jun 2005 11:39:08 +0000

In George Orwell's Animal Farm, when the pigs take over the farm, and set up their workers' paradise, the mantra of the revolution, repeated ad infinitum by a Greek chorus of bleating sheep, is "Two Legs Bad, Four Legs Good". Which pretty much sums up the level of debate we've had in the camps of the Motorola/Macintosh and Intel/Microsoft alliances for the last two decades. It's also a war that's been fought on two fronts – from the mud-bogged trenches of the Mac/Windows jihadists to the free-flowing desert warfare of the Intel/Motorola skirmishes. And, as any general will tell you, a war fought on two fronts is bloody hard work, with the principal sufferers along the way being the confused and shell-shocked civilian population.

But one part of that war is heading for a conclusion: Apple is switching to Intel. Let me say that again: Apple. Is. Switching. To. Intel. It's like watching Martin Luther walk up to the church door in Wittenberg and nail a piece of paper to the door only to find that, rather than the 95 Theses of Contention, it's an advert for a lap-dancing club. So it's probably time for a little reflection, not to mention eating of crow. I'll have ketchup with mine…