MacBook Pro Retina – the Mac and Windows dream combo

For a while now, I hadn’t been 100% satisfied with my preferred machine and software for writing blog posts. I’d been  looking for better  solution for my writing which balanced portability (to write in the lounge) and desktop like performance, thereby allowing me to write easily wherever I am using the tools to get the job done.

As you know, my favourite blogging solution is Windows Live Writer.  And as it’s on my Lenovo X220 which is my day job  PC, I struggle to make and enjoy the mental separation when blogging in my free time (which in 2013, has been rarely than normal due to the demanding day schedule). I had thought about the Lenovo Carbon X1, but it’s too expensive in relation to a Mac and for more than £1,000 only runs Windows.

An opportunity came up to sell some kit and give the MacBook Air completely to the missus. So I became intrigued with the power, portability and eye catching Retina display qualities of the 13” MacBook Pro Retina. Out of the box with a 128Gb SSD and 8Gb RAM, I got the superior hardware and experience of OS X (of course with that lovely keyboard), and could also run a Windows 7 VM to use Live Writer as I needed. I’m doing that right now. The VM is a 1 processor core and 2Gb and runs well for my lightweight blogging needs.  tart up time for the Windows VM is less than 20 seconds.  Live Writer opens in about 5 seconds. This is a real pleasure, the SSD of course, being the big difference.

Shame Windows it not Retina enhanced, it will make for an even better Windows machine, even better than a PC as reported in the last few days.

Home maintenance

In the last few months, I'd noticed an increasing number of system freezes on my iMac 24 from late 2008. As you will all know, these sorts of things feel generally random and happen at the wrong time when producing or creating something - so they are especially annoying.

The odd one every few months is okay, but in recent weeks web browsing, on-line gaming with Football Championship Manager or editing in iBooks has seen a frequency of freezes get to the stage of being particularly troublesome and worrying. My overall aim for the iMac 24 is to see it through the next 12 months into 2013 (dreams of a retina display iMac + SSD). This summer it will see its fourth OS upgrade in the form of Moutain Lion, and the Mac will probably be a a bit slower again as  result.

Wondering if something was up, it was time to run the key checks on the disk and other subsystems. In terms of quick checks, I did the usual repair permissions with Disk Utility.  But another freeze occurred afterwards,which suggested to me with all the spate of freezes which required power recycling, I'd need to do a directory rebuild using DiskWarrior.   Since doing that, the iMac has felt a bit snappier.

DiskWarrior is an essential utility and well worth the investment

I also took the opportunity to upgrade TechTool Deluxe which came with AppleCare to TechTool Pro 6, which now provides a range of background preventative monitoring tasks as well as range of test across al subsystems across the machine (disk, memory video memory,etc).  It's certainly a comprehenisive tool and again another one worth the considered investment in self-maintenance before calling for the vendor repair option.

TechTool Pro 6 is a worthy tool for a wider range of tests

So far, so good. Beyond, some directory damage to some minor directories, all looks good.  From a browsing standpoint, I decided to disable Flash on Chrome and leave it available on Safari when I do need to watch Flash based content.  It's good to know that HTML5 video has come on leaps and bounds as the preferred video content standard since the advent of iOS and Android devices.

So, time will tell if this has made the difference and if I'm sitting on a major hardware failure. While a disk verification runs in my scripted SuperDuper backup clones of my hard drive on a monthly basis, I think a quarterly directory rebuild in DiskWarrior is the task I'll add to my schedule from now on.

Nearly a month with the new iPad

It's amazing how our perceptions and expectations of technology and gadgets change so quickly.  I had an iPad 1 on the day it was launched in the UK.  That was May  2010. I sold it on March 2012. During that time, it had been at my side as my trusted tool when I attended seminars and conferences as part of my job. It had been my bathroom and couch companion on a daily basis (Confirmed - I am a guy).

The first iPad got through 2 major iOS releases during that time.  It started at iOS3 before the iPhone 4 came out. I finished using at iOS5. Apple are very clever with their design and of devices. They future proof the device to a certain extent (2-3 years) to ensure it can run a number of future software releases before obsolescence starts to show up by virtue of new iOS features which will no longer be supported.  We saw this on the iPhone 3G when you upgraded to iOS4. Glenn Fleishman's argument on Apple's incremental improvement approach talks to that point.

That said, I had grown tired of my iPad 1. It started with the zippier performance seen with the iPad 2 with the dual core graphics chip and doubling in memory to 512Mb. My daily apps started creaking such as Guardian, The Times, dJay, FlipBoard and others.  I saw app crashes a bit too often. I would kill open apps sometimes just to reduce the chances of a large app launch going wrong (even though iOS memory management is completely seamless). Then I upgraded my phone to the 4S, which I posted previously. It became very apparent that in less than 2 years, I would want to upgrade to the new iPad as soon as I could.

For an iPad 1 user, it's like going from the iPhone 3G to the iPhone 4 for the first time. Read the reviews from Gruber, Dalrymple, and Anandtech  on what feels like a huge jump in performance. There's been enough said on the Retina display, so all I will say is that this device has the potential to take publishing and new PC displays to a whole new level.  It's that good and most of all satisfying to use. I suspect it narrows the value add of the Kindle e-Ink displays, such is its clarity and brightness.

[FAO - owners of the Guardian and The Times apps. I'm sure you have it in hand. But please upgrade your iPad apps to Retina as soon as possible.  Right now and in places, they look terrible.]

On a day to day basis, the old irritants on the iPad 1 are gone. Apps like the ones I mentioned strangely do not crash any more (at least very rarely). I suppose this is because the new chipsets and the 1Gb RAM on board can cope with everything thrown at it and still have room to manoeuvre. I do understand that the 1Gb is not purely dedicated to the apps, but in part for the retina display. Of course, all this may change when iOS6 comes out and can do more on newer hardware which we will see in the fullness of time.

Typing on the new iPad is much, much more responsive. Fast typists like me now feel the new iPad keeps up with their speed, allowing for anyone being accustomed to typing on the iPad in the first place.  I've taken the new iPad on a couple of business trips, preferably over my 11" MacBook Air and I've been surprised at how fast I can do my surfing, social, document management, mail and calendaring and task management. I'll be sharing more on my comparisons with the MBA in a coming post. One of the themes coming out of this is that iOS apps on the new iPad seem to more often have an edge over the OSX counterpart.  Take OmniFocus for example, an application I have been looking at for task management. The UI experience on the iPad is miles superior to the OSX version, which is ok, but cumbersome in places. Of course, the OSX app will see another upgrade and for that matter, so will Lion, starting this summer.

Watching HD movies is simply fantastic. The detail is eye-popping on the Retina and very satisfying when on a plane.

The other big surprise was pairing the new iPad with the 3rd generation Apple TV. Airplay Mirroring has the possibility of becoming a staple device is most enterprises for presentation and learning and development. Great little device.

Downers? Possible LTE this time next year, since it won't work on the planned UK 4G frequencies. But if the incremental improvements for iPad (4) have anything to go by, this new one will be back on the market in no time :)

It's no wonder

When an opportunity came up to upgrade to an iPhone 4S and remain cost neutral, I took it. I mainly expected a slight performance bump given the reviews I'd read.

When I went from the 3G to the iPhone 4, it was a major bump.  Responsiveness, multi-tasking and all that good stuff felt satisfying.  So perhaps on this upgrade, my expectations were lower.

I skim read a number of reviews and thought that the only thing I thought I'd enjoy getting to grips with was Siri.

Surprisingly, I was wrong.  And on a variety of counts:

1. Firstly, compared to its predecessor, the 4S is much more smoother and fast. App loading and switching are all markedly quicker than before.
2. The screen is brighter and I see a better white balance and colour clarity compared to the 4.
3. Wifi performance now consistently picks up 28-30mbps on my fibre link.
4. Web pages, even on 3G load much quicker.  
5. Listening to Spotify streams and loading RSS feeds or web pages, feels seamless. Heck, even the audio seems more polished, but that could be for other reasons.
6. The cell signal for voice and data is a lot better.  Taking the same journey everyday to my office, I notice the higher bars on the voice side  I can read pages and tweet in places where the 3G signal on the 4 was borderline.

I could go on, but feel that's not needed. The only downside, is that the battery sucks down noticeably quicker. Same usage pattern, but I'm reaching for a recharge when I get home in the evenings. I doubt, it would get me through a day of travel the way the 4 or most Blackberry's would.

My experience seems to match up with AnandTechs deeply technical review.

Same appearance, but much better phone overall.  It's no wonder it sold by a record bucket load for Apple in FY11 Q4.

The weakest link in the chain

The other thing of course, is having all of this bandwidth does make you think about things to do with it.  Such as online backups, high definition video calls with Skype or FaceTime, online gaming and as much streaming as there is worthwhile content. Worthwhile content will get better with time in the UK, without having to go over a VPN through using Boxee box or Hulu on a PC.

The problem is of course, expectation of performance.

Unless your content provider has a pretty extensive hosting provision in a data centre with big links to ISPs who have their own big links to the major networks and peering points for going cross-border,  you're always going to find the weakest link in the chain sets your real download speed.  So your large content provider download download is always going to be quick and dependent on your line, you may see 1-5mb/s download speeds (using my link as an example)  But more often that not, if your source has a small rack in a co-located data centre and pays meagrely for its traffic out to the net - don't be surprised that a 8meg file download can still take a minute or two.  Big in this case means better.

Of course, it's never this simple.  You also have to trust that your ISP does not run congested links in the first place.  Not always easy to detect, unless you have an ISP who is transparent on how they deliver services in the first place.  Hat tip my my AAISP again (and no, I'm not invested in them in any way).

Having the capacity on tap, is still sort of good though.  In the next year or so, I forsee a big jump in applications across mobiles and tablets which will make use of the larger pipes for high definition rich content.  We'll wonder how we ever lived without it.