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us have consistently non-directional
lighting. Most of us are better off with
anti-glare matte. Yes, you have to give
up glass's cool factor. But what's cool
about something a gazillion people
have, anyway?
We told you not to buy into
Time Capsule
Back in early 2008, we said we didn't think
Time Capsule was ready for prime time. It
was underpowered and badly designed.
November 2009 brought major
newspaper reports that power supply
failures were becoming common around
the 18-month mark, with some failing at
just a few days. See
and the ever-
reliable for more. At
the time, we said we'd be backing up with
RAID-1 solutions from Maxtor instead. We
still will be. When you manufacture a
backup product, there's only one way to
do it: right. Maxtor's One Touch III Turbo
edition does it right. In three years of
testing, we haven't had a storage glitch.
It's fast, it's stable, it's easy to set up. It's
the ideal storage drive. There are now
some similar drives out there (tri and quad
interface, RAID-1). There's no reason why
they shouldn't be good, and we'll be
testing them. But we
know the Maxtor
is solid.
Whither Firewire? And more
laptop options?
We also don't like Apple's grudging
remaining support of Firewire: Why only a
niggardly 800 port? Why not 400 as well?
Why not do 4-pin as well as 6-pin? Does
anyone actually
like using converters? We
also find it sad that Apple still doesn't
have an economy priced 17-inch laptop.
Dell builds 17-inch laptops approaching
Apple quality in the neighborhood of $600
— with Firewire. Why can't Apple do the
same? And where are the new quad-core
processors that had already appeared on
Dell laptops in December? We imagine
they'll appear sometime in January or
early February — when this issue hits print.
Don't buy a Macbook until the quad cores
come out.
Whose fault are the iPhone's woes?
A widely-read New York Times article by
Randall Stross on December 13, 2009,
claims that connection problems with
iPhones are not AT&T's fault but Apple's.
Google New York Times Randall Stross for
the full story.
Have you heard?
You can run OS X on most modern PCs - -
and though we've heard Apple isn't happy
about it, the practice has gone mainstream
enough to be written about without ado in
the august pages of Macworld magazine.
We blush to say we've been too chicken to
try this out before, but stick around for a
report in the future.
OS X or Windows 7?
We've been testing Windows 7 and we're
very impressed. It's the leaner and meaner
OS that Vista should have been. It's still
more buggy than either Tiger or Leopard.
Macs remain overall a more enjoyable
experience by a comfortable margin. But
Windows 7 runs programs built 20 years
ago — like XyWrite, still the word processor
I like to work with most. And Snow
Leopard breaks software built the day
before yesterday. Which shows we should
be grateful that Apple's user base remains
manageably small compared to
Microsoft's. Otherwise, OS X would still be
having run programs that worked on the
Apple II. Probably the most annoying thing
I find when switching platforms is how to
close a window or program. In Mac
programs, it's always command-W and
command-Q. In Windows it can be dozens
of different things.
Enough Griping?
Well, that's quite enough griping. As of late
October 2009, there's some superlative
and affordable Apple hardware to
celebrate. The company is back on track.
FEATURE
