WWDC ’09: My Take

This image shamelessly kidnapped from IGN Entertainment

WWDC 2009 happened yesterday for most of you. For me, it happened early as balls this morning. I stayed up and watched as reports flooded in from 1AM until 3AM local time. This was one of those times where the time difference really, really sucked for me.

Some of you might be scoffing right now. “Surely you could have slept and read about it in the morning,” you say. “There was absolutely no reason to lose sleep over this thing. You didn’t even make an early post about it!” That may well be true. I didn’t post anything super-early in the wee, partially-conscious hours of my morning. I didn’t make any sort of cutting-edge analysis of Apple’s actions. I didn’t disparage them like some, and I certainly didn’t praise them like others. I just watched, because at heart I’m a geek, through and through. I love technology for technology’s sake, even if I don’t end up buying or using it. I love seeing how it evolves, how different technologies and upgrades compare to market conditions and what effect that has on price points. I love watching companies duke it out over who has the superior product, because that means innovation and better products for the little guy.

If you’re curious, I’ve got absolutely no intention of buying the new iPhone 3G S, nor any of the updated notebooks. For better or worse, I’m currently stuck on the T-Mobile network, which means no shiny Apple phone for me. I got the aluminum unibody MacBook when it came out, so there’s absolutely no reason for me to buy the new one because the battery and screen are better and it’s being called a MacBook Pro. I will say that Snow Leopard is mighty tempting at the $29 price point, and I’ll probably pick it up when it is released this September. Smaller footprint, OpenCL and their Grand Central tech? Yes, please!

I Want To Kill YNNU’s IT Department

If you read this often, or even a very small amount, you’ve probably gathered that I’m online a lot, and by that I mean most of my day. I’m online at school, online at home, online any bloody place with available WiFi.

In China, that’s a different story altogether.

For the last hour I’ve been trying to read an article on Anandtech about SSD storage. This isn’t really atypical of how I spend my evenings, except for the fact that every freakin’ time I try to navigate to the next page (or anything else, for that matter), the stupid server at my university disconnects me. Every. Single. Time.

Live from China: Tech+Lifestyle Is Back

Hong Kong Int'l Airport

The past two weeks have been interesting, to say the least. I’ve been in China since February 23rd, experiencing all sorts of new stuff. Being the nerd that I am, one of the very first things I attempted upon getting here was to get online – my laptop’s battery had given out at the Hong Kong International Airport, and my iPod Touch gave up the ghost not long after.

I was somewhat dismayed to find a complete lack of Wifi here – none in my dorm, or anywhere else on campus, for that matter. I’ve got a single ethernet connection in my room, which I’m obligated to share with my roommate until I can find a cheap switch to use. Even with a wired connection, though, I wasn’t immediately able to get online. For some reason, my MacBook absolutely refused to yield internet access. I endured a week of no access in my room except for two occasions when I borrowed my suite-mate’s computer to check email, and once when I went to a shady internet cafe for a couple of hours.

Windows 7: I am Victorious

After 24 hours of checking and rechecking four different sites for availability of the Windows 7 beta, I finally snagged myself a copy. That’s with a product key, mind you – if I were impatient, I would’ve grabbed the ISO long ago and just let it expire after 30 days. That’s the weak way to do it. Vigilance pays off, my friend. That, and about a metric ton of caffeine. On the other hand, if you aren’t as cool as me (aka didn’t get a beta key), here’s the 64 bit ISO, and here’s the 32-bit ISO. It’s crippled (no updates) and it’ll die young (read: 30 days), but I’m sure you’ll enjoy the time, right?

I’m currently sitting at 17% 24% downloaded, around 570MB 775MB so far out of the total 3.2GB file. Once I’ve got it, I’ll burn the sucker to a disk and document the super fun lovely exciting install process. It’s going onto a second partition on my Macbook, so we’ll see how that goes. In particular, I’ve got this morbid curiosity to see if the multi-touch support will actually work with the touch pad. I’m told (as in this is unconfirmed) that Windows 7 has 48 bit color support, though this isn’t even remotely useful yet as not graphics cards can take advantage of that yet.

Anyway, plenty of screenshots and stuff await your eager eyes/faces/brains/whatever. Don’t forget to check back later tonight tomorrow, my loyal (or perhaps accidental) readers.

Note: the delay in content is due to the fact that my Macbook is absolutely dragging it’s feet on the hard drive partition necessary for a dual-boot install. I’m just about ready to restart and begin the partition all over again – it might actually be faster than sitting here hoping that it’ll magically go through.

***Update*** I’ve temporarily given up on the Windows 7 beta. Boot Camp Assistant won’t recognize my burned ISO as a valid Windows Installation CD, meaning it won’t let me boot from the CD and actually use the partition I created for that specific purpose. I’ve got other PCs in the house I could use, but I’m at home, not away at school right now, so I’d rather not do an install on a computer that isn’t mine. The Windows 7 beta is tabled indefinitely.

Mini-DisplayPort Adapter

I’ve finally received and gotten to use my mini-DisplayPort to DVI adapter, which means my gorgeous 24-inch monitor is actually useful, instead of sitting around collecting dust. The adapter isn’t anything fancy – typical Apple white plastic, slightly glossy, with mini-DP on one end and DVI on the other. It fits snugly into the video-0ut on my notebook, and seems well-built. The only downside is that it cost me $29.99 plus shipping (also, it took forever to arrive, but that’s the post office’s fault, not Apple’s). Here’s a couple pics of it in action, because we all know how exciting display adapters are:

Adapter

And with that, POW!

Gone. Just gone. 

That’s the best way to describe the state of my desktop right now. My secondary hard drive went from being detected saturday night to disappearing when I woke up yesterday. I couldn’t find any sort of reason for it online, so I shrugged and restarted, chalking it up to another one of those really weird Windows quirks that not even the boys up in Redmond can explain. When my computer rebooted, it gave me an unnerving two beeps from the internal speaker. That’s not generally a good thing. I got an error screen explaining that neither of my hard drives (SATA 0 and SATA 2, for those of you that care) could not be found. 

I tried to do a repair from my Windows disk, hoping that it would somehow magically fix the problem (yes, I realized that it was a thoroughly illogical thing to do – can’t fix the operating system if you can’t find the HDD it’s located on). One of my more knowledgeable friends suggested that my SATA ports were bad. That made sense to me, so I switched the drives to my other two SATA ports and restarted. I activated those ports in the BIOS, and voila! Still no drives recognized. I don’t have any old IDE drives, so I can’t bypass the problem that way. Essentially, even though only one feature no longer works on my motherboard, it has been rendered useless.

This presents me with a conundrum.

My Macbook Impressions: Two Weeks In

I’m typing this on my still relatively-new Macbook. As the title suggests, I’ve been in possession of this notebook for a grand total of two weeks, and below are some thoughts as to my experience so far. Keep in mind that before this, my use of Macs / OS-X has been minimal. Things that Mac users don’t necessarily notice stick out for me. I’m directly comparing the usability of this system to that of my main PC, in regard to both hardware and software.

Macbook: The Unboxing

Finally, one week later, I’m getting around to posting the photos of my Macbook unboxing experience. It was nice. There was a halo of light and an angelic chorus and everything when I opened the box. 😉

Anyway, check it out:

My New Macbook…

Is scheduled to arrive Tuesday! I’m fairly excited, not gonna lie. I’ll do my own unboxing post, along with impressions after some use. I’ll also time the battery life under low usage (word processing, web surfing), moderate usage (same but multitasking and some music or video) and heavy usage (HD video playback).

New Macbook

When I was ordering the thing, it took me a little while to decide which model to get, or if I should even be considering Macs and just go with a PC alternative.

Apple Notebook Marketshare = Up!

Apple has done an amazing job pushing their Macbooks and Macbook Pros (and most recently Macbook Air). From Q2 2007 to Q2 2008, their market share increased 4 percent, giving them a grand total of 10.6% of the notebook market! That’s pretty impressive, if you ask me.

Market Share

I’m totally buying a new Macbook when they come out… slim aluminum casing, led-backlit screen, new processor, lower price point ($999, anyone?), hopefully updated ports and hard drive… my notebook future is bright!