Tag Archives: apple

Reality Distortion Field

SSD Upgrade

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Solid State Drives have been replacing Hard Disks on computers lately. Instead of storing data on a rotating magnetic disk, they store data in flash memory: basically silicon chips that keep data even when powered off. They are lighter, use less power, have no moving parts, and most importantly are way faster than hard disks. The problem is that, compared to their rotating counterparts, they are (still) more expensive.

Still, prices have dropped dramatically recently. Shlomit’s computer was feeling a little sluggish so I decided to give it a nice little upgrade.

Crucial M4 SSD

After waiting for a good price on DealMac for a few weeks, I bought a 256 GB Crucial M4 for $180, a very good deal at the time of this writing, to replace the stock 250 GB spinning disk.

The upgrade is reasonably simple, here are the steps:

  1. Copy your Hard Drive contents to the SSD.
    1. I used a borrowed adapter to connect the SSD to the Mac via USB.
    2. Use Disk Utility (it comes with Mac OS X) to format the SSD.
    3. Use Carbon Copy Cloner (donation-ware) to copy the contents of your old hard drive to the new one. This was straightforward and it even created a Recovery Partition on the SSD. But it took a long time: almost 3 hours.
  2. Swap the hard drives. It’s easy, just follow the instructions posted on any of hundreds of YouTube videos. Like this one. But make sure you have the right tools, in my case a Philips #0 and a Torx #6 screwdrivers.
  3. Turn on your Mac and be amazed at how fast it feels now.
  4. Go into System Preferences and make sure you select the SSD as the Startup Disk. Otherwise every time you boot your computer, it’s going to spend ~30 seconds looking for the old drive.
Carbon Copy Cloner doing its thing.
MacBook in mid-transplant. Make sure you don’t misplace a screw.

Really, the speed difference is amazing. Everything is snappy. Opening programs like iPhoto or iTunes happens in less than a second.

If you have a computer that’s 1-2 years old and you want something much faster without buying a new machine, strongly consider upgrading to an SSD. You may have to sacrifice capacity but I think it’s worth it. Just put your pirate movie collection in an external hard drive and/or pay $25 to keep your music on iTunes Match.

If you are buying a new laptop, make sure you get one with an SSD. If it’s too expensive, get a slower processor instead to make up for the difference. You will be surprised at how most slow tasks are dramatically sped up by an SSD. Don’t believe me? Check out this video of a side by side comparison:

Reality Distortion Field

The new iPad

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Left: iPad 2. Right, the new iPad and its Retina display. Click to zoom.
The new iPad vs iPad 2 screen comparison by The Verge. 

A new iPad is out. It’s not iPad 3 nor iPad HD. Just iPad. Kind of how Apple used to name the new version of the iPod. And it’s “Resolutionary” – lame pun intended by Apple, not by me.

The biggest change, at least in my mind, is the new “Retina” display. Four times as many pixels in the same area, making each individual pixel so small that you cannot effectively see them anymore. That’s it! The pixel has died, you no longer need to worry about the number of pixels in your iPad; more pixels would be pointless since you cannot see them already!

And so the death of the pixel continues.

And if it’s anything like the difference between the screens on the iPhone (3G, 3GS) and the iPhone 4(S)… it’s going to look amazing.

Reality Distortion Field

The road to iPhone 4S II

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…continued from The Road to iPhone 4S

October 13, 2011

T-1. I decide to call AT&T again. This time they are able to cancel my order. So why didn’t the last person cancel it? What changed? This further proves that when it comes to phone or cable companies, you can’t trust what you are told and just need to keep calling.

The representative does warn me: It will take 2 to 3 days for your contract to revert. Uh-oh.

Genius idea: since the phone is presumably unlocked, use my still valid AT&T SIM on it for 2-3 days until the contract reverts. Then start my phone activation and number transfer with Sprint.

October 14, 2011

I leave my house to work. Interestingly, my phone had no service. Common in the area. Later I realize that it was not just bad coverage, but it was dead. No service from AT&T. My genius idea goes down the drain. When I get to the office I try to log-in to AT&T:

I’m not about to cal. Two possibilities:

  1. AT&T’s guy canceled my account, not just my order. Potential problem: I could lose my number. Or…
  2. Sprint started my number transferred too early. Potential problem: My contract with AT&T still says I just renewed and they make me pay the full cancellation fee.

Then… I receive my iPhone 4S. It’s as beautiful as I had hoped. And my number is working! (which means it was #2). I test an AT&T SIM to see if it’s unlocked. Damn.

Reality Distortion Field

Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

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To transform one industry in your lifetime is enough to be remembered by history. But what if you transform several industries, and change the way people think of and interact with technology several times?

Here’s some of the things that exist thanks to Steve’s unparalleled vision, drive, and leadership:

  1. Macintosh
    Hard to remember just how primitive any computer before the Macintosh is.
  2. iPod
    Not the first digital music player, but the first one with the right mix of features, size, capacity and ease of use – replacing Walkman as the default word for “portable music player”.
  3. iTunes Music Store
    Completely changed the way music is distributed and sold, and thus the music industry. Per track purchases and instant gratification. The technology was there, but only Apple was able to put it all together in a successful manner.
  4. iPhone
    No phone looked or acted like iPhone before it, and no phone is expected to look or act unlike iPhone after it. Only four years after its introduction people forget just what a massive change this was and just how primitive a pre-iPhone phone looks.
  5. App Store
    One place to securely find, buy, install and uninstall software. Software distribution changed forever. Everybody (Google, RIM, Microsoft) have exactly copied this model.
  6. iPad
    Not the first tablet computer by a long shot. But it was a completely new vision and the first (and still only) successful one. It takes a lot of guts and an uncompromising vision to distill a product down to the appliance-like minimality of the iPad. Again, no table was like an iPad before it, and pretty much every tablet after it is an iPad clone.

Thank you for always skating where the puck is going, and for taking us along for the ride.

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.” [Steve Jobs to The Wall Street Journal, May 25, 1993]

Reality Distortion Field

iPhone 4S

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…and it’s here.

Let’s see what’s new and exclusive to the 4S (meaning, not part of iOS5):

  • A5 Processor: About 2x faster, 7x faster graphics
  • AirPlay mirroring
  • Siri, which looks like something out of a sci-fi movie
  • Much improved camera, and not just megapixel wise
  • 1080p video with image stabilization
  • Better battery life
  • Faster cellular download speed
  • World phone (CDMA and GSM)
  • Better antennas, presumably more resistant to the Grip of Death

As someone that had the 3G and upgraded to the 3GS, I can tell you how huge the camera and speed and battery life improvements were. They made the day to day use of the phone vastly better. And it was good to begin with. Sure, there were other things, but these three were the biggest (oh, and support for multitasking). So I’m really looking forward to the iPhone 4S.

Some people are disappointed because there wass no iPhone 5. Who cares? The only difference between the iPhone 4S and the iPhone 5 are the name and the form factor. I couldn’t care less about the name, and the form factor is already excellent, especially when compared to most of the gigantic and ugly Android phones out there.

Ready to pre-order.

Update: I use my phone’s camera a lot, so I was happy to see this sample, unedited photos taken with an iPhone 4S on Apple’s website.

Reality Distortion Field

Mini Lion Review

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Because you asked for it, here it is: a few notes on the new Mac OS X. But I must clarify that I have not used it that much yet.

First, some quick observations:

  • Since I don’t have a multitouch trackpad on my old Mac, the new subtler scroll bars don’t disappear. This is good. Scroll bars serve a purpose: They tell you if there is more content in the window and how much content you can see at once. I want to be able to glance at them without needing to attempt to scroll.
  • Not having a multitouch trackpad has disadvantages: No cool gestures for Mission Control, Launchpad, etc. I’m missing out.
  • Oh yeah, Mission Control is great, and Launchpad might be useful.
  • The new Mail.app is cool and I really really like the way they did threaded messages.
  • They reversed the scrolling behavior: Move fingers up, and the content moves up, like on the iPad. This seems like the right thing to me but it’s going to take some time to get used to. I will try to without going crazy. Those of you who aren’t as patient can toggle the behavior in the System Preferences.
  • I really like full screen apps except for the fact that the menu bar hides until you hover. It’s not that I need to see the menu bar, but rather that when I move the mouse up to push some button or select the URL bar in Safari, the menu bar pops down and pushes down whatever I’m trying to click on. It’s driving me crazy. Breaks Fitt’s Law too.
  • AirDrop does not work on my computer. I don’t know the details on how it’s implemented nor why they couldn’t make it work on my computer… but my hardware does not support it.

The lesson so far: Time for me to get a new Mac.

But here’s what I think is the most significant and profound change in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion – and it happens to be the one thing that you won’t use immediately because it requires third party application updates: Auto Save and Versions and Resume.

It’s a big deal: Apple went back and questioned one of the most basic givens of computer use since the 80’s, the stuff nobody even questions anymore. From now on, you no longer do we need to save your files. It happens automatically, and you can always go back and revert any change. It’s built-in and transparent and easy to use. It’s great.

And they didn’t stop there. Quitting applications is now obsolete! But if you do quit, when you restart the application or even your computer, everything comes back just the way you left it (and you didn’t have to save your open files!).

Maybe it doesn’t sound like much, but it is a is a change to a basic paradigm on our interaction with our computers (Ah! but not our iPhones and iPads). File managing and file systems are going away, and that’s a good thing.

Overall I really like Lion, it feels as fast if not faster than Snow Leopard (YMMV), and it’s very well worth a paltry $29. So download your copy now!