If you notice the not-so-great quality, Justin made a boo boo because he forgot to switch his MacBook Pro mic to the H2 mic instead. Sorry! m(_ _)m

Jerrick, Justin

Stories this week:

[1:08] Samsung opens up TouchWiz development
[3:25] Snow Leopard Seeds uses 32bit Kernel and drivers by default
[6:16] Twitter Documentary
[8:34] PS3 Slim
[15:00] Study Touts Internet Explorer 8 As Worlds Most Secure Browser
[19:21] HP Mini 1000 hacked into touchscreen tablet

[23:40] Byte of the week: Posterous

I finally bought the 13” MacBook Pro, 2.53GHz with an 8gig RAM upgrade. I’ve used it for more than 2 months and here are my thoughts on it. I’m splitting this post into 2 parts, where I’ll talk about what I like in this post, and what I dislike in the next post.

I love you, MacBook Pro

One of the things I really love is the hardware itself. The unibody case is very well crafted together with the screen. The aluminium gives it a very nice touch and feel to it, although be very careful if there are power leaks. My MacBook Pro had a power leak once and got pretty feisty because of the aluminium casing. For those who know me personally, I have the tendency to caress this marvellous piece of craftsmanship very lovingly.

The screen is brightly lit with LED backlit, displaying great graphics and clear images. Even though the screen is glossy and reflective, I don’t really have any problems with the reflection as I initially thought I might have. I like the glass panel protecting the screen although it adds a little weight to the overall laptop.

The multi-touch trackpad is a pleasure to use, with various multi-touch gestures that are inbuilt into the operating system. For example, I love the 2 finger scroll up/down gesture; the 3 finger back/forth gesture; the 4 finger swipe up/down for expose and swipe left/right to switch applications. It is well integrated into the operating system and works on most applications which really makes the experience all the more complete.

The keyboard feel is not too stiff and not to deep to type. It isn’t stiff and clickity like some keyboards out there. It has a different feeling from my usual Thinkpad keyboards, but I like this new MacBook Pro style of keyboard. The backlight on the keyboard is a refreshing change from the slowly deteriorating ThinkLight technology.

The new non-removable battery is exactly as what Apple proclaims, of much better quality. Although I can only get less than 3-4 hours with my virtual machine turned on, and a little more than 5-6 hours with my normal applications running, it is more than satisfactory as opposed to my previous Thinkpad. It’s been 2 months, yet I’ve been able to get consistently 96-98% full battery charge, which is pretty good. The battery usually gets reduced to 93-95% or less after 2 months of my normal usage on previous laptops. Just a refresh of the battery usually brings the maximum battery charge back a little higher. I’m very impressed with the quality of the battery, and what Apple has done to make it robust and last for quite some time. To get almost all the information you need regarding your battery, download coconutBattery. The maximum capacity for this battery is 5450 mAh and my current maximum charge is 5300 mAH with about 60 charges.

One of the greatest features I love on the Mac OS X is Spaces. Now I can’t live without Spaces. I assign different Space for different uses. Space 1 contains my web browser, which is mainly what I use, and various other activities like QuickTime for watching movies, and listening to music. It is my main workspace. Space 2 contains my various communication avenues, like twitter, IRC chat, instant messengers, etc. Space 3 contains my news reader and various news related applications. This is the workspace where I just sit back and relax, reading my news for a few minutes before I get back to work. Space 4 contains my Windows 7 virtual machine, which I use for coding, and other Windows related activities. I love this ability to compartmentalise my life into different spaces to manage my tech lifestyle. There are many applications out there that allows virtual desktops on Windows 7, but I haven’t really found anything that’s nice. If you do, leave a comment.

Spotlight is another really great tool that I find really useful to load up applications and search for various information related to your search criteria. Windows 7 has the feature too, but it isn’t as powerful as Spotlight. One things that Spotlight wins over Windows 7’s search implementation is it has it’s own dictionary application which is able to search for the definition of a certain word. That, my friend, is the most useful feature I’ve ever come across, especially when writing articles, emails, documents, or just chatting with friends. You are also able to use it as a calculator just to do quick calculations. There are applications that offer this feature too, like Skylight and Launchy, but it’s either too resource intensive or just isn’t as clean and good as Spotlight.

But I think the best feature, which I’m sure everyone would agree, is the speed it takes to sleep and resume from sleep. To me, it is an amazing experience to be able to open your MacBook Pro and just able to use it within 2-5 seconds, as opposed to Windows 7 which takes a fair amount of time to wake up for its sleep. Putting it to sleep is really a pleasure, especially when you’re in a hurry to go somewhere. Although it is great, but it didn’t fully sleep for just once, which made the MacBook Pro extremely hot. I had to turn it shut it down manually in order not to let it overheat any longer.

Although there are many features on both the MacBook Pro, hardware-wise, and the Mac OS X, software-wise, that I like, I have many complaints about it. There is a love-hate relationship between my MacBook Pro and myself.

Stay tuned for Part 2 when I discuss the bad and the ugly of both the MacBook Pro and Mac OS X.

Disclaimer: These are my own opinions, and do not represent anyone, any organization or any company’s opinions.

Original Post: http://www.justinlee.sg/2009/08/17/i-love-you-macbook-pro-after-2-months/

It’s that time of the year again! CES + Macworld combo! It is therefore only appropriete for us that we should record the longest episode this week too! Have no fear!! Check out our shownotes, and use the time-stamps to listen to just the stories that you’re interested in! We’ve carefully picked only the best stories just for your listening pleasure.

The beginning of the year is an interesting one for the tech industry. First Apple surprises us (well, not really) by announcing minor products, while Microsoft over promises in their keynote by having their servers crash hours they released Windows 7′s public beta. And who would have guessed that the company that was going to steal all the thunder last week was going to be Palm? And interesting year, this is, indeed…

Daniel, NTT, DK, featuring our special guest, Willy Foo of LiveStudios.sg

P.S.: Apologies for the delay this week. Our producer fell ill, and was unable to produce this episode. Thanks for your patience!

Stories this week:

[02:05] Apple’s last keynote at Macworld 2009 (Keynote transcript | video)
- [02:35] iLife ’09
- [10:40] iWorks ’09
- [12:10] Updated 17 inch Macbook Pro with Unibody and integrated 8-hour battery
- [13:55] iTunes turns DRM free by end of 1st Quarter 2009

[16:55] Windows 7 Public Beta announced at CES09 Keynote
- [18:25] ZDNet compares Windows 7 with Vista and XP

[23:45] Sony reveals Vaio P “not-a-netbook” netbook

[34:20] Creative reveals what Zii is all about, turns out NTT was right after all

[38:45] Palm steals CES09 thunder with the Palm Pre and the Palm WebOS (Announcement transcript | Video)

[49:45] For more CES coverage, we recommend Engadget.com

[50:20] Byte of the week: Mozilla Prism (also mentioned is Fluid)

Featuring: Daniel, NTT, Farinelli, Ryu, Nicole, Naveen and special cameo by DK.

[01:29] Announcement: New 65bits podcast feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/65bits for 65bits only. Stay with this feed for all future Tech65 audio podcasts.

[04:00] Pre-DigitalMediaFest 2008 Discussion. What is Digital Media in Singapore?

[09:50] Impressions of the new Samsung Innov8
- Review by Claudia.sg

[13:44] Kongregate Labs: Gaming tutorials on creating Flash Games

[16:13] HSDPA Eee PC 901 promotion with SingTel Broadband On Mobile

[20:35] Microsoft unveils final name for Windows 7

[26:57] Apple Time!

[28:03] Oh wait, before that, tips on reformatting your Windows machine

[33:48] Finally! The “dreaded” Apple event discussion
- New MacBook
- New MacBook Pro
- New Cinema Display

So Apple launched a bunch of brand new Macbooks and Macbook Pros early this morning (Singapore time). I’m not going to talk about them because I’m saving all that for this Saturday’s 65bits with the crew. However, I have to talk to all of you who have been complaining about Apple removing that button from the track pad. Seriously, before you start ranting, make sure you dig up the facts first!!

Note, this isn’t a “Woot! I love Apple!” post, it’s a “What are you guys talking about!?!” post.

The button is STILL THERE
First of all, there is a button. THE WHOLE TRACK PAD has become a button. And I’m not talking about the touch thing that you find in all of today’s laptops (i.e. if you tap on the track pad, it’s a click). I’m talking about a physical “push-and-the-track-pad-sinks-in” button. In fact, according to Engadget, if you’re used to pushing that button at the bottom of the track pad, it shouldn’t feel any different. It’s one of those “it’s there, you just don’t see it” things.

We actually don’t hate the all-clicking trackpad much at all. (If your thumb muscle memory makes you click at the bottom where the button used to be, it works and feels pretty much the same.)
- Engadget

In fact, now you have more!
Here’s a fact that many people missed out. There’s actually preferences that allow you to set “multiple buttons”. That means you can set regions on your track pad to be buttons, like the Mighty Mouse. In other words, you can set the bottom right of the track pad to be “right-click”, and when you click (as in really push that corner of the glass down) that region of the track pad, it will right click! So not only did they not remove any button, they added an extra one!

If you’re coming from a right-click world, you can right-click with two fingers or configure a right-click area on the trackpad.
- Apple.com

You can get multi-buttons via software, so if you’re a Windows user coming from Windows and you’d like that right-click button, no problem, just turn it on in Preference and you got it.
- Steve Jobs, Apple Keynote (21:36)

His Steveness only mentioned it once, and didn’t show it off. He should have, because this is a pretty useful feature! How do I know? Because everyone is complaining that it’s not available! This is better than having a right-click button!!

So what does all this mean?
This new glass track pad has the best of both worlds! It allows you to have any kind of button you want, including a PHYSICAL right-click button (c’mon, you have to admit it’s about time, right?), yet still increases the track-pad’s area by 37%! Only Apple can pull that off! So now can you stop complaining about the new track pad? I can’t believe I have to do all the work for you… Apple, you owe me one.

Catch Episode 93 of 65bits as the Tech65 crew talk about the new products that Apple launched, and why we weren’t excited enough to make a mid-week episode for it. Or better still! Join us this Saturday morning 10:30 am at Geek Terminal and tell us what you think!

If you were the star of my life, I’d be fried into black soot right now. THIS! Is Tech65.

Stories this week :

[0:58] S’pore, M’sian regulators to study cutting roaming charges with telcos

[4:06] Google Hackathon Singapore
- Harish Mallipeddi - The guy who was sponsored to go to Yahoo! hackday 2008.

[7:42] Google Street View – Coming to Singapore

[12:24] Google Talk gets more Translation Bots!

[16:13] Google Mail Labs

[21:12] xkcd – Youtube Audio Preview

[23:32] G2: HTC Touch HD may be T-Mobile’s next Android phone

[33:53] BlackBerry Storm 9500 hands-on

[38:00] Apple “notebook” event is on, October 14th!

[41:55] Byte of the Week : Gothere.sg