What Is Noise

When Steve Jobs took the stage today in his ubiquitous black shirt, blue jeans and glasses everyone was wondering what was going to happen with the much rumored sub-notebook. We now know this to be the Macbook Air.

The MBA is basically a super-thin Macbook, minus some ports, plus the option of a Solid State Drive.

Don’t get me wrong, people were clamoring for a SSD in a laptop. It’s a really cool technology that offers some great stability, great speed, and great battery performance. There’s a downside however being that they are still stupidly expensive. We are used to $100 500GB drives. 64GB drives are well over $1000USD still.

So what do I see is wrong with the Macbook Air? Two things. First, it’s not small enough. Yes it’s stupidly thin which is cool. But we already have a 13.3″ widescreen Mac. I still kinda miss my 12″ iBook. I wish they had put out a 10″ sub-notebook. That would have been truly useful and fit a niche well. Instead we basically have a thin Macbook with fewer ports.

Then comes the price of the “better” one, which is simply absurd. It pushes over $3000 with the SSD. It still only has 2GB memory (I’ve been using 2GB standard for years now). Basically, it costs about the same as the 17″ Macbook Pro, when both configured to have the fastest available processors (and the $100 high-rez 17″ screen update) and Applecare for both. It’s nuts. Also, while most won’t be watching much video on this I suppose, it doesn’t even include the Apple Remote. It’s an extra $20. On a plus side, it does include a better touchpad that can be used for gestures as you can on the iPhone. Not quite the same, but close.

This computer is really close to perfect, but it’s flawed. It should have been:

• 10″ or so for a screen.
• Ram expandable to 4GB
• Perhaps with a small breakout cable for a “dock” that might include another USB port and Firewire.

But as is it’s overly expensive (and I never say that about an Apple product), and simply doesn’t fit most users. I’m sure some people will love it but I just don’t get it.

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I made a video at work today (the betahouse) at a little MacWorld Party we had. Just asking people what they thought about the new Macbook Air.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8suKXmGjFU[/youtube]

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So what has Apple released that I feel is worthy of my money? I am a pretty hardcore Apple guy, on my 4th Apple (5th if you count the iPhone) since 2002 now. I love their products, my friends use them, my co-workers use them. They are great. They just had all of their product releases, so what is worth it? What will I get (or beg my boss to buy me)?

1. The AppleTV seems to be more viable than ever. For my to use my computer with my 37″ Westinghouse 1080p screen, it has to be over there. I sometimes like to watch movies and surf at the same time. I’d like a dedicated piece, and with the new price drop- it’s pretty much right on. I wish it supported 1080p, and perhaps it will. With the new HD movie rentals from Apple, it seems like a winner to me.
2. The new 8-core Mac Pro. Not new from today, but new in the past 2 weeks. I have a Macbook Pro currently, and I love it. However when I try something like Motion or FCP it still gets killed. There’s still a few tasks that just having raw power rocks. Apple has really hit the one out of the ballpark for me. Yea, some PC kid could cobble together ’something’ for a few hundred bucks cheaper- maybe. But it’s not the same as having a Mac that will rock for years to come.
3. iPhone update (1.13?). I’m not jailbroken as I had some severe problems getting mine jailbroken. I’ll upgrade. I’m hoping that with the API next month (which details weren’t released on) that new apps will be released. I can wait. The GPS doesn’t really excite me, but I live in Boston and always know where I am.
4. Time Capsule- I need somewhere to back up my computer anyways that will work well. The wireless part is even better, and it seems reasonably priced. The gigabit ethernet is key and I need to find if the AppleTV can mount it.

The iTunes rentals are cool. For me personally, the Macbook Air is a non-item. I need more power, not less, and I don’t personally care about weight/thickness. It’s sexy for sure, but not for me. I’ll keep my Macbook Pro. I think the Air is overpriced, has too big of a screen, and missed what was really wanted.

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Today the betahouse had our own MacWorld party. About 20 people came over, including 2 former Apple employees and one current one. Twitter was up and down (come on, it goes down on random days, of course it was going to go down today). The “leaked” keynote was totally fake.

So what happened today at MacWorld? What am I placing an order (or hoping someone places me an order) for?

• New iPhone software. Mainly just the features that were leaked prior. Quasi-GPS support, Lyrics, better SMS, blah. I’ll upgrade. Nothing exciting. I know where I am normally
• The iPod Touch got Maps, Mail, Weather, etc… but it’s a $20 paid upgrade. Boo. That’s non-standard and kinda lame
• Time Capsul- An Airport Extreme base station + 500GB/1TB drive for wireless Time Machine backup. Not bad. I’ll bite and get one. I’ve been looking for a good network backup and storage solution that will work well with Macs
• Apple of course touted their sales and Steve gave lots of numbers
• iTunes Movie Rentals, and it supports HD! Goodbye Netflix!
  • Details, 30 days to start watching, 24 hours to finish
  • 2.99/3.99/4.99 for HD rentals
  • Near instant streaming
  • Available to watch on iPhone/Mac/PC
  • All major studios
  • Starting today
• Apple TV update that seems to rock pretty well. Might have to get one. Does it do 1080p?
  • They lowered the price, AND the updates are free. I’m getting one…
  • New Software out in 2 weeks. Price on eBay to adjust soon?
• Macbook Air confirmed
  • 3rd series of notebooks, in addition to MBP and MB
  • I love my MBP, so I don’t really need something smaller. It is stupidly thin however. I like the Multitouch trackpad
  • I hope they upgrade the MBP software to allow multitouch motion on the trackpad
  • The rumors of a huge multitouch surface seem wrong
  • 64GB SSD drive. “Pricey but fast”. Now that could ROCK for video editing.
  • Just wondering… why do I want this again? If I wanted a small notebook, sure.. but the standard MB is fine imho
  • No Firewire. Looks like Apple really has gone to USB. Too bad. Death of Firewire.
  • Optional Superdrive (No BluRay),$99
  • $1799. I paid that much for my Macbook Pro (after student discount and selling the “free” iPod)
  • People seem to wish thatthe screen was smaller and that it was more of a ’sub-notebook’
  • Better for environment. Nice, but not huge news.
  • Site updated… no more “just one more thing”?

MORE UPDATES COMING AS I WATCH

In the Spring, Jack Hodgson is organizing MacCampBoston. It’s going to be an “unconference” based on Mac stuff.

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I have a Fender Mustang that I’ve modified a bit. There’s a few more things that I want to do to it, in order to make it all around my favorite guitar of all time. Then I’ll have to start hacking on another guitar.

So here’s my thoughts for what I want to do pretty soon. The only downside being that this is all going to cost what the guitar did, all over again:

• I want to put a new bridge pickup on it. The stock bridge pickup is fairly anemic compared to the neck one I currently have in there. I’m thinking perhaps a humbucker that I can split, or a P90. I don’t mind routing out the body a bit more or the pick guard.
• I’m going to put a Graphtech saddle/bridge system on it, which basically is throwing piezo pickups on it. This will allow me to do three things:
  • Output a piezo pickup sound (a bit more like an acoustic, but not quite)
  • Output to a 13-pin midi synth system for synthesis and tracking
  • route a mult of each pickup to send back to a sustainer system (more on this later)
• Put a much better volume pot on there. Tune a fixed tone pot position for each pickup and remove the tone pot. Replace with encoder for midi system or piezo system.
• Rewire pickup switches to make them more useful with new pickup system
• Add a kill-switch
• Add a Fender branded Bigsby tremelo. This will make it look “almost stock” but not quite.

I’d like to build another guitar or two with this similar feature set. Also, thinking of how I could integrate a Nintendo Wii controller on the guitar for both IR finger tracking and motion sensing to use with Max/Msp

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