As reported at Gizmodo and elsewhere, the MacBook Pro has gotten a speed bump. The original announcement listed two models, 1.67GHz and 1.83GHz. Now, before even shipping the first one (they reportedly start today), those numbers have been bumped to 1.83GHz and 2.0GHz respectively, with a 2.16GHz configure-to-order option.
That makes the top about 18% faster than before; significant, but not exactly exciting (unless you’re easily excited by this sort of thing).
Apple’s new MacBook Pro doesn’t have a PC Card slot. Instead, the specifications tell us, it has an ExpressCard/34 slot.
What?
If you’re a Windows notebook nerd you probably know all about ExpressCard, as many models already support it, but I suspect most Mac-o-philes have never heard of it before; I hadn’t, anyway. It’s a replacement for the venerable PC Card (formerly PCMCIA card), designed to be smaller, simpler, faster, and more power-efficient.
In case you missed the news, there’s a new laptop in town. It’s supposed to be really fast and stuff. But my favorite feature is the new MagSafe power connector.
On Tuesday morning, before the keynote, one of my students happened to stop by my office to show me what had happened to the power adapter on his PowerBook. His roommate tripped over the power cord while he was working on the couch.
Last week I got a Palm TX, a new model released in October. You can check the Palm site for full specs, but for those familiar with preceding models the highlights are: 320x480 screen, non-collapsing case, built-in WiFi, and a $299 suggested retail price.
Some context: I’ve owned about a half-dozen Palm devices, and these comments are aimed at long-term users like me; the TX is replacing a Tungsten T, so this is also my first exposure to the 320x480 screen; I bought now rather than waiting for the elusive Cobalt because my T was at the end of its useful life.
This is amateur science at its best. Peter Klausler, an aficionado of the Dvorak keyboard layout, decided to see if there were better permutations of keys yet unrealized:
…I constructed a complicated function that measures the amount of “work” needed to touch-type a given text with a given layout.
Very good. But where does the primordial soup of keyboard layouts come from?
…4096 keyboard layouts compete with each other. The layouts in the initial pool are entirely random.
Apple customers have a long tradition of griping about Apple’s silly naming policies. But I take it all back after going over this Kaypro timeline from the ’80s. Let’s see, in chronological order starting in 1982 we have:
Kaypro II (the first model, so naturally we call it “II”) Kaypro IV Kaypro 10 Kaypro 4 (totally different from the “IV” of course!) Kaypro 2 (totally… never mind) This madness continued through several more models until the Kaypro 1 was released in 1986, at which point the company completely imploded, possibly due to a logic vacuum deep in its core or a breach in the space-time continuum.
There’s a fine line between collecting and just not knowing when to throw stuff out. Sometime in the last few years I switched from the latter to the former – in the realm of vintage computer hardware, anyway. Because the OCD aspects of collecting kind of freak me out, I don’t get too organized about it. I like portable stuff; I like Apple stuff; I like stuff that’s cleverly designed. I like stuff I’ve actually used; I like getting stuff really cheap on eBay.
