geekosystem

I'm going to say up front: I'm a bit of an Apple fanboy. I've never owned a non-Apple computer or smartphone. While I am a fan of Apple's products, I totally understand people are who get angry about their holier-than-thou fan club. The cult of Jobs is real people having a conversation with one of company's supporter can sometimes feel like a debate with a brick wall... or a Scientologist.

Yesterday, Dell announced the XPS15z, which it touts as the "thinnest 15-inch PC on the planet," bringing "performance, style, battery life and craftsmanship together in a sleek package less than one inch thin." But at least a few observers have wondered if the $999 laptop is cribbing some of that style from a certain other grey 15-inch laptop.

Designer Tommaso Gecchelin has taken it upon himself to imagine a design for the MacBook Pro circa the year 2020, extrapolating from Apple's current obsession with streamlined design to envision a laptop with a holographic screen, essentially infinite battery life, and no wires whatsoever. Though the sidebars to Gecchelin' illustrations refer to the current technological and materials research with which he sees this as being possible, he's probably being more than a little optimistic about the delivery date, if not the overall feasibility of such a device: MacBook 2035, maybe? Still, fun grist for Apple-branded sci-fi.

Yesterday, we noted that the new MacBook Pros mark an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, change to Apple's lineup -- they look the same as the past generation of MacBook Pros, weigh the same, have the same battery life, still don't come with SSDs by default, and haven't moved towards the great iPad convergence predicted by Apple-watchers. The main changes here are performance boosts and the addition of the new Thunderbolt data transfer technology. But lest we sweep them under the rug, those performance boosts are very real, thanks in large part to new Sandy Bridge quad-core processors from Intel. PrimateLabs looked through Geekbench benchmarking scores for the new MBPs (shown above), and had this to say:

The performance of the new MacBook Pros is amazing. The slowest MacBook Pro performs on par with the fastest previous-generation MacBook Pro, and the fastest MacBook Pro is 80% faster than the fastest previous-generation MacBook Pro. In fact, if you look at our Mac Benchmark charts, you'll see that the fastest MacBook Pro is faster than a lot of Mac Pros (including the current generation of Mac Pros). The new MacBook Pros truly are portable workstations.

Note that these tests measure CPU and memory performance, and do not reflect the additional muscle provided by video cards or external storage devices. If you want to run the same tests on your Mac, you can download Geekbench and git 'er done in a matter of one or two minutes. My early 2008 MacBook Pro got a 3200. (PrimateLabs via MacRumors)

Today is Steve Jobs' birthday, and as expected, Apple has celebrated the event by rolling out the new generation of MacBook Pro laptops. As is underscored by the fact that Apple introduced these in a relatively low-key way without much fanfare, the new MacBook Pros mark an evolutionary rather than revolutionary change to the MBP lineup: Faster processors are available across the board, yes, and "Thunderbolt" (formerly known as Light Peak) has been unveiled, promising data transfer at speeds of up to 10 GB per second. Apple says that "the Thunderbolt pipeline is more than 12 times faster than FireWire 800 and up to 20 times faster than USB 2.0, and it offers unprecedented expansion capabilities," with new peripherals on the way. But the new MacBook Pros do not bring the rumored operating system on an SSD that we heard about earlier this week: More broadly, they haven't morphed into the iPad-laptop hybrids that many envisioned with the launch of the MacBook Air, though today Apple released to developers a preview of Mac OS X Lion, which is expected to bridge the gap somewhat between iOS and previous builds of OS X.  This is an incremental upgrade, and while the laptops may be worth getting if you're in need of a new computer anyway, it may be worth waiting until either this fall's likely MacBook Air update or next spring's likely MacBook Pro update to see if Apple whips up something that's dramatically different from MacBook Pros to date. Specs and prices below:

Apart from the iPad 2, the iPad 3, the Apple Store in Grand Central Station, and the cheap new iPhone, people just have not been freaking out enough about Apple-related rumors lately, which is why it is important to know that this may be the week that Apple announces its expected late winter/early spring refresh of the MacBook Pro line. One interesting bit of evidence marshalled in support of this theory is that Apple's online store, which normally ships everything within 24 hours (see, for instance, the MacBook Air page), has pushed shipping for MacBook Pro computers back to 3-5 business days, suggesting a rare act of mercy on the part of a company from which one always seems to buy things the moment before they become outclassed by a newer model. AppleInsider: "Apple usually reserves this kind of across-the-board shipping delay for imminent new product releases. Placeholder SKUs for new Apple-branded computers discovered Sunday in the Best Buy inventory system appeared to further corroborate the pending upgrade. Five models were listed on the electronics reseller's Laptop Configuration tool ranging in price from $1,199 to $2,499." If the announcement indeed happens this week, Thursday is said to be the day. The big question on every Mac person's mind, however, is how new the new MacBook Pros will be: They're expected to use Intel's new Sandy Bridge processor, but theories abound as to whether they'll simply consist of a spec refresh, whether they'll converge further towards the MacBook Air line with features like more widespread Flash memory, or whether they'll feature the very promising-looking new Light Peak technology from Intel. Hopefully, we'll learn soon enough. (via AppleInsider, 9to5Mac)

BeyondTheTech has devised a sleek skinmod to complement the MacBook Air's razor-thin profile: The familiar black-and-white mottle of a grade-school composition notebook. The OCD among you will notice that the pink line on the lined page is on the wrong side, but as Core77 points out, this is actually a handy way of marking the useable part of the trackpad.

If Three Guys and a Podcast's report holds true, the next iteration of the MacBook Pro will release in April 2011, featuring solid-state drives, and will dispense with optical drives, like the recent version of the MacBook Air. It is also speculated that the new MacBooks may feature Intel's Light Peak optical cabling, which is supposed to be a universal bus to replace various buses, such as SATA, USB, HDMI, PCI Express and FireWire.

True to their mission of ripping apart any Apple product they can to get at its guts, the good people of iFixit have taken a hard look at the innards of Apple's just-unveiled 11-inch MacBook Air. Not too many surprises -- the big takeaway for less tech-oriented people will be that Apple used 5-point Security Torx screws to make getting inside MacBook Airs really hard, even for folks like the iFixit crew. CrunchGear bemoans the fact that "most of the parts are so customized (not to say obscure) that you’d be unable to find them in even the most extensive part store." Still, if you want a look at how Apple manages to cram so much in such a small box -- as well as a slew of specs -- head on over to iFixit. (iFixit via NOTCOT)

Riffing on the all-but-confirmed reports that Apple will be rolling out a new 11.6-inch MacBook Air at their press announcement this afternoon -- Engadget says it'll have a 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with a 2.33GHz option, 2 GB of memory, no optical drive, a single-button trackpad, and a smaller footprint than the current MacBook Air, but with the same thickness -- DVICE has mocked up some more clever elemental MacBooks. There are two and only two possible quips to make here: 1. Where's MacBook Heart? 2. By our powers combined, etc. (DVICE)

Attention, MacHeads: Swiss design firm THISMADE makes a cutting board shaped just like a MacBook laptop, down to the button-shaped nub in the front and the line between the top and bottom 'halves' (though it doesn't appear to unfold). And made of applewood, fittingly enough. Available in 13", 15", and 17" sizes for €43, €49, and €55 respectively at designspray; on the pricy side, but that's the Apple experience, right? More pics below:

On most models of modern Apple laptops, the little light that indicates when the computer is in sleep mode is actually tuned to the rate at which the average adult breathes.

This February, parents of Lower Marion high school students brought suit against the school district for covertly spying on students using the webcameras of school issued MacBooks.  The LMSD said that the cameras, equipped with remote access software, were simply a security feature to be used in the case that the laptops were stolen or misplaced.  Parents say that they were never informed about this possible use of the cameras, and that some were activated without the computer being reported lost.  Michael and Holly Robbins found out about the cameras when pictures from their son's computer were used as evidence in disciplinary action against him. Now comes the information that the webcams took "thousands" of secret pictures of students in their homes.

Trees can breathe a sigh of relief.  The iPad moved one step closer to making paper unnecessary this week by finding a place inside the backpacks of every student at Seton Hill University, a small liberal-arts college in Pennsylvania.  The school announced yesterday that it would begin distributing the hot item to every single full-time student this coming fall.  Heck, all the incoming freshmen even get free 13"  MacBooks!

Regretsy has discovered a request on Alchemy, Etsy's forum for requests, for a laptop sweater.

What's a laptop sweater, you ask? Obviously: a sweater that covers a person and their MacBook ... at the same time.