Powerbook 1Ghz: My Old Girl, But Still Sexy

I bought my aluminum 1Ghz Powerbook eons ago and it has not been on my lap for more than two years since I bought the late-2008 unibody Macbook back in December of 2008. And guess what? It still rocks.

See, one of the reason I went with the Macbook was that it had a great screen that the LCD on the Powerbook just could not keep up through over the years of being used and abused as a productivity device and media device.

Still, it has a lot of uses that cannot be matched in ways that an aging Windows machine cannot.

First, the keyboard on this particular line of the Powerbook is still second to none. The keys are responsive and is, depending on your opinion, a starkly different from the chicklet forms on the newer Macbooks. And that's say that the current keyboards on the Macbook are also excellent.

I imagine that many of you out there in Apple land has more than a few Powerbooks still up and running at home. So you know what I am talking about. Whether you've passed this along to your kids, parents, or just having it sit on the side of your workstation to play music through iTunes or as a file server, you know what I'm talking about here.

There's life yet in this awesome piece of Apple engineering for years to come. There will not being any more updates from Apple and have not been for a long time. However, what is there is quite stable and fast.

I've maxed out the PB to the 2 GB of RAM. There simply isn't more you can do beyond that. And for what you can continue doing on these PowerPC Macs, you don't need more than that.

Anyway, it's a good walk down memory lane and great knowing that road is still being traveled. And as if I needed a reminder, the Powerbook seems to be agreeing with me by warming my laptop on this cold night.

So, do you still have a pre-Intel Powerbook in your household, apartment, or dorm? If so, what are you using it for?


- This post was written and sent from My Powerbook

iPad Is Not A Viable Enterprise Tool: Guess Who Thinks This

iPad isn't for biz  Well, if Dell, HP, and Microsoft says it, it must be true...

I'm gonna take a guess and say that the PC market, san the Mac part of it, isn't doing too well.  The sudden chorus of chatter in the media against the iPad only solidifies Steve Jobs' claim that we are approaching the post-PC era.  

A comprehensive mobile experience for computing with a viable ecosystem is something that is difficult to create and these guys are late to the game.

More here.

iPhone Or Apple Rumors and Where They Belong

Here is a great post from Seeking Alpha about why I don't deal with rumors on my blogs (but I love reading them).  The thing is that I think bloggers now should be held accountable for stuff they report as rumors.  In the wild wild West of the blogosphere, rumors are treated as news  The media has gotten lazy and fact checking, let alone, facts are no longer something people in the press are interested in.

 

It's now the fast pace of here and now.  That means clicks, eyeballs, and impressions.  More often and often, I see some lazy ass writer from traditional media, especially, CNBC, start with "according to Apple blog, X, Apple will be (delaying, releasing)…"

 

Seriously, talk about lame…

 

Oh, and for disclosure, I've got Apple positions…long.  As in long long term.  I don't know what its stock price is on a daily basis.  While I do love rumors, let's keep them in perspective.  They're fun to read and by belong on the world of blogs for our entertainment.

 

No more.  And certainly, no less.

Note:  I chimed in on this issue yesterday because some of what we know as facts, such as the confirmation of the release of the white iPhone just a couple of months before the traditional schedule for new iPhone release just did not make sense.  And the CDMA iPhone did just come out six weeks or so ago.

 

More at Seeking Alpha via MacDailyNews. 

Apple’s Software Show, WWDC, in June To Focus On Software, No New iPhone 5 Hardware – Not Surprised

I love this rumor which is why I'm breaking my own rules to talk about it but I'll explain why this particular rumor makes a lot of sense.  And hopefully, you will too.

The World Wide Developer Conference is about developers and software.  In the past, Apple had used it as a launch pad for the new iPhone hardware in the June.  And now, people completely expects that whenever June rolls around, it means new iPhone.  

Word was put out, probably by Apple, that we will not see this behavior repeated this year.  I've long suspected that Apple might do this eventually.  And this is especially true this year.  

We have Lion coming in the summer as well as the expected iOS 5. That's a lot of software.  Let's not forget that an updated iWork is still missing.  On top of that, there is the comprehensive mobile, computing, and entertainment vision that Apple will try to convey to the world.  It's difficult to do that with an iPhone launch in the mix.

And then are a couple of things about the iPhone 4 that show Apple is not quite done with it yet  Verizon iPhone.  Apparently, it's doing well and I reckon that CDMA iPhone will see new markets – mostly likely in China.  That'll add a few millions of new sales in the next quarter or two without slowing down sales.  

Then there's this.  The white iPhone that is coming in April.  Apple has confirmed this and even at this late stage, Apple will sell tons of those.

So it never made sense that Apple would introduce the CDMA iPhone in Feb and the white iPhone in April and then release the iPhone 5 in June.

More at The Loop. 

Girl Scouts Use Mobile to Accept Credit Card. NFC Next?

While tech giants work out how they want to incorporate near field communication capability to allow mobile devices ranging from regular cell phones to high-end devices like iPhones and who has the final control over data, some folks just are not going to wait around until that day comes.

The Girl Scouts in Ohio are now accepting credit card payments via GoPayment from Intuit, the folks who brought us Quicken And TurboTax, a dongle that can be attached to the the iPhone.

This is just the beginning.  I wonder what'll happen once more devices like the iPhones become NFC-capable?

More at Greenjava.

Digitimes Wrong Most of the Times but Bloggers Will Not Call Them Out

So, DigiTimes, a Chinese tech publication that's often linked to by bloggers, especially Apple-centric sites for the claims itself and its analysts make that is wrong virtually every time.

Personally, I am still waiting for my 7" iPad that digitimes said was coming even after Steve Jobs dismissed such a possibility.

More often that not, I get the feeling that DigiTimes just goes around and time certain posts to generate traffic on Apple. Perhaps they have quotas they are supposed to meet for their advertisers.

The amazing thing is that some posts that link to DigiTimes also make a disclaimer that DigiTimes does not have a good track record regarding Apple products and plans.

And more than that, some of the things that DigiTimes come up with are so out there that not even Wall Street analysts dare put those things down on paper.

In the latest report, they claim that Apple is seeking to secure screens out of Taiwan due to the northeastern Japan earthquake even if it means a price nike.. Makes sense right? Sure until you read the little post that offered no sources whatsoever. It's always according to "this or that". Nothing to explain the nature of such a deal. Thing is, folks, that Apple has been sourcing from the Taiwanese for years. There really nothing new here. The rumor made it sound like this was the first time Apple is dealing with the tech folks there.

Now, don't get me wrong, I like Apple rumors. The best rumor so far this year is the one that we might get a 5" iPod touch. And it came from blogs that claim to have their own sources that they've used in the past. And that this will be a part of a greater fall surprise that Apple is planning. This latter part is also a rumor but detailed enough to be credible.

And how is this different from what Digitimes posts? Rumors from these blogs have a chance of actually being true whereas Digitimes offers nothing to suggest anything other than that Apple posts will generate links and traffic. Digitimes information never turns out to be true.

Knowing this fact as most bloggers do, that virtually everything DigiTimes reports are wrong, why share it with your readers?

Hit your regular sources for the juicy stuff. Because these days, I don't even bother reading your rumor posts if the source is DigiTimes.

Note: If you want to know more about the Digitimes post I referenced to above, you're welcome to Google it. I'm just not going to link to it.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod touch

Macs: To Guard Against Certificate Attacks

I came across this post regarding digital certificates.  After Microsoft's trusted Comodo Certificate Authority issued fraudulent certificates that effected many top sites.

So here are some instructions that you can use to protect yourself if you're on a Mac and use Safari as your main browser.  Honestly, I don't know how serious this is but if it's got Microsoft's attention, I'd worried somewhat, enough to continue looking into it.

It's amazing this does not happen more often if you ask me.  So the instructions provided at Sophos basically enables certificate revocation.  

There really isn't much we can do about this.  We rely on a system that is based on an honor system and require these security and certificate companies to audit and continually beef up their protocols.  

More at Sophos and how this happened.

Note: Firefox and IE 9 users should be fine even though Microsoft has issued an update.  IE 8 users needs to act to protect themselves.