Just a Thought...

With all the fanfare surrounding the iPad and iPhone OS 4.0 (there’s multitasking now), the updates to the MacBook Pro line came out with little attention. So what’s new with MacBook? There’s four improvements that I could see:

• New i5/i7 processors (still dual core, but they throttle up as necessary)
• New and improved graphics (NVidia GeForce 320 or 330)
• More pixels on your screen (1980×1200 on 17”, 1680×1050 on 15”)
• More battery life (10 hours on 13”, 8-9 hours on 15” and 17”)

The advantage of buying a mac laptop isn’t just the Apple operating system. These are very balanced systems. Apple cares about little things like battery life, stability, and things just working. It’s how they’ve re-established their brand. Usually it’s not just about swapping out your processor, updating graphics, and such. They’ve got to do it in a way that keeps the same battery life or better.

I can understand why they didn’t move up to quad core on their laptops just yet. That will probably come with the fanfare surrounding the new update to their operating system—whenever that is. With Snow Leopard they introduced some APIs to make it easier to write multi-core friendly code. They hinted at the release that there is still more work to be done in that area. My guess is that in order for 4 cores of 1.6 GHz processing power to feel faster than 2 cores of 2.66 GHz processing power, they need to finish that work. It’s also my guess that they’ll need to update their motherboard to support new socket types for the quad core i7 line.

So, Apple if you are listening, here’s what I’d like to see on your next MacBook Pro update:

• A bit more fanfare
• full 1080p on your 15” laptops (if Dell can do it, you can do it better)
• quad core i7 processors as an option (the i7-720 is not too expensive)
• 1333MHz DDR3 RAM
• blue ray? (dare to dream)

I know there isn’t going to be too much difference between the 1066 and 1333 MHz ram, but every bit helps. Of course, the 1333MHz DDR3 RAM and the 1080p screen will require a different GPU. Perhaps the NVidia GeForce M260? Not sure how battery hungry the M260 is, but it if you want to attract people who do gaming you’ll need something like this. I personally create stuff, so between my programming, photography and occasional game and my daughter’s video and DVD creation we can make use of the power that’s there.

I’ve been in the market for a new PC for a bit, and since I don’t have the cash right now I have some time to look at options. I’ve been reading up on some reviews and found that Apple has really been taking this green computing thing seriously. For example, some of the laptop reviews wanted to give an apples to apples type of comparison for things like 3D benchmarks, disk throughput capability, etc. The only solution they had was to install Windows on the Mac laptop with Apple’s BootCamp to switch between the operating systems. This is where it gets a bit interesting. With Windows and Mac OS X on the same hardware, the battery life was very different. See this laptop mag review for details. As much as a four hour difference. Even with Windows installed, it still outperformed the industry average for laptops in it’s class by as much as an hour.

Seeing that review reminded me of my own experience when I switched from Windows to Ubuntu Linux on my little old HP laptop. My battery life was cut in half. There’s a lot that the operating system can do to make the power it uses. You might be able to explain away the difference between Windows and OS-X on the Mac laptop with Windows not having the right driver for the hardware. That may be the case, but to me that doesn’t explain a four hour difference.

For grins, I pitted an AlienWare M15x configuration against a MacBook Pro 15. I made the configurations as close as I possibly could, and it turned out to be a dollar for dollar equivalent ($2475 for both systems as configured). So I bet you’re thinking that I gamed the system a little. Well, AlienWare has updated it’s configurations more recently than Apple so it couldn’t be an exact equivalent. The AlienWare PC had the same size screen, but it was 1080p. It had the same configuration for a hard drive, but the AlienWare had a quad core i7 instead of a Core 2 processor. The RAM was using a 1333Mhz bus speed instead of 1066MHz. The AlienWare PC also has all its cool lighting effects. Technically, it was a better buy …except… the keyboard had some soft spots, and the touch pad was smaller and didn’t support gestures. The final difference was that the AlienWare PC was a heck of a lot heavier, bulkier, and featured a 2:30 battery life.

There’s a lot to be said for the Apple MacBook Pro. I haven’t read a review where the reviewer absolutely hated it. It doesn’t do gaming as well as your PC laptops, but if gaming is not a big part of your life that’s OK. It’s a very respectable package, and it’s an industry leader in reducing its impact on the environment. I’m not a tree hugging green guy, but I can appreciate not needing to take out my power cord for hours at a time. I can appreciate a laptop that only weighs about 5 lbs for a Pro configuration.

So when is PC going to catch up? Windows 7 needs to get even more aggressive with it’s power saving features, and work with the motherboard manufactures and CPU manufacturers to help it become more efficient. PC manufacturers have to start getting what the mobile experience is about. I’m a programmer, I can use the extra cycles in the more powerful machines, but I also tend to put my machines through some abuse. I’d like to not burn a hole in my jeans when I’m running builds and test suites. I’d like to have more pixels on my screen (hint, hint Apple).

What would make my day is if the next generation of MacBook Pros each featured full 1080p video (at least for 15” and 17” models), had quad core versions available, and a minimum of 4GB of RAM. All for the prices that they are sold today. I know I’m greedy, but this laundry list is not outside the realm of impossibility. I’d just like to see it within the next couple of months.

Have you ever started typing in a password for one of the many resources that require one and right in the middle, the focus is snatched away by another program? It’s particularly troublesome while the operating system is starting up. Talk about a security risk. What if the thing that stole focus from my email password prompt was going to broadcast my keystrokes somewhere else? It should be illegal to steal focus while the user is typing into any text box. It’s just sheer rudeness, and I’m tired of it. Here I am trying to get something productive done and the operating system that is supposed to be helping me do my job is interrupting me with stuff I don’t care about.

I can answer the prompt telling me that my monitor is past due for a recalibration after I type in my email password. Why steal my focus from what I’m typing in right now while a new window is popping up in the background? Shouldn’t that stay in the background? I’ll start a few things at once knowing they’ll take some time to finish up, but that doesn’t mean I want them to jump in front of me when they are ready. I’m a grown a** man, I can decide for myself what and when I want to do things on my own computer. Tell my why it’s so important to grab my attention while I’m typing in a URL?

Listen Microsoft, Apple, Linux, and any other wannabe contenders out there: I want a polite operating system. Get out of my way and let me do my job the way I want to do it. If an application doesn’t need my attention at the moment, don’t grab it. If an application does need me to do something, let me finish what I’m doing in the application right now. Make it illegal to steal focus if I’m typing in a text box—especially if it is a password box. How hard can it be? Heck, I don’t mind you flashing the application button on the task bar until I address the need, but don’t allow any application to usurp control whenever it wants to. Only allow applications to request control.

Lastly, make sure that your scheduling system will make sure there are enough resources for me to continue typing in what I’m typing in without background processes interrupting me. Why should an application ignore keystrokes just because another application is loading in a butt-load of libraries? Why should I have to restart typing in my passwords because the operating system can’t keep up with me and simply ignores the keys I’m typing in? It’s the 21st century for crying out loud. These annoyances should be a thing of the past.

Sure it’s cheap for me to complain, and it’s cheap for you to say “build it yourself if you don’t like the way we do things”. But there is a free market economy. We specialize in different things. I do application work, but if you want to pay me to do operating system work I’ll be happy to take on the challenge. If Apple OS X is a polite operating system let me know, when I upgrade my machines I’ll switch. But to date, I haven’t run across one single operating system that can behave properly in this regard.