Speeds and Feeds

I suppose most of the excitement from MacWorld Expo has died down by now, but I'd still like to talk a little about two new Mac laptops introduced at the show-- Apple's own 17" MacBook Pro, and Axiotron's Modbook Pro, a tablet computer made by repackaging the components from Apple's 15" MacBook Pro along with some new parts.

Axiotron's Modbook Pro tablet computer

(Credit: Axiotron Corp.)

First, the Axiotron product. Externally, the ModBook Pro is radically different from the Apple notebook that provides most of its component parts.

In this publicity photo, the Modbook Pro's beveled edges are apparent. The shape is functional, making it easier to hold the device in one hand while writing on it with the other. The shape also facilitates picking up the machine from a flat surface as well as flush-mounting the Modbook Pro in a rotating mount to create a modern version of the traditional animation desk.

The base unit of the Modbook Pro. Clockwise from lower right: the 2.5-inch hard disk, the battery, the motherboard (with I/O connectors at left and two fans for the CPU and GPU), and the optical drive.

(Credit: Peter N. Glaskowsky)

Inside the Modbook Pro's base unit, the original MacBook Pro components are mounted to an aluminum baseplate. The angled side pieces, machined out of a single piece of aluminum, connect that baseplate to the display and touchscreen assembly above. The result is a very solid assembly, but one that is rather heavy. The system's target weight is 6.9 pounds, though the prototype shown here was somewhat heavier. The other benefit of this assembly method is that the Modbook Pro can take any CPU-GPU combination that can go into a MacBook Pro, unlike most Windows-based Tablet PCs, which are thinner and lighter but can't handle the fastest, hottest chips. Axiotron says the Modbook Pro is the fastest tablet computer on the market (or will be, I suppose, when it ships), and as far as I know, that's true.

The new unit is scheduled to ship by June, 2009. In the meantime, Axiotron is also selling an updated version of its original Modbook, which is made from an Apple Macbook. The custom Axiotron software on the Modbook will carry over to the Modbook Pro, including the "Synergy Touch" feature which is optional on the Modbook and will be standard on the newer system. Synergy Touch provides translucent on-screen icons that can be used to control applications while the user is simultaneously drawing with the digitizer pen. It looks like an effective enhancement to the usual tablet user interface, and better for some applications than the usual combination of keyboard plus mouse or stylus.

The Modbook Pro is aimed at professional users and is priced accordingly: $4,998 and up for turnkey systems (which includes the price of the new MacBook Pro that Axiotron must buy in order to make the machine), or $3,049 and up if you send Axiotron your own MacBook Pro to be turned into a tablet.

Apple's new 17" MacBook Pro

(Credit: Courtesy of Apple)

Apple's new 17" MacBook Pro

The other big notebook news from MacWorld Expo was Apple's new 17" MacBook Pro, joining the previously announced 15" MacBook Pro and 13" MacBook systems that I reviewed in October (see "The new MacBooks: Beauty more than skin deep" and "Hands-on with the new MacBook Pro").

The 17" model has the same type of milled aluminum unibody chassis introduced with the other systems in October. Like them, it also has a sheet-aluminum bottom cover. But that cover is also the first indicator of the big difference between the 17" MacBook Pro and its 15" sibling: there's no battery cover because the battery in the 17" model isn't removable.

Instead, Apple built in a 95 watt-hour lithium polymer battery featuring two kinds of new technology: new chemistry developed by Apple's own "team of scientists and electro-chemists" (according to the page on Apple.com about the 17" MacBook Pro battery) and a more advanced battery-charging circuit also developed by Apple.

I'm familiar with the basic principles of this technology from my time at Montalvo Systems, where I led the company's system architecture work. Most notebooks treat lithium batteries as if they contain just a single cell, even though internally they consist of multiple cells in series-parallel connections.

For example, the most common six-cell notebook battery arrangement is two parallel strings of three cells in series. This produces a battery with an effective output voltage around 10.8 volts (3.6V per cell times three cells, sometimes also marked as 11.1 volts depending on the average cell voltage) and twice the current capacity of a single string of cells.

(Incidentally, while I'm on the subject: please, all you OEMs, stop referring to the ampere-hour specification of an assembled battery. This is a meaningless figure without also knowing the number of cells and the average cell voltage. It's impossible to compare amp-hour figures directly. Just state the energy capacity in watt-hours. That number is far more useful.)

When such a battery is charged only through its outermost connections-- the ground and 10.8V points-- it's inevitable that one cell will become charged before the others in each string, and one string will be fully charged before the other. Eventually, some of the cells wear out before the others because of overcharging, and some cells aren't used to their full capacity because others discharge first.

Good manufacturers do the best they can to match the cells in each battery pack, but this only goes so far. This is why some battery packs will age much faster than others even though they have the same basic components-- their individual cells weren't as well matched.

In the new MacBook Pro, according to the figures on that battery page, the built-in battery pack is configured as four cells in series by two parallel strings. But the charging circuit can sample the voltages between each cell in the pack and adjust the charging current so that each cell is charged in the best possible way. Apple's website refers only to intelligent charging, but this optimization could in principle extend to the discharge side as well, allowing the power supply to cut out each cell as it becomes drained, avoiding the stress that goes with being pushed past that point.

Once Apple decided to go with this kind of charging circuit, it may have been persuaded to make the battery non-removable simply because the battery connector would have been huge-- as many as ten high-current contacts just for the cells (the two endpoints plus three internal nodes for each string of four cells) plus more for the usual temperature sensor.

Whatever the exact mechanism, Apple says that the combination of better chemistry and better charging technology gives the 17" MacBook Pro far better battery life-- and lifespan-- than other notebooks. Apple says that the model with the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M GPU can run up to 8 hours from a single charge. That corresponds to an average power consumption of less than 12 watts.

At Montalvo, I tested the power consumption of many commercially available notebook, and in my experience, 12 watts is a very good figure for a 17" system. My own 15" MacBook Pro--now a couple of years old--consumes significantly more power than that.

More significantly, Apple claims the battery in the 17" MacBook Pro can go through 1,000 full charge cycles before its capacity drops to 80% of the original figure. Since a charge cycle is the equivalent of a 100% discharge--such as two cycles to 50%, or four cycles to 75%--this specification suggests these built-in batteries should easily last five years for most users without a substantial reduction in the battery life per charge.

Of course, in real life, this potential may be reduced if the charger causes the battery to cycle slightly while the machine is plugged in. High temperatures can also reduce battery longevity. So we won't really know how effective Apple's technology is until users have had these systems for a while.

Apple users may be interested to know that the "System Profiler" application will actually report the remaining charge capacity of a battery on the Hardware, Power page. On my MacBook Pro, the original battery-- which I leave in the system essentially all the time-- now indicates a maximum charge capacity of 1,364 mAH at 10.8V, or 14.7 WH-- a decline of over 75% from the original rated capacity. System Profiler also reports that the battery's cycle count is just 61 cycles. That's probably about right, since this battery usually sustains the machine only in standby mode for the time it takes to get from home to work and back each day.

This is a far cry from the promise on Apple's website that "a properly maintained battery is designed to retain up to 80% of its original capacity at 300 full charge and discharge cycles." Perhaps that promise applies only to current systems, not my one-generation-back machine, but still, I recommend taking Apple's battery-life claims with a grain of salt.

If I were in charge of Apple's battery strategy, I would think differently. I'd fit the 17" MacBook Pro for the same removable battery found in the 15" model... and also build in a smaller battery using an entirely different battery chemistry such as lithium iron phosphate (LFP) that provides inherently longer cycle life.

An LFP battery can be charged faster than a regular lithium-polymer battery, and can have twice the cycle life when properly maintained--long enough not to be a factor in the notebook's mean time to failure.

This combination would convey the additional benefit of allowing the machine's removable battery to be swapped while it continues to operate normally, even if the user is away from an AC outlet-- a substantial advantage for business travelers. No other notebook on the market has such a feature.

The battery compartment on a 15" MacBook Pro (previous generation)

(Credit: Peter N. Glaskowsky)

I'm sure there's enough room in the 17" chassis to support such a combination. It's significantly larger than the 15" model (15% more plan area, or 21 square inches), but with essentially the same internal components. Apple says that omitting the battery packaging and retaining hardware saves a lot of space, but from my own examination of the battery compartment in a scrapped MacBook Pro case assembly, I don't think that's as big an issue as Apple says.

In this photo from the "inside" of that lower case assembly with one of my auxiliary batteries installed, you can see that the MacBook Pro battery compartment and battery casing together occupy less than a quarter of an inch around most of the battery and about a half-inch on the fourth side where the power connector is located. It adds up to a reduction in plan area of about five square inches--significant but not exactly a severe loss. Even the new 17" system must have some internal protection around the battery, if only to stop foreign objects from falling in and shorting out the cells.

Other than the battery, the new 17" MacBook Pro looks very nice, just like the earlier unibody models. Plus, it's available with an optional anti-glare display. I don't know how this effect is achieved; I've used both matte-finish displays as well as CRTs with a glass-smooth face plus an anti-reflection coating. Whichever method Apple uses, it has to be better than the high-glare effect of the standard screens on the 17" and 15" MacBook Pros. I've seen these machines in various real-world conditions now, and I just couldn't live with that level of reflectivity no matter what it does for the black levels of DVD movies.

I expect I'll be in the market for a new MacBook Pro in the coming year, and at the moment, there's no doubt in my mind--it's the new 17" for me.

When Apple announced its new notebooks on Tuesday, it said the new machines would be in the company's retail stores the next day.

So I went to the Apple store at the Westfield Valley Fair mall in Santa Clara, Calif., after work on Wednesday. I got there a few minutes after 6 p.m. and discovered that an Apple technician was in the process of replacing an old MacBook Pro with the first one of the new models.

I positioned myself authoritatively about a foot from the tech's left elbow, so when he was done, I was the first customer to get my hands on the new machine.

Apple's new MacBook Pro.

(Credit: Apple)

It looked as good in real life as it does in the pictures. The tapered edges make it look thinner than it really is, considerably more svelte than the older MacBook Pros like mine.

A few things struck me about the new design. There's no latch for the lid, but some kind of cam in the hinge keeps it snugly closed unless it's opened on purpose. I don't think this would work as well with the old lid style because there's enough of an edge on there for incidental contact to overcome the hinge tension. But with the new extra-thin edge, the lid seems to resist accidental opening.

Unfortunately, like older MacBooks and PowerBooks, the machine starts to turn on when the lid is opened only slightly. I've never understood why these switches are so sensitive. It seems to me it would be better to wait until the machine is opened more like two or three inches to avoid accidental actuation, especially when there's no latch.

The trackpad was very nice, easily the best I've ever used. It also doesn't look or feel like glass. I can confirm that Apple thought of the same thing that I did in my previous post--a click with one finger generates a left-click, and a tap with two fingers generates a right-click. Awesome. So now Apple has the world's only two-button mouse that doesn't have any buttons at all, and it isn't even a mouse!

(I also tried three- and four-finger taps, but I couldn't see any difference in the behavior of the Finder. I wonder if that's something applications can detect, though.)

Too glossy
As for the new glass-face display: I'm sure it'll be great for watching movies in a dark room. I'm sure it'll be fine for most purposes, if you're in a dark room. And wearing dark clothing, and nothing shiny. But wow, I really don't like to see windows or lights or my clothing reflected in glossy displays, and the only way this new machine's display could be any more glare-prone is if it were mirrored like a highway cop's sunglasses.

I picked the machine up and turned it around in my hands, somewhat constrained by the attached power and Ethernet cables. It felt good in my hands. The surface finish is good-- not slippery, but not rough either. I gave the machine some light tweaking between my hands--both the lid and the base separately, as well as the whole machine with the lid closed--and in all tests, the new machine seemed to offer more torsional rigidity than my old MacBook Pro. So that says the new manufacturing techniques have paid off, at least in that respect.

The bottom covers for the battery/HD and RAM felt very securely attached, not rattly, and the seams were remarkably tight. I hope they stay that way over time, always a difficult thing to achieve with sheet aluminum, which is not the most stable material. (Cars, for example, could be built with even smaller gaps between doors and frames, but makers don't do that because the inevitable shifts over time would then be more conspicuous--and most cars are made out of steel.)

Apple used its snazzy technology for nearly-invisible indicator lights on the sleep indicator; you basically can't see the light unless it's on. (The same technology is used for the "on the air" light next to the Webcam on older MacBook Pros like mine, and it's really almost like magic.) Oddly, however, there's a short slot next to the indicator on the new machine that compromises the clean look Apple was presumably seeking with this design feature. I don't even know what the slot is for! My only guess is that it might have the infrared receiver for the Front Row remote control behind it.

Out of respect for the store, I didn't pop the battery cover off, though I am curious how that latch works. The latch is at one side, but it has to seal tight across a very long edge. That's usually difficult to arrange.

Sharper feel
The edge of the aluminum around the keyboard and palm rests does, indeed, feel sharper than the plastic on the older MacBook Pros. Not physically sharper, but the low friction of the old plastic makes the edge feel smoother because skin is less likely to hang up on it. Skin doesn't slide over the new aluminum edge nearly as easily.

Since the new machine had accumulated quite a crowd within just a few minutes while I examined these elements, I turned to a couple of guys on one side who had arrived shortly after I did, rubbed my palm across the edge of the new MacBook Pro a few times, did the same on the older model next to it, and asked them to do the same. Then I asked "does the new one feel sharper?" Both said yes. But we all also agreed that visually, they appeared to be about the same, so I think the answer is that Apple ought to round over this edge just a bit more.

And with that, I stepped back and let the rest of the crowd fight over the new machine. I didn't see any new MacBooks on that visit (and I couldn't get my iPhone power adapter replaced under the recall; they were out). But seeing the new Pro was enough to justify the visit. I love the looks, but I can't justify buying a new laptop right now. So I'll wait for the next refresh and hope those machines still look this good.

I couldn't be at the Tuesday morning Apple launch event for the new MacBook and MacBook Pro systems, but I've had a chance to review the announcements.

Normally I focus on the technology in new products, but this time, I have to say my first impression is dominated by the appearance of these systems. These are some good-looking laptops.

Apple's new MacBook Pro.

(Credit: Apple)

The most dramatic change is the new display surround, black glass that goes right out to the edge of the upper case just like on an iPhone. The lower case also looks significantly cleaner now that the old gray plastic edging is gone. I never liked this edging on my MacBook Pro. It looks and feels like what it is: a compromise forced on Apple by the inherent difficulty of making bare metal edges meet cleanly.

Apple dealt with this problem on the new machines by relocating the case seams to the underside of the machine, where they're less visible--and where they can serve a more useful purpose, that of simplifying access to the battery, hard disk, and RAM. I'm especially sensitive to the whole hard-disk thing on the old machines, having upgraded my hard disk twice in two years.

The new case is what Apple calls a "unibody" design, recalling the term used in the automotive industry to describe a car chassis made by welding together many sheet-steel pieces...but in fact, Apple's new manufacturing is much more unitary than that. The lower chassis of all the new machines (as well as the original MacBook Air) is made by milling down a solid block of aluminum to the exact shape needed.

This approach makes for an exceptionally strong, stiff chassis. Milling (also known as stock removal) is more expensive than some other methods, but it provides almost unlimited design freedom. It's the same method I'd use if I were building low-volume, high-value custom notebooks; for Apple to be using it on high-volume system expresses a strong commitment to product quality. (The only method that would produce an even stronger chassis is net-shape forging, in which the metal is formed under high pressure to the exact shape required...but that approach would also be more expensive, and it imposes significant design constraints.)

I also really like the new trackpad. It's huge, and it supports more multi-finger gestures than a New York cabbie. My MacBook Pro uses two-finger dragging to scroll within the window under the cursor, and really, I think this was one of the greatest improvements in general usability in years. More gesture recognition should be even better. With any luck, Apple will support both one- and two-finger clicking for left- and right-clicking.

Apple's decision to use Nvidia chipsets is especially significant on the MacBook models, because the Intel chipsets usually used in midrange systems have really weak graphics. Mac OS X and many Mac applications rely on good 3D acceleration. Nvidia has it, Intel doesn't. On the MacBook Pro models, Apple would have included a good discrete graphics chip no matter who made the chipset, but the fact that both come from Nvidia made it easier for Apple to support switching between integrated and discrete graphics depending on whether the user needs battery life or 3D performance at the moment.

There are some things I'm not so sure about on these new systems. I generally prefer a matte-finish display, but there's no longer any alternative to a glossy, glassy screen. Apple says reflections are less of a problem with a high-brightness LCD such as these machines are equipped with, but I'd have to live with one for a while to believe that.

I'm also not sure if the crisp new aluminum edge around the keyboard and palm rests is entirely a good thing. It doesn't look any sharper than the edge on the plastic around my own machine, but the plastic has a glass-smooth and, more importantly, low-friction surface. This is another thing I'll have to try for a while before I can make up my mind.

Is this really the right time to shift all of Apple's portables to the new DisplayPort standard? Apple's new 24" Cinema Display with DisplayPort and a built-in MagSafe power supply is a very cool product, but most of the displays in the world use analog RGB (over a VGA cable) or DVI.

Apple used to throw in a free DVI-to-VGA adapter, but the new MacBooks require extra-cost adapters--three different ones!--for the same functionality, and some of these dongles are active electronic devices. It looks like one of these even needs to draw additional power from a USB port!

The battery-level indicator is now built into the side of the machine itself, rather than being part of the battery. This puts the indicator where it's easier to see when a battery is installed, which is good, but I wonder if there's another indicator on the battery itself, since it's even more important to know the condition of a battery when it isn't installed.

A few things that aren't quite so awesome:

There's no new 17" model, just a lightly updated version of the old 17" model. (If you really must have a matte-finish LCD screen on a MacBook Pro, that's the only way to get it.) I expect this is just a temporary situation.

There's no Blu-ray optical drive. At the post-announcement Q&A, Apple CEO Steve Jobs explained that Blu-ray licensing "is just a bag of hurt" today, so the company is holding back until that gets straightened out.

The maximum RAM is still only 4GB. With OS support for considerably more, I was hoping Apple would remove that particular limit in this generation of notebooks. Personally, given my tendency to keep a dozen applications open plus, sometimes, Parallels Desktop running Windows Vista--and the low cost of DRAM today--I'd be happier with as much as 16GB of RAM.

Apple doesn't yet offer 500GB hard disks as a build-to-order option. With two companies making these drives, Apple's a little behind the times on this one.

There's no eSATA or FireWire 3200. The MacBook Pros still have FireWire 800, which is plenty good enough for any single-disk or dual-disk RAID boxes, but it's old technology now. (And as a commenter points out below, the MacBooks have lost FireWire 400, a problem for video editing and other applications that benefit from fast external hard disks.)

I mention these things because they matter...but really, not as much as the high quality and aesthetic appeal of the new machines. I'm not in the market for a new laptop quite yet, but if I were, I'd have placed my order by now.

Monday, I wrote about the process of upgrading the hard disk on my Apple MacBook Pro, and the as-yet unsolved problem of migrating the 20GB Boot Camp partition on the old hard disk--along with its Windows Vista installation--to a 32GB partition on the new drive. (See "Another new hard disk...and an unsolved problem.")

Well, it's all working now. As I've always said about the Mac, most things are either easy or impossible...and this one turned out to be easy.

My thanks to my friend EDN senior technical editor Brian Dipert who provided half of the solution, and also to CNET member rob66778, who apparently signed up for a CNET account just so he could tell me about the other half. That was very kind of him!

Rob66778's contribution, in the comments to my post Monday, was to tell me about a program called WinClone, which can copy Boot Camp partitions to a disk-image file and then copy from the image to a different Boot Camp partition.

Equipped with this tool, I was able to wipe out the Boot Camp partition I'd previously created, use Boot Camp to create another one of the same size, and copy the Boot Camp partition from the old disk to the new one.

But I wanted a larger Boot Camp partition. I think now I could have just created a larger partition to begin with and WinClone would have handled it correctly, but I had tried that before--using a different tool to copy the partition data--and it didn't work.

So to be safe, I had WinClone make the exact copy, and used the program Brian suggested-- Paragon's CampTune-- to expand the Boot Camp partition to the size I wanted.

CampTune comes as an .iso file that is used to create a bootable CD just for this purpose. I burned the disc, booted from it, and everything worked perfectly for me. CampTune is currently "pre-release" software, though, so make sure you make reliable backups first.

At that point I was able to boot Vista from the Boot Camp partition, and when I rebooted into Mac OS X, I was able to run Parallels Desktop to bring up the same copy of Vista in a virtual machine.

So all is well, and I'm documenting the process here for the next person who needs to get this done.

I'll also second the comment on my previous post from CNET user Mr. Dee , who said that Apple's Time Machine software ought to take care of backing up and restoring Boot Camp partitions, since Apple is responsible for creating those partitions in the first place.

Please leave a comment if you try this process yourself, especially if you can confirm that WinClone can do the whole thing in one step. Thanks!

I bought my 2.33GHz MacBook Pro about two years ago, shortly after it was introduced. It came with a 160GB hard disk, but that wasn't really enough for all my stuff, particularly when I wanted to add a Boot Camp partition for Microsoft's Windows Vista.

So last July, I upgraded to a 250GB drive, a process I described here ("A new hard disk for my MacBook Pro").

Samsung's Spinpoint M6 500GB mobile hard disk

(Credit: Samsung)

That drive started feeling a little tight within just a few months, chiefly due to videos downloaded from the iTunes Store. Although I rarely buy videos from iTunes, there's a lot of free stuff there. I have a particular weakness for video podcasts about automobiles, such as VOD Cars and BMW's own video magazine, BMW-web.tv. Oh, and I've also lost some potential productivity to the Onion News Network video feed and the original Onion Radio News, which are also available through iTunes.

I hung tight through the 320GB generation of laptop hard disks, figuring that wasn't enough of a capacity improvement to justify the cost.

But shortly after Samsung started shipping the Spinpoint M6 model HM500LI, Montalvo Systems shut down, and I had other things to think about than upgrading my hard disk. I decided to wait for Hitachi or Western Digital to introduce a competing model, so I could make sure I was getting the best product when the time came.

Hitachi has a 500GB drive, but at 12.5mm thick, it won't fit in the MacBook Pro. Then Western Digital introduced the new Scorpio Blue, a 9.5mm drive with specifications pretty much identical to those of the Samsung drive. I was able to get a pretty good deal on the Samsung drive, so that's what I decided to go with.

I went through the same upgrade process I used last time, which I recommend to anyone upgrading a hard disk: back up the old disk to the new disk in an external enclosure before swapping in the new drive. With a Mac, it's easiest to do the backup by connecting both drives to another machine using the special feature called FireWire Target Disk Mode.

In this case, I only backed up the Mac partition this way, since Macs can't natively write to NTFS partitions; I used Windows to back itself up separately to a different drive.

After going through the usual grief involved in upgrading a MacBook Pro hard disk-- which I don't recommend to anyone who isn't very familiar with safe maintenance procedures for modern laptops-- everything just worked. The new drive is fast, silent, and huge, everything I love in a hard disk.

Well, all but one thing. The Boot Camp partition isn't so easy to migrate over. After booting from the new drive, I let the Boot Camp Assistant program create a new Boot Camp partition with an NTFS filesystem, then used Mike Bombich's NetRestore application to copy the old data to the new partition.

But although the copy proceeded normally and the new partition received all the files from the old one, it also received the old partition's size-- 20GB instead of the 32GB I had allocated for it. And it didn't come out bootable, nor would Parallels Workstation work with it, in spite of being configured to use the Boot Camp partition on the old drive.

I can't find anything online about migrating a Boot Camp partition when upgrading a hard disk. So let me ask all of you folks: does anyone know how to do this?

I'll post an update here when I get it figured out. In any event, I can always just wipe out the new partition and reinstall Windows...

Update: now solved! See my followup post: "Migrating and resizing a Boot Camp partition". Thanks to everyone who commented.

My very first meaningful blog post here (after an introduction), from June 23, 2007, was titled "Why I'm not getting an iPhone".

Apple's iPhone 3G

(Credit: Apple)

Let me review my reasons at the time:

1. The original iPhone couldn't really do any more for me than my Palm Treo 650.
2. The iPhone couldn't be used to connect my laptop to the Internet.
3. No voice-memo support.
4. No 3G networking.
5. Not enough storage capacity.
6. No native apps from third-party developers.
7. No high-res screen.

Okay, what's changed?

Well, the iPhone 3G still... Read more

In a way, this story is left over from CES 2008, where I attended a blogger party hosted by the Parnassus Group and sponsored by, among other companies, Virgin America, the US domestic airline counterpart to Virgin Atlantic.

The party was a lot of fun, and all the sponsors did extensive giveaways. I got a flight suit from Intel and Zero G, a private company that offers "weightless" (parabolic trajectory) flights. Alas, I didn't win a Zero G flight, but I did win a free flight on Virgin America. In fact, I think pretty much everyone at the party won one of these prizes-- apparently they gave away 80 flights.

A Virgin America A320 Airbus aircraft

(Credit: Virgin America)

The free flight coupon, which was good for one round trip in the main cabin (that is, coach class) anywhere Virgin flies in the US, was valid through the end of May, so when Montalvo Systems shut down in early April I was able to spend some time planning a trip.

Although Virgin America flies to several West Coast destinations, I spend most of my time on this end of the country anyway. The two choices that seemed most attractive were New York and Washington, DC. Ultimately I decided I could have a better time in DC and not spend so much money, so that's where I went.

Buying the ticket on the Virgin America website was pretty easy once I figured out that the site requires customers to apply discount codes in advance rather than also accepting discount codes when paying for a flight.

I had to pay $21 in fees for the flight, and I chose to pay $25 extra for an exit-row seat, but the discount still amounted to $277.20. Normally I'd say such a meager amount wouldn't influence my posts here, but it's probably the case that I wouldn't be writing about Virgin America otherwise...

The airline charges $25 extra for "premium" seats at the bulkheads and exit rows in the main cabin. As a fairly tall guy, I like this idea-- it discourages people from taking these seats if they don't need them, and makes them more likely to be available for those of us who really need them.

I was able to get an exit-row seat on the return flight, but not on the flight out. The seat pitch in the main cabin is adequate for moderately tall people such as myself, but only barely. It's about like American Airlines, which is the airline I usually fly on.

Virgin America seems to have learned some valuable lessons from the success of JetBlue on these transcontinental flights. Virgin provides fairly comfortable leather seats in the main cabin and attractive leather massage chairs in first class. The airline's Airbus airplanes (my flights were on A320s) are attractively decorated inside with color-changing "mood lighting" (which remained set to blue and purple on my flights).

Virgin provides a high-quality multimedia entertainment system with a 9" touchscreen LCD at every seat. The system, called Red, carries 24 channels of live satellite TV (sourced from Dish Network), 20 channels of live satellite radio, a good variety of on-demand TV shows and music, movies, simple games, and even chat rooms. I checked frequently but never found anyone in the chat rooms on the way out; on the way back, this feature was disabled.

The system has menu options called "Read" and "Shop", but they were not active. It seems to me that unavailable options ought not to be displayed.

The Dish Network channels are standard definition, not HD, but are stretched to fill the widescreen LCDs, which I find annoying. The broadcasts didn't come through reliably; on both flights, there were long periods when some of the channels were experiencing trouble, even in level flight at our cruising altitude under a clear sky. Sharp turns caused the satellite receiver to fail entirely, but I suspect there's no good way to solve that problem. On the return flight, four of the channels (ESPN, ESPN Classic, BET, and BBC America) were carrying Dish informational programming instead of the intended content.

I was pleased to see that the music videos and some of the pre-recorded TV shows and movies are offered free of charge. For example, I found several of the TED Talks and an episode of Patrick Norton's Tekzilla (an old one-- episode 17 from January 2008).

When watching the pre-recorded content, there are pause, rewind, and fast-forward controls. These functions aren't available for the live broadcasts-- no in-air DVR yet, sorry.

I also appreciated the live flight map based on data from Google Maps, although it doesn't offer a satellite view or a really close-up view of the road maps. It seems to me that these features would be useful, but I suppose that providing them would require much more on-board storage. The map can pop up over whatever TV show you're watching, which makes it convenient to check the progress of the flight during commercials. There was an odd problem with this feature-- the black pixels on the map overlay were actually transparent, so legends on the map (city names, etc.) were intermittently illegible depending on the TV image. This function worked well on the flight to DC, but was not reliable on the flight back. Even after we landed at SFO, the system showed the airplane was a few miles southwest of the airport.

The system can also be used to order food, which seems like a great idea, assuming it doesn't run the cabin crew ragged. Some of the things you can order are free, like sodas, but most items are sold to generate additional revenue. Accordingly, "Eat" buttons are easy to find on the wired remote control and the on-screen menus.

Entrees-- salad and sandwich type stuff, no hot food-- were around $9; snacks were $1 to $2. These prices were competitive with those of airport shops, and it's certainly more convenient to get the food onboard-- but most airports offer more variety. A turkey-bacon wrap sandwich I ordered came without the expected accessories (napkin, mustard, etc.).

One of the most valuable features on board-- to me, at least-- was the provision of two 110V outlets for each set of three seats in the main cabin. (Presumably the folks in first class get one each.) Finally, there's a legal way to power and recharge my laptop in flight. The DC outlets found on some airlines won't charge a MacBook Pro, although they do let the machine operate without running down the battery further. Virgin's AC outlets are oriented horizontally, rather than the usual vertical arrangement in most wall outlets, which made for a fragile connection to the MacBook Pro's power adapter, which frequently fell out.

Virgin America also offers Ethernet and USB jacks at each seat, but these are currently useless. When I hooked up to the Ethernet jack, my laptop detected the connection, but didn't receive an IP address, so there was no way to communicate over it. I can imagine this feature could be useful for business travelers who need to collaborate on some project during the flight, but until a DHCP server is provided, even peer-to-peer networking will likely not work.

The USB jack, allegedly provided to allow customers to recharge cellphones, iPods, and other USB devices (and, according to the on-board Welcome guide, to hook up a full-size keyboard for the in-flight entertainment system, an amusing notion), didn't even provide power.

Bottom line-- the electronics and the in-air food ordering are fun, but not enough to make a difference for me. I will certainly consider Virgin America for future travel, but I'll continue to choose airlines based on price, schedule, and compatibility with my existing frequent-flyer miles, as I've always done.

Coming up next, a few museum reviews! I spent most of my time in DC doing the usual touristy stuff, and I ran across a chunk of ENIAC, the world's first general-purpose digital computer, in an unexpected place...

Apple refreshed its MacBook and MacBook Pro product lines last week. I was hoping for more significant improvements, but the changes were minimal.

Apple's MacBook Pro

(Credit: Courtesy of Apple)

The updated models come with new Intel processors, larger hard disks, more main memory, and more graphics memory.

The new Penryn processor was expected to improve battery life, but I noticed something when I compared the specs for the old MacBook Pro to those of the new model. The new machine's stated battery life has dropped from six hours to just five. However, Apple now refers to five hours of "wireless productivity," whereas the old machine didn't use that qualifier. This suggests to me that Apple is now rating battery life with wireless networking enabled, and may have been doing the measurements with Wi-Fi off on the older machines. If that's what happened, Apple should explain it; without the explanation, the apparent drop in battery life is disappointing.

Well, these machines are just a midlife kicker. The real advance will show up later this year when Apple ships machines based on Intel's forthcoming Montevina platform, which includes the same Penryn processors but introduces a new family of chipsets code-named Cantiga.

Apple will presumably add other new features along with Montevina. I have no idea what Apple is working on, but we can look at other PC notebooks on the market today to see what technology Apple might consider adopting:

• Extreme Edition processors
• Support for more than 4GB of DRAM--Mac OS X "Leopard" is a full 64-bit OS and 4GB isn't really enough any more, especially if you use a virtualization environment such as Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion to run Windows apps within Mac OS X
• Integrated WWAN--I use an Option ExpressCard 3G adapter for the AT&T network, but I'd rather have this function built in to free up the slot
• Blu-ray optical drives--I expected to see this feature last year!
• A secondary solid-state hard disk--I suggested this feature in a blog post last June, and now Sony has it in its Vaio TZ92 notebook
• Intel HD audio
• Nvidia's GeForce 8800M GTS and GTX graphics chips
• Hybrid graphics--the ability to use a discrete graphics chip for high performance or the simpler graphics engine in the chipset for longer battery life; Sony offers this feature too
• A fingerprint reader--Apple's systems are already more secure than most Windows machines, but a fingerprint reader would be a useful complement to existing security measures
• Tablet mode--maybe not on all machines, but it'd sure be nice to see a tablet-capable MacBook

Apple has often been ahead of the competition. Earlier PowerBook and MacBook models were among the first notebooks to introduce super-thin cases, Gigabit Ethernet, motion sensors, LED backlights, DVI video outputs, FireWire, and other advanced features. Perhaps Apple is looking well beyond the features I've listed here, some of which have become almost routine in Windows notebooks.

Of course, even without these improvements, existing MacBook and MacBook Pro machines are still among the sleekest, fastest, and most capable notebook PCs on the market. But no tech company can afford to stand still, not even Apple.

And I need a reason to replace my own MacBook Pro. It's almost a year and a half old, and I'm getting itchy. C'mon, Apple, surprise me!

I've been using an Apple MacBook Pro for a little over a year now, and I'm pretty happy with it.

Apple's new Mac OS X Leopard

(Credit: Courtesy of Apple)

I didn't immediately upgrade to Leopard, the new version of Mac OS X, when it shipped back in November for reasons I discussed here, but last weekend I decided to go for it.

There's a new update coming to version 10.5.2, which according to a release note available to Apple developers includes a raft of bug fixes, but I wanted to upgrade to Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 as soon as possible, so I figured I'd just go ahead and upgrade OS X at the same time. (I'll probably post a review of Office 2008 sometime soon.)

The OS upgrade process appeared to go well, but when I tried to log in, Leopard said it wasn't able to access my home folder. I use Apple's FileVault security technology, which stores my home folder in a virtual disk image that is encrypted using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). FileVault protects my data if the machine is stolen, and I regard it as an indispensable feature of Mac OS X.

Unfortunately, Leopard wasn't happy with the disk image for my home folder, and simply refused to open it.

I wasn't expecting this problem, but I was prepared for it. I made a backup of the machine just before starting the upgrade, and I also maintain a secondary user account without FileVault in case of problems with the primary account. I logged into that other account and discovered on the Web that other people have seen exactly the same problem.

Apple published a tech note suggesting that this problem is related to passwords of 8 or more characters-- my passwords are all a lot longer than that, and so should yours be!-- but the complex procedure described in the note for solving the problem didn't help me.

Ultimately I had to delete and recreate my primary account then copy my files from the disk image into the new home folder. It turns out I'd have wanted to do this anyway, since Leopard introduces a new approach to FileVault that works better with Time Machine, Apple's new backup program.

Everything worked properly when I was done, but this was a slow, awkward procedure that most ordinary users would never have been able to handle. I just wish the Leopard installer had checked for this condition and done all the necessary work directly.

With Leopard running at last, I was able to get Office 2008 installed, and I'm slowly working through a number of small issues-- learning how to work around a minor bug in the new version of Apple's Mail program, upgrading some third-party software I use, etc.-- but generally I'm happy with the upgrade. Leopard seems a little faster overall, and Time Machine is great. It gives me a lot of confidence that my data is better protected against software and hardware failures.

I'm also making periodic complete backups in case I get bitten by any major new bugs in Leopard or Time Machine, but I don't expect anything like that.

I may have additional comments, especially after the 10.5.2 update... stay tuned!