What's it all about, Alfie?

Well... I took about three times longer to order it than necessary - I had to triple-check that I had all the options picked out right, but I finally ordered a new 17-inch MacBook Pro from Apple. The aluminum unibody on the 15-inch I got for my Mom and played with for a while was just superb. Solid - just like I like things. Sleek. Smooth. Beautiful. Literally, a work of art.

I had to get the matte finish on the screen - it's just too important to me when I'm working on the train to have it glare at my with the glossy screen. Worth the $50 for that. I also got the faster 320GB HDD (7200 rpm) as I know that's a big factor in the compiles and loads, and I do a lot of that. Of course, I had to get the 8GB of RAM - that was something I've waited for for a long time.

It's due to arrive Feb 26^th. That's seven weeks away. I can wait. By then, I'll have iLife '09 and iWork '09 which will be a lot of fun to get this month, yet.

I was talking to a friend today about the new 17-inch MacBook Pro and it's dual-GPU configuration, and why I thought that was Apple's design for more cores as opposed to putting a quad-core CPU into the laptop. He didn't think the two could be powered at the same time, and pointed to the need for a reboot in the current hardware to switch from one to the other. I didn't remember where I'd read the news from NVidia, but I found it today.

The article points out that the NVidia representative confirmed:

Besides confirming that you'll see it in other notebooks soon, they definitively answered some lingering questions about the chip's capabilities: It can support up to 8GB of RAM. It can do on-the-fly GPU switching. And it can work together with the MacBook Pro's discrete 9600M GT. But it doesn't do any of those things. Yet.

This makes perfect sense then.

Apple invests in OpenCL and gets some of the ObjC code in the OS to use it and then all of a sudden it's got a tremendous advantage over those machines that don't have the similar capability. I was a little surprised to see the dual-GPU in the 15-inch MacBook Pro, but wrote it off to the fact that the integrated GPU was "free", and removing it was more expensive than just using it. But it wasn't good enough, so they added the "good" one.

Not so, I think now.

This is going to be a CPU/GPU machine where the integrated GPU is connected directly to the system RAM, and that makes perfect sense for fast processing. Sure, it's going to require a lot of work to get OpenCL integrated into the OS, or core Frameworks, but when it does what a boost!

Yup, I've got to order one of these boxes. Gotta.

With the MacWorld Keynote announcement that more record labels are putting their songs in the iTunes Plus category, I decided this morning to update my library to iTunes Plus. It turns out that there were 120 songs including 3 albums that I had that needed to be upgraded. Only cost about $25 to get it all updated to the DRM-free, high-bit rate versions. What's not to like about that?

I have to say that updates in the iTunes Store, like this, are one of the reasons I like Apple as a company. Sure, they are making $25 off me for a simple upgrade, but I upgrade the software I have when the old versions probably worked just fine. It's technology and it's my career. I like it. I don't check that often for updates to my music, but it's nice to see that it's not that much even when I do it so infrequently.

I "listened" to the MacWorld keynote today on IRC chat and was very happy to see that iLife and iWork got significant upgrades. I'm sure we'll be getting the Family Pack for iLife as the kids will all enjoy the additions to iMovie and iPhoto, and I will certainly enjoy having the additional features and graphs in iWork and Numbers. Great work, Apple.

Then we got to the cool stuff for me - the new 17-inch MacBook Pro. True, it's not a quad-core like I've been asking for, but I think in their plans, it never will be. The addition of OpenCL in Snow Leopard is going to make the use of one of the two GPUs for computing far better than an additional two cores in the CPU. I'm guessing the GPUs have on the order of 20 to 40 cores, and that, coupled with the OpenCL, is going to make the machines really scream.

What I may need to do is to focus on programming for OpenCL and the GPUs and in that way take maximal advantage of the machine, but even so, the machine is a nice one - fast CPU with 8GB RAM, and matte screen... with a fast hard drive, and up to 8 hours of battery life. I'm not upset about the loss of the replaceable battery - it's understandable why they did it. I haven't replaced the one in my 17-inch MacBook Pro yet, and it's fine. If it ever does need replacing, then it's time to go to the Apple Store and let them swap it out.

In general, the new 17-inch MacBook Pro is everything I'm looking for. It will be shipping at the end of this month, and unfortunately, cost a boat-load of dough. But good things cost. And if my current laptop is any indication, then the new one will last me several years. Excellent.

As long as the display looks nice, and in my case, my 17-inch MacBook Pro looks very nice, I haven't spent a lot of time worrying about the correct rendition of colors on the screen. You know, is it calibrated for the correct Pantone colors, etc. Well, yesterday evening an old friend twittered that he'd calibrated his display, and it was an amazing difference. Having never done this, I got to thinking: Was I missing something important? So I decided to look into it.

In the System Preferences, Display pane, 'Colors' tab, there's a button to calibrate the screen by a simple process that almost anyone can do. You start by clicking on the 'Calibrate' button:

from there, you'll see a new window pop up - you need to make sure that you have selected the "Expert Mode" and then click 'Continue'.

What you'll see is a series of Apple logos within a field of horizontal lines. The goal of each screen is to make the logo "disappear" by matching first it's intensity and then it's shade. After five of these screens, the assistant has all the details it needs to correctly set up the display for the best representations possible.

What I found was that the first time I did this I was a little off. The second time was a lot better. I'm guessing if I did this a few more times I'd be pretty darn good at it. It's a question of know how to move the cursor in the boxes to make the logo disappear. Clever idea, really.

So now I have my laptop's display calibrated, and I have to say, it's different. A little closer to reality, I think. The original "Color LCD" was a little brown (dirty) in comparison to what I have now. Not exactly night and day, but nice.

Even without Steve, it's clear that something is going to be shown at MacWorld tomorrow. The most likely ones seem to be about Snow Leopard - due out the first part of this year. There's also the possible update to the Mac mini. There's the news that the updated 17-inch MacBook Pro will not have a removable battery like the current 17-inch has, the word being that the new battery has a significantly increased energy storage - upwards of 50% more.

Now this last bit makes me hopeful for a quad-core 17-inch MacBook Pro. The new battery may be necessary to keep the 'lifetimes' of the machine in the same ballpark as the existing machines. It's certainly possible with Intel's recent announcements about more mobile quad-core CPUs available - and Acer's announcement that they will be shipping a quad-core laptop.

Thankfully, with Twitter so common this time around, it'll be easy to listen to the updates from the keynote. I would surely like to see the quad-core MacBook Pro... but I have my doubts.

This is an interesting note from Steve on his reasons for not attending MacWorld for the keynote. His reasons are purely selfish, and I understand every one. Seems very reasonable, and unfortunate that he has to defend his health every time he's not looking and acting like the Steve of a decade ago.

Alas, that is the cost of having told the world you have cancer. Sad, but true.

I really enjoy his parting comments to the continued cycle of rumors - addressing this not to the analysts, as they are always going to do what they do, but instead, to the Apple faithful:

I have given more than my all to Apple for the past 11 years now. I will be the first one to step up and tell our Board of Directors if I can no longer continue to fulfill my duties as Apple’s CEO. I hope the Apple community will support me in my recovery and know that I will always put what is best for Apple first.

Go ahead, Steve, have the Holidays off. You deserve it.

Today Apple made this announcement - it's going to be the last MacWorld for Apple. It's the last keynote, and it's not even going to be given by Steve. So it appears the days of great product announcements from Apple is over. Now, it'll be trickled out in special media events at Apple's campus, or just on the online store.

While I can understand the realization that the trade show is not the center of attention that it used to be, it's sad to see Apple stop supporting a show specifically created for them to showcase their products. In fairness to Apple, that's the job of the Apple Stores, now.

So it's going to be a different release cycle. Maybe the rumor pages will have increased importance... hard to say. But it is a definite shift.

I've heard it was coming out any day now, but it's great that today is that day. There are the assorted bug fixes and security updates, but 10.5.6 is also probably the last update before we see 10.6 (Snow Leopard) in the beginning of next year. Maybe not, but it's going to have some neat new things, and I'm super excited about updating.

If only Comcast had been up this morning. Grrr... I'll have to wait until later today to update.

[10:44] UPDATE: I finally found the time to update to 10.5.6. Glad I did. Now I just need to get rid of my hiccups and I'll be golden.

This morning I saw that Xcode 3.1.2 is out and I had to get it. I'm not sure what all it's got, but there's no way I'm sitting out on an update to the very best developer environment the world has ever seen. (No really, I did the research...)

I'm sure there are changes for the iPhone/iPod Touch 2.2 firmware, and possibly updates to the compilers... all good things. I noticed that even the JDK tools seem to have gotten an update in this release. Can't ask for more.