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JANUARY 27, 2010

Apple introduced the iPad, my take

Today marks a new era in computing as Apple introduced its new iPad, a real tablet computer starting at $499, that falls between a MacBook and an iPod Touch with a special 9.7" multitouch screen and running a new version of the iPhone OS. The Wi-Fi-only models ($499-699) will ship in late March and the 3G models ($629-829) will ship in April. The 3G capability requires a data plan at additional cost.

Looking at it I can't help thinking back to Dale Baggett's and my speculative predictions about the then upcoming new iMac following the lamp-style one. We basically said the new iMac should be a smart screen that could be carried about but we were way ahead of the times. The new iPad is it, only untethered to a base (we said put the iMac's "guts" in the keyboard as a base) by Wi-Fi and with multitouch capabilities and other current technology.

The iPad is 7.47" by 9.56" and a half-inch thick and weighs just 1.5 pounds for the Wi-Fi-only model and 1.6 pounds for the 3G model. It has a 9.7" LED-backlit glossy screen with 1024x768 resolution at 132 pixels per inch and what Apple calls IPS technology. It comes with n-speed Wi-Fi (yay!), optionally 3G cell phone networking for $130, Bluetooth 2.1, a SIM card slot (3G models), GPS (3G models), accelerometers, microphone, speaker, headphone jack, 30-pin dock connector, a 10W AC adaptor and a fantastic 10-hour battery that lets you watch video the entire way from San Francisco to Tokyo! It runs off an Apple A4 1GHz processor, the fruit of an earlier Apple purchase, and has 16-64GB of flash memory depending on which model one buys. Of course, it also meets Apple's green environmental standards.

Extra cost accessories include a standalone dock, a keyboard dock, a camera connection kit and an iPad case that acts like a stand. Apple's wireless keyboard works with the iPad.

All 140,000 iPhone Apps run on the iPad right out of the box, either iPhone size or full screen by doubling up on the pixels. Developers can use a new kit to re-tune their apps for the bigger screen and iPad capabilities if they want and most will, of course.

There's a new app called iBook (its baaaack!) and the iBook Store, the iPad's answer to Amazon's Kindle. It directly accesses books online from the five largest publishers for $8-15 or so.

Apple has produced iWork for iPad with special editions of Keynote, Numbers and Pages for $9.99 each so the iPad can do real work with its on-screen keyboard just like a MacBook.

The iPad is really cool. The key question to me is can it replace my MacBook Air? I've got to think about it for awhile but right now it looks like it could. [Update: It's looking less likely after a little more research and thought. There's no video camera for iChat's. Photoshop for iPhone may work for modifying images on the iPad but that will have to be tested first hand. The probable killer so far is that the iPad does not have Microsoft Exchange support, something the iPhone has and I need. It is only a probable killer because of the iPhone's capability so I'll have to get my hands on the iPad to see as there are somewhat inconvenient workarounds such as email forwarding in Outlook.] [Bill Fox]

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JANUARY 26, 2010

Apple posted record earnings per share for Q1 of 2010, beats estimate by 26%

On Monday, Apple posted a record earnings per share (EPS) of $3.67, blowing away Wall Street analysts consensus estimate by over 26% when scaled to Apple's amended accounting standards. Revenue was $15.7 billion with a net quarterly profit of $3.4 billion and a 41 percent gross margin, which represents increases over the first quarter of 2009 of 32 percent, 50 percent and 8 percent respectively.

Mac sales were up 33 percent to 3.4 million, iPhone sales were up 100 percent to 8.7 million and iPods were down 8 percent to 21 million, all as compared with the first quarter of 2009. This quarter the desktop sales increase of 70 percent exceeded the portable sales increase of 18 percent, a reversal of recent Mac type performance where portables had led.

All of Apple's four regional operating segments (Americas, Europe, Japan and Asia Pacific) scored increased sales and revenue over the same quarter in 2009, averaging 33 percent in sales and 32 percent in revenue. Apple's retail stores also had increases in sales and revenue of 34 percent and 13 percent respectively.

Apple's forecast for the next quarter's revenue is in the range of $11.0-11.4 billion with earnings per share in the range of $2.06-2.18. Apple's forecasts have been quite conservative in the past.

Tomorrow, Apple will release a new product or products so stay tuned. [Bill Fox]

JANUARY 20, 2010

Apple's 1st quarter 2010 financial report due next Monday

Apple's best quarter ever in terms of earnings per diluted share of stock (EPS) was $1.82 for the fourth quarter of 2009, i.e. last quarter. Apple traditionally books its best quarter during the first quarter (October-December) of its fiscal year which runs from October 1st to September 30th. During the record fourth quarter of 2009, Apple's net profit was nearly $1.7 billion on revenue of $9.9 billion with a gross margin of an incredible 37 percent. This was due to record Mac and iPhone quarterly sales.

This performance beat the Wall Street analysts' consensus estimate of $1.42 EPS by over 28 percent. Apple always beats the analysts' consensus estimate in recent years.

Apple forecast that its revenue for the first quarter of its 2010 fiscal year (October-December of 2009) would reach $11.3 to $11.6 billion with an EPS of $1.70 to $1.78. Apple's forecasts are usually conservative and the analysts' consensus estimate now stands at $2.05 EPS. I will have a report following Apple's announcement and conference call next Monday. [Bill Fox]

JANUARY 4, 2010

Hands-On Review: Mac OS X 10.6.2--3D graphics speed increase?

I played a few rounds of the vintage game Halo (v2.0.3) over the weekend and noted that it seemed a bit faster than I had remembered. In my review of Mac OS X 10.6, I noted that my biggest disappointment in Snow Leopard was the apparently reduced speed of the graphics drivers for the hot EVGA GeForce 285 GTX graphics card for the Mac. So following its release, I tested 10.6.1 but there was no change. Apple released Mac OS X 10.6.2 in early November with an even newer set of graphics drivers (1.6.6 vs 1.6.2) but I had not yet speed-tested them. Could it be that the performance of the GeForce 285 GTX had at least increased to the level achieved under Leopard 10.5.7?

Here are the results of the graphics re-tests (see how) under 10.6.2:

The OpenGL scores increased slightly in Xbench and a little more in Quake III Arena but the scores are still much lower than under Leopard. However, the score for Halo increased over 34 percent to the fastest level I have tested at these settings. Apparently, Apple engineers found and fixed a significant bottleneck in OpenGL performance that affected Halo and, perhaps, other 3D games. [Bill Fox]

Hands-On Review: 128GB RunCore Pro IV SSD in a Rev. A 1.6GHz MacBook Air

Abstract: The 128GB RunCore SSD makes my 1.6GHz MacBook Air run super fast for disk-intensive tasks. For $470 including shipping, you get SSD performance, an additional 45GB of internal storage and an 80GB external USB drive that doesn't need an A/C adapter.

Introduction

Nearly two years ago I was seduced by Apple's very slim, three pound MacBook Air (see my review). I bought the 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo base model with an 80GB hard drive because I suspected there was only an imperceptible speed difference with the 1.8GHz CPU, a $200 upgrade, and the rather smallish 64GB solid state drive (SSD) upgrade cost nearly $1000 all by itself.

At the time, the mini 1.8" 80GB 4200RPM hard drive seemed large enough for my stripped down traveling Mac (I use a Mac Pro when not traveling) and it seemed fast enough for standard uses from my try-outs at an Apple Store. However, I knew that eventually I would need more space and would crave faster performance. I expected that the size of SSD's would grow rapidly and their cost would plummet enough to save the day when the need for a new drive arrived.

Unfortunately, my plan was foiled by Apple's decision to use drives with the older PATA interface in the initial Air. The second generation Airs with a larger 120GB hard drive or a cheaper/larger 128GB SSD arrived with the newer and incompatible SATA hard drive interface--same for the Windows world. This virtually ended the manufacturing of 1.8" hard drives and SSDs using the PATA interface, making bigger and faster ones scarce and relatively expensive way sooner than I had expected.

So, now I was resigned to getting either a new MacBook Air (a third generation Rev. C) or an aluminum unibody MacBook. I almost got the fabulous new 13" MacBook Pro this past summer but the expense and an additional pound and a half of weight (nearly 50% more than the Air) kept me procrastinating, that is, until I read Dan Frakes' 12/17 review of the RunCore Pro IV SSD in a new Rev. C 1.86GHz MacBook Air. The performance improvement was absolutely amazing. The upgraded Rev. C 1.86GHz Air was even faster than the Rev. C 2.13GHz top-end model with a stock SSD in drive-related tests.

Woohoo! The RunCore Pro IV SSD comes with a PATA interface as well as a SATA and comes in sizes from 16GB to 128GB. However, the cost for the 128GB model is not insignificant at $460. I found it for as low as $419 from other online vendors, not that much of a bargain.

Based on Frakes' test I could expect disk-based performance roughly equal to or maybe even better than a new Rev. C Air. The new Air still had the same 2GB of memory and 5-hr battery of my Rev. A Air, which I am very happy with except for hard disk space and disk-based performance, especially running Windows via Parallels. If I could put up with the extra 1.5lbs, I could get a 13" MacBook Pro with a 2.53GHz CPU, 4GB of memory and a 7-hr battery for just $1499 or a net of about $1200 after sales tax and selling my Air. But I had sprung for Apple Care on my Air and have 15 months left on it so I decided to pass up the new Pro and its 1.5lbs and to put $500 more into my Air for at least another year's use. Maybe by then Apple will have upgraded the Air with more memory, a longer battery life and a faster/larger SSD.

I bought my RunCore 128GB SSD directly through RunCore for $460 plus $10 for 2-day shipping because of the issue of bad USB boards for the external case mentioned in Frakes' article. A working external case is essential because the first step is to clone the contents of the current hard drive onto the SSD in an external case. I didn't want to risk going through a return process from another retailer who might not have the newer USB board. [Update: Runcore informed me that the problem was confined to the LIF interface and that the ZIF interface, like on my SSD, never had a problem. They have recalled the problem cases and all resellers now have the new ones.]

What you get

Shipping was quick. I ordered it last Monday and it arrived Thursday morning. Here is what came in the blister package:

• 128GB RunCore Pro IV SSD w/label PATA ZIF interface for the Rev. A MacBook Air;
• External USB drive case in pieces: a USB board, a mini USB cable, two ribbon cables (one 5cm with blue and white ends and one 7cm with two white ends), eight microscopic screws, a tiny screw driver, two case sides and a mid-case bracket;
• Screw driver for the MacBook Air case screws;
• Manual.

A copy of Mike Bombich's excellent Carbon Copy Cloner was supposed to be on the SSD but it wasn't. Instead, once I got the USB case assembled with the SSD inside, a Windows .exe file for TrueCopy was on it. And even though the SSD was labeled for a Rev. A MacBook Air, it was formatted for a PC, i.e. Master Boot Record format instead of GUID Partition Table format.

After installing the SSD in the Air, the old disk drive can be placed in the external USB drive case and used as an emergency boot drive and for additional external storage.

Installation

The RunCore web site states there are three easy steps:

1. Plug the RunCore SSD into the MacBook Air's USB port
2. Clone the hard drive onto the SSD
3. Install the SSD into the MacBook Air

The first step leaves out one of the tasks that I found to be the more difficult, i.e. assembling the external USB case and installing the SSD into it. The directions in the manual (in Chinese and English) show using the shorter ribbon cable, the one with the blue end, to connect the SSD to the USB board by inserting the blue end into the ZIF socket on the USB board. But it didn't fit because it was too thick. The blue end was also too thick to insert in the SSD's ZIF socket. Since the white end fit into both sockets, I used the longer ribbon cable with two white ends instead although it is not mentioned in the manual except on the parts list. I left the top off the case because I had a lot of difficulty with the tiny phillips screws and it wasn't necessary for just cloning the contents of the hard drive onto the SSD.

Once together and plugged into the MacBook Air via the included mini USB cable, cloning the hard drive onto the SSD was simple. First, I had to reformat the SSD using Mac OS X's Disk Utility because it was formatted for a PC with the Master Boot Record partition scheme. I chose one partition and the Intel Mac's GUID Partition Table scheme. It doesn't matter what you name the SSD during formatting because it will get the same name as the internal hard drive in the next step. Then, I selected the Restore tab, the source as the MacBook Air's current hard drive and the destination as the SSD and clicked the Restore button. It took awhile to clone the drive. I then made sure the SSD worked to boot up the Air before the next step.

The final step is to swap the internal hard drive for the SSD. The web site iFixit.com has an excellent set of instructions for doing this in a downloadable PDF file. (By the way, iFixit.com also sells a 120GB hard drive for a more reasonable $249 if you just want more capacity in your Rev. A MacBook Air.) I followed the iFixit instructions to remove the old 80GB hard drive and encountered no surprises or problems. I even used my fingernail in place of the plastic spudger, something I have done before, but I recommend that anyone trying this for the first time use a spudger because the ribbon cables are fragile. Re-assembly was a bit more challenging. When I first re-assembled it, the Air couldn't find the SSD to boot up so I had to re-open my Air. I discovered that the connector on the SSD's ribbon cable had popped loose from the logic board, probably when I had screwed down the bracket holding the SSD. Screwing down the bracket seems to put some tension on the ribbon cable so be aware of this possibility. However, I may have simply not snapped the connectors together completely the first time.

Upon re-assembly the second time, the Air booted up fine off the SSD and I finished replacing all of the remaining bottom screws.

Performance

I noticed right away that my Rev. A MacBook Air was quite a bit zippier with the RunCore SSD installed. To quantify the speed change, I ran the disk test of Xbench 1.3 on the 128GB SSD as I had done with the 80GB hard drive before the switch. The SSD scored 113.3 vs 31.2 for the old hard drive (an average of three runs each), some 260 percent higher! The full table in MB/sec is:

The RunCore SSD's performance is amazing, testing faster by 45 to 3075 percent. While its performance is excellent in beating the HD by 45 to 141 percent in the sequential write and read tests with small and large files, the SSD's performance is relatively spectacular in the random tests, especially with small files.

So how does this extra speed translate into the speed of real disk-based operations? I ran a few more tests on everyday actions to see. Here are the results:

The RunCore SSD is faster than the 80GB hard drive in every test, ranging from 38 to 69 percent faster.

I had been running certain Windows applications with Windows XP using Mac OS X 10.6.2 (Snow Leopard) Boot Camp 3.0 because they were too slow with Parallels Desktop 4 for Mac. Apple's Boot Camp is great but it is much slower to restart under Windows (72 sec), launch and run an application (e.g. launching Word 2007 took 11 sec) and reboot back into Mac OS X (71 sec) than to launch and run Windows applications under Parallels. Running Windows applications in Windows 7 in Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac is very snappy using the RunCore SSD so it will save me from having to use Boot Camp.

In Summary

While the RunCore Pro IV SSD came with a few surprises, it is very fast. The SSD makes my original (Rev. A) 1.6GHz MacBook Air competitive in speed with the current (Rev. C) 2.13GHz model with a stock SSD for many standard operations. It is so fast that it allows me to use Parallels 5 with Windows 7 instead of Snow Leopard's Boot Camp, saving me quite a bit of time booting into and out of Boot Camp to run a Windows application.

Also, I now have a small external 80GB USB drive to serve as an emergency boot drive and for additional storage. Besides its small size and weight, it does not need an AC adapter, a major plus. My only complaint is that the quality of the case is not very high. I had to find a small piece of plastic to wedge between the drive and the USB board to keep the board from sliding too far into the case when plugging an external USB cable into its mini USB port.

My MacBook Air already gets great battery life, about 4 hours without WiFi, doing non-disk intensive activity and with the screen dimmed by 50% or more and around 3 hours with WiFi. I expect battery life to be a bit better with the SSD. Using my MacBook Air extensively for several days with and without WiFi enabled seems to confirm this although I have no real objective measure to report.

In my view, the 128GB RunCore SSD is well worth the $470 cost (including shipping) for use in a Rev. A 1.6GB MacBook Air--the significantly improved performance, an extra 45GB or so internal disk space and an external drive with 80GB of additional space. I can stick with my 3 pound MacBook Air until Apple upgrades the amount of memory and battery life in a future MacBook Air to that of the current MacBook Pros (i.e. 4GB and 7hrs)--well, hopefully. [Bill Fox]