Latest Posts in Editors' Notes

Neuromancer turns 25

The tantalizing question about William Gibson's ideas in his novel Neuromancer involves their relationship with the course that the Web took and continues to take as Neuromancer's publication date--July 1, 1984, 25 years ago today--recedes farther into the past. In his afterword to the 2000 re-release of the book, novelist Jack Womack suggests that Neuromancer may have directly influenced the way the Web developed--that it may have provided a blueprint that developers who grew up with the book consciously or subconsciously followed. Womack asks "what if the act of writing it down, in fact, brought it about?"

I'll take a stab at discussing Neuromancer's major tech inventions, including the ones that are already coming true, as well as some that seem unlikely to happen anytime soon.

First, a little background. Neuromancer tells the story of Case, once a hot and high-paid cyberspace cowboy who could infiltrate and rip off corporate databases. But he stole from his employer, who took revenge by crippling Case's nervous system with a mycotoxin, rendering him unable to hack. Alone and suicidal, Case is scooped off the street and given a second chance by a shadowy group of people who have big (and scary) plans. In exchange for curing Case's nervous system, they want him to help them infiltrate the core of a huge and powerful AI (artificial intelligence) called Wintermute.

If you haven't already read Neuromancer, consult the (nicely done) plot summary on the Neuromancer Wiki page, which includes a handy character index and a glossary of terms. The novel is widely credited with popularizing the term "Cyberspace," with presenting a thoroughly developed idea of virtual reality, and with introducing the idea of the World Wide Web. Neuromancer also gave rise to a whole new genre in literature: cyberpunk.

Read more...

Another day, another HackBook

There’s an old saying, widely attributed to Will Rogers, that describes three types of people: “The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.” In matters of technology, I'm a proud member of the third group. As a perfect example, I’m writing this article from the smallest Mac OS X laptop I’ve ever used: It weighs just under 2.4 pounds, and is only 9 inches wide, 6.7 inches deep, and 1.3 inches thick.

That’s right, I bought a netbook and installed Mac OS X on it. Even though Peter Cohen already spent some time with an Asus Eee PC. Even though Jason Snell already installed Leopard on an MSI Wind. I just needed to try out the whole “Hackintosh” thing for myself (though since it’s a laptop we’re talking about, I prefer the term HackBook). Just don't tell Apple.

Hardware bargain

My HackBook is a Dell Vostro A90, the “business” version of Dell’s now-discontinued Mini 9. It has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, an 8.9-inch LCD screen, 802.11g WiFi, 100Base-T Ethernet, a 0.3MP Webcam with an LED light, three USB 2.0 ports, Bluetooth, VGA video output, and an SD memory-card reader. I chose this model for two reasons: First, the Mini 9/Vostro A90 is the most OS X-compatible netbook on the market—once you get Mac OS X installed, most things just work. Second, and just as important, was the price: During one of Dell’s many sales, I purchased the A90, which came with 1GB RAM and an 8GB SSD, for just $199—a price so low I couldn’t resist.

Read more...

Fun with iPhone 3G S stress tests

Macworld’s sister publication, PC World, has an annual tradition based on the release of the new iPhone. In addition to the traditional review process, they like to have a little bit of fun by performing a few torture tests. In the past, they’ve driven over the iPhone with a motorcycle, dropped the iPhone into a bowl of cereal, dragged a key along the iPhone screen, and more.

This time around, the tests are less physical but just as demanding. In this video, PC World's Tim Moynihan takes a look at how well the iPhone 3G S handles the following tests.

• How well the iPhone’s Voice Control handles different spoken accents
• What happens to the iPhone’s digital compass when the iPhone is spun around
• How the Find My iPhone feature works
• How well the smudge-proof screen performs

If you’re interested, you can also watch the first iPhone torture test, and last year’s iPhone 3G torture test.

Ever had an accident with your iPhone? Ever drop it on the sidewalk? Left it in your pants while it went through the laundry? If you have a iPhone survival story—or iPhone disaster story—share it with us in the comments section below.

 

Opinion: Safari 4 download stat is pure hype

The following article is reprinted from the BizFeed blog at PCWorld.com.

I know I'm cruisin’ for some abusin’ at the hands of the Mac fanatics today, because twice in one morning I’ve felt compelled to bring a little skepticism to the exuberant reporting surrounding the latest developments from Apple. This time, all the major tech outlets are credulously reporting on this morning's press release from Apple, which heralds the runaway success of Safari 4 on the basis of 11 million downloads in three days.

Now, I’m not doubting Apple's numbers. Why would I? But as someone with three Macs at home, I couldn’t help but notice that Apple pushed Safari 4 out as an automatic update to all of its users this week. Yesterday, all three of the Macs in my household received the update, and we don’t even use Safari. (We prefer Firefox.)

An informal poll of my friends and colleagues reveals a whole lot of the same. Got the update dialog, downloaded and installed it, don’t intend to use it.

It may well be that Safari 4 is a fantastic browser, and that’s not what's at issue here. What is at issue is the ridiculously thin claim that the latest Safari is a wild success on the basis that Apple basically pushed it out to everyone it possibly could, whether they wanted it or not. This very clearly echoes the last big Safari update, which Apple also pushed to unsuspecting users through its update tool.

[Robert Strohmeyer is a senior editor at PC World. He doesn't actually have anything against Apple, but the fanaticism gets under his skin. He tweets as @rstrohmeyer.]

Spring cleaning—but how?

Now this was something I never thought I’d need again, ever. A floppy disk drive.

Seriously, it has been many years since I’ve even pondered the concept of a floppy disk or the device that reads it. But the other night night I was confronted with no choice. I had found some old floppy disks in the back of a cabinet nestled comfortably in one of those wood cassette boxes alongside the ZIP disks that I was busily transferring data from. Yes, I do still have my ZIP 250 drive—for the moment—and no SCSI jokes, please. For a split second (OK, a minute, maybe two), I thought they were low-capacity ZIP disks, until they literally swam in the drive bay.

Expertly encased in tiny plastic floppy jewel cases with artistically appointed labels, this was no pedestrian packaging job. Each of the six disks contains one set of fonts that the P22 Type Foundry sent to me when I worked as news editor at a now defunct Mac magazine. Someone at P22 realized they had found a fellow font freak at MacHome Journal who actually featured the release of new fonts in the news section.

Read more...

The MacBook turns Pro

When Apple quietly updated the 13-inch MacBook a couple weeks ago, giving the company’s least-expensive—and previous-generation-design—laptop better performance than the more-expensive aluminum unibody models, it was a good hint that the aluminum models were due for a refresh. After all, what company wants to undercut its “premium” models by selling a better-performing product for less money?

Sure enough, just 12 days later, Apple announced updates to nearly the entire MacBook line. The MacBook Air gains faster processors; the 17-inch MacBook Pro gets a faster processor and a larger hard drive; and the 15-inch MacBook Pro sports faster processors, higher RAM capacity, a solid-state drive option, a longer-life battery, an improved display, and an SD memory-card slot (in lieu of the ExpressCard slot found on the previous version). All of these changes are accompanied by lower prices.

These are notable upgrades, but it’s the changes to the 13-inch MacBook that are generating the most buzz. Keep in mind that Apple’s consumer laptop line got a dramatic overhaul just last October, when the company switched all but the entry-level model to a new aluminum unibody enclosure, converted to LED displays, added a multi-touch trackpad, upgraded the graphics and processor performance, and even added the “pro”-level backlit-keyboard feature (albeit only to the most-expensive model).

Read more...

Snow Leopard more feature-laden than expected

After Monday’s Worldwide Developers’ Conference keynote, we now know that Snow Leopard will cost Leopard users $29 ($49 for the family pack) when it ships in September. In my pre-WWDC OS X Snow Leopard piece, I’d guessed either free or $20—so I was closer to right than wrong, though still wrong. But what do you get for your $29? Are there more features than the five big ones I covered last week?

If you watched any of the keynote coverage, you know the answer to that question is “yes, there are more features.” In addition to Snow Leopard’s already-known features, Apple revealed some very interesting things about the next major OS X release.

On its Snow Leopard page, Apple groups these changes into four major topic areas: Better. Faster. Easier, Next-generation technologies, More accessible than ever, and Exchange support. I dug through these pages Monday, trying to get a sense for what we’ll get to see when Snow Leopard ships in September (not quite “about a year” from last June’s WWDC, but close).

As I loaded page after page, I was thrilled to find this blurb on an additional page of enhancements and refinements: “Adjust view options for Spotlight results just as you can with any Finder window. Modify the default view as well as the size, labeling, and alignment of icons.” This was the No. 1 entry on my list of Leopard annoyances, and it looks like (yes!) it’s finally fixed in Snow Leopard.

Read more...

Mac hardware figures to be MIA at WWDC

If you expect the team of Apple executives presenting the keynote at the Worldwide Developer Conference to pull back the curtain on some game-changing piece of Mac hardware, you’re likely to wind up disappointed on Monday. At least if the history of WWDC announcements is anything to go by.

To be sure, Apple has used its annual gathering of Mac developers to lift the lid on new hardware. But those announcements have been few and far between, especially compared to that other launch pad for big Apple unveilings, Macworld Expo.

Don’t believe me? Let’s look at the highlights of the last 10 WWDC keynotes, pulled from Macworld archives and my Wikipedia-aided memory. For easy reference, I’ve put the hardware announcements in bold.

• 2008 WWDC keynote: iPhone 3G, recaps of the iPhone SDK and App Store announcements from March 2008, MobileMe
• 2007 WWDC keynote: OS X 10.5 demo, iPhone launch date, Safari 3 for Mac and Windows
• 2006 WWDC keynote: Mac Pro, Xserve, OS X 10.5 preview
• 2005 WWDC keynote: Intel transition, podcast support for iTunes
• 2004 WWDC keynote: New displays, OS X 10.4 preview
• 2003 WWDC keynote: Power Mac G5, Panther preview, Safari, iChat, iSight
• 2002 WWDC keynote: OS X 10.2, QuickTime 6
• 2001: WWDC keynote: OS X Server
• 2000 WWDC keynote: OS X progress report
• 1999 WWDC keynote: Darwin, OpenGL, Cocoa

By my count, that’s fivesix hardware unveilings (including the iSight, which I omitted originally) in a decade’s worth of WWDC keynotes. (We’re not including the Intel transition in that total, since Apple didn’t actually announce a shipping product at the 2005 conference.) That doesn’t exactly establish WWDC as a hardware lover’s paradise.

And look at the types of hardware that were announced. Typically, we’re talking about high-end desktops, servers, and displays—the sort of thing that appeals to a roomful of developers and programmers, but not the sort of thing that sets the hearts of general-interest consumers a-flutter—Last year’s iPhone 3G unveiling being the exception that proves the rule.

So if you’re hoping that the 2009 keynote has some sort of laptop overhaul in store, those dreams of new MacBooks and MacBook Pros run counter to Apple’s WWDC m.o. Expecting Apple to leap into the netbook game Monday? Seems unlikely from this perspective. Think the time is right to roll out that new Mac tablet everyone keeps gassing on about? All signs point to no, at least so far as this year’s WWDC is concerned. Apple has been quite pointed in its comments that this year’s developer conference will focus on two things—the iPhone 3.0 update and Snow Leopard. I think we can pretty much take the company at its word.

Which is not to say that there won’t be any hardware whatsoever unveiled on Monday. Heck, I wouldn’t put it past Apple to announce any of the things I just dismissed for the express purpose of making me look silly. But if I were a betting man—and the fact that I’m financially solvent suggests that I am not—any hardware announcement planned for this week probably has something to do with either (or both) of the two main items in the agenda. With iPhone 3.0 slated to get a lot of attention, that likely means a new iPhone.

After all, if you’ve managed to assemble enough developers to fill the Moscone West convention center and they’re all set to build things for the iPhone platform, why not show them the hardware they’ll be developing for, whether it’s got more capacity, a front-facing camera, or whatever other doodad you plan to introduce? If the new iPhone OS is going to have any features that take advantage of new hardware, then now’s the time to let developers (and by extension, the rest of the world) in on the secret. (Reported shortages of iPhone 3Gs on store shelves also suggests that now might be a good time to unveil a new model.)

Will that be enough to satisfy the chattering classes? Probably not—Apple can roll out a new phone, disclose a few more iPhone 3.0 details (like, say, a release), and give us a good look at Mac OS X 10.6, and someone, somewhere, will likely snivel about how underwhelming the WWDC announcements will be—an attitude that says more about those commenters’ inability to grasp the purpose of a developer conference than it says about the significance of Apple’s announcements.

Whatever Apple has in store—hardware, software, or otherwise—we’ll have all the details in Macworld’s live WWDC keynote coverage, starting at 10 a.m. on Monday.

Hands on with the Opera 10 Web browser beta

Long-time readers know that I’m something of a browser fanatic. (There are presently 30 or so installed on my Mac). Perhaps my interest in anything related to Web browsers has its roots in the dark old days when (shudder) Internet Explorer was really the only Mac browser.

Whatever the reason, if there’s something new in the browsersphere, I’m interested in it. Recently, that meant taking a look at both Safari 4 and Chromium.

Now comes word that Opera has released Opera 10 Beta. I’ve had Opera on my machine for years, and would occasionally use it, mainly to make sure my sites were at least readable for someone using it. I was never really comfortable with the user interface, though; it just felt disjointed and not all that well put together.

Read more…

Introducing the Mac Gems Superguide

While most people are aware of the big-name software titles for the Mac—Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, and the like—there are many great products out there that don’t get the recognition, or even the awareness, they deserve. That’s where we come in. Macworld mines the Web, sifting through inexpensive and lesser-known products from developers big and small to find those products that are worth your time and hard-drive space—the inexpensive software that, once you’ve tried it, you can’t imagine using your Mac without. We call these programs Mac Gems, and we cover them in our “Mac Gems” column in print and on the Mac Gems Weblog here on Macworld.com.

If you’ve been watching the site recently, you may have noticed that we’re well into “GemFest 2009,” this year’s installment of our annual celebration of gems, where we feature a new Gem every day instead of the usual two per week. But there’s another reason to celebrate Mac Gems this week: We’ve given Mac Gems the Macworld Superguide treatment.

As with the other titles in our Superguide series, the Mac Gems Superguide is a veritable greatest hits of Mac Gems. We’ve gone through every gem we’ve ever covered—a number fast approaching 1,000—checked compatibility with Leopard, hand-picked the best, and compiled them in a fun, informative book. Within its 186 pages, you’ll find over 240 of our all-time favorites, organized by category. For each program, we give you a brief description of what it does, the URL of our full review, and the URL of the developer’s site for downloading.

Included are bargain programs for increasing productivity, organizing your files, customizing OS X, and fixing common problems. There are nifty applications for audio editors, graphic designers, students, Internet addicts, and photographers. Some are standalone programs, while others are subtle tweaks that make Mac OS X work the way you wished it did. The one thing they all have in common is that each is a standout product that won’t break the bank.

Whether you’re a power user looking to get more control over your system or a Mac beginner searching for add-ons that will make your computing life easier, this collection has something for you. You can purchase and download the PDF version of the Mac Gems Superguide for just $12.95, or you can purchase a print copy for $19.95 or the PDF on a CD-ROM for $12.95.

Of course, just because Mac Gems has gotten its own book, we aren’t resting on our laurels. This August will mark the fifth anniversary of the Mac Gems Weblog, and we plan to continue to search for the best in low-cost, high-value Mac software.