Mockup: New, thinner MacBook Pro on the left. Current model on the right.

Apple’s pattern of releasing new hardware over the last few years, has been to release both 13″ and 15″ new models at the same time. This has held true over the last few Macbook Pro iterations, with a new 17″ version coming a few months later.

It may be that Apple is planning to discontinue the 13″ Macbook Pro altogether, in favor of a “beefier” 13″ AIR model (sans optical drive).  Which is what the rumor mills seem to suggest is happening with “Air Downing of the 15″ model”, removal of the optical disk drive to make it lighter and thinner.  Although, prices are dropping on Solid State drives which Apple is leaning towards in ALL models, making hard drive makers, well a bit nervous I imagine, but also more innovative.

Keeping an optical drive in the Macbook Pro 13″ model might make some sense for now, unless the 13″ Air can move UP to the processor and memory specs of the Pro line to replace it.  But I don’t think users who want portability, like the idea of schlepping around an external DVD/burner/player. I don’t think Apple cares about eliminating parts they don’t actually make themselves (like floppy drives and optical drives).  So it would not surprise me to see the model line up change in this way.  Prices are dropping on Solid State drives, which Apple doesn’t make on their own yet, but that could be why they bought the Israeli company who has been designing them, and expanding a manufacturing plant very quietly in Israel.

As more Thunderbolt peripherals come online, and EVERYONE putting everything into one “cloud” or another, optical input is moving the way of the floppy  and becoming “obsolete”.  Remember Apple did this on the Bondi Blue iMAC (first consumer desktop computer model at the time without a floppy drive) and I wrote I thought they were crazy. Yeah like foxes!

Then they came out with the iPOD and I thought, who would ever want that? (I’ve had 3 iPods and three iPhones so far)  Apple pushes the technology envelope and that is why they lead it.  There has also been some speculation that Apple has been secretly bidding on mobile phone frequency or an outright purchase of T-Mobile USA to get it’s own wireless network.  They love “end to end control” and up until now, the telecom companies have just been thorn in their side, except that they (Apple) got the better part of the iPhone deal than AT&T in the end, who are now forced to scramble for new mobile data frequency “air space” to accommodate all of the data hungry smart phones (and not just Apple’s).

What interests me more is when and where (or if) we will see a new Mac Pro form factor? Producers, Cad Artists, Video Producers, Scientists,  all want all of the horse power they can get and up until now, the Mac Pro Tower has been THE TOOL in every advanced studio, lab and editing suite in the world.  It’s the only Apple model with extensive expandability. Perhaps we will see a new CUBE model serve as the new PRO computer with less than the TOWER expandability, but significantly more than the current MINI.  Perhaps a box with hot swappable hard drive bays right up front (wouldn’t that be novel for Apple to make something really user friendly? <JK>).  With new 3 TERABYTE hard drives, a small form factor desktop editing powerhouse might really interest say, the ENG (Electronic News Gathering) and Pro Video markets.

In the PRO world it’s all about graphical processing speed, transportability of huge amounts of data, and HUGE amounts of easily accessible storage. Even in the field, I’ve seen large RAID arrays hooked up to MB Pro’s.  The Mini is just that, a mini-mac at the cheapest price entry point.  It was meant to convert aging PC labs in schools with good monitors and other peripherals NOT EVER to be a Mac Pro .

However, the iMAC seems to be a more popular choice even in the education market, not the mini.  Editing Pro’s are now opting to go with with 27″ iMac models with two (2) Thunderbolt ports means a second, third or fourth monitor support and 1GIGABYTE AMD graphics cards, the iMac is a respectable competitor for that “high data manipulation” market. Rumor mills conjecture next iMacs will have 2 and 4 gigabyte nVIDIA graphics cards and not AMD.  And you will be able to “daisy chain” multiple RAIDS so will the Mac Pro internal storage and expansion slots even be necessary?

The pundits point out that with iPhones and iPads are outselling MACS by a wide margin, adding they might abandon the “PRO” market altogether to become a “consumer product” only company.  That would be a shame.  I loved the 24″ iMAC I had but went to a 13″ Macbook Pro with the 24″ Display with all the connections for USB etc.  With an AIR I would have had to buy an optical drive although I do have a few cases laying around, so that wouldn’t have been an issue.  The AIR at the time just didn’t seem to have the horsepower I wanted for Dreamweaver and Photoshop, not to mention Final Cut Pro-X.

The Mac Pro form factor has been exactly the same since it was introduced with Motorola G5 chips.  So it’s really gone long in the tooth.  I’ve never really liked it that much as it is HUGE and is uncomfortable on a small desk usually winding up UNDER the desk. Unquestionably it was a beautiful engineering design – back then.  Apple has gone through many iterations and changes of all of it’s other products, except for the case design of the PRO model.  I think it’s about time, and I would like to see a couple new form factors, even Steve Jobs’ dream of the “perfect cube”.

Retired for now, I don’t anticipate ever being able to work 12/14 hour days as I used to programming, maintaining computers and networks. Got four or five hours at best of “up” time when I have the most energy to get out and about. So I need my phone to do a lot of what my laptop used to while resting in bed. (started another round of chemo this past week and can’t wander to far from the lavatory).

Being perfectly honest, my first computers were Atari. We all know some history about that company. Little known is that Jobs & Woz took their first design Apple to Atari and were promptly shown out the door. Apple may have never been born had not Atari founder Nolan Bushnell (who wanted to work with Jobs and Wozniak) sold the computer division to Jack TramieI’s Tramel Technology Ltd. In 1984, the original Atari Inc. was split, and the arcade division was turned into Atari Games Inc. Atari Games received the rights to use the logo and brand name with appended text “Games” on arcade games, as well as rights to the original 1972-1984 arcade hardware properties.

The Atari Consumer Electronics Division properties were in turn sold to Jack TramieI’s Tramel Technology Ltd., which then renamed itself to Atari Corporation to build computers. Jack Tramel was the jerk who laughed Steve & Steve out the door. Bet he has regretted that move ever since.

IPhone has some serious competition these days (especially from Samsung – iPhones use a lot of Samsung components) . I think the only really serious competition is from Android OS devices, which like Microsloth before Google, made their OS available to any computer maker willing to pay a license fee. We all also know the history of that move, and it’s impact on Apple and Macintosh.  The irony of course was that Google’s CEO sat on the Apple board for the years iPhone was still in the dream stage, then even when it was released.  I’m sure he was privy to plenty of inside information, and finally left the board taking a slew of prime Apple employees with him to work for Google’s own OS development team.

Google’s Android OS is the main challenger now to Apple’s IOS without a doubt. Rim is fading, HP bought out Palm OS and is a distant fifth or sixth. Nokia, worlds largest handset maker is stuck on Symbian, another closed circuit OS at least to the average consumer, with few developers concentrating their application development for that singular platform.

Many early purchasers of iPhone, were stuck with a two year contract with ATT, groaned with discomfort as new iPhones have come out every year, forcing them to extend contracts another two years, each time they buy a new iPhone.  I jumped ship when ATT raised their 3G data plan $35 when I bought the 3G iPhone. Initially, 3G seemed markedly faster but after one month of use often dropped to 2G around Miami, so why did I have to pay more? ATT would not agree to let me pay for the old 2G service only, so I dumped ATT and went to T-Mobile even though I’d only get 2G data speed on my 3G iPhone.

I found browsing mostly tedious with the Safari browser the main reason for having data plans anyway. Constant mis-clicks on a link, when simply trying to scroll a page jumps you to another website, a complete annoyance (still present on the iPhone 4 with no control to adjust the time a link must be pressed to activate, it just happens instantly). No other free browser (at that time) and as I recall, very few other real apps (web only).

After about a year using iPhone 3G on T-Mobile the phone seemed sluggish, even when using WiFi, so I completely wiped and reloaded it with just the basics, plus the unlocking tools I needed to run on T-Mobile.  The FCC passed a “decree” saying it was NOT illegal for end user to unlock or “jailbreak” their iPhones, which is expressly forbidden in the iPhone EULA.  A dilemma Apple was not happy with, yet most end users are not adventurous enough to hack their expensive phone and turn it into a doorstop, which is what Apple wants everyone to believe would happen if the phone ran anything but sanctioned Apple software or third party programs.  It took them a full year to implement “Copy& Paste”, while I enjoyed that feature through a third party app NOT sanctioned by Apple the entire jail-broke time.

The 3G iPhone eventually seemed very slow, compared to the features now selling on the iPhone 4 (not 4G) comparatively.  I wondered if there might even be a built in “obsolescence” to iPhone components causing the slow down, designed intentionally to get users to “buy” new phones every year.  That would have been okay by me, hadn’t the service provider (ATT) required a two year agreement, in order to use the phone.  What a racket Apple & ATT set up. And yes all of the providers do this in the USA, while in Europe most countries forbid this exclusionary practice.

Even stripped to the bone with no photos, videos or music, the 3G seemed clunky next to my daughters iPhone 4.  I wasn’t about to re-sign with ATT, and Verizon had yet to get iPhone, what was my alternative?  T-Mobile deployed their HSPA+ network they deemed 4G, unquestionably the fastest network at the time.   Concurrently they started selling the Galaxy series phones with “4G” speed. The data speed in my neighborhood is well over 10mbps peaking at 18/19mbps late at night.  I can see the cell tower from my bedroom window, so I imagine that’s why I consistently have a fast, secure connection.  I can share my phone as an access point for my laptop, and Speed-tests prove it’s by far faster than my cable connection exclusively provided by my landlord (which I rarely get 1.5mbps) which it’s supposed to be 3mbps.

So yes Virginia, I jumped off the iPhone bandwagon! At first I hated the Samsung Galaxy S 4G.  I wanted to return the phone, but I thought I had thirty days to decide, which turned out to only be 14 days.  So I was stuck.  Yes the Galaxy S 4G runs circles around the iPhone 3G, but after a while even it seemed to slow down terribly, getting it loaded up with apps, photos, videos, it started to get clunky as well. Then I lost my phone.

Unlike ATT for iPhone, T-Mobile offers a reasonably priced insurance plan to protect against theft, loss or breakage, so I got a new phone!  Boom, lightening fast again.  The phone came with a 2GB micro SD card. I bought a new 32 GIG card from NewEgg for $39.  An unlocked Android phone can move applications or anything really onto the SD card for use.  So I load all third party apps to run from the SD card, leaving the OS and primary apps to the internal memory management.

Firefox is available free from Android Market and is a joy to use.  There is a thin “glide” area which allows for screen scrolling to be performed from the extreme right or left, settings in preferences. There is a slide out drawer showing mini views of pages you’ve migrated from, quickly being able to switch pages, and tabs like the desktop versions.  I just found a “dock” replacement where you can load anything from Apps to a direct dial phone number accessible from any “home” screen.  It’s much faster that the stock Android launcher, and adding Apps or links to the “home screens” is also much faster.  An Application called “Speed Boost” keeps the system clean and running at peak performance.

I also love the “Swype” technology on Android, text entry method, which I actually hated at the beginning. It’s much faster and remembers often used words such as “avilearner” which I often use logging into different websites.  As I mentioned before, the 4G speed is impressive.  It doesn’t seem so great when I get near downtown Indy, but I imagine T-Mobile will fix that soon.

I’m praying that the ATT/T-Mobile deal does NOT go through, I’d have to jump to some other provider, as I never intend to pay ATT another penny for ANY service.  I’ve thought with Apple’s cash hoard, they could outright buy the T-Mobile network from Deuche-Telecom and continue to be a leader in the cell phone market.  They could still sell universal handsets that work on any network, but then add featured based web and data services unique to their own network to lure customers away from the monster providers ATT & Verizon.  There is a legal battle going on to block the merger, and I hope it succeeds.  I just hope that Google doesn’t swoop in and scoop up T-Mobile, cause they have the backbone to do it as easily as Apple could.  I guess I’d upgrade to the the Galaxy S 4G II, which promises to be the real competitor to an iPhone 5, whenever Apple decides it’s release.

Many pundits feel there will be an iPhone 4S rather than a “5″ released sometime this year, to capitalize on the holiday buying season.  Apple has already broken the yearly release pattern, so it’s plausible to think this could happen.  They are also actively working on an iPAD 3 to compete with all of the new tablets coming online in time for the holiday buying season.  Although both iPhone 4 and iPad 2 are selling very strongly, many people are holding off upgrading, waiting for Apple to spill the beans on iPhone 5, which they never seem to do, before they are good and ready.

For now, I’m happy with my Samsung phone.  And don’t forget the battle between Apple and Samsung in this mix.  Samsung provides many of the key components used in the iPhone. Apple accuses Samsung of stealing proprietary stuff from iPhone and successfully blocked the sales of some Samsung devices in Europe and Austrailia.  Only Apple is standing in the doorway trying to keep the products away from wanting consumers, including iPhone users fed up with the wait for new phones.

My guess is new machines will work fine out of the box. Problems seem to be popping up for Lion upgraders when installing software (like MS OFFICE, Filemaker and even the new Final Cut Pro X). Most issues crop up during or after OS upgrades due to anomolies or unnoticeable issues already present in an old installation. They may not cause any noticeable problems on their own, but are exacerbated by the update or driver conflicts contained within the “upgrade”.

That is why I prefer a “clean” installation of the OS, so you know everything is working like it should,  then I use the “Migration Assistant” to move all of my third party applications and documents to the “new” system.  Hard drive units are so inexpensive these days, it makes no sense not to have a at least one backup drive, if not several.

The next issue is driver support from third party software and hardware peripherals. My ex-wife’s iMac worked fine in Leopard with her HP 1020 Laserjet, using the 1022 drivers. When I upgraded her to Snow Leopard, that work around ceased working.

I think Apple doesn’t give developers enough lead time with beta releases in order to update drivers. On the other hand companies selling hardware like HP create orphans of useful peripherals without driver support in order to drive sales.

Of course Apple uses the same strategy to get us to buy new hardware, now abandoning PowerPC, ROSETTA, Appletalk, Internal Dvd drives, ports, on and on. It’s called “PROGRESS”, folks.  I’m updating this article the day after the “new”  iPad (not named iPad 3, but technically is the third release version)

I haven’t didn’t upgrade to Lion yet as an early adopter, because I haven’t found didn’t  find a compelling argument to do so. Does it run significantly faster? Not from what I’ve read, in fact many “upgraders” say just the opposite. This could be due to carry over problems mentioned above.

New machines with Lion installed are complaining about the lack of ability to install common installations of Word, and Filemaker for instance, while upgraders claim already installed versions work fine.

So yes John I agree with you. I normally jump to get the latest upgrades, so I can be current, and suportive for clients. Since I don’t have that many anymore, I can’t afford the even the cheap upgrade, or the downtime chasing driver workarounds. I’ll wait for 10.7.2 or 3, when I hear the anomolies and driver conflicts catch up to the OS, AND OSX works out the new bugs it has introduced.

Avi Learner – # 317.938.9333

Kolmen Shokler, my grandfather, came to the U.S.  to escape the czar’s army.. He met Ida Berg here and married her.  She had a sister, whom we knew as Tanta Yetta. Incidentally Aunt Fan often worked sewing at the fur store, which was the family meeting place in downtown Cinti. She also went on buying trips to N.Y. with Phil, maybe with her father, too.

Just a thought.

Dr. Furman, the internist in charge of her case, agrees about rehab, where she will be going tomorrow for probably two weeks. She did not have polyps but pockets in her colon, a form of diverticulitis, for which she is getting some treatment. This does not sound serious.

Dr. Tsur, the cardiologist who is also very helpful, reviewed all her meds with Dennis and took her off about two-thirds of them. That’s a good thing since no doc has ever looked at them all together. He also told Dennis that when Phyllis was last in the hospital, they did a brain scan and she has chronic “small vessel disease.” This disease is typical for older people. This is much more serious since it creates memory loss, cognitive and motor impairment. These are all accelerating rapidly in her case. Dennis says she can’t remember what happened yesterday. Some of that could also be the stress of the colonoscopy, etc. Hopefully rehab will help her a bit with this. The disease in some cases can also lead to dementia. Tsur also concurred about the rehab and re-affirmed that Phyllis cannot be left alone.

So the current plan is rehab, then live with Dennis, then transfer her to assisted living when the individual apartments open up (late summer?) and we hopefully have her long-term care insurance re-instated.

Then today I am reading articles that say Apple has pulled retail packages from stores and it’s no longer available for purchase from the Apple store online. Thanks for nothing Apple! I emailed the person I bought it from and she just received a shipment of 30 packages (ouch, really)! I called Apple Support to see if I could get a refund but THEY WOULDN’T ISSUE ONE BECAUSE I BOUGHT FROM A THIRD PARTY!

I feel stupid because I really only keep the account for the email address. I’ve never really used any of the other services except for unsuccessful sync attempts that screwed up my calendar and Address Book. I have the same “Family” groups showing 4 times on my iPhone, yet it only shows once in either MobileMe or on my MacBook Pro.

Speculation in articles online claim that MobileMe will soon be offered for free to compete with Google services. The idea being to make leaner mobile devices that keep all of your stuff on “their cloud” servers, available from anywhere.

I guess if they offer some premium set of services for “pay”, might be all set except for buying all new hardware. They’ve supposedly built a super server farm in North Carolina under top secret development. They are supposed to run iTunes and App Stores from there. That’s where Apple’s vision of “cloud services” should come to fruition. It might work if the network bandwidth is there to support it. So far I have not seen any wireless data network deliver any great media experience.

What makes me feel really dumb is in the Apple email’s last line of the services I’d lose it says, “except for MobileMe mail” on the iPhone the text was tiny. I didn’t read the entire email carefully, I just reacted to the threat. Being on disability my cash is slim. So I don’t get groceries this week I guess, Stevey.

I’ve been on the fence about upgrading my iPhone. This has me leaning a little more towards buying the new 4G Samsung Galaxy S from T-Mobile instead of waiting for iPhone 5. T-Mobile’s data network called HSPDA+ is the current speed leader in the USA supposedly capable of 10Mbits. Rumors are also flying that iPhone 5 may be delayed until September 2011. T-Mobile’s data network they are “calling 4G” is really technically 3.5G, according to network analysts and pundits.

With these wireless international network carriers, it’s one-ups-man-ship or who can deploy the fastest data networks the quickest for the barrage of newer data hungry wireless devices. It wouldn’t surprise me if Apple bought it’s own wireless network and made certain devices ONLY OPERABLE ON THEIR NETWORK

GSM networks are more universal worldwide, which ATT and T-Mobile are in the USA. Sprint and Verizon use the CDMA data technology at the moment, with higher speed build outs and newer LTE (faster) technology waiting in the wings.

Only Apple knows if it will make a model capable of operating on T-Mobile, USA or any other networks. They make a model for T-Mobile in Europe. It’s also assumed it is just a matter of time until iPhone will be widely available on many other carriers.

It seems likely to me that a broader range of accessible wireless devices, multiple style models and lesser expensive iPhone models that store everything in the cloud.

Slow iPhone sales on Verizon, capable iPad competition from Dell, Samsung, LG, Blackberry (RIM), Motorola, HP, Sony, et al, may hasten Apple to broaden it’s US market by making truly provider independent groups of phones, like mini-flips, iPhone, intermediate sized iPad/iPhones, larger high res iPads really soon, to keep it’s lead.

ATT is offering the 3GS for $49.00 with a two year commitment. The current IOS 4.2.1 runs badly on a 3G but okay on a 3GS. I imagine Apple might have an agreement with ATT not to release a new model or to other carriers until ATT’s supply of 3GS’ are sold way down or gone completely.

If Apple were getting ready to make the service free, why then keep the automated renewal threats going until the very last day? Squeeze every last dime? I made money once from Apple stock, so enjoy my contribution, Apple. Kehna Hura!

The new MacBook Pros look pretty sweet though, especially the Quad core i7 processor 17″ model w/eSATA capability. The Thunderbolt port will break out to support current 24″ LED Display Port connectors and Thunderbolt connecters will connect to new machine. The specs say the port will also accept the current display port plug directly.

Chanukah Kids 2010

Of course you know how Uncle Harry made his serigraphy. He used b&w litho films to separate the colors shot through different color filters.

Harry Shokler’s Website

The picture above represents a modern computerized version of his technique, sort of. The end result you see is the result of layering three separate digital photo images in Photoshop.

Two of the photos, including the main image, is somewhat softer than the image of the Menorah and orange matt. The picture of “Menorah On An Orange Matt”, was taken the following night with a 4G iPhone which has a better camera resolution.

The picture of Leah was cut and layered to the front (from the other kids, behind Nathan Zeh are brother and sister of Abi in the hat) of the main image.

The photo of Jacob was from a completely different image taken that same night. I took those on an iPhone 3G then used Photoshop CS4 on my Mac. Doing this allowed me to do in a few minutes what used to take me a week, to do photomechanically.

Photo magic, huh? Uncle Harry’s Serigraphy was an early means of separating color images pre-color photo films being available. It was a means of widely distributing his paintings in a variety of sizes.

I spent the better part of my photographic career in the dark room. If you count the time I was learning to print and develop my own film and color prints then produce photo murals professionally for 35 years, total was about 40 years.

In the mid 1960’s when first learning how to develop and print B&W photographs, we used a device called a “StaticMaster” (one and three inch models shown above) which was a camel’s hair brush that came with a strip of polonium covered by an aluminum “protective shield”.

The purpose of the strip being to reduce the static charges that attract dust to film and the glass carriers we used to hold the film flat in custom photo enlarging equipment.

We also used a different, yet equally dangerous technology attached to an electro-statically charged, highly pressurized air brush. I think perhaps either or both used simultaneously, might have released tiny charged micro-particle(s) of polonium or dust into the air. I might have inhaled some dust that came in contact with the strip while prepping negatives or transparencies to be printed (enlarged).

I’m sure there were warnings about not breathing or touching the polonium strip. Adding additional high air pressure and blasting dust (spray offset powder), airborne probably didn’t really help.

Quite possibly these energized radioactive particles were then trapped by the lymph node on the right side of my neck right under my jaw.

I can remember having winter colds in Chicago, when that lymph node swelled up. However, it always returned to it’s normal size.

Lying dormant for years, something must have triggered it and the squamous cell cancer started to grow rapidly in the lymph node. Perhaps even a visit to a hospital, doctor’s or dentist’s office where radiation was in use set it off, or a close proximity to a leaky microwave oven. I don’t know and neither do my doctors. I do know that I have yet another year of recovery ahead.

My doctors weren’t even sure where the cancer came from on my body and could not pinpoint the primary site. The lymph nodes are like the bodies protective filter. l received a massive targeted dose of radiation (45 days) to a point near the base of my tongue and tonsils after the ENT Doctor cut out 42 lymph nodes.

I rarely wore a protective mask until many years later while mixing photo chemistry. We handled sodium hydroxide, several acids like Hydrochloric, Acetic and Sulphuric with rubber gloves, an apron and supposedly an aspiration mask. I read an article where Sodium Hydroxide exposure was suspected of causing external squamous cell carcinoma on the skin. Guess I should have been more cautious!

I really hope 2011 is a better year! Le Chaim!