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News & Opinion
Tech Trends
News & Opinion
Post-PC Era? Maybe, but We're Definitely in the
Mobile Era
ZDNet's James Kendrick says the post-PC era may or may not be
coming, but there is no question that the mobile era is here, noting
that few subjects get people riled up like that of "the post-PC era"
Steve Jobs proclaimed as being ushered in by the iPad.
He notes that many folks are in no hurry to give up real computers
for the slate or gadgets of other forms [hear!, hear! cm] and
get downright testy if you tell them they must.
Kendrick agrees that traditional computers aren't going away any
time soon, so he thinks a better term for the we time we're
experiencing is "the mobile era," which he observes is firmly
established, noting that it's not so much the form of the device that
makes up the post-PC era - it's the way we use them, and that factor
knocking the old tethered PC from shopping lists of millions, and
beginning to replace the standard computer away from the workplace.
Link: Post-PC or Not, We
Are Firmly in the Mobile Era
MacBook Air Creaking? Check for Loose Screws
An OS X Daily contributor reports that his/her 11" MacBook Air
has been creaking a lot lately when picked up, and the noise, which has
gradually increased, was traced to loose screws. 
The
obvious solution is to simply tighten the screws, but Apple has made
that customarily simple task difficult by it's employment of screws
with nonstandard heads, the dreaded "pentalobe", which defeats your
average household screwdriver from working either to tighten or loosen
the fasteners.
Consequently, if you want to perform tasks from screw-tightening
maintenance to warranty-voiding case opening, you'll need to buy a
pentalobe screwdriver, available from Amazon.com
for $5.95.
Incidentally, the pentalobe fasteners were the main reason iFixit
awarded the 11" MacBook Air a miserable 4 out of 10 repairability score
in its teardown evaluation of that model.
Link: MacBook Air
Creaking? Check for Loose Screws
Installing an OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 3G SSD in a 2008 MacBook
Pro
PCWeenies' Krishna has posted an illustrated tutorial on how he
installed a OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 3G SSD in his 2008 (pre-unibody) MacBook
Pro.
Krishna says he has owned Wallstreet and Pismo PowerBooks, which
were succeeded by first generation Intel MacBook Pros - 2006 and 2008
models. Among these machines he rates the early 2008 MBP as easily the
best of the bunch, but its Hitachi 250 GB 5400 RPM hard drive was
getting a little long in the tooth. Nevertheless, he wasn't ready to
part with it, and opted instead for some hot-rodding, installing a 115
GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 3G SSD, and buying a OWC On-the-Go Pro
enclosure for the pulled 5400 RPM hard drive and installed the SSD with
the help of iFixit's teardown guide.
Krishna notes that getting into the guts of the early 2008 MacBook
Pro involves unscrewing some 30 odd similarly sized, but different,
teeny, tiny screws, and his strategy was to affix tape to secure the
screws next to the appropriate step on the printed-out Guide docs, and
says The OWC toolkit he bought with the drive came in very handy.
Part 2, The Surgery, covers extraction of the old stock 5400 RPM
Hitachi hard drive and shoehorning in the replacement 115 GB OWC SSD,
noting that the latter step was the most frustrating part of the whole
procedure. It's doable, but requires extra patience, and after which he
says reassembly was almost anticlimactic, taking approximately 10
minutes.
As for installing Lion on the new SSD (part 3), "You would think
installing Lion on a fresh solid state drive would be easy, and in my
case, you would be wrong."
Link: Operation: Phoenix
Revival Part I
Link: Operation: Phoenix Revival Part
II
Link: Operation: Phoenix Revival Part
3
Apple Developing a Hybrid Drive System of Its
Own
Patently Apple says:
"On September 29, 2011, the US Patent & Trademark Office
published a patent application from Apple that reveals a next
generation Hybrid Drive that includes both a hard drive and Flash.
Intel will be pushing their Smart Response hybrid drive systems for
consumer systems in 2012 and Apple's patent would indicate that they
intend to have their own solution for future hardware."
Link: Apple Working on a
Hybrid Drive System of Their Own
Tech Trends
Ultrabooks vs. Tablets: Tablet Demise Greatly
Exaggerated
The Register's Tony Smith riffs on widespread commentary, mostly
sourced from a DigiTimes article, predicting that tablet sales will be
hammered next year by Ultrabooks.
That prognostication is primarily attributed to Acer VP Scott Lin,
hardly a disinterested and unbiased observer being as Acer's Aspire S3
Ultrabook was released in Taiwan the day before the DigiTimes article
appeared.
Lin suggests (reasonably) that Ultrabooks won't start to hit their
stride until early next year. Smith notes that Intel has announced that
second-gen Ultrabooks based in its new "Ivy Bridge" CPU family will be
available then offering better performance and battery life than
first-gen models, and that Lin anticipates Ultrabooks accounting for
30% of global notebook sales by the end of 2012, mirroring Intel's
projections.
However, he also believes Ultrabooks will eat into tablet sales,
which Smith agrees that they may very well do, but observes that Acer
has an interest in promoting that view, what with the drubbing that
Apple's iPad has laid on it and rival PC makers.
Link: Ultrabooks vs.
Tablets: Tablet Demise Greatly Exaggerated
Aluminum Alloy Ultrabook Chassis Likely in Short
Supply Through 2012
DigiTimes' Aaron Lee and Steve Shen report that supply of aluminum
alloy chassis for ultrabooks may fall short of demand in 2012, as most
ultrabook models launched by the various Windows PC vendors will come
with the metal chassis. They note that capacities at metal chassis
makers including Catcher Technology and Foxconn Technology have been
fully booked to the end of 2011, according to industry sources.
Ultrabook models already announced include Acer's Aspire S3,
Lenovo's IdeaPad U300s, Toshiba's Portegé Z830 and Asustek's
forthcoming UX-series lineup, all of which will be available with metal
chassis, Lee and Shen's sources noted. For example, Acer purchases
chassis from Catcher, while Asustek buys them from China-based BYD.
Link: Aluminum Alloy
Ultrabook Chassis Likely in Short Supply Through 2012 (subscription
required)
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