However, despite all this, the iPhone 4S seems to be nothing but a catch up device to the Android market and especially to the frightening specifications of most Android phones, being both big and fast. It seemed that the only way for Apple to outdo these competitors would be to release a slightly bigger iPhone, with much better specifications and a new body that would dazzle the market, the fabled iPhone 5. But that did not happen, and instead the iPhone 4S is just a spec bump of a previous generation iPhone. Alright, if Apple didn’t update the styling, at least the hardware would be up to par with the rest of the market. The performance data may be quite astoundingly, but the specifications don’t amaze, and the 800MHz A5, and 512MB of RAM definitely do not catch up to anything.

And consumers don’t see those numbers. They see an iPhone 4S which, without comparing it side by side to an iPhone 4, is not noticeably faster to the average consumer. The iPhone needs a big screen and big specifications to capture the market. And it is also missing a huge piece of technology quickly rolling out on new phones: an LTE data connection. At the moment, LTE equipped phones have faster network transfer rates than any phone, even most desktop connections in the United States. What we need is an iPhone 5 with at least a 4″ display, an LTE connection, AND a battery life that is equal to or better than the current iPhone 4.

Clearly, Apple has noticed these shortcomings. Without the specs to win over consumers, Apple has created something else for its marketing team to use: new features in iOS 5, most importantly Siri.

Apple is marketing Siri as a new voice recognition technology which is far superior to previous voice recognition systems. And, based on the first reviews of the iPhone 4S, Siri seems to live up to the hype Apple created for it. It is a good feature to use to replace the fact that the iPhone 4S is lacking in terms of hardware specs. Siri is not only useful, but fun to talk to, as it responds to not only commands, but also other questions that Apple engineers were able to imagine.

One of the features I was looking forward to is Airplay Mirroring. The ability to mirror the iPhone’s display on your TV was something extremely exciting, and the thought of playing Angry Birds on my HD TV was just too much. iMessage is also one of the features that I liked, seeing as I could message people without being charged text messaging fees.

But unfortunately, for the world outside the iPhone 4S, these features, other than iMessage, are not available. Siri is only available for the iPhone 4S, as well as Airplay Mirroring. Apple claims that these features would not work or would not work well without the speed of the A5 processor, but I don’t believe so. Clearly, Apple wanted some features for the iPhone 4S to have just to force consumers to upgrade/purchase the 4S.

In Engadget’s review of the iPhone 4S, here, they said that, although the 4S was faster than the iPhone 4, it wasn’t radically different. And while Siri is an interesting piece of software, it isn’t really a replacement for good hardware, especially after the hype has died down.

I do understand that it is quite difficult for Apple to create a mythical iPhone 5 which outclasses everything. But that’s what Apple does. And although this criticism of Apple may seem harsh or inappropriate with the recent passing of Steve Jobs, I don’t think that he would disapprove of this post, seeing as Apple clearly needs to pull some all-nighters. After all, Apple is the company that “Thinks Different”. And unfortunately you can’t really do that while playing catch-up to everyone else.

After using my MacBook Pro for well over three years, I am quite familiar with many of its quirks. One of the problems it, and every other laptop, has, is that it is far too big and heavy. Even though the MacBook Pro is lighter, thinner, and better sized than most of its competitors, it still wasn’t light enough.

At the other end of the market there are netbooks, which are somewhat good in terms of size, but extremely poor in terms of performance. Netbooks are meant to be used as a second computer, and are simply too slow to substitute for a normal computer in terms of speed and power. On top of that, netbooks are built to a budget, and thus tend to be with flimsy materials, cramped keyboards, and terrible displays.

The MacBook Air 11″ is what laptops are meant to be. Not only is it small and portable, it is just as powerful as bigger computers, and definitely powerful enough to replace a laptop, seeing as its CPU easily outruns most of the Core 2 Duos which, until recently, were considered fairly fast in the computer market, especially for laptops. The MacBook Air, then, is easily fast enough for the majority of computer users.

And unlike netbooks, the MacBook Air has a stunning display with a resolution of 1366×768 and a wide viewing angle. It also has a full sized keyboard, making it fantastic for typing on, and even has backlighting for typing in the dark.

But let’s not only look at the specifications. The purpose of a laptop is to provide a mobile computer, a computer which can be taken to places and has the same, or as close as possible features that a desktop computer has.

The problem with most laptops is that they really are not that mobile. Yes, they’re easier to move around than desktop computers, but they’re just not portable enough; taking my MacBook Pro around was quite a chore, especially since its battery was dead and I had to carry around a chunky charger as well. And wherever I was, I had to look for an outlet to connect to, since the battery was fairly useless.

The MacBook Air 11″, however, is small enough that it is almost as portable as an iPad. That means carrying it around is no more difficult than carrying around a notebook, ironically. It has a battery life long enough to last a day(at least, for me it does) and its charger is so small that I have no problems with carrying it around all the time, just in case.

The SSD or flash based hard drive in the MacBook Air continues to aid it in its mission to be as portable as possible; the Air starts up faster than any other Mac, and applications load extremely quickly thanks to the fast transfer speeds. This makes a computer feel much faster, especially to average consumers who don’t know about processor speeds and other technicalities. People who judge a computer’s speed based on how fast their email application opens, or their web browser opens, or other tangible things.

The only possible drawback that the MacBook Air has for everyday computing is the lack of a CD/DVD drive. But over the three years that I’ve owned a MacBook Pro, I’ve found that I rarely use the SuperDrive. The few occasions where I did use it was either to install Windows or view a DVD, which only happened once when I was traveling in Europe. And to be honest, I could have been just as happy without watching a movie and instead spending my time checking out Paris.

Nowadays, I take my Mac with me everywhere, and I am finding uses for it that I had never before done so with my MacBook Pro. In many places, it has replaced pen and paper for me, and undoubtedly if everyone resorted to computers to replace things such as notebooks and textbooks, a huge amount of paper would be saved.

The MacBook Air is also better than an iPad, because an iPad is too big to be ultraportable like an iPhone, yet does not have enough features to qualify it as a fully capable computer. The MacBook Air is essentially just as portable as an iPad, but it has many more features, and its only drawback is a shorter battery life.

But most the most amazing thing about the MacBook Air is its speed. Having seen tons of computers over the past few years, anyone would instinctively believe that a laptop the size of the MacBook Air simply couldn’t be fast. And a few years ago, this was very true, as the technology needed to creature small, efficient, yet powerful CPUs simply did not exist. However, thanks to the Intel Core i5 chip in the MacBook Air, it is possible. Combine that processor with Apple’s extremely slim, and very strong unibody design, and you have a small laptop which is ultraportable, strong, and powerful for everyday use.

And on top of all that, the MacBook Air is priced like any other notebook. Starting at 999, which is a very accessible price point for the majority of the market, and heading upwards towards the 2grand mark. In other words, the MacBook Air has a version for everyone. It’s the ultimate notebook that all notebooks are meant to be. The MacBook Air could cover for the needs of the vast majority of the market. The few people who need extremely powerful laptops can stick with higher end MacBook Pros, but the other notebooks sitting in the middle of the range(MacBooks, 13″ MacBook Pros, etc) cannot hold a candle to the MacBook Air’s portability, power, style, ease of use, and the fact that, as a laptop, it is far superior.

In conclusion, the MacBook Air does have some drawbacks. The lack of a CD/DVD drive, and the small(compared to the rest of the market) storage space means that it cannot handle every possible need in the market. However, for the majority of the market, it is the best notebook out there, and is the best laptop that Apple makes.

But I still have the MacBook Pro from when I started this blog, and here’s a quick update on how it is getting on with life.

Unfortunately, my MacBook Pro really is starting to show its age. Technology has changed quite a lot since it was new, and the 120GB hard drive that it originally came with was not good enough for this day and age. I’ve since upgraded the hard drive to 320GB, and as my warranty has long since expired, that switch has gone very smoothly, and it works perfectly fine with the upgrade.

The super drive, however, is no longer functioning. As soon as a disk is inserted, it is immediately rejected, and that has prevented me from reinstalling Mac OS X, or using anything that is on an optical disk. Since I don’t use many CDs or DVDs, this isn’t a big problem for me, just an inconvenience.

The battery is also a goner. It now lasts around 30 minutes after being unplugged, and the computer can no longer accurately predict the amount of charge left in the battery. Although it may say that 80% of the battery is still remaining, the battery is actually near empty at that level, and the computer will simply drop dead at that point. Which means that I have not used it on battery power for many months now.

However, the rest of the computer is fine. The 15.4″ display is still drop dead gorgeous, and is much better than most laptops on sale today. In fact, it is a lot better than the display sold on MacBook Pros today, simply because it is a matte display instead of glass. Although I do not celebrate Steve Jobs’s retirement from Apple, I hope that his replacement Tim Cook will address the issue of Apple having no matte displays, other than the $150 upgrade on the 15″ and 17″ MacBook Pros.

My system is still running Mac OS X Snow Leopard, as I see no purpose of upgrading to Lion, which seems to be more of a user interface upgrade than any actual software improvements. Everything on my Mac runs as normal; everything works without many glitches, and any flash intensive website still causes the mac to overheat. The fact that so many hours of overheating has not killed the computer is a testimony to Apple design, and although the heat is an issue, it at least does not prevent the user from using any of the mac’s functions.

To conclude, the MacBook Pro is still my main computer. Although I am thinking of replacing it–due to form factor–it works perfectly fine, and is an icon for Apple design.

But that’s not how you should think of it.  The upgraded hardware on the iPad makes it incredibly different from the iPod Touch, and means it will be used more frequently and is able to do more than an iPod Touch can. It is like the difference between a Mustang Shelby GT500 against a V6 Mustang: sure they both look very similar, but that bigger engine makes all the difference in the world.

The iPad is worlds ahead of the iPod Touch in speed. Everywhere that the iPod lags behind, the iPad flies ahead. It loads webpages and opens apps much faster than an iPod Touch, and makes it more appealing. Some of the problems with using the iPod Touch or iPhone as a web browsing device or even using apps for a long time is that the screen is small and eventually the lag makes you too impatient and you jump back onto a computer.

And this is where the iPad succeeds. Because it’s much faster than an iPod Touch, you will want to use it more; because the screen is bigger, you can use it for longer periods of time and not feel frustrated or annoyed at the lack of screen real estate. On an iPod Touch, you have to zoom in to a tiny section of a webpage just to read it, while on an iPad, you can pretty much read everything from the 100% view.

Also, the iPad doesn’t just improve upon the iPod Touch; it’s bigger screen real estate means that it holds much more potential in its apps. The bigger screen allows app developers to create word processing applications and more useful apps that weren’t good on an iPod Touch because the screen wasn’t big enough. The iWork suite is proof of what the iPad is capable of: replacing many of the functions of a computer.

The iPod Touch and iPhone, as we all know, hold an incredible amount of functionality. The iPhone has improved the smart phone market unlike any other, and the iPod Touch is its little brother. However, the iPad does everything they do, and better. Yes, it doesn’t make calls, but that isn’t the purpose of an iPad. It possesses much more functionality and capability than the iPod Touch.

And the best part is that it’s extremely portable. Yes, laptops are thin and light but in the end, they are still a hassle to carry around. With most laptops, you have to carry the chargers with you, and using a laptop means finding a place to sit down or a surface to put the laptop on, and a power outlet to plug it in. With the iPad, you simply pick it up and go. It’s incredible battery life alleviates you of carrying a charger, and even if you need to, the charger is simply an iPod sync cable, which isn’t exactly hard to carry with you.

The flash debate is quite big, but think of it like this: Apple has decreed that the web should move on to HTML5 and H.264 video content. And many companies have responded. Youtube is completely accessible on an iPad, and many news websites have created HTML5 sites. The list grows larger as time passes, and many important websites are already iPad ready.

And think about it: flash’s main purposes on the web have been flash video, advertisements, and games. Video is pretty much covered, since Youtube and Vimeo are both capable of working on the iPad; adverts well… it isn’t like the end user wants to see adverts. And adverts can easily be converted into HTML5 or others. As for games, the list of games for the iPhone and iPod Touch grow in vast numbers constantly, and the iPad-native apps will grow quickly as well. Already there are good titles out, and because the iPad has a bigger screen, these games are better, more extensive, and run faster thanks to the iPad.

And then there is the iBooks reader. Now, there isn’t really anything revolutionary about this app, although the page flipping animations are incredibly addicting to do. However, the real point of this is that the iPad does this AND everything else. Comparing an iPad to a Kindle makes no sense: a Kindle lets you read books and it’s only advantage ( and in some ways, a disadvantage) is it’s E-ink screen, whilst the iPad can do the reading AND the web browsing, games, productivity apps, etc. On top of that, because of the iPad has a color screen, it’s capable of becoming a vessel for textbooks and other literature that needs colored pictures.

Typing on the iPad is an interesting experience. There is no feel whatsoever in typing on it, in fact it felt somewhat similar to a Forza 3 demo I played at the NY Auto Show, where the steering wheel had no force feedback, the pedals felt like sponges, and the wheel didn’t turn 900 degrees. I’m sure the settings can be adjusted so that it’s more realistic, but at that demo that’s how it was. And that is how the typing is like on the iPad: there’s no feel to it. You have to judge by your vision, and although typing works on the iPad, even the most experienced typer probably has a learning curve to type quickly on it. It isn’t really as bad as the Forza 3 demo though, proof shown through the many times I turned the wheel too much because it didn’t have 900 degree rotation.

The feature I like the most on the iPad, however, is the ability for it to connect to a project and play presentations created in Keynote. This, I think, is its best feature. Whenever I have to give presentations, I must carry my laptop around on top of the books and stuff that I already carry around. This makes my bag rather heavy, and while it’s livable, it’s an inconvenience that’s rather annoying. On top of that, a laptop is much more delicate than an iPad, and so I kept worrying about hitting something and breaking it. An iPad however, weighs 1.5 pounds, 4 pounds less than my Mac’s 5.5 pounds. That means I carry around all the functionality I need in a portable device for 4 pounds less and many times easier to access than on my Mac. And an iPad is around almost 4X cheaper than a MacBook Pro.

An iPad is also incredibly user friendly. Yes, that means it does have a very basic interface that seems redundant, but it is efficient and it works, and it helps users of all ages use it easily. And because it has a very similar interface to the iPhone and iPod Touch, there are already millions of users who will know how to handle an iPad from the moment they start using one.

As you can see, the iPad has a huge amount of positives. However, there are also some negatives with it as well. It desperately needs both a front facing and back camera, because a camera is an important feature that many people use. A front facing camera would allow for video chats, which, thanks to the iPad’s fast CPU, can probably run quite well on it. And a camera on the back is obvious, everyone wants one, otherwise they’ll need to bring another camera with them.

Also, while the CPU in the iPad is fast, it needs to be faster. Yes, it runs everything the iPod Touch and iPhone does at an insane speed, but it’s own iPad-native apps start to suffer. This is very apparently in the iWork suite, where it lagged dramatically while I was using it. As iPad apps expand into more sophisticated areas, this is a gaping hole in a wonderful device.

And finally, the storage space is not enough for the price. For 500 dollars, you buy only 16GB. That is too little; because the iPad is a larger device, it’s more likely you’ll fill it up with movies and photos, movies and photos that are of much larger resolution than ones you’d load up on the iPhone or iPod Touch. This means that they’ll fill up the tiny flash chip on the iPad incredibly fast, and you’ll be out of space very quickly. This is also a very big hole they need to fix; after all, you cannot just upgrade everything and then leave the storage space untouched.

Overall, the iPad is very positive. It is a very useful device because it is portable, has a long battery life, and does a huge number of things well. It is more than a big iPod Touch; it’s a device that you can and will use much more often. It does have drawbacks however, but they are likely to be fixed in the second generation. The overall idea/concept of the iPad, however, is excellent, and while the iPad does not live up to Steve’s standards exactly ( the web needs time to transition to HTML5) it holds the potential to be one of the most important devices of the future.

VLC player is a little buggy however, and sometimes video playback randomly freezes or crashes. In most cases, it plays wonderfully and is very stable, but occasionally, it is buggy, and certain videos it will continue to crash while trying to play, and for apparently no reason whatsoever.

Another video player that is very good is DivX player. This doesn’t support as wide a range of formats as VLC player, but it has many more features and also looks a lot better. It plays all the videos that VLC has troubles with, and playback is just as smooth as VLC when it’s working. DivX player also has a lot more features than VLC player, and it makes watching movies even better. It will even darken the rest of your screen while watching a video, although this feature is somewhat useless because you might as well watch the video in full screen. Still, it’s nice to have.

Real player is also a decent video player for Mac OS X. It has a bunch of useful features, although the range of formats it supports it much less than VLC and DivX. It has some interesting options for full screen and also is a very stable video player.

However, in the end, VLC is the winner. It is simple, and does everything you want. It’s ultimate win is the fact that it is very simple and supports a huge range of formats. If Quicktime supported as many or close to as many formats as VLC player, I would definitely pick Quicktime player over VLC, simply because Quicktime player is absolutely flawless and has an even better interface. However, because it doesn’t, VLC is a much better video player, and it will fulfill all your needs to play videos of all sorts of formats.

Apple has been heading into a new direction, starting with the introduction of the glass and aluminum iMac. In fact, I daresay this new direction has been starting since the beginning of the Intel Macs, but it isn’t very evident until about late 2008, with the introduction of the new MacBook Pros and aluminum MacBooks.

Apple is no longer the company that produced reliable products. Macs nowadays are much more unreliable than before, prone to bizarre errors and problems that Apple promised would not be there.

Apple has always said that the consumer using their product would have an easy learning experience and a problem free product. That they should be able to turn it on and just use it, without hassles or errors. And if there was any problems, they could take their Mac to the Apple Store and get a free check up and fix as long as they were in warranty.

Now however, this is not the case. New Macs seem to turn on much slower than older Macs of a close spec, particularly the time from pressing the power button to the gong and the Apple logo showing up. Safari opens frustratingly slow at start up, and even afterwards, there are times when the browser lags for seemingly no reason whatsoever. Pentium 4 PCs open firefox quicker than my MacBook Pro starts up Safari. And Firefox is no good on a Mac either, because it isn’t optimized properly and hogs most of your Mac’s resources, so that it will overheat. Opera 10 is a very fast and optimized browser, but it isn’t compatible with many websites and the interface is somewhat yucky.

Apple Mail has also been causing problems. It will constantly create mailboxes on its own, and is unable to sync with one of my Gmail accounts. After emptying the cache in my Library, the problem was temporarily fixed, but came back a few days later. While it is attempting to sync with Gmail, it will use a huge amount of bandwidth and CPU, and render Safari and other applications laggy, as well as overheat the computer.

Microsoft Office and productivity suites similar to it are a problem too. Office for Mac applications start up EXTREMELY slowly, and run differently from other Mac apps so using them isn’t very intuitive. They run like downgraded versions of the Windows apps, which means they are very annoying to use, and lack a lot of the function found on their Windows counterparts.

Apple’s iWork on the other hand, works well, but lacks many advanced functions. Also, it doesn’t work with Microsoft Office, unless it is for very basic documents that you could have written/created in Office for Mac anyways. Keynote is however very useful, but it does mean your presentations are not compatible with Windows computers and that if you want to display your presentation to anyone, you would have to carry a Mac with you.

The new iMacs, while a brilliant computer, are somewhat ridiculous. They really are taking touch technology to a ridiculous place: the “magic” mouse. There really is no purpose to having touch functions on a mouse; it makes sense on a laptop’s trackpad, to provide functions that are useful, but on a mouse, there is room for physical buttons. The magic mouse does not optimize your work, but rather makes you think, why can’t I have a normal mouse? The magic mouse is no more useful in function than a normal Logitech mouse; in fact advanced mice from Logitech have more useful functions than the magic mouse. The glass screen is still stupid; placing the iMac in a position opposite of a window means you cannot see anything at all during the day, and it acts like a mirror instead.

The iPad is a very brilliant idea; in fact, it has a lot of potential. Unfortunately, they have gone wrong with it at the moment. The CPU is not powerful enough, and there aren’t enough functions to make it similar to a computer. A netbook is more useful in terms of functions, and the iPad really is a big iPod Touch. Excluding the big screen, an iPod Touch will do everything an iPad can do. What the iPad needs is a more computer-like interface. It needs at least a 2GHz processor, and it needs to be able to have a file system like the Finder or Windows Explorer. It needs to be able to run third party apps not only from the app store, but from any developer, without having to deal with Apple’s app rejection problems.

The reason why an iPad needs to be more like a computer is because it has the potential to replace most laptops and netbooks on the market. Most people who do have a laptop are usually using it for internet (which means flash is a NECESSITY) and for writing essays and powerpoints, etc. Watching videos in many formats is also important. An iPad cannot do flash, so the internet part of it already fails, and watching videos is also pretty much a fail because users cannot upload content through anything other than iTunes. Also, it doesn’t seem like the iPad can connect to a printer, so what is the purpose of creating documents on the iWork Pages app for iPad? It would be easier to type through a computer than on the iPad, and in order to print, you would need to bring that file from the iPad to a computer, so you might as well write it on a computer.

The eBooks section on the iPad is very nice, but it does have a problem. I already have a fairly large bookcase with books that I enjoy, but if I were to get an iPad, I’d have to repurchase all of these books if I want to read them on my iPad. This is a problem spread across all eBook readers, and Apple hasn’t solved it. In fact, Apple hasn’t improved on eBook readers at all; the Kindle is better on the eyes, has free wireless access, and is cheaper than an iPad. And because an iPad cannot replace a computer, it’s other functions don’t account for it’s eBook part.

To conclude, Apple’s new products are all brilliant and are based on brilliant ideas. However, they’ve forgotten the basics, and are creating products that have a brilliant potential, but don’t work as advertised, and don’t have as much function as they could possibly have. The list of problems with Mac OS X grows larger every year, and problems aren’t being solved. I am still adamant that Tiger is still a better operating system than Leopard and Snow Leopard, simply because its basics work. It does work without many problems, and it does function well. The iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad could all be more useful to our lives if Apple would add more features to them. The new magic mouse is really giving the message: don’t improve on perfection. The modern day mouse works; it does not need the touch functions that the magic mouse adds.

Apple, please. Get it right. I still think my MacBook Pro is an exceptionally well made and designed computer, but it also has problems that I do not expect it to have. Your new products are flawed in ways we do not expect it to be. They are not as revolutionary as you claim them to be.

Snow Leopard is HOT. My MacBook Pro runs hotter daily than before on Leopard. Most likely, OpenCL, which utilizes the GPU for CPU tasks, gives my Nvidia Geforce 8600M GT more reason to heat up more than usual. And since it normally heats up too much, adding CPU tasks onto its to do list just makes it worse. The heat difference isn’t noticeable while doing day to day tasks, but when watching Youtube or using flash…. there goes the fans.

But other than that, Snow Leopard is quite amazing. 64 bit Safari is FAST! Web pages load much snappier than before, and Google Maps sees an extreme performance boost, to the point where loading maps is instantaneous. Of course, I’m using Verizon FiOs which is a very fast internet service, but DSL and Cable users should also see a major improvement.

Quicktime X’s interface is quite interesting, and is a new idea to see a window without any sign of its frame. However, I don’t use Quicktime too often because a lot of the videos I download and watch are in a format supported by my favourite, VLC Player. Fortunately, it still works in Snow Leopard.

What doesn’t work in Snow Leopard is iStat Menus. They’re supposed to be working on an update, but iStat Menus has been very useful to me in Leopard, and in Snow Leopard I have to judge certain things based on how loud the fans are spinning (therefore guessing the temperature and how much CPU the computer is using). It’s true I could use Activity Monitor, but it takes up room on my screen and looks very clumsy.

I love the new stacks and Expose. It makes life so much easier. Before, to go into my utilities folder, I would open my applications stack, click on the utilities folder, wait for finder to open, and then double click on the utilities folder again, and finally get to open whatever application I am looking for. Now in Snow Leopard, I simply click on my applications stack, click on utilities, and open the app.

Finder is much smoother than before. Cover flow especially sees a major performance boost; before in Leopard, cover flow would take a long time to load the icons for apps. Now with the 64 bit Finder, Cover Flow loads icons very fast, so it is actually useable. However, it still isn’t my favourite way of using the Finder, so I still don’t use it.

Dock expose is quite useful, but there’s a little improvement they could make; when using dock expose on applications such as safari, it would be useful to be able to actually see different tabs of a web browser. Usually, most of my web browsing is done in one window with multiple tabs, which makes expose useless for Safari in my case.

I still have to try out that chinese input thing, but unfortunately, my MacBook Pro does not support it. I’ll just have to wait until I install Snow Leopard on my dad’s MacBook Pro unibody to see how well it works.

iChat’s video quality has improved, but there’s also a problem. Because the video is now 4 times the resolution, that means my Mac has to work 4x as hard to render that video. Which of course, means even more heat produced by my nvidia geforce 8600m gt. Wonderful.

My apps also open faster. Whether it’s Photoshop or Final Cut Express, apps just feel like they’re faster and more streamline. Indeed, Snow Leopard is an upgrade that involves tweaking things in the background. On the outside, it looks exactly the same. Well, almost. Just waiting for Apple to release that update that fixes the heating, and also waiting for that iStat Menus update.

To explain the reason why Snow Leopard is such an exciting release for me, first I must tell you about Mac OS X Leopard, the operating system I am running right now. Leopard has plenty of excellent features and is definitely the best operating system I have ever used. However, I have many quirks with it, all of them related to behind the scenes “stuff”.

One reason that Leopard was quite annoying is stability; Tiger was definitely more stable than Leopard. Leopard seemed to be a bunch of fancy features that were extremely useful, but unfortunately also rendered the operating system less stable and more… Windows esque. It’s a poor description of Leopard, because it is more stable than Windows, but it definitely wasn’t as good as Tiger.

Not only that, some times Leopard does not use the CPU very well. Time Machine Backups hog the CPU and set the fans running high, and small tasks often drain too many resources. Startup and shutdown has dramatically slowed down from Tiger, and iChat almost always has problems connecting to others attempting a video chat or audio chat.

Snow Leopard promises to fix Leopard. With Snow Leopard, the transition of Mac OS X to 64 bit is complete. Most core applications will be 64 bit, such as Safari, Mail, iChat, etc. Being 64 bit helps improve the performance of a program, and will probably help out Safari loading flash. According to Apple, the Safari 4 that ships with Snow Leopard will be 50% faster than Leopard due to it being 64 bit, and it is also crash resistant, so no more cooliris or adobe flash crashing Safari.

With Snow Leopard, there is also Grand Central Dispatch, which will help allocate the CPU’s resources more effectively. Instead of Time Machine Backups taking up most of my CPU, it will focus on the application that needs it, such as Safari or Pages or whatever is using the CPU most. When programs aren’t being used, they will also use much less resources on the CPU, unlike in Leopard where idle applications use almost as much resources as when they are running full time.

Startup and shutdown are also going to be much faster, up to 2x faster according to Apple. Snow Leopard also takes care of many small things, such as taking up 6GB less of disk space. Exposé and Stacks  have been updated, with Stacks now having the ability to view into folders (something I’ve always wanted) and Exposé is now much neater, with the windows arranging themselves like a grid, making it easier to get to the window you want. Dock Exposé is quite interesting, because it has the capability of replacing traditional Exposé, since you now no longer need an Exposé key to launch Exposé.

In general, Snow Leopard is promising a huge user experience upgrade. Somewhat similar to the subtle but also very useful upgrade of the iPhone 3GS, Snow Leopard is going to bring a faster Mac to your already feature filled computer.

PS – If you’re wondering why I haven’t written something for so long, it’s because I’ve been studying chemistry and reading books on Xcode.

But if you don’t have an iPhone 3G next to it, you most likely will not notice the speed difference, unless you’ve had an iPhone 3G AND you think that the 3G is slow. Otherwise, the speed isn’t a big enough of a change to be worth upgrading to the iPhone 3G S. It probably isn’t twice as fast, and in general it’s not a big deal unless you’re using some sort of more intensive application.

However, there is one subtle change that is very useful; the iPhone 3G S’s screen is much more fingerprint proof than before. Actually, not finger print proof really, but easy to clean. A single swipe of the screen can probably wipe off any fingerprints you’ve managed to get on it. Yet despite this change, the screen still feels the same as before, although it’s true that it feels less like glass.

I wasn’t able to test out the camera’s focus in the Apple Store because I didn’t want to take pictures of people walking around me, but the manual focus does work when you tap on it, and  the camera tries to adjust to the way you want it. I wasn’t able to try out video recording either, but based on just moving the camera around, it doesn’t look incredibly different from the iPhone 3G. The video recording is probably the most important difference, but you could get that on the 3G if you jailbreak it. However, the video is much smoother and the camera is much faster than the iPhone 3G.

The digital compass does not lag at all. Spinning the iPhone around, the compass changes to match the direction the top of the iPhone is pointing in. Also, maps now has the feature where it changes the view of the map based on what direction your iPhone is facing. This is a major upgrade for you if you travel or go to unfamiliar places a lot, or simply need directions to somewhere. Because now you are able to know which direction you are facing, so you know you are moving in the right direction. Before, you would need to walk a certain distance and look to see where the little bubble indicating your location has moved. This makes it much easier for many users and is a definite plus.

Voice control seems to be a nice and useful feature, but it’s been available for many years now in other phones and frankly, it’s not that useful and gets quite annoying sometimes. If you say a command wrong, it takes a long time to get something done, and it’s extremely annoying when it repeatedly fails to understand what you are saying. Of course, I did not test out how well the iPhone 3G S recognizes your voice (since it’s very loud in the Apple store) but I don’t think it could be that much better than other voice control phones.

In general, the iPhone 3G S is very good, and it’s a much better buy than the iPhone 3G 8GB for 99 dollars. However, if you have an old iPhone, you don’t have an incredible lot of reason to upgrade with. In general, think of the iPhone 3G S as something like a new Mac. Sure it’s faster and it’s different and all, but that doesn’t make your technology outdated. iPhone 3G S is like a spec bump. It’s not like the difference between the 3G and original iPhone.

So if you’re a new iPhone switcher, get the 3G S. Don’t get the 3G, it’s older, and it’s not as worth it. But if you own the older iPhone 3G, don’t waste your money on an extra expensive 3G S and contract increase. It’s not worth it.

However, in my opinion, there are now two types of MacBook Pros, the MacBook Pros and the pseudo-MacBook Pros. And the reason I say that is because both the 1699 15″ MacBook Pro and the 13″ MacBook Pros use the Nvidia Geforce 9400M, and have no dedicated graphics card. In my opinion, that separates them from the rest of the family, starting at 1999, that has the Geforce 9600M GT, a much more powerful, dedicated graphics card.

Anyone getting the pseudo-MacBook Pros are simply buying an overbloated MacBook, and in a way, that’s great for Apple to give even better systems to its consumers. But these machines shouldn’t have the name MacBook Pro on them simply because the MacBook Pro is all about performance, and these machines don’t hit the pro level because of their graphics cards.

However, the price decrease on the upper end MacBook Pros are very welcome. It’s probably more worthwhile to spend your money on the 2299 MacBook Pro now instead of the 1999 version because, unlike before, you only pay 200 dollars to upgrade to the highest end model, while it used to be 400 dollars. The 17″ model is also very worthwhile now because it has been decreased in price by 300 dollars.

So with these updates, Apple has made it better for both consumers and pro level users, with cheaper MacBook Pros, and also bringing more pro level features to a consumer line. However, they have united the MacBook and MacBook Pro line (almost) and the MacBook Pro name almost creates an illusion that what you’re buying is a Pro machine and that it’s incredibly fast, and for most people, that’s enough convincing to make them upgrade from buying a plastic MacBook to a 13″ MacBook Pro. What does an average person know about Intel or CPUs or GPUs, when all he can see is an aluminum laptop, less than an inch thick, called the MacBook Pro?

However, there are Pro users who would buy the 13″ MacBook Pro because they wanted a lot more portability. And that’s fine too, but their needs are different from the true MacBook Pros, which are really about power compared to the MacBook line. The added FireWire 800 and SD card slot make it easier for both photographers and anyone else using these ports, to travel on the go and still have a full featured laptop. However, if any professional truly wants their studio to go, they would have to stick with either the higher end 15″ models or the 17″ model.

In general, I like the new MacBook Pro family, but I do not like that Apple still have not given people an anti glare option on the 15″ MacBook Pro. Perhaps professional level users like it, but some users who do not use it for what professionals do like anti glare screens as well, and do not like the glass, glossy screen. The point is, Apple should give users the CHOICE to pick, since we’re paying over 2 grand for one of these and then even more for the anti glare screen. Until they release a 15″ with the anti glare screen, I doubt I would buy a MacBook Pro 15. I have a Santa Rosa MacBook Pro from mid 2007 and it works fine and it’s anti glare and I like it.

So in conclusion, the MacBook Pro line is not complete. It’s now accessible to so many more people because of price and size, but there are things that need to be fixed before the features of the MacBook Pro are complete. And even after that, new technology and more powerful systems will be released, but there is an error right now with the BUILD of the MacBook Pro. Of course, a lot of laptops aren’t even close to the level that the MacBook Pro is at, but the MacBook Pro is not perfect either. Comparing a modern day MacBook Pro unibody to an aluminum PowerBook, there probably isn’t enough of a change. The only changes are the unibody, the LOSS of useful ports, and the glass screen which is controversial. Apple still needs to pick up the pace with the MacBook Pro. However, if you find that you do not mind the glass screen, and you need a laptop, this is perfect for you. Go ahead and get one, and if you’re a PC user, welcome to the world of Macs.