The trend continues, more pronounced than ever:

Mac maker Apple Inc. enjoyed strong retail sales during the first calendar quarter of 2008, boosting its share of the US personal computer market above 6 percent, according to a report released Wednesday by market research firm Gartner.

In total, the Cupertino-based company is said to have shipped over 1.01 million systems nationally, representing 32.5 percent growth and a 6.6 percent share of the US PC market, up from 762,000 systems and 5.2 percent share during the same three-month period last year.
In addition to its strong retail performance, there were indications that Apple showed decent growth in the professional market as well, Gartner said.

(via AI)

Engadget's Ryan Block gives a solid review of the MacBook Air. He thinks it's a gorgeous machine, which it is. He also appreciates the engineering that went into making the machine so thin and light. But, he summarizes, Apple conceded a lot to arrive at such a diminutive machine, and it's obviously not a primary computer for most users. The MBA's screen, heat management, MagSafe adaptation are all bright spots for the unit, however. For the road warrior, these can't be overlooked. (Huh. I think I remember hearing very similar stuff somewhere before, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Strange.) Anyway, before long the design concessions start, and there are a few biggies, chief among them the lack of a user-replaceable battery. Block goes on to say that the HD is quite slow compared to standard 2.5 inch models, and durability of the drive, especially over time, will be interesting. Finally -- and quite predictably -- Block notes that the lack of ports mean real-world sacrifices, such as the need for integrated 3G, given how it can't be expanded via ExpressCard. (Or ethernet, Firewire, or reasonably standard DVI). Overall, though, Block's final verdict is somewhere on the fence, as are most mainstream reviews:

The Air is a tough call. On the one hand it proposes to be a no-compromises ultraportable, but on the other hand it compromises many (but not all) the things road warriors want. We're all about removing unnecessary frills and drives (we rejoiced the day the original iMac bucked the floppy), but laptops are increasingly becoming many users' primary -- often only -- machines, which is why the Air's price doesn't do it any favors, either. It's hard to justify almost two grand for a second laptop (or a third machine) just for travel needs -- and even then, that's only easily done if all your data lives in the cloud. Given those sacrifices and that higher-end sticker, it's more than likely not going to replace most peoples' current workhorse laptop.

As I said before, the MBA is a great machine -- for niche users. For those of us who want the love child of the MBA and MacBook Pro, we're out of luck. For now.

MacBook Air: First Lab Tests:

Our tests reveal that the slower processor and disk make the MacBook Air quite a bit slower than the other portables in Apple’s product line. The MacBook Air was also outpaced in our tests by the its closest desktop cousin, the ultra-compact 1.83GHz Mac mini Core 2 Duo.

Not surprising when you talk about a machine that puts size/weight first. Nonetheless, the MBA's performance is yet another indicator that it is a niche product and almost certainly not a primary machine. It beats a 1.67 GHz G4 in most things. That's something, right?

I've purposely waited a few days before writing this post, mainly to let my impressions about the MacBook Air (MBA) stabilize. They finally have, and if you want the short version, here it is: I'm not terribly impressed. It's a reasonable machine for certain users, but I think my definition of certain users and Apple's are two different things. And maybe therein lies the rub: the success -- or lack thereof -- of the MBA will be how many align with my line of thinking, versus that of those who think the MBA is a runaway hit. When the MBA was unveiled during the keynote, I was thrilled: I've been looking to replace my MBP with a newer machine, preferably one that's smaller and yet still has pro-class power. At first glance, the MBA looked like it had a fighting chance to be such a machine. Those hopes fell away rather quickly. Now, as I write this, I can soberly say that I have no desire for an MBA given my requirements. Cutting to the chase, here's how I see the MBA: it's clearly and unavoidably a second machine. To think it can be used as a primary machine is to admit that your computing needs are incredibly light or that you really haven't thought through the MBA's downsides. Anyone with even a mildly wide array of computing requirements trying to simplify and consolidate to the MBA as a single machine will likely be disappointed. Like everything else in technology, the MBA represents a tradeoff in terms of benefits and cost. To me -- and I'm guessing to the larger market -- the costs associated with the benefits will be an upside-down proposition. THE UPSIDES The form factor, obviously. The MBA achieves what I'm sure was its primary goal with aplomb: the machine is thin and light to an otherworldly degree. When people talk about ultraportable or subnotebook machines in terms of minimalist heft and thickness, the MBA is the new high-water mark. Aesthetics. The MBA is gorgeous, quite literally the most attractive and modern-looking laptop I've ever seen. And from all the Macworld show floor reports I've read, it's doubly stunning in person. If you want a machine that will turn heads in Starbucks, your ship has arrived. Remote optical disc technology. Seeing how the MBA doesn't come with an internal optical drive, the fact that the MBA can access another Mac or PC's on-board optical drive is outstanding. Again, however, this clearly suggests that the MBA is a second computer for a given user/family, and that there's another, presumably more fully-featured, machine in the household. Nonetheless, a very smart and convenient technology. THE DOWNSIDES An insufficient array of standard ports. No ethernet, no Firewire, and only one USB on a modern machine? In my book, that's badly crippled. I know you can by adapters/dongles to address these shortcomings, but (1) they represent extra cost, and (2) they're inconvenient. I'd much rather have more functionality built into the machine at the expense of a few points of aesthetic/size. I/O functions are a huge part of daily computing, and to require the user to affix accessories to the machine to do them is shortsighted. What seems no big deal at first will become annoying over time. Sealed battery, which means it can't be replaced by the user. This is the biggest show-stopper for me, and likely the heaviest impetus to the comments I've seen around the web that decry the MBA as "not a real computer." If you're on a plane or vacation and your battery decides to go tits up, so does your machine until you send it in to Apple for replacement -- which means you also send away your entire computer and personal data that's stored on your hard drive/SSD array. This isn't a phone or iPod; this is a computer. Having a non-user-replaceable battery again hints at Apple's bias towards this machine as a second machine in a household or straight-away hobby machine. Stupid nickle-and-diming by Apple. This isn't so much a fault of the MBA, but it does relate and contribute to the MBA's purchase and ownership experience. Want a Frontrow remote controller, even though the software is included in Leopard? That'll be $20, please. Want an ethernet adapter? Cha-ching. How about a different video adapter? Upcharge. Would it have killed Apple to include these in the box, seeing how the machine has very obvious holes in functionality/convenience as it relates to the average user? No, it wouldn't have. The best way for me to explain my feelings about the MBA is this: it's upsides are tactical, while it's downsides are strategic. Over time and using the MBA daily, the downsides will permeate through the user's experience far more than will the upsides. Again, I go back to the notion that this is a satellite machine, period. And while that's fine and well for some people, not everyone has $1800 (or over $3000 if you want the SSD storage) lying around for a convenience machine. Apple made the MBA's target market smaller via conscious design choice, which isn't a necessary concession just because you're talking about an ultraportable. I think the assumption that an ultraportable computer would naturally be a second machine is a bad one. If I were buying an ultraportable machine today on pure features vs. price alone, it'd be impossible to pass up the Dell XPS M1330, which is a very nice machine. LED backlit LCD, available 200 GB 7200 RPM HD or SSD option, cellular networking, 3 GB RAM for no extra cost, dedicated GPU, battery-powered WiFi catcher -- it's about the most loaded ultraportable on the market, and it surrenders about a pound to the MBA. Yes, it runs Vista and not OSX, so I'm not exactly talking apples to apples (the pun sucks, I know), but nonetheless it's the best that the market offers in this computing category. I've seen and used one, and it's a nice machine. I've read several times elsewhere on the web that the MBA is the new G4 Cube, which is Apple's most recent big-time flop. I don't think the MBA is that far off the mark, but make no mistake: this is not a volume sales product. It will fit within a niche, and my hope is that it's simply a first-generation model that hints of much better things to come, both unto its own product line as well as the standard MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

Since everyone and his brother are doing these today, I figure I should throw my two cents in so I have a chance to something being at least somewhat right. I miss 100% of the shots I don't take, so I may as well go public with my shots and still miss. Yay. MacBook Ultraportable: "MacBook Air" Yes. This will happen. Wired has its pretty Photoshop mockup here, and while I think it's a little over-thin, I would be willing to bet it's not far off. Probability: 100% New Cinema Displays Yes. It's about time for a display refresh, and I look for higher resolutions and an exterior design scheme similar to the current iMac. I predict these to be mainly an aluminum and glass construction, with matte options available on some models for pro users who want more accurate color fidelity. Probability: 80% OSX Leopard 10.5.2 Yes. Rumors have been floating around the web for a few weeks now that this point release will contain a great many bugfixes and -- here's the meat -- some new functionality. What sort of new functionality can we expect in a simple point release? (Probability 100%, by the way.) How about... Wireless Time Machine Backups Best explanation of this comes from Daring Fireball's John Gruber:

Time Machine is very cool; the first backup that qualifies as “you don’t have to do anything, it just works”. But currently it only works using a storage device connected via USB or FireWire. Tethered backups are irritating with notebooks — and MacBooks are the fastest-growing segment of Apple’s Mac hardware sales. The problem is that when you want to use your portable away from your desk, it’s a pain to disconnect mounted USB and FireWire drives. You can’t just pulled the plugs — you’ve got to unmount them in the Finder first. And, once you do so, to get Time Machine backups running again, you’ve got to re-tether your storage drive. Leopard developer seeds all supported network backups to USB drives connected to an AirPort base station. The feature was also demoed at WWDC. It was removed (or, better said, disabled) very late in Leopard’s development, supposedly because of a security problem that was discovered, but I expect the feature to return, perhaps in 10.5.2. It’s a terrific idea, perfect for multi-Mac homes and small offices.

Probability: 60% iTunes Movie Rentals Christ, this has been everywhere for some time now. I already it assume to be a given for this Macworld, but not everyone sees it that way (because they enjoy being wrong). Regardless, this will happen. I don't even feel too proud about calling it a prediction, but I'll take anything to increase my batting average. Probability: 100% Apple TV v2.0 with Slingbox-like Capabilities Maybe. Since Apple TV is languishing and the hobby seems to have been abandoned for a nice game of kickball down the street, it's time to get this product across the chasm or sunset it entirely. I'm betting on the former, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a revamped Apple TV that allows wireless streaming of shows to any Mac or PC, a la Slingbox, and the ability to rent shows from iTunes, just like the iPhone can. Probability: 60% 16 GB iPhone Yes, but that's all it is: not 3G, not the iPhone v2. It's merely the new high-end iPhone model with new RAM. Welcome addition? Sure, but it's just an incremental upgrade. Nothing more. MOVE ALONG, FOLKS. But wait: Jobs might demo or otherwise show an actual 3G iPhone, just to let us all know it's coming and that we can just chill out, for the love of Christ. Probability: 80% for the 16 GB model; 40% for Jobs showing us the 3G version iPhone SDK We will not see the SDK released at Macworld (that's a better thing to announce at WWDC), but we will see demonstrations of apps designed with the SDK to ensure our iPhone lust remains strong for the next six months. I don't know what these apps will be, but there are quite a few signs that point to an official Twitter client based on certain tweets today. Probability: SDK release 10%; native iPhone app demos 80% AAPL Finishes the Day Strong on Heavy Volume Hopefully. I think the street likes what it sees after some intra-keynote jitters and emotionalism. I think Jobs' updates on Mac and iPhone sales fuel the street at a fundamental level, while the rest of the Jobs keynote does its magic. (Assuming, of course, that all of these massively high expectations aren't just a nice hot fail pie and the street rebels at otherwise pedestrian news.) Tomorrow's like Christmas for me; it's stupid how excited I get for these things. Childlike wonder, indeed.

I'm giving MarsEdit a test drive. I typically use ecto, but I've read a lot about Marsedit and decided to give it (another) try. Some initial thoughts on the latest version (2.0.4): How can I do an ordered/unordered list? I see no markup options for bullets or numbers. I'd be using bullets here if I could find the option. (And no, I don't feel like adding custom HTML to the text markup options. Sorry.) I don't care how "pure" the raw HTML approach is, I simply don't understand the lack of WYSISWG editing. This has turned me off of MarsEdit in the past, and I'm doing everything I can do look past it this time around. I'm struggling. In fact, I'd say this is probably Daniel Jalkut's #1 request, and there's been little hint that MarsEdit will move in this direction. We're talking about a Mac application here, and it seems to me that there's no audience in the world that would expect visual editing more. I don't see an easy way to resize pictures (for straight size manipulations or into thumbnails). ecto handles this quite well. As a matter of fact, I'd like to see other image options too: drop shadow, slight rotate, picture frame, watermarking, etc. Blogs are increasingly a media-rich medium and the more options we have here, the better. There is the chance that I'm missing something here, but I don't think so. I've kicked the media functionality around pretty well so far. On the plus side, the HTML tags MarsEdit generates are sane and clean. I like that. Some of the code ecto generates is wildly incomprehensible. I like knowing that the HTML will arrive at my blog in its proper form. MarsEdit is less fussy when it comes to creating extended text formatting (you know it as the "More..." link at the bottom of longer articles that fetches the rest of the post). ecto always manages to fuck this up, and I have to go into Wordpress's dashboard and fix the spacing myself. Marsedit handles this perfectly, which again goes back to the clean HTML it generates. I am not an HTML pro by any means, but I can wade around in it if I have to. It's just that when it comes to composition, I don't want to mess with it much. When I want to list some thoughts in a bullet-list format, I shouldn't have to create new HTML macros. To me, that's not too user friendly, although I do understand that sort of barrier to entry has a certain level of geek appeal. But me, I'm a WYSIWYG guy. What I'd really like to see is a flavor of Windows Live Writer for the Mac. In my opinion, WLW is the best blogging tool on the market for any platform, and I absolutely guarantee there's big money in the wings for someone who creates a clone for OSX. It's that good. Why is this so hard to do? Quite bluntly, the state of blogging clients on the Mac is horrendous. WLW blows anything on the Mac away by a full order of magnitude. It's the one app I really enjoy using on a Windows machine. If you use MarsEdit, I'd love to hear your suggestions. I have mixed feelings about the application now, although I do very much appreciate the (relative) simplicity of the tool, the complaints above notwithstanding. And Daniel Jalkut is a very responsive developer. Granted, I've only been using the app for about a half hour, so it stands to reason that I'm missing something huge. But I'm guessing I'm not. Sigh.

This one boasting about how the fastest Windows Vista notebook is...a MacBook Pro.

Seriously, I can't get enough of John Hodgman.  He is this campaign.  Justin Long is just along for the ride.

Get a Mac: "Misprint"

Very well done QuickLook module to allow viewing of ZIP contents via Leopard's QuickLook function. Perfect example of how to extend QuickLook functionality via its extensible API.

(click to embiggen) Equally well done is the Folder plugin, which allows the viewing of a folder's contents via QuickLook. Get it here. [Via Matt]

I use Firefox as my default browser on my Mac. I like it well enough, but the vast improvements in Safari under Leopard (specifically the improvements made to WebKit) have made me try to make the switch to Safari full-time. One issue remains however, and for me it's a real problem: Safari doesn't work well with Wordpress.com's web interface. Example: if I compose a post using Wordpress' web interface under Safari, it starts out well enough.

After publishing, though, things start to go to hell. This, obviously, renders Safari 3 relatively worthless for an all-purpose browser, seeing how using Wordpress' web controls is something I do regularly. (Even though I compose most of my posts with ecto, I often do edits/updates to posts using Wordpress itself.) This is the one bug that I'd really like to see fixed. I'm somewhat surprised that this happens under Safari, because in every other dimension of my web life, Safari doesn't miss a beat. With Wordpress, however, it does, and quite badly at that. If anyone knows a way around this, I'm all ears. Until then, I'm all about Firefox.