Over the past few years RSS readers have become increasingly popular with people trying to tame the constant barrage of information and news brought to us by the Internet. They allow us to aggregate the latest headlines for many sources and to filter that information, showing only the subjects that interest us. As people master the RSS reader, the need to visit the homepage of each web site becomes less necessary. This poses problems for content creators who rely upon online advertising as their source of income. Who wants to be bombarded with flashing banner ads when all of the useful information can stripped out of the page and be cleanly displayed within an RSS reader?

To combat this trend, content creators are deploying new tactics in the form of “embedded RSS advertising”. These adverts are displayed within the RSS feed (usually at the bottom of each post). While there are numerous ways to block ads in the browser window, there hasn’t been an easy way to tackle RSS advertising.

Enter Glimmerblocker, an open source project that takes a new approach to adblocking. Instead of being application specific, it intercepts online ads systemwide using an http proxy to capture all network traffic entering your Mac. This affords Glimmerblocker a few advantages over more traditional ad blocking techniques. Firstly, any ad blocking carried out in this way affects every app of the system whether they be a browser, an email client or an RSS reader. Secondly, because Glimmerblocker doesn’t rely on hacks like input managers or application enhancers, programs can be safely updated without running the risk of breaking the ad blocking tool and/or the application in question.

Glimmerblockers default settings already block many of the most insidious ad networks like Doubleclick and Mediaplex. By adding a few more domain names to Glimmerblockers blacklist you can banish the majority of embedded RSS adverts. Of course, different users have different interests and therefore subscribe to a wide variety of feeds. My own personal experience has taught me that by adding the following domains to the blacklist, 95% of embedded ads are successfully blocked…

*.feedads.googleadservices.com
*.pheedo.com

Adding new domains to the blacklist is relatively easy (although I hope in the future that the developers behind Glimmerblocker will simplify the UI a little).

- Once installed access the Glimmerblocker settings from the preference pane in Mac OS X System Preferences.
- Select the ‘Filters’ tab and using the top left pane add a new filter group.
- Then, using the bottom pane, add each of the domains list above.
- Finally, turn on Glimmerblocker by selecting the ‘Setup’ tab and then checking the ‘Activate Glimmerblocker’ checkbox.

This should go a long way towards removing adverts from your RSS reader.

After several months of use, my largest gripe with the new range of MacBooks and MacBook Pros is the new buttonless trackpad. The first month was plagued by a bug that prevented trackpad clicks being registered reliably. While this was extremely frustrating it always felt like a software issue that could be resolved in time. To the relief of many, Apple fixed this with a software patch at the beginning of November.

However, hardware problems are much more difficult to overcome and it has been a hardware issue that has ruined my experience with my new MacBook Pro until now. It seems that some users (including me) are bothered by the click action of the new trackpad. When pressed it emits a loud, hollow sounding click that becomes extremely irritating in quiet environments. It feels cheap and nasty when compared to the trackpad button on my MacBook Air and even my old first generation white MacBook.

Looking for a solution I came across a few blog posts suggesting the rather drastic solution of stuffing the space between the battery and the underside of the trackpad with Kleenex. This seemed a little half-baked and maybe even dangerous (given Apples recent track record with batteries its probably not advisable to place sheets of combustible material on top of the battery).

However, after flipping over the MacBook Pro and popping out of the battery, the user can access the underside of the trackpad where they will find one tri-blade screw. Although these types of screws typically require a special tool, this particular one is easy to turn with the edge of a small flat blade screwdriver. Turning the screw clockwise reduces the travel required to execute a trackpad click and dampens the sound emitted. Turning the screw counterclockwise increases the travel and force required and increases the noise made when the trackpad is depressed.

From experience I would advise turning the screw clockwise an eighth of a turn, testing the trackpad button and repeating until the desired trackpad button action is achieved. Turning the screw too far results in an inability to click the trackpad at all. If this happens, back off a little by turning the screw counterclockwise an eighth of a turn.

After successfully adjusting my own MacBook Pro I can report that the trackpad button is now as quiet as my MacBook Air resulting in a much more pleasant day-to-day user experience.

Being someone who has a fetish about notebooks, I was excited to see what Steve Jobs had in store for Apples line of portable Macs when he took to the stage on 14th October 2008. Rewinding to March 2003, and I was one of the first to pick up the 17 inch PowerBook. In its day it was a work of art. The pinnacle of laptop design. But its been five years and while the internal components have changed significantly (from a PowerPC to Intel architecture), the casing design and general aesthetic has changed little. It was high time for a refresh.

The day after the announcement I hopped on a train to London and visited the Apple Store on Regent Street where I picked up a new 15 inch MacBook Pro. I have been using it for 5 days now and feel I have learnt enough to share some of my feelings about the new hardware design.

Casing

Apple has placed great emphasis on the construction techniques used to manufacture the new MacBook Pros casing. During the announcement, Jonathan Ive (Apples Vice President of Industrial Design) made a rare appearance on stage to preach the virtues of the new aluminum ‘unibody’ which is produced by carving the casing as a single part from a solid block of aluminum. In doing so, Apple has hit a home run. The new casing is incredibly rigid, with a truly staggering fit and finish. The laptop itself will continue to look pristine many years after the internal components are obsolete. Make no mistake, this marks a new gold standard in laptop case construction and puts every other notebook I have come across (with the exception of the Macbook Air) to shame, including the previous generation MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

Trackpad

I have found the trackpad to be a true Jekyll and Hyde. The new glass surface is a true joy to work on. It provides just the right level of friction to ensure your finger glides to the desired spot accurately. I am sure it will also prevent the age old problem of the users finger polishing areas of the trackpad over time, which in turn should help boost resale value. A few commentators have reported that the glass surface is painted. This is not the case. The trackpad is constructed by laying a thin plane of etched transparent glass onto a metal base (which itself is the same color as the notebooks aluminum shell). This helps ensure that the glass is not cracked by heavy handed users whilst providing the illusion that the trackpad is the same color as the rest of the machine. Either way, your finger is in direct contact with the glass which leads me to wonder… If my finger cannot polish the glass trackpad over time, can the glass trackpad polish away my fingerprint?

The second innovative new feature of the redesigned trackpad is the complete absence of a separate button. For years people have bemoaned the absence of the right button found on PCs. In typical Steve Jobs fashion, Apple has given those complaining the middle finger and removed the one button they did have. Sort of.

Instead of having a separate trackpad and button, the redesigned trackpad is the button itself. The whole surface can be pushed down to register a click. For me at least, this has taken some getting used to. Firstly, the level of pressure needed to successfully click on something is not uniform. The trackpad is hinged at edge closest to the keyboard, so while it is easy to click in the bottom half of the pad, clicking in the top half requires a great deal of force. Secondly, compared with my previous MacBook Pro and my current MacBook Air, the click action requires more pressure and offers a very audible click which I find distracting. I am hoping this will resolve itself after a few months of use when the button mechanism has been broken in.

I have also run into problems because of the way my hand rests on the trackpad. I find the most natural poise for my hand is to rest my thumb on the button and then use my index finger for the majority of the trackpad work. But with no button at all my thumb naturally rests on the bottom third of the trackpad. This prevents me from successfully registering a click by tapping my index finger because the trackpad recognizes this as a two finger click. Very annoying. Nevertheless I have managed to retrain myself to use the trackpad differently over the past 5 days and this has become less of an issue as time has passed.

Display

The most controversial aspect of this refresh is the glossy display, or rather the lack of the previously available matte display. The new screens are adorned with a sheet of glass which stretches to the exterior edges of the black bezel that surrounds the LCD panel. This glass is extremely shiny and bumps up the level of glare even in comparison to recent glossy notebook screens sold by Apple (which had a plastic rather than glass coating on the screens surface itself).

This is a real deal breaker for some, especially if you belong to the print design community. As the MD of a graphics design studio I sympathize with the concerns over glare and reflections on the new glossy display. However, I have never found it to be much of a problem for me. In fact I tend to prefer the glossy display as it adds vibrancy to colour and produces deeper blacks. That said, my job role has morphed from a designer to a more conventional manager over the last few years so I tend to spend more time answering email and carrying out tasks within the browser than I do creating and editing artwork in Photoshop or Illustrator.

Putting aside concerns over glare and reflections, the 1440×900 panel is super bright and has a very wide viewing angle. It uses LED backlighting which is more energy efficient than the superseded cold cathode lamp backlighting and is not prone to yellowing or diminishing brightness following prolonged use. I do feel its time Apple stepped up the resolution of their screens a little but I cannot fault the quality of the panel itself.

While the lid assembly is thinner than previous models, it feels rigid and appears to have good torsional strength probably helped by the glass panel. It is worth noting that a black rubber bumper which runs around the entire perimeter of the display has replaced the tiny rubber stops of the older model. This is intended to ensure adequate clearance between the keyboard and screen when the lid is closed. However, sadly this is still not the case. The keys do still touch the display when the lid is closed. On older models this eventually caused permanent marks on the display. Whether this remains a problem with the new model is less clear. It maybe that the harder glass resists such markings more effectively. But as someone who has suffered this problem in the past I don’t intend on finding out. Instead I will be laying a microfiber cloth over the keyboard before closing the lid. As a side note, the hinge mechanism feels improved, with a more fluid feel than previous models.

Heat Dispersion

Older MacBook Pros were notorious for the heat they kicked out. On many occasions I have had to either stop using my older model or move it from my lap to a table because of the discomfort caused by the heat radiating from its underside. So how do the new MacBook Pros stack up?

While they can indeed still get quite warm, the heat is dispersed over a wider area probably as a result of the new aluminium unibody. In addition this machine is much quieter. In normal operation the fans are virtually silent (you have to press your ear against the machines only cooling vent running along the display hinge to hear them). But even when stressing the CPU the machine is significantly quieter than previous models. This seems to be achieved by using fans with more blades, allowing for adequate cooling at a lower RPM. Slower fans equal quieter fans.

Keyboard

Taking cues from the MacBook Air, the new Pro uses a chiclet style black keyboard. This seems to have polarized the mac community with many people complaining that the black keys are more visually jarring than the old silver keyboard which blended into the notebook casing. Personally I like the black keyboard. It brings back fond memories of my 2001 Titanium PowerBook.

While the keyboard may look a lot like the MacBook Air’s, it feels quite different. The travel of the keys themselves feel more in keeping with the old MacBook Pro design and less like the more ‘clicky’ action of Apples consumer line.

The backlighting of the keyboard is bright. Sometimes a little too bright. While the characters on the keys light up nicely, there is a lot of light spilling out from around the edge of each key. Coupled with the glossy screen which reflects the keyboard back at the user, the results can be a little distracting in very dark situations. Thankfully the backlighting can be toned down or turned off altogether.

These are my initial thoughts on the redesigned MacBook Pro hardware. I will endeavor to post about the machines performance once I have had an opportunity to really put it through its paces.

Apple have finally released a fix for the core shutdown issues plaguing MacBook Air owners. The support notes warns third party apps that alter the voltage or characteristics of the CPU are incompatible with the patch and that they should be removed before the update is applied. Although not mentioned by name, this warning is an obvious reference to Coolbook; a third party app that I covered in an earlier post that lowers the voltage fed to the CPU.

I have been running a newly patched MacBook Air for a few hours now. During that time I have had three flash videos running simultaneously along with Activity Monitor. I have yet to see a CPU core shutdown leading me to believe, that after a six month wait, the Apple update resolves this issue once and for all.

The MacBook Air update 1.0 is available through Software Update.

It seems that Apple has made some changes today to the servers that host MobileMe email. As of this afternoon the servers in the cloud are pushing new email down to Mac OS X Mail without the need to poll the server itself.

This can be tested by setting Mail to check for new messages manually and then sending yourself a message from another account. They seem to be showing up in Mail within 3-5 seconds.

I am guessing that the MobileMe team have activated the IDLE function of IMAP on the servers (although I don’t claim to be an expert with IMAP protocols).

Jason Snell over at Macworld.com has posted a video covering the issues surrounding the MacBook Air core shutdown problem I detailed a few months ago.

Like me, Jason has seen a marked improvement following the installation of Coolbook‘.

Since my original post I am happy to report that I have seen no real side effects to the underclocking; certainly no kernel panics or OS instability. Battery life was waned a little and ranges anywhere between 3.5hrs to 4hrs. This maybe because my MBA battery has now been cycled 251 times and is no longer keeping an optimal charge.

But after 4 months use I can say with certainty that it’s one of the best $10 I have ever spent. If I hadn’t discovered Coolbook I would have had no choice but to return my MacBook Air to the Apple Store for a refund.

One of the features I was most looking forward to when I ordered my MacBook Air was multi-touch and after 4 months heavy use I can report that my excitement was only partially justified. Some gestures have become second nature, while others feel decidedly unnatural. But as I have become accustomed to certain trackpad commands it has become increasingly apparent that Apples implementation of multitouch is somewhat of a walled garden, with little opportunity to customize gestures and too few apps that support them.

Step up MultiClutch. A donationware preference pane that may very well become my favorite app of 2008. MultiClutch allows you to assign keyboard shortcuts to gestures at a global level and in third party applications. It also brings a few new gestures to the table, namely ’swipe up and swipe down’ as well as combinations of stock Apple multitouch gestures.

So, for example, I have used MultiClutch to customize trackpad gestures in Safari like so….

Rotate left = Back
Rotate right = Forward
Swipe left = Switch to tab on left
Swipe right = Switch to tab on right

This is combined with customized gestures at a global level….

Swipe down = Minimize window
Swipe up = Hide window
Pinch = Close window
Stretch = Quit application

After a few hours of using the trackpad in this way it’s difficult to go back to Apples limited multitouch implementation. In particular, swiping down to minimize a window to the dock feels satisfyingly natural.

There are very few drawbacks to Multiclutch. The most apparent limitation of the software is it’s inability to control Carbon apps (ruling out Finder and iTunes). I have also yet to find a way of assigning keyboard shortcuts that don’t use the command key. But these are small gripes that take nothing away from what may be the most useful app I have installed since discovering Quicksilver two years ago.

Highly-anticipated video game Grand Theft Auto (GTA) IV has received a string of near-perfect reviews ahead of its worldwide release on Tuesday. The game is expected to break records for the fastest-selling game of all time and many shops are opening their doors at midnight for gamers. But I suspect many of those people won’t remember the first GTA…

Behold. The first Grand Theft Auto.

Just a quick shameless plug for the latest of my wallpapers to be added to PlasmaDesign.co.uk. ‘Turbulence’ is available to all visitors in widescreen and regular 4:3 ratio resolutions up to 2560×1600 pixels. The original version of this photo was a shot of the water fountain outside the Grand Hyatt in downtown San Francisco at night. The final version has been subjected to a considerable number of adjustments using Photoshop CS3.

Get it here.

You may have come here looking for an answer to the question above. If so, sorry. I wish I knew. How can a company as large and well respected as Adobe justify releasing a software updater that uses 100% of CPU resources from the minute it launches until the moment it quits? Indeed, that question can be added to other Adobe-related gripes, like why Illustrator takes forever to load even on a quad core Mac Pro? Or why my Version Cue database slows Bridge to a crawl if there are more than 100 projects? Or why using Dreamweaver CS3 on a Mac is akin to wading through treacle. For the love of God, Adobe. If you are going to charge thousands of dollars for your software, spend some of that revenue on ironing out it’s countless bugs because one day there might be a viable alternative. And if that happens you can kiss goodbye to my cash.

Typography.com published a great comparison between the newly designed currencies of the UK and US. Both were designed using very different approaches…

“Above, the new face of British currency, announced by the Royal Mint. The striking new designs, selected from an open competition that attracted four thousand entries, are the work of a 26-year old graphic designer named Matthew Dent. They are Mr. Dent’s first foray into currency design.

Below, the new five dollar bill, introduced last month by the United States Department of the Treasury. The new design, which features a big purple Helvetica five, is the work of a 147-year-old government agency called the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing. It employs 2,500 people, and has an annual budget of $525,000,000.”

Yet more proof that ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’.

I have been using a MacBook Air as my sole laptop for a month or so now. In general I feel very positive about my experience with it. However, there is one issue that seems to be plaguing myself and other MacBook Air owners. When taxing the CPU for extended periods, the MacBook Air shuts down one of it’s cores to prevent overheating. The easiest way to reproduce the problem is to watch a few YouTube videos. After approximately 15 minutes the Mac OS X Activity Monitor clearly shows only one core running. Within a few minutes of the CPU load being lightened, the dormant core springs back to life.

While running on only one CPU core, the MacBook Air is barely usable. The UI becomes jittery and the onscreen trackpad pointer jumps around.

While trying to find a solution to the problem I came across this forum post. The author suggests an application called ‘Coolbook‘ which purports to underclock the laptops CPU by lowering the voltage supplied to the processor and by more agressively throttling the speed of the CPU. My initial reaction was one of extreme skepticism. Alarm bells were ringing. While I consider myself a geek I have never dabbled with overclocking of CPU’s and have never even heard of underclocking. But after reading five pages of positive responses I decided to take the plunge and install ‘Coolbook’.

Firstly, let’s describe the applications UI as abysmal. There is no getting away from it. Maybe it would make more sense to someone with experience in underclocking but the whole point in a GUI is to assist the uninitiated in achieving their goals without having to resort to technical manuals. Needless to say I had to resort to the manual which is thankfully quite good.

After tinkering with the various parameters and following the advice of others on the forum I settled on the following settings…

When power adaptor is plugged in…

600HMz = 0.9V
800MHz = 0.9V
1200MHz = 0.9V
1400Mhz = 0.9V
1600Mhz = 0.95V

When the MacBook is running on battery…

600MHz = 0.9V
800Mhz = 0.9V
1200Mhz = 0.9V

This lowers the voltage supplied to the CPU by 0.2V. Also of note is the removal of the 1400MHz and 1600MHz setting when running on batteries. This has had the following results…

Before Coolbook

Approx CPU temperature under light load 52C
Approx CPU temperature under heavy load 75C
Fan speed under light load 2500rpm
Fan speed under heavy load 6500rpm
Battery life under light load – 3.35

After Coolbook

Approx CPU temperature under light load 43C
Approx CPU temperature under heavy load 62C
Fan speed under light load 2500rpm
Fan speed under heavy load 4250rpm
Battery life under light load – 4.25

Since installing Coolbook, my MacBook Air has suffered no core shutdowns, it has run significantly cooler to the touch, it is quieter (as a result of the lower fan speeds) and it lasts almost an hour longer than usual when running on battery power. As of yet I have found no downsides and I have not experienced any instability.

There is some debate about the possibilities of damaging the CPU by underclocking it. My research leads me to believe that such damage is unlikely and that using too low a voltage will simply result in OS instability. However, I am not advising anyone else rushes into underclocking their MacBook Air. All I offer is my experience with ‘Coolbook‘ for those who might be interested I will update this post should my experience change over the coming weeks.

Have you time for a good read? Then try the new Wired article on ‘How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong‘.

“It’s hard to see how any of this would have happened had Jobs hewed to the standard touchy-feely philosophies of Silicon Valley. Apple creates must-have products the old-fashioned way: by locking the doors and sweating and bleeding until something emerges perfectly formed. It’s hard to see the Mac OS and the iPhone coming out of the same design-by-committee process that produced Microsoft Vista or Dell’s Pocket DJ music player. Likewise, had Apple opened its iTunes-iPod juggernaut to outside developers, the company would have risked turning its uniquely integrated service into a hodgepodge of independent applications — kind of like the rest of the Internet, come to think of it.”

As the owner of a graphic design agency, I see the negative impact of ‘design by committee’ on a frequent basis. It is rarely pretty.

Apple have just upgraded their Airport Express to 802.11n. The previous model was only 802.11g. Apple claims a 5x speed improvement over the old version although in my experience users are more likely to get about three times the throughput; a nice speed bump nevertheless. The new Airport Express also boasts twice the range and is selling for the same price ($99) as the model it supersedes.

The northern lights must be one of the most beautiful natural phenomenon known to man, yet they are notoriously difficult to capture on film. However, Sigurdur H. Stefnisson seems to have perfected the art. These stunning photos of were all taken in Iceland over the last 20 years.

If you are like me and you feel compelled to tinker under the hood of Mac OS X then you may find the latest Alcor (the genius behind Quicksilver) project interesting. ‘Secrets 1.0′ is a system preference pane that provides GUI access to a multitude of hidden user defaults for both Mac OS X itself, Apple software and third party apps.

Secrets 1.0 is an open source project, compatible with Leopard only. Every time the preference pane is accessed it pulls the entire list of user defaults from http://secrets.textdriven.com/. New entries are being added to the site by its users on a minute by minute basis so the list of changes you can make to your Mac using the ‘Secrets’ preference pane will grow and grow over time.

Once again, another fascinating project by the creator of Quicksilver, and one that is sure to have the developers of more conventional system tweaking apps like Tinkertool, Onyx and Cocktail looking over their shoulders.

Download the software and find out more about Secrets here.

The MacBook Air is the latest in a long line of Apple notebooks to find a home at ‘Chez Randtoul’. Until its arrival I had considered the MacBook Pro to be the gold standard for build quality in a notebook. However, there are a few issues with the MacBook Pro, caused by less-than-perfect design.

1) When closed the screen touches the keys. Over time this leaves permanent marks on the display. Ultimately caused by a lack of clearance between the screen and keyboard, the problem is exasperated by the amount of flex in the lid. Apple has made modifications to the MacBook Pro/Powerbook over the years to try and address the issue (mainly through the addition of rubber pads around the screen bezel). A number of third party solutions have also sprung up, including screen protecting microfiber cloths that are placed on the keyboard before the lid is closed. However, in my mind these are band-aids developed to mask a fundamental design flaw.

2) While the casing for the MacBook Pro is beautifully anodized aluminum, the bevelled edge just below the space bar is painted. Whether this becomes a problem for the user depends heavily on how they type, and where they rest their thumbs. If, like me your thumbs tend to sit on the space bar, over time the painted area can become discolored and eventually wear off altogether, revealing the bare aluminum underneath.

3) Under certain circumstances the backlighting of the keyboard can actually make the keys more difficult to read. Since the death of the Titanium Powerbook, Apple have chosen to match the color of the keys to the notebooks casing, resulting in a light grey keyboard on the Macbook Pros. During daylight this is fine (light grey keys, black characters). During darkness (once the backlighting is activated) again all is well (black keys, white characters). But in a room with a low light the result is white characters on light grey keys. While not too much of a problem for touch typists, the low contrast between the keys and characters tends to negate the supposed benefits of a backlit keyboard.

Back to the MacBook Air. There has of course been much debate about its merits since it’s launch. However, what cannot be denied is it’s exceptional build quality. The curved surfaces of the casing give the notebook an amazing amount of rigidity, especially when the ultra-thin form factor is taking into consideration. Indeed, I have heard many people comment that the MacBook Air feels as though it is carved from a solid slab of aluminum.

Stanley Kubrick once said “Sometimes the truth of a thing is not so much in the think of it, as in the feel of it.“

While the MacBook Air feature set is a lesson in compromise and sacrifice, the ‘feel’ of the Air is of undeniable quality and craftsmanship.

So what about those three design flaws still present in the Air’s big brother, the Macbook Pro?

1) The keys no longer touch the screen. This has been achieved by making three changes. Firstly a rubber bumper now runs around the entire circumference of the screen. Secondly, the use of the MacBooks chiclet style recessed and flat-surface keyboard results in more clearance between the screen and keys. Thirdly, the curves of the lids casing provide much more rigidity, resulting in less screen flex.

2) There are no painted areas. While I haven’t taken a sheet of sandpaper to my new MacBook Air, I have given it a thorough inspection and it appears that all surfaces are anodized aluminum.

3) The keyboard is now black. While this is cosmetically a little jarring for some (although it brings back fond memories of the Titanium Powerbook for me), it provides high contrast between the keys and characters under all lighting conditions. Is this a rare case of Apple choosing function over form? Surely not

After two weeks with my MacBook Air I find it difficult to levy any significant criticism of the units build quality and engineering. It truly is the gold standard of notebook design. Alas poor MacBook Pro. I knew him well.

A few years back when my kids had less attitude and hadn’t perfected the art of sarcasm they frequently subjected me to many hours of Tellytubbies. My personal favorite was Noo-Noo, but that’s besides the point.

I came across this article on GoogleSightseeing.com; a great Web site that publishes the co-ordinates of points of interest on Google Earth. I always thought that The Teletubbies was filmed in a BBC studio somewhere but apparently not!

View Teletubby Land from space here.

One of the highlights of Macworld 2008 for me was attending Merlin Mann’s presentation on ‘Time & Attention‘. The session was originally labelled ‘Living With Data’ so many attendees were surprised not to be learning about backing up their files etc. It is a testament to Merlin’s presentation skills and his obvious passion for the subject that no-one left halfway through the misleadingly billed session. And I spoke to many people afterwards who were fascinated and downright inspired by Merlins talk. As was I.

The audio and slides for Merlins ‘Time & Attention’ presentation can be watched online at 43folders.com

The diminutive Macbook Air must be Apples most controversial product in years. Designing a subnotebook is an exercise in compromise. By it’s very nature, certain features must be left out or cut back to achieve the compact form factor that subnotebook users demand. Each persons opinion of the Macbook Air is determined by whether the compromise in features outweigh the benefits of the machines physical attributes. Still undecided? Here is a roundup of early Macbook Air reviews…

Ars Technica (in my opinion the definative review site)

Macworld (an epic review by Jason Snell)

MacNN – Initial impressions

Engadget (a balanced review by Ryan Block)

Gizmodo – disassembly (self explanatory)

Gizmodo – review

PC Mag

Crave

CNET

Wall Street Journal (a suprisingly critical review from Walt Mossberg who is considered by many to be biased towards Apple)

Newsweek (an early review by the author of the fantastic iPod book ‘The Perfect Thing’)

USA Today

Gearlog – unboxing

NotebookReview.com (good review with video)