On the lack of Firewire on unibody MacBooks

After some quick research, I’ve concluded that the lack of Firewire on the unibody MacBook is totally inconsistent with other Macs that are available for less.

A potential reason for omitting Firewire is cost. If this is the case, then I have only one question: why is it that Firewire is still a standard feature on the new Mac Minis starting at $599, AND even the updated white MacBook with the 9400M GPU that sells for $999? Ouch.

That and Firewire has nice benefits such as target disk mode for easily mounting the disk for recovery, being able to carry more power for self-powered devices, TCP/IP networking, and smoking USB 2.0 because it’s still CPU dependent, while Firewire is handled by a dedicated controller.

This is not good.

Update – 8 June 2009: Firewire once again STANDARD on all Apple portables except the MacBook Air. YES!

Not sure if Target Disk Mode (TDM) will be offered though. It would be madness not to.

Bald by choice

I’ve decided to go bald since the new year and am really liking the change. Though initially thinking it was a good way to save money from getting a haircut, the cost of razors and shaving cream, however, negates any of the cost benefits.

But still, I think this is a good direction, and I’ll keep it going this year.

Some people don’t like it though, my mother included, as well as a girl from work. In fact, she had asked me if I was ever going to grow it back. I told her it was unlikely.

Now, I’ve had my hair in a bunch of different styles growing up, so there was never any one I stuck with. That, and I’ve never had a clean, well-defined hairline. So the conclusion was, why bother with hair at all?

If I suddenly lost the ability to grow hair, and never had to shave it down every morning, that would be quite a blessing.

But some people get this preconceived idea that being bald gives people the look of having been in the slammer, and/or involved with crime. Most likely it’s manufactured by the media.

A good example is the Mirror Universe episode of Star Trek TOS, where the crew meets their evil counterparts, who all have beards and look evil, Spock in particular.

Home for the week

I’m taking some time off and came back home Tuesday night.

Work last week was pretty bad and I really needed time off to get out of NYC and back to my safe harbor, my refuge. I’m pretty sure that I was close to having a nervous breakdown.

So far, so good. I’m feeling better and I’m making good use of my time to do the things that I like.

I think I’m late to the game in realizing that personal productivity is important to one’s mental health. Historically, in the countless number of time I’d come home from college or work, I wouldn’t have a real agenda of things to do. If there’s friends in town, then go out and get drinks with them and stay out late. If I couldn’t think of stuff to do, just browse the web until late at night and sleepin the following day, virtually squandering it.

But this time, I’m playing it differently and made some plans. I have a reading list of stuff to read, and am making plans to go places this year. Last night, I watched the Dreamers on the train ride home, and starting reading some of Paul Graham’s essays, as well as before going to bed. Today, I met my sister for lunch, got my bike tuned up and took a 7 mile ride around home (more on this later), drove around town to get stuff and see how much the area has changed. My motivations for biking probably would’ve been nonexistent had I not signed up for the Five Boro bike ride on 3 May (Nerd will be participating) as well as a similar event in Chicago on 24 May (Nerd present). Having not biked in over 2 years as my bike was sent back home after moving to Brooklyn, and to do a dry run on the day of the 41-mile Five Boro ride I figured, would be futile.

More thoughts to come shortly, including my mother’s reaction to me being bald.

Steve Jobs’ Successor

Ever since the news of SJ’s medical problems, I’ve been thinking long and hard about who could potentially succeed him, should he ever decide to step down.

I started with a list of usual suspects and began narrowing it down rather quickly. In a nutshell, there were several that once worked for Apple, but haven’t been with the company for ages, so I don’t think Jobs would be interested in them. Crossing those two out leads to a handful of possible candidates that are currently on Apple’s management team.

Of that handful, the group consists of former NeXT executives that were brought over from the Apple acquisition in 1997, and the rest are industry veterans from other major companies.

Keep in mind that SJ’s brain trust is not entirely known to the public, and for good reason (preventing his team from being poached away by other companies). These guys don’t even have bios on the Apple website. Pretty clever if you want to keep your crown jewels intact, and out of the limelight.

Recently, he was seen running the iPhone OS 3.0 media event. And no, I don’t believe it’s Scott Forstall.

My bet, is on Greg Joswiak.

(If this were to happen, it’d be great to have Steve Wozniak back as well, for the sole reason of having similar last names, Joz and Woz! )

Raw and Wrong

I am absolutely loving the rawness of Depeche Mode’s new song Wrong. Nerd and I are going to the Borgata in August to watch them in concert. Looking forward to getting their CD in a few weeks.

The HD version is even better, and the music video is SICK.

I think the rawness very much complements how I’m feeling these days.