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This is just a public service announcement for those wishing to replace the HD/SSD in a first generation MacBook Air with a Mach Xtreme Technology MX-Nano P-ATA ZIF SSD. Since information on P-ATA ZIF connectors and cables is kind of hard to come by, and the MX-Nano uses a different orientation for Pin 1 than the normal Toshiba or Samsung HDs used in the MacBook Air, there can be some confusion as to how to correctly install the MX-Nano.

So for those that plan on using the MX-Nano, this is the correct way to install the SSD (for full instructions just follow the relevant iFixit Guide): Place the SSD with the green top label on the bottom side, and the specs label on the top side into the rubber gasket as shown in this picture:

This still allows you to attach the flex cable without too much bending and the SSD itself works like a charm.

This book gives a very enjoyable look at Georgian and Victorian era British horse-racing and gambling, centered around the scandal of the Derby of 1844. It paints a very illuminating picture of the respective eras and the changes in gambling they brought about. Combined with the mystery surrounding the “stolen” Derby of 1844 this makes for an absorbing read. For those so inclined Amazon also offers a nice Kindle edition. Definitely recommended!

I’ve finally gotten around to slightly improving the layout of this blog, mostly thanks to the fantastic CSS Editor CSSEdit. Now that font-embedding for the web is finally gaining acceptance, I also switched to the very nice font Fontin Sans by Jos Buivenga (exljbris), which is employed through web font-embedding via @font-face, as supported by Safari 3.1 and Firefox 3.5 and later. Everyone else who doesn’t have Fontin Sans installed will still see this site in Trebuchet MS, Helvetica, Arial or whatever sans-serif font your user agent defaults to.

Please expect minor re-edits of old posts in the following days to manage some of the fallout from these design tweaks.

Following the “long-standing” tradition of pundits predicting what will be announced by Apple at WWDC (or other events), here are my predictions:

1. iPhone 3GS

   I agree with John Gruber’s prediction that a faster iPhone “3GS” will be announced, and of course it will have at least 16GB and 32GB models, though I sincerely hope, but do not expect, a 64GB model that would aid in replacing my 160GB iPod Classic. Well, maybe next year.

   I also think that we are going to see something for the lower end of the market, and I suspect it is not going to be the current iPhone 3G.

2. Snow Leopard

   Of course WWDC on the Mac side will be all about Snow Leopard, and I fully expect an announced ship date, as well as one or two currently unknown features for Snow Leopard, though probably nothing earth shattering, technically speaking.

   I doubt a new UI will be announced for Snow Leopard, with such a short lead time for developers, and announcing a new UI that is going to ship with 10.7 before 10.6 ships is out of the question.

   I fully expect Snow Leopard to be a full price paid update, i.e. $129.

3. No Tablet

   I’d love to be proven wrong, but I don’t think an “iTablet” is ready for release. If it should be released, it would be a high-end iPhone.

   The reason I’d love to be proven wrong is not that I’d personally want a tablet (I’d rather have either an iPhone or MacBook Air, thanks very much), but it would finally put to rest all the euphoric Apple tablet-excitement. I’ve been around since before (probably) the first time in the late 80s when tablets were all the rage (remember the GRiDPad?), and with each new tablet mania each 5-8 years, (IMHO unrealistic and unclear) expectations were never ever met by the products, and they subsequently vanished in small niche markets, never to be heard of again. An Apple tablet is either going to meet the same fate, not unlikely, or it is going to revolutionize the tablet form factor into something which people can really use in practice, not merely crave in the abstract. In either case we’ll know something more about tablets and their place in the world.

4. Cinema Displays

   I continue to expect that they’ll update the Cinema Display range sometime this year, and it is getting kind of urgent with all current products going to DisplayPort connectors, and only one matching display. However Apple has continually failed to update them, so why now? We’ll see…

I know it’s a little late for the holiday season, but for a nice post-holiday read I’d like to recommend Political Philosophy Comes to Rick’s: Casablanca and American Civic Culture, edited by James F. Pontuso. This collection of essays is a nice read for fans of Casablanca, of course, especially with its combination of production background information, character analysis and historical context.

More importantly its exposition of American civic culture and political philosophy against the backdrop of Casablanca can also be a refreshing reminder of certain civic values which though constantly under attack are sorely needed in any age, especially ours.

Another bus-powered external DVD-writer that works with the MBA is the Samsung SE-T084. It is a slot-in type drive, weighs in at around 420g and 142 x 158 x 20mm, supports DVD-RAM and Lightscribe, as well as small diameter (8cm) discs, and seems fairly sturdy in its manufacture.

While lots of people seem particularly interested in getting the MacBook Air Superdrive to work with non-MBA computers, I fail to understand the large appeal of this, except for aesthetic concerns: There are a number of nice external drives that will work powered by a sufficiently capable (i.e. above-spec) USB port, or a combination of those.

One of those is the LG GSA-E50L, which is only slightly larger (156 x 165 x 21 vs. 139 x 139 x 17 mm) and heavier (380g vs. 320g) than the MBA Superdrive, is a bit faster and cheaper, and offers Lightscribe and DVD-RAM support, for those that care. I’ve purchased one of those, and it works very well with the MBA from its beefed up USB port, and through its Lightscribe support I can label discs on the road without all of the pain of printed labels. Recommended.

It seems that, at long last, the 4GB mobile memory barrier is being broken. It turns out that certain Intel mobile chipsets do, actually, inofficially, support 2GBit chips and hence the 4GB memory modules needed for e.g. 8GB of RAM.

I just hope that support for more than 4GB of RAM will move into the mainstream sometime later this year, maybe when Intel releases their new mobile chipsets in the second half of 2008. I find it kind of strange having all 64bit Mobile Processor line-ups (Core 2 Duo and friends), yet still next to no support for actually employing that addressing power with physical memory, given the resource hoggishness of current operating systems and applications and their non-trivial working sets.

(Via Heise Newsticker.)

I was on the road with the MBA in the last couple of weeks, traveling around the country to various clients, and the experience has been a good one, so far. I’ll write more on the computing side of things in another post, here I just wanted to note that the MBA is indeed raising eye-brows and enthusiasm wherever I take it, whether hotel bars, coffee shops, airport security, or client meetings. Even my PowerBook 17” didn’t raise that much interest when it first came out, so I really expect the MBA to be a stellar performer for Apple.

On the topic of airport security, as e.g. Michael Nygard has already noted, the X-ray signature of the MBA is indeed different enough from the ordinary for screeners to notice (though at least the European screeners I met handled this with much less fuss than the TSA screeners encountered by Michael Nygard). Which BTW seems not so surprising to me, given the design goals of the MBA, which leads to a laptop with very little electronics inside, and the rest of the enclosure containing the spread out battery. If one were to design a device that contained as much plastic explosives as possible, while still being able to function as enough of a laptop so as to fool casual tests, the design might end up looking similar, though one would probably create something with a little more volume.

Anyway, the road so far with the MBA as a main machine has been very successful, though I still sometimes long for my large 17” PowerBook display. A related nuisance I have noticed with the MBA is that connecting an external display leads to very frequent fan noise, apparently caused by the GPU circuitry working overtime (at least with my Cinema HD 23” display).

Aside from this nuisance and either a second powered USB port or a FireWire port (or a much bigger internal HD), I still have to find something about the MBA not to like. Definitely recommened for people not doing heavily media-centric stuff. Even as a developer main machine, this can pass muster, if carefully used. And as a second machine besides a Mac Pro, the MBA is likely to be enough for many more.

On a Lisp-related note: The MBA is, like all Intel-based Macs, one of the nicest modern Lisp machines, able to run all currently maintained Common Lisp implementations (even Windows-only ones ;).

Ok, so I succumbed to the temptation of getting a MacBook Air, seeing as MacBook Pro updates are likely some way off, and/or are marginal improvements at best (especially on the 4GB front), and having a developer hardware discount expiring.

Having ranted about even MacBook Pros being RAM starved for my uses, and barely living within the constraints of my self-upgraded 160GB HD, why-oh-why would I want a MacBook Air? Well, for one because it’s sexy and like any self-respecting tech junkie, why wouldn’t I want one?

The main other reason is that my work-pattern has changed for the better in recent years, with less time spent at customer premises, and more time spent in-office, with a certain amount of traveling all over the country/continent/world for shortish durations thrown in. So the idea of having a heavy-duty laptop as main machine for ease of permanent relocation is getting somewhat less important to me, and the idea of going back to a non-portable main machine with a travel-friendly laptop is actually something that might become palatable.

Of course, there are still a number of open questions, especially when it comes to keeping stuff in-sync, especially to the point of being able to leave at fairly short notice without missing stuff on the road. A lot of stuff, like e-mail, address books, base-line source code, etc., is already stored and synced through centralized servers, but there is still lots of things that are not so synced, so I will have to see about that.

The next couple of weeks I’m going to try to live within the confines of the MacBook Air as a sort-of main machine, with only non-essential stuff living somewhere else.

The first impressions of the MBA to me are quite favorable: It is indeed very thin and stylish, very well made, and reasonably light, while remaining stiff and somewhat robust.

The new touch-pad gestures are very, very likable, making me miss a mouse much less than normally. The optical-drive borrowing works reliably (though a directly connected drive is really preferable for largish installations, especially over 802.11g and lower networks).

Performance is nothing to be ashamed of, though of course once you enter swapping-territory, having a 1.8” HD does not really help (D’oh)!

All in all, living within the MBA in the last couple of days proved surprisingly unrestrictive, and I can really see this being the one and only computer for quite a lot of folks. The only thing that I’m really missing is a Firewire 400/800 connector, since I really dislike USB 2.0 for mass-storage (especially on Apple platforms), and have standardized on firewire for all external storage. That said, most people will likely be just as happy with the USB 2.0 port.

We will see how things progress from here, once the mundane cruft accrues on the HD and sychronization issues crop up…