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- Israel Banning iPad Over Wi-Fi Concerns
While the iPad has been flying off shelves for almost two weeks now, its Wi-Fi — currently the only way to get online with iPad, until the 3G wireless models drop later this month — has caused some headlines of its own. Now the news comes of Israel blocking the entry of iPads into the country over concerns of the wireless transmitters being too strong.
It seems that Israeli Customs have already confiscated 10 iPads from travelers until officials can certify the strength of the wireless transmitters used in the new Apple product. The ban doesn’t appear to be an issue of import, as tourists are being blocked from bringing iPads along with residents of the country. This must certainly be a difficult blow for those traveling with their great new device, only to have it taken away by the hosting government. The iPads are being held with a daily storage fee to the owner, or can be mailed home at the owner’s expense for now.
The Communications Ministry of Israel has explained its reasoning:
If you operate equipment in a frequency band which is different from the others that operate on that frequency band, then there will be interference
The iPad specs show it can manage 802.11 a/b/g/n radio transmissions. The n radio representing the most recent wireless capabilities. I suppose I could understand if Israel doesn’t currently run 802.11n networks, but that still doesn’t compute — the way these Wi-Fi technologies work, is that they access a Wi-Fi hotspot using the lowest common denominator. So if the iPad was the only n-capable Wi-Fi device on a wireless network, it would be downgraded to the next highest possible transmission speeds based on other wireless client devices. Then again, I don’t pretend to know what the infrastructure in Israel is like, so I can’t be certain where their concerns may stem from. (I don’t suppose the Israeli government will relax due to the fact the iPad has been having major Wi-Fi connectivity issues…?)Hopefully Israeli officials can come to agreeable terms soon, as Apple will be releasing the iPad internationally on May 10. But until the restrictions die down, you’ll have to leave your iPad at home when traveling to Israel in the near term.
Related GigaOM Pro Research: How AT&T Will Deal with iPad Data Traffic
Переслать - Apple Backup Returns with an Update
Apple quietly introduced a much needed update this week: Backup 3.2. I’m a big fan of Apple’s easy-to-use, yet often quirky backup solution. However, back in November I noticed that the program was quite long in the tooth after its second birthday still stuck at version 3.1.2. Did Apple follow my suggestions on what to change? Barely.
First on my list was the obvious change of reference from .Mac to MobileMe. Also on my list were modifications to the backup Quickpicks. Apple removed the out-of-date reference to Internet Explorer, but still fails to include backup of non-Apple products such as Quickbooks or Firefox. The Internet Explorer reference was the only noticeable change to the Quickpicks.
Missing from the update were my feature requests for encrypted backup and backup of iPhone data. Maybe that will be in 3.5. This was, after all, only a minor point release.
Still, some new features were added and the update isn’t merely a modernization of antiquated references to outdated products. Part of this modernization is a requirement for Leopard or higher to run.
Backup’s file structure for iDisk has changed and your first new backup will be a “Full backup,” which means it can take some time. You’ll still be able to restore from old backups, but you won’t be able to append to them. Fortunately, Backup duplicates your old backup scripts. Be prepared for the additional time of a full backup. Backups to hard disks or DVDs appear to remain unchanged.
Another feature of iDisk backups is automatic recycling of old backups. Previously with Backup, if you set a scheduled backup to the iDisk, you’d eventually fill it up and have to delete your oldest backups and sometimes completely start from scratch. Backup 3.2 now will automatically delete your oldest backup. For daily backups, that’s after 30 days and for weekly that’s 12 weeks. This schedule is not changeable. The only way to prevent recycled backups to an iDisk is to set it up for a manual schedule. For many people that’s just fine and is consistent with other online services such as Carbonite and Mozy.
Backing up to local media or a network share remains mostly unchanged. The language of the backup schedule slightly changed and Backup no longer allows a backup schedule of every six months. The most you can schedule on an interval is a quarter (in 3.1.2 referred to as 3 months). Recycled backups to non-iDisk destinations allows recycling to be optional.
In quick testing I noticed an obvious change in speed of both the backups and the restores. My first full backup via 3.2 took less time than my incremental backups in 3.1.2! Similarly, old restores are typically a pain and take an inordinate amount of time for even small files. I used my address book files as a test file. In total, that folder is about 16MB. Restoring from the iDisk took about 10 minutes with 3.1.2. After doing my full backup with 3.2, restore took less than a minute. Awesome! My network backups also completed restores in record time. Clearly the file structure is improved.
If it’s been a while since you used Backup, now might be the time to give it another try. Apple states it has improved the “overall reliability” and from what I’ve seen so far it’s true. If you’ve got that extra space on iDisk, might as well use it as another backup destination. Realize the backup is not encrypted, though. Hopefully that’s in the 3.5 or 4.0 version.
For those interested in cloud computing or data centers, check out our Structure conference in June.
Переслать - What's So Hot About the New MacBook Pros? The Stuff You Can't See
Between packing up to move apartments and keeping an eye on Twitter’s Chirp conference, I’ve been playing around with a new 15-inch Macbook Pro, one of the many new laptops introduced by Apple earlier this week. The 15-inch devices, which use Intel’s i5 and i7 processors while the 13-inch Macbook Pro uses the Intel Core 2 Duo chip, look virtually no different than they did before, with unibody styling and the same screen size, weight and number of ports. The only visible change is in the design of the mag-safe power connector, which is now clearly inspired by the MacBook Air charger. [Digg]The real change in these new laptops is under the hood — in the stuff you can’t see. It all starts with the integrated( Intel graphics) and discrete (Nvidia’s GeForce 330M GT) graphics chips, which can be found in both the 15- and 17-inch machines. The 13-inch Macbook Pros use the 320m chip. What Apple has done in this most recent update to its line-up is make switching between two graphics modes automatic, depending on the task at hand. For instance, a simple application such as Mail or Safari by default uses the embedded/integrated graphics engine, while more graphics-intensive apps such as Premiere or Aperture automatically switch to the more muscular graphics chips.
So what’s the big deal about this? First, you get a smoother performance. But the big impact is on the battery life of these laptops, especially with the 13 inch Macbook Pros. While the previous generation of MacBook Pros used Nvidia’s 9400M integrated graphics engine, the new line-up uses the new Nvidia 320M. The old chip had 16 cores while the new 320M has 48. And yet the 320M, despite being more muscular (it provides an 80 percent performance gain over the 9400M) is 40 percent more energy efficient. That boosts the battery life of the laptops by as much as three hours, which means Apple is offering total battery life of between 8 and 10 hours on the new MacBook Pros.
I’m pretty sure Apple made more tweaks than just that in order to get those 8-10 hours, but graphic chip optimization has to be right up there when it comes to squeezing more out of the battery. Maybe because it makes both the hardware and the operating system it’s able to get more from the batteries on its machines.These tweaks reminded me of something uber-investor and Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, who will be speaking at our Green:Net conference on April 29, said recently — that by innovating around the internal combustion engine, we can substantially improve car mileage. Others believe that by writing more efficient, smarter software, more life can be squeezed from the current generation of battery technology. Apple is certainly proving that.
Oh and in case you were wondering about the machine itself, it is really really really fast. Much faster than my old MacBook Pro, which has an SSD drive and 8 GB of memory. Apps start in a blink of an eye and even iTunes works as if it was suddenly Barry Bonds. If you want to know anything specific, go ahead and ask me, and I will do my best to answer your questions.
Переслать - iPad Price Gouging? Not Quite
iSuppli, the market research and analysis firm, came out with its final report on how much it costs Apple to make an iPad, and the magic number turns out to be about $260 for the baseline 16GB model, which sells for $500 at retail. Apple haters are surely whining that Apple is gouging customers with these prices while getting away with huge margins.The reality is different. Apple wouldn’t make any money if it just charged slightly higher than the manufacturing costs. Apple has to pay for both hardware and software development, plus the costs of launching a completely new product. It also has to pay its employees, both at the Apple retail stores and at Cupertino itself. With these extra costs in mind, the price of the iPad doesn’t seem as high (many Apple analysts were actually predicting that the iPad would cost $1,000 or more). Apple’s margins are actually far less than other commodities like CDs, which cost about $1 to manufacture, yet are sold for around $10 at retail.
Apple gets these margins for each version of the iPad:
Model Retail Price Hardware Cost Margin iPad 16GB $500 $260 48% iPad 32GB $600 $290 52% iPad 64GB $700 $350 50% As you can see, the margins stay about the same as the hardware costs go up. Apple’s margins for new products have historically been around these numbers as well, so if you are being gouged (and you’re really not), at least you should be used to it by now.
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